>The idea that government should not support any particular company (ie stand back and let free competition occur) is a peculiarly American idea.
Is not.
>Much of the world doesn't think very highly of American politics; from their perspective, we get all bent out of shape over things that are common practice elsewhere (Presidential affairs, predatory business practices).
Ok, but its not true for ALL other countries. Yes, most of the world thinks that presidental affairs is a more a matter between the president and his wife (lying about is under oath is worse though), but if you suggest that only Americans get upset over corruption or predatory business practices, think again. In Sweden, Mona Salin, the woman who was supposed to become the new head of the Social Democracy party and therefore probably the next prime minister, was ripped apart by media after using an official credit card to buy private stuff (I think it was diapers and socks or something banal like that) for around $20, even though she had later paid back the money! She resigned from her post and disappeared from politics. (Though she was forgiven after a while and is back now.)
But yes, I have gotten the impression that in southern Europe (France and Italy especially), voters seem to accept corruption quite a lot. This is what has made Scandinavians very sceptic about joining the EU. However, things are moving in the right direction. Remember Edith Cresson (sp?), she was thrown out together with the rest of the European parliament. But maybe I'm prejudiced as well when accusing southern Europe.;-)
Look what I found on the net. Take a look at this. The lower the number, the more corruption in the country. Guess which country doesn't even make it into the top ten?:-)
Cheers, Lars
http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/democ/papers/wayne.htm ***************** Table 1. 1996 Transparency International Corruption Index By Country
Country Corruption Ranking New Zealand (NZL) 9.43 Denmark (DNK) 9.33 Sweden (SWE) 9.08 Finland (FIN) 9.05 Canada (CAN) 8.96 Norway (NOR) 8.87 Singapore (SGP) 8.80 Switzerland (CHE) 8.76 Netherlands (NLD) 8.71 Australia (AUS) 8.60 Ireland (IRL) 8.45 United Kingdom (GBR) 8.44 Germany (DEU) 8.27 Israel (ISR) 7.71 United States (USA) 7.66 Austria (AUT) 7.59 Japan (JPN) 7.05 Hong Kong (HKS) 7.01 France (FRA) 6.96 Belgium (BEL) 6.84 Chile (CHL) 6.80 Portugal (PRT) 6.53 South Africa (ZAF) 5.68 Poland (POL) 5.57 Czech Republic (CZE) 5.37 Malaysia (MYS) 5.32 South Korea (ROK) 5.02 Greece (GRC) 5.01 Taiwan (TAI) 4.98 Jordan (JOR) 4.89 Hungary (HUN) 4.86 Spain (ESP) 4.31 Turkey (TUR) 3.54 Italy (ITA) 3.42 Argentina (ARG) 3.41 Bolivia (BOL) 3.40 Thailand (THA) 3.33 Mexico (MEX) 3.30 Ecuador (ECU) 3.19 Brazil (BRA) 2.96 Egypt (EGY) 2.84 Colombia (COL) 2.73 Uganda (UGA) 2.71 Philippines (PHL) 2.69 Indonesia (IDN) 2.65 India (IND) 2.63 Russia (RUS) 2.58 Venezuela (VEN) 2.50 Cameroon (CMR) 2.46 China (CHN) 2.43 Bangladesh (BGD) 2.29 Kenya (KEN) 2.21 Pakistan (PAK) 1.00 Nigeria (NGA).69
Kaffe means "coffee" in Swedish, but I presume both words are homonyms of the word that came from the culture that originally invented coffee (that's a mouthful). The Swedish word just happen to be spelled the same way as the original.
But which country invented coffee, and what language does the word come from? It should be in the FAQ methinks.
>China isn't going to become a superpower like the US anytime soon.
They COULD be, but I doubt it too - though for different reasons. The chinese leaders are walking a tightrope right now. So far they have managed to introduce limited market economy without much personal freedom, but unrest is growing in the country. China is a mindboggingly huge country that is the oldest still living civilization, consisting of hundreds of different peoples and languages. If a civil war breaks out, it would be a tradegy on a scale not seen before. Imagine Bosnia with 1.2 billion citizens.
>Why? Because the supress freedom of press and speech there, which is not going to help people become more educated.
Well, America has freedom of press, but it doesn't seem to do a lot of good for YOUR education.;-) I mean, I bet 95% of Americans could tell you who Jerry Springer is, but according to a study "one in five could not name a single country in Europe, while one in four could not locate the Pacific Ocean on a map. Nearly half of those tested could not find New York State, and fourteen percent of them could not even correctly identify the United States on a blank map of the world's nations."
>It'll take a long time to revamp it, and the only way they can get better stuff is to steal it from us
That is where you are wrong. The west is currently ahead in the technological race, but the Chinese are smart and dismissing them like that would be a mistake.
>Russia? First, how are they going to pull their country out of economic ruin? Second, the only reason anyone cares about Russia is that they usd to be a superpower and still have lots of nukes. They are really just a junky broke country with corrupt and stupid leaders.
Russia is in deep shit for sure, but don't you understand that an unstable country is MORE DANGEROUS than a functioning one. Nukes have gone missing for crying out loud. Who has them now? Suicidal Hizbolla guerillas who want to give the US a little present? The Russian Mafia wanting to blackmail a nation? If you knew a little bit about history, you would know that it was the economic ruin after WWI and German resentment over their defeat that made it possible for Hitler to rise to power. And he actually managed to rebuild the country in a few years. As you said, they have lots of nukes. Would you want Zhirinovski in control of them?
>Retaliates for what? All the aid we've sent them?
Well, I doubt YOU sent any aid. It's funny, poorer nations that need every penny they have to build their econmy have it in their hearts to spend 1-2% of their GDP on aid to the poor. How much does the rich US spend? 0.0001? Or look at the sitiation in Kosovo. Now that the fun and exitement of dropping bombs on civilians is over, the US goes home and declares that it is the job of Europe to take care of 100 000 refugees, both Kosovars and Serbs, and rebuild a country that has been bombed back to the 19th Century.
Personally, I would like to nuke the US for what you have done to the environment, but that is another matter...:-)
>Any military attack from Russia would mean no more Russia.
...and if they used nukes, no more US, no more Europe, and nuclear winter. Wohoo.
>"The American society is arrogant, poorly-educated, knows very litle about history, is very easly influenced, manipulated and brainwashed." And this is different from the people in other countries how?
It is a matter of degree, and the stupidity and ignorance is spreading, but your country defenitely leads the pack. This is a quote from a forum on Salon Magazine that I think sums it up pretty good.
Cheers, /Lars
****************** P Glass 11:03pm Jun 9, 1999 PDT (# 98 of 106) WHERE IS THE PRESS?.....(It's been 'developed') Sounds about right, catb. But I'm getting dizzy. The media pack simply is getting dumber and less and less informative every month. In no other country has this occurred. And they all have payrolls to meet and `need audience. But somehow they manage to attract viewers and listeners and readers by the good, not poor quality of their product.
Andrew walsh 06:29am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 99 of 106) Last time I visited Niagara Falls I watched CBC at night. I was pretty amazed at the quality of the programming. Maybe it was just a good night for CBC, but I wished I lived closer to the border. More and more the US strikes me as a strangely zombified country. Lots of money, lots of irrational anger and paranoia, lots of religious cults, but it's missing something that I can't put my finger on - something akin to emotionally cool, satisfied-with-life, integrated-with-society mental health. Ken Starr, singing hymns at night as he soaks in the dirty details of Clinton's sex life, seems the perfect embodyment of this psychic illness. But no one dares to say the emperor has no clothes.
P Glass 08:38am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 101 of 106) WHERE IS THE PRESS?.....(It's been 'developed') Andrew- re CBC... I remember with nostalgia the time in the early eighties when NPR routinely carried CBC news productions daily as part of All Things Considered and the AM news.The ONLY unbaised, investigative journalism on the ground in Nicaraugua, for example. Canadian correspondents entered villages immediately following the massacre of citizens carrying a tape recorder. One I particularly remember was inside a village house where inhabitants had been caught and slaughtered while in the midst of preparing a meal. The correspondent was almost whispering into the mike as he went from room to room describing the fresh bloody scene..... CBC was removed from NPR after a couple years...I wrote and telephoned protest. I think it was too sophisticated for NPR to tolerate. Their correspondents in Cuba and Central America were not helping NPR in its struggle to keep Congressional funds..
> I read somewhere that american companies are _way_ out ahead in dealing with the millenium bug, followed by the UK & Germany, then rest of Europe, then Japan.
I believe Scandinavia and the Benelux region is in fact ahead of Germany when it comes to dealing with the Y2k problem, on par with the USA and the UK.
When it comes to IT usage, Sweden and Finland is in fact #1 and #2 in the world when you count per capita. In Sweden over 50% of the population used the Internet last month. Mobile telephone usage is WAY ahead. There is in fact a lot of interesting research done in northern Europe when it comes to wireless communication, for instance Bluetooth, and other high-tech areas. But American media is a bit bad on reporting on non-american news....
>Congress is "concerned about the privacy rights of American citizens[...]"
I see this attitude in all American articles about Eschelon. Why is it that most Americans (at least those in power) see it as OK to trample the privacy rights of people from other nations? Right to privacy is a human right, no matter what nation you belong to. Eschelon is used to spy on private citizens of other countries, even those countries in Europe that are considered allies. If it has been used (as some reports suggest) for industrial spionage, that is also an outrage. The rest of the world tries to get their economies going and increase their standard of living - just to have their best ideas stolen by bigger American companies who can then crush them on the market. So this is why American has forced Europe to ban strong encryption.
This is symptomatic of a bigger attitude problem. America treats their supposed allies like shit. The high tech bombers used in Yugoslavia take off in America, fly over the Atlantic, drop their bomb from a high altitude (no matter that the lack of precision causes loss of innocent civilian lives) and then fly back without landing. This is because America don't want to use air fields in Europe. They don't trust their military allies to see their shiny new toy!
Another example - USA bombs Yugoslavia back to medieval times. (Yes, its NATO - but NATO is essentially USA. NATO's power structure is deeply undemocratic, the other nations can never go against the wishes of the USA) This despite protests that the bombings do not in fact help the people of Kosovo, despite the protests that civilians both on the serbian side and the Kosovo side are being hurt and killed. Now that the American public has become bored with the war and American media has stopped reporting on it, Clinton declares that heroic America has done enough, now its time for those lazy European cowards to do their part - namely take care of over 100 000 refugees as winter approaches and pay for the rebuilding a country where infrastructure for BILLIONS of dollars have been destroyed. Its so cynical its beyond belief.
If you treat your friends like that, you can't expect them to remain friends forever.
When it comes to transmitters, there are some who are already ahead.
Sweden's Ericsson together with IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba have created an open standard technology for wireless communication called Bluetooth. The Bluetooth tranciever technology will be very cheap and low in power and is said to work even on planes. Bluetooth will have a range of up to 10 metres, 360-degree connectivity, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connections, a gross data rate of 1 mbps, supporting Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Data rates up to 721 kbps, and support of both voice and data channels for simultaneous operation. The best thing is that it uses the open band of radio frequency which is available all over the world!
You might not have heard much about yet in America since it seems futile to get American media (including Slashdot...*mumble mumble*) to report on it, but interest in the system is rocketing and it is very hot in Europe. Over 750 companies have joined the Special Interest Group so far. Already developed is a headset for your cell phone which lets you speak even if the phone is in your bag. (You will defenitely be taken for a loon when you go around on the streets talking to yourself with this one), a harddrive that automatically connect to thin clients anywhere(thereby working as PDAs) and many other things. Other early products is expected to be stereo speakers that you can place anywhere in the room (you still need a power cord of course), digital cameras from Casio, ID numbers to track stolen cars, cheap wireless LANs from 3Com, smart card readers, washing machines that call the repairman when broken, mobile phones that can double as remotes for your TV or to unlock your car, and other products. For computer users an early benefit is that we might finally get rid of the cable "spaghetti" behind the computer and the stereo. It is also said that the Calcaria Linux7K project (or Linux CL-PS7110) is interested in Bluetooth, something that makes Microsoft a bit worried since it seriously threatens Microsoft CE. The name Bluetooth comes from a Viking king who ruled Denmark and southern Sweden.
>Creative Labs, Diamond... one's head spins.. >Are they all the same?
No. They are not extremely different, but they have taken quite different directions. Some developers overclock the TNT chip to get the fastest card, others have advanced control panels.
Check out http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/tnt2buyers/def ault.asp http://www.sharkyextreme.com/ for the latest on the TNT2 cards.
>I don't have an AGP slot.. are there any PCI >Riva TNT cards?
The guy might be a good coder, but he comes off as being very immature. If he only had a problem with one person, why did he in the previous letter slam GNOME, Redhat, RHAD LABS, KDE while praising his own work to the heavens and boasting of his noble commitment to users?
Well, that's my view. I wont post on the subject again, no use fanning the flames.
IF PS2 is a hit, I think it will be the end of the traditional console, not the computer. However, Sony must overcome many problems before they will reach the goal their hype has set for them. There are three major reasons I doubt PS2 will be the PC killing console some people have dubbed it:
1) The techology. Read this from an article in Next Generation:
*********************************************** "Remember the Jaguar?" one developer opened our interview. "It could reportedly do a billion pixels. That was possible if there was no software and all processors were dedicated to pushing pixels. It's the same thing here."
Sony's Phil Harrison has stated that the Next Generation PlayStation has a fill rate of 2.6 Gigapixels. (That's 2.6 times the Jaguar, for those keeping track at home.)
Several other developers had the same doubts about the machine's spectacularly high polygon numbers. One PC and Console developer joked "It's the 3dfx rope-a-dope. They convince you that the only important benchmark in the universe is framerate. nVidia has better image quality? So what! It's all about the framerate. Sony knew they could destroy Sega on polygon count and Floating Point and that's what they did. Ease of development, quality of games...none of those things are here. It's all about the polygons."
However, some developers we spoke to simply don't believe Sony's polygon numbers. "They're there to make you report on them," one developer admonished. "They're 'best case' scenarios achieved by adding every processor's raw output capacity. They don't take into account bus speed, communication between processors, or any effects." *********************************************** http://www.next-generation.com/j smid/news/5998.html
Those who have seen the early demos have reported that it is indeed AWESOME (for instance the famous dancing couple demo, or the dinosaur), but remember that a demo is not a game, and does not show the finished product. The console is not here yet, and while it might easily beat several Xeons with Voodoo3/UltraTNT2 as some have reported, a lot can go wrong in development of this ultra new technology, and in the meantime a lot can happen in the computer world in a year.
2) How to make a profit. When the Playstation emulators came out, I read that even on the Playstation 1, Sony actually LOST money on every console sold. What they made money from was licencing the rights to make games to gaming companies. On Playstation 1 this worked wonderfully as we have seen - the console gave people wonderful prestanda/price which meant they sold LOTS. The big market made gaming companies willing to pay the licencing fees. But look at PS2. The system will be MUCH more expensive. Sony first claimed $300 or below price, but who thinks this is possible? $500 dollars is a lot....$800? Hardcore Playstation fans will no doubt buy it anyway, but will parents buy it as a Christmas gift for their kids? (Playstation 1 sales soared around Christmas) Lots of developers were also attracted to Playstation 1 because of ease of development. No worry about different hardware configurations, different OS versions and so on. But what of the Playstation 2? Read what Squaresoft has to say in the same article as above....
************************************************ * The most important issue in development, however, is who will be able to develop for the machine. No developer we asked could think of a team in the United States with the expertise to develop for the Next Generation PlayStation's high end abilities.
The demo shown in Japan revealed an ability to create curved surfaces and pre-rendered quality gameplay graphics. Whether anyone currently geared toward developing with polygonal systems will be able to turn around a game using that kind of technology is highly questionable -- particularly with the quick development cycle Sony's 2000 release will require.
No one has commented on this question, whether a world used to developing for PlayStation can take advantage of a wholly new architecture with advanced 3D functions, more publicly than Tomoyuki Takechi, president of Square Co. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported yesterday that the Square chief believes, "No more than five software companies can develop games that take full advantage of the PlayStation 2's capabilities." (Though given that outlet's recent translation troubles, he may have in fact said no more than fifty.)
Takechi reportedly went on to say that the new technology will draw the lines between developers "who have computer graphics prowess and those who do not." ************************************************
FIVE?? And even if it was fifty, that is pretty god damn low! Are these companies alone expected to support Sony and their subventioned console? They will have to make a really big profit then to make ends meet. Also, fifty companies in the world. How many good and original games can they churn out per year? Look at how long it has taken Id to learn the new technology (curves and so on) and do Quake 3. And look at Squaresoft the flagship of Playstation, they seem to be only making compies of their old hits these days. (Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy 8. I have seen it all before.) As a gamer, I am sceptical. The added price and low number of developers can make the positive spiral of Playstation 1 turn negative. Few games and an expensive unit around release could make many gamers take a wait and see approach. And if profits doesn't come quickly gaming companies will start to pull out and develop for PC and Dreamcast instead. Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar anyone?
3) "It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's..a pretty hot computer!" Even if Sony manages to overcome the previous problems (and that is a big IF), what is it that they are creating? According to Verant, Sony is considering making Everquest one of the games available for the PS2 when it comes out. To play Everquest, you need: An Internet connection, a harddrive for the patches, a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor unless you want to view the gorgeous graphics on a cruddy TV screen, speakers for the monitor, an OPERATING SYSTEM to manage all these things. What is this if not a computer? Also, they have said they will have DVD, Firewire, USB, a built in camera and microphone. With internet connection you will want a browser. A mouse for the browser. An email program. A frigging ICQ client, maybe IRC! Are Sony going to develop all this hardware and software by themselves?? If all these promises are kept, how the HELL are they going to keep the price for the "console" below $1500?
Again, if they despite all odds manage to pull this through...more power to us! I presume this will mean that we will finally be free of the crud that has built up over the years around the x86 architechture. We will have computers that are many times more powerful than today. The only losers will be Intel. And hopefully Microsoft.:-)
There, I've spread enough FUD about poor Sony for one day.
As long as they allow godshatesfags.com they shouldn't get on any high horses... Besides, weren't there an article in Wired about this a way back? NSI refused names that were racist, but appearently the one above was ok.
LadyBird, please read my answer to your post in the "It IS America...and guns especially" thread above for a refutation of this "slippery slope" argument. ("If we ban guns we have to ban everything that could be dangerous").
Hehe...I'm Swedish, not German. Didn't you know the Swedish national uniform is nudity?;-)
> Yes, they shoot, but in all honesty, I'd rather > be shot at by a mad gunman than be greeted by a > bomb-laden car in front of say, Harods in > London. Or in a German bar!
Ok. I think I would choose the bomb actually. Bombs are of course a terrible weapon too, but as I said in my first post, no one in Denver was killed by the bombs (to the best of my knowledge...), they were all shot. One of the recent bombings (I think it was the one filled with nails. What monster could do something like that??) in England caused many deaths, but it seems that was a combination of many unfortunate circumstances, for instance appearently most people didn't belive the security guard who tried to warn people that there was a bomb ("Oh no, this isn't London, nothing like that could happen here"). A bomb is just a less effective killing device, it can fail in many ways. Unless the killer has decided to commit suicide, he has to place the bomb and then remove himself from the location. The bomb might be discovered, it might not go off, it might not do as much damage as the terrorist had hoped. It can only go off once (unless the bomber places several. But every bomb increases the chance of discovery!) unlike a gun where a psycho can kill again and again and again until he runs out of ammo.
> Why don't we get NATO to get rid of cars in > London, bars in Deutschland, anything the Irish > can get their hands on, and whatever else is > out there that people could get hurt on?
Uh, banning a location is a pretty silly example, but for your argument, say that we replace it with the common household chemicals that can be used to make bombs like the ones the boys in Denver had created. The reason we ban guns and not metal pipes and chemicals is because guns are made for one purpose only: to fire slugs at great velocity through living tissue, causing living beings to die. And they do a great job of it! A gun is such a quick and effective weapon. Guns kept in a car makes possible "road rage" killings where people with a short temper on a really bad day go on a rampage just because they were cut off on the road. A homemade bomb by comparison takes time, planning and knowledge to create. Lots of things can go wrong when making or using it. And that is a good thing.
>Re check your facts. The bombs caused more damage than the guns did.
I did. I couldn't find any exact information about how those victims who had been killed died, but when I looked through the list of those hospitalized. 11 were listed with "gunshot wounds", three were only listed as "wounded" and one girl was said to have "shrapnel injuries" AND "gunshot wounds".
So it seems you were wrong, stickler for details or not.
You know it. They are panicking like HELL now. They are damned if they wait, and damned if they release now. They will release it soon, meaning it will be bloated, full of bugs (even more than the previous ones) and most importantly they must slash whole technologies that aren't finished like Intellimirror. And that was the major reason of the update in the first place.
Well, if they had done multiuser correctly in the first place they wouldn't have this problem. But if you start growing your technology tree from a seed called Quick and Dirty OS, what can you expect.:-)
Windows Y2K will be the end of Microsoft's OS dominance, you can count on it. (Still, I don't want them to go completely bankrupt. Age of Empires 2 and that new optical USB mouse look sweet!)
>They made pipe bombs, and they had to make those by hand. That implies that they had enough rage to build the supposed 50 bombs.
Yes, but did you notice that NO ONE was killed by those bombs? Ban the guns and half the problem is solved. Now you only have to fix shallow materialistic American culture, its oppression of those different and its obscene acceptance of violence as a solution to problems. Good luck!
Of course I can't speak for the whole country, but where I went the situation was very different. I was bullied in school at first (I guess I was pretty odd when I was a kid), but the higher I got, the better the situation got. The first 6 years were pretty bad (7-12 years old), the following three was not good (13-15), but then I began highschool, and it was a WORLD of difference. I had become something of a geek who preferred to stay home with his computer when groving up, perhaps as a reaction against being bullied. But when "gymnasiet" (high school) began lots of people made an effort to make me feel at home in the class. There were maybe five guys who were really into sports, but they were really nice too. The concept of jocks doesn't really exist in Sweden. People don't take their "identities" as seriously it seems, they understand that they are more than the hobbies they do or the music they listen to. People don't split up into different cliques (sp?) as clearly. Consequently the whole class did things together and "punk boy" or had no problem talking to or partying with me, or the sporty guys, or the American exchange student. Of course, after a while you became better friends with some people who you spoke most too and the class organised in smaller friendship groups, but we still liked each other and did things together.
Most importantly I think is that there really was no popularity contest. There was clear division between "elite" and no "losers" as it seems to be in American schools. One girl was a European champion in, I think, Judo. There were a few articles about her in the local newspaper, but none of the same hero worship I see of a US football team and mostly she was treated the same as everone else. People who are successful here tend to play it down a bit and be a bit more humble. Those on the outside are usually helped. Of course, this is not always the case, there have been serious cases of bullying here too.
Good Katz gun control article on Wired
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Katz wrote an article on Wired a while ago before this incident which dealt with gun control. I am usually very careful about saying that things are "irrefutably true" (it is so embarressing if you are proven wrong and it comes back to haunt you) but in general the article sums up quite well my views on gun control.
"The media habits of these teenage suspects aren't yet clear. The common denominator linking them, to date, is quite clear: They can easily find guns. Why haven't journalists and politicians focused on this as the most pressing issue connecting these tragedies, a far more convincing common denominator than violence on TV?
We all know the answer. Because the gun lobby is too powerful, and because journalists can hide behind the comfortable ethos of objectivity, which makes avoiding the truth not only excusable but virtuous. All they have to do is make sure to quote everybody else's stalemating opinions.
When it comes to the sale and distribution of rapid-fire assault weapons, the gun lobby is our modern equivalent of Murder Inc., responsible for vast tragedy and suffering. That this is so obviously, irrefutably true, even when it comes to stopping the slaughter of helpless children, is a bloody indictment of both journalism and politics, two of our most cowardly and morally bankrupt contemporary public institutions."
An armed society is a SCARED society.
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>"An armed society is a polite society"
A society where everyone is armed is a SCARED society. Someone who is gagged can't be said to be polite, he is unable to speak! If everyone go around with guns you have a constant threat. Maybe someone would like to say something, but the threat of getting shot keeps her silent. That is not politeness, that is intimidation.
No, actually, guns are to blame.
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>'guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people'. Those who want to kill will always find away.
If someone has a knife, you might be able to outrun them, but you can't outrun a bullet. Sure, people might be able to build pipe bombs, but those are carefully planned killings. USA style gun ownership makes it possible impulsive killings, like people having a bad day blowing the head off someone who cuts them off on the road.
This is what Next Generation said about the specs:
********************************************** "Remember the Jaguar?" one developer opened our interview. "It could reportedly do a billion pixels. That was possible if there was no software and all processors were dedicated to pushing pixels. It's the same thing here."
Sony's Phil Harrison has stated that the Next Generation PlayStation has a fill rate of 2.6 Gigapixels. (That's 2.6 times the Jaguar, for those keeping track at home.)
Several other developers had the same doubts about the machine's spectacularly high polygon numbers. One PC and Console developer joked "It's the 3dfx rope-a-dope. They convince you that the only important benchmark in the universe is framerate. nVidia has better image quality? So what! It's all about the framerate. Sony knew they could destroy Sega on polygon count and Floating Point and that's what they did. Ease of development, quality of games...none of those things are here. It's all about the polygons."
However, some developers we spoke to simply don't believe Sony's polygon numbers. "They're there to make you report on them," one developer admonished. "They're 'best case' scenarios achieved by adding every processor's raw output capacity. They don't take into account bus speed, communication between processors, or any effects."
One developer we asked about the polygon count Sony is quoting, 66 million polygons transformed by the CPU and 75 million drawn by the graphics engine, took a much kinder view. "They're very high and best-case, but everyone's numbers at hardware announcements are high. The 20 million number is more realistic [Phil Harrison has said the machine's sustainable drawing figure is 20 million polygons per second with all effects], and that's an incredible number. I believe they can do that and I can't wait." *********************************************** http://www.next-generation.com/jsmid/news/5998.h tml
Some of my friends who are console freaks have said that this will kill the computer as an entertainment platform, and the easy to use console will replace it, but I have my doubts. The P2 looks sweet now, but look at all the things they will add to it. They have said that they are going to have Firewire, USB, and more. Sony's own Everquest is said to be one of the first games to be available when it is released. If they are going to play Everquest, they need a keyboard. A mouse (probably). A harddrive to save all the patches.:-) A modem or other internet connection. An OS to manage all this. What do we have? A computer, only it uses TV instead of a monitor (bleech). If this becomes a hit (and it looks like it), the technology will spread, and the power of the machine will be harnessed to do other things, either top down by Sony or bottom up by hackers. This would then become the new PC.
Question is, will we hate Sony as much as we hate Microsoft?:-)
I don't know about this claim, but Steve Jones has done a really *excellent* series called "In the Blood". It takes up racism, evolution, free will vs determinism and stuff like that. The trailer said "Knowing your destiny is the first step towards changing it." The series has been shown a couple of times on BBC World. I don't know if it is available in the US, but if you ever get the chance I recommend you see it.
Stephenson a quickie!! What the hell??
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Not only does he rock as a sci-fi writer, I thought the essay was the most balanced and informative piece I have read on Linux and computers in a long time. This gets hidden away as a quickie, while Katz and ESR gets hyped whenever they open their mouths?
Getting old episodes?
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· Score: 1
Ok, I live in Sweden, and this is what has happened: Sci-fi have stopped sending in Europe outside of the UK, so I can't tape the last episodes. There are some great ones available from Rhino Video, but lo and behold, they don't deliver outside of the US. I have ordered those few available froom the Sci-fi channel website, but I want MORE. Does anyone have a suggestion how I can get hold of old episodes? Some kind soul could consider copying a tape or two and send them to me? I would of course pay for the tapes.
>You say in your essay that freedom is for moral >man and people should be courageous to discover >new things. It is through Christianity that both >of these things reach their fullness.
Freedom through Christianity? You have an invisible god who gives you absolute moral rules. He is supposedly omnipotent. He controls everything. Any thought of independence is beaten down with the oldest and crudest method - the threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in hell". This is an important part of Christianity and the very opposite of freedom.
>The enlightenement came about because of >Christian thought, people in the middle ages >began to study the world because it is God's >creation and as such, is good.
Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle ages. What happened? Many works of the greek philosophers were destroyed as heretical. Science stagnated. The Church had monopoly on the truth and tolerated no independence. Medicine hardly advanced at all for almost one thousand years because of the ban on autopsies and the concept of the human body as something wicked and dirty which needed to be punished rather than helped!
The renaissance and the enlightenment started because some brave people dared to break away from the monolithic world view of the Catholic Church and search their own truth.
>So Christian thought began the process which >resulted in the enlightenment.
Faith means to believe something without evidence. This is the very opposite of rationality and enlightenment.
>The American revolution was moral people with >Christian principles taking a stand on right and >wrong, against tyranny.
Yes, the world is always black and white.
>The French revolution was anti-Christian and >used secular ideals, everyone who has taken a >European history class knows the result of that >revolution.
The revolution was anti-monarchy in case you didn't know. The monarchy with the help of the church had opressed the French people ruthlessly and eventually they revolted. The massacres that followed were of course terrible, but they were not caused by secular ideals. They were caused by resentment against tyranny.
Slashdot Mirror
And risk another trade war? Naw. Look at all the trouble that has been caused just by bananas and genetically modified food...
>The idea that government should not support any particular company (ie stand back and let free competition occur) is a peculiarly American idea.
;-)
:-)
m
.69
Is not.
>Much of the world doesn't think very highly of American politics; from their perspective, we get all bent out of shape over things that are common practice elsewhere (Presidential affairs, predatory business practices).
Ok, but its not true for ALL other countries. Yes, most of the world thinks that presidental affairs is a more a matter between the president and his wife (lying about is under oath is worse though), but if you suggest that only Americans get upset over corruption or predatory business practices, think again. In Sweden, Mona Salin, the woman who was supposed to become the new head of the Social Democracy party and therefore probably the next prime minister, was ripped apart by media after using an official credit card to buy private stuff (I think it was diapers and socks or something banal like that) for around $20, even though she had later paid back the money! She resigned from her post and disappeared from politics. (Though she was forgiven after a while and is back now.)
But yes, I have gotten the impression that in southern Europe (France and Italy especially), voters seem to accept corruption quite a lot. This is what has made Scandinavians very sceptic about joining the EU. However, things are moving in the right direction. Remember Edith Cresson (sp?), she was thrown out together with the rest of the European parliament.
But maybe I'm prejudiced as well when accusing southern Europe.
Look what I found on the net. Take a look at this. The lower the number, the more corruption in the country. Guess which country doesn't even make it into the top ten?
Cheers,
Lars
http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/democ/papers/wayne.ht
*****************
Table 1. 1996 Transparency International Corruption Index By Country
Country Corruption Ranking
New Zealand (NZL) 9.43
Denmark (DNK) 9.33
Sweden (SWE) 9.08
Finland (FIN) 9.05
Canada (CAN) 8.96
Norway (NOR) 8.87
Singapore (SGP) 8.80
Switzerland (CHE) 8.76
Netherlands (NLD) 8.71
Australia (AUS) 8.60
Ireland (IRL) 8.45
United Kingdom (GBR) 8.44
Germany (DEU) 8.27
Israel (ISR) 7.71
United States (USA) 7.66
Austria (AUT) 7.59
Japan (JPN) 7.05
Hong Kong (HKS) 7.01
France (FRA) 6.96
Belgium (BEL) 6.84
Chile (CHL) 6.80
Portugal (PRT) 6.53
South Africa (ZAF) 5.68
Poland (POL) 5.57
Czech Republic (CZE) 5.37
Malaysia (MYS) 5.32
South Korea (ROK) 5.02
Greece (GRC) 5.01
Taiwan (TAI) 4.98
Jordan (JOR) 4.89
Hungary (HUN) 4.86
Spain (ESP) 4.31
Turkey (TUR) 3.54
Italy (ITA) 3.42
Argentina (ARG) 3.41
Bolivia (BOL) 3.40
Thailand (THA) 3.33
Mexico (MEX) 3.30
Ecuador (ECU) 3.19
Brazil (BRA) 2.96
Egypt (EGY) 2.84
Colombia (COL) 2.73
Uganda (UGA) 2.71
Philippines (PHL) 2.69
Indonesia (IDN) 2.65
India (IND) 2.63
Russia (RUS) 2.58
Venezuela (VEN) 2.50
Cameroon (CMR) 2.46
China (CHN) 2.43
Bangladesh (BGD) 2.29
Kenya (KEN) 2.21
Pakistan (PAK) 1.00
Nigeria (NGA)
Kaffe means "coffee" in Swedish, but I presume both words are homonyms of the word that came from the culture that originally invented coffee (that's a mouthful). The Swedish word just happen to be spelled the same way as the original.
But which country invented coffee, and what language does the word come from? It should be in the FAQ methinks.
>China isn't going to become a superpower like the US anytime soon.
;-)
:-)
They COULD be, but I doubt it too - though for different reasons. The chinese leaders are walking a tightrope right now. So far they have managed to introduce limited market economy without much personal freedom, but unrest is growing in the country. China is a mindboggingly huge country that is the oldest still living civilization, consisting of hundreds of different peoples and languages. If a civil war breaks out, it would be a tradegy on a scale not seen before. Imagine Bosnia with 1.2 billion citizens.
>Why? Because the supress freedom of press and speech there, which is not going to help people become more educated.
Well, America has freedom of press, but it doesn't seem to do a lot of good for YOUR education.
I mean, I bet 95% of Americans could tell you who Jerry Springer is, but according to a study "one in five could not name a single country in Europe, while one in four could not locate the Pacific Ocean on a map. Nearly half of those tested could not find New York State, and fourteen percent of them could not even correctly identify the United States on a blank map of the world's nations."
>It'll take a long time to revamp it, and the only way they can get better stuff is to steal it from us
That is where you are wrong. The west is currently ahead in the technological race, but the Chinese are smart and dismissing them like that would be a mistake.
>Russia? First, how are they going to pull their country out of economic ruin? Second, the only reason anyone cares about Russia is that they usd to be a superpower and still have lots of nukes. They are really just a junky broke country with corrupt and stupid leaders.
Russia is in deep shit for sure, but don't you understand that an unstable country is MORE DANGEROUS than a functioning one. Nukes have gone missing for crying out loud. Who has them now? Suicidal Hizbolla guerillas who want to give the US a little present? The Russian Mafia wanting to blackmail a nation?
If you knew a little bit about history, you would know that it was the economic ruin after WWI and German resentment over their defeat that made it possible for Hitler to rise to power. And he actually managed to rebuild the country in a few years. As you said, they have lots of nukes. Would you want Zhirinovski in control of them?
>Retaliates for what? All the aid we've sent them?
Well, I doubt YOU sent any aid. It's funny, poorer nations that need every penny they have to build their econmy have it in their hearts to spend 1-2% of their GDP on aid to the poor. How much does the rich US spend? 0.0001? Or look at the sitiation in Kosovo. Now that the fun and exitement of dropping bombs on civilians is over, the US goes home and declares that it is the job of Europe to take care of 100 000 refugees, both Kosovars and Serbs, and rebuild a country that has been bombed back to the 19th Century.
Personally, I would like to nuke the US for what you have done to the environment, but that is another matter...
>Any military attack from Russia would mean no more Russia.
...and if they used nukes, no more US, no more Europe, and nuclear winter. Wohoo.
>"The American society is arrogant, poorly-educated, knows very litle about history, is very easly influenced, manipulated and brainwashed." And this is different from the people in other countries how?
It is a matter of degree, and the stupidity and ignorance is spreading, but your country defenitely leads the pack. This is a quote from a forum on Salon Magazine that I think sums it up pretty good.
Cheers,
/Lars
******************
P Glass 11:03pm Jun 9, 1999 PDT (# 98 of 106)
WHERE IS THE PRESS?.....(It's been 'developed')
Sounds about right, catb.
But I'm getting dizzy. The media pack simply is getting dumber and less and less informative every month.
In no other country has this occurred. And they all have payrolls to meet and `need audience. But somehow they manage to attract viewers and listeners and readers by the good, not poor quality of their product.
Andrew walsh 06:29am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 99 of 106)
Last time I visited Niagara Falls I watched CBC at night. I was pretty amazed at the quality of the programming. Maybe it was just a good night for CBC, but I wished I lived closer to the border. More and more the US strikes me as a strangely zombified country. Lots of money, lots of irrational anger and paranoia, lots of religious cults, but it's missing something that I can't put my finger on - something akin to emotionally cool, satisfied-with-life, integrated-with-society mental health. Ken Starr, singing hymns at night as he soaks in the dirty details of Clinton's sex life, seems the perfect embodyment of this psychic illness. But no one dares to say the emperor has no clothes.
P Glass 08:38am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 101 of 106)
WHERE IS THE PRESS?.....(It's been 'developed')
Andrew- re CBC...
I remember with nostalgia the time in the early eighties when NPR routinely carried CBC news productions daily as part of All Things Considered and the AM news.The ONLY unbaised, investigative journalism on the ground in Nicaraugua, for example.
Canadian correspondents entered villages immediately following the massacre of citizens carrying a tape recorder. One I particularly remember was inside a village house where inhabitants had been caught and slaughtered while in the midst of preparing a meal. The correspondent was almost whispering into the mike as he went from room to room describing the fresh bloody scene.....
CBC was removed from NPR after a couple years...I wrote and telephoned protest. I think it was too sophisticated for NPR to tolerate. Their correspondents in Cuba and Central America were not helping NPR in its struggle to keep Congressional funds..
> I read somewhere that american companies are _way_ out ahead in dealing with the millenium bug, followed by the UK & Germany, then rest of Europe, then Japan.
:-)
I believe Scandinavia and the Benelux region is in fact ahead of Germany when it comes to dealing with the Y2k problem, on par with the USA and the UK.
When it comes to IT usage, Sweden and Finland is in fact #1 and #2 in the world when you count per capita. In Sweden over 50% of the population used the Internet last month. Mobile telephone usage is WAY ahead. There is in fact a lot of interesting research done in northern Europe when it comes to wireless communication, for instance Bluetooth, and other high-tech areas. But American media is a bit bad on reporting on non-american news....
Do I have an inferiority complex? Hell yeah.
>Congress is "concerned about the privacy rights of American citizens[...]"
I see this attitude in all American articles about Eschelon. Why is it that most Americans (at least those in power) see it as OK to trample the privacy rights of people from other nations? Right to privacy is a human right, no matter what nation you belong to. Eschelon is used to spy on private citizens of other countries, even those countries in Europe that are considered allies. If it has been used (as some reports suggest) for industrial spionage, that is also an outrage. The rest of the world tries to get their economies going and increase their standard of living - just to have their best ideas stolen by bigger American companies who can then crush them on the market. So this is why American has forced Europe to ban strong encryption.
This is symptomatic of a bigger attitude problem. America treats their supposed allies like shit. The high tech bombers used in Yugoslavia take off in America, fly over the Atlantic, drop their bomb from a high altitude (no matter that the lack of precision causes loss of innocent civilian lives) and then fly back without landing. This is because America don't want to use air fields in Europe. They don't trust their military allies to see their shiny new toy!
Another example - USA bombs Yugoslavia back to medieval times. (Yes, its NATO - but NATO is essentially USA. NATO's power structure is deeply undemocratic, the other nations can never go against the wishes of the USA) This despite protests that the bombings do not in fact help the people of Kosovo, despite the protests that civilians both on the serbian side and the Kosovo side are being hurt and killed. Now that the American public has become bored with the war and American media has stopped reporting on it, Clinton declares that heroic America has done enough, now its time for those lazy European cowards to do their part - namely take care of over 100 000 refugees as winter approaches and pay for the rebuilding a country where infrastructure for BILLIONS of dollars have been destroyed. Its so cynical its beyond belief.
If you treat your friends like that, you can't expect them to remain friends forever.
When it comes to transmitters, there are some who are already ahead.
Sweden's Ericsson together with IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba have created an open standard technology for wireless communication called Bluetooth. The Bluetooth tranciever technology will be very cheap and low in power and is said to work even on planes. Bluetooth will have a range of up to 10 metres, 360-degree connectivity, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connections, a gross data rate of 1 mbps, supporting Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Data rates up to 721 kbps, and support of both voice and data channels for simultaneous operation. The best thing is that it uses the open band of radio frequency which is available all over the world!
You might not have heard much about yet in America since it seems futile to get American media (including Slashdot...*mumble mumble*) to report on it, but interest in the system is rocketing and it is very hot in Europe. Over 750 companies have joined the Special Interest Group so far.
Already developed is a headset for your cell phone which lets you speak even if the phone is in your bag. (You will defenitely be taken for a loon when you go around on the streets talking to yourself with this one), a harddrive that automatically connect to thin clients anywhere(thereby working as PDAs) and many other things. Other early products is expected to be stereo speakers that you can place anywhere in the room (you still need a power cord of course), digital cameras from Casio, ID numbers to track stolen cars, cheap wireless LANs from 3Com, smart card readers, washing machines that call the repairman when broken, mobile phones that can double as remotes for your TV or to unlock your car, and other products. For computer users an early benefit is that we might finally get rid of the cable "spaghetti" behind the computer and the stereo. It is also said that the Calcaria Linux7K project (or Linux CL-PS7110) is interested in Bluetooth, something that makes Microsoft a bit worried since it seriously threatens Microsoft CE. The name Bluetooth comes from a Viking king who ruled Denmark and southern Sweden.
Read more at The official Bluetooth homepage and the ZDnet UK Bluetooth Special Report.
>Creative Labs, Diamond... one's head spins..
f ault.asp
>Are they all the same?
No. They are not extremely different, but they have taken quite different directions. Some developers overclock the TNT chip to get the fastest card, others have advanced control panels.
Check out
http://www.firingsquad.com/guides/tnt2buyers/de
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/
for the latest on the TNT2 cards.
>I don't have an AGP slot.. are there any PCI
>Riva TNT cards?
Yes.
The guy might be a good coder, but he comes off as being very immature. If he only had a problem with one person, why did he in the previous letter slam GNOME, Redhat, RHAD LABS, KDE while praising his own work to the heavens and boasting of his noble commitment to users?
Well, that's my view. I wont post on the subject again, no use fanning the flames.
IF PS2 is a hit, I think it will be the end of the traditional console, not the computer. However, Sony must overcome many problems before they will reach the goal their hype has set for them. There are three major reasons I doubt PS2 will be the PC killing console some people have dubbed it:
* *
*
:-)
1) The techology. Read this from an article in Next Generation:
***********************************************
"Remember the Jaguar?" one developer opened our
interview. "It could reportedly do a billion
pixels. That was possible if there was no
software and all processors were dedicated to
pushing pixels. It's the same thing here."
Sony's Phil Harrison has stated that the Next
Generation PlayStation has a fill rate of 2.6
Gigapixels. (That's 2.6 times the Jaguar, for
those keeping track at home.)
Several other developers had the same doubts
about the machine's spectacularly high polygon
numbers. One PC and Console developer joked "It's
the 3dfx rope-a-dope. They convince you that the
only important benchmark in the universe is
framerate. nVidia has better image quality? So
what! It's all about the framerate. Sony knew
they could destroy Sega on polygon count and
Floating Point and that's what they did. Ease of
development, quality of games...none of those
things are here. It's all about the polygons."
However, some developers we spoke to simply don't
believe Sony's polygon numbers. "They're there to
make you report on them," one developer
admonished. "They're 'best case' scenarios
achieved by adding every processor's raw output
capacity. They don't take into account bus speed,
communication between processors, or any
effects."
***********************************************
http://www.next-generation.com/j smid/news/5998.html
Those who have seen the early demos have reported that it is indeed AWESOME (for instance the famous dancing couple demo, or the dinosaur), but remember that a demo is not a game, and does not show the finished product. The console is not here yet, and while it might easily beat several Xeons with Voodoo3/UltraTNT2 as some have reported, a lot can go wrong in development of this ultra new technology, and in the meantime a lot can happen in the computer world in a year.
2) How to make a profit. When the Playstation emulators came out, I read that even on the Playstation 1, Sony actually LOST money on every console sold. What they made money from was licencing the rights to make games to gaming companies. On Playstation 1 this worked wonderfully as we have seen - the console gave people wonderful prestanda/price which meant they sold LOTS. The big market made gaming companies willing to pay the licencing fees.
But look at PS2. The system will be MUCH more expensive. Sony first claimed $300 or below price, but who thinks this is possible? $500 dollars is a lot....$800? Hardcore Playstation fans will no doubt buy it anyway, but will parents buy it as a Christmas gift for their kids? (Playstation 1 sales soared around Christmas) Lots of developers were also attracted to Playstation 1 because of ease of development. No worry about different hardware configurations, different OS versions and so on. But what of the Playstation 2? Read what Squaresoft has to say in the same article as above....
***********************************************
The most important issue in development, however,
is who will be able to develop for the machine.
No developer we asked could think of a team in
the United States with the expertise to develop
for the Next Generation PlayStation's high end
abilities.
The demo shown in Japan revealed an ability to
create curved surfaces and pre-rendered quality
gameplay graphics. Whether anyone currently
geared toward developing with polygonal systems
will be able to turn around a game using that
kind of technology is highly questionable --
particularly with the quick development cycle
Sony's 2000 release will require.
No one has commented on this question, whether a
world used to developing for PlayStation can take
advantage of a wholly new architecture with
advanced 3D functions, more publicly than
Tomoyuki Takechi, president of Square Co. The
Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported yesterday that the
Square chief believes, "No more than five
software companies can develop games that take
full advantage of the PlayStation 2's
capabilities." (Though given that outlet's recent
translation troubles, he may have in fact said no
more than fifty.)
Takechi reportedly went on to say that the new
technology will draw the lines between
developers "who have computer graphics prowess
and those who do not."
***********************************************
FIVE?? And even if it was fifty, that is pretty god damn low! Are these companies alone expected to support Sony and their subventioned console? They will have to make a really big profit then to make ends meet. Also, fifty companies in the world. How many good and original games can they churn out per year? Look at how long it has taken Id to learn the new technology (curves and so on) and do Quake 3. And look at Squaresoft the flagship of Playstation, they seem to be only making compies of their old hits these days. (Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy 8. I have seen it all before.) As a gamer, I am sceptical. The added price and low number of developers can make the positive spiral of Playstation 1 turn negative. Few games and an expensive unit around release could make many gamers take a wait and see approach. And if profits doesn't come quickly gaming companies will start to pull out and develop for PC and Dreamcast instead. Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar anyone?
3) "It's a bird! It's a plane! No! It's..a pretty hot computer!"
Even if Sony manages to overcome the previous problems (and that is a big IF), what is it that they are creating? According to Verant, Sony is considering making Everquest one of the games available for the PS2 when it comes out. To play Everquest, you need: An Internet connection, a harddrive for the patches, a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor unless you want to view the gorgeous graphics on a cruddy TV screen, speakers for the monitor, an OPERATING SYSTEM to manage all these things. What is this if not a computer? Also, they have said they will have DVD, Firewire, USB, a built in camera and microphone. With internet connection you will want a browser. A mouse for the browser. An email program. A frigging ICQ client, maybe IRC! Are Sony going to develop all this hardware and software by themselves?? If all these promises are kept, how the HELL are they going to keep the price for the "console" below $1500?
Again, if they despite all odds manage to pull this through...more power to us! I presume this will mean that we will finally be free of the crud that has built up over the years around the x86 architechture. We will have computers that are many times more powerful than today. The only losers will be Intel. And hopefully Microsoft.
There, I've spread enough FUD about poor Sony for one day.
/Lars
As long as they allow godshatesfags.com they shouldn't get on any high horses...
Besides, weren't there an article in Wired about this a way back? NSI refused names that were racist, but appearently the one above was ok.
************************************************ ***
Hehe...I'm Swedish, not German. Didn't you know the Swedish national uniform is nudity?
> Yes, they shoot, but in all honesty, I'd rather
> be shot at by a mad gunman than be greeted by a
> bomb-laden car in front of say, Harods in
> London. Or in a German bar!
Ok. I think I would choose the bomb actually. Bombs are of course a terrible weapon too, but as I said in my first post, no one in Denver was killed by the bombs (to the best of my knowledge...), they were all shot. One of the recent bombings (I think it was the one filled with nails. What monster could do something like that??) in England caused many deaths, but it seems that was a combination of many unfortunate circumstances, for instance appearently most people didn't belive the security guard who tried to warn people that there was a bomb ("Oh no, this isn't London, nothing like that could happen here"). A bomb is just a less effective killing device, it can fail in many ways. Unless the killer has decided to commit suicide, he has to place the bomb and then remove himself from the location. The bomb might be discovered, it might not go off, it might not do as much damage as the terrorist had hoped. It can only go off once (unless the bomber places several. But every bomb increases the chance of discovery!) unlike a gun where a psycho can kill again and again and again until he runs out of ammo.
> Why don't we get NATO to get rid of cars in
> London, bars in Deutschland, anything the Irish
> can get their hands on, and whatever else is
> out there that people could get hurt on?
Uh, banning a location is a pretty silly example, but for your argument, say that we replace it with the common household chemicals that can be used to make bombs like the ones the boys in Denver had created. The reason we ban guns and not metal pipes and chemicals is because guns are made for one purpose only: to fire slugs at great velocity through living tissue, causing living beings to die. And they do a great job of it! A gun is such a quick and effective weapon. Guns kept in a car makes possible "road rage" killings where people with a short temper on a really bad day go on a rampage just because they were cut off on the road. A homemade bomb by comparison takes time, planning and knowledge to create. Lots of things can go wrong when making or using it. And that is a good thing.
************************************************ ***
I did. I couldn't find any exact information about how those victims who had been killed died, but when I looked through the list of those hospitalized. 11 were listed with "gunshot wounds", three were only listed as "wounded" and one girl was said to have "shrapnel injuries" AND "gunshot wounds".
So it seems you were wrong, stickler for details or not.
************************************************ ***
You know it. They are panicking like HELL now. They are damned if they wait, and damned if they release now. They will release it soon, meaning it will be bloated, full of bugs (even more than the previous ones) and most importantly they must slash whole technologies that aren't finished like Intellimirror. And that was the major reason of the update in the first place.
:-)
Well, if they had done multiuser correctly in the first place they wouldn't have this problem. But if you start growing your technology tree from a seed called Quick and Dirty OS, what can you expect.
Windows Y2K will be the end of Microsoft's OS dominance, you can count on it. (Still, I don't want them to go completely bankrupt. Age of Empires 2 and that new optical USB mouse look sweet!)
Yes, but did you notice that NO ONE was killed by those bombs? Ban the guns and half the problem is solved. Now you only have to fix shallow materialistic American culture, its oppression of those different and its obscene acceptance of violence as a solution to problems. Good luck!
************************************************ ***
Of course I can't speak for the whole country, but where I went the situation was very different. I was bullied in school at first (I guess I was pretty odd when I was a kid), but the higher I got, the better the situation got. The first 6 years were pretty bad (7-12 years old), the following three was not good (13-15), but then I began highschool, and it was a WORLD of difference. I had become something of a geek who preferred to stay home with his computer when groving up, perhaps as a reaction against being bullied. But when "gymnasiet" (high school) began lots of people made an effort to make me feel at home in the class. There were maybe five guys who were really into sports, but they were really nice too. The concept of jocks doesn't really exist in Sweden. People don't take their "identities" as seriously it seems, they understand that they are more than the hobbies they do or the music they listen to. People don't split up into different cliques (sp?) as clearly. Consequently the whole class did things together and "punk boy" or had no problem talking to or partying with me, or the sporty guys, or the American exchange student. Of course, after a while you became better friends with some people who you spoke most too and the class organised in smaller friendship groups, but we still liked each other and did things together.
Most importantly I think is that there really was no popularity contest. There was clear division between "elite" and no "losers" as it seems to be in American schools. One girl was a European champion in, I think, Judo. There were a few articles about her in the local newspaper, but none of the same hero worship I see of a US football team and mostly she was treated the same as everone else. People who are successful here tend to play it down a bit and be a bit more humble. Those on the outside are usually helped. Of course, this is not always the case, there have been serious cases of bullying here too.
Katz wrote an article on Wired a while ago before this incident which dealt with gun control. I am usually very careful about saying that things are "irrefutably true" (it is so embarressing if you are proven wrong and it comes back to haunt you) but in general the article sums up quite well my views on gun control.
1 2749.html
"The media habits of these teenage suspects aren't yet clear. The common denominator linking them, to date, is quite clear: They can easily find guns. Why haven't journalists and politicians focused on this as the most pressing issue connecting these tragedies, a far more convincing common denominator than violence on TV?
We all know the answer. Because the gun lobby is too powerful, and because journalists can hide behind the comfortable ethos of objectivity, which makes avoiding the truth not only excusable but virtuous. All they have to do is make sure to quote everybody else's stalemating opinions.
When it comes to the sale and distribution of rapid-fire assault weapons, the gun lobby is our modern equivalent of Murder Inc., responsible for vast tragedy and suffering. That this is so obviously, irrefutably true, even when it comes to stopping the slaughter of helpless children, is a bloody indictment of both journalism and politics, two of our most cowardly and morally bankrupt contemporary public institutions."
http://www.wired.com/news/news/wiredview/story/
Also read:
http://www.handguncontrol.org/
>"An armed society is a polite society"
A society where everyone is armed is a SCARED society. Someone who is gagged can't be said to be polite, he is unable to speak! If everyone go around with guns you have a constant threat. Maybe someone would like to say something, but the threat of getting shot keeps her silent. That is not politeness, that is intimidation.
>'guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people'. Those who want to kill will always find away.
If someone has a knife, you might be able to outrun them, but you can't outrun a bullet. Sure, people might be able to build pipe bombs, but those are carefully planned killings. USA style gun ownership makes it possible impulsive killings, like people having a bad day blowing the head off someone who cuts them off on the road.
This is what Next Generation said about the specs:
h tml
:-) A modem or other internet connection. An OS to manage all this. What do we have? A computer, only it uses TV instead of a monitor (bleech). If this becomes a hit (and it looks like it), the technology will spread, and the power of the machine will be harnessed to do other things, either top down by Sony or bottom up by hackers. This would then become the new PC.
:-)
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"Remember the Jaguar?" one developer opened our interview. "It could reportedly do a billion pixels. That was possible if there was no software and all processors were dedicated to pushing pixels. It's the same thing here."
Sony's Phil Harrison has stated that the Next Generation PlayStation has a fill rate of 2.6 Gigapixels. (That's 2.6 times the Jaguar, for those keeping track at home.)
Several other developers had the same doubts about the machine's spectacularly high polygon numbers. One PC and Console developer joked "It's the 3dfx rope-a-dope. They convince you that the only important benchmark in the universe is framerate. nVidia has better image quality? So what! It's all about the framerate. Sony knew they could destroy Sega on polygon count and Floating Point and that's what they did. Ease of development, quality of games...none of those things are here. It's all about the polygons."
However, some developers we spoke to simply don't believe Sony's polygon numbers. "They're there to make you report on them," one developer admonished. "They're 'best case' scenarios achieved by adding every processor's raw output capacity. They don't take into account bus speed, communication between processors, or any effects."
One developer we asked about the polygon count Sony is quoting, 66 million polygons transformed by the CPU and 75 million drawn by the graphics engine, took a much kinder view. "They're very high and best-case, but everyone's numbers at hardware announcements are high. The 20 million number is more realistic [Phil Harrison has said the machine's sustainable drawing figure is 20 million polygons per second with all effects], and that's an incredible number. I believe they can do that and I can't wait."
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http://www.next-generation.com/jsmid/news/5998.
Some of my friends who are console freaks have said that this will kill the computer as an entertainment platform, and the easy to use console will replace it, but I have my doubts. The P2 looks sweet now, but look at all the things they will add to it. They have said that they are going to have Firewire, USB, and more. Sony's own Everquest is said to be one of the first games to be available when it is released. If they are going to play Everquest, they need a keyboard. A mouse (probably). A harddrive to save all the patches.
Question is, will we hate Sony as much as we hate Microsoft?
I don't know about this claim, but Steve Jones has done a really *excellent* series called "In the Blood". It takes up racism, evolution, free will vs determinism and stuff like that. The trailer said "Knowing your destiny is the first step towards changing it." The series has been shown a couple of times on BBC World. I don't know if it is available in the US, but if you ever get the chance I recommend you see it.
Not only does he rock as a sci-fi writer, I thought the essay was the most balanced and informative piece I have read on Linux and computers in a long time. This gets hidden away as a quickie, while Katz and ESR gets hyped whenever they open their mouths?
Ok, I live in Sweden, and this is what has happened: Sci-fi have stopped sending in Europe outside of the UK, so I can't tape the last episodes. There are some great ones available from Rhino Video, but lo and behold, they don't deliver outside of the US. I have ordered those few available froom the Sci-fi channel website, but I want MORE. Does anyone have a suggestion how I can get hold of old episodes? Some kind soul could consider copying a tape or two and send them to me? I would of course pay for the tapes.
Mail me at: lars.westergren@home.se
>You say in your essay that freedom is for moral
>man and people should be courageous to discover
>new things. It is through Christianity that both
>of these things reach their fullness.
Freedom through Christianity? You have an invisible god who gives you absolute moral rules. He is supposedly omnipotent. He controls everything. Any thought of independence is beaten down with the oldest and crudest method - the threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in hell". This is an important part of Christianity and the very opposite of freedom.
>The enlightenement came about because of
>Christian thought, people in the middle ages
>began to study the world because it is God's
>creation and as such, is good.
Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle ages. What happened? Many works of the greek philosophers were destroyed as heretical. Science stagnated. The Church had monopoly on the truth and tolerated no independence. Medicine hardly advanced at all for almost one thousand years because of the ban on autopsies and the concept of the human body as something wicked and dirty which needed to be punished rather than helped!
The renaissance and the enlightenment started because some brave people dared to break away from the monolithic world view of the Catholic Church and search their own truth.
>So Christian thought began the process which
>resulted in the enlightenment.
Faith means to believe something without evidence. This is the very opposite of rationality and enlightenment.
>The American revolution was moral people with
>Christian principles taking a stand on right and
>wrong, against tyranny.
Yes, the world is always black and white.
>The French revolution was anti-Christian and
>used secular ideals, everyone who has taken a
>European history class knows the result of that
>revolution.
The revolution was anti-monarchy in case you didn't know. The monarchy with the help of the church had opressed the French people ruthlessly and eventually they revolted. The massacres that followed were of course terrible, but they were not caused by secular ideals. They were caused by resentment against tyranny.