But imagine if we could freely share copies of that art between ourselves. You, me, and a bunch of our friends (or say 100,000 strangers out there on the internet) could all chip in a little bit and buy the same thing the mega rich fat dudes can buy, and we could all have a copy of it at the same time. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
So in order to succeed, you'd probably already have to have production values as well as musical talent, which probably means investments, which means financial risk. To me this sounds like a scheme that would easily end up with only a few big "meme" bands thriving at a time.
Secondly, take a look at the music industry today. You think that the mega rich fat dudes don't already decide what gets made?
No, they don't. Mega rich fat dudes may get to decide what gets the widest commercial promotion, but there's no incentive for you to buy or even listen to the end result. There's plenty of smaller labels around to cater for different tastes if none of the more popular stuff catches your ear. There's even netlabels and hobbyist musicians (like myself) who choose to give their music away for free - but it's a choice. Nobody is trying too hard to stuff views down someone else's throat, and that's just fine.
It's quite different to a world where the only way to get by as an artist is to become a proverbial Britney Spears.
The issue is one of distribution. Correct that, and we could cut back on crops.
Yeah, all we have to do is restructure the global economy so that poorer countries are able to develop, and the problem will most likely solve itself. Why aren't we getting to work already instead of ripping them off?
For example, use bran X it is utter crap but at least it is "Greener" than brand Y which actually works.
And when brand X can do the same as brand Y while demanding less from the hardware, it certainly is a technical merit. Energy and material resource efficiency certainly should be an increasingly more important consideration for people right now. We're not only looking at the threat of what global warming might cause, but the economical and technological elevation of some of the largest population zones on Earth are also likely to cause some interesting effects.
Linux geeks will pound the boards about foul play --
If I had a euro for every such bogus report based on raw quantity of patches within a given, appropriately narrowed timeline, between products that distribute uncomparably different scopes of applications...
*draws breath*
...I could afford to drink myself silly right now with that money alone and not care.
Something comes to my mind about pots and kettles. I'm interested in hearing what your alternative course of action would be, seeing as the vendors have made their current stances quite crystal-clear.
I suppose you're thinking of passive devices, so the answer would be in the range of a couple hundred bits. They're not really equipped for running anything either - if you're looking for a cool way to carry your tiny distribution, just stick with USB flash devices (pun not intended).
That's something everybody keeps on repeating, but I'd like to note that there's plenty of great games from around the era of that hardware range (and indie titles up to this day) that haven't ceased working. Just plug in a decent video card and you're good.
(Spoken by someone who actually has a second box mostly for playing older titles, and is a proud NES and SNES owner.)
I'm thinking more along the lines of a simple and stupid daemon that listens for input and writes it onto the disk. Advantage being that the local end is the only one that has anything to do with the file system, so you have less variables in play.
You'll have to set up public key login with no passphrase for the scp to work without a password to the remote machine
Here's hoping that you also keep that remote machine in isolation from the rest of your LAN in case the laptop is actually snatched by a random miscreant.
So yeah, generally speaking, if spacefaring civilizations exist, they've probably been trauling the universe for millions of years now.
Based on what, exactly? All we have an idea about is how long it took for us to evolve up to this point both biologically and socially, but for all we know Earth could simply be in an unfathomable sweet spot for the emergence and development of life. Poetry and naïve hopes aside, we know practically nothing, but then again it's curiosity that's always driven us forward.
If I'm not mistaken, it's a song that Microsoft themselves started. No wonder really, because their real problem is that they can't let go of native backwards-compatibility with ancient APIs or they stand to risk losing their lock-in status with customers. Without that obstacle, they could've gotten rid of much of their security problems long ago.
Due all respect, I'd say that Mac OS X and current desktop-oriented Linux distributions are all more secure and easier to use than Windows XP.
How many so-called ports have the look and feel of a second-rate translation?
That may be because a lot of so-called ports probably are just that - hack-togethers of programs originally written with only one platform in mind, but adapted to a completely different one as an afterthought. In the worst case, by people with little or no experience about the new platform.
It also happens to be the biggest reason why I like to keep away from Microsoft's APIs.
However, this is still a very interesting development, as neurons have proven to be quite adaptable, so one could (in theory) learn to recieve or transmit a data feed to an off-site storage location.
Certainly an interesting and tempting concept. However, I shudder to think what would happen to such an individual were (s)he then suddenly cut off from that external mass memory even temporarily. I seem to find myself feeling a little stranded just losing my less direct access to the Internet at times, but it doesn't really compare at all to suffering an effective lobotomy.
Still - what wouldn't any self-respecting philomath give to have a memory that doesn't forget, and perhaps even the sum of human knowledge at a thought's length?
Emulation at this level doesn't necessarily mean fully emulating the hardware.
I know how it works, that's why I was talking about IO in particular.
Since we're talking about sending longer and longer programs to the GPU to let it process those itself, you'll actually see the overhead go down as shader programs get larger.
That means you'll either have to have a very direct interface from the graphics card to the virtual machine, or use a recompiler for translating those increasingly long programs. In the latter case you'll still be relying on an extra software layer on a very low level to be smart enough that you don't take a performance hit. Allowing two software environments to use the same hardware directly, on the other hand, sounds like a road to all sorts of nastiness.
No, I simply don't see this as practical right now. I'd much rather vote for improvement and wider adoption of multi-platform APIs if you have to expend significant effort in something like this.
I think you'll find that what you're referring to is more conventionally called "hardware abstraction". DOS games need DOSBox these days, but more modern operating systems already come equipped with their own layers for doing the same thing. Emulating hardware is painstakingly slow and complex compared to just supporting another API or binary format (which WINE does), so it's only practical for supporting completely foreign environments or ones that require past generations of hardware.
Virtualisation is certainly hot in servers right now, but you don't have to bother about low-latency, high-bandwidth IO as an essential component of the user experience there. For current-gen games, I just don't see that coming, at least anytime soon.
People who suggest the "bootable game CD" idea also keep forgetting the technical reality of the PC as a platform. Please, at least once, boot up any reasonably full-featured Linux live-CD just to see how long it takes to probe your particular setup and fire up an environment where running 3D-accelerated games with surround sound and whatnot is actually plausible. I'll throw in some extra points for each time you actually do get to that point with just auto-configuration, and double for every future hardware generation you can cover with the same CD.
Modern consoles boot up their games almost instantly because there's only one type of hardware setup and the firmware, base operating system and user settings are all stored in fast solid-state devices instead of the relatively dead slow optical media. PCs won't be able to pull anything like that off unless the archaic BIOS architecture is completely abolished and operating systems fully adopt the advantages, and even in such a case I'd remain skeptical.
The percentage of people that actually want to think for their living is quite dismal in the grand scheme of things.
I would find that evidence is quite plainly against that. I'm taking a wild guess here, but you probably didn't write your comment on a stone slab with pieces of charcoal.
Secondly, look at who is more respected/has more resources in the society -- a "pop" star or a mathematician?
Depends on where you look. How many failed garage band projects are there to one pop star? How well does a successful mathematician do compared to your local pub band? Scientists have certainly had strong and far-reaching influences though history, but how many "pop idols" can you name from the times of Galileo Galilei, or Aristoteles?
So while engineering schools may be geared towards thinking, the question boils down to how many jobs out there require you to think as opposed to obey?
Those categories actually aren't mutually exclusive. Engineering in particular is one of those fields which lies relatively close to the middle of the grey area, which means there's fun to be gained from people's reactions on both extremes of the scale (yes, I'm an engineering student).
Much of what equates to practical knowledge useful to an engineer is best learned through real-world experience - you most likely won't get a good one just by running a person through a series of schools. However, while an electrician won't necessarily know how to design good and efficient wiring systems or electric gadgets, someone with a solid theoretical basis will at least have an easier time learning the necessary skills.
Just my odd few small units of currency at this late hour.
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So in order to succeed, you'd probably already have to have production values as well as musical talent, which probably means investments, which means financial risk. To me this sounds like a scheme that would easily end up with only a few big "meme" bands thriving at a time.
No, they don't. Mega rich fat dudes may get to decide what gets the widest commercial promotion, but there's no incentive for you to buy or even listen to the end result. There's plenty of smaller labels around to cater for different tastes if none of the more popular stuff catches your ear. There's even netlabels and hobbyist musicians (like myself) who choose to give their music away for free - but it's a choice. Nobody is trying too hard to stuff views down someone else's throat, and that's just fine.
It's quite different to a world where the only way to get by as an artist is to become a proverbial Britney Spears.
Yeah, all we have to do is restructure the global economy so that poorer countries are able to develop, and the problem will most likely solve itself. Why aren't we getting to work already instead of ripping them off?
I'm not sure if common sense is a proper name for that, it sounds more like weird cartoon logic to me.
But then you'd just spend every new episode of your life looking for a new one because you overloaded the last specimen.
(Que in the rest of the Star Trek jokes.)
And when brand X can do the same as brand Y while demanding less from the hardware, it certainly is a technical merit. Energy and material resource efficiency certainly should be an increasingly more important consideration for people right now. We're not only looking at the threat of what global warming might cause, but the economical and technological elevation of some of the largest population zones on Earth are also likely to cause some interesting effects.
If I had a euro for every such bogus report based on raw quantity of patches within a given, appropriately narrowed timeline, between products that distribute uncomparably different scopes of applications...
*draws breath*
(Just my two cents and student aid, FWIW.)
Something comes to my mind about pots and kettles. I'm interested in hearing what your alternative course of action would be, seeing as the vendors have made their current stances quite crystal-clear.
Someone should probably tell the mass storage manufacturers, they don't seem to have caught onto this memory addressing convenience thing at all.
I suppose you're thinking of passive devices, so the answer would be in the range of a couple hundred bits. They're not really equipped for running anything either - if you're looking for a cool way to carry your tiny distribution, just stick with USB flash devices (pun not intended).
That's something everybody keeps on repeating, but I'd like to note that there's plenty of great games from around the era of that hardware range (and indie titles up to this day) that haven't ceased working. Just plug in a decent video card and you're good.
(Spoken by someone who actually has a second box mostly for playing older titles, and is a proud NES and SNES owner.)
The Xcerion web site nevertheless refers to it as an "Internet OS". I suppose "application framework" is passé as a buzzword now.
And what about shark-related stories?
I'm thinking more along the lines of a simple and stupid daemon that listens for input and writes it onto the disk. Advantage being that the local end is the only one that has anything to do with the file system, so you have less variables in play.
This has precisely what advantage over not letting the thief access any part of your system directly?
Here's hoping that you also keep that remote machine in isolation from the rest of your LAN in case the laptop is actually snatched by a random miscreant.
Based on what, exactly? All we have an idea about is how long it took for us to evolve up to this point both biologically and socially, but for all we know Earth could simply be in an unfathomable sweet spot for the emergence and development of life. Poetry and naïve hopes aside, we know practically nothing, but then again it's curiosity that's always driven us forward.
Nice, though if he still stands by his story he's sure to have very sore feet.
If I'm not mistaken, it's a song that Microsoft themselves started. No wonder really, because their real problem is that they can't let go of native backwards-compatibility with ancient APIs or they stand to risk losing their lock-in status with customers. Without that obstacle, they could've gotten rid of much of their security problems long ago.
Due all respect, I'd say that Mac OS X and current desktop-oriented Linux distributions are all more secure and easier to use than Windows XP.
That may be because a lot of so-called ports probably are just that - hack-togethers of programs originally written with only one platform in mind, but adapted to a completely different one as an afterthought. In the worst case, by people with little or no experience about the new platform.
It also happens to be the biggest reason why I like to keep away from Microsoft's APIs.
Certainly an interesting and tempting concept. However, I shudder to think what would happen to such an individual were (s)he then suddenly cut off from that external mass memory even temporarily. I seem to find myself feeling a little stranded just losing my less direct access to the Internet at times, but it doesn't really compare at all to suffering an effective lobotomy.
Still - what wouldn't any self-respecting philomath give to have a memory that doesn't forget, and perhaps even the sum of human knowledge at a thought's length?
I know how it works, that's why I was talking about IO in particular.
That means you'll either have to have a very direct interface from the graphics card to the virtual machine, or use a recompiler for translating those increasingly long programs. In the latter case you'll still be relying on an extra software layer on a very low level to be smart enough that you don't take a performance hit. Allowing two software environments to use the same hardware directly, on the other hand, sounds like a road to all sorts of nastiness.
No, I simply don't see this as practical right now. I'd much rather vote for improvement and wider adoption of multi-platform APIs if you have to expend significant effort in something like this.
I think you'll find that what you're referring to is more conventionally called "hardware abstraction". DOS games need DOSBox these days, but more modern operating systems already come equipped with their own layers for doing the same thing. Emulating hardware is painstakingly slow and complex compared to just supporting another API or binary format (which WINE does), so it's only practical for supporting completely foreign environments or ones that require past generations of hardware.
Virtualisation is certainly hot in servers right now, but you don't have to bother about low-latency, high-bandwidth IO as an essential component of the user experience there. For current-gen games, I just don't see that coming, at least anytime soon.
People who suggest the "bootable game CD" idea also keep forgetting the technical reality of the PC as a platform. Please, at least once, boot up any reasonably full-featured Linux live-CD just to see how long it takes to probe your particular setup and fire up an environment where running 3D-accelerated games with surround sound and whatnot is actually plausible. I'll throw in some extra points for each time you actually do get to that point with just auto-configuration, and double for every future hardware generation you can cover with the same CD.
Modern consoles boot up their games almost instantly because there's only one type of hardware setup and the firmware, base operating system and user settings are all stored in fast solid-state devices instead of the relatively dead slow optical media. PCs won't be able to pull anything like that off unless the archaic BIOS architecture is completely abolished and operating systems fully adopt the advantages, and even in such a case I'd remain skeptical.
It's a passive device attached to a soggy bag of meat. I'd say four feet is pretty damn good already, if it means a reliable reading distance.
I would find that evidence is quite plainly against that. I'm taking a wild guess here, but you probably didn't write your comment on a stone slab with pieces of charcoal.
Depends on where you look. How many failed garage band projects are there to one pop star? How well does a successful mathematician do compared to your local pub band? Scientists have certainly had strong and far-reaching influences though history, but how many "pop idols" can you name from the times of Galileo Galilei, or Aristoteles?
Those categories actually aren't mutually exclusive. Engineering in particular is one of those fields which lies relatively close to the middle of the grey area, which means there's fun to be gained from people's reactions on both extremes of the scale (yes, I'm an engineering student).
Much of what equates to practical knowledge useful to an engineer is best learned through real-world experience - you most likely won't get a good one just by running a person through a series of schools. However, while an electrician won't necessarily know how to design good and efficient wiring systems or electric gadgets, someone with a solid theoretical basis will at least have an easier time learning the necessary skills.
Just my odd few small units of currency at this late hour.