conquer my people
take our planet
force us to ship packages
can I call myself a man if I am slave to the Irken machine?
our futures, crushed like so manly little loving packing peanuts
no, no I say; I must rebel
I, will, switch the addresses on these two boxes
Let the revolution be-
It could be made and shipped realatively cheaply if it used water for the wieght. Addressing the overall concept though, there are a million ways to generate small ammounts of electricity, the challenge is to increase the efficency of products and reduce our needs to the point where this sort of thing becomes viable.
Not off topic in the least, but coincidentally I just did this a few minutes ago upon obtaining a bag of m&ms and remembering this 'copypasta'. I used more of a tournament style bracket so that at the end the competitors would be equally worn. Though there's always an element of chance in natural selection, if m&ms had genetic traits and were bread in the proposed manner you would get the same result, just less efficiently. That aside, the green m&ms seem to be the strongest and won against every competing color with the exception of one yellow m&m which was subsequently destroyed by another green m&m. Coincidence?
I have been slacking off as of late. I'll just have to triple my output from last semester, but I doubt everyone will so I'll have to compensate, maybe twice that? Does it count if I watch a movie again or show it to a group? Frankly, there isn't much worth downloading.
I carry a similar device with me. While it may not be a fully-featured remote it is small and I can use it at home without searching for the remote, when I rent a room with a tv, or if I'm ever in a public place and it's use would not be considered 'fascist imposition of my will upon others'. I also think it would be 'cool' to learn how to pick locks yet I wouldn't abuse that knowledge. I know a few people in my residence who could break into any of the rooms but they are also decent people. Essentially anything we can interact with can be abused in some way or another. This is why we have locks, vehicle and weapon licenses and so fourth in the first place, but there is a balance between crime prevention and personal liberties. Clearly what they did was wrong and there should be consequences but there's no reason to raise the status of something like th TV-b-gone to that of RF jammers. If you are unable to tolerate it simply give your business to places with a strict no TV-b-gone policy (or that simply disable their IR ports) and, as you said, create a market for places that will provide and pleasant atmosphere for you. But if insisting that people who buy these are to be "purged from society" is not self centered and arrogant then I don't know what is.
Just because you already own/bought a CD doesn't mean the music was free. I don't think it would average out to be much less than a dollar per song. Looking at the average size of the files I have, assuming I paid a little less than a dolar for each, and imagining I owned one of them 160GB ipods and filled it with nothing but music, it would just pass $30,000. The average person wouldn't end up with what would be $40,000 worth of music on an ipod but they'd be out several thousand.
Just want to say that, based on personal experience, Verizon really does disable anything they can. Long story short I flashed my fhone with another carier's firmware (obligatorily voiding the warranty) and like magic I could transfer events to the calendar, use bluetooth, etc.; it extended the battery life too. I'd have less to complain about if the money they make off of people emailing pictures to thmselves or downloading ringtones subsidised the cost of the phone, but of the carriers I've seen with more open phones the prices are the same with the 2-year contract alone. Unfortunately profit takes priority over, well, anything that anyone reading/. would want and in that so much is lost.
If we redefine the second by such a margin I'll have to recalibrate the nuclear clock in my basement. A much simpler solution would be to require cars near the equator to vent their exhaust upward durring the day, slightly increasing Earth's orbit, counteracting global warming and eliminating the need to adjust our clocks to compensate for the Eearth's error.
Of course, we'll all be dead by 1012 so it won't make much of a difference either way.
Plausable? Yes. Likely? No. Typicly manufactures don't rely on the operating system to preotect the hardware if it has such a limitation. Even if they do sleep (among other things) can be disabled in windows for any number of reasons such as running a server with the lid closed. If there's a warning then that's different but, if not, then he is doing the right thing. Unfortunately that reasoning does sound like it could stand up legally, comming out of the warranty policy or whatnot. Best of luck.
I have a similar thought to this. I can't believe I'm about to do this but I'm goinf to praise Valve for getting it right. When someone creates a server for a Valve game they have to option of enabeling the VAC (Valve anti-cheat) thing. Only people playing on VAC-enabled servers with a modified game will be banned and once they are banned they are only banned from VAC-enabled servers. Then, although I'd never want to deal with it, there is a system for appeals. I think Microsoft should follow this policy but they are likely more concerned with detering piracy than cheating simply because a console isn't as easely modified to facilitate cheating, or so I think. At least the 360 doesn't require an internet connection, plus there's always Xbox connect. (virtual lan, not Live but it's 'free')
Technicly athiesm is a belief in the lack of devine power. I know I'm picking nits with the athiesm/agnosticism argument but considdering how strongly some athiests respond to the notion of god they are, in a sense, more religious than most people who belive in a god. Irony aside, it shows thaty there is a tendency tward religion however it might be rationalized. Unlike emotions (hormones, etc.) I don't think it has anything to do with evolution though. As I see it religion is just a byproduct of large barins idleing.
I had always wondered why I couldn't take my packpack into class in middle school. I found out later that it was because of guns and now bombs. Personally I'm quite forgetful and having to take select books and binders from my locker rather than caryying them definitely hurt me academic record. Not that it matters in middle-school but it goes to show.
Strangely enough a similar incident happened in my last year at middle school. I did a science project on electrolysis. I had the standard jar of vinegar, nail, penny, wires, and battery. The vinegar disolves the penny, the electricity moves the copper to the nail, etc. My teacher set it outside for the weekend and the assistant principle saw it. Now, my teacher was gone but several others knew what it was including the janitor. She thought it was a bomb, called in the bomb squad to 'dispose of' my science project. It ended up costing the school some $3000 and I lost $3 in aligator clips and a jar. I was quite proud and now that I'm allowed to talk about it it makes for a good story but I'm not sure if I should be more afraid of "the terrorists" or the American public. Note this is pre-9/11, possibly around the school shooting era though.
Regarding the actual event, I'm going to watch some of Aqua Teen Hunger Force not because I like it but out of spite. I was listening to a Boston radio talkshow after I heard the news out of curiosity. One of the main points was that this type of advertising shouldn't even be considdered in the post-9/11 world and that the evil corperation is to blame. One of the "homeland security experts" testified that people should realize that this sort of think can't be done because it will scare people. The irony in all of this is that the actual radio show is doing its part to establish this underlying fear. They even included a sound bite of one of the officils saying the city should be kept "on edge". It was also claimed that the device could clearly be seen as a threat. This doesn't seem to be the case considdering there are over twenty of them, they were up for weeks in multiple cities, and it was presumably reported by a single person in Boston. Unless the responsable party wanted this to happen then there was no malitious intent and there's no need to presecute especially after all of this negative publicity.
It wouldn't be the best but for quick refrence prior to the game or heading up to bat it would be convinient.. I guess. I don't even know the rules of baseball and I'm arguing a point, must be slashdot.
Just another example, but Elder Scrools 4 Oblivion really drives this point home. The concept appealed to me, sandbox gameplay with monsters that level with you, but I discovered as did others that it's not so simple. Upon looking at reviews I found that the only way to beat the game was to micro-manage your character and pick a class with skills you don't want so you don't level up as often. There is no built-in difficulty setting and isn't much of an explination in the game either. By the time I figured this out it was too late; I cold fight some enemies but only one at a time and I would have to wait to recover my health betwen fights, I even fond myself standing on rocks and using other explots to kill enemies that would normally kill me in two strikes. There are of course mods availabe now that fix this problem but I don't have the time or motivation to go back and start a new game. The game -does- look good, but it is a clear example of how this system can work against the player.
Not that the concept is bad. The fact that Oblivion allows non-linear play is one of the main factors in the dificulty of keeping the game consistant. I agree with the parent except I feel that it can be done automaticly to an extent, or the option should be there. Mario Kart 64 comes to mind. The more racers that are ahead of you the better your wepons are and anyone who is behind you is faster. Ultimately though it boils down to user prefrence and the "tuning" of the game in general.
Just because it can be used for illegal purposes doesn't mean it's not a 'good idea'. The demand is there ans while I can't speak for the german legal system but if it's taken down something will show up in it's place.
The world will rejoice when valve cuts off their service. Aside from serving up games all the 'service' does is check to see if a client purchased a game and if the cleint can play a game or connect to a server. (isn't banned, etc.) If valve goes down for some reason or another the servers, which are all privately hosted, won't find the authentication servers and anyone will be able to join. The peroblem with this is obviously that the client needs to connect to the auth server to launch anything, but there will be some sort of a patch released by valve or a third party to restore functionality.
Regarding that, I have cheated valve in the past. For the reasons mentioned in the previously in the "no freedom no purchace" post I didn't want to touch steam and thus wouldn't buy the games. Note that I'm not condoning this; I'm just telling what happened. Anyway, for the longest time I used a utility to launch the games and another to find 'cracked' servers to connect to. I never encountered any problems and the servers would only update once after every three or so of valve's updates. Eventually I became more interested in the games and bought them. Although I could join any server then, I was kiked off no less than five times that day. That and the offline mode only works 1/2 of the time. I could easily 'fix' that, but can't at the risk of having my service revoked. It's a nice concept and it works most of the time, but not always.
If the server stops responding, your house has been destroyed. ...or the internet went out, but anything without internet access is essentially useless anyway.
Also, I have yet to see free glasses or contacts anywhere. Glasses are quite expensive, a bit bulky, and need to be replaced often due to loss or a change of perscription. As far as contacts, those are not free either. Sometimes medical plans cover the cost, on an individual basis, but that certainly does not apply to the majority of visually-impared people.
So some blind people can't afford a computer with a dynamic braille displays or a guide dog. Despite the extent of their disability the blind likely recieve more assistance than other "disadvantaged" groups. I find the fact that a blind person can (more or less) live an independant life impressive. They can use money as it is and they might end up folding different sized money anyway. If someone wanted to, it wouldn't bee too hard to use a debit card for everything by going where they're accepted.
Regarding the proposed change in US currency, while it may not be rocket science it itself would have a significant cost atached. There would be the cost of printing and swapping out the money as well as the cost of adapting existing macienery to the new bills. Vending machiene readers, money sorters/counters, etc. would become obsolete. In the meantime, the entire US population would be inconvinienced, blind people included, and the ecomomy would take a hit. For the cost of the legal procedings and the aftermath we might as well hire full-time assistants for the blind.
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but it's just not practical, even in the long run. Then again, the government isn't exactly the voice of reason.
Off-topic, but this reminds me of the movie The Day of the Triffids (1962) where the world's population is blinded by aliens. Not the best movie but an interesting take on armageddon.
It's probably one of the most circulated ones, easy find.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6330278913 814994
Regarding keyboard durability, it's true that they are lighter and more flexable, but most of them are rather resilient. I got mine 6 years ago for $6 and it's still good as new. The only broken keybaords I've seen are some old ones in public use at my school where some keys don't function and, ironicly, a friend's spill-proof keyboard that was advertized as durable.
That should just about cancel out the money lost at the hands of "PC and hardware enthusiasts" who provide billions of dollars worth of free piracy. Sad thing is, I'm half-seious.
Slashdot Mirror
conquer my people
take our planet
force us to ship packages
can I call myself a man if I am slave to the Irken machine?
our futures, crushed like so manly little loving packing peanuts
no, no I say; I must rebel
I, will, switch the addresses on these two boxes
Let the revolution be-
It could be made and shipped realatively cheaply if it used water for the wieght. Addressing the overall concept though, there are a million ways to generate small ammounts of electricity, the challenge is to increase the efficency of products and reduce our needs to the point where this sort of thing becomes viable.
Not off topic in the least, but coincidentally I just did this a few minutes ago upon obtaining a bag of m&ms and remembering this 'copypasta'. I used more of a tournament style bracket so that at the end the competitors would be equally worn. Though there's always an element of chance in natural selection, if m&ms had genetic traits and were bread in the proposed manner you would get the same result, just less efficiently. That aside, the green m&ms seem to be the strongest and won against every competing color with the exception of one yellow m&m which was subsequently destroyed by another green m&m. Coincidence?
I have been slacking off as of late. I'll just have to triple my output from last semester, but I doubt everyone will so I'll have to compensate, maybe twice that? Does it count if I watch a movie again or show it to a group? Frankly, there isn't much worth downloading.
I carry a similar device with me. While it may not be a fully-featured remote it is small and I can use it at home without searching for the remote, when I rent a room with a tv, or if I'm ever in a public place and it's use would not be considered 'fascist imposition of my will upon others'. I also think it would be 'cool' to learn how to pick locks yet I wouldn't abuse that knowledge. I know a few people in my residence who could break into any of the rooms but they are also decent people. Essentially anything we can interact with can be abused in some way or another. This is why we have locks, vehicle and weapon licenses and so fourth in the first place, but there is a balance between crime prevention and personal liberties. Clearly what they did was wrong and there should be consequences but there's no reason to raise the status of something like th TV-b-gone to that of RF jammers. If you are unable to tolerate it simply give your business to places with a strict no TV-b-gone policy (or that simply disable their IR ports) and, as you said, create a market for places that will provide and pleasant atmosphere for you. But if insisting that people who buy these are to be "purged from society" is not self centered and arrogant then I don't know what is.
Just because you already own/bought a CD doesn't mean the music was free. I don't think it would average out to be much less than a dollar per song. Looking at the average size of the files I have, assuming I paid a little less than a dolar for each, and imagining I owned one of them 160GB ipods and filled it with nothing but music, it would just pass $30,000. The average person wouldn't end up with what would be $40,000 worth of music on an ipod but they'd be out several thousand.
Just want to say that, based on personal experience, Verizon really does disable anything they can. Long story short I flashed my fhone with another carier's firmware (obligatorily voiding the warranty) and like magic I could transfer events to the calendar, use bluetooth, etc.; it extended the battery life too. I'd have less to complain about if the money they make off of people emailing pictures to thmselves or downloading ringtones subsidised the cost of the phone, but of the carriers I've seen with more open phones the prices are the same with the 2-year contract alone. Unfortunately profit takes priority over, well, anything that anyone reading /. would want and in that so much is lost.
If we redefine the second by such a margin I'll have to recalibrate the nuclear clock in my basement. A much simpler solution would be to require cars near the equator to vent their exhaust upward durring the day, slightly increasing Earth's orbit, counteracting global warming and eliminating the need to adjust our clocks to compensate for the Eearth's error. Of course, we'll all be dead by 1012 so it won't make much of a difference either way.
Plausable? Yes. Likely? No. Typicly manufactures don't rely on the operating system to preotect the hardware if it has such a limitation. Even if they do sleep (among other things) can be disabled in windows for any number of reasons such as running a server with the lid closed. If there's a warning then that's different but, if not, then he is doing the right thing. Unfortunately that reasoning does sound like it could stand up legally, comming out of the warranty policy or whatnot. Best of luck.
I have a similar thought to this. I can't believe I'm about to do this but I'm goinf to praise Valve for getting it right. When someone creates a server for a Valve game they have to option of enabeling the VAC (Valve anti-cheat) thing. Only people playing on VAC-enabled servers with a modified game will be banned and once they are banned they are only banned from VAC-enabled servers. Then, although I'd never want to deal with it, there is a system for appeals. I think Microsoft should follow this policy but they are likely more concerned with detering piracy than cheating simply because a console isn't as easely modified to facilitate cheating, or so I think. At least the 360 doesn't require an internet connection, plus there's always Xbox connect. (virtual lan, not Live but it's 'free')
Technicly athiesm is a belief in the lack of devine power. I know I'm picking nits with the athiesm/agnosticism argument but considdering how strongly some athiests respond to the notion of god they are, in a sense, more religious than most people who belive in a god. Irony aside, it shows thaty there is a tendency tward religion however it might be rationalized. Unlike emotions (hormones, etc.) I don't think it has anything to do with evolution though. As I see it religion is just a byproduct of large barins idleing.
I had always wondered why I couldn't take my packpack into class in middle school. I found out later that it was because of guns and now bombs. Personally I'm quite forgetful and having to take select books and binders from my locker rather than caryying them definitely hurt me academic record. Not that it matters in middle-school but it goes to show.
Strangely enough a similar incident happened in my last year at middle school. I did a science project on electrolysis. I had the standard jar of vinegar, nail, penny, wires, and battery. The vinegar disolves the penny, the electricity moves the copper to the nail, etc. My teacher set it outside for the weekend and the assistant principle saw it. Now, my teacher was gone but several others knew what it was including the janitor. She thought it was a bomb, called in the bomb squad to 'dispose of' my science project. It ended up costing the school some $3000 and I lost $3 in aligator clips and a jar. I was quite proud and now that I'm allowed to talk about it it makes for a good story but I'm not sure if I should be more afraid of "the terrorists" or the American public. Note this is pre-9/11, possibly around the school shooting era though.
Regarding the actual event, I'm going to watch some of Aqua Teen Hunger Force not because I like it but out of spite. I was listening to a Boston radio talkshow after I heard the news out of curiosity. One of the main points was that this type of advertising shouldn't even be considdered in the post-9/11 world and that the evil corperation is to blame. One of the "homeland security experts" testified that people should realize that this sort of think can't be done because it will scare people. The irony in all of this is that the actual radio show is doing its part to establish this underlying fear. They even included a sound bite of one of the officils saying the city should be kept "on edge". It was also claimed that the device could clearly be seen as a threat. This doesn't seem to be the case considdering there are over twenty of them, they were up for weeks in multiple cities, and it was presumably reported by a single person in Boston. Unless the responsable party wanted this to happen then there was no malitious intent and there's no need to presecute especially after all of this negative publicity.
It wouldn't be the best but for quick refrence prior to the game or heading up to bat it would be convinient.. I guess. I don't even know the rules of baseball and I'm arguing a point, must be slashdot.
Just another example, but Elder Scrools 4 Oblivion really drives this point home. The concept appealed to me, sandbox gameplay with monsters that level with you, but I discovered as did others that it's not so simple. Upon looking at reviews I found that the only way to beat the game was to micro-manage your character and pick a class with skills you don't want so you don't level up as often. There is no built-in difficulty setting and isn't much of an explination in the game either. By the time I figured this out it was too late; I cold fight some enemies but only one at a time and I would have to wait to recover my health betwen fights, I even fond myself standing on rocks and using other explots to kill enemies that would normally kill me in two strikes. There are of course mods availabe now that fix this problem but I don't have the time or motivation to go back and start a new game. The game -does- look good, but it is a clear example of how this system can work against the player.
Not that the concept is bad. The fact that Oblivion allows non-linear play is one of the main factors in the dificulty of keeping the game consistant. I agree with the parent except I feel that it can be done automaticly to an extent, or the option should be there. Mario Kart 64 comes to mind. The more racers that are ahead of you the better your wepons are and anyone who is behind you is faster. Ultimately though it boils down to user prefrence and the "tuning" of the game in general.
Just because it can be used for illegal purposes doesn't mean it's not a 'good idea'. The demand is there ans while I can't speak for the german legal system but if it's taken down something will show up in it's place.
The world will rejoice when valve cuts off their service. Aside from serving up games all the 'service' does is check to see if a client purchased a game and if the cleint can play a game or connect to a server. (isn't banned, etc.) If valve goes down for some reason or another the servers, which are all privately hosted, won't find the authentication servers and anyone will be able to join. The peroblem with this is obviously that the client needs to connect to the auth server to launch anything, but there will be some sort of a patch released by valve or a third party to restore functionality. Regarding that, I have cheated valve in the past. For the reasons mentioned in the previously in the "no freedom no purchace" post I didn't want to touch steam and thus wouldn't buy the games. Note that I'm not condoning this; I'm just telling what happened. Anyway, for the longest time I used a utility to launch the games and another to find 'cracked' servers to connect to. I never encountered any problems and the servers would only update once after every three or so of valve's updates. Eventually I became more interested in the games and bought them. Although I could join any server then, I was kiked off no less than five times that day. That and the offline mode only works 1/2 of the time. I could easily 'fix' that, but can't at the risk of having my service revoked. It's a nice concept and it works most of the time, but not always.
Also, I have yet to see free glasses or contacts anywhere. Glasses are quite expensive, a bit bulky, and need to be replaced often due to loss or a change of perscription. As far as contacts, those are not free either. Sometimes medical plans cover the cost, on an individual basis, but that certainly does not apply to the majority of visually-impared people.
So some blind people can't afford a computer with a dynamic braille displays or a guide dog. Despite the extent of their disability the blind likely recieve more assistance than other "disadvantaged" groups. I find the fact that a blind person can (more or less) live an independant life impressive. They can use money as it is and they might end up folding different sized money anyway. If someone wanted to, it wouldn't bee too hard to use a debit card for everything by going where they're accepted.
Regarding the proposed change in US currency, while it may not be rocket science it itself would have a significant cost atached. There would be the cost of printing and swapping out the money as well as the cost of adapting existing macienery to the new bills. Vending machiene readers, money sorters/counters, etc. would become obsolete. In the meantime, the entire US population would be inconvinienced, blind people included, and the ecomomy would take a hit. For the cost of the legal procedings and the aftermath we might as well hire full-time assistants for the blind.
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but it's just not practical, even in the long run. Then again, the government isn't exactly the voice of reason.
Off-topic, but this reminds me of the movie The Day of the Triffids (1962) where the world's population is blinded by aliens. Not the best movie but an interesting take on armageddon.
It's probably one of the most circulated ones, easy find. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6330278913 814994
Regarding keyboard durability, it's true that they are lighter and more flexable, but most of them are rather resilient. I got mine 6 years ago for $6 and it's still good as new. The only broken keybaords I've seen are some old ones in public use at my school where some keys don't function and, ironicly, a friend's spill-proof keyboard that was advertized as durable.
If you're running Vista rumor has it you can get up to an 8x8 grid.
Technically that's where all of the anti-cheat algorithms are headed. We could definitely use something like that, but it's cat and mouse.
That should just about cancel out the money lost at the hands of "PC and hardware enthusiasts" who provide billions of dollars worth of free piracy. Sad thing is, I'm half-seious.