"you're making the same fundamental mistake that many people of other countries make. That's assuming that the vast majority of Americans think one way or another, and pegging all of us as fitting some arbitrary mold that serves their own prejudices"
There is truth in what you are saying, however, consider this fact :
You guys elected W.Bush TWICE.
It still needed a majority of Americans to think the same way to accomplish this. Food for thought.
HeHe.. First Post on the ATARI Falcon ^^ ! Even though I took the time to check the exact DSP model on wikipedia for the NeXTstation, and confirm that the AMIGA 1200 didn't have any.
Too bad I was too poor to afford a Falcon 030 at the time. I was drooling over my friend's, and marveling at the applications available thanks to the DSP. Can you say Apex Media ? Even the guys using SGI wanted that program. First time I was seeing image morphing done on home computers.
Those had a 56001 DSP along their motorola main CPU for extra mathematical oomph, and impressive realtime visual or sound effects. If this Cell inclusion could become a trend, it could lead to a lot of interesting applications. (especially from the free software world, demo-scene, etc...)
As a french national, I can tell you about 75% of the electricity here is nuclear generated. It was even mentioned in the presidential debates last year, so it is fairly common knowledge, not a state secret.
Pioneer 2, the colony ship city from where you teleport to the planet below, has several elements directly influenced from blade runner. The background music is inspired from the movie score, several flying vessels pass above you regularly, and if you know where to look, you can even notice a sign on a nearby building that is very similar to the ATARI symbol.
(The latter has been removed in ulterior versions of the game).
To complement your interesting post, I would like to add that during the constrution of the Concorde airliner, the soviets did get their hands on the complete blueprints for the plane.
You have to rememeber they were planning to compete with their TU-144.
However, despite having all the schematics, they were unable to reproduce the plane as their enginneer/workers did not have the know-how of their french and english peers. They had to deviate substantially from the design, like adding canards control surfaces, and the structure integrity of the aircraft itself was way behing the Concorde's.
Spain and France exchange power over the grid, depending on their output/needs and the time of the day. It allows for smoother operation and less costs.
"I got spoiled by having lots-o-registers on the Z-80 - when I 'graduated' the 6502, I was dismayed to find essentially 3 registers: A, X, and Y."
I'm sure then you can understand the terror and abjection felt by the generation that grew up on ATARI ST and AMIGA sporting the Motorola 68000, with its 16 (sixteen) universal 32 bits registers (just save 1 for the SR), when they had to study the 8086 instruction set at university. And I pity from the bottom of my heart those that had to actually work on this family of retarded architecture processors at assembly level.
I think your observation could easily be explained by the fact countries do not buy electricity at the same rate as the average french citizen does. EDF is the state monopolist power operator, and the European Community has imposed the opening of the power generation market. Business can or soon will be able to choose their energy providers. EDF is getting privatised in part.
Most of France's advances like the TGV, the Minitel, the nuclear generated electricity have been subsidized by citizens paying more for common facilities like phone and power. Was it worth it ?
Hell Yes ! Cleaner air & fantastic transportation system are really nice to have.
'The other advantage of a CD is that the data on a CD is precise, an exact copy of the original, and any functioning CD player will interpret the CD identically'
Uhm, no. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but a CD-audio, not to be mistaken with a CD-ROM, will not yield the same sound information on all players. This is simply due to the error-correction scheme implemented in the CD-audio standard, that does not allow an exact reading of the source material. Compromises had to be made, and this was one of them.
And secondly, the quality of the D/A converters influences tremendously on the quality of sound you will get from the disc.
And what do we give a shit for base 10 units in computing, tell me ?
In the same line, what use is having our UPS power output sold as VA (Volt*Amp) instead of watts (W) ?
Industrials are simply trying to screw us with inflated, bigger numbers different than reality, numbers that are deceitful to not technic-savvy customers.
And btw, there is no need for those fancy i-added units.
1 KB = 1024 B 1 kB = 1000 B
k is the SI prefix for 1000, not K. There was never any ambiguity in the computing field.
"You go and launch a game, the drive seeks to the game executable, loads that, then seeks to the game data (which is often in a couple large pack files)"
I am afraid you are being optimist. Every game I have on my PC has its data spanning over thousand of files (like individual Mesh, Ani, Texture, and so on..). A Solid state drive would really help.
Just for your information, the cruising speed of all TGV is 320 km/h, not simply 'over 160 km/h'. Such speed is sustained for 90% of the travel, exceptions being when going through a major station where no stop is scheduled.
Maybe because it is precisely with SP 2 that Microsoft arrogated itself the right to modify YOUR machine anytime anywhere.
If you remember, a lot of law offices then said they would definitely NOT install it, as it would violate some of their privacy/contractual requirements.
I guess you have discovered computing with the PC and I pity you. A 16MHz 68000 computer would play a soundtracker tune while you happily work on something else.(ATARI ST - AMIGA)
Uhm.. no. See how your windows machine hangs when it does not receive a response from the IDE in a timely manner. It's very visible when the drive has trouble reading the inserted disc. The OS hangs after the IDE requests, and it is very annoying. You have a 'dead in the water' PC until either the drive succeeds to read the disc, or you succeed in having it ejected (or you switch off the PC).
Slashdot Mirror
"you're making the same fundamental mistake that many people of other countries make. That's assuming that the vast majority of Americans think one way or another, and pegging all of us as fitting some arbitrary mold that serves their own prejudices"
There is truth in what you are saying, however, consider this fact :
You guys elected W.Bush TWICE.
It still needed a majority of Americans to think the same way to accomplish this.
Food for thought.
The problem I see is that legions of slashdotters will back up your employer in his sacrosanct right to sack you anytime he pleases.
While in other countries (EU ones) this just can't happen.
You need a serious reason (serious misdemeanor with detailed facts) to fire someone.
HeHe .. First Post on the ATARI Falcon ^^ !
Even though I took the time to check the exact DSP model on wikipedia for the NeXTstation, and confirm that the AMIGA 1200 didn't have any.
Too bad I was too poor to afford a Falcon 030 at the time.
I was drooling over my friend's, and marveling at the applications available thanks to the DSP.
Can you say Apex Media ?
Even the guys using SGI wanted that program. First time I was seeing image morphing done on home computers.
Those had a 56001 DSP along their motorola main CPU for extra mathematical oomph, and impressive realtime visual or sound effects. ...)
If this Cell inclusion could become a trend, it could lead to a lot of interesting applications.
(especially from the free software world, demo-scene, etc
VS 2003 does not (C++) do real time error highlighting.
You need to use 3rd party plug-ins.
As a french national, I can tell you about 75% of the electricity here is nuclear generated.
It was even mentioned in the presidential debates last year, so it is fairly common knowledge, not a state secret.
"Why would anyone want to?"
The Judge who ruled Microsoft guilty of monopoly abuse and other illegal practices, that's who.
His recommendations were to break up Microsoft into two separate divisions, one for Windows and one for Office.
"still have not bought a DVD-+R for my PC or even a DVD player "
Oh, you mean for your 286 ? Now could be a good time ^^
Pioneer 2, the colony ship city from where you teleport to the planet below, has several elements directly influenced from blade runner.
The background music is inspired from the movie score, several flying vessels pass above you regularly, and if you know where to look, you can even notice a sign on a nearby building that is very similar to the ATARI symbol.
(The latter has been removed in ulterior versions of the game).
To complement your interesting post, I would like to add that during the constrution of the Concorde airliner, the soviets did get their hands on the complete blueprints for the plane.
You have to rememeber they were planning to compete with their TU-144.
However, despite having all the schematics, they were unable to reproduce the plane as their enginneer/workers did not have the know-how of their french and english peers.
They had to deviate substantially from the design, like adding canards control surfaces, and the structure integrity of the aircraft itself was way behing the Concorde's.
Spain and France exchange power over the grid, depending on their output/needs and the time of the day.
It allows for smoother operation and less costs.
"I got spoiled by having lots-o-registers on the Z-80 - when I 'graduated' the 6502, I was dismayed to find essentially 3 registers: A, X, and Y."
I'm sure then you can understand the terror and abjection felt by the generation that grew up on ATARI ST and AMIGA sporting the Motorola 68000, with its 16 (sixteen) universal 32 bits registers (just save 1 for the SR), when they had to study the 8086 instruction set at university.
And I pity from the bottom of my heart those that had to actually work on this family of retarded architecture processors at assembly level.
I think your observation could easily be explained by the fact countries do not buy electricity at the same rate as the average french citizen does.
EDF is the state monopolist power operator, and the European Community has imposed the opening of the power generation market.
Business can or soon will be able to choose their energy providers.
EDF is getting privatised in part.
Most of France's advances like the TGV, the Minitel, the nuclear generated electricity have been subsidized by citizens paying more for common facilities like phone and power.
Was it worth it ?
Hell Yes ! Cleaner air & fantastic transportation system are really nice to have.
Or when the Nasa describes Gagarin as the first 'european' in space.
as per your offtopic :
[offtopic] The US of A are slowly becoming in the minds of people "big bad evil with GUANTANAMO inside [/offtopic]
'The other advantage of a CD is that the data on a CD is precise, an exact copy of the original, and any functioning CD player will interpret the CD identically'
Uhm, no.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but a CD-audio, not to be mistaken with a CD-ROM, will not yield the same sound information on all players.
This is simply due to the error-correction scheme implemented in the CD-audio standard, that does not allow an exact reading of the source material.
Compromises had to be made, and this was one of them.
And secondly, the quality of the D/A converters influences tremendously on the quality of sound you will get from the disc.
Yes I remember.
It was called Altavista and didn't work as bad as you make it to be.
The only fault I could point about it were a longer name than google and a less simplistic home page.
And what do we give a shit for base 10 units in computing, tell me ?
In the same line, what use is having our UPS power output sold as VA (Volt*Amp) instead of watts (W) ?
Industrials are simply trying to screw us with inflated, bigger numbers different than reality, numbers that are deceitful to not technic-savvy customers.
And btw, there is no need for those fancy i-added units.
1 KB = 1024 B
1 kB = 1000 B
k is the SI prefix for 1000, not K. There was never any ambiguity in the computing field.
Chiiii ? ^_^
(cf. Chobits)
"You go and launch a game, the drive seeks to the game executable, loads that, then seeks to the game data (which is often in a couple large pack files)"
..).
I am afraid you are being optimist.
Every game I have on my PC has its data spanning over thousand of files (like individual Mesh, Ani, Texture, and so on
A Solid state drive would really help.
Just for your information, the cruising speed of all TGV is 320 km/h, not simply 'over 160 km/h'.
Such speed is sustained for 90% of the travel, exceptions being when going through a major station where no stop is scheduled.
Maybe because it is precisely with SP 2 that Microsoft arrogated itself the right to modify YOUR machine anytime anywhere.
If you remember, a lot of law offices then said they would definitely NOT install it, as it would violate some of their privacy/contractual requirements.
The ST had multitasking added later on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiNT
Remember this gem of the Sega Saturn ? :)
Better prep for the future of FireFighting
http://www.theghz.com/br/br/br.html/
I guess you have discovered computing with the PC and I pity you.
A 16MHz 68000 computer would play a soundtracker tune while you happily work on something else.(ATARI ST - AMIGA)
Uhm .. no.
See how your windows machine hangs when it does not receive a response from the IDE in a timely manner.
It's very visible when the drive has trouble reading the inserted disc.
The OS hangs after the IDE requests, and it is very annoying. You have a 'dead in the water' PC until either the drive succeeds to read the disc, or you succeed in having it ejected (or you switch off the PC).