Possibly, but Iran even if they have a nuclear weapon won't possibly use it as it would mean 100% of their country would die due to Israel's 100-200 "unofficial but everyone knows they exist" warheads pointed its way. I'd honestly be more worried about Pakistan and a nuke or two getting sold off to some group in Afghanistan than thinking that Iran is stupid enough to actually do something like that at a future date.
When DSN came out it was the result of a rush-job(quickest to date in the industry at the time for a major series) by Paramount in an attempt at dealing with Babylon 5 and its perceived threat. As such, it was boring, inane, and the single worst Sci-Fi series by a major studio in the last couple of decades, with the possible exception of Andromeda.(The recent Flash Gordon series would have gotten third place, but it was mercifully killed off). Thankfully almost nobody under *40* remembers it, so for a while there I thought that there was some hope for TV in the U.S.
I'm a talkative guy. To the point where most of the time my friends are telling me to shut the hell up, but even I am at a loss of words to describe how bland, useless, and thing will be. Even I can't explain how bad it will be except to say that I could write a Thesis on the badness of it and still not have covered a tenth of it all. I honestly feel for the poor people. From the developers and programmers to the artists to the actors and everyone else. Paramount has this pathological desire to milk this dead rotting carcass for every last drop of blood that it can. There's a reason none of the characters want to go to any of the conventions - it's career suicide and most of them would rather do their taxes or get a root canal at this point. But enough ranting, let's get down to just a little of why it will suck:
1 - The big problem with the TV series was that like my title says, "To Boldly Go... Nowhere" It's a series about a bunch of guys on a station in the middle of nowhere and that's it. Paramount really did cobble this turd together in 3-4 months in order to beat the competition to the punch. And then refused to let it die until Babylon 5 had died off(mission accomplished!). Now think about translating all of that into a MMOG. It's like playing EVE online with only ONE STATION. One giant area with basically nothing to do but walk around and do... nothing. And this stems from the fact that the original had nothing to do other than maybe deal with keeping the station from falling apart. There is no real plot or action behind it all. Maybe this would work as a cute web-driven single player resource management game, but as a MMOG? What in the world is Paramount thinking?
2 - The setting is ancient and played out. Literally nobody under 40 watched this show(maybe 35 if they caught the reruns), so it utterly fails to even come with a DECADE of the core MMOG demographic. "Hey - let's make a MMOG of stuff only OLD PEOPLE will understand!".
3 - The series was not about combat or anything fun. DDO, as perhaps one of the worst currently running examples of MMORPG gaming, still has a basic "kill the monsters get the loot" concept which works. There's something a little fun there for the fan of grinding. And even stuff like the typical crap out of Korea appeals to the collect everything and chat on your cell phone at the same time crowd.
4 - Free to play. Now, this seems like a bonus at first, but free to play means three things for the players. Advertising, spending money to obtain even a reasonable character, and a budget for support and upgrades that is microscopic. DDO is a great example, again, of this idiocy in action. New Update! Now the same exact 5 monster templates... underwater! Good games make you pay and deliver huge content for your hard earned money. Free games usually get a few cookie-cutter ad-ons thrown in and you're done.
5 - Perhaps the saddest thing of all is how many kids will try this and be turned off of MMOGs or go back to stuff like WoW. It's truly amazing that after five years, nobody has come up with a decent replacement for EVE. Consider that seriously for a moment. Five years and it's still alive and the best outer-space MMOG that is available. That really makes me want to cry. Nobody is stepping up to the plate. Nobody is offering an alternative. And when something like this comes along, it just makes the situation that much worse. Paramount could have done a space-based exploration MMOG based upon the NEW SERIES, and perhaps been a little bit fun, but this is just utter failure waiting to happen.
SELinux, while flawed, is a massive step in the right direction, though. I'd liken it to at least putting up security cameras and reinforced plexi-glass at the local bank. It won't stop real hardened thieves, but it will deter the random criminal most of the time. As it is, on my Windows box, I have to have the following running:
Registry locker. Massive oversight by MS that I have to ADD back in. Firewall to lock all unused ports and sharing/connections *by default*. Also a massive oversight that I have to effectively add back into the OS. Popup Blocker - because most browsers still assume, wrongly so, that the default state is happy and nice and trusting. Especially where Java is concerned. AV software - because the security is still a massive headache. DNS blocker - because this also was not part of the system by default.(it does exist, but it's useless garbage)
5 programs just to get online. And it's only going to get worse until the OS makers get rightfully paranoid and distrustful.
Playing whack a mole with stuff like antivirus, antispam, antiwhatever suggests your operating system is broken.
Correct. The two most common operating systems are truly broken at this point and need a full re-write with security as their primary goal. Apple does a bit better, but it's a security joke right of the box. Windows is a mass of Swiss cheese that has a welcome sign up. And you're right, playing whack-a-mole never works. And, no, Linux also is no magic cure, either. It just has too few users to be a target of botnets and the like.
We need a new generation of operating systems that do it right and are designed from the beginning with the idea that your machine WILL be attacked and it WILL be online and vulnerable unless it's designed to make it difficult for hackers.
The proper response should have been, and still is, to obtain the information from the company concerning where the pet was sold/make a case over that. Business information isn't the same as personal data, especially when it is backed by a request from the courts. Obtaining such a request against the company who re-sold his property illegally is a 20-minute deal in court.
And then go after the pet store or whomever re-sold the pet to the new owners without checking for a microchip first.(or ignoring it) Get *them* to contact the owners and notify them of the mistake or sue them to get a replacement dog.
The Pet ID company can't do anything and yes, he went after the wrong people here.
Moral of this story - always follow the money and always attack where it changes hands.
Title pretty much says it all. I'm not interested in "cheap" and "easy" and "free" energy or anything else if it's not going to ever make it to market. As it is, despite several years of "breakthroughs" in solar power, if you went out today to get solar installed for your home, you would be using 1980s era technology at thousands of dollars per KW.
What's interesting about the first generation models as well is that they actually have a full PS2 inside them. When the wireless DualShock controllers came out originally, I got one from Japan 6 months early and the rumble feature worked with every PS2 game. The first gen also works with USB to PS2 adaptors(Guitar Hero and so on). The original two machines also as a result can play PS1 games. The latter software emulation PS2 models work 50% for PS1 and 75% for PS2.
It's a shame that they don't support it any more, because PS2 titles are plentiful and cheap. And often better than the PS3 in game-play.
But back to the topic. I can understand emulation, but the question is WHY. Why turn a $300+ top-end gaming console into a $20 garage-sale relic from 15 years ago?
The title pretty much says it all. People in art don't program games at all. They instead get hired to do levels and art for them. I'd just take a basic game that's well understood and have them make their own custom levels for it.
(summation of above post) And the new generation of industry moves to China where none of this nonsense exists.
All we really are doing is causing such an unfriendly legal environment in the U.S. that soon nobody will want to start new businesses here. Oh, wait. We already are losing industry to China. I guess that means that the worse it gets, the less likely that it will ever come back. So much for a "recovery".
Technically it would fill in with rain water over time and become Lake France. Or possibly the French Sea if the explosion is large enough to reach the Atlantic.
is it really so unreasonable to merely subtract one more deity from that list without being labelled a blind faith fanatic of atheism?
What's interesting is that if you look at Christianity as a set of ethics and beliefs only, it operates exactly the same. You can remove God from the equation and it would change virtually nothing in how it is currently practiced by the vast majority of people in the U.S. This isn't to say that they don't practice it properly, either. It's just that if you look at the New Testament as only wise words and teachings to follow, what Jesus is/was really doesn't make a huge difference. Most of Modern Christianity, in fact, is pretty much simple common sense.
Fraud is a crime, and law enforcement should be involved. Of course, IANAL.
I've been through this myself in the past. You don't need to be a laywer or anything to know that identity theft is a crime. Duh.
But what's really going on here isn't identity theft so much as hijacking a website. Since it's not actually identity theft in terms that the police understand, and is a more a civil dispute, don't bother with them right now.
Let me tell you something I learned early in life:
Lawyers and lots of detailed paperwork are awesome in their ability to kick someone's ass for you. It's not just "get a lawyer". It's "If you want to crush this punk like the bug he is, use a two ton hammer." A Lawyer is just the means to do so in this case. And this also applies to the case itself. Go in prepared to crush the competition into a thin paste. Anything else will be seen as weakness and exploited. In short, grow a pair and put on your Alpha-male pants. (though the story does sound fishy and more akin to fishing for "how do I save my ass" than anything else, I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt as I know money is tight for many people now)
True. But a minor note: You need twice the resolution and twice the refresh rate. An acceptable minimum to not suffer from motion effects/look smooth is 240hz. Double that is 480hz. A few LCD sets have this. But you also need twice 720P, which is 2560*1440 for "720 3D". Sets have a ways to go to reach this, but it should be possible in a few years.(it would revert to 1920*1080 and a slight black area around it for 1080P material) 1440P sets are in development as we speak, since it's likely the proper replacement/upgrade for a 1080P format(supports pixel doubling cleanly and enables proper 3D.
True. The shutter mechanism is a bad way to deal with it, since people's eyes react differently and at different rates to each other (astigmatism, reflexes, and so on). It needs to be done in-screen. That said, I have seen a high refresh rate plasma set that is free of artifacts and looks as smooth as a CRT set while in 3D mode, so it should be a viable option in ten years or so.(the resolution and refresh rate needs to be double the current state of the art)
But the big deal, is that this is a lot like digital versus analog audio. Unless the entire mastering process is done in one format, it often sounds like rubbish. Now, converting from analog sound to digital sound is a process that they have worked hard on for the last twenty years to where it's pretty much perfected, but they are just barely getting started in film(doubly so since our eyes are many times more sensitive than our ears)
Converting from analog film to digital leads to those headache-inducing side effects the vast majority of the time, since the 3D has to be clean and literally per-pixel accurate to be effective. Computer programs can do this already, so it does work well on your PC with those special glasses. But as long as they stubbornly rely on film for movies and TV, it's going to be an uphill battle.
So what do you do if it's an outdoor shot or at night? There are severe limitations with film that can't be worked around. Film is still not close to what our eyes can perceive. It's close, but at best it's always been a case of "looks fairly close... well, we can't really do any better anyways". If it was as easy as you say, anyone could grab a camera and shoot a film. The attempts that I have seen that have tried to impart greater depth look distorted and unrealistic or were shot under extremely controlled environments. They can do this and make great posters and still shots, but for action or anything difficult, it's just not going to give good results. Film-based 3D has tried to overcome some of this limitation at times, but it's just too imprecise and honestly gives me a headache after an hour or so. It's a lot like watching a bad first generation LCD HDTV where everything has blurring and artifacts around the edges.
Reliance on film is the main problem, as we both know. But 95%+ of the motion picture industry is still using film, so maybe they just don't care or just don't realize what can be gained(or didn't until Avatar came out). Avatar's insane cost, though, tempers their excitement. They are in an economic crunch and naturally are loathe to spend that type of money. Each minute of Avatar's footage takes an astounding 18GB of storage without compression and they had to build a huge server farm to handle the post-processing. It ranks in the top 200 supercomputers - this isn't stuff most studios want or know how to deal with at this point.
Still, if you want it to look "real"(not mostly realistic or how we're used to seeing films), you need to get rid of the film and move to digital. But then you need to find a way to get around sensor and lens limitations that plague digital. I can't believe that we're still using a Bayer type pattern at this stage in the game. Since nobody that I know of makes a camera (*remember, we're talking purely cinematography uses and NOT consumer grade cameras* ) that uses on-sensor HDR or bracketing and blending to regain this lost information, you're back to where you started. But, Digital 3D, unlike film, does work as has been shown. I can watch it and the alignment and clarity is such that I never get a headache while watching it.
But to get back to the original post here, 3D TVs are just not doing 3D digital(due to lack of hardware/format issues and the general lack of digital 3D films), and until they can/do do it, they will remain a fancy trick and nothing else. Maybe in 20 years or so. Probably not even then.
Post-production expenses are higher for film, but the software and equipment(production as well as converting theaters) for 3D digital is very cutting edge and hard to justify the cost of for most studios(who wrongly see Digital 3D mostly as a gimmick). They have film cameras already and so there's really little cost for them other than maybe repairs and replacing damaged units and so on. Yes, the cost is less in the long run, but it's a large one-time sum to make the transition. The entire Digital Cinematography movement didn't even really get started until Lucas used it in 2002. Most studios aren't using digital currently.
I found this online as well in an article about the subject: "Since not all theaters currently have digital projection systems, even if a movie is shot and post-produced digitally, it must be transferred to film if a large theatrical release is planned."
So film is still used for most every movie out there. And as such, the issues of optics and their limitations are still present with film. You can't get large depth of field with 2D images without making enormous sacrifices. Just ask any professional photographer. That movement in the 1930s unfortunately was the exception to the rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_focus As you'll note, the article makes mention of how almost no modern films make use of this technique. There are limitations that it creates for the director that most just don't want to deal with these days. Digital 3D is a very quick and simple method to regain this effect and make your film look more realistic without changing your filming style whatsoever. It's a win-win scenario, as Avatar showed. Done properly, it breathes life back into an otherwise aging and limited format.
http://luminous-landscape.com/ This site has a vast number of real experts who frequent it that can explain the mechanics of optics and lenses and why the limitations cannot be overcome without major difficulty. Explore it at your leisure. This forum isn't the place to discuss technical details in depth.
It's because the lenses that the cameras use have limits to their depth of field that cannot really be overcome without artificially altering the film itself to give *back* the lost depth of field and focus, especially at low lighting, that we normally see with our eyes.
What made Avatar so great from a visual perspective was that it gave the film a *realistic* depth of field as if you were looking at it in real life instead of the flat, blurry, and out of focus way that film tends to look. We've just become so used to the way that film looks that we're desensitized to it and think that it's "correct". The reason people thought that it wasn't anything special was because they were expecting "3-D" type cheesy effects instead of a barely noticeable but correct "fix" for the problem of flat projection surfaces and optical limitations of the lenses(cameras as well as the projector itself).
But to adequately pull this off, it almost has to be done at the pixel level so that it's not noticeable(the difference between Avatar with the glasses off and on while watching it was barely noticeable other than the increased depth of focus). This means non-digital filming will always look poor and incorrect. But digital filming is still horrendously expensive. Kind of a catch-22 for the next few years until it becomes affordable to shoot in digital.
Your proposal would work best, to be honest, if the major backbone providers did this to the entire ISP instead of leaving the ISP to half-assed "police" its members. If a large amount of spam is coming from a provider, shutting it off entirely will get them to comply with their terms(which I can guarantee has terms and conditions concerning malicious use and so on). It's currently entirely within their bounds to do so but to date, they still refuse to do it. It's also not rocket science to see where the spam and activity is coming from.
I bet if Earthlink (as an example) had a quarter of its network taken down it would scrub the spammers and infected accounts off of its servers in under 24 hours. And for a small country that might be home to a major control center, well, having the entire country go black until it is fixed would certainly get some action I'd wager. Having your DS4 and DS5 lines go down gets your attention immediately.
It should be up to the major companies that run the Internet to do the policing and not the Government. The more that they refuse to do their job, the more they end up being taken over by government agencies. Which means more and more of the Internet is controlled by just a couple of countries, essentially, which is obviously a bad thing in the long term.
The real issue, and I know It's been said in other articles(but bears repeating), is that the whole Linux industry needs to get together and start, well, acting LIKE an industry. The problem is that it right now has an image amongst businesses as a bunch of guys in their garage who are tinkering with it, almost akin to shareware developers.
If you want the public to embrace it, you have to focus on businesses embracing it first. Now, I know that there is a strong anti-corporate undertone to Linux as well, which isn't helping, but it has to be done. They need to get together, set strong standards, and start streamlining it (as well as marketing it) for business use. They need to ditch the inane "mascot" and other drivel and market it as the OS equivalent of aerospace engineering. Hardcore, no-nonsense, and efficient at what it does. If you want your business to run faster for less money, while having less problems and crashes, run this. If you want real security, even if your employees mess up and visit sites they shouldn't, run this. True, you will need more highly educated support staff, which will cost a bit extra on your payroll, but your next hardware upgrade costs will be 1/10th of what they were last time. (and so on)
Because what we have now is the marketing equivalent of "as seen on TV" "look at this knife cut through a tin can!" type late-night advertising. So even if it is the best thing out there and is free(or nearly so), nobody in the business world wants to buy it because of the image problem that it currently has. And without big companies willing to go in a different direction, it will remain a scenario where "I'm not willing to risk my job over this" for most IT departments.
True, but in a way, it does eventually get to the administrators. The interesting thing is that the results are going to be clumped in a few bad schools and even that much will be useful to the people in Sacramento. I'd imagine that they are happily awaiting the report so that they can adjust the funding levels and know where to make budget cuts first.
I live in the Los Angeles area myself, and it really is verging on third-world bad in the LAUSD. The state is broke and there are too many failing institutions. It basically has to close about 20-30% of schools and colleges statewide or raise taxes to nearly double what it's currently charging for education. They would love to know where to cut first. But the unions and schools do a very good job of hiding the information from the public to the point where it's impossible to tell which schools should be closed and which ones should be saved.
Also, yes, the teachers deserve nothing in the way of protection from scrutiny. If you are a public employee and you do a half-assed job and make mistakes, you are supposed to be in serious trouble. If you don't like it, teach in a private school.
(2)... Or hear the news. Or the weather if the sky looks dangerous...
I think this is actually a good feature, since hardly anyone listens to TV or radio and there's a real potential concern about half of the population not being able to hear any civil defense system broadcast or the like.
Plus, about 15-20% of new phones have it already. It's a nice feature to have even if you only rarely use it.
It would make more sense to have the beam act as a boring device and inject something down the "tunnel" that it creates. A vacuum energy detonation comes to mind as the best option, since it would create a massive sudden explosion that would easily break a planet into pieces if it was planted at the center of its core. The device itself could be as small as a typical nuclear bomb. Assuming some sort of high-tech device to harness the vacuum energy in a baseball sized space, naturally. The entire rest of the Death Star would be to facilitate the boring and launching. That's why there's no center beam from the "dish" - the payload fires from there down the inside of the "laser" like a rifle barrel. A laser that can bore a 1-2 miter wide hole through a planet I can just manage to comprehend. Beyond that, no - not going to work any other way.
You beat me to it. The fact is that this is all good and we should be having a small party in response.
1 - The *only* way to possibly get out of this hellhole of a depression that we are in is to train the next generation with better skills and knowledge to overcome the "brain drain" of the last decade that has affected much of the U.S. If we spend nothing else at this point, education should be #1 on the list. So spending 100 billion on education is a good thing. Note - this is also critical as many state college systems are in the verge of collapsing. As it is, the university system in California(as an example) has raised tuition to $5000 a quarter and reduced enrollment by 30%. This is the real legacy of the last twenty years of idiocy in D.C. - we need training and degrees to be competitive versus China and the rest of the world and only the wealthy can afford to obtain it. Claiming funding education is a bad thing is inane.
2 - Green Jobs (tm) come from education and new knowledge. They are the guy in the small company who invents a better solar cell and so on(shoot, a quarter or more of the news here on Slashdot is about stuff like this it seems). Microsoft can't "green" its way out of a paper bag, and neither can Apple. Our problem in the past was that we didn't immediately start to rebuild from the ground up. But that's kind of understandable as the number of people in the White House and Congress who understand economics without the help of "advisers" and "experts" (who religiously believe their economic theories as a rule) are a mere handful. Obama was elected and handed Bush and Clinton's mess. So he called in "the experts" who told him that this wasn't a depression and it would be all rosy and so on. Well, at least some help for education and job training is finally coming now that they realize that it's hit the fan.
3 - As Dachshund pointed out, a large(read enormous) amount of money flows overseas and we like idiots don't tax it. If we should be taxing anyone first, it should be the tax dodgers, foreign companies, and others who are abusing the system while outside of the U.S. If it was me, I'd have a 100% tax on all money going in or out of places like the Cayman Islands.
4 - And of course, at the end, the best part. 1 *trillion* in reduced spending(WTF? Wait - Congress actually reducing spending to pay for something? (checks to see if Hell froze over)). This alone should get everyone celebrating. But I suspect that it's a bit more about party politics for most people at this point.
Another great old game to play is/are the X-Wing games. With a little tweaking, you can run them in Windows. It's perhaps the first full-featured 3D space combat simulator(yes, I know about Elite and older stuff, but for Windows, this was pretty much the best of the lot in the DOS days). Tie Fighter was the best, IMO, since you could customize your load-out and it supported high resolution graphics.
And it was hard. It really felt like an accomplishment when you finally finished the entire game. Not 10 hours to get through like Prey. Try 50-100 hours to get through a game that originally fit in 20MB. Doom was the same, with Doom 2 being even better. Hours and hours to play and you never felt like you were wasting your money. Conversely, I played Doom 3 in 6-7 hours and it was linear, predictable, and just really didn't require any skill. I can still remember running out of ammo in Doom and having to get VERY creative to get more ammo or kill the monsters. "Should I use my pistol to save ammo or maybe my 20 shotgun shells will last untill the end of the level..."
Old games have enormous value. You can easily get the old Ultima games, as an example, and for anyone under 20, they are quite compelling and "new". Sure, the graphics are weak, but it's like a typical Nintendo DS game(not really much worse than that) times 50 in scale. Ultima 4 was by far the best, with I don't know how many hours (100+?) to complete. X-Com is also another gem worth every penny(available on Steam, IIRC). You can put 40-50 hours into it and it still feels great, even years later.
Slashdot Mirror
Possibly, but Iran even if they have a nuclear weapon won't possibly use it as it would mean 100% of their country would die due to Israel's 100-200 "unofficial but everyone knows they exist" warheads pointed its way. I'd honestly be more worried about Pakistan and a nuke or two getting sold off to some group in Afghanistan than thinking that Iran is stupid enough to actually do something like that at a future date.
When DSN came out it was the result of a rush-job(quickest to date in the industry at the time for a major series) by Paramount in an attempt at dealing with Babylon 5 and its perceived threat. As such, it was boring, inane, and the single worst Sci-Fi series by a major studio in the last couple of decades, with the possible exception of Andromeda.(The recent Flash Gordon series would have gotten third place, but it was mercifully killed off). Thankfully almost nobody under *40* remembers it, so for a while there I thought that there was some hope for TV in the U.S.
I'm a talkative guy. To the point where most of the time my friends are telling me to shut the hell up, but even I am at a loss of words to describe how bland, useless, and thing will be. Even I can't explain how bad it will be except to say that I could write a Thesis on the badness of it and still not have covered a tenth of it all. I honestly feel for the poor people. From the developers and programmers to the artists to the actors and everyone else. Paramount has this pathological desire to milk this dead rotting carcass for every last drop of blood that it can. There's a reason none of the characters want to go to any of the conventions - it's career suicide and most of them would rather do their taxes or get a root canal at this point. But enough ranting, let's get down to just a little of why it will suck:
1 - The big problem with the TV series was that like my title says, "To Boldly Go... Nowhere" It's a series about a bunch of guys on a station in the middle of nowhere and that's it. Paramount really did cobble this turd together in 3-4 months in order to beat the competition to the punch. And then refused to let it die until Babylon 5 had died off(mission accomplished!). Now think about translating all of that into a MMOG. It's like playing EVE online with only ONE STATION. One giant area with basically nothing to do but walk around and do... nothing. And this stems from the fact that the original had nothing to do other than maybe deal with keeping the station from falling apart. There is no real plot or action behind it all. Maybe this would work as a cute web-driven single player resource management game, but as a MMOG? What in the world is Paramount thinking?
2 - The setting is ancient and played out. Literally nobody under 40 watched this show(maybe 35 if they caught the reruns), so it utterly fails to even come with a DECADE of the core MMOG demographic. "Hey - let's make a MMOG of stuff only OLD PEOPLE will understand!".
3 - The series was not about combat or anything fun. DDO, as perhaps one of the worst currently running examples of MMORPG gaming, still has a basic "kill the monsters get the loot" concept which works. There's something a little fun there for the fan of grinding. And even stuff like the typical crap out of Korea appeals to the collect everything and chat on your cell phone at the same time crowd.
4 - Free to play. Now, this seems like a bonus at first, but free to play means three things for the players. Advertising, spending money to obtain even a reasonable character, and a budget for support and upgrades that is microscopic. DDO is a great example, again, of this idiocy in action. New Update! Now the same exact 5 monster templates... underwater! Good games make you pay and deliver huge content for your hard earned money. Free games usually get a few cookie-cutter ad-ons thrown in and you're done.
5 - Perhaps the saddest thing of all is how many kids will try this and be turned off of MMOGs or go back to stuff like WoW. It's truly amazing that after five years, nobody has come up with a decent replacement for EVE. Consider that seriously for a moment. Five years and it's still alive and the best outer-space MMOG that is available. That really makes me want to cry. Nobody is stepping up to the plate. Nobody is offering an alternative. And when something like this comes along, it just makes the situation that much worse. Paramount could have done a space-based exploration MMOG based upon the NEW SERIES, and perhaps been a little bit fun, but this is just utter failure waiting to happen.
SELinux, while flawed, is a massive step in the right direction, though. I'd liken it to at least putting up security cameras and reinforced plexi-glass at the local bank. It won't stop real hardened thieves, but it will deter the random criminal most of the time. As it is, on my Windows box, I have to have the following running:
Registry locker. Massive oversight by MS that I have to ADD back in.
Firewall to lock all unused ports and sharing/connections *by default*. Also a massive oversight that I have to effectively add back into the OS.
Popup Blocker - because most browsers still assume, wrongly so, that the default state is happy and nice and trusting. Especially where Java is concerned.
AV software - because the security is still a massive headache.
DNS blocker - because this also was not part of the system by default.(it does exist, but it's useless garbage)
5 programs just to get online. And it's only going to get worse until the OS makers get rightfully paranoid and distrustful.
Playing whack a mole with stuff like antivirus, antispam, antiwhatever suggests your operating system is broken.
Correct. The two most common operating systems are truly broken at this point and need a full re-write with security as their primary goal. Apple does a bit better, but it's a security joke right of the box. Windows is a mass of Swiss cheese that has a welcome sign up. And you're right, playing whack-a-mole never works. And, no, Linux also is no magic cure, either. It just has too few users to be a target of botnets and the like.
We need a new generation of operating systems that do it right and are designed from the beginning with the idea that your machine WILL be attacked and it WILL be online and vulnerable unless it's designed to make it difficult for hackers.
The proper response should have been, and still is, to obtain the information from the company concerning where the pet was sold/make a case over that. Business information isn't the same as personal data, especially when it is backed by a request from the courts. Obtaining such a request against the company who re-sold his property illegally is a 20-minute deal in court.
And then go after the pet store or whomever re-sold the pet to the new owners without checking for a microchip first.(or ignoring it) Get *them* to contact the owners and notify them of the mistake or sue them to get a replacement dog.
The Pet ID company can't do anything and yes, he went after the wrong people here.
Moral of this story - always follow the money and always attack where it changes hands.
Except you lose the ability to play online games due to Sony's changes to the OS in recent patches. Is that a net gain?
Title pretty much says it all. I'm not interested in "cheap" and "easy" and "free" energy or anything else if it's not going to ever make it to market. As it is, despite several years of "breakthroughs" in solar power, if you went out today to get solar installed for your home, you would be using 1980s era technology at thousands of dollars per KW.
Wake me up when I can actually buy any of this.
What's interesting about the first generation models as well is that they actually have a full PS2 inside them. When the wireless DualShock controllers came out originally, I got one from Japan 6 months early and the rumble feature worked with every PS2 game. The first gen also works with USB to PS2 adaptors(Guitar Hero and so on). The original two machines also as a result can play PS1 games. The latter software emulation PS2 models work 50% for PS1 and 75% for PS2.
It's a shame that they don't support it any more, because PS2 titles are plentiful and cheap. And often better than the PS3 in game-play.
But back to the topic. I can understand emulation, but the question is WHY. Why turn a $300+ top-end gaming console into a $20 garage-sale relic from 15 years ago?
The title pretty much says it all. People in art don't program games at all. They instead get hired to do levels and art for them. I'd just take a basic game that's well understood and have them make their own custom levels for it.
(summation of above post)
And the new generation of industry moves to China where none of this nonsense exists.
All we really are doing is causing such an unfriendly legal environment in the U.S. that soon nobody will want to start new businesses here. Oh, wait. We already are losing industry to China. I guess that means that the worse it gets, the less likely that it will ever come back. So much for a "recovery".
Technically it would fill in with rain water over time and become Lake France. Or possibly the French Sea if the explosion is large enough to reach the Atlantic.
is it really so unreasonable to merely subtract one more deity from that list without being labelled a blind faith fanatic of atheism?
What's interesting is that if you look at Christianity as a set of ethics and beliefs only, it operates exactly the same. You can remove God from the equation and it would change virtually nothing in how it is currently practiced by the vast majority of people in the U.S. This isn't to say that they don't practice it properly, either. It's just that if you look at the New Testament as only wise words and teachings to follow, what Jesus is/was really doesn't make a huge difference. Most of Modern Christianity, in fact, is pretty much simple common sense.
Fraud is a crime, and law enforcement should be involved. Of course, IANAL.
I've been through this myself in the past. You don't need to be a laywer or anything to know that identity theft is a crime. Duh.
But what's really going on here isn't identity theft so much as hijacking a website. Since it's not actually identity theft in terms that the police understand, and is a more a civil dispute, don't bother with them right now.
Let me tell you something I learned early in life:
Lawyers and lots of detailed paperwork are awesome in their ability to kick someone's ass for you. It's not just "get a lawyer". It's "If you want to crush this punk like the bug he is, use a two ton hammer." A Lawyer is just the means to do so in this case. And this also applies to the case itself. Go in prepared to crush the competition into a thin paste. Anything else will be seen as weakness and exploited. In short, grow a pair and put on your Alpha-male pants.
(though the story does sound fishy and more akin to fishing for "how do I save my ass" than anything else, I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt as I know money is tight for many people now)
True. But a minor note: You need twice the resolution and twice the refresh rate. An acceptable minimum to not suffer from motion effects/look smooth is 240hz. Double that is 480hz. A few LCD sets have this. But you also need twice 720P, which is 2560*1440 for "720 3D". Sets have a ways to go to reach this, but it should be possible in a few years.(it would revert to 1920*1080 and a slight black area around it for 1080P material) 1440P sets are in development as we speak, since it's likely the proper replacement/upgrade for a 1080P format(supports pixel doubling cleanly and enables proper 3D.
True. The shutter mechanism is a bad way to deal with it, since people's eyes react differently and at different rates to each other (astigmatism, reflexes, and so on). It needs to be done in-screen. That said, I have seen a high refresh rate plasma set that is free of artifacts and looks as smooth as a CRT set while in 3D mode, so it should be a viable option in ten years or so.(the resolution and refresh rate needs to be double the current state of the art)
But the big deal, is that this is a lot like digital versus analog audio. Unless the entire mastering process is done in one format, it often sounds like rubbish. Now, converting from analog sound to digital sound is a process that they have worked hard on for the last twenty years to where it's pretty much perfected, but they are just barely getting started in film(doubly so since our eyes are many times more sensitive than our ears)
Converting from analog film to digital leads to those headache-inducing side effects the vast majority of the time, since the 3D has to be clean and literally per-pixel accurate to be effective. Computer programs can do this already, so it does work well on your PC with those special glasses. But as long as they stubbornly rely on film for movies and TV, it's going to be an uphill battle.
So what do you do if it's an outdoor shot or at night? There are severe limitations with film that can't be worked around. Film is still not close to what our eyes can perceive. It's close, but at best it's always been a case of "looks fairly close... well, we can't really do any better anyways". If it was as easy as you say, anyone could grab a camera and shoot a film. The attempts that I have seen that have tried to impart greater depth look distorted and unrealistic or were shot under extremely controlled environments. They can do this and make great posters and still shots, but for action or anything difficult, it's just not going to give good results. Film-based 3D has tried to overcome some of this limitation at times, but it's just too imprecise and honestly gives me a headache after an hour or so. It's a lot like watching a bad first generation LCD HDTV where everything has blurring and artifacts around the edges.
Reliance on film is the main problem, as we both know. But 95%+ of the motion picture industry is still using film, so maybe they just don't care or just don't realize what can be gained(or didn't until Avatar came out). Avatar's insane cost, though, tempers their excitement. They are in an economic crunch and naturally are loathe to spend that type of money. Each minute of Avatar's footage takes an astounding 18GB of storage without compression and they had to build a huge server farm to handle the post-processing. It ranks in the top 200 supercomputers - this isn't stuff most studios want or know how to deal with at this point.
Still, if you want it to look "real"(not mostly realistic or how we're used to seeing films), you need to get rid of the film and move to digital. But then you need to find a way to get around sensor and lens limitations that plague digital. I can't believe that we're still using a Bayer type pattern at this stage in the game. Since nobody that I know of makes a camera (*remember, we're talking purely cinematography uses and NOT consumer grade cameras* ) that uses on-sensor HDR or bracketing and blending to regain this lost information, you're back to where you started. But, Digital 3D, unlike film, does work as has been shown. I can watch it and the alignment and clarity is such that I never get a headache while watching it.
But to get back to the original post here, 3D TVs are just not doing 3D digital(due to lack of hardware/format issues and the general lack of digital 3D films), and until they can/do do it, they will remain a fancy trick and nothing else. Maybe in 20 years or so. Probably not even then.
Post-production expenses are higher for film, but the software and equipment(production as well as converting theaters) for 3D digital is very cutting edge and hard to justify the cost of for most studios(who wrongly see Digital 3D mostly as a gimmick). They have film cameras already and so there's really little cost for them other than maybe repairs and replacing damaged units and so on. Yes, the cost is less in the long run, but it's a large one-time sum to make the transition. The entire Digital Cinematography movement didn't even really get started until Lucas used it in 2002. Most studios aren't using digital currently.
I found this online as well in an article about the subject:
"Since not all theaters currently have digital projection systems, even if a movie is shot and post-produced digitally, it must be transferred to film if a large theatrical release is planned."
So film is still used for most every movie out there. And as such, the issues of optics and their limitations are still present with film. You can't get large depth of field with 2D images without making enormous sacrifices. Just ask any professional photographer. That movement in the 1930s unfortunately was the exception to the rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_focus
As you'll note, the article makes mention of how almost no modern films make use of this technique. There are limitations that it creates for the director that most just don't want to deal with these days. Digital 3D is a very quick and simple method to regain this effect and make your film look more realistic without changing your filming style whatsoever. It's a win-win scenario, as Avatar showed. Done properly, it breathes life back into an otherwise aging and limited format.
http://luminous-landscape.com/
This site has a vast number of real experts who frequent it that can explain the mechanics of optics and lenses and why the limitations cannot be overcome without major difficulty. Explore it at your leisure. This forum isn't the place to discuss technical details in depth.
And this depth is a known problem with filming.
It's because the lenses that the cameras use have limits to their depth of field that cannot really be overcome without artificially altering the film itself to give *back* the lost depth of field and focus, especially at low lighting, that we normally see with our eyes.
What made Avatar so great from a visual perspective was that it gave the film a *realistic* depth of field as if you were looking at it in real life instead of the flat, blurry, and out of focus way that film tends to look. We've just become so used to the way that film looks that we're desensitized to it and think that it's "correct". The reason people thought that it wasn't anything special was because they were expecting "3-D" type cheesy effects instead of a barely noticeable but correct "fix" for the problem of flat projection surfaces and optical limitations of the lenses(cameras as well as the projector itself).
But to adequately pull this off, it almost has to be done at the pixel level so that it's not noticeable(the difference between Avatar with the glasses off and on while watching it was barely noticeable other than the increased depth of focus). This means non-digital filming will always look poor and incorrect. But digital filming is still horrendously expensive. Kind of a catch-22 for the next few years until it becomes affordable to shoot in digital.
Your proposal would work best, to be honest, if the major backbone providers did this to the entire ISP instead of leaving the ISP to half-assed "police" its members. If a large amount of spam is coming from a provider, shutting it off entirely will get them to comply with their terms(which I can guarantee has terms and conditions concerning malicious use and so on). It's currently entirely within their bounds to do so but to date, they still refuse to do it. It's also not rocket science to see where the spam and activity is coming from.
I bet if Earthlink (as an example) had a quarter of its network taken down it would scrub the spammers and infected accounts off of its servers in under 24 hours. And for a small country that might be home to a major control center, well, having the entire country go black until it is fixed would certainly get some action I'd wager. Having your DS4 and DS5 lines go down gets your attention immediately.
It should be up to the major companies that run the Internet to do the policing and not the Government. The more that they refuse to do their job, the more they end up being taken over by government agencies. Which means more and more of the Internet is controlled by just a couple of countries, essentially, which is obviously a bad thing in the long term.
The real issue, and I know It's been said in other articles(but bears repeating), is that the whole Linux industry needs to get together and start, well, acting LIKE an industry. The problem is that it right now has an image amongst businesses as a bunch of guys in their garage who are tinkering with it, almost akin to shareware developers.
If you want the public to embrace it, you have to focus on businesses embracing it first. Now, I know that there is a strong anti-corporate undertone to Linux as well, which isn't helping, but it has to be done. They need to get together, set strong standards, and start streamlining it (as well as marketing it) for business use. They need to ditch the inane "mascot" and other drivel and market it as the OS equivalent of aerospace engineering. Hardcore, no-nonsense, and efficient at what it does. If you want your business to run faster for less money, while having less problems and crashes, run this. If you want real security, even if your employees mess up and visit sites they shouldn't, run this. True, you will need more highly educated support staff, which will cost a bit extra on your payroll, but your next hardware upgrade costs will be 1/10th of what they were last time. (and so on)
Because what we have now is the marketing equivalent of "as seen on TV" "look at this knife cut through a tin can!" type late-night advertising. So even if it is the best thing out there and is free(or nearly so), nobody in the business world wants to buy it because of the image problem that it currently has. And without big companies willing to go in a different direction, it will remain a scenario where "I'm not willing to risk my job over this" for most IT departments.
True, but in a way, it does eventually get to the administrators. The interesting thing is that the results are going to be clumped in a few bad schools and even that much will be useful to the people in Sacramento. I'd imagine that they are happily awaiting the report so that they can adjust the funding levels and know where to make budget cuts first.
I live in the Los Angeles area myself, and it really is verging on third-world bad in the LAUSD. The state is broke and there are too many failing institutions. It basically has to close about 20-30% of schools and colleges statewide or raise taxes to nearly double what it's currently charging for education. They would love to know where to cut first. But the unions and schools do a very good job of hiding the information from the public to the point where it's impossible to tell which schools should be closed and which ones should be saved.
Also, yes, the teachers deserve nothing in the way of protection from scrutiny. If you are a public employee and you do a half-assed job and make mistakes, you are supposed to be in serious trouble. If you don't like it, teach in a private school.
(2) ... Or hear the news. Or the weather if the sky looks dangerous...
I think this is actually a good feature, since hardly anyone listens to TV or radio and there's a real potential concern about half of the population not being able to hear any civil defense system broadcast or the like.
Plus, about 15-20% of new phones have it already. It's a nice feature to have even if you only rarely use it.
It would make more sense to have the beam act as a boring device and inject something down the "tunnel" that it creates. A vacuum energy detonation comes to mind as the best option, since it would create a massive sudden explosion that would easily break a planet into pieces if it was planted at the center of its core. The device itself could be as small as a typical nuclear bomb. Assuming some sort of high-tech device to harness the vacuum energy in a baseball sized space, naturally. The entire rest of the Death Star would be to facilitate the boring and launching. That's why there's no center beam from the "dish" - the payload fires from there down the inside of the "laser" like a rifle barrel. A laser that can bore a 1-2 miter wide hole through a planet I can just manage to comprehend. Beyond that, no - not going to work any other way.
You beat me to it. The fact is that this is all good and we should be having a small party in response.
1 - The *only* way to possibly get out of this hellhole of a depression that we are in is to train the next generation with better skills and knowledge to overcome the "brain drain" of the last decade that has affected much of the U.S. If we spend nothing else at this point, education should be #1 on the list. So spending 100 billion on education is a good thing. Note - this is also critical as many state college systems are in the verge of collapsing. As it is, the university system in California(as an example) has raised tuition to $5000 a quarter and reduced enrollment by 30%. This is the real legacy of the last twenty years of idiocy in D.C. - we need training and degrees to be competitive versus China and the rest of the world and only the wealthy can afford to obtain it. Claiming funding education is a bad thing is inane.
2 - Green Jobs (tm) come from education and new knowledge. They are the guy in the small company who invents a better solar cell and so on(shoot, a quarter or more of the news here on Slashdot is about stuff like this it seems). Microsoft can't "green" its way out of a paper bag, and neither can Apple. Our problem in the past was that we didn't immediately start to rebuild from the ground up. But that's kind of understandable as the number of people in the White House and Congress who understand economics without the help of "advisers" and "experts" (who religiously believe their economic theories as a rule) are a mere handful. Obama was elected and handed Bush and Clinton's mess. So he called in "the experts" who told him that this wasn't a depression and it would be all rosy and so on. Well, at least some help for education and job training is finally coming now that they realize that it's hit the fan.
3 - As Dachshund pointed out, a large(read enormous) amount of money flows overseas and we like idiots don't tax it. If we should be taxing anyone first, it should be the tax dodgers, foreign companies, and others who are abusing the system while outside of the U.S. If it was me, I'd have a 100% tax on all money going in or out of places like the Cayman Islands.
4 - And of course, at the end, the best part. 1 *trillion* in reduced spending(WTF? Wait - Congress actually reducing spending to pay for something? (checks to see if Hell froze over)). This alone should get everyone celebrating. But I suspect that it's a bit more about party politics for most people at this point.
Another great old game to play is/are the X-Wing games. With a little tweaking, you can run them in Windows. It's perhaps the first full-featured 3D space combat simulator(yes, I know about Elite and older stuff, but for Windows, this was pretty much the best of the lot in the DOS days). Tie Fighter was the best, IMO, since you could customize your load-out and it supported high resolution graphics.
And it was hard. It really felt like an accomplishment when you finally finished the entire game. Not 10 hours to get through like Prey. Try 50-100 hours to get through a game that originally fit in 20MB. Doom was the same, with Doom 2 being even better. Hours and hours to play and you never felt like you were wasting your money. Conversely, I played Doom 3 in 6-7 hours and it was linear, predictable, and just really didn't require any skill. I can still remember running out of ammo in Doom and having to get VERY creative to get more ammo or kill the monsters. "Should I use my pistol to save ammo or maybe my 20 shotgun shells will last untill the end of the level..."
Old games have enormous value. You can easily get the old Ultima games, as an example, and for anyone under 20, they are quite compelling and "new". Sure, the graphics are weak, but it's like a typical Nintendo DS game(not really much worse than that) times 50 in scale. Ultima 4 was by far the best, with I don't know how many hours (100+?) to complete. X-Com is also another gem worth every penny(available on Steam, IIRC). You can put 40-50 hours into it and it still feels great, even years later.