Quote: "30,000 people are thought to have died from the radioactive fall-out.
Seven million people were still directly affected by Chernobyl, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator, Kenzo Oshima said."
Then of course there's all the birth defects that those unlucky people will be living with for a long time.:( Not pretty..
Considering the outrage in the EU about Echelon and the accusations of it being used for Industrial Espionage, i find it very unlikely that any EU country would encourage companies to use software that gives the US a backdoor!
Perhaps if a world-wide agreement was reached, in which each country required a backdoor, then it may be pallatable to other Governments, but i doubt you could gather that many short-sighted politicians in one place!:)
Even so, it would just mean the same old thing, Law abiding citizens and companies are less secure while criminals are untouched..
I had the same problems, (i have since thrown my MX300 card) thats what happens when company go bust! Aureal died, and so it seemed did all traces of their drivers / support. As you would expect, unless of course the company is bought out. Unfortunatly to make it that much worse Aureal went under just before they finnished their Win2k drivers properly, as i understand at least, In particular the SMP friendly drivers.
Reason its a bad example is that the only real support left is Linux support, because that was never done by Aureal (as i understand) so it wasnt affected...
I agree completely about the motherboard being so important. It is far more important than CPU, now I use two main PC's and tend to upgrard each of them every 3-6 months, (yes i work with a retailer and get *good* prices).
But the real question here nobody seems to have picked up on, when it comes to price of top end CPU's you are really talking Pentium4 / Athlon, and quite frankly when an Athlon 1.4Ghz costs only AU$50 or so more than a PentiumIII 933Mhz, AND is about A THIRD of the price of a P4 1.7, why would anyone in their right mind spend their *own* money on the latter???
AMD have it made, they have the (arguably) fastest chip out there, and its priced near the middle of the market, so why *wouldnt* you want the best if its only costing you such a small amount more??
RAM now is also cheap as chips, for the price of my motherboard i put 768MB ram in my latest desktop!!!!:)
I dont know maybe just here in Australia since all we get now of Bab5 is re-runs on cable (i think season 3 or 4?), but i would disagree with most of your points right off!
Firstly whenever I look at the show and just think, fuck my GeForce3 even kills that. The special effects just look so simple! I dont know if ive seen much of season 5 or anything, but it all just looks like some PC game!:(
There is no realism to it all, except I will say the alien costumes / etc, they are pretty good, very close to the ST:VOY/DS9 quality.. (That is my benchmark here btw)
But the main gripe i have with it, is the story! 90% of the time i watch it i get that feeling, "ahh fuck no dont be this lame, come on i want to be entertained!":) The worst thing i found was that feature movie (cant remember the name), damn i hate storys which go like this:
* Good human suggests exploring relations with X race.
* Military agree's that the big race X with an apparently huge military etc should be investigated.
* Send big war ship and find MOST arrogant war loving murdering captain to command this peacefull mission.
* Act supprised when you start intergalactic war.
*Shudder* that movie about the history of the war with Minbari (sp?) made me sick! And unfortunatly far too many episodes give me the same feeling.:(
One thing with your realism comment, i kind of like the idea that one day we as a race will be able to resolve a lot of our problems, ie, poverty, stupidity, etc.:) Thats one appealing factor of ST for me at least. But i guess we are all very different..
I really cant beleive some of the comments that a mod'ed up, but feh, this is slashdot..
I'll only comment on your Ozone comment, dont want to get redundant.
Maybe the reason you dont hear about the Ozone is because you live in America / etc. Unfortunatly us lucky fools living here in Australi (/ NZ) have to deal with the effects every day, in summer, you cant be more than 15-20 minutes in the sun without getting BADLY burnt.
If you want facts, look up the statistics on the rate of skin cancer in Australia, and you will see its the highest in the world.:(
Thats such a good quote, its a pitty tho, while we kill ourselves we kill everyone else, FIRST.
Feel sorry for those Africans, who now only have to put up with famine, disease, war. Soon thanks to our friend the greenhouse effect, they will all get so much worse.
[ugly sarcasm]
Oh but thats fine, it wont effect us for at least another xxx years after *they* die.....
[/sarcasm]
You say the 1 1/2 degree change over the last one hundred years is consitent, maybe but is the predicted 4 - 5 degree change over the next one hundred years consistent?!
Unfortunatly one of the biggest problems with "Global warming" is people in countries like America and Australia (where i am) see the warnings, of mass floodings, rising temps, etc, and thing, "so what, its not going to effect *me*!":(
The same revolutions have happened over and over again, and each time have been met with the same resistance! Ages back, many these artists probably scoffed at the CAMERA, and how "That's not ART!", and then again with Film, and again and again with every new medium.
Thats all this digital medium is, a NEW one. It will take time, but as history has shown that it will happen.
On a good note for here in Australia actually, the newly appointed head of the NSW Art board (or something like that, cant remember, but was on TV a short while ago), is not the usual appointment, ie he's not "an artist" with years of art background, he's background is actually more IT based! [Insert uproar from art community here] And he has stated on many occasions, his belief in Digital artwork as a new revolution of sorts.
Everyone seems to be bashing the 2gig's thing, if you have seen many M$ apps/os's installing lately they will all say 'requires xMB free to install', but most of that is just for the install. MS seems to love their temp files and such, but with the exception of 'restore files' (to uninstall) Im sure the final size USED (not size required to install) will be at or below the 1 gig mark!
Oh and when talking about stability, I dont thing enough was said at all in the review to draw any conclusions either way, but considering what this whole thing is, ie Windows2000 with new UI + tweaks, you should be able to easily imagine how stable the thing should be (based on Windows2000). With the exception of the apps of course, personally I never found MediaPlayer to run stable since version 6.4!:(
I think its easy to see where these requirements come from for both XP and OSX, its a matter of support. If you have ever tried helping someone over the phone who knows next to nothing about pc's install Windows2000 on a computer with *just* under the bare minumum requirements you may understand.
Personally after three years of supporting hundreds of different corporate and home users with every type of pc (windows) problem, i now truly believe there should be one type of computer for 'users' and only one. "No im sorry 64meg ram was two years ago, i just bought 256meg for $150, why cant you?", you want to run new software, well thats what you need then..
No okay, more seriously new software needs new hardware, its as simple as that, if you want to connect your digital camera / scaner / (win-)dsl modem, then you need some more memory, if you dont need those things, then why dont you stick with win98, or even better NT.
After reading though some of the firestorm of comments on trektoday's discussion board, it sounds like this new prequel series will be set before the creation of StarFleet, the details are obviously vague, but set in the 22nd century, 'historically' it could be before or sometime close too the formation of StarFleet and the United Federation of Planets.
The whole thing sounds great too me, *if* it happens, would be bridging that gap that has always been there between the 'current day' (paranoid, etc) human society and the 'future' startrek UFP..
With the TMP scene, i saw this link http://www.geocities.com/st_ent/ which is apparently one of the pictures shown in that scene of TMP.
I would agree largely with the previous posters comments from my experience, but when you talk Enterprise sizes 100000 users (or even 2000+!) I'd tend to agree with you.
I server a large number of small to medium networks (1000 users), all running NT for server, and the one's I set up *mostly* run fine. I admit some of the heavier loaded ones have been know to develop problems (and need a reboot), BUT I'll say the biggest cause I have found is in the setup! I see this especially in the smaller clients, they hire some "expert" to set it all up, then after a few months of weekly reboots they give them the flick and find someone else!
Unfortunatly for me due to that factor, the majority of my clients I didnt setup! The number of idiots who think Backoffice server means, yeah we can have *everything* on one server, no probs, or since the setup is easy "how could *we* cause the problems?", its scary. But ignorance always is..
But I dont want to defend M$ one bit, the number of god-damn-annoying stupid problems that DO come up with so much of their software is why I hate them. But on the other hand, I'm paid well and my job's easy. Leaving me time to 'toy' with my internal network, toys, etc. (slashdot, openbsd, beos, etc etc etc)
Yes, I think this worked out brilliantly for Sun, first they introduced Java years ago with all the hype, etc, M$ 'incorporated' it into their plans, the language took off, now that its a 'standard' (of sorts) M$ can't use it.
Sun has succeded in stopping the "Embrace and Extend" policy of M$, good for them! And us!
I would agree completely, one thing I think is very true is that English and American Humour are worlds apart, and I think my Australian humour is more on the side of English.. So I can understand Katz' view on the movie.
I personnally found it great, but not as good as Lock Stock, and not really in the same class even as Trainspotting. But still an enjoyable flic.
My only critisism is that it is too similar to Lock Stock, the plot, the cast and the scenes. You could almost cut and paste between the two! Needless to say that isnt a good thing.
That's really supprising to hear that in America the analogue network is still quite common, over the past 10 years here in Australia the fed govt has sponsored the transition from analogue to digital, finnishing this year when the last remaining parts of the analogue net was completly replaced by a CDMA net..
I remember my first mobile in '93 i was told by the sales man "Don't get analoge! you'll regret it in a few years!!" Well i listened, but since then i have had no less than 3 contracts! (many more actual phones!)
Network coverage was always the issuse here too, now CDMA covers all that GSM doesnt which is like 99% to 98% coverage respectivly (of the population).
Anyway too keep this ontopic, here in Australia the plans are allways the best to go with, i assume you have Vodafone there, from my experience here in Australia and in the UK, vodaphone is best for price / QUALITY!! Unfortunatly i was stupid and with my latest plan picked Optus (Cable & Wireless) for the very cheap calls, but it drops out at least 1 in 3 calls, whereas my old vodaphone rarely did. I also had to get a One2One prepaid when i was in London last, (Global roaming in Europe from Aus is not reasonable!) I believe one2one is a Cable&Wireless subsidery again, but that too droped out as much as my Optus does!
Ive heard Analogue here in Aus was just as bad, constant drop outs, etc. So I would ask more importantly than plan price / etc, is cost / network quality! Whats the point of a phone if you miss ever second word and lose connection constantly!:(
BTW, Avoid pre-paid like the plague, they are more expensive, and are 'low-priority' on the network, ie you get even WORSE quality!
Read again people! http://innominate.org/%7Etgr/slides/performance/ img8.htm
They did use linux 2.4.0-test1-acxx as it says; "very fresh kernel due to the big problems in the vm [blah blah] in the late 2.3.xx kernels, also linux 2.2 was tested..."
May sound a little strange, but you got me thinking, if you are to implement a type of GUI in a 3d "world" as such, ie rooms and signs on the walls, you would still need an interface to the computer which allows you to intuitively access that interface.
Sorry I think i'm almost loosing myself there..:) But its all fine and dandy to have a 3d world as your interface, aka VRML etc, but when you sit in front of your computer you still have to use your mouse and keyboard to access that world!
Hey it looks easy but when you compare games controls ie, Quake / Doom / Unreal / whatever you will see everyone has their own customised controls. Some use the mouse to move, some to look, some not at all!
The worst is when you try to use someone else's controls, you find yourself lost! That's not intuitive.
During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ballpoint pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about $1 million U.S. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on Earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody got cancer from it.
s id_1297000/1297261.stm
:( Not pretty..
Are you nuts?! Go do a quick search on google for anything other than the 'official report'!
ie:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/new
Quote: "30,000 people are thought to have died from the radioactive fall-out.
Seven million people were still directly affected by Chernobyl, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator, Kenzo Oshima said."
Then of course there's all the birth defects that those unlucky people will be living with for a long time.
Think about it, if it somehow gets *that* bad, then you and 30% of your neighbourhood / town / city, grabs their shotguns..
Don't they call that Cival war?
Im not sure what kind of gun laws China has but, would the Govt send tanks to run over a few hundred students if every adult had a shotgun at home?
Considering the outrage in the EU about Echelon and the accusations of it being used for Industrial Espionage, i find it very unlikely that any EU country would encourage companies to use software that gives the US a backdoor!
Perhaps if a world-wide agreement was reached, in which each country required a backdoor, then it may be pallatable to other Governments, but i doubt you could gather that many short-sighted politicians in one place!
Even so, it would just mean the same old thing, Law abiding citizens and companies are less secure while criminals are untouched..
Very sad.
Wow! Quote:
"Intel processors and the Intel Pentium 4 processor compatible 845 chipset infringe VIA's patents,"
Does anyone have any further information? Is this just another case of some company with a lot of very *broad* patents trying to milk them?!
I guess good for them using such (suspect) tactics to combat equally suspect tactics, you can certainly call them bold!
heh, sorry had to say it..
I cant think of anything more simple and beatiful than a nice x86 asm program...
I had the same problems, (i have since thrown my MX300 card) thats what happens when company go bust! Aureal died, and so it seemed did all traces of their drivers / support. As you would expect, unless of course the company is bought out. Unfortunatly to make it that much worse Aureal went under just before they finnished their Win2k drivers properly, as i understand at least, In particular the SMP friendly drivers.
Reason its a bad example is that the only real support left is Linux support, because that was never done by Aureal (as i understand) so it wasnt affected...
I agree completely about the motherboard being so important. It is far more important than CPU, now I use two main PC's and tend to upgrard each of them every 3-6 months, (yes i work with a retailer and get *good* prices).
:)
But the real question here nobody seems to have picked up on, when it comes to price of top end CPU's you are really talking Pentium4 / Athlon, and quite frankly when an Athlon 1.4Ghz costs only AU$50 or so more than a PentiumIII 933Mhz, AND is about A THIRD of the price of a P4 1.7, why would anyone in their right mind spend their *own* money on the latter???
AMD have it made, they have the (arguably) fastest chip out there, and its priced near the middle of the market, so why *wouldnt* you want the best if its only costing you such a small amount more??
RAM now is also cheap as chips, for the price of my motherboard i put 768MB ram in my latest desktop!!!!
I dont know maybe just here in Australia since all we get now of Bab5 is re-runs on cable (i think season 3 or 4?), but i would disagree with most of your points right off!
:(
:) The worst thing i found was that feature movie (cant remember the name), damn i hate storys which go like this:
:(
:) Thats one appealing factor of ST for me at least. But i guess we are all very different..
Firstly whenever I look at the show and just think, fuck my GeForce3 even kills that. The special effects just look so simple! I dont know if ive seen much of season 5 or anything, but it all just looks like some PC game!
There is no realism to it all, except I will say the alien costumes / etc, they are pretty good, very close to the ST:VOY/DS9 quality.. (That is my benchmark here btw)
But the main gripe i have with it, is the story! 90% of the time i watch it i get that feeling, "ahh fuck no dont be this lame, come on i want to be entertained!"
* Good human suggests exploring relations with X race.
* Military agree's that the big race X with an apparently huge military etc should be investigated.
* Send big war ship and find MOST arrogant war loving murdering captain to command this peacefull mission.
* Act supprised when you start intergalactic war.
*Shudder* that movie about the history of the war with Minbari (sp?) made me sick! And unfortunatly far too many episodes give me the same feeling.
One thing with your realism comment, i kind of like the idea that one day we as a race will be able to resolve a lot of our problems, ie, poverty, stupidity, etc.
So is Windows, and i think that was his point!
I really cant beleive some of the comments that a mod'ed up, but feh, this is slashdot..
I'll only comment on your Ozone comment, dont want to get redundant.
Maybe the reason you dont hear about the Ozone is because you live in America / etc. Unfortunatly us lucky fools living here in Australi (/ NZ) have to deal with the effects every day, in summer, you cant be more than 15-20 minutes in the sun without getting BADLY burnt.
If you want facts, look up the statistics on the rate of skin cancer in Australia, and you will see its the highest in the world.
Oh if only it were that simple..
:(
Last year when i travelled over europe it was great to be out in the sun all day long, no sun-block lotion, no problems..
Here at home in Sydney Australia, 20 minutes in the sun unprotected leaves you in BURNING PAIN.
I have a sneaky suspicion thats caused by that gaping big hold just beneith us!
Thats such a good quote, its a pitty tho, while we kill ourselves we kill everyone else, FIRST.
Feel sorry for those Africans, who now only have to put up with famine, disease, war. Soon thanks to our friend the greenhouse effect, they will all get so much worse.
[ugly sarcasm]
Oh but thats fine, it wont effect us for at least another xxx years after *they* die...
[/sarcasm]
You say the 1 1/2 degree change over the last one hundred years is consitent, maybe but is the predicted 4 - 5 degree change over the next one hundred years consistent?!
:(
Unfortunatly one of the biggest problems with "Global warming" is people in countries like America and Australia (where i am) see the warnings, of mass floodings, rising temps, etc, and thing, "so what, its not going to effect *me*!"
The same revolutions have happened over and over again, and each time have been met with the same resistance! Ages back, many these artists probably scoffed at the CAMERA, and how "That's not ART!", and then again with Film, and again and again with every new medium.
Thats all this digital medium is, a NEW one. It will take time, but as history has shown that it will happen.
On a good note for here in Australia actually, the newly appointed head of the NSW Art board (or something like that, cant remember, but was on TV a short while ago), is not the usual appointment, ie he's not "an artist" with years of art background, he's background is actually more IT based! [Insert uproar from art community here] And he has stated on many occasions, his belief in Digital artwork as a new revolution of sorts.
Everyone seems to be bashing the 2gig's thing, if you have seen many M$ apps/os's installing lately they will all say 'requires xMB free to install', but most of that is just for the install. MS seems to love their temp files and such, but with the exception of 'restore files' (to uninstall) Im sure the final size USED (not size required to install) will be at or below the 1 gig mark!
:(
Oh and when talking about stability, I dont thing enough was said at all in the review to draw any conclusions either way, but considering what this whole thing is, ie Windows2000 with new UI + tweaks, you should be able to easily imagine how stable the thing should be (based on Windows2000). With the exception of the apps of course, personally I never found MediaPlayer to run stable since version 6.4!
I think its easy to see where these requirements come from for both XP and OSX, its a matter of support. If you have ever tried helping someone over the phone who knows next to nothing about pc's install Windows2000 on a computer with *just* under the bare minumum requirements you may understand.
Personally after three years of supporting hundreds of different corporate and home users with every type of pc (windows) problem, i now truly believe there should be one type of computer for 'users' and only one. "No im sorry 64meg ram was two years ago, i just bought 256meg for $150, why cant you?", you want to run new software, well thats what you need then..
No okay, more seriously new software needs new hardware, its as simple as that, if you want to connect your digital camera / scaner / (win-)dsl modem, then you need some more memory, if you dont need those things, then why dont you stick with win98, or even better NT.
After reading though some of the firestorm of comments on trektoday's discussion board, it sounds like this new prequel series will be set before the creation of StarFleet, the details are obviously vague, but set in the 22nd century, 'historically' it could be before or sometime close too the formation of StarFleet and the United Federation of Planets.
The whole thing sounds great too me, *if* it happens, would be bridging that gap that has always been there between the 'current day' (paranoid, etc) human society and the 'future' startrek UFP..
With the TMP scene, i saw this link http://www.geocities.com/st_ent/ which is apparently one of the pictures shown in that scene of TMP.
I would agree largely with the previous posters comments from my experience, but when you talk Enterprise sizes 100000 users (or even 2000+!) I'd tend to agree with you.
I server a large number of small to medium networks (1000 users), all running NT for server, and the one's I set up *mostly* run fine. I admit some of the heavier loaded ones have been know to develop problems (and need a reboot), BUT I'll say the biggest cause I have found is in the setup! I see this especially in the smaller clients, they hire some "expert" to set it all up, then after a few months of weekly reboots they give them the flick and find someone else!
Unfortunatly for me due to that factor, the majority of my clients I didnt setup! The number of idiots who think Backoffice server means, yeah we can have *everything* on one server, no probs, or since the setup is easy "how could *we* cause the problems?", its scary. But ignorance always is..
But I dont want to defend M$ one bit, the number of god-damn-annoying stupid problems that DO come up with so much of their software is why I hate them. But on the other hand, I'm paid well and my job's easy. Leaving me time to 'toy' with my internal network, toys, etc. (slashdot, openbsd, beos, etc etc etc)
Yes, I think this worked out brilliantly for Sun, first they introduced Java years ago with all the hype, etc, M$ 'incorporated' it into their plans, the language took off, now that its a 'standard' (of sorts) M$ can't use it.
Sun has succeded in stopping the "Embrace and Extend" policy of M$, good for them! And us!
I would agree completely, one thing I think is very true is that English and American Humour are worlds apart, and I think my Australian humour is more on the side of English.. So I can understand Katz' view on the movie.
I personnally found it great, but not as good as Lock Stock, and not really in the same class even as Trainspotting. But still an enjoyable flic.
My only critisism is that it is too similar to Lock Stock, the plot, the cast and the scenes. You could almost cut and paste between the two! Needless to say that isnt a good thing.
.My 2c
That's really supprising to hear that in America the analogue network is still quite common, over the past 10 years here in Australia the fed govt has sponsored the transition from analogue to digital, finnishing this year when the last remaining parts of the analogue net was completly replaced by a CDMA net..
:(
I remember my first mobile in '93 i was told by the sales man "Don't get analoge! you'll regret it in a few years!!" Well i listened, but since then i have had no less than 3 contracts! (many more actual phones!)
Network coverage was always the issuse here too, now CDMA covers all that GSM doesnt which is like 99% to 98% coverage respectivly (of the population).
Anyway too keep this ontopic, here in Australia the plans are allways the best to go with, i assume you have Vodafone there, from my experience here in Australia and in the UK, vodaphone is best for price / QUALITY!! Unfortunatly i was stupid and with my latest plan picked Optus (Cable & Wireless) for the very cheap calls, but it drops out at least 1 in 3 calls, whereas my old vodaphone rarely did. I also had to get a One2One prepaid when i was in London last, (Global roaming in Europe from Aus is not reasonable!) I believe one2one is a Cable&Wireless subsidery again, but that too droped out as much as my Optus does!
Ive heard Analogue here in Aus was just as bad, constant drop outs, etc. So I would ask more importantly than plan price / etc, is cost / network quality! Whats the point of a phone if you miss ever second word and lose connection constantly!
BTW, Avoid pre-paid like the plague, they are more expensive, and are 'low-priority' on the network, ie you get even WORSE quality!
-Randon.
Read again people!
http://innominate.org/%7Etgr/slides/performance
They did use linux 2.4.0-test1-acxx as it says; "very fresh kernel due to the big problems in the vm [blah blah] in the late 2.3.xx kernels, also linux 2.2 was tested
May sound a little strange, but you got me thinking, if you are to implement a type of GUI in a 3d "world" as such, ie rooms and signs on the walls, you would still need an interface to the computer which allows you to intuitively access that interface.
:) But its all fine and dandy to have a 3d world as your interface, aka VRML etc, but when you sit in front of your computer you still have to use your mouse and keyboard to access that world!
Sorry I think i'm almost loosing myself there..
Hey it looks easy but when you compare games controls ie, Quake / Doom / Unreal / whatever you will see everyone has their own customised controls. Some use the mouse to move, some to look, some not at all!
The worst is when you try to use someone else's controls, you find yourself lost!
That's not intuitive.
Slightly off topic but hey:
During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ballpoint pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules.
After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about $1 million U.S. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on Earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil.
Who ever said Americans do it best? [grin]