You are just an ignorant narcissistic prick. Nobody gives a fuck about your shopping preferences, because for a supermarket chain you are indistinguishable from a zero. People (and that doesn't include you) may enjoy this new type of shopping experience - this is what the chain is betting on. IBM has good people and they know this stuff better than you do (I see how you only mention your education and past experience - what is your current job? Do you have a job?). They may fail, of course, but probably won't. People like comfort, people like shiny tech, people enjoy shopping and they will enjoy it more in this store. And you, once you overcome your stubbornness, will do like everyone else does. And once there is an easy to use shopping list software provided for free to any customer, you will bother making the lists and not bother anyone with your pointless objections. Hope this clears it up for you.
You completely miss the point. This isn't done because shopping is difficult, this is done because some believe that customers will enjoy the store a little more if they have access to smart shopping carts. Some marketers also think that this may benefit the stores (and the customers too) by providing more avenues for personalisation, increase customer loyalty, etc.
Re:Fixing fundamental design mistakes?
on
Linus Interviewed
·
· Score: 1
One advantage of Unix is that it is inherently multi-user. If it's just me on the computer, why should I be limited to just one identity? Seems I should be able to run a browser under its own identity and if it catches viruses and whatever, all it can mess up is itself. A possible approach is to observe the usage patterns of a typical desktop user. He rarely uses more than one program at a time (I don't mean multitaskin, just that he doesn't use several programs in a tandem). So you can safely limit permissions for most programs to a couple of files that he works on. This way a broswer would be able to corrupt the bookmarks and the files you download, but it won't be able to touch your personal photos or MP3s you bought through another program.
I think there are some valid underlying reasons for a satirical news program to be more objective and honest than "real" news. In Russia a well-known liberal journalist Victor Shenderovich (Shender.Ru, Russian-only) does a weekly satirical news program Syrok (before it was a similar one called Itogo). This is an outlet that can be used to say anything that the journalist wants (including the truth) and this being a satirical program he is not responsible for anything other than the rating - he doesn't have to uphold the "party line". If it was a "real" news program, he (or his boss) would get a phone call quickly - the same is probably true about the USA and Jon Stewart as well.
Here are the topics from the October 8 issue (BTW, currently the main Russian theme is how to provoke terror and then fight it to shift the attention from other issues - Russian political life is a carbon copy of America in 2001-2002, it's really amazing far the similarities go). Anyway: - A People's Artist (a honors title) Aristarkh Livanov was annoyed by his neighbours singing caraoke at 4AM, so he decided to establish the "All-Russian public movement "Russia-Antiterror"". Among the stated goals is to create a national network of house committies that will keep tabs on people from other regions, former felons or amoral people. The movement got support from president Putin (held their convention in the hotel "Russia" in Moscow, got one of the president's advisors there, etc.) - He gives some news about Pumane - a guy, who started to testify about the latest terrorist bombing, but was raped and "accidentally" strangled with a shower hose... Amazing what goes for humour in Russia nowdays... - Refers to an article in one of the newspapers about a possibility that Duma will pass a law that the presumption of innocence may be cancelled for terrorism and corruption suspects. - The Fund for Support of "United Russia" (a pocket party for the regime) suggested to issue photo IDs for all Moscow schoolchildren. The pilot tests were run in 4 schools already. The cards include a phone number of the nearest offices of "United Russia" on the back... - Talks about some ass-licking by Egor Stroev - former chairman of Federal Counsil (upper chamber of parliament), who recently begged Putin to strengthen the government and not allow the country to collapse. - The head of the Central Election Committee said that sunset provisions are needed if we are to cancel the elections of governors. He said 10 years should be ok. (Recently president Putin decided that it would be a great idea to cancel direct election of regional [state] governors - all to fight terrorism, but against the consitution, of course). - In Chechnya a newly elected president was inaugurated. The location was kept in secret until the last moment. Former president - Maskhadov - is wanted by the Russian government (10 million dollar bounty), but the clan of the new one (Kadyrov) could not manage to catch him just yet. - "Commersant" newspaper (main business newspaper) writes that people presidential administration are not even trying to hide the fact that they are fighting over the assets of UKOS - a large oil company, kind of "captured" by the government recently. - The Supreme Court declined to give compensations to the victims of October 2002 terrorist act in Moscow. - Incidentally, the statue of Themis on the Russian Supreme Court building is missing a blindfold. - In Vladimirskaya oblast the deputies of regional parlament declined to ratify the new coat of arms of the region proposed by the Prosecutor's office. The coat of arms contained traditional golden leopard in a crown holding a silver cross in a right arm, but also crossed hammer and sickle. - 3 months ago the government of Belgorodskaya oblast started a campaign against swearing. Several lecture halls were opened, plays organised, a leaflet was published and a competition for anti-swearing slogans was held. One of the winning entries was "Today swearing - tomo
Actually there was a site that provides ed2k links to political videos. I just can't recall the name, but if you keep looking, you are bound to eventually find it.
I am not missing the point. I would probably watch this show if I could and enjoy whatever science was included there, I just abhore the idea that the only way to get Joe Public interested is to blow shit up or piss on an electric fence.
Owning an Universal Audio 1176 may be a status symbol (whatever it is), but I would dare guess that it's only for a very small group of people. Paintings are different - people are trained to believe that they have some intrinsic quality, but look at the growing popularity of online collections of all sorts of images (from porn and funny pics to photoshop contents, galleries of computer art, renders, photos, etc.). However, paintings have some unique qualities (being physical objects) and so may survive for some time. Animated cartoons didn't take over because they are more expensive to make and because you can't watch them in the book. However, as tablet PCs (and their successor - smart paper) develop, as 3D modelling software improves and simplifies, at one point it will be much easier/faster/better/cheaper to take some 3D objects, quickly make a story out of them and render animated shots for the smart paper media. This may very well happen in about 15 years. But this is more complex because the end results are different, not just the technology.
Returning to the original topic, rendered comix are (or will be soon) every bit as good as hand-drawn. And you can (once there are enough stock models and modelling software is simple enough to use) make a story much easier, with less skills and better quality. This is a winner and noone will keep using outdated technology - just a handful of people who enjoy being "old-school".
In my view, the point of science TV programs is not to correct some misconceptions people have - it's to educate them about science and create a positive attitude towards it so that they can apply the scientific method (and basic critical thinking, scepticism and rationalism) to resolve these misconceptions themselves when need arises.
The point is not to give them more "I saw it on TV" ammo when discussing whether peeing on an electric fence is dangerous, the point is (or rather should be) to make intelligent human beings out of the general populace. For this particular example they would need to have a general understanding of what electricity is and how it works, what matter and energy are, in what areas of agriculture, law-enforcement, military, etc. electric and other fences are used and why, how the power is generated, what is air, what is urine, how it is generated in the human body, what is waste, what people eat in different parts of the world...
And I (or any educated person) can go on and on about what fields of human knowledge are related and I have a sufficient understanding in most of them to be able to either know the answer myself with a sufficient degree of certainty (though hearing experimental results can still be useful), can judge the stories presented elsewhere, evidence that is available and claims that are made based on it, and can apply the knowledge more widely than just not pissing on the fence or having some fun pretending to be educated while watching some crap on TV.
Most of presumably scientific content on TV is crap (depends on the country/TV channel, etc.). Rarely is the right thing done as it requires such a gagrantuan effort and such a unique combination of skills that those few people who manage this are treated as heroes (Carl Sagan, Sergey Kapitsa).
The same boring cycle. First they say it's impossible, then improbable and then obvious and expected. A few years ago people argued with foam on their mouths that 3D animation will not replace traditional animation, that 3D CGI is inferior to traditional effects and computer-rendered movies have no future. They keep saying this (they being the majority of people), because they (same definition) are retarded idiots. People (specifically, the unique American blend of retarded christians) argued that stem-cells are evil and should never be used, but just look at the news... There are hundreds other examples.
Things are going to change and there is nothing that can be done (not that anything should be) about this. Almost no comics will be hand-drawn in 2015, that's kind of obvious to any man with a functioning brain.
There is actually a short sci-fi story about exactly this problem. After a number of mock-up long-term mission the space command told two astronauts that the next one will be a max-realism simulation. Eventually the austronaut (the surviving one) found out that this must have been a real one.:) Sadly, I don't remember neither the title, nor the author.
Sadly the development of a government budget is not a result of rational decision-making. There are probably hundreds of similar low-cost, low-risk, high-payoff projects that could be done using the money collected by IRS, but they do not fit the traditional lobbism scheme and so are not even considered.
for example MDI works excellently for stuff like tabbed browser windows (eg mozilla). (yes, i know it's not 'traditional mdi' but it is mdi.)
It's even better in Opera, where you have real 'traditional' MDI. There is a separate workspace for browsing - you can use both tabs AND click/move the page windows.
Apple grosses about 1.8 billion per quarter selling hardware. To equate that with just selling OS X at $129, they would need to sell 14 million units a quarter.
First, Apple doesn't need to equate the x86 OS X sales with Mac sales, they just need to cover their porting costs while not cannibalising their existing sales. After they cover the porting costs, each sale would bring up to 100$ profit (allowing for admin, marketing, distribution, etc.). I am not sure they make a 100$ profit from each computer they sell. And even if they do, that would mean they need to sell only as many x86 OS X licenses, which is less than a million per quarter to make this their primary revenue source. Needless to say, if they manage not to harm their hardware business, any significant amount of copies would mean they earn a nice profit (and ROI).
Well, you can check out the specs for a Dell top-level machine, buy the parts and build it yourself. Bingo! You have a cheap system that is almost 100% compatible.
I don't believe that big-name vendors add much value. I always buy my machines custom-built. It is a common practice in most stores here to do it for free - you just pay the list price for the parts. Unless you are aiming for the absolutely cheapest parts, you can be pretty confident that the system will work just fine - and the store will test the machine after it is built anyway.
Stability is the last of the Mac OS X advantages. Mac OS9 crashed like WinME and probably worse - people still loved it. Apple doesn't win loyal customers by providing a secure and stable OS - they do it by providing a comfortable well-designed environment to work in. I would estimate that stability and security are only responsible for about 20% of total user satisfaction.
I am a Windows user. Sadly, the OS is prone to crashes and it's not always hardware's fault. So I don't think that Mac OS X ported to x86 will suck too much on this front.
However, I am still unsure if I would "Switch". A week ago I went to a Mac shop to check out the OS (to understand whether I want my new laptop to be a Mac). I am not sure I liked the experience. The interface may be slick, but for some reason on all machines the mouse sensitivity was set to very low (must be a OS default then). I like my mouse fast (1280 pixels ~ 1.5-2 cm), so I really hated to drag that stupid rodent all over the table. And I couldn't change the setting because I am not familiar with the OS and it was in German.:) So I didn't know where to look and soon gave up.
This might not sound like a valid criticism - after all, how many customers may be so exigent as to demand changing mouse sensitivity to be obvious for a novice user who can't read? May be I am alone, but that's the level of user-friendliness I would require to compensate me for switching costs. I know Windows pretty well, with all its bugs and follies, so I can have a relatively comfortable experience despite it all. In Mac OS I will have to endure unfamiliar OS behavior for some time and I'm afraid I can't accept it unless this time equals zero.
You don't need a reason for people to congregate today. In the past it made sense to build them on the rivers, so that they have access to transportation or serve as nodes in a large transportation network.
But in 1703 Russian emperor Peter the Great said "A city shall be found here" (to spite the Swedes and to become a new capital). He drew the original plan himself and so the city grew orderly from the very beginning (though fortunately it was improved by architects better than the Emperor, such as ober-architect Peter Eropkin and others). This city, bearing the name of it founder (technically the name of his patron saint, which is the same), is the 3rd largest city in Europe today and one of the most beautiful in the world.
Today you can build a city anywhere, as evidenced by the success of Las Vegas or some cities in Saudi Arabia or Emirates (such as Dubai Internet City - though not technically a separate city, it's a great example of how vision + investment = city + jobs + growth + happiness).
Ports don't need many people anyway, neither do plants. A city today, if you ignore the legacy of most modern cities, is just a place for people to live and work comfortably (wasn't it always:] ) - and it can be done in almost any place on Earth. Your comment about arbitrary shape and structure of the imagined cities is certainly valid, but the one about location is probably not.
The planning sucks - that's the reason. One of the most beautiful cities in the world - St. Petersburg, Russia - was planned. Peter the Great drew the plan and the city was built according to it (the central part, obviously).
And Soviet urban planning was quite good, actually (though subject to many real-life limitations). Much better then the American suburbs/inner city ghettos.
The biggest problem is that planning was rarely attempted on a large enough scale and with sufficient consistency over time. We need more geniuses like Corbusier, not less. An intelligent architect/city planner is much better at envisioning the future demands on the city than the market forces.
Well, how about a browser that integrates search results with your browsing (like Google text ads, but much better - you can get links, snippets of other pages, images, etc. while you are looking for something without you explicitly searching) and the whole web with your bookmarks (so that you can see the whole structure of the segment of web relevant to your searching/browsing at a glance, not 10 results at a time)? There is immense potential in organising Internet information and Google might have the chance to possibly make a great product out of it. They might end up with something boring/faulty, though. I am also not sure if those new hires are good enough. We'll see.
It's well known in the world of business that during an economic crisis you are supposed to increase investments, including investments in R&D so that when the economy turns around and a boom starts, you have some results to use for making new products. This is a very basic principle, which is probably mentioned to most BA students at least once.
However, the temptation to "improve" the short-term results by cutting down R&D is too strong and can't be resisted by most people, even though it's obvious that it's wrong and will harm the firm (and stockholders).
It is obvious that you can't protect music. It's also difficult to protect video, since even a telesync can be relatively good. You can lock the video if you make sure absolutely every device (including all displays) supports DRM, but the difficulty of the task is incredible (and then the materials can leak from studios). It is imho impossible to protect software, because in the worst case you can buy one copy legally and then emulate that computer on all others (usually it's enough to emulate a small part of it, like the CD drive).
So even though a working DRM is theoretically possible, the content can almost always be extracted and then repackaged and redistributed without the DRM.
You can't forbid general purpose computing without a world government and NWO. There is too much hardware (most of it in Asia), and making computers is relatively simple. American content-producers may dream, but outlawing computers won't work. And as long as everyone can get a computer for which it is possible to write software (without a license from MS), piracy will be possible. Which is good.
It took 31 years to come from 2D computer digitized image first used in a movie (Westworld) to this. Check out the timeline of CGI in movies for history and screenshots.
Of specific interest is the Matrix: Revolutions, which had the most realistic computer recreation of a human (agent) face. And then this face was smacked by a 100% CGI Keanu Reaves hand. Recreating humans is easy. My estimate is that in 2007-2008 we will see a 100% CGI film that would look like real thing, with AI agent in lead roles and all.
Also expect CGI sets to proliferate extremely quickly. There already are Immortel (ad vitam), Casshern, and Sin City that use the same technique. Expect tens more in the upcoming year.
Doom 3 doesn't have ambient light for most levels. And it doesn't have atmosphere light scattering or secondary reflections. That means any pixel, which is not lit by some light source directly, is 100% black. This is totally unrealistic, of course. This is also a shortcoming of the Doom 3 engine, because any other game that uses lightmaps can have truly realistic lighting (though not dynamic).
I am not aware of any existing mainstream FPS games with better AI than Far Cry. Even though it might not work flawlessly sometimes, at least you had bushes to hide in. In other games, such as Doom 3, hiding is basically impossible and the AI is basically limited to 10 LOOK PLAYER 20 RUN FORWARD 30 BITE PLAYER.
Far Cry, had great team AI that had a few quirks and could be outsmarted sometimes, but at least it was there.
Slashdot Mirror
You are just an ignorant narcissistic prick. Nobody gives a fuck about your shopping preferences, because for a supermarket chain you are indistinguishable from a zero. People (and that doesn't include you) may enjoy this new type of shopping experience - this is what the chain is betting on. IBM has good people and they know this stuff better than you do (I see how you only mention your education and past experience - what is your current job? Do you have a job?). They may fail, of course, but probably won't. People like comfort, people like shiny tech, people enjoy shopping and they will enjoy it more in this store. And you, once you overcome your stubbornness, will do like everyone else does. And once there is an easy to use shopping list software provided for free to any customer, you will bother making the lists and not bother anyone with your pointless objections. Hope this clears it up for you.
You completely miss the point. This isn't done because shopping is difficult, this is done because some believe that customers will enjoy the store a little more if they have access to smart shopping carts. Some marketers also think that this may benefit the stores (and the customers too) by providing more avenues for personalisation, increase customer loyalty, etc.
Russians pronounce it Lee-noos and Lee-nooks.
One advantage of Unix is that it is inherently multi-user. If it's just me on the computer, why should I be limited to just one identity? Seems I should be able to run a browser under its own identity and if it catches viruses and whatever, all it can mess up is itself.
A possible approach is to observe the usage patterns of a typical desktop user. He rarely uses more than one program at a time (I don't mean multitaskin, just that he doesn't use several programs in a tandem). So you can safely limit permissions for most programs to a couple of files that he works on. This way a broswer would be able to corrupt the bookmarks and the files you download, but it won't be able to touch your personal photos or MP3s you bought through another program.
I think there are some valid underlying reasons for a satirical news program to be more objective and honest than "real" news. In Russia a well-known liberal journalist Victor Shenderovich (Shender.Ru, Russian-only) does a weekly satirical news program Syrok (before it was a similar one called Itogo). This is an outlet that can be used to say anything that the journalist wants (including the truth) and this being a satirical program he is not responsible for anything other than the rating - he doesn't have to uphold the "party line". If it was a "real" news program, he (or his boss) would get a phone call quickly - the same is probably true about the USA and Jon Stewart as well.
Here are the topics from the October 8 issue (BTW, currently the main Russian theme is how to provoke terror and then fight it to shift the attention from other issues - Russian political life is a carbon copy of America in 2001-2002, it's really amazing far the similarities go). Anyway:
- A People's Artist (a honors title) Aristarkh Livanov was annoyed by his neighbours singing caraoke at 4AM, so he decided to establish the "All-Russian public movement "Russia-Antiterror"". Among the stated goals is to create a national network of house committies that will keep tabs on people from other regions, former felons or amoral people. The movement got support from president Putin (held their convention in the hotel "Russia" in Moscow, got one of the president's advisors there, etc.)
- He gives some news about Pumane - a guy, who started to testify about the latest terrorist bombing, but was raped and "accidentally" strangled with a shower hose... Amazing what goes for humour in Russia nowdays...
- Refers to an article in one of the newspapers about a possibility that Duma will pass a law that the presumption of innocence may be cancelled for terrorism and corruption suspects.
- The Fund for Support of "United Russia" (a pocket party for the regime) suggested to issue photo IDs for all Moscow schoolchildren. The pilot tests were run in 4 schools already. The cards include a phone number of the nearest offices of "United Russia" on the back...
- Talks about some ass-licking by Egor Stroev - former chairman of Federal Counsil (upper chamber of parliament), who recently begged Putin to strengthen the government and not allow the country to collapse.
- The head of the Central Election Committee said that sunset provisions are needed if we are to cancel the elections of governors. He said 10 years should be ok. (Recently president Putin decided that it would be a great idea to cancel direct election of regional [state] governors - all to fight terrorism, but against the consitution, of course).
- In Chechnya a newly elected president was inaugurated. The location was kept in secret until the last moment. Former president - Maskhadov - is wanted by the Russian government (10 million dollar bounty), but the clan of the new one (Kadyrov) could not manage to catch him just yet.
- "Commersant" newspaper (main business newspaper) writes that people presidential administration are not even trying to hide the fact that they are fighting over the assets of UKOS - a large oil company, kind of "captured" by the government recently.
- The Supreme Court declined to give compensations to the victims of October 2002 terrorist act in Moscow.
- Incidentally, the statue of Themis on the Russian Supreme Court building is missing a blindfold.
- In Vladimirskaya oblast the deputies of regional parlament declined to ratify the new coat of arms of the region proposed by the Prosecutor's office. The coat of arms contained traditional golden leopard in a crown holding a silver cross in a right arm, but also crossed hammer and sickle.
- 3 months ago the government of Belgorodskaya oblast started a campaign against swearing. Several lecture halls were opened, plays organised, a leaflet was published and a competition for anti-swearing slogans was held. One of the winning entries was "Today swearing - tomo
Actually there was a site that provides ed2k links to political videos. I just can't recall the name, but if you keep looking, you are bound to eventually find it.
I am not missing the point. I would probably watch this show if I could and enjoy whatever science was included there, I just abhore the idea that the only way to get Joe Public interested is to blow shit up or piss on an electric fence.
Owning an Universal Audio 1176 may be a status symbol (whatever it is), but I would dare guess that it's only for a very small group of people. Paintings are different - people are trained to believe that they have some intrinsic quality, but look at the growing popularity of online collections of all sorts of images (from porn and funny pics to photoshop contents, galleries of computer art, renders, photos, etc.). However, paintings have some unique qualities (being physical objects) and so may survive for some time. Animated cartoons didn't take over because they are more expensive to make and because you can't watch them in the book. However, as tablet PCs (and their successor - smart paper) develop, as 3D modelling software improves and simplifies, at one point it will be much easier/faster/better/cheaper to take some 3D objects, quickly make a story out of them and render animated shots for the smart paper media. This may very well happen in about 15 years. But this is more complex because the end results are different, not just the technology.
Returning to the original topic, rendered comix are (or will be soon) every bit as good as hand-drawn. And you can (once there are enough stock models and modelling software is simple enough to use) make a story much easier, with less skills and better quality. This is a winner and noone will keep using outdated technology - just a handful of people who enjoy being "old-school".
In my view, the point of science TV programs is not to correct some misconceptions people have - it's to educate them about science and create a positive attitude towards it so that they can apply the scientific method (and basic critical thinking, scepticism and rationalism) to resolve these misconceptions themselves when need arises.
The point is not to give them more "I saw it on TV" ammo when discussing whether peeing on an electric fence is dangerous, the point is (or rather should be) to make intelligent human beings out of the general populace. For this particular example they would need to have a general understanding of what electricity is and how it works, what matter and energy are, in what areas of agriculture, law-enforcement, military, etc. electric and other fences are used and why, how the power is generated, what is air, what is urine, how it is generated in the human body, what is waste, what people eat in different parts of the world...
And I (or any educated person) can go on and on about what fields of human knowledge are related and I have a sufficient understanding in most of them to be able to either know the answer myself with a sufficient degree of certainty (though hearing experimental results can still be useful), can judge the stories presented elsewhere, evidence that is available and claims that are made based on it, and can apply the knowledge more widely than just not pissing on the fence or having some fun pretending to be educated while watching some crap on TV.
Most of presumably scientific content on TV is crap (depends on the country/TV channel, etc.). Rarely is the right thing done as it requires such a gagrantuan effort and such a unique combination of skills that those few people who manage this are treated as heroes (Carl Sagan, Sergey Kapitsa).
The same boring cycle. First they say it's impossible, then improbable and then obvious and expected. A few years ago people argued with foam on their mouths that 3D animation will not replace traditional animation, that 3D CGI is inferior to traditional effects and computer-rendered movies have no future. They keep saying this (they being the majority of people), because they (same definition) are retarded idiots. People (specifically, the unique American blend of retarded christians) argued that stem-cells are evil and should never be used, but just look at the news... There are hundreds other examples.
Things are going to change and there is nothing that can be done (not that anything should be) about this. Almost no comics will be hand-drawn in 2015, that's kind of obvious to any man with a functioning brain.
There is actually a short sci-fi story about exactly this problem. After a number of mock-up long-term mission the space command told two astronauts that the next one will be a max-realism simulation. Eventually the austronaut (the surviving one) found out that this must have been a real one. :) Sadly, I don't remember neither the title, nor the author.
Sadly the development of a government budget is not a result of rational decision-making. There are probably hundreds of similar low-cost, low-risk, high-payoff projects that could be done using the money collected by IRS, but they do not fit the traditional lobbism scheme and so are not even considered.
for example MDI works excellently for stuff like tabbed browser windows (eg mozilla). (yes, i know it's not 'traditional mdi' but it is mdi.)
It's even better in Opera, where you have real 'traditional' MDI. There is a separate workspace for browsing - you can use both tabs AND click/move the page windows.
Apple grosses about 1.8 billion per quarter selling hardware. To equate that with just selling OS X at $129, they would need to sell 14 million units a quarter.
First, Apple doesn't need to equate the x86 OS X sales with Mac sales, they just need to cover their porting costs while not cannibalising their existing sales. After they cover the porting costs, each sale would bring up to 100$ profit (allowing for admin, marketing, distribution, etc.). I am not sure they make a 100$ profit from each computer they sell. And even if they do, that would mean they need to sell only as many x86 OS X licenses, which is less than a million per quarter to make this their primary revenue source. Needless to say, if they manage not to harm their hardware business, any significant amount of copies would mean they earn a nice profit (and ROI).
Well, you can check out the specs for a Dell top-level machine, buy the parts and build it yourself. Bingo! You have a cheap system that is almost 100% compatible.
I don't believe that big-name vendors add much value. I always buy my machines custom-built. It is a common practice in most stores here to do it for free - you just pay the list price for the parts. Unless you are aiming for the absolutely cheapest parts, you can be pretty confident that the system will work just fine - and the store will test the machine after it is built anyway.
Stability is the last of the Mac OS X advantages. Mac OS9 crashed like WinME and probably worse - people still loved it. Apple doesn't win loyal customers by providing a secure and stable OS - they do it by providing a comfortable well-designed environment to work in. I would estimate that stability and security are only responsible for about 20% of total user satisfaction.
:) So I didn't know where to look and soon gave up.
I am a Windows user. Sadly, the OS is prone to crashes and it's not always hardware's fault. So I don't think that Mac OS X ported to x86 will suck too much on this front.
However, I am still unsure if I would "Switch". A week ago I went to a Mac shop to check out the OS (to understand whether I want my new laptop to be a Mac). I am not sure I liked the experience. The interface may be slick, but for some reason on all machines the mouse sensitivity was set to very low (must be a OS default then). I like my mouse fast (1280 pixels ~ 1.5-2 cm), so I really hated to drag that stupid rodent all over the table. And I couldn't change the setting because I am not familiar with the OS and it was in German.
This might not sound like a valid criticism - after all, how many customers may be so exigent as to demand changing mouse sensitivity to be obvious for a novice user who can't read? May be I am alone, but that's the level of user-friendliness I would require to compensate me for switching costs. I know Windows pretty well, with all its bugs and follies, so I can have a relatively comfortable experience despite it all. In Mac OS I will have to endure unfamiliar OS behavior for some time and I'm afraid I can't accept it unless this time equals zero.
You don't need a reason for people to congregate today. In the past it made sense to build them on the rivers, so that they have access to transportation or serve as nodes in a large transportation network.
:] ) - and it can be done in almost any place on Earth. Your comment about arbitrary shape and structure of the imagined cities is certainly valid, but the one about location is probably not.
But in 1703 Russian emperor Peter the Great said "A city shall be found here" (to spite the Swedes and to become a new capital). He drew the original plan himself and so the city grew orderly from the very beginning (though fortunately it was improved by architects better than the Emperor, such as ober-architect Peter Eropkin and others). This city, bearing the name of it founder (technically the name of his patron saint, which is the same), is the 3rd largest city in Europe today and one of the most beautiful in the world.
Today you can build a city anywhere, as evidenced by the success of Las Vegas or some cities in Saudi Arabia or Emirates (such as Dubai Internet City - though not technically a separate city, it's a great example of how vision + investment = city + jobs + growth + happiness).
Ports don't need many people anyway, neither do plants. A city today, if you ignore the legacy of most modern cities, is just a place for people to live and work comfortably (wasn't it always
The planning sucks - that's the reason. One of the most beautiful cities in the world - St. Petersburg, Russia - was planned. Peter the Great drew the plan and the city was built according to it (the central part, obviously).
And Soviet urban planning was quite good, actually (though subject to many real-life limitations). Much better then the American suburbs/inner city ghettos.
The biggest problem is that planning was rarely attempted on a large enough scale and with sufficient consistency over time. We need more geniuses like Corbusier, not less. An intelligent architect/city planner is much better at envisioning the future demands on the city than the market forces.
Well, how about a browser that integrates search results with your browsing (like Google text ads, but much better - you can get links, snippets of other pages, images, etc. while you are looking for something without you explicitly searching) and the whole web with your bookmarks (so that you can see the whole structure of the segment of web relevant to your searching/browsing at a glance, not 10 results at a time)? There is immense potential in organising Internet information and Google might have the chance to possibly make a great product out of it. They might end up with something boring/faulty, though. I am also not sure if those new hires are good enough. We'll see.
It's well known in the world of business that during an economic crisis you are supposed to increase investments, including investments in R&D so that when the economy turns around and a boom starts, you have some results to use for making new products. This is a very basic principle, which is probably mentioned to most BA students at least once.
However, the temptation to "improve" the short-term results by cutting down R&D is too strong and can't be resisted by most people, even though it's obvious that it's wrong and will harm the firm (and stockholders).
It is obvious that you can't protect music. It's also difficult to protect video, since even a telesync can be relatively good. You can lock the video if you make sure absolutely every device (including all displays) supports DRM, but the difficulty of the task is incredible (and then the materials can leak from studios). It is imho impossible to protect software, because in the worst case you can buy one copy legally and then emulate that computer on all others (usually it's enough to emulate a small part of it, like the CD drive).
So even though a working DRM is theoretically possible, the content can almost always be extracted and then repackaged and redistributed without the DRM.
You can't forbid general purpose computing without a world government and NWO. There is too much hardware (most of it in Asia), and making computers is relatively simple. American content-producers may dream, but outlawing computers won't work. And as long as everyone can get a computer for which it is possible to write software (without a license from MS), piracy will be possible. Which is good.
It took 31 years to come from 2D computer digitized image first used in a movie (Westworld) to this. Check out the timeline of CGI in movies for history and screenshots.
Of specific interest is the Matrix: Revolutions, which had the most realistic computer recreation of a human (agent) face. And then this face was smacked by a 100% CGI Keanu Reaves hand. Recreating humans is easy. My estimate is that in 2007-2008 we will see a 100% CGI film that would look like real thing, with AI agent in lead roles and all.
Also expect CGI sets to proliferate extremely quickly. There already are Immortel (ad vitam), Casshern, and Sin City that use the same technique. Expect tens more in the upcoming year.
Doom 3 doesn't have ambient light for most levels. And it doesn't have atmosphere light scattering or secondary reflections. That means any pixel, which is not lit by some light source directly, is 100% black. This is totally unrealistic, of course. This is also a shortcoming of the Doom 3 engine, because any other game that uses lightmaps can have truly realistic lighting (though not dynamic).
I am not aware of any existing mainstream FPS games with better AI than Far Cry. Even though it might not work flawlessly sometimes, at least you had bushes to hide in. In other games, such as Doom 3, hiding is basically impossible and the AI is basically limited to 10 LOOK PLAYER 20 RUN FORWARD 30 BITE PLAYER.
Far Cry, had great team AI that had a few quirks and could be outsmarted sometimes, but at least it was there.