Indeed, I think the article is totally off. I've been playing Earthbound obsessively for the past few weeks. It's fantastic. Mario RPG, Yoshi's Island, and Donkey Kong Country 1+2 are next. Then again, I'm not really your typical XBox gamer (my last console was an N64. My next will be a Wii), so maybe this only holds true for people like me.
Yeah, that's true. Furthermore, not to burst anyone's bubble, but it's not really innovating when the system has been publicized since '03 or '04. Linux is most often a place for open-source reincarnations, and much less often a place where new ideas are born. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, it's just not what many OSS-pushers want. On the other hand, there are notable exceptions to this.
Yes, on all technical merits, Blu-ray is superior. It is much more dense, holds more data, and has a faster transfer speed. It supports the same three video codecs as HD-DVD (MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2), and has a java-based interactivity system. This test was unfair in that the HD-DVDs were encoded with VC-1 whereas the BRDs used MPEG-2. Since VC-1 is the bastard child of MPEG-4 technology and Microsoft design, I'm holding out for movies encoded with AVC. Particularly, Blu-ray + AVC should be spectacular.
Keep in mind that this is basically designed to be a kiosk for lab work or web browsing. With that in mind, the lack of bluetooth, a remote, and dedicated video makes perfect sense.
Yes, this is true. I myself am merely a "casual" linux user who only made the switch when Hoary was released (after a few months of playing around with live CDs) -- and my main reasons for switching were completely desktop-related. Since then, at least two of my friends are raving about Ubuntu and one is bringing his girlfriend over. Ubuntu has enabled the 1998-era PC in my family's living room to stay modern and beautiful. All of this was probably true before Ubuntu, but the real difference is the audience. None of us are anything close to the prototypical linux user.
Not that desktop Linux doesn't have a long way to go, and in my personal opinion OS X is still lightyears ahead of everything else available, but the trend is definitely there.
You must not have ever taken a high-school level Government class. The first ammendment does NOT protect your right to command that a specific person be killed. The K.K.K. may legally proclaim that their members should kill all blacks, but they may not say "kill that black man over there". This is textbook stuff.
Stargazers often use this trick as well--if you look directly at a faint star, after a couple of seconds you'll question whether it's actually where it was just a moment before. But if you look slightly off to the side, your eyeball moves around and twitches enough that it creates apparent "motion" of the faint star you're trying to see and you can pick it up again.
Is that true? I've always been under the impression that the reason that stars are easier to see in peripheral vision is because rod cells, which are predominant in the periphera, are much more sensitive to light than the cone cells that crowd the visual center.
You must badly misunderstand evolution to say something like that. It seems to be a common misconception that, because we live in a very medically advanced society, that somehow we have single-handedly brought to a stop the entire process of natural selection on our species. This is a problem of thinking too narrowly (by staying within the confines of the rest of the natural world).
The fact is, natural selection is going on just as much as it ever has, and just as much as it always will. All that natural selection guarantees is that it will, over time, produce a creature best suited to its immediate environment. Just because our environment is currently filled with medical technology and other human beings does not mean that it's any less valid or real of an environment, particularly from the perspective of a force like evolution. It is simply the case that any human beings surviving in our society are adapted to survival in our society. It's not a big deal. There will never be a such thing as "second rate" anything according to evolution, because evolution is not a scale. It's simply a blind force acting on us, constantly, completely indifferent to human activity. It's arrogant to think otherwise.
"I understand that scissors can beat paper and I get how rock can beat scissors. But there's no fucking way paper can beat rock. Paper is supposed to magically wrap around rock leaving it immobile? Why the hell can't paper do this to scissors? Screw scissors, why can't paper do this to people? Why aren't sheets of college-ruled notebook paper constantly suffocating students as they attempt to take notes in class? I'll tell you why, because paper can't beat anybody, a rock would tear that shit up in two seconds. When I play rock/paper/scissors I always choose rock. Then when somebody claims to have beaten me with their paper I can punch them in the face with my already clenched fist and say "OH SHIT I'M SORRY, I THOUGHT PAPER WOULD PROTECT YOU, ASSHOLE."
For the record, Gnome on Ubuntu 6.06 does lock the screen until you enter a password. However, this still happens infrequently and predictably enough to not be annoying in the least --it only happens when dealing with application addition/removal, and any of the apps in System->Administration. Pretty reasonable.
Google has indeed been working on Picasa, and it's finally available for
download at
http://labs.google.com/
For the curious, here are a few tidbits about how it came to be.
When Google wanted to port Picasa to Linux, they faced a
problem: the Picasa team was busy working on new projects, and
having them also do a native port would have taken a while.
As an experiment, Google decided to give Wine a try.
A quick look showed that much of Picasa already worked,
but key features were missing: the IWebBrowser API, SSL,
scanner/camera support, removable media notification (so you can
insert a flash drive and have Windows notice it right away),
and change notification (so Windows can notify apps when new
files are created), among others. Fortunately, Wine was
already halfway to having an implementation of IWebBrowser
thanks to Jacek Caban's Summer of Code 2005 project. And all
that other stuff couldn't be *that* hard, right?:-) So
Google engaged Codeweavers to add those features and fix any
other bugs. This resulted in tons of improvements to Wine (see
the list at code.google.com/wine.html), all of which are now in
the public tree at winehq.org.
Many people assume that when porting a Windows app to Linux
using Wine, the best thing to do is link Winelib into the
application to create a native Linux application. Not so!
It's just as effective, and a heck of a lot easier, to run
the same binary on both Windows and Wine. So that's what the
Picasa team did. Picasa for Linux uses slightly different
text messages, but the.exe file is identical for both Windows
and Linux.
http://www.winehq.com/pipermail/wine-devel/2006-Ma y/047806.html
In short, we would have eventually gotten a non-wine version. It would have probably been much further away, and much less feature-complete. We're the infintesimal minority here. We have to take things like this and run with them.
As a matter of fact, after recieving a year of terrible education in a local private high school, I decided to transfer into the local public school (known for its academics). The academic programs there were vastly better and there was much more diversity in the way of electives. I, too, had nearly a semester's worth of AP credits upon entering college. For what it's worth, we sent two kids to Princeton, two to Yale, and about fifteen more to the other Ivies (out of a class of ~170). While the public school system in general is less prestigious than the private school system, this is much less of a rule than is convenient to believe.
I haven't been this excited to play a video game since Mario 64. I caught myself feeling this way while watching the E3 conference. The reason? It's a totally new experience. I distinctly remember how psyched I was reading Next-Gen in 1996 about the N64's analog control and the true 3D immersion that was made possible by the N64 and Mario 64. When I first laid hands on it at a Wal-mart demo console, it was almost a religious experience. I find myself feeling the same way, after about seven years of not caring about gaming whatsoever, about the Wii. I can't wait to feel the completely different gaming experience. That, for me, is the single sexiest thing about the Wii and the most significant -- no system since the N64 has offered that sort of freshness. PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, and Xbox 360 have all offered essentially the same gaming experience. Wii is, in a very real way, revolutionary.
The other thing that entices me about the Wii is the futuristic sense of the thing. Everything about the console reminds me of something that we might've seen in a 90's sci-fi movie, that, if it didn't actually exist, we would all laugh off as this ridiculous thing that would never really be made. It's just too cool to be real. Throw in some flying cars and moonbases and I'll retract all my grievances about how big of a let-down the turn of the century was.
NGE is the story of a program initiated by a secret council of powerful old men
Yes.
in order to make themselves immortal.
No. The goal is not personal immortality for the members of Seele. Instrumentality/complementation is the goal.
The program uses genetic material from "aliens"
"Yes."
(who are actually not aliens, but rather the original inhabitants of Earth, related to humans but not the same species)
... Sorta.
to create living "robots"
Yes.
that can only be operated by children who have been traumatically separated from their mothers
No. It is stated in the show that the Evas can be operated by anyone. The use of Shinji, Asuka, and Rei is important for Instrumentality.
- the bodily fluids of the mothers are used to provide an interface to the "robots".
Ew. No.
The original plan was to have the old men take over an immortal fusion of human and "robot",
No. The original plan was to engineer Instrumentality. This succeeded.
but this was hijacked by the lead scientist on the project who was aiming to be reunited with his dead wife (the mother of one of the child pilots).
Yes. (Sorta). Yui did not die. Her soul was absorbed into Unit 01.
This also goes awry, and the result is that all of humanity undergoes an involuntary fusion with everybody else
No. The fusion was not due to Gendo's failure. It was the intended result of the process from the word go.
, but this is interrupted by the rejection of this union by the child pilot who acts as the medium for the unification
Yes.
, when he realises it will mean those closest to him being able to know his most secret thoughts.
No. He rejects it because he realizes that, despite the potential for pain, individuality is better because the chance for love still exists (sorta) and because he determines that the world created by instrumentality is no different than a dream, and therefore he is "running away" from reality.
The ending is ambiguous as to how the whole mess works out.
The end isn't ambiguous in the least. It's clearly stated that people would return to form when they decided to. Instrumentality failed, and that's where the story ended.
Furthermore, it seems that Ask's satellite data in some areas is much better than that of thecompetition. This is the first I'm able to explore my hometown in high-res, living color.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, I think the article is totally off. I've been playing Earthbound obsessively for the past few weeks. It's fantastic. Mario RPG, Yoshi's Island, and Donkey Kong Country 1+2 are next. Then again, I'm not really your typical XBox gamer (my last console was an N64. My next will be a Wii), so maybe this only holds true for people like me.
Yeah, that's true. Furthermore, not to burst anyone's bubble, but it's not really innovating when the system has been publicized since '03 or '04. Linux is most often a place for open-source reincarnations, and much less often a place where new ideas are born. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, it's just not what many OSS-pushers want. On the other hand, there are notable exceptions to this.
Yes, on all technical merits, Blu-ray is superior. It is much more dense, holds more data, and has a faster transfer speed. It supports the same three video codecs as HD-DVD (MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1, MPEG-2), and has a java-based interactivity system. This test was unfair in that the HD-DVDs were encoded with VC-1 whereas the BRDs used MPEG-2. Since VC-1 is the bastard child of MPEG-4 technology and Microsoft design, I'm holding out for movies encoded with AVC. Particularly, Blu-ray + AVC should be spectacular.
Keep in mind that this is basically designed to be a kiosk for lab work or web browsing. With that in mind, the lack of bluetooth, a remote, and dedicated video makes perfect sense.
Adium is listed in the "honorable mentions" section.
Seconding this.
Yes, this is true. I myself am merely a "casual" linux user who only made the switch when Hoary was released (after a few months of playing around with live CDs) -- and my main reasons for switching were completely desktop-related. Since then, at least two of my friends are raving about Ubuntu and one is bringing his girlfriend over. Ubuntu has enabled the 1998-era PC in my family's living room to stay modern and beautiful. All of this was probably true before Ubuntu, but the real difference is the audience. None of us are anything close to the prototypical linux user. Not that desktop Linux doesn't have a long way to go, and in my personal opinion OS X is still lightyears ahead of everything else available, but the trend is definitely there.
You must not have ever taken a high-school level Government class. The first ammendment does NOT protect your right to command that a specific person be killed. The K.K.K. may legally proclaim that their members should kill all blacks, but they may not say "kill that black man over there". This is textbook stuff.
You must badly misunderstand evolution to say something like that. It seems to be a common misconception that, because we live in a very medically advanced society, that somehow we have single-handedly brought to a stop the entire process of natural selection on our species. This is a problem of thinking too narrowly (by staying within the confines of the rest of the natural world). The fact is, natural selection is going on just as much as it ever has, and just as much as it always will. All that natural selection guarantees is that it will, over time, produce a creature best suited to its immediate environment. Just because our environment is currently filled with medical technology and other human beings does not mean that it's any less valid or real of an environment, particularly from the perspective of a force like evolution. It is simply the case that any human beings surviving in our society are adapted to survival in our society. It's not a big deal. There will never be a such thing as "second rate" anything according to evolution, because evolution is not a scale. It's simply a blind force acting on us, constantly, completely indifferent to human activity. It's arrogant to think otherwise.
"I understand that scissors can beat paper and I get how rock can beat scissors. But there's no fucking way paper can beat rock. Paper is supposed to magically wrap around rock leaving it immobile? Why the hell can't paper do this to scissors? Screw scissors, why can't paper do this to people? Why aren't sheets of college-ruled notebook paper constantly suffocating students as they attempt to take notes in class? I'll tell you why, because paper can't beat anybody, a rock would tear that shit up in two seconds. When I play rock/paper/scissors I always choose rock. Then when somebody claims to have beaten me with their paper I can punch them in the face with my already clenched fist and say "OH SHIT I'M SORRY, I THOUGHT PAPER WOULD PROTECT YOU, ASSHOLE."
For the record, Gnome on Ubuntu 6.06 does lock the screen until you enter a password. However, this still happens infrequently and predictably enough to not be annoying in the least --it only happens when dealing with application addition/removal, and any of the apps in System->Administration. Pretty reasonable.
Who pissed in this blogger's Cheerios?
You can get the binaries directly (regardless of location) from these links:
c asa/picasa_2.2.2820-5_i386.deb
- 2.2.2820-5.i386.rpm
2 820-5.i386.bin
Deb: http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/pool/non-free/p/pi
RPM: http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386/picasa
Binary installer: http://dl.google.com/linux/standalone/picasa-2.2.
As a matter of fact, after recieving a year of terrible education in a local private high school, I decided to transfer into the local public school (known for its academics). The academic programs there were vastly better and there was much more diversity in the way of electives. I, too, had nearly a semester's worth of AP credits upon entering college. For what it's worth, we sent two kids to Princeton, two to Yale, and about fifteen more to the other Ivies (out of a class of ~170). While the public school system in general is less prestigious than the private school system, this is much less of a rule than is convenient to believe.
I haven't been this excited to play a video game since Mario 64. I caught myself feeling this way while watching the E3 conference. The reason? It's a totally new experience. I distinctly remember how psyched I was reading Next-Gen in 1996 about the N64's analog control and the true 3D immersion that was made possible by the N64 and Mario 64. When I first laid hands on it at a Wal-mart demo console, it was almost a religious experience. I find myself feeling the same way, after about seven years of not caring about gaming whatsoever, about the Wii. I can't wait to feel the completely different gaming experience. That, for me, is the single sexiest thing about the Wii and the most significant -- no system since the N64 has offered that sort of freshness. PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, and Xbox 360 have all offered essentially the same gaming experience. Wii is, in a very real way, revolutionary.
The other thing that entices me about the Wii is the futuristic sense of the thing. Everything about the console reminds me of something that we might've seen in a 90's sci-fi movie, that, if it didn't actually exist, we would all laugh off as this ridiculous thing that would never really be made. It's just too cool to be real. Throw in some flying cars and moonbases and I'll retract all my grievances about how big of a let-down the turn of the century was.
Yes.
No. The goal is not personal immortality for the members of Seele. Instrumentality/complementation is the goal.
"Yes."
Yes.
No. It is stated in the show that the Evas can be operated by anyone. The use of Shinji, Asuka, and Rei is important for Instrumentality.
Ew. No.
No. The original plan was to engineer Instrumentality. This succeeded.
Yes. (Sorta). Yui did not die. Her soul was absorbed into Unit 01.
No. The fusion was not due to Gendo's failure. It was the intended result of the process from the word go.
Yes.
No. He rejects it because he realizes that, despite the potential for pain, individuality is better because the chance for love still exists (sorta) and because he determines that the world created by instrumentality is no different than a dream, and therefore he is "running away" from reality.
The end isn't ambiguous in the least. It's clearly stated that people would return to form when they decided to. Instrumentality failed, and that's where the story ended.
Way to not actually address his refutation and instead degenerate to name-calling. Makes your argument look real strong.
Furthermore, it seems that Ask's satellite data in some areas is much better than that of the competition. This is the first I'm able to explore my hometown in high-res, living color.