>I would argue that things unnatural do not exist.
That depends on the way you understand the word natural.
If natural means, a product of nature, then of course unnatural things would not exist. But then the existence of the word natural wouldn't make sense as the word darkness wouldn't make sense if there were no light.
I'd say, it's the very same difference between an human being and an animal. Sentience, reason and understanding. It's an metaphysical distinction.
Natural is something that comes without consciousness.
A human isn't unnatural in itself. His education and decisions makes him so.
But don't get me wrong. Unnatural doesn't mean bad. All culture is unnatural as it is a product of thought.
On what humans need depend on the way how consider humans. If you ask, what a human needs naturally, you have to ask what does the beast "human" need. That surely doesn't include TV, computer, Internet.
But if you ask what does the intellectual beeing "human" as part of the unnatural construct civilisation need, it may include those things.
But this is a concious decision. And conciousness includes the disctinction between good and bad, and right and wrong.
I'd say, in essence, from those people who are watching it. And concerning Star Trek (and probably SciFi in general) this compromises a small fan(atic?) group of viewers.
The whole Star Trek thing would have stopped after The Original Series, if it wasn't for the fans.
In the immortal words of Bart Simpson:
Listen to yourself man, you're hanging with nerds!
Another proverb says "The quill is mightier than the sword".
>looking at issues and at issues and problems from all angles
That's what I currently try to do. Trying to understand the motivations behind the net ban.
I'm not a strong supporter for such a move, but in contrast to the majority on this site, I'm neither a strong supporter for the opposite position, that's why I'm taking their position.
> I just can't take your view which basically seems to me "people are stupid, easily fooled by others, and as such should be brainwashed by the government into believing what I want them to believe." I just don't buy that.
My stance is uneducated and unhappy people are foolish and can be pushed in a certain direction by other people (which may include the current goverment or not).
It's not brainwashing. Most people tend to have a fear of the unknown, which includes foreigner and people tend to glorify the past.
Now consider, you didn't have a job for over a year. You feel worthless and humiliated because you are on the dole.
There are two people, one tolds you that it's practically your fault that you don't have a job.
The other one tells you that you don't have a job because a foreigner has your job and your more worth than him. In the past you had a job and there were fewer foreigner and everything was better. Suddenly everything makes sense, there is a reason for both your current situation and your fear of the foreign.
Whom are you going to believe? (Well, not actually you in person... you know what I mean)
I think, history supports my position. How do you think the Nazis came into power? They were legally elected by a dissatisfied (and, in my eyes, uneducated part) of the population after a worldwide economic crisis and a lost war.
Uneducated in the sense, that they had nearly no confidence in/knowledge about democracy and knew not enough about the Nazi-Party.
The task of a well functioning tolerant society should be to avoid this disinformation through education. Educate in the sense to shape the people into people, who are questioning and have moral courage.
You will surely agree that it is a hard task. And I willingly agree that it is worthwile task.
But it seems to me that the European goverments doesn't consider themselves capable achieving it.
Considering their past its understandable for me.
But as I said (or at least tried to) I don't think it is a solution to the problem, it only hides the problem.
But why is it ok to cut off part of a man's penis?
The difference is, that cutting this very part of the woman's genital leads to less pleasure in sex. That is the very reason why they do this.
Speak with a fellow jew and ask him in what ways "chopping off the end of your dick" did affect him.
BTW, it's not the end of your dick but the surrounding skin.
As you illustrated in your previous paragraph, no one people have a monopology on hatred. Freedom of speech protects the Black Panthers etc as much as anyone else
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges. -Anatole France
What I wanted to illustrate with these words was that equality is not a good justification for a law.
Why do they see the need for such a law?
Speech can be harmful. The problem is that unhappy people, who have no work, fell easily for words which blame their situation on a minority. Their unhappiness turns into hate towards this minority.
Usually, those propagandising people are a minority themselve.
So what about the majority?
If you have an active majority, which works against those people, the situation will be fine.
Now the historical experience in Europe was that this process might not work.
As some German once said:
In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up." -Martin Niemöller
But these words show also a way how to cope with this problem: You have to educate the people, to give them the knowledge and the moral courage to cope with these people.
My problem with the law is, that it only works against voicing the thoughts in public, whereas the hatred remains.
Educating works against both, but costs you more time and dedication.
But maybe you agree with me that it's quite hard to decide against suppressing racist voices with a historical guilt for several million death people.
The reason, why Itanium is considered as niche product by AMD is not because it's 64-bit (as AMD upcoming Hammer is too), but it's new instruction-set and architecture (in contrast to AMDs Hammer)
The Itanium-architecture currently seem to have some problems.
A group surounding Professor Wen-mei Hwu from the University Illinois is developing a compiler called IMPACT which should take advantage of the EPIC architecture. He made some observations concerning the Itanium.
Theoretically, the Itanium is capable of issuing 6 instructions simultanously. But on a SPEC benchmark, called mcf, the processor achieves only 0.15 IPC. Throughout the SPECint2000 benchmark the CPU calculates only 10% of the time. Most of the time the CPU idles because of memory accesses or pipeline-flushs.
Currently, the Itanium leads in certain benchmarks (Floating Point, IRC), but lags in other areas.
> the Itanium is a niche product now. in a few years i expect its time will come
You're probably right, but only time will tell.
Maybe EPIC is the wrong way, maybe not.
Because, if they don't meter the access, the bandwidth usage rises. This can usually attributed to a small percentage of the users (to whom I count myself)
The rise has to be compensated with another DS3 trunk, which leads to increased costs.
These costs are equally distributed on the subscribers.
Is that fair?
How about your connection to your ISP?
Modems and ISDN adaptors aren't connected directly with the DS3. Usually, they have some kind of modem-rack which provide access to a certain amount of users simultanously.
Now assume everyone is permantly online, this means that there have to be as many dial-in ports aviable as there are users. This leads to another increase in costs.
Usually, the costs for ISPs are reduced by resource-sharing.
If I'm only half a day online, I'll give someone else the chance to use the same hardware. This reduces costs. If I do not download the newest distribution/music track just for fun, I'll save bandwith and give someone else the chance to use it.
How do I achieve a sensible use of (usually limited) resources? I'd say by fees.
As I said, I wouldn't like it as it would be to my disadvantage, nonetheless it'd make sense.
Well, as much as I dislike paying per minute, doesn't it make sense?
Of course, one could say once the infrastructure is build, it doesn't differ how much I telephone.
But it does differ.
The infrastructure is build to serve only a small percentage of the subscribed users users simultanously (Usually about 1%, IRC.)
This applies for land-lines and even more so for radio.
You can only supply a certain percentage of the population simultanously. This becomes most obvious on certain events. Ever tried to use your mobile on new year 24:00?
That's where demand and supply comes into play.
Even if it didn't make a difference, don't you think, that those, who use a service more intensive, should pay more?
Well, I shouldn't speak so loud... someone may get on the idea and meter my internet-access:)
There are several things one doesn't like, but that doesn't have to mean that they don't make sense.
Different compiler do produce different code and have different extensions.
To enable compiling the kernel with different compilers, you have to programm for the different extensions and you have to test the kernel with the different compilers. This, plus the different architectures supported gives you a (n*m) variety of possibilities and the same amount of problems.
For the very same reason, the kernel is not only for GCC it's also only for one or two different versions of GCC.
Maybe take a look a the LKML-FAQ, where Rafael R. Reilova gives an anwser on why not use different compilers.
First of all, it's not about the US alone
>If people don't want to work so hard, why do they do it? Because its an opportunity...
It's not a opportunity...
Imagine, some people don't have the problem to choose between a Playstation 2 and a X-Box.
Either they work, or they and their family would starve.
It's either you work or one of the 100 other people waiting for the job would do it.
>The way to not support sweat shops if you don't like them is to NOT buy their products
Now, don't say that a bad treatement of their employees would have an negative impact on their sales.
You and most other people (myself included) have no idea, under which conditions my clothing or shoes. Did you know how Nike produce(d?) some shoes?
Or do you ask about it? Will someone tell you about it? (Excuse me sir, are those shoes produced with child labor? How are the working conditions?)
>It's terrible labor laws and government intervention that has made America impossible to produce in
In what ways did the US (and other industrial nations) suffer from the increased cost, due to protection laws?
IRC, the total amount of wealth increased. The difference between the poorer countries and the richer countries increased, same with the rich and the poor in the US.
> End it the capitalist consumer way, don't get government involved.
It seems to me that most person have forgotten where those govermental regulations and unions did stem from and how working conditions in the industrial nations (today one should say information nations) where before(e.g. US) those regulations.
Did you read Dickens "Oliver Twist" by any chance?
Nowadays, in most industrial nations most legislations seem to be unnecessary and maybe even are.
But most nations in the world have not reached this level of wealth, where it's up to choose between more or less comfort in exchange for more or less money, but between something to eat and nothing.
1) You have to tune the ruleset to achieve a balanced gameplay. The more complex, the more you have to test.
2) You have to develop an "AI" that has to cope with your ruleset.
Both reasons urges you keep the ruleset simple, which is (at least for me) contraproductive for interesting games. Online-gaming seems to get rid of reason 2.
Strategy doesn't sell and game companies have become very conservative. (Name a current game that isn't a sequel)
1) Having limited manpower, you have to choose between GFX and game complexity. Now try to sell a non 3D game.
2) Complexity scare most customer. (I don't have the time to read a complete handbook, just to play a game)
>In fact, you'd be very hardpressed to find someone who uses actualy tactics in a strategy game
You seem to have a different understanding of the words tactis and strategy than me.
For me strategy is much more long-term orientated whereas tactics is only "a method of employing forces in combat".
Following this understanding, most RTS aren't strategy games to my eyes. They are tactical games.
They have to cope with too many different things in short time so that game-logic is reduced to build and crush.
One word says it all, pathfinding (Where is my harvester?)
GFX have to rendered quickly every frame.
>If you were to create a strategy game with real strategy, what would you implement?
I'm more a fan of build and expand, than intercept and crush, but considering war-faring, I think there are some books I'd try to reflect in the rule-set: Sun Tzu's Art of War and Miyamoto Musashi's Ni Ten Ichi Ryu That means several things beside manpower have to be considered, troop moral, moral of the supporting nation(s), supply, training, terrain.
Currently, I'm waiting for Master of Orion III to crush my hopes:).
At least from their statements they are reflecting some of my (reduced) expectations from a good (space) strategy game.
It's just unclearly formulated.
When your deleteing a file, your not deleteing the data. Your just removing the directory entry for that file.
So you data is still there (to the great pleasure of the law enforcement units).
To really delete the data, you have to overwrite the data with different data. Even several times to be sure that no traces are left.
This feature was usually provided by some tools (PGPtools comes to mind).
This is now integrated into XP, much to the concern of some law-enforcement people.
See a story at The Reg
>Secondly, GNOME?[...]
>Who writes a GUI in C, for crying out loud[...]
>I really like how everything in KDE is integrated
>SuSE [...] prefer over Redhat
Expect to be flamed.:) Touching four religions in one post. Programming language, distribution, Gnome/KDE, Integration/Small tools. You failed to mention your favourite browser, politics, Star Wars/Star Trek, an audiophile theme of your choice (CD/LP/MP3/Ogg).
Anyway... Choosing a more conservative filesystem as default is not necessary evil. Especially if your targeting a lots of different users.
About writing in C... Well, take the language that suits you most. Personally, I'd rather write larger programs in C++, too (Smaller ones I prefer C). But I don't think it you HAVE to write them in C++, especially if your more proficient in C.
About the integration in KDE, I like it, too.
At least on my desktop. But surely not on my notebook, there I prefer Blackbox or a CLI.
Expect to be proposed(threatened?) to use Windows as integration should be its philosophy in contrast to Unix.
As if using small programs stem from philosophy and not 8k total memory. (Real men program by rewireing, only quiche-eaters need IDEs:) )
To show my point, I'll quickly state that I think the difference between Unix and Windows is the possibilty to use different tools including lightweight programs or Integrated Enviroments matching your taste and/or technical outfit.
Not quite, the delay between sending the signal and recieving the signal is known by everybody, but with varying accuracy.
The small variation (the "delay" I'm writing of) added to the sending time-stamp is only known to the DoD.
It's called Differential GPS (DGPS). (GPS is already triangulation of different signals sources)
AFAIK, the signals are delayed according to a certain algorithm (known to the DOD).
But there are several fixed GPS receivers which compare the measured position and the real position. The comparision yields a correction factor for the various signals from the different GPS-satellites.
Here is some short explanation
Re:A great example of open-source at work.
on
Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
W2k Magazine has an article about the resemblence.
They are very similar. But why it was called "New Technology" is not written there, although its a major design difference.
The VMS has a monolithic layered kernel, whereas NT has (or better had) a microkernel, almost like Mach. Take a look at your favourite OS book or here.
I consider memory as a another resource and wanted to abstract it a little more.
Generally, an unprotected concurrent access can lead the system to an unstable state.
Of course, concurrent direct access on the printer port will hardly crash the OS, whereas a write to a random memory address has good chances to do so.
Not quite correct.
It's not preemptive vs. cooperative.
But preemptible vs. non-preemptible kernel.
"Pre-empt means the OS decides when the thread loses control."
Yes, that's preemption.
B,ut there is another preemption.
Should a process get a higher priority than the currently running process, then the current process gets preempted.
E.g.
You have a low priority CPU-bound process A(e.g. Seti@home) and you have a high priority I/O-bound process B (e.g. XMMS).
Usually, B does nothing but waiting for I/O (e.g. the soundcard and the harddisk). While waiting, the process is not in the run-queue.
Meanwhile, A hogs the CPU. Usually, when the I/O request is done, the CPU gets an interrupt request (IRQ) which causes the OS to switch in kernel mode and handle the request. B gets active again and has a higher priority than A, so A gets preempted. Usually that works fine, but now A wants to do some I/O (deliver a packet) and calls the kernel, which handles the request. Just this moment is the I/O for B ready. In Linux (as in most other OSs too) B has to wait until A gets its syscall done, since the kernel is not preemptible. This period of time until the B gets the CPU increases the latency.
Windows 95 is preemptive (at least according to A. Silberschatz) as is Linux.
The high amount of crashes of the whole system stem from the resource protection (direct hardware access), not the scheduling.
Do not forget the AIM Linux port.
It thought some time ago, it was mentioned that AOL wanted Linux as OS for Internet access device.
(That's where the big market comes in)
A quick search revealed a story on CNET two years ago:"AOL considering Linux device, sources say".
Maybe this development is part of a long term strategy. On the other hand, all those companies seem to have acted more or less independently from AOL.
>The whole player thing is getting a bit weird. [...]
Now all we need is Xmms on OSX:)
Yes, it's shame that PHP doesn't has native unicode support.
But if you use utf-8 and don't touch the strings and just pass them to the (unicode-capable) DB from the Webbrowser (or the reverse) it seem to work (at least for me using latin-1 and japanese characters).
The DARPA-NET was created to provide a mean to communicate after a nuclear-strike or any other physical attack.
It should be redundant (and by this mean fault tolerant).
Therefor all partners were more or less equal.
It didn't matter which way the packets go and it shouldn't matter.
Security was never a main issue as you can see from the amount of security flaws, which exist(ed) in TCP/IP.
Granted, IPv6 seems to tackle these problems, but it is still not in use. And sometimes it's easier to build something new than to change the existing (I would suggest doing the same with tax law).
What was the best network security tool again? IRC, pliers.
But in cities, the cells are significantly smaller, some cells even cover only a single street.
And the single antenna argument only applies, when they're not using smart antennas, especially one like an Adaptive Antenna Arrays (AAA) which has to determine the positon.
An AAA determines the position of the users by detection of the direction of arrival of their signals at the antenna array.
Then the position is used to determine a pattern with that maximises the peak at the user and simultanously minimises interference for other users. The pattern is achieved by radiating the signal with different phase shifts from the different antenna. You may guess how exact the determined location will be.
Slashdot Mirror
>I would argue that things unnatural do not exist.
That depends on the way you understand the word natural.
If natural means, a product of nature, then of course unnatural things would not exist. But then the existence of the word natural wouldn't make sense as the word darkness wouldn't make sense if there were no light.
I'd say, it's the very same difference between an human being and an animal. Sentience, reason and understanding. It's an metaphysical distinction.
Natural is something that comes without consciousness.
A human isn't unnatural in itself. His education and decisions makes him so.
But don't get me wrong. Unnatural doesn't mean bad. All culture is unnatural as it is a product of thought.
On what humans need depend on the way how consider humans. If you ask, what a human needs naturally, you have to ask what does the beast "human" need. That surely doesn't include TV, computer, Internet.
But if you ask what does the intellectual beeing "human" as part of the unnatural construct civilisation need, it may include those things.
But this is a concious decision. And conciousness includes the disctinction between good and bad, and right and wrong.
Where do they get their money from?
I'd say, in essence, from those people who are watching it. And concerning Star Trek (and probably SciFi in general) this compromises a small fan(atic?) group of viewers.
The whole Star Trek thing would have stopped after The Original Series, if it wasn't for the fans.
In the immortal words of Bart Simpson:
Listen to yourself man, you're hanging with nerds!
Another proverb says "The quill is mightier than the sword".
>looking at issues and at issues and problems from all angles
That's what I currently try to do. Trying to understand the motivations behind the net ban.
I'm not a strong supporter for such a move, but in contrast to the majority on this site, I'm neither a strong supporter for the opposite position, that's why I'm taking their position.
> I just can't take your view which basically seems to me "people are stupid, easily fooled by others, and as such should be brainwashed by the government into believing what I want them to believe." I just don't buy that.
My stance is uneducated and unhappy people are foolish and can be pushed in a certain direction by other people (which may include the current goverment or not).
It's not brainwashing. Most people tend to have a fear of the unknown, which includes foreigner and people tend to glorify the past.
Now consider, you didn't have a job for over a year. You feel worthless and humiliated because you are on the dole.
There are two people, one tolds you that it's practically your fault that you don't have a job.
The other one tells you that you don't have a job because a foreigner has your job and your more worth than him. In the past you had a job and there were fewer foreigner and everything was better. Suddenly everything makes sense, there is a reason for both your current situation and your fear of the foreign.
Whom are you going to believe? (Well, not actually you in person... you know what I mean)
I think, history supports my position. How do you think the Nazis came into power? They were legally elected by a dissatisfied (and, in my eyes, uneducated part) of the population after a worldwide economic crisis and a lost war.
Uneducated in the sense, that they had nearly no confidence in/knowledge about democracy and knew not enough about the Nazi-Party.
The task of a well functioning tolerant society should be to avoid this disinformation through education. Educate in the sense to shape the people into people, who are questioning and have moral courage.
You will surely agree that it is a hard task. And I willingly agree that it is worthwile task.
But it seems to me that the European goverments doesn't consider themselves capable achieving it.
Considering their past its understandable for me.
But as I said (or at least tried to) I don't think it is a solution to the problem, it only hides the problem.
The difference is, that cutting this very part of the woman's genital leads to less pleasure in sex. That is the very reason why they do this.
Speak with a fellow jew and ask him in what ways "chopping off the end of your dick" did affect him.
BTW, it's not the end of your dick but the surrounding skin.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges. -Anatole France
What I wanted to illustrate with these words was that equality is not a good justification for a law.
Why do they see the need for such a law?
Speech can be harmful. The problem is that unhappy people, who have no work, fell easily for words which blame their situation on a minority. Their unhappiness turns into hate towards this minority.
Usually, those propagandising people are a minority themselve.
So what about the majority?
If you have an active majority, which works against those people, the situation will be fine.
Now the historical experience in Europe was that this process might not work.
As some German once said:
In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up." -Martin Niemöller
But these words show also a way how to cope with this problem: You have to educate the people, to give them the knowledge and the moral courage to cope with these people.
My problem with the law is, that it only works against voicing the thoughts in public, whereas the hatred remains.
Educating works against both, but costs you more time and dedication.
But maybe you agree with me that it's quite hard to decide against suppressing racist voices with a historical guilt for several million death people.
The reason, why Itanium is considered as niche product by AMD is not because it's 64-bit (as AMD upcoming Hammer is too), but it's new instruction-set and architecture (in contrast to AMDs Hammer)
The Itanium-architecture currently seem to have some problems.
A group surounding Professor Wen-mei Hwu from the University Illinois is developing a compiler called IMPACT which should take advantage of the EPIC architecture. He made some observations concerning the Itanium.
Theoretically, the Itanium is capable of issuing 6 instructions simultanously. But on a SPEC benchmark, called mcf, the processor achieves only 0.15 IPC. Throughout the SPECint2000 benchmark the CPU calculates only 10% of the time. Most of the time the CPU idles because of memory accesses or pipeline-flushs.
Currently, the Itanium leads in certain benchmarks (Floating Point, IRC), but lags in other areas.
> the Itanium is a niche product now. in a few years i expect its time will come
You're probably right, but only time will tell.
Maybe EPIC is the wrong way, maybe not.
Because, if they don't meter the access, the bandwidth usage rises. This can usually attributed to a small percentage of the users (to whom I count myself)
The rise has to be compensated with another DS3 trunk, which leads to increased costs.
These costs are equally distributed on the subscribers.
Is that fair?
How about your connection to your ISP?
Modems and ISDN adaptors aren't connected directly with the DS3. Usually, they have some kind of modem-rack which provide access to a certain amount of users simultanously.
Now assume everyone is permantly online, this means that there have to be as many dial-in ports aviable as there are users. This leads to another increase in costs.
Usually, the costs for ISPs are reduced by resource-sharing.
If I'm only half a day online, I'll give someone else the chance to use the same hardware. This reduces costs. If I do not download the newest distribution/music track just for fun, I'll save bandwith and give someone else the chance to use it.
How do I achieve a sensible use of (usually limited) resources? I'd say by fees.
As I said, I wouldn't like it as it would be to my disadvantage, nonetheless it'd make sense.
> and you're going to be paying by the minute.
:)
Well, as much as I dislike paying per minute, doesn't it make sense?
Of course, one could say once the infrastructure is build, it doesn't differ how much I telephone.
But it does differ.
The infrastructure is build to serve only a small percentage of the subscribed users users simultanously (Usually about 1%, IRC.)
This applies for land-lines and even more so for radio.
You can only supply a certain percentage of the population simultanously. This becomes most obvious on certain events. Ever tried to use your mobile on new year 24:00?
That's where demand and supply comes into play.
Even if it didn't make a difference, don't you think, that those, who use a service more intensive, should pay more?
Well, I shouldn't speak so loud... someone may get on the idea and meter my internet-access
There are several things one doesn't like, but that doesn't have to mean that they don't make sense.
It's a very pragmatic decision.
Different compiler do produce different code and have different extensions.
To enable compiling the kernel with different compilers, you have to programm for the different extensions and you have to test the kernel with the different compilers. This, plus the different architectures supported gives you a (n*m) variety of possibilities and the same amount of problems.
For the very same reason, the kernel is not only for GCC it's also only for one or two different versions of GCC.
Maybe take a look a the LKML-FAQ, where Rafael R. Reilova gives an anwser on why not use different compilers.
First of all, it's not about the US alone
>If people don't want to work so hard, why do they do it? Because its an opportunity...
It's not a opportunity...
Imagine, some people don't have the problem to choose between a Playstation 2 and a X-Box.
Either they work, or they and their family would starve.
It's either you work or one of the 100 other people waiting for the job would do it.
>The way to not support sweat shops if you don't like them is to NOT buy their products
Now, don't say that a bad treatement of their employees would have an negative impact on their sales.
You and most other people (myself included) have no idea, under which conditions my clothing or shoes. Did you know how Nike produce(d?) some shoes?
Or do you ask about it? Will someone tell you about it? (Excuse me sir, are those shoes produced with child labor? How are the working conditions?)
>It's terrible labor laws and government intervention that has made America impossible to produce in
In what ways did the US (and other industrial nations) suffer from the increased cost, due to protection laws?
IRC, the total amount of wealth increased. The difference between the poorer countries and the richer countries increased, same with the rich and the poor in the US.
> End it the capitalist consumer way, don't get government involved.
It seems to me that most person have forgotten where those govermental regulations and unions did stem from and how working conditions in the industrial nations (today one should say information nations) where before(e.g. US) those regulations.
Did you read Dickens "Oliver Twist" by any chance?
Nowadays, in most industrial nations most legislations seem to be unnecessary and maybe even are.
But most nations in the world have not reached this level of wealth, where it's up to choose between more or less comfort in exchange for more or less money, but between something to eat and nothing.
Strategy is hard to implement.
:).
1) You have to tune the ruleset to achieve a balanced gameplay. The more complex, the more you have to test.
2) You have to develop an "AI" that has to cope with your ruleset.
Both reasons urges you keep the ruleset simple, which is (at least for me) contraproductive for interesting games. Online-gaming seems to get rid of reason 2.
Strategy doesn't sell and game companies have become very conservative. (Name a current game that isn't a sequel)
1) Having limited manpower, you have to choose between GFX and game complexity. Now try to sell a non 3D game.
2) Complexity scare most customer. (I don't have the time to read a complete handbook, just to play a game)
>In fact, you'd be very hardpressed to find someone who uses actualy tactics in a strategy game
You seem to have a different understanding of the words tactis and strategy than me.
For me strategy is much more long-term orientated whereas tactics is only "a method of employing forces in combat".
Following this understanding, most RTS aren't strategy games to my eyes. They are tactical games.
They have to cope with too many different things in short time so that game-logic is reduced to build and crush.
One word says it all, pathfinding (Where is my harvester?)
GFX have to rendered quickly every frame.
>If you were to create a strategy game with real strategy, what would you implement?
I'm more a fan of build and expand, than intercept and crush, but considering war-faring, I think there are some books I'd try to reflect in the rule-set: Sun Tzu's Art of War and Miyamoto Musashi's Ni Ten Ichi Ryu
That means several things beside manpower have to be considered, troop moral, moral of the supporting nation(s), supply, training, terrain.
Currently, I'm waiting for Master of Orion III to crush my hopes
At least from their statements they are reflecting some of my (reduced) expectations from a good (space) strategy game.
Hmm, so a device is only powered by a certain OS if its integrated as module into its kernel?
It's just unclearly formulated.
When your deleteing a file, your not deleteing the data. Your just removing the directory entry for that file.
So you data is still there (to the great pleasure of the law enforcement units).
To really delete the data, you have to overwrite the data with different data. Even several times to be sure that no traces are left.
This feature was usually provided by some tools (PGPtools comes to mind).
This is now integrated into XP, much to the concern of some law-enforcement people.
See a story at The Reg
>Secondly, GNOME?[...]
:) Touching four religions in one post. Programming language, distribution, Gnome/KDE, Integration/Small tools. You failed to mention your favourite browser, politics, Star Wars/Star Trek, an audiophile theme of your choice (CD/LP/MP3/Ogg).
:) )
>Who writes a GUI in C, for crying out loud[...]
>I really like how everything in KDE is integrated
>SuSE [...] prefer over Redhat
Expect to be flamed.
Anyway... Choosing a more conservative filesystem as default is not necessary evil. Especially if your targeting a lots of different users.
About writing in C... Well, take the language that suits you most. Personally, I'd rather write larger programs in C++, too (Smaller ones I prefer C). But I don't think it you HAVE to write them in C++, especially if your more proficient in C.
About the integration in KDE, I like it, too.
At least on my desktop. But surely not on my notebook, there I prefer Blackbox or a CLI.
Expect to be proposed(threatened?) to use Windows as integration should be its philosophy in contrast to Unix.
As if using small programs stem from philosophy and not 8k total memory. (Real men program by rewireing, only quiche-eaters need IDEs
To show my point, I'll quickly state that I think the difference between Unix and Windows is the possibilty to use different tools including lightweight programs or Integrated Enviroments matching your taste and/or technical outfit.
Not quite, the delay between sending the signal and recieving the signal is known by everybody, but with varying accuracy.
The small variation (the "delay" I'm writing of) added to the sending time-stamp is only known to the DoD.
It's called Differential GPS (DGPS). (GPS is already triangulation of different signals sources)
AFAIK, the signals are delayed according to a certain algorithm (known to the DOD).
But there are several fixed GPS receivers which compare the measured position and the real position. The comparision yields a correction factor for the various signals from the different GPS-satellites.
Here is some short explanation
W2k Magazine has an article about the resemblence.
They are very similar. But why it was called "New Technology" is not written there, although its a major design difference.
The VMS has a monolithic layered kernel, whereas NT has (or better had) a microkernel, almost like Mach. Take a look at your favourite OS book or here.
I consider memory as a another resource and wanted to abstract it a little more.
Generally, an unprotected concurrent access can lead the system to an unstable state.
Of course, concurrent direct access on the printer port will hardly crash the OS, whereas a write to a random memory address has good chances to do so.
Not quite correct.
It's not preemptive vs. cooperative.
But preemptible vs. non-preemptible kernel.
"Pre-empt means the OS decides when the thread loses control."
Yes, that's preemption.
B,ut there is another preemption.
Should a process get a higher priority than the currently running process, then the current process gets preempted.
E.g.
You have a low priority CPU-bound process A(e.g. Seti@home) and you have a high priority I/O-bound process B (e.g. XMMS).
Usually, B does nothing but waiting for I/O (e.g. the soundcard and the harddisk). While waiting, the process is not in the run-queue.
Meanwhile, A hogs the CPU. Usually, when the I/O request is done, the CPU gets an interrupt request (IRQ) which causes the OS to switch in kernel mode and handle the request. B gets active again and has a higher priority than A, so A gets preempted. Usually that works fine, but now A wants to do some I/O (deliver a packet) and calls the kernel, which handles the request. Just this moment is the I/O for B ready. In Linux (as in most other OSs too) B has to wait until A gets its syscall done, since the kernel is not preemptible. This period of time until the B gets the CPU increases the latency.
Windows 95 is preemptive (at least according to A. Silberschatz) as is Linux.
The high amount of crashes of the whole system stem from the resource protection (direct hardware access), not the scheduling.
Do not forget the AIM Linux port.
:)
It thought some time ago, it was mentioned that AOL wanted Linux as OS for Internet access device.
(That's where the big market comes in)
A quick search revealed a story on CNET two years ago:"AOL considering Linux device, sources say".
Maybe this development is part of a long term strategy. On the other hand, all those companies seem to have acted more or less independently from AOL.
>The whole player thing is getting a bit weird. [...]
Now all we need is Xmms on OSX
Not really, you just have to click on "Grab the Winamp 3 Linux Alpha Preview" link.
:) )
(Writing this from a w2k machine, shame on me
Nonetheless did Sting sing this line (too?)
Yes, it's shame that PHP doesn't has native unicode support.
But if you use utf-8 and don't touch the strings and just pass them to the (unicode-capable) DB from the Webbrowser (or the reverse) it seem to work (at least for me using latin-1 and japanese characters).
And there is an experimental multi-byte string module
AFAIK, banks have a own seperated network.
The DARPA-NET was created to provide a mean to communicate after a nuclear-strike or any other physical attack.
It should be redundant (and by this mean fault tolerant).
Therefor all partners were more or less equal.
It didn't matter which way the packets go and it shouldn't matter.
Security was never a main issue as you can see from the amount of security flaws, which exist(ed) in TCP/IP.
Granted, IPv6 seems to tackle these problems, but it is still not in use. And sometimes it's easier to build something new than to change the existing (I would suggest doing the same with tax law).
What was the best network security tool again? IRC, pliers.
But in cities, the cells are significantly smaller, some cells even cover only a single street.
And the single antenna argument only applies, when they're not using smart antennas, especially one like an Adaptive Antenna Arrays (AAA) which has to determine the positon.
An AAA determines the position of the users by detection of the direction of arrival of their signals at the antenna array.
Then the position is used to determine a pattern with that maximises the peak at the user and simultanously minimises interference for other users. The pattern is achieved by radiating the signal with different phase shifts from the different antenna. You may guess how exact the determined location will be.