From what I understand, a Satellite internet connection requires a land line (phone line) for upstream communication. So in addition to the expense of the Dish, cables, etc. you'll need a dedicated phone line.
This is according to a recent issue of Maximum PC Magizine.
On the topic of Saddam Hussien being evil IMO, he is not evil. He is human.
He is demonstrably evil through his actions:
The use of chemical weapons in the war with Iran.
The attempted extinction of the Kurdish people.
The use of chemical weapons on the Kurdish people.
Refusing to step down from power despite the fact that his continued presence perpetuates the embargo, causing starving and needless suffering for his people.
I wonder if you hold Syria responsible for the continued occupation and oppression of Lebenon.
The thing that kills me about people like you is your transparent hate for anything israeli and all things western and your willingness to turn a blind eye to the actions of truely evil people like Hafiz Asad and Saddam Hussien.
And yes, they do send the occasional spam email, but to tell you the truth, I don't care, because they give me good service, and I like their search engine. On the other hand, Barnes & Noble's search engine is horid, and I'd have to spend all day searching for titles that would take me seconds to find searching on Amazon.
The bottom line is, I care about my convineince above a few silly spam emails. I like the fact that a book(s) I order from amazon shows up 2 days later for only $3 in shipping charges, and I spend at least $400 a month there. When I go to a book store they never have all of an author's titles, so I can order through them, but then I have to wait for weeks and it's a major fucking hassle, and I really don't have the time.
Call me selfish, but I could give two shits who amazon is sueing, as long as they continue to provide the same level of service to me and don't raise costs significantly.
I think it's a bit soon to abandon the nation state system. However, the Rhodes Scholars have been indoctrinated into a globalist position - specifically global government, and Clinton (a pseudo-Rhode Scholar himself), fearing that Gore will lose the 2000 election is rushing to achieve some legacy. Why not the appeasement of the globalists, and his Chinese masters?
The fact that America's entire industrial base has been exported as a result of globalist policies such as NAFTA, and GATT (and now the WTO) means little to any of the parties these days, as there doesn't seem to be an advocate for the working man any more. *everyone* seems to be in the pocket of the corporates these days... which is sad. I suspect people won't start to wake up until THEIR high paying high tech jobs meet the same fate. OH? don't think it can happen to you? what makes you think your job is safe? That all those US universities that subsidize *thousands* of foreign students each year on YOUR tax dollars aren't teaching them the same things that they're teaching you? What of those students who actually go back to their countries of origin? Such as the Indians? What happens when there's enough programmers in 3rd world so that the corporates can farm out YOUR job to some guy living in a hut for 10 cents an hour? You don't think that won't happen? It happened with textiles, steel, the automotive industry, all the rest of manufacturing, and now the computer component industry is almost exclusively in Asia. So go ahead and think of this in terms of sovereignty, but I'll tell you what, it's not really about that.
If the corporations are running all the political parties now, then they actually control the national & international policy across the board, and all this is in fact a moot point. However, I don't think we should make it easy for the corporates, by just letting them walk right over western democracies like an Oil company in Africa. Perhaps the corruption of the planet is inevitable, however any delay is welcome.
I heard that AMD might break even this quarter, which hopefully will give the motherboard manufactuers some courage. I'm hoping that the EU does boycott the P3, so that AMD gains a major foothold in Europe (that is, if cheap celerons don't flood the market).
Then there's the KX133. VIA advertised an early November release date both before and after the earthquake. However, all the Comdex articles point to a January 2000 release of KX133 motherboards.
Not to mention the fact that nobody is advertising SMP KX133 boards, not even the Mighty Tyan, who showcased the Dolphins 2 board at Comdex which featured only one measlely CPU slot.... and this from a company renown for their dual processor high end boards. It's almost as if people *want* the upcomming Athlon Ultra to fail... I mean come on, who in thier right mind would buy a crappy old Xeon with 2 megs of cache for $2k + when you can have an Ultra with much better FPU architecture and *8* megs of cache at a lower cost?
It looks like people are out to screw AMD, but I will support them, and I'm happy that they didn't lose money this quarter, and I hope they clean up next quarter, and sell a ton of Athlons in Europe & the U.S.
I for one would buy AMD even if it were inferior *which it isn't* because I do_not_want a CPU with some nefarious embeded ID # broadcasting across the internet for whatever reason, and you shouldn't either.
I use Red Hat. I have experimented with other distributions, but to me, it's easier having all the software at the point of installation: specifically, the WM's, netscape, etc.
RH 6.1 even has a new PPP dialer configuer in the installer now. And setting up PPP is kind of tedious normally, I think.
Then there's Alan Cox. The fact that he works for RH is a big plus. It says that the company has direction, and will not go off on some tangent.
Then there's the fact that the industry takes RH seriously. Just last week, I received a copy of Oracle 8i for RH 6.0. This is a big step. This program is not for other distributions, just for RM btw.
The point is, the software industry is finally taking Linux seriously, and it's not an expanding user base that is soley responsible for this. It's a serious company like RH that makes something like this possible.
This statement amounts to a get out of jail free card for B. Gates... As long as he drops a few million on the gore 2000 campaign.
The fact of the matter is, the Clinton Justice Department is exceedingly corrupt, and this whole case has been nothing but a shakedown from the get-go. The fact that some of the chief thugs are getting their fingers into the cookie jar is no surprise.
Don't be surprised if Micros~1 walks away with a slap on the wrist in a couple months and the Democratic Party Campaign chest gets a sizeable injection of M$ capitol.
If you don't beleive me, what about the Intel settlement? Have they changed any of their practices? Noooooo. They are still up to their dirty tricks, all they had to do was lay some cash on Janet Reno, and *pooof* no more investigation. M$ should have done this from the start, and it would have gone easier for them. How could they expect to get justice from a corrupt political system, hmmmmm?
I won't even mention all the Miami Cocaine king pins who walked after droping 100 million on DOJ after drug busts....
It strikes me as highly ironic that in a forum where the topic of conversation revolves around a highly repressive regime (Russia) my comment is censored out of existence to a -2 threshold.
Message to whomever moderated my post: I will personally buy you a plane ticket to Moscow, just get your censoring ass the fuck out of my country.
Russia has exploited these treaties to develop its own ABM systems so that it could develop a monopoly over the international market. It has done so, using US aide dollars to fund R&D on these systems.
The fact that we continue to pay billions of dollars in *bribes* to the organized crime controlled, corrupt Russian regime is all the more reason to contiune developing broad based, comprehensive ABM systems - not just minimal threat systems such as the current Raytheon system. We are still totally vulnerable to a massive strike (1000+ ICBMs) from Russia. And it's only a matter of time before China has accumulated an equally large ICBM stockpile (using stolen US nuclear technology).
We can no longer rely on cold war treaties and ideas of MAD (mutually assured destruction) to protect US cities - the fact that the Democrats are finally comming to the table on this, despite a decades long propaganda war against "Star Wars" or the Stragegic Defense Initiative ABM research of the Regan Administration.
The sooner Clinton gets out of office the sooner we can get to work on a total, comprehensive system. And as for the Russians, they need to realize that they are no longer a superpower, but that despite their continued membership on the UN Security Council, they have devolved into a petty, corrupt dictatorship, worthy of little more than our contempt. As soon as we can safley ignore Russian nuclear blackmail, the better. The only problem lies in our allies. With certain members of NATO's demonstrable willingness to export highly sensitive military technology to our enemies (specifically France) it would only be a matter of time before any US ABM system fell into the hands of the enemy. And despite gushing sentiments of sharing this technology in the hopes of ending the threat of global nuclear war, this would only provide the enemies of the United States the means to reverse engineer our systems and possibly develop countermeasures.
So in answer to your question. These treaties are a sham, and Clinton is a fool.
If the Internet and the computer infrastructure behind it weren't growing so rapidly, and feeding Ron and his family so well, he might have drifted into some other field. Perhaps he'd be designing more efficient Diesel fuel injection systems that would help cut air pollution or inexpensive Artesian well pumps that could help bring marginal land under cultivation.
Perhaps a shift to a telecommuter economy (a positive side effect of the Internet) will ultimately produce the same result: that is, reduction in fossil fuel emissions, and pollution.
If the same spirit that drove the growth of Apple and Oracle and 3Com had been put into space transportation, we might have permanent colonies on the moon by now. We might even be ready to launch human expeditions to some of the more interesting asteroids.
One of the technological requisites for a true space age will be artificial intelligence. The continued existence of companies innovating computer software and hardware technologies, including Internet tech, is necessary to achieve this end.
The other two inventions that we need (in the absence of faster than light speed travel) are cryogenics and fusion power; fusion for a continual power source, cryogenics to suspend human crews in stasis for the hundreds of years interstellar travel require, artificial intelligence to pilot/maintain/navigate the spacecraft.
So IMHO, the Internet is stepping-stone to a higher technological index. Some of the spin offs have been greater communication (e.g. access to uncensored information) and the huge entrepreneur factors that are fueling our continued economic prosperity.
But I see the Internet as only a means, not an end. It is not a cure all. The same problems remain. The same threat of humankind's extinction looms... and will continue to loom until mankind can get free of this gravity well, this prison, this earth.
"So your the first female captain, and you're lost?" - Conan O'Brien interviewing Captain of Voyager, Kate M.
I for one am still curious as to why they replaced the last ST with Voyager... I think this is what took the wind out of ST's sails. The fact that they had to bring in Jerry Ryan for sex appeal is pretty demeaning to science fiction...
I have watched the series (and movies) on and off since the late 70s, but ST never held a candle to the SF books that I've read over the years. Perhaps it's the fact that the genre doesn't often translate well onto the screen, but I suspect it's also due to the limited nature of the show. However, there is at least movement, as opposed to DS9 which never appealed to me.
Another thing that I've found distasteful is the same thing that has progressively annoyed me about Lucas' Star Wars films. Too many creatures.
And yes, ST is guilty of the Jar Jar factor aswell. The point is, a story should sustain itself, and there shouldn't be a need for an endless parade of critters to simulate an alien experience.
Personally I will watch ST again when they get another Captain on par with Jean Luc. Flashing a little T&A (7 of 9) isn't going to win me over so easily.
I know this discussion is long over, but I personally like Tom's reviews, and I think that he does have integrity, as evidenced by his reaction to Intel's *apparent* attempt to censor and intimidate him.
Why do I believe his side of this story in this? Mostly because of all the nasty things I've been reading about Intel's *apparent* strong arming of Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, and the *apparent* cutting of a deal with Gateway so they'd stop using AMD CPUs in their machines. Not to mention Intel's failed attempt to *apparently* force RDRAM on OEMs and the market, and a number of other Micros1~ esque tactics.
The fact of the matter is, Tom is very thorough. He was the first to publish an overclocking guide for the Athlon for example. Another example of his dedication is his yearly trips to Taiwan to talk directly with manufacturers there. I mean who does this but someone into what he does? The guy doesn't get paid to do this you know, he's a medical doctor, not an employee of some corporation.
Regarding 3dfx. They've really been acting strange lately, and not a little bit cheesy, IMO.
For example, cutting off Creative and Diamond like they did, and making their chipset proprietary. Maybe they have a right to be paranoid, what with Intel in bed with S3 and S3 now owning Diamond... but this was a bad move. Look at the hell that Apple went through as a result of it's decision to go proprietary back in the days before the Return of Jobs(TM). 3dfx will, I suspect, go through similar troubles, as major manufacturers have little choice but to either create their own chipsets (which can be disastrous, look at #9's "Ticket To Ride") or use another company's chipset, like nVidia -- who is making better 3D chipsets right now.
Another thing that 3dfx did which has lost them quite a bit of market share, (as evidenced by contrasting nVidia's 1999 profit and loss statements with 3dfx's) was essentially ship an overclocked banshee card:) What else can you call the Voodoo3 with @ 16 bit? Then there's the glaring lack of a heat sync fan on the voodoo3s (fans come with nVidia based cards), and the vast, power supply crippling, 183 MHz of the Voodoo3 3500, which I've read has *apparently* been problematic for some users with lower wattage power supplies...
These things don't go unnoticed by consumers, or for that matter by honest hardware reviewers. The benchmarks Tomas Pabst used in the GeForce article are valid, and Voodoo3 scored at zero on the 32 bit true color tests, because it is a 16 bit card. Simple as that... if you'd read the whole article, you'd see that he did list GeForce's short commings, specifically the memory bandwidth problems with the SDRAM versions of the Card vs. the upcomming double data rate RAM versions of the card (to say nothing of the *expected* 64 MB GeForce that I'm waiting for).
I have not lost faith in 3dfx, and I hope that their troubles of late will cause some restructuring which will lead to an increased emphasis on design quality, rather than throwing MHz at the problem. I do have to applaud their efforts to support the Apple community with Mac drivers for voodoo cards, although I hear poor Microconversions *might* have been forced out of the mac/voodoo card business as a result:(
Despite all this, the 3D wars are far from over, and I suspect the Voodoo4 will be quite a sight to see, but I won't rush out and buy either a GeForce or a Voodoo4 until I know all the facts, and for that I'll probably read a number of reviews. I've also found that forums where actual users relay anecdotal accounts of their experiences with specific products are truly telling. If you don't believe me go check out the forums at Intel:)
First you accuse me of being a "poseur word jockey" in response to my mildly mocking post, and then when I reply seriously to your relativistic arguments, you accuse me of employing "overbearing, masturbatory, venacular."
You have a funny way of debating, my friend.
"if you will indulge me and assume that quantity of responses to any two particular forums indicates a level of practical import, let us examine the following syllogism:
forum A has 15 responses
forum B has 200 response
forum B is more substantive than forum A
irrespective of the quality of the content expressed in either forum, I merely hinted that if the majority of the/. community participated in the MTV forum, it was more practically useful than the Bruce Sterling forum."
Hrm, weren't you the one lecturing me on the perils of quantifying value A.K.A. substance? It seems to me that your definition of substantive has finally risen to the top, as curdled milk will float to the top of lemon tea. (ahh a metaphor! perhaps I'm not hopeless after all!)
What your are employing here is populist philosophy, which works well if you're a politician, but poorly if you pride yourself on the ability to think independently.
However, let's look at my initialcomment and its context. I was in no way attacking Roblimo, or/. I was merely making an observation, which you've just validated with your populist arguments. I understand that there is a generally larger interest in stories such as the one this thread addresses, and that the editors of/. understand this and select their stories with a broad audience in mind.
However, merely commenting on the fact that more people seem to respond to such posts on/. shouldn't be taken by you as a put down, it is merely an observation, which I suspect is shared by others wiser than myself:)
As far as the Dickensian character you're attempting to paint me as, save yourself the trouble. Suffice it to say, I personally feel that this all won't mean much in 100 years when we're all worm food, and under this philosophy, *everything* is equally trivial.
I gather that my preceding comment went over your head, as you appear to be a literalist lacking in the ability to read between the lines. Let me spell it out for you so that it's easier for you to digest since metaphors don't seem to be your bag:
What you consider substantive, the next person may consider trivial. It's all relative to one's own beliefs and way of thinking.
Ahrm. I understood perfectly well what you meant, and I have a very low opinion of post-modern, quasi-intellectual relativism. The whole philosophy of, "it's like all about perspective man" is the reason our country (United States of Artless Letters, or U.S.A) is morally bankrupt. It is the same philosophy that allows the President of our country to rationalizethat oral sex, is indeed not sex. Well it isn't, is it, if you operate under relativism? I mean he didn't think it was sex, so it isn't sex "according to him."
Before the 20th century, such a rhetorical tactic was referred to as sophistry, today individuals unpolluted by so called, "higher education" would accurately describe the president's argument as "a load of bullshit."
To step back a moment. Let's look at the "logical" structure of your claim. That what is substantive is "relative to one's own beliefs and way of thinking"
according to the postmodern "science" of Semiotics,the world is broken into three distinct variables:
sign -------> signifier ---------> signified
Essentially, Semiotics reduces language to a naming process only. We see a tree, we name it a tree - the word tree is essentially a tag, which becomes psychologically united with the object in our brains by an associative bond. In this case, we become the Signifier and the tree becomes the signified and the word "tree" becomes the sign. Semiologists argue that knowing the word tree in no way brings us closer to understanding the nature of the tree, and therefore they argue that the linguistic sign is arbitraryor that we, the signifiers "artificially" create meaning.
So up springs the word, relativism. It's all relative man! Well it's not... The classical definition of sanity is:
sane \Sane\, a. [L. sanus; cf. Gr. ?, ?, safe, sound. Cf. Sound, a.] possessing a rational mind; having the mental faculties in such condition as to be able to anticipate and judge of the effect of one's actions in an ordinary manner.
On a societal level, this requires that there be some collective understanding of what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable, what is good and what is evil. Civility is impossible without some collective basis or belief system that governs our social interactions. The same can be true about determining the quality of an idea/object/whatever. For example, a BMW 750il is a quality car. This is something most people can agree on, due to the superior engineering in its fabrication, etc. The same can be true of the written word. Regardless of your point of view, it is sane to assert that a book such as War and Peaceis more substantive than a Dick and Jane story. Were one to assert a contrary view, it would generally be perceived as ironic,as the meaning of the statement is contrary to the literal sense of the words. So depending on your audience, after making such a statement, you'll either be perceived as (a) funny; or (b) a moron.
You see it's all about meaning. Yes, language is an artificial system, but it serves a purpose, which is to facilitate communication through creating commonalties of understanding. An exchange of ideas can either be poor, as in lacking in substance, or rich, as in substantive.
As adults, we may not enjoy a particular subject, but we can generally agree as to the degree of depth a particular subject potentially has: we can weigh the worth of Dick & Jane and Tolstoy on the basis of their complexities. That we like or dislike either book is irrelevant and correctly termed value judgements. Without any logical framework, then no intelligent exchange of ideas is possible, and without an exchange of ideas, society begins to deteriorate, as we're seeing in America today.
And, oh by the way, I do not watch TV, therefore I would hardly be the person to gauge whether MTV is substantive or not, for myself. I do read SF voraciously, but I do not personally consider Bruce Sterling "major", as you put it.
Bruce Sterling is Major, as in best-selling, yes (as I meant it in my post), but as a talent, no. I do not personally enjoy his writing, however I do think he is an intelligent writer, and thou I do not agree with him, I was interested in the opportunity to debate with him. Unfortunately, the forum was drowned out by the bleating of sycophants whose posts were artificially elevated by equally fawning moderators.
You see, I don't let others make that determination for me. I have the feeling that you do, on the other hand. If you believe you are an intellectual because you find participating in a Bruce Sterling ask-athon stimulating, I have a Nobel Prize to sell you.
I believe I'm an intellectual primarily because I can, and do think for myself. If you have trouble believing this after a cursory examination of my 48 posts on slashdot, then I really don't care:)
Oh, and for those of you interested in a more thorough definition of relativism, this is a good place to start.
Doom was the beginning of 3D, first-person shooters I seem to remember playing castle wolfenstein before doom came out:) Granted it wasn't as fancy, but was technically the first, as Wizardry was the first 3D D&D game.
I still remember playing wizard of war (old video game) at the neighborhood strategy shop where they also sold D&D along w/ lead figures.
I'm not sure I agree with you. The only information I've read regarding companies making any modifications are Leadtek and Elsa. Leadtek, in addition to adding a DVI connector to the card, is *supposedly* planning on installing a heat monitoring device, while Elsa was *supposedly* looking to make some small adjustments in order to fix the overheating problems. The Creative & Elsa cards have an ETA of 10/15, while Leadtek has advertised 10/22 and Guillemot's ETA is listed as "mid-October" which doesn't leave a whole lot of time to totally redesign the reference card.
The card has 23 million transistors on a 0.22 micron "GPU" die running at 120 MHz. I'd read that nVidia was planning on putting an air funnel through the die to remove hot air out, but *supposedly* card manufacturers had vetoed this:)
I'm somewhat skeptical about so much of the FPU intensive T&L work being shifted onto the GPU (graphical processing unit), essentially negating the usual FPS (frames per second) increase from having a faster CPU... So I plan on waiting to see what experiences the *beta* users have before diving in.
I find the dictionary a useful reference, perhaps you should pick one up.
However, since we're on the subject, MTV can be described as a:
vacuous \Vac"u*ous\, a. [L. vacuus. See Vacant.] Empty; unfilled; void; vacant.
wasteland n : an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation; "the barrens of central Africa"; "the trackless wastes of the desert" [syn: barren, waste]
for
Dilettantes \Dil`et*tan"tes\, n.; pl. Dilettantes. Amateurs; especially, those who follow an art or a branch of knowledge, desultorily, or for amusement only.
On the other hand, an opportunity to debate ideas with a major science fiction writer in a public forum is:
interesting \In"ter*est*ing\, a. Engaging the attention; exciting, or adapted to excite, interest, curiosity, or emotion; as, an interesting story; interesting news.
stimulating n. \Stim"u*late*ing\.1. To excite as if with a goad; to excite, rouse, or animate, to action or more vigorous exertion by some pungent motive or by persuasion; as, to stimulate one by the hope of reward, or by the prospect of glory.
and
intellectual \In`tel*lec"tu*al\, n. The intellect or understanding; mental powers or faculties.
However, should you find that MTV elicits the previous three responses, then perhaps you would feel more at home with the rest of the kiddies watching MTV.
I'm curious as to why you selected OpenGL for Quake 3 Arena. Is it because Glide is restricted to 3dfx cards and you decided to appeal the the increasing number of gamers who've chosen nVidia cards over 3dfx?
What are your thoughts on nVidia's new card NV10, redubed GeForce 256? Specificially the low, 120 MHz rating? Will the low fill rate that will result from this sub-standard speed be a barrier to the next generation 3D games running at high resolutions? Or will there be some workaround for this potential problem?
Finally, do you predict that OpenGL will entirely replace Glide in the future, despite the fact that certain game companies own stock in 3dfx, and have a vested interest in keeping this API alive?
Personally I'd rather log into an Apache webserver with no graphics, and all high quality *text-only* content than some huge, bandwidth sucking, graphichal "Art" site where it takes 10x as long to find what you're looking for.
Regarding the fate of the "web designer," if you know how to do the tricker website stuff, for instance:
Java
SQL
RDBMS
Unix administration
basically the things that you need to know in order to set up and administrate an e-commerce site, then you will have a job for a long time to come, baring an e-commerce killing economic recession - which is far more likely to be the death of the IT boom IMHO Rob.
Notice how substantive stories, such as the recent Ask Bruce Sterling,feature generated less response than this trivial tidbit.
Regarding the d00d community. Thou for the most part they are shallow little sociopaths, I suspect a lot of the "distinguished" members of/. download their fair share of warez and porn also.
Slashdot Mirror
This is according to a recent issue of Maximum PC Magizine.
He is demonstrably evil through his actions:
I wonder if you hold Syria responsible for the continued occupation and oppression of Lebenon.
The thing that kills me about people like you is your transparent hate for anything israeli and all things western and your willingness to turn a blind eye to the actions of truely evil people like Hafiz Asad and Saddam Hussien.
www.google.com "smell=peppermint"
www.apple.com "smell=sawdust and apple cider"
www.msnbc.com "smell=aqua velva, dirty laundry"
http://www.barnesandnoble.com "smell=sour milk"
http://www.ebay.com "smell=sweaty socks, dirty ashtrays, tin can full of dead flies"
www.everything2.com "smell=freshly baked bread"
www.cnet.com "smell=varnish"
www.altavista.com "smell=plastic"
And yes, they do send the occasional spam email, but to tell you the truth, I don't care, because they give me good service, and I like their search engine. On the other hand, Barnes & Noble's search engine is horid, and I'd have to spend all day searching for titles that would take me seconds to find searching on Amazon.
The bottom line is, I care about my convineince above a few silly spam emails. I like the fact that a book(s) I order from amazon shows up 2 days later for only $3 in shipping charges, and I spend at least $400 a month there. When I go to a book store they never have all of an author's titles, so I can order through them, but then I have to wait for weeks and it's a major fucking hassle, and I really don't have the time.
Call me selfish, but I could give two shits who amazon is sueing, as long as they continue to provide the same level of service to me and don't raise costs significantly.
The fact that America's entire industrial base has been exported as a result of globalist policies such as NAFTA, and GATT (and now the WTO) means little to any of the parties these days, as there doesn't seem to be an advocate for the working man any more. *everyone* seems to be in the pocket of the corporates these days... which is sad. I suspect people won't start to wake up until THEIR high paying high tech jobs meet the same fate. OH? don't think it can happen to you? what makes you think your job is safe? That all those US universities that subsidize *thousands* of foreign students each year on YOUR tax dollars aren't teaching them the same things that they're teaching you? What of those students who actually go back to their countries of origin? Such as the Indians? What happens when there's enough programmers in 3rd world so that the corporates can farm out YOUR job to some guy living in a hut for 10 cents an hour? You don't think that won't happen? It happened with textiles, steel, the automotive industry, all the rest of manufacturing, and now the computer component industry is almost exclusively in Asia. So go ahead and think of this in terms of sovereignty, but I'll tell you what, it's not really about that.
If the corporations are running all the political parties now, then they actually control the national & international policy across the board, and all this is in fact a moot point. However, I don't think we should make it easy for the corporates, by just letting them walk right over western democracies like an Oil company in Africa. Perhaps the corruption of the planet is inevitable, however any delay is welcome.
Then there's the KX133. VIA advertised an early November release date both before and after the earthquake. However, all the Comdex articles point to a January 2000 release of KX133 motherboards.
Not to mention the fact that nobody is advertising SMP KX133 boards, not even the Mighty Tyan, who showcased the Dolphins 2 board at Comdex which featured only one measlely CPU slot.... and this from a company renown for their dual processor high end boards. It's almost as if people *want* the upcomming Athlon Ultra to fail... I mean come on, who in thier right mind would buy a crappy old Xeon with 2 megs of cache for $2k + when you can have an Ultra with much better FPU architecture and *8* megs of cache at a lower cost?
It looks like people are out to screw AMD, but I will support them, and I'm happy that they didn't lose money this quarter, and I hope they clean up next quarter, and sell a ton of Athlons in Europe & the U.S.
I for one would buy AMD even if it were inferior *which it isn't* because I do_not_want a CPU with some nefarious embeded ID # broadcasting across the internet for whatever reason, and you shouldn't either.
RH 6.1 even has a new PPP dialer configuer in the installer now. And setting up PPP is kind of tedious normally, I think.
Then there's Alan Cox. The fact that he works for RH is a big plus. It says that the company has direction, and will not go off on some tangent.
Then there's the fact that the industry takes RH seriously. Just last week, I received a copy of Oracle 8i for RH 6.0. This is a big step. This program is not for other distributions, just for RM btw.
The point is, the software industry is finally taking Linux seriously, and it's not an expanding user base that is soley responsible for this. It's a serious company like RH that makes something like this possible.
The fact of the matter is, the Clinton Justice Department is exceedingly corrupt, and this whole case has been nothing but a shakedown from the get-go. The fact that some of the chief thugs are getting their fingers into the cookie jar is no surprise.
Don't be surprised if Micros~1 walks away with a slap on the wrist in a couple months and the Democratic Party Campaign chest gets a sizeable injection of M$ capitol.
If you don't beleive me, what about the Intel settlement? Have they changed any of their practices? Noooooo. They are still up to their dirty tricks, all they had to do was lay some cash on Janet Reno, and *pooof* no more investigation. M$ should have done this from the start, and it would have gone easier for them. How could they expect to get justice from a corrupt political system, hmmmmm?
I won't even mention all the Miami Cocaine king pins who walked after droping 100 million on DOJ after drug busts....
not to mention all those 1950's power plants that might or might not stay on line...
Message to whomever moderated my post: I will personally buy you a plane ticket to Moscow, just get your censoring ass the fuck out of my country.
Good day
The fact that we continue to pay billions of dollars in *bribes* to the organized crime controlled, corrupt Russian regime is all the more reason to contiune developing broad based, comprehensive ABM systems - not just minimal threat systems such as the current Raytheon system. We are still totally vulnerable to a massive strike (1000+ ICBMs) from Russia. And it's only a matter of time before China has accumulated an equally large ICBM stockpile (using stolen US nuclear technology).
We can no longer rely on cold war treaties and ideas of MAD (mutually assured destruction) to protect US cities - the fact that the Democrats are finally comming to the table on this, despite a decades long propaganda war against "Star Wars" or the Stragegic Defense Initiative ABM research of the Regan Administration.
The sooner Clinton gets out of office the sooner we can get to work on a total, comprehensive system. And as for the Russians, they need to realize that they are no longer a superpower, but that despite their continued membership on the UN Security Council, they have devolved into a petty, corrupt dictatorship, worthy of little more than our contempt. As soon as we can safley ignore Russian nuclear blackmail, the better. The only problem lies in our allies. With certain members of NATO's demonstrable willingness to export highly sensitive military technology to our enemies (specifically France) it would only be a matter of time before any US ABM system fell into the hands of the enemy. And despite gushing sentiments of sharing this technology in the hopes of ending the threat of global nuclear war, this would only provide the enemies of the United States the means to reverse engineer our systems and possibly develop countermeasures.
So in answer to your question. These treaties are a sham, and Clinton is a fool.
Perhaps a shift to a telecommuter economy (a positive side effect of the Internet) will ultimately produce the same result: that is, reduction in fossil fuel emissions, and pollution.
If the same spirit that drove the growth of Apple and Oracle and 3Com had been put into space transportation, we might have permanent colonies on the moon by now. We might even be ready to launch human expeditions to some of the more interesting asteroids.
One of the technological requisites for a true space age will be artificial intelligence. The continued existence of companies innovating computer software and hardware technologies, including Internet tech, is necessary to achieve this end.
The other two inventions that we need (in the absence of faster than light speed travel) are cryogenics and fusion power; fusion for a continual power source, cryogenics to suspend human crews in stasis for the hundreds of years interstellar travel require, artificial intelligence to pilot/maintain/navigate the spacecraft.
So IMHO, the Internet is stepping-stone to a higher technological index. Some of the spin offs have been greater communication (e.g. access to uncensored information) and the huge entrepreneur factors that are fueling our continued economic prosperity.
But I see the Internet as only a means, not an end. It is not a cure all. The same problems remain. The same threat of humankind's extinction looms... and will continue to loom until mankind can get free of this gravity well, this prison, this earth.
I for one am still curious as to why they replaced the last ST with Voyager... I think this is what took the wind out of ST's sails. The fact that they had to bring in Jerry Ryan for sex appeal is pretty demeaning to science fiction...
I have watched the series (and movies) on and off since the late 70s, but ST never held a candle to the SF books that I've read over the years. Perhaps it's the fact that the genre doesn't often translate well onto the screen, but I suspect it's also due to the limited nature of the show. However, there is at least movement, as opposed to DS9 which never appealed to me.
Another thing that I've found distasteful is the same thing that has progressively annoyed me about Lucas' Star Wars films. Too many creatures.
And yes, ST is guilty of the Jar Jar factor aswell. The point is, a story should sustain itself, and there shouldn't be a need for an endless parade of critters to simulate an alien experience.
Personally I will watch ST again when they get another Captain on par with Jean Luc. Flashing a little T&A (7 of 9) isn't going to win me over so easily.
Why do I believe his side of this story in this? Mostly because of all the nasty things I've been reading about Intel's *apparent* strong arming of Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, and the *apparent* cutting of a deal with Gateway so they'd stop using AMD CPUs in their machines. Not to mention Intel's failed attempt to *apparently* force RDRAM on OEMs and the market, and a number of other Micros1~ esque tactics.
The fact of the matter is, Tom is very thorough. He was the first to publish an overclocking guide for the Athlon for example. Another example of his dedication is his yearly trips to Taiwan to talk directly with manufacturers there. I mean who does this but someone into what he does? The guy doesn't get paid to do this you know, he's a medical doctor, not an employee of some corporation.
Regarding 3dfx. They've really been acting strange lately, and not a little bit cheesy, IMO.
For example, cutting off Creative and Diamond like they did, and making their chipset proprietary. Maybe they have a right to be paranoid, what with Intel in bed with S3 and S3 now owning Diamond... but this was a bad move. Look at the hell that Apple went through as a result of it's decision to go proprietary back in the days before the Return of Jobs(TM). 3dfx will, I suspect, go through similar troubles, as major manufacturers have little choice but to either create their own chipsets (which can be disastrous, look at #9's "Ticket To Ride") or use another company's chipset, like nVidia -- who is making better 3D chipsets right now.
Another thing that 3dfx did which has lost them quite a bit of market share, (as evidenced by contrasting nVidia's 1999 profit and loss statements with 3dfx's) was essentially ship an overclocked banshee card :) What else can you call the Voodoo3 with @ 16 bit? Then there's the glaring lack of a heat sync fan on the voodoo3s (fans come with nVidia based cards), and the vast, power supply crippling, 183 MHz of the Voodoo3 3500, which I've read has *apparently* been problematic for some users with lower wattage power supplies...
These things don't go unnoticed by consumers, or for that matter by honest hardware reviewers. The benchmarks Tomas Pabst used in the GeForce article are valid, and Voodoo3 scored at zero on the 32 bit true color tests, because it is a 16 bit card. Simple as that... if you'd read the whole article, you'd see that he did list GeForce's short commings, specifically the memory bandwidth problems with the SDRAM versions of the Card vs. the upcomming double data rate RAM versions of the card (to say nothing of the *expected* 64 MB GeForce that I'm waiting for).
I have not lost faith in 3dfx, and I hope that their troubles of late will cause some restructuring which will lead to an increased emphasis on design quality, rather than throwing MHz at the problem. I do have to applaud their efforts to support the Apple community with Mac drivers for voodoo cards, although I hear poor Microconversions *might* have been forced out of the mac/voodoo card business as a result :(
Despite all this, the 3D wars are far from over, and I suspect the Voodoo4 will be quite a sight to see, but I won't rush out and buy either a GeForce or a Voodoo4 until I know all the facts, and for that I'll probably read a number of reviews. I've also found that forums where actual users relay anecdotal accounts of their experiences with specific products are truly telling. If you don't believe me go check out the forums at Intel :)
First you accuse me of being a "poseur word jockey" in response to my mildly mocking post, and then when I reply seriously to your relativistic arguments, you accuse me of employing "overbearing, masturbatory, venacular."
You have a funny way of debating, my friend.
"if you will indulge me and assume that quantity of responses to any two particular forums indicates a level of practical import, let us examine the following syllogism:
- forum A has 15 responses
- forum B has 200 response
- forum B is more substantive than forum A
irrespective of the quality of the content expressed in either forum, I merely hinted that if the majority of theHrm, weren't you the one lecturing me on the perils of quantifying value A.K.A. substance? It seems to me that your definition of substantive has finally risen to the top, as curdled milk will float to the top of lemon tea. (ahh a metaphor! perhaps I'm not hopeless after all!)
What your are employing here is populist philosophy, which works well if you're a politician, but poorly if you pride yourself on the ability to think independently.
However, let's look at my initialcomment and its context. I was in no way attacking Roblimo, or /. I was merely making an observation, which you've just validated with your populist arguments. I understand that there is a generally larger interest in stories such as the one this thread addresses, and that the editors of /. understand this and select their stories with a broad audience in mind.
However, merely commenting on the fact that more people seem to respond to such posts on /. shouldn't be taken by you as a put down, it is merely an observation, which I suspect is shared by others wiser than myself :)
As far as the Dickensian character you're attempting to paint me as, save yourself the trouble. Suffice it to say, I personally feel that this all won't mean much in 100 years when we're all worm food, and under this philosophy, *everything* is equally trivial.
"Words, words words...." a depressed Dane.
What you consider substantive, the next person may consider trivial. It's all relative to one's own beliefs and way of thinking.
Ahrm. I understood perfectly well what you meant, and I have a very low opinion of post-modern, quasi-intellectual relativism. The whole philosophy of, "it's like all about perspective man" is the reason our country (United States of Artless Letters, or U.S.A) is morally bankrupt. It is the same philosophy that allows the President of our country to rationalizethat oral sex, is indeed not sex. Well it isn't, is it, if you operate under relativism? I mean he didn't think it was sex, so it isn't sex "according to him."
Before the 20th century, such a rhetorical tactic was referred to as sophistry, today individuals unpolluted by so called, "higher education" would accurately describe the president's argument as "a load of bullshit."
To step back a moment. Let's look at the "logical" structure of your claim. That what is substantive is "relative to one's own beliefs and way of thinking"
according to the postmodern "science" of Semiotics,the world is broken into three distinct variables:
sign -------> signifier ---------> signified
Essentially, Semiotics reduces language to a naming process only. We see a tree, we name it a tree - the word tree is essentially a tag, which becomes psychologically united with the object in our brains by an associative bond. In this case, we become the Signifier and the tree becomes the signified and the word "tree" becomes the sign. Semiologists argue that knowing the word tree in no way brings us closer to understanding the nature of the tree, and therefore they argue that the linguistic sign is arbitraryor that we, the signifiers "artificially" create meaning.
So up springs the word, relativism. It's all relative man! Well it's not... The classical definition of sanity is:
On a societal level, this requires that there be some collective understanding of what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable, what is good and what is evil. Civility is impossible without some collective basis or belief system that governs our social interactions. The same can be true about determining the quality of an idea/object/whatever. For example, a BMW 750il is a quality car. This is something most people can agree on, due to the superior engineering in its fabrication, etc. The same can be true of the written word. Regardless of your point of view, it is sane to assert that a book such as War and Peaceis more substantive than a Dick and Jane story. Were one to assert a contrary view, it would generally be perceived as ironic,as the meaning of the statement is contrary to the literal sense of the words. So depending on your audience, after making such a statement, you'll either be perceived as (a) funny; or (b) a moron.
You see it's all about meaning. Yes, language is an artificial system, but it serves a purpose, which is to facilitate communication through creating commonalties of understanding. An exchange of ideas can either be poor, as in lacking in substance, or rich, as in substantive.
As adults, we may not enjoy a particular subject, but we can generally agree as to the degree of depth a particular subject potentially has: we can weigh the worth of Dick & Jane and Tolstoy on the basis of their complexities. That we like or dislike either book is irrelevant and correctly termed value judgements. Without any logical framework, then no intelligent exchange of ideas is possible, and without an exchange of ideas, society begins to deteriorate, as we're seeing in America today.
And, oh by the way, I do not watch TV, therefore I would hardly be the person to gauge whether MTV is substantive or not, for myself. I do read SF voraciously, but I do not personally consider Bruce Sterling "major", as you put it.
Bruce Sterling is Major, as in best-selling, yes (as I meant it in my post), but as a talent, no. I do not personally enjoy his writing, however I do think he is an intelligent writer, and thou I do not agree with him, I was interested in the opportunity to debate with him. Unfortunately, the forum was drowned out by the bleating of sycophants whose posts were artificially elevated by equally fawning moderators.
You see, I don't let others make that determination for me. I have the feeling that you do, on the other hand. If you believe you are an intellectual because you find participating in a Bruce Sterling ask-athon stimulating, I have a Nobel Prize to sell you.
I believe I'm an intellectual primarily because I can, and do think for myself. If you have trouble believing this after a cursory examination of my 48 posts on slashdot, then I really don't care :)
Oh, and for those of you interested in a more thorough definition of relativism, this is a good place to start.
I still remember playing wizard of war (old video game) at the neighborhood strategy shop where they also sold D&D along w/ lead figures.
- Ah nastalgia
The card has 23 million transistors on a 0.22 micron "GPU" die running at 120 MHz. I'd read that nVidia was planning on putting an air funnel through the die to remove hot air out, but *supposedly* card manufacturers had vetoed this :)
I'm somewhat skeptical about so much of the FPU intensive T&L work being shifted onto the GPU (graphical processing unit), essentially negating the usual FPS (frames per second) increase from having a faster CPU... So I plan on waiting to see what experiences the *beta* users have before diving in.
I find the dictionary a useful reference, perhaps you should pick one up.
However, since we're on the subject, MTV can be described as a:
- vacuous \Vac"u*ous\, a. [L. vacuus. See Vacant.] Empty; unfilled; void; vacant.
- wasteland n : an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation; "the barrens of central Africa"; "the trackless wastes of the desert" [syn: barren, waste]
forOn the other hand, an opportunity to debate ideas with a major science fiction writer in a public forum is:
- interesting \In"ter*est*ing\, a. Engaging the attention; exciting, or adapted to excite, interest, curiosity, or emotion; as, an interesting story; interesting news.
- stimulating n. \Stim"u*late*ing\.1. To excite as if with a goad; to excite, rouse, or animate, to action or more vigorous exertion by some pungent motive or by persuasion; as, to stimulate one by the hope of reward, or by the prospect of glory.
andHowever, should you find that MTV elicits the previous three responses, then perhaps you would feel more at home with the rest of the kiddies watching MTV.
What are your thoughts on nVidia's new card NV10, redubed GeForce 256? Specificially the low, 120 MHz rating? Will the low fill rate that will result from this sub-standard speed be a barrier to the next generation 3D games running at high resolutions? Or will there be some workaround for this potential problem?
Finally, do you predict that OpenGL will entirely replace Glide in the future, despite the fact that certain game companies own stock in 3dfx, and have a vested interest in keeping this API alive?
Regarding the fate of the "web designer," if you know how to do the tricker website stuff, for instance:
basically the things that you need to know in order to set up and administrate an e-commerce site, then you will have a job for a long time to come, baring an e-commerce killing economic recession - which is far more likely to be the death of the IT boom IMHO Rob.
- Baby boomer parent
Regarding the d00d community. Thou for the most part they are shallow little sociopaths, I suspect a lot of the "distinguished" members of /. download their fair share of warez and porn also.
- Apple also has 3 finger salute 'ya know.