Hey and windoze users are much better?!? I did phone tech support for Win and most of them wouldn't know a security hole from a hole in their heads. Some of the people I talked to were very bright, just not computer savvy. Others were complete morons who needed help - SERIOUS help (the kind that asks about the footpedal). Very rarely would I talk to someone who knew what they were doing and had overlooked something. Mac users are the same - some are extremely computer savvy (and probably grew up using macs) while others shouldn't be trusted with anything other than a mouse and photoshop. Then you have bastards like me who have a PC, Mac, and Linux machines happily coexisting because of their love/hate relationship with all OSes.
My grandma and her family make coffee like that. We usually joke about it having the consistency of tea (and bad tea at that). I bring my own beans and grinder (and own pot and press if it fits:)
I advise anyone visiting the US to avoid gas station coffee and most restaraunt coffee. Hit a good specialty shop (not all are good, from what I can tell above). I usually use the rule of thumb - most American beverages (aside from pop/soda/coke) are the cheapest, crappiest most disgusting things on the market, so avoid anything popular. Take our beer for instance. Ever had Americas most popular beer - Budweiser? YECH! How about the #1 coffee - Folgers (I think...). Double YECH! I still have yet to find a good tea that comes in a bag.
You know it's really bad when you go to some stadiums around the country and all they serve is 3.2 (% alcohol) Bud or Coors. Not only does it taste bad, you don't get enough alcohol in you to start rioting over the absolute horridness of beer (or the game/concert).
Sigh - I'm starting to stray offtopic to my other vice, beer.
btw, I've had some crappy European coffee too, so I guess you just need to know where to go. I did have some excellent Turkish coffee, until I choked on the grounds (hey, I didn't know!:P) The worst was some Belgian coffee (tasted like dirt), but I've also had some good coffees from there.
Hmm - I would have to say WOTC never will be the biggest game company in the world since they were swallowed up by Hasbro.
3rd Edition DnD - I disbelieve your illusion and cast magic missile at your head. Seriously, tho, some of the best role-playing I ever experienced was when I was a serious Rolemaster fan and had to be 'degraded' into playing D&D because nobody wanted to play anything else. I played a thief who, on a lark, spent all his options in ventriloquism and played a split personality with my shortsword. Oddly, everyone else in the game picked unusual skills and characters as well, which made for a very interesting party. Some of the other characters in the game included a half ogre who was so dumb he had to make rolls to see if he could remember if you were a friend or foe (among other things - often very funny), a dwarf who lived for battle and often needed to be talked out of charging into no-win situations (one which nearly got my character killed when our arguement got a little too heated and drew the attention of the enemy. It was a difficult arguement, too, because my sword was on his side...), a mage who specialized in cantrips and others I don't remember so well. I guess my point is anything can be role-played, so don't judge the people by the system.
Wow - rainbow-headed goths! I was really starting to get depressed about the state of the whole goth thing.
I rode in the Mystery Machine. About 12 years ago (really!). Maybe not the same one, tho.
Blondes in chainmail bikinis...yawn... what else is new? I worked Ren fest in a booth with two of 'em a few years back (1 who usually only wore chain mail... and not much at that!). The ones I remember from GenCon were much more modest. Then again, a lot could have changed in the 10 years since I went last:)
Star Wars RPG is back?!? That can only mean Space Opera and Spawn of Fashan can't be far behind! And even Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and 007! nah.
The problem isn't with mp3.com, it's with my.mp3.com my.mp3.com is a database containing 80,000 commercial CDs in mp3 format. The CDs themselves would be illegal to distribute except that they get the owner to insert their owned copy of the CD to prove ownership, then allow listening of the CD over the internet in the future. MP3's arguement is that this is fair use (you can make a backup of media you own), but the RIAA says it's piracy since you don't own the copy mp3 is piping to you.
I personally want to see the RIAA burn in hell, but hey - I'm a former musician who saw far too many people get screwed by the industry:)
all of these clones were essentially reverse engineered from the original, meaning only that the idea was used. If it's illegal to copy someone else's idea, then every PC not made by IBM is illegal and all manufacturers owe them billions in back royalties. How about automobile bodies - who owns the SUV style? The implications are frightening.
Even more to the point, Novell would have a monopoly on the networking business and Microsoft as an OS would never exist as DOS was essentially a clone of CP/M.
Geez - you must have a crappy viewer - load the JPG using your 128 bit MMX/SIMD/3DNow!/etc instructions (or your floating point unit by typecasting to a double float to blockload a bigger chunk of data - useful on machines such as Apple's G3) and optimize the JPG decoder to use the units (on G3, use float unit) as well. Since everything except MMX can do parallel operations, you can devote the integer unit(s) to decoding instructions (ie, use [nearly] exclusively for 32 bit memory addressing) and your other units to decoding the JPG and therefore you save your precious integer cycles.
If your pr0n - er, sexy pics - are taking up more than 4GB of memory (64GB on 36bit) THEN you have problems... but since most JPGs aren't this big (I believe I remember the upper limit being 4GB, actually), I think you're still safe
my point is (aside from being snotty;), 64 bit int units aren't gonna boost performance much, if at all, which is why most PCs are still 32 bit.
There's more to smalltalk being "dead" than that. Both C++ and Smalltalk are based off of Simula67, which isn't exactly the most popular language. C took off as a popular language because it was portable over different hardware. In the mainframe days this meant you didn't have to learn a new language with every new machine you went to, thus you could learn one programming language and work on many systems. Smalltalk was invented as an entirely new language with ideas taken from Simula67. C++ chose a different route, extending C with Simula67 ideas (classes, inheritance, etc). Since most programmers were familiar with C, picking up C++ was easy compared to completely learning a new language like Smalltalk, and thus C++ became the more popular of the two.
Smalltalk did have a chance, but Steve Jobs blew it. Had the Mac chosen to use Smalltalk rather than Pascal, the language would have had a much better chance to catch on. When windowing environments came to their own with the mac, programmers needed to learn a whole new set of APIs to be able to write programs in them. Everything defined as a pascal function could have just as easily been defined as a smalltalk object, and be easier to implement (imoho). Not to blow holes in your speed argument or anything, but if speed is everything and native assembly is faster than C, why don't we all still write in native assembly?
I wouldn't rip hardware agnostic design, either. Java wouldn't exist if it hadn't been portable (it was designed for embedded systems, after all) and C would have died as soon as the mainframe or minicomputer it was first designed for/on was gone.
Yours is just as ridiculous - if enough people start committing rapes and murders, society will collapse as well.
I don't really think you'll ever stop white collar crime since it is easy to do and difficult to police. Ever copy a program from work? It seems so easy and harmless, but the punishment is ridiculous if you get caught (I don't know what it is now but it used to be something like 1yr/$100000). The justice department wouldn't even allow a notebook computer to be brought into mitnick's cell -- he might write some world destroying virus (do these people know how to reformat?)! I really don't think our justice department knows how to punish computer criminals. What we need is independent, tech savvy people who are not related to a crime to determine an apt punishment.
On a sidenote (and slightly offtopic), rape once was punished by life imprisonment or death and murder by exile in many countries. Now drug offenders often spend more time in jail than rapists and sex offenders (in the US). I really think some priorities are out of wack - at least drug users get to choose to use (at least the first time). I bet most rape victims wish they had a choice. Also, the crimes are different. A rape victim often wants their assailant castrated. How often does a drug user want their dealer harmed? Usually only when they owe the user money. Anyhow, I really think the US needs to get specialists in each area to rewrite many laws without a religious or socialogical influence (ie, use varying religious and ideological people of different sexes rather than a group that's mostly christian white men). On this point, people who don't understand computers shouldn't be writing computer crime laws. Politicians and lawyers especially (CDA anyone?).
And to think, HAL was named because it was one letter off from IBM (H->I, A->B, L->M). I wonder if Microsoft used that same scheme to name NT (M->N, S->T). It's all starting to make more sense...
I couldn't see those marks, but I sure hope they're there - a mac user I know is Red-Green colorblind... Red-Amber-Red... must be some decorative pattern:)
The biggest thing I dislike about macs is the menubar is attached to the screen and not to the window. That originally was the result of a hack when Apple wanted to add multitasking to its single application at a time system (OS6 with multifinder) and doesn't give a proper window to menu relationship. I'm sure menus on windows will work when running an X Window, but wonder about native OSX Apps...
Hmm... strayed a bit from the original topic (I was responding to the Looks Good part)
you've got that half wrong - the guys will be chained to the back of a pickup somewhere in Southern Louisiana at a dilapidated house with lots of dogs by a guy with no teeth and a double barrel shotgun who spits while he says he's "lookin fer sum ack-shun."
Anyone else notice that they didn't include weapon of choice...
I had some other ideas... CD: Dare to Be Stupid - Weird Al (fits the situation) Movie: any Barney (to mess them up as parents) Board Game: Uncle Wiggly (we made it a drinking game, so can they... maybe we'll see some action on the cam, then) Video Game: Doom (what else, dammit!) Music Video Rock Me Amadaus - Falco (god they're gonna hate me after hearing that for the 90000th time) Books: The Velvet(ine?) Rabbit (kids book... about the right intellectual level) Snack Food: Cheezy Poofs (yum). Gadget: Missile Launcher (They'll probably use it to take out their kids and be caught in the backwash. See Barney.) Toy: Jarts. (Might prove fatal without proper medical attention. Then again, might seem overkill after Barney.)
Hasn't this one been going around about 5 years...
anyhow, I have a source in the North Pole that reports that Santa, his reindeer, and elves are all from Krypton and can fly faster than the speed of light and reverse time (as long as they charge up during the long summers on our yellow sun). You've probably seen Superman do this in one of his movies. Santa didn't get the X-Ray vision or superhuman strength or ability to fly when he came here, but he can suck in his gut and fit down narrow chimneys and has psychic perception to know when you've been bad or good, asleep or awake, which more than makes up for those powers. Santa also has the ability to clone himself and appear at multiple shopping malls at once. He is also immortal. You may or may not remember the evil Multiple Santa (who was thankfully defeated by the Tick) duplicated this power, but lacked the psychic powers.
I'd best not reveal any more, or Santa's Security (SS) troops will track me down and beat me again.
Re:How about improving the american money instead.
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IDs in Color Copies
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· Score: 1
Some of the improvements started years ago (before the new 100s and 20s). First there were color threads, then magnetic metal strips. Now the new bills.
Now interestingly, I had a roommate who was a former drug dealer and he would pull the magnetic strips out of 20 dollar bills because he believed that the government used them to identify people bringing large amounts of currency into and out of the country (and therefore likely to be associated with illegal activity). He believed the government could tell exactly how much you had on you - while I don't believe that, I can see how a lot of those strips could set off a metal detector...
As far as copying goes, I can't see how a watermark is going to stop someone from going into a Best Buy and paying for a printer and scanner with cash (no record of who you are that way). Even with the watermark, you'd have to find the scanner and printer first (meaning you know who did it anyway). The only use for watermarks would be for prosecution. Even then, if you're not caught red handed, you could just say you recently bought the printer used for cash...
I'd much rather have a DVD than a DIVX - at least I can create DVD-ROMs with a DVD writer. DIVX was a protected, proprietary technology owned almost entirely by Circuit City, sold only by Circuit City, sent all personal information back to an address in Florida where marketers could know every movie a person watched and all the while charged a 'per use' or 'per machine' fee. Think about it - most marketing people pay for information about what viewers are watching - DIVX was charging for it!
The DVD facists haven't changed their tune at all - they wanted a protected format to protect from exact duplicates of commercial movies, a huge problem in countries like Russia and China (I think something like 95% of all CDs and Video Cassettes sold in China in 1996 or 1997 were pirated, but I can't remember the source... 95% of all figures are lies anyway:) Figures are high for Russia, too).
The real problem is that their paranoid, protectist ways give bored crackers and professional thieves something to do - break the encryption. I see it a lot like the Apple II/PC/64/etc software protection in the 80s - they'll keep trying, declare something uncrackable, and 3 hours later someone will distribute the crack (as happened to Microsoft's "uncrackable" Flight Simulator - not only cracked in 3 hours, but distributed on pirate BBSes across the country within 12 hours of release). Eventually the software people (mostly) gave up because it was a losing battle - it cost more to create and implement the protection than what they recouped by having the protection.
Apple may not have to convince card manufacturers to write drivers... there are a couple of programmers porting the nVidia drivers from Linux to MacOS already (albeit not X yet). I'm sure the same port is possible to X, provided some programmer works on it and a graphics API such as OpenGL is available. I don't know if OpenGL or Mesa are available for X yet, tho.
Now if Apple wants SUPPORTED drivers, that might be an issue:)
No more power than current spec?!?
on
USB2 Specs Are In
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Not to add to speculation, but it could very well be... About 2 weeks ago, there was a newsburst on Apple Insider mentioning that Connectix corp, maker of VirtualPC emulation software, had a hardware emulation card in the works, capable of running a PC in emulation roughly 50MHz slower than the primary chip.
Now it doesn't take a genius to see that a) they may be using the transmeta chip (and it could well be limited by PCI bus speed) or b) they're developing a 'similar technology'
anyone else care to speculate?
Re:The man deserves more credit (and funding)
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Project Grizzly
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That's BS - nobody would have ever heard of him if he hadn't made the film, ergo no interviews, endorsment deals, action figures, etc. He will have action figures, right? (I want one)
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Hey and windoze users are much better?!? I did phone tech support for Win and most of them wouldn't know a security hole from a hole in their heads. Some of the people I talked to were very bright, just not computer savvy. Others were complete morons who needed help - SERIOUS help (the kind that asks about the footpedal). Very rarely would I talk to someone who knew what they were doing and had overlooked something. Mac users are the same - some are extremely computer savvy (and probably grew up using macs) while others shouldn't be trusted with anything other than a mouse and photoshop. Then you have bastards like me who have a PC, Mac, and Linux machines happily coexisting because of their love/hate relationship with all OSes.
Microsoft charged about $50 for Win98 betas. My cube neighbor PAID $50 for it too. Dumbshit.
I advise anyone visiting the US to avoid gas station coffee and most restaraunt coffee. Hit a good specialty shop (not all are good, from what I can tell above). I usually use the rule of thumb - most American beverages (aside from pop/soda/coke) are the cheapest, crappiest most disgusting things on the market, so avoid anything popular. Take our beer for instance. Ever had Americas most popular beer - Budweiser? YECH! How about the #1 coffee - Folgers (I think...). Double YECH! I still have yet to find a good tea that comes in a bag.
You know it's really bad when you go to some stadiums around the country and all they serve is 3.2 (% alcohol) Bud or Coors. Not only does it taste bad, you don't get enough alcohol in you to start rioting over the absolute horridness of beer (or the game/concert).
Sigh - I'm starting to stray offtopic to my other vice, beer.
btw, I've had some crappy European coffee too, so I guess you just need to know where to go. I did have some excellent Turkish coffee, until I choked on the grounds (hey, I didn't know! :P) The worst was some Belgian coffee (tasted like dirt), but I've also had some good coffees from there.
3rd Edition DnD - I disbelieve your illusion and cast magic missile at your head. Seriously, tho, some of the best role-playing I ever experienced was when I was a serious Rolemaster fan and had to be 'degraded' into playing D&D because nobody wanted to play anything else. I played a thief who, on a lark, spent all his options in ventriloquism and played a split personality with my shortsword. Oddly, everyone else in the game picked unusual skills and characters as well, which made for a very interesting party. Some of the other characters in the game included a half ogre who was so dumb he had to make rolls to see if he could remember if you were a friend or foe (among other things - often very funny), a dwarf who lived for battle and often needed to be talked out of charging into no-win situations (one which nearly got my character killed when our arguement got a little too heated and drew the attention of the enemy. It was a difficult arguement, too, because my sword was on his side...), a mage who specialized in cantrips and others I don't remember so well. I guess my point is anything can be role-played, so don't judge the people by the system.
Wow - rainbow-headed goths! I was really starting to get depressed about the state of the whole goth thing.
I rode in the Mystery Machine. About 12 years ago (really!). Maybe not the same one, tho.
Blondes in chainmail bikinis...yawn... what else is new? I worked Ren fest in a booth with two of 'em a few years back (1 who usually only wore chain mail... and not much at that!). The ones I remember from GenCon were much more modest. Then again, a lot could have changed in the 10 years since I went last :)
Star Wars RPG is back?!? That can only mean Space Opera and Spawn of Fashan can't be far behind! And even Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and 007! nah.
my.mp3.com is a database containing 80,000 commercial CDs in mp3 format. The CDs themselves would be illegal to distribute except that they get the owner to insert their owned copy of the CD to prove ownership, then allow listening of the CD over the internet in the future. MP3's arguement is that this is fair use (you can make a backup of media you own), but the RIAA says it's piracy since you don't own the copy mp3 is piping to you.
I personally want to see the RIAA burn in hell, but hey - I'm a former musician who saw far too many people get screwed by the industry :)
all of these clones were essentially reverse engineered from the original, meaning only that the idea was used. If it's illegal to copy someone else's idea, then every PC not made by IBM is illegal and all manufacturers owe them billions in back royalties. How about automobile bodies - who owns the SUV style? The implications are frightening.
Even more to the point, Novell would have a monopoly on the networking business and Microsoft as an OS would never exist as DOS was essentially a clone of CP/M.
If your pr0n - er, sexy pics - are taking up more than 4GB of memory (64GB on 36bit) THEN you have problems... but since most JPGs aren't this big (I believe I remember the upper limit being 4GB, actually), I think you're still safe
my point is (aside from being snotty ;), 64 bit int units aren't gonna boost performance much, if at all, which is why most PCs are still 32 bit.
Smalltalk did have a chance, but Steve Jobs blew it. Had the Mac chosen to use Smalltalk rather than Pascal, the language would have had a much better chance to catch on. When windowing environments came to their own with the mac, programmers needed to learn a whole new set of APIs to be able to write programs in them. Everything defined as a pascal function could have just as easily been defined as a smalltalk object, and be easier to implement (imoho). Not to blow holes in your speed argument or anything, but if speed is everything and native assembly is faster than C, why don't we all still write in native assembly?
I wouldn't rip hardware agnostic design, either. Java wouldn't exist if it hadn't been portable (it was designed for embedded systems, after all) and C would have died as soon as the mainframe or minicomputer it was first designed for/on was gone.
I don't really think you'll ever stop white collar crime since it is easy to do and difficult to police. Ever copy a program from work? It seems so easy and harmless, but the punishment is ridiculous if you get caught (I don't know what it is now but it used to be something like 1yr/$100000). The justice department wouldn't even allow a notebook computer to be brought into mitnick's cell -- he might write some world destroying virus (do these people know how to reformat?)! I really don't think our justice department knows how to punish computer criminals. What we need is independent, tech savvy people who are not related to a crime to determine an apt punishment.
On a sidenote (and slightly offtopic), rape once was punished by life imprisonment or death and murder by exile in many countries. Now drug offenders often spend more time in jail than rapists and sex offenders (in the US). I really think some priorities are out of wack - at least drug users get to choose to use (at least the first time). I bet most rape victims wish they had a choice. Also, the crimes are different. A rape victim often wants their assailant castrated. How often does a drug user want their dealer harmed? Usually only when they owe the user money. Anyhow, I really think the US needs to get specialists in each area to rewrite many laws without a religious or socialogical influence (ie, use varying religious and ideological people of different sexes rather than a group that's mostly christian white men). On this point, people who don't understand computers shouldn't be writing computer crime laws. Politicians and lawyers especially (CDA anyone?).
somehow this humors me :) The feed via Windows Media player is still open, if you have a PC handy. Windows Media player link
And to think, HAL was named because it was one letter off from IBM (H->I, A->B, L->M). I wonder if Microsoft used that same scheme to name NT (M->N, S->T). It's all starting to make more sense...
Red-Amber-Red... must be some decorative pattern
The biggest thing I dislike about macs is the menubar is attached to the screen and not to the window. That originally was the result of a hack when Apple wanted to add multitasking to its single application at a time system (OS6 with multifinder) and doesn't give a proper window to menu relationship. I'm sure menus on windows will work when running an X Window, but wonder about native OSX Apps...
Hmm... strayed a bit from the original topic (I was responding to the Looks Good part)
Anyone else notice that they didn't include weapon of choice...
I'd rather take the A-Bomb, than that fate!
I had some other ideas...
CD: Dare to Be Stupid - Weird Al (fits the situation)
Movie: any Barney (to mess them up as parents)
Board Game: Uncle Wiggly (we made it a drinking game, so can they... maybe we'll see some action on the cam, then)
Video Game: Doom (what else, dammit!)
Music Video Rock Me Amadaus - Falco (god they're gonna hate me after hearing that for the 90000th time) Books: The Velvet(ine?) Rabbit (kids book... about the right intellectual level)
Snack Food: Cheezy Poofs (yum).
Gadget: Missile Launcher (They'll probably use it to take out their kids and be caught in the backwash. See Barney.)
Toy: Jarts. (Might prove fatal without proper medical attention. Then again, might seem overkill after Barney.)
anyhow, I have a source in the North Pole that reports that Santa, his reindeer, and elves are all from Krypton and can fly faster than the speed of light and reverse time (as long as they charge up during the long summers on our yellow sun). You've probably seen Superman do this in one of his movies. Santa didn't get the X-Ray vision or superhuman strength or ability to fly when he came here, but he can suck in his gut and fit down narrow chimneys and has psychic perception to know when you've been bad or good, asleep or awake, which more than makes up for those powers. Santa also has the ability to clone himself and appear at multiple shopping malls at once. He is also immortal. You may or may not remember the evil Multiple Santa (who was thankfully defeated by the Tick) duplicated this power, but lacked the psychic powers.
I'd best not reveal any more, or Santa's Security (SS) troops will track me down and beat me again.
sorry - I couldn't resist :)
Now interestingly, I had a roommate who was a former drug dealer and he would pull the magnetic strips out of 20 dollar bills because he believed that the government used them to identify people bringing large amounts of currency into and out of the country (and therefore likely to be associated with illegal activity). He believed the government could tell exactly how much you had on you - while I don't believe that, I can see how a lot of those strips could set off a metal detector...
As far as copying goes, I can't see how a watermark is going to stop someone from going into a Best Buy and paying for a printer and scanner with cash (no record of who you are that way). Even with the watermark, you'd have to find the scanner and printer first (meaning you know who did it anyway). The only use for watermarks would be for prosecution. Even then, if you're not caught red handed, you could just say you recently bought the printer used for cash...
The DVD facists haven't changed their tune at all - they wanted a protected format to protect from exact duplicates of commercial movies, a huge problem in countries like Russia and China (I think something like 95% of all CDs and Video Cassettes sold in China in 1996 or 1997 were pirated, but I can't remember the source... 95% of all figures are lies anyway :) Figures are high for Russia, too).
The real problem is that their paranoid, protectist ways give bored crackers and professional thieves something to do - break the encryption. I see it a lot like the Apple II/PC/64/etc software protection in the 80s - they'll keep trying, declare something uncrackable, and 3 hours later someone will distribute the crack (as happened to Microsoft's "uncrackable" Flight Simulator - not only cracked in 3 hours, but distributed on pirate BBSes across the country within 12 hours of release). Eventually the software people (mostly) gave up because it was a losing battle - it cost more to create and implement the protection than what they recouped by having the protection.
Now if Apple wants SUPPORTED drivers, that might be an issue :)
USB2 will have no more power than USB1.1... note to self - buy additional power strip.
Now it doesn't take a genius to see that
a) they may be using the transmeta chip (and it could well be limited by PCI bus speed)
or
b) they're developing a 'similar technology'
anyone else care to speculate?
That's BS - nobody would have ever heard of him if he hadn't made the film, ergo no interviews, endorsment deals, action figures, etc. He will have action figures, right? (I want one)
The computer didn't forget to mention the driver should've waited for the ferry, it told the driver there was a BRIDGE! Thats why he didn't stop....
Oh well....