"There is the small problem that police officers, by definition of the job, mostly interact with scum."
It is not a small problem--it is a huge problem when we are being treated as "scum", as you put it. Because that is exactly what is happening--peace officers have to assume that everyone is the same scum and act accordingly.
You yourself state that you "have" to apply some measure of circumspection, yet I just witnessed 5 peace officers clearly state that they would not be doing so in the courtroom if they were assigned as jurors, that they would automatically believe another peace officer over anyone else. That is not circumspection, that is bias.
What I would have liked to hear was something along the lines of "I would apply what personal experience and wisdom I have acquired over the years to be impartial and fair.", but that isn't even remotely what they stated. Only one officer hesitated--the others were obviously secure in the idea that peace officers are more truthful then anyone else.
The same could be said about you--the only difference between you and your patients is an education, yet you are given the responsibility of judging truthfulness on the part of those same patients. What makes you more trust-worthy? I recently had a doctor lie to me (and my daughter) when he bluntly stated that the methamphetamine he wanted to prescribe my daughter was not addictive. So much for doctors being different (or more truthful) then the rest of us.
My point is that people do not really understand how much of a disadvantage defendants and suspects are subjected to when they enter the "Justice" system.
"What lawyers call "curtilage," on the other hand, meaning the land immediately surrounding a residence, still has greater privacy protections."
From the SCOTUS decision in United States v. Dunn, a case where the DEA overstepped it limitations when searching--without a warrant--the premises of a suspected drug manufacturer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Dunn ):
""[C]urtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by.""
MY emphasis. This last part is crucial--it is what everyone needs to know when it comes to privacy around one's home. The definition of curtilage was refined with this last statement--the act of creating a private space essentially defines it. That being said, if one surrounds his house with a 6 ft fence, but the cops take pictures through a knot-hole, they have still violated the privacy protections afforded by the SCOTUS definition--the effort of creating the curtilage, by building a fence, defined the "boundary" of the curtilage, not whether the fence successfully blocked the view of potential viewers.
I recently sat through jury selection as a potential juror.
Both the prosecutor and the defense lawyer asked questions openly of us all. The defense lawyer also singled out any peace officers (Border Patrol, ICE and county Sheriffs as they stated) and asked them a very specific question--"Would you, as a peace officer, take the word of another officer over that of any other person?". All five answered that, yes, they would take the word of an officer over that of anyone else.
That, for me, was the American Justice system in a nutshell. At least they were honest about it. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but it pretty much reinforced my own opinion that as long as an officer is testifying, the accused will NOT get a fair trial. Everyone seems to accept the testimony of an officer as somehow more "truthful" when in reality they are people just like the rest of us and just as likely to lie when it suits them.
Interestingly, of the forty people being considered for that case, five were peace officers. With that many potential jurors being essentially employees "for the prosecution", I am beginning to think that peace officers should be kept off of juries out of respect for potential "conflicts of interests" and an apparently inherent bias that is admittedly present in these officers.
What it all boils down to, for me, is this--If it becomes a matter of your word against that of a peace officer, you lose by default, more so if a peace officer happens to be on the jury. That is NOT justice.
"(For those who don't know, a honeypot is an easily hackable machine that serves no purpose except to be hacked so that an observer can find folks who are trying to break in.)"
Judging by the formations of geese and pelicans I've watched flying by in large groups, I have to assume this effect can be carried from one flyer to the next in a chain and isn't confined to just two flyers. The next question would be "Do all trailing flyers receive this 10% fuel savings, or is there some sort of diminishing return at play?"
If all of the flyers receive the savings, then the airlines might find that sending a small squadron of aircraft, say five DC-10 sized aircraft in formation as opposed to one large "super-liner", is economically beneficial both in terms of lower costs AND lower CO2 emissions. It would also relieve a common problem with current flight scheduling--empty seats. If the "flight" (I'm referring to the squadron idea) did not sell all the seats, they could simply send one less plane--it allows for options in balancing demand vs resource allocation, which would, I assume, allow the airlines to lower costs across the board including ticket prices. It would also allow the airlines to scale specific routes based on demand more accurately--if there is a sudden surge in demand on specific route, they simply increase the squadron size as required.
There is the added benefit of "diluting" the severity in repercussions as a result of mechanical failures/human error--when a super-liner suffers catastrophic failure, everyone dies. In a squadron of planes, a failure on one craft wouldn't mean the death of everyone. Not putting one's eggs in one basket has it's benefits.
In the second episode of the original Star Trek series ("The Man Trap",1966), Spock is standing next to the main view screen on the bridge of the Enterprise and uses a hand-swipe gesture ("slicing" his hand from right to left at waist level) to change the image on the main view screen.
This predates both Kinect-based systems and touchpad gesture systems by about 35 years.
I wonder if any of that has been brought up in all these lawsuits brought by Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple regarding those technologies.
I used to live in Mountain View, CA. when I was a teen. A friend and I used to ride our bicycles out on the levies that abounded along the southern San Francisco Bay--commonly know as the "Baylands"--often following the wooden catwalks that stretched for miles over the water surfaces that the levies partitioned off. The top of these levies were used as security roads around the eastern side of Moffet Field and Nasa's Ames Research Center.
We soon realized that as long as we bypassed a security check-point near the north end of the base, using the catwalks, that once we were beyond the security roads on the levee, nobody gave us a second glance. I guess they assumed we were military kids or something, because we were able to ride our bicycles right past the tarmac by going through an open gate in the security fence--only once did anyone say anything to us and that was to tell us that we were supposed to walk our bikes when we were inside the hangars. We spent many hours wandering around those hangars that summer. Ames had the neatest stuff--helicopters with wings, jets with VTO rotors, a helicopter with no windshield (mind you, this was the early 80's--I'd never heard of a "drone" before), models of every sort lined up for wind-tunnel testing, etc. We once went out there in the middle of a hot, summer night and watched a large jet take off (judging by the lights and noise) and barely caught sight of a totally silent aircraft follow it off the ground less then 3 seconds behind the first, this second aircraft only being visible by virtue of creating a silhouette against the brightly lit Bay-Area sky--otherwise it was totally silent and had zero lighting. Not sure why they'd be doing so, but it looked like they were towing another aircraft under cover of darkness. Pretty exciting, especially for a kid.
I somehow don't think that one could stroll into that place as easily these days. Lucky we didn't get shot.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, there is a description of Gilgamesh going on a long journey from the area we now call Iraq, following the Euphrates to the mountains of Syria to fell a large cedar. A lush forest, filled with large dangerous animals is described. The single cedar he floats back to Iraq is large enough to construct the entire city gate of Ur.
Those cedars are long gone, all felled by the hands of man, and what remains is exactly what you describe--a wasteland that we now call The Levant. What remains are stoney, soil-less hills that retain little moisture and produce little as the soil has long since been washed into the Mediterranean. The few fertile valleys that remain are the remnants of those lush hills--thick layers of sediment of which only the surface is available for plant-life to utilize.
That place was once lushly forested, not only in pre-history, but recently enough to have been recorded.
Now some might blame the loss of these forests on global warming and desertification of the region, but perhaps it was the decline in carbon storage of these very forests that led to the warming trends in the first place. Personally, I find more evidence to lay the blame squarely at our own feet.
This project is a diversion from the logging practices in my own country (US).
"Foresters" in my home state of Washington leave thin strips of trees along highways to hide the clear-cuts from the public. If you fly over these areas, they look like farms--entire regions stripped down to mineral soil as if ready for the Spring planting season. Massive landslides dot the landscape, most of them terminating in a salmon spawning waterway. I live near the site of the largest shingle plant ever built (in the world) and the builders of that plant said there were more trees here then could ever be cut down...and they were out of business in twenty years because they ran out of trees in the area. Washington State has less then 4% of it's original forest--old growth stands exist only in places that the loggers couldn't get their equipment.
Seriously? You're all concerned about the security issues of this situation? Did nobody read the original AP article written by Julie Pace? She handed Democrat voters a BOMBSHELL...and everyone is talking about debt.
From the Original AP article written by Julie Pace (and the REAL meat of the article):
"Huawei, one of the world's largest producers of computer network switching gear, has repeatedly struggled to convince U.S. authorities that they can be trusted to oversee sensitive technology sometimes used in national security work. In 2008, CFIUS concerns led Huawei and private equity firm Bain Capital to abandon an $2.2 billion deal to buy a firm that produces anti-hacking software for the U.S. military"
MY emphasis. Did nobody notice that shortly after Mitt Romney split from Bain Capitol he decided to run for President? Julie Pace just gave us the reason for this...Mitt Romney has been sleeping with the Chinese all along.
"...One thing is clear: the founders and never wanted corporations to have too much power. They had direct knowledge of companies with too much power did through their experiences with the East India Company."
I think our Founding Fathers had more direct interaction with Hudson's Bay Company--probably the closest corporations and government can get to each other without one of them giving birth. In this case, that happened anyway and The United States of America was born.
Loved it, told everyone I knew about, got served a few re-iterations, didn't tell as many people, found out any application on my computer can throw a plug-in into the works without so much as a hello, stopped telling anyone about it except to point out last "feature".
So what's this Waterfox thing and who the hell is Mr. Alex?
"I'm sorry.. wait, what was the purpose of this article?"
To get the ball rollin' on the violent political upheaval (the clock is ticking--we only have 8 years), and to point out they're doing it wrong--those Chick-fil-A events should have been on the same day.
"Basically, you get a new Great War as soon as those who survived the previous one are too frail to prevent it anymore."
I think you can refine that some.
If you take the lives of Grandma, her daughter, and her grand-daughter, overlap them in a time-line taking into consideration age before giving birth, life expectancy and the time grand-daughter and grandma can spend time with each other, you'd end up with something that may also effect the equation--how much information can be passed directly from one generation to another. It is much easier to forget if nobody tells you in the first place.
All that being said, going by averaging the stats for the last three generations (haphazardly gleaned from Wikipedia), arranging them in a time-line and locating the point at which Grandma dies, I come up with roughly 110 years, including 10 years to get things properly fucked up.
But, the point is moot, to quote Jesse Jackson--we live in times unlike any other--and always will--and thus shit like this is pointless.
"The Everquest 2 client includes an in-game web browser derived from Mozilla. Could that have any connection to the plug-in?"
While it could, at this point the plug-in is trivial. Far worse shit is involved. I've outed myself in another Slashdot post. See here for an explanation on that.
Here is a link to the thread at the SOE/EQ2 forum, if you wish to see the SOE responses for yourself. From what I've found so far, I believe the purpose of all of this is to track P2P activity, as well as what files have been downloaded with a P2P client, as well as document it all. I can only imagine what they are going to do with the gathered data.
August 2000, statements by Sony Pictures Entertainment US senior VP Steve Heckler. Seems they weren't fucking around...
"The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake."
Okies, time to come clean--I was trying to keep Sony from connecting this account to the Sony forum account of mine. Too late now. Deceiving Slashdot readers was not my intention.
I am "Bug", the dude that started that thread on the SOE site. I was trying to get the information I found out about EQ2, and what appears to be a rootkit, posted here on Slashdot without allowing Sony to make any connections between me (and my SOE account), this Slashdot account...and the only computer they didn't get into--this one. Oh, well.
The sole reason I started that thread was to get some feedback from SOE--re-posting those replies here on Slashdot is meaningless. I wanted people to see the SOE responses--denials in particular--first hand and not just take my word on it. That is the reason I posted a link to that thread here on Slashdot--to get word out. The fact I tried to do so anonymously is now moot, but no less regrettable.
The deeper I dig, the more shit I find. I've done everything I said in that thread, including imaging the drive from my wifes computer--that image is in someone elses hands now--but in the meantime I've been dissecting the drive in my wifes XP machine that actually got rooted. I am also quite serious about handing all of this over to my State Attorney General--in the last Sony Rootkit fiasco, Attorneys General were the people that spear-headed the investigations once Mark Russinovich identified XCP (I really wish he'd take a look at this). My understanding of this is limited--someone that really knows what they are doing needs to take a look at this. If any of you are interested in doing so (on a sacrificial machine, of course), EQ2 is Free-to-play and can be installed for free--you don't have to put real information in the account registration if you have no intention of paying for the game. At that point you'd have full access to everything I've found, unless of course they already removed it from the most recent update. I'm also very interested in whether or not ALL of the SOE games are dealing this crap.
Some people in the SOE forums have claimed that they have found up to 16GB of data stored in that "user.dmp" file--after what I've found personally, I believe them. I cringe at the thought of what might be contained in a 16GB "crash report".
PS: I apologize for the all-bold post above--accidentally removed some HTML. Also, my apologies to any that feel I was being deceptive here on Slashdot--I am usually honest and forthright here, and furthermore, posting anonymously like I did felt a little "dirty", regardless of my motives. It will not happen again.
This is the most recent post in that thread. I'm amazed it hasn't been deleted yet. That being said, I post it here on Slashdot for posterity. (I removed some spaces from the post for/. sake, and my emphasis). Somebody needs to get Mark Russinovich looking at this stuff--I'm sure he'd love another swing at the Pinata.
""The question at hand was about the Trusted Site settings. This is a Windows OS setting, it happens to be controllable from either IE or the control panel..."
My point exactly--it is an OS setting, something SOE should not be mucking about in, yet did, and without permission.
"Then please explain LiveDriver.exe
This executable is not installed by any SOE product or used by any SOE product...."
On my wifes XP machine, when EQ2 updated, one of the files that was downloaded was LiveDriverSDK.exe (the.exe installed the.dll, a.xml file and unknown other files, then deleted itself). So I missed a bit on the name of the file, but you should have know what I was referring to, seeing as how you have something very close to what I mentioned.
LiveDriverSDK.dll
Located at C:/Program Files/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/Everquest II
Also...
eq2ui_popup-livedriver.xml
Located at C:/Program Files/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/Everquest II/UI
This appears to be a popup for recording character voices. And you claim nothing called LiveDriver came from SOE?
The EQ2 install directory">was located in C:/Users/Username/AppData/LocalLow/Sony Online Entertainment"
The EQ2 Uninstaller should have removed this. Simple as that. I'm not buying your excuse.
Now, on to another questionable folder far more serious--C:/Crash--My wifes XP machine had two files in here, for a total of 56MBs.
drwtsn32.log (this file can be opened with notepad.exe and be read in plain-text)
I can understand why you might want this file, although it has information in it that you really don't need. The next file is the one that every person that reads this forum needs to inspect on their own machines--this is a serious breach of trust, if not a violation of Federal Wiretap laws. This file may, or may not, be in the C:/Crash folder, depending on whether or not it has been uploaded as the files here are deleted once uploaded.
user.dmp
If you open this file with notepad.exe, what you see is mostly machine/assembly code--unreadable for you and me. Grab that scroll bar on the right and start dragging--you will begin to see code for a graphical interface, frame settings and such. Keep scrolling (I had to scroll down about 80% of the way down the file). If you are like my wife and I, we use a P2P client--that client, specifically BitTorrent, is listed along with a few other applications. What follows is what really matters...a list of every single file downloaded by BitTorrent since my wife last ran CCleaner(set to delete BitTorrent logs), as well as every other file placed in those torrented folders, up to and including update files, patches, cracks, mods and user created files.
Hear me well, Torrenters. SOE is tracking everything you torrent, and doing so directly through your own computer. They are then uploading that data to their own servers via wws_crashreport_uploader.exe.
"People will say deeply offensive things to you in life..."
True, but this is Twitter. If someone said that to him directly, he could respond with a punch in the face. People say things on Twitter (and elsewhere on the internet) they normally wouldn't only because they think there are no repercussions. I am willing to wager that the person that made that Twitter post wouldn't have said as much to the athlete directly because they know a punch to the face might be a realistic repercussion.
The internet allows for connecting more easily, but it does NOT bring people closer together ('ceptin maybe backpage.com....har, har). If anything, I think the internet estranges us from what is really important and skews our perception of self/other in subtle ways.
" It's one of those touches that I see often overlooked in games..."
And it shouldn't be. Game designers should be taking "The Uncanny Valley" into account when working on such things as animations, facial expressions and such.
I think the focus is more on fluidity then accuracy. I honestly don't understand why motion-capture isn't used more often then it is. Maybe someone can explain why it isn't used in 3d modeling (based on the animations I've seen in games so far), but is used often in motion picture CG. Seems to me that technology could be applied, but perhaps I am unaware of a crucial limitation inherent to 3D modeling--I don't do it for a living.
Speaking of "The Uncanny Valley", does anyone besides me think that people that have had a lot of cosmetic surgery are back-sliding into that Valley? Some of that shit is getting a little creepy. Michael Jackson is the first thing I think of when I hear the words "uncanny valley".
Slashdot Mirror
"There is the small problem that police officers, by definition of the job, mostly interact with scum."
It is not a small problem--it is a huge problem when we are being treated as "scum", as you put it. Because that is exactly what is happening--peace officers have to assume that everyone is the same scum and act accordingly.
You yourself state that you "have" to apply some measure of circumspection, yet I just witnessed 5 peace officers clearly state that they would not be doing so in the courtroom if they were assigned as jurors, that they would automatically believe another peace officer over anyone else. That is not circumspection, that is bias.
What I would have liked to hear was something along the lines of "I would apply what personal experience and wisdom I have acquired over the years to be impartial and fair.", but that isn't even remotely what they stated. Only one officer hesitated--the others were obviously secure in the idea that peace officers are more truthful then anyone else.
The same could be said about you--the only difference between you and your patients is an education, yet you are given the responsibility of judging truthfulness on the part of those same patients. What makes you more trust-worthy? I recently had a doctor lie to me (and my daughter) when he bluntly stated that the methamphetamine he wanted to prescribe my daughter was not addictive. So much for doctors being different (or more truthful) then the rest of us.
My point is that people do not really understand how much of a disadvantage defendants and suspects are subjected to when they enter the "Justice" system.
"What lawyers call "curtilage," on the other hand, meaning the land immediately surrounding a residence, still has greater privacy protections."
From the SCOTUS decision in United States v. Dunn, a case where the DEA overstepped it limitations when searching--without a warrant--the premises of a suspected drug manufacturer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Dunn ):
""[C]urtilage questions should be resolved with particular reference to four factors: the proximity of the area claimed to be curtilage to the home, whether the area is included within an enclosure surrounding the home, the nature of the uses to which the area is put, and the steps taken by the resident to protect the area from observation by people passing by .""
MY emphasis. This last part is crucial--it is what everyone needs to know when it comes to privacy around one's home. The definition of curtilage was refined with this last statement--the act of creating a private space essentially defines it. That being said, if one surrounds his house with a 6 ft fence, but the cops take pictures through a knot-hole, they have still violated the privacy protections afforded by the SCOTUS definition--the effort of creating the curtilage, by building a fence, defined the "boundary" of the curtilage, not whether the fence successfully blocked the view of potential viewers.
United States v. Dunn was heard in 1987.
I recently sat through jury selection as a potential juror.
Both the prosecutor and the defense lawyer asked questions openly of us all. The defense lawyer also singled out any peace officers (Border Patrol, ICE and county Sheriffs as they stated) and asked them a very specific question--"Would you, as a peace officer, take the word of another officer over that of any other person?". All five answered that, yes, they would take the word of an officer over that of anyone else.
That, for me, was the American Justice system in a nutshell. At least they were honest about it. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but it pretty much reinforced my own opinion that as long as an officer is testifying, the accused will NOT get a fair trial. Everyone seems to accept the testimony of an officer as somehow more "truthful" when in reality they are people just like the rest of us and just as likely to lie when it suits them.
Interestingly, of the forty people being considered for that case, five were peace officers. With that many potential jurors being essentially employees "for the prosecution", I am beginning to think that peace officers should be kept off of juries out of respect for potential "conflicts of interests" and an apparently inherent bias that is admittedly present in these officers.
What it all boils down to, for me, is this--If it becomes a matter of your word against that of a peace officer, you lose by default, more so if a peace officer happens to be on the jury. That is NOT justice.
"(For those who don't know, a honeypot is an easily hackable machine that serves no purpose except to be hacked so that an observer can find folks who are trying to break in.)"
Kind of like this thread.
The Airlines should take notice.
Judging by the formations of geese and pelicans I've watched flying by in large groups, I have to assume this effect can be carried from one flyer to the next in a chain and isn't confined to just two flyers. The next question would be "Do all trailing flyers receive this 10% fuel savings, or is there some sort of diminishing return at play?"
If all of the flyers receive the savings, then the airlines might find that sending a small squadron of aircraft, say five DC-10 sized aircraft in formation as opposed to one large "super-liner", is economically beneficial both in terms of lower costs AND lower CO2 emissions. It would also relieve a common problem with current flight scheduling--empty seats. If the "flight" (I'm referring to the squadron idea) did not sell all the seats, they could simply send one less plane--it allows for options in balancing demand vs resource allocation, which would, I assume, allow the airlines to lower costs across the board including ticket prices. It would also allow the airlines to scale specific routes based on demand more accurately--if there is a sudden surge in demand on specific route, they simply increase the squadron size as required.
There is the added benefit of "diluting" the severity in repercussions as a result of mechanical failures/human error--when a super-liner suffers catastrophic failure, everyone dies. In a squadron of planes, a failure on one craft wouldn't mean the death of everyone. Not putting one's eggs in one basket has it's benefits.
Leonard Nimoy should be a rich man.
In the second episode of the original Star Trek series ("The Man Trap",1966), Spock is standing next to the main view screen on the bridge of the Enterprise and uses a hand-swipe gesture ("slicing" his hand from right to left at waist level) to change the image on the main view screen.
This predates both Kinect-based systems and touchpad gesture systems by about 35 years.
I wonder if any of that has been brought up in all these lawsuits brought by Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple regarding those technologies.
I used to live in Mountain View, CA. when I was a teen. A friend and I used to ride our bicycles out on the levies that abounded along the southern San Francisco Bay--commonly know as the "Baylands"--often following the wooden catwalks that stretched for miles over the water surfaces that the levies partitioned off. The top of these levies were used as security roads around the eastern side of Moffet Field and Nasa's Ames Research Center.
We soon realized that as long as we bypassed a security check-point near the north end of the base, using the catwalks, that once we were beyond the security roads on the levee, nobody gave us a second glance. I guess they assumed we were military kids or something, because we were able to ride our bicycles right past the tarmac by going through an open gate in the security fence--only once did anyone say anything to us and that was to tell us that we were supposed to walk our bikes when we were inside the hangars. We spent many hours wandering around those hangars that summer. Ames had the neatest stuff--helicopters with wings, jets with VTO rotors, a helicopter with no windshield (mind you, this was the early 80's--I'd never heard of a "drone" before), models of every sort lined up for wind-tunnel testing, etc. We once went out there in the middle of a hot, summer night and watched a large jet take off (judging by the lights and noise) and barely caught sight of a totally silent aircraft follow it off the ground less then 3 seconds behind the first, this second aircraft only being visible by virtue of creating a silhouette against the brightly lit Bay-Area sky--otherwise it was totally silent and had zero lighting. Not sure why they'd be doing so, but it looked like they were towing another aircraft under cover of darkness. Pretty exciting, especially for a kid.
I somehow don't think that one could stroll into that place as easily these days. Lucky we didn't get shot.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, there is a description of Gilgamesh going on a long journey from the area we now call Iraq, following the Euphrates to the mountains of Syria to fell a large cedar. A lush forest, filled with large dangerous animals is described. The single cedar he floats back to Iraq is large enough to construct the entire city gate of Ur.
Those cedars are long gone, all felled by the hands of man, and what remains is exactly what you describe--a wasteland that we now call The Levant. What remains are stoney, soil-less hills that retain little moisture and produce little as the soil has long since been washed into the Mediterranean. The few fertile valleys that remain are the remnants of those lush hills--thick layers of sediment of which only the surface is available for plant-life to utilize.
That place was once lushly forested, not only in pre-history, but recently enough to have been recorded.
Now some might blame the loss of these forests on global warming and desertification of the region, but perhaps it was the decline in carbon storage of these very forests that led to the warming trends in the first place. Personally, I find more evidence to lay the blame squarely at our own feet.
This project is a diversion from the logging practices in my own country (US).
"Foresters" in my home state of Washington leave thin strips of trees along highways to hide the clear-cuts from the public. If you fly over these areas, they look like farms--entire regions stripped down to mineral soil as if ready for the Spring planting season. Massive landslides dot the landscape, most of them terminating in a salmon spawning waterway. I live near the site of the largest shingle plant ever built (in the world) and the builders of that plant said there were more trees here then could ever be cut down...and they were out of business in twenty years because they ran out of trees in the area. Washington State has less then 4% of it's original forest--old growth stands exist only in places that the loggers couldn't get their equipment.
And they want you to look at the Amazon...
Seriously? You're all concerned about the security issues of this situation? Did nobody read the original AP article written by Julie Pace? She handed Democrat voters a BOMBSHELL...and everyone is talking about debt.
From the Original AP article written by Julie Pace (and the REAL meat of the article):
"Huawei, one of the world's largest producers of computer network switching gear, has repeatedly struggled to convince U.S. authorities that they can be trusted to oversee sensitive technology sometimes used in national security work. In 2008, CFIUS concerns led Huawei and private equity firm Bain Capital to abandon an $2.2 billion deal to buy a firm that produces anti-hacking software for the U.S. military"
MY emphasis. Did nobody notice that shortly after Mitt Romney split from Bain Capitol he decided to run for President? Julie Pace just gave us the reason for this...Mitt Romney has been sleeping with the Chinese all along.
Anyone seen the Firehose lately?
It appears to have been removed.
Anyone?
"...as they get ready to download a new version of the flight software on the Mars rover Curiosity..."
Flight software? She flying back too?
" Also, the process is CPU expensive so brute forcing is highly unfeasiable for reasonably length passwords."
Tell that to the 10 million Chinese willing to do it manually for $.18 an hour.
Been there, done that...
As long as you're the General in command, War is always 'remote-control".
"...One thing is clear: the founders and never wanted corporations to have too much power. They had direct knowledge of companies with too much power did through their experiences with the East India Company."
I think our Founding Fathers had more direct interaction with Hudson's Bay Company--probably the closest corporations and government can get to each other without one of them giving birth. In this case, that happened anyway and The United States of America was born.
"I am just virtually certain that if it becomes available, five million will not begin to cover the price of immortality."
I'm sure the University of California at Riverside will hold the patent, so it's up to them, I suppose.
Teetering on the fence...and falling.
Loved it, told everyone I knew about, got served a few re-iterations, didn't tell as many people, found out any application on my computer can throw a plug-in into the works without so much as a hello, stopped telling anyone about it except to point out last "feature".
So what's this Waterfox thing and who the hell is Mr. Alex?
"I'm sorry.. wait, what was the purpose of this article?"
To get the ball rollin' on the violent political upheaval (the clock is ticking--we only have 8 years), and to point out they're doing it wrong--those Chick-fil-A events should have been on the same day.
"Why would 3 failures of the mobile market want to get together?"
Epic fail?
"Basically, you get a new Great War as soon as those who survived the previous one are too frail to prevent it anymore."
I think you can refine that some.
If you take the lives of Grandma, her daughter, and her grand-daughter, overlap them in a time-line taking into consideration age before giving birth, life expectancy and the time grand-daughter and grandma can spend time with each other, you'd end up with something that may also effect the equation--how much information can be passed directly from one generation to another. It is much easier to forget if nobody tells you in the first place.
All that being said, going by averaging the stats for the last three generations (haphazardly gleaned from Wikipedia), arranging them in a time-line and locating the point at which Grandma dies, I come up with roughly 110 years, including 10 years to get things properly fucked up.
But, the point is moot, to quote Jesse Jackson--we live in times unlike any other--and always will--and thus shit like this is pointless.
"The Everquest 2 client includes an in-game web browser derived from Mozilla. Could that have any connection to the plug-in?"
While it could, at this point the plug-in is trivial. Far worse shit is involved. I've outed myself in another Slashdot post. See here for an explanation on that.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3018053&cid=40852721
Here is a link to the thread at the SOE/EQ2 forum, if you wish to see the SOE responses for yourself. From what I've found so far, I believe the purpose of all of this is to track P2P activity, as well as what files have been downloaded with a P2P client, as well as document it all. I can only imagine what they are going to do with the gathered data.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=520848
August 2000, statements by Sony Pictures Entertainment US senior VP Steve Heckler. Seems they weren't fucking around...
"The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake."
Stupid "Post Anonymously" check-box didn't work.
Okies, time to come clean--I was trying to keep Sony from connecting this account to the Sony forum account of mine. Too late now. Deceiving Slashdot readers was not my intention.
I am "Bug", the dude that started that thread on the SOE site. I was trying to get the information I found out about EQ2, and what appears to be a rootkit, posted here on Slashdot without allowing Sony to make any connections between me (and my SOE account), this Slashdot account...and the only computer they didn't get into--this one. Oh, well.
The sole reason I started that thread was to get some feedback from SOE--re-posting those replies here on Slashdot is meaningless. I wanted people to see the SOE responses--denials in particular--first hand and not just take my word on it. That is the reason I posted a link to that thread here on Slashdot--to get word out. The fact I tried to do so anonymously is now moot, but no less regrettable.
The deeper I dig, the more shit I find. I've done everything I said in that thread, including imaging the drive from my wifes computer--that image is in someone elses hands now--but in the meantime I've been dissecting the drive in my wifes XP machine that actually got rooted. I am also quite serious about handing all of this over to my State Attorney General--in the last Sony Rootkit fiasco, Attorneys General were the people that spear-headed the investigations once Mark Russinovich identified XCP (I really wish he'd take a look at this). My understanding of this is limited--someone that really knows what they are doing needs to take a look at this. If any of you are interested in doing so (on a sacrificial machine, of course), EQ2 is Free-to-play and can be installed for free--you don't have to put real information in the account registration if you have no intention of paying for the game. At that point you'd have full access to everything I've found, unless of course they already removed it from the most recent update. I'm also very interested in whether or not ALL of the SOE games are dealing this crap.
Some people in the SOE forums have claimed that they have found up to 16GB of data stored in that "user.dmp" file--after what I've found personally, I believe them. I cringe at the thought of what might be contained in a 16GB "crash report".
PS: I apologize for the all-bold post above--accidentally removed some HTML. Also, my apologies to any that feel I was being deceptive here on Slashdot--I am usually honest and forthright here, and furthermore, posting anonymously like I did felt a little "dirty", regardless of my motives. It will not happen again.
This is the most recent post in that thread. I'm amazed it hasn't been deleted yet. That being said, I post it here on Slashdot for posterity. (I removed some spaces from the post for /. sake, and my emphasis). Somebody needs to get Mark Russinovich looking at this stuff--I'm sure he'd love another swing at the Pinata.
""The question at hand was about the Trusted Site settings. This is a Windows OS setting, it happens to be controllable from either IE or the control panel..."
My point exactly--it is an OS setting, something SOE should not be mucking about in, yet did, and without permission.
"Then please explain LiveDriver.exe
This executable is not installed by any SOE product or used by any SOE product...."
On my wifes XP machine, when EQ2 updated, one of the files that was downloaded was LiveDriverSDK.exe (the .exe installed the .dll, a .xml file and unknown other files, then deleted itself). So I missed a bit on the name of the file, but you should have know what I was referring to, seeing as how you have something very close to what I mentioned.
LiveDriverSDK.dll
Located at C:/Program Files/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/Everquest II
Also...
eq2ui_popup-livedriver.xml
Located at C:/Program Files/Sony Online Entertainment/Installed Games/Everquest II/UI
This appears to be a popup for recording character voices. And you claim nothing called LiveDriver came from SOE?
The EQ2 install directory">was located in C:/Users/Username/AppData/LocalLow/Sony Online Entertainment"
The EQ2 Uninstaller should have removed this. Simple as that. I'm not buying your excuse.
Now, on to another questionable folder far more serious--C:/Crash--My wifes XP machine had two files in here, for a total of 56MBs.
drwtsn32.log (this file can be opened with notepad.exe and be read in plain-text)
I can understand why you might want this file, although it has information in it that you really don't need. The next file is the one that every person that reads this forum needs to inspect on their own machines--this is a serious breach of trust, if not a violation of Federal Wiretap laws. This file may, or may not, be in the C:/Crash folder, depending on whether or not it has been uploaded as the files here are deleted once uploaded.
user.dmp
If you open this file with notepad.exe, what you see is mostly machine/assembly code--unreadable for you and me. Grab that scroll bar on the right and start dragging--you will begin to see code for a graphical interface, frame settings and such. Keep scrolling (I had to scroll down about 80% of the way down the file). If you are like my wife and I, we use a P2P client--that client, specifically BitTorrent, is listed along with a few other applications. What follows is what really matters...a list of every single file downloaded by BitTorrent since my wife last ran CCleaner(set to delete BitTorrent logs), as well as every other file placed in those torrented folders, up to and including update files, patches, cracks, mods and user created files.
Hear me well, Torrenters. SOE is tracking everything you torrent, and doing so directly through your own computer. They are then uploading that data to their own servers via wws_crashreport_uploader.exe.
I do not accept your lies, Sony.
I'm done here. Good day."
"People will say deeply offensive things to you in life..."
True, but this is Twitter. If someone said that to him directly, he could respond with a punch in the face. People say things on Twitter (and elsewhere on the internet) they normally wouldn't only because they think there are no repercussions. I am willing to wager that the person that made that Twitter post wouldn't have said as much to the athlete directly because they know a punch to the face might be a realistic repercussion.
The internet allows for connecting more easily, but it does NOT bring people closer together ('ceptin maybe backpage.com....har, har). If anything, I think the internet estranges us from what is really important and skews our perception of self/other in subtle ways.
" It's one of those touches that I see often overlooked in games..."
And it shouldn't be. Game designers should be taking "The Uncanny Valley" into account when working on such things as animations, facial expressions and such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
I think the focus is more on fluidity then accuracy. I honestly don't understand why motion-capture isn't used more often then it is. Maybe someone can explain why it isn't used in 3d modeling (based on the animations I've seen in games so far), but is used often in motion picture CG. Seems to me that technology could be applied, but perhaps I am unaware of a crucial limitation inherent to 3D modeling--I don't do it for a living.
Speaking of "The Uncanny Valley", does anyone besides me think that people that have had a lot of cosmetic surgery are back-sliding into that Valley? Some of that shit is getting a little creepy. Michael Jackson is the first thing I think of when I hear the words "uncanny valley".