The success of the Wii says that it's not all that difficult to do that. Given the manipulative abilities of a mouse and keyboard vs. say, a game controller, it's not hard to imagine uses where a mouse and keyboard just doesn't cut it. Would you like a real example? Art. Without delving into automated tools to help create, computers have nothing on a pencil. Now, if you can keep the tools of a computer, and the controls of a pencil, you end up with a tablet, like the ones most artists use. Why is it inconceivable that other alternate controls could be better for other tasks, like the one he was doing?
I have not seen the movie you mentioned with the VR, but it sounds a lot like the book Disclosure. IIRC, it was supposed to be like the old way, because it wasn't meant for the tech-savvy. It was a dumbing down of real interfaces for Luddite users.
Took the AP test. Local Tech College doesn't honor it for Economics, for some BS reason. Also no way to opt out of the course by test or paper. Ah well, it was an easy A.
There is a nigh-infinite number of possible combinations of hardware and software. An operating system that 'just works' is pretty damn hard to do if you're not going to be Apple. Vista breaks stuff. We knew that one going in, with all the talk about revamping and cutting off some of the backwards compatibility. Yes, Microsoft should have let ATI and nVidia in on the secrets before market, but this is how things progress.
Real world analogy, the U.S. is a lot less horse-friendly than it used to be. It's getting tough to even find a hitching post. This was a natural consequence of going to automobiles. Vista is attempting to advance operating systems, and the fact that horses aren't supported anymore is logical. They lose a few points for not making a smooth transition.
Searches. Windows Vista beats the pants off my Windows XP with Google Desktop. IPv6 is fully integrated. They killed off a bunch of backwards compatibility, which has hosed some older programs. The interface is nice, but not necessary. Stack protection.
Don't forget that we're comparing the recently released Vista to XP, which has been out for years. Of course XP is going to be winning popularity contests right now. Same thing would have happened when XP was released if it wasn't following up ME. I've worked with people who want to keep their Windows 98 machines, for crying out loud. But very few people move backward from a mature OS. There may still be people who like Windows 98, but there aren't people who use Windows XP, and say "Gee, I wish I was using 98 instead." So shall it be with Vista when it matures.
Not quite. He seems to advocate not having to go through the class if you already know enough to get into the class after it. Suppose, for example, that I had the world's best economics teacher in high school (Here's to you, Mr. McCaffery). I regularly paid no attention during my college economics class, and aced all the exams. This is an extreme case to be sure, but I'm sure most of us can come up with a college class we took that we gained very little or nothing from. I'm torn on this issue, because I've had classes which were complete wastes of time, and I've had classes which, despite adding nothing to my understanding of the material, were very much necessary in terms of 'unrelated' skills gained, including such things as precision and concision in writing, logical analysis of events and their consequences, and so on. This, from a class on electrical circuits.
I don't know how this should play out, but I'd hate to have others miss out on that circuits class.
Why should it be a mouse? If we compare it to a shark, we've got much more flexible cartilage. Such a robot might be capable of passing through spaces smaller than the smallest dimension of the largest structural member. Even better would be if we went with an amoeba or something similar, where there are no bones at all, merely controlled motive forces.
Are there any engineering specialists around to tell me if there's any good way to do something like that?
My apologies, file systems are not my specialty. I'm sure there's some file system that is both vulnerable to being deleted, and is obscure enough to fool teams of forensic experts into thinking it's random crap after the format. This seemed less expensive than my original plan of 'do everything off an external drive, and apply belt sander if necessary.' Also less likely to put dangerous stuff in the lungs.
I'm going to go out on a limb, and assume that the RIAA is not as good as the FBI at finding files. I would consider it to be a nontrivial matter to try to pull mp3s from a formatted partition previously using an esoteric file system. If you like, you could run some secure deletion utilities on the dead partition prior to turning the partition into just another part of C:. The whole point to this is that there is nothing obviously missing. People, forensics experts included, will see what they expect to. If all the obvious evidence points to 'This is the wrong guy,' the natural course is to look for a different guy. Toss in the preponderance of evidence suggesting that the RIAA doesn't know a filesharing fiend from a deceased septuagenarian, and you've got yourself a successful case.
It seems to me the easiest way to do this is with a dual-boot computer. Say one partition running Windows XP with NTFS, the other one running Linux with Reiser or ext3. When someone decides that you've been breaking the law, just extend your Windows Partition over the full drive. Windows doesn't accept that partitions without recognizable file systems exist, so it will happily format the Linux partition and convert the file structure to NTFS for you. Give them your computer, they'll find no trace of illegal data/software. It's a pain to rebuild afterwards, but it's better than having a stack of evidence.
This is one of the many great things about Heroes. NBC has all the episodes available to watch free online. Each episode will get maybe 3 minutes of advertising, total. And while the advertisement is running, the next section is loading. It's stuff like this that makes me happy as a consumer.
If anyone reading this knows who thought that up, tell them that they get kudos.
Troll? Or are you going to post a link or two to some reputable web pages? James Randi says no, and has a million dollars on the line. Princeton just shut down PEAR a few months ago, and had no observations that fell outside of 1 standard deviation from average. Best shot you have is that government agencies have spent lots of money trying to develop these kinds of abilities for soldiers, spies, assassins, and what have you, and if they figured it out, they wouldn't tell us. Either provide research that doesn't come from Doctor Spengler, or go away.
I'll need to get a sheet, of course, but I'm definitely going to need to have at least a hundred Darth Vader stamps for use as well. I don't even write that many letters.
I've done some computer work for a local real estate outfit. The computers there all got OpenOffice and Firefox. Turns out an important website for them (Paragon, if anyone cares) is not friendly with any browser except IE. I've called them, and talked to a support guy who said that he wished they supported Firefox too, but nothing was likely to change. So, the person who uses a Mac there is out of luck.
OpenOffice is disliked for the performance hit. Apparently the people there have gotten very used to some of the features of Word, not to mention the compatibility problems between PowerPoint and Impress. They would rather spend the money, and who am I to tell them no?
Hey, I've got some copyright protection from this company called Starforce. Software doesn't hurt hardware, so I'm sure it's all in your imagination when it destroys your CD drive.
The system, as you describe it, is extremely vulnerable to being gamed. Something like, I upload copyrighted files from an anonymous account that I only use at the local Internet cafe, or whatever. Then I go home, wait a half hour, and win a CD. When the same people who cause problems are rewarded for fixing them, the incentive is to make more trouble, not clean it up.
If I remember my computing history, Ctrl-Alt-Del was picked because that was a keystroke combination that would never be accidentally pressed. There was nothing even close to it that did anything. The whole point was to be intentional.
Now they want to put it on a single button, surrounded by other tiny buttons? Someone had a real winner of an idea there...
I see a new phishing scam on the horizon. Screw "You may already be a winner," we've got "You may already be a lawsuit victim. You have been sued, to settle, Paypal $500 to phishman54. We thank you for your prompt acknowledgement of these conditions."
Saw article headline. Assumed MS Paint. Was already forming snarky comment about dipping a RJ-45 connector in primer to give network security. Now I feel more and less stupid at the same time.
That's a bad assumption. I would suggest that the percentage of people who maliciously exploit Linux after finding a flaw is lower than the number of people who maliciously exploit Windows after finding a flaw. Part of that is that Linux supports peer review, so anyone who finds a flaw can also fix it in short order, and gain geek cred by getting their name commented into the source, or whatever the Linux community does to honor contributors. If you find a flaw in Windows, it's probably not something that's user fixable. If it is, and you tell Microsoft about the flaw and the fix, there will be a waiting period of a couple weeks while they review the code, and then it might be anonymously attached in a Windows Update.
People who spend this kind of time and effort on something generally like to be recognized for it, and the easy path on Windows is to release an exploit in the wild, rather than telling the authorities. This is less a technology issue than a psychology issue.
So you're saying that if there is no monetary value in doing something, it will not be done? This is wrong no matter what hat you wear. On the white hat side of programming, we've got all of Open Source. On the black hat side, we've got people who release viruses for fun, rather than profit. Money is only one motivation for people, and it's generally not the strongest one for most people.
Slashdot Mirror
The success of the Wii says that it's not all that difficult to do that. Given the manipulative abilities of a mouse and keyboard vs. say, a game controller, it's not hard to imagine uses where a mouse and keyboard just doesn't cut it. Would you like a real example? Art. Without delving into automated tools to help create, computers have nothing on a pencil. Now, if you can keep the tools of a computer, and the controls of a pencil, you end up with a tablet, like the ones most artists use. Why is it inconceivable that other alternate controls could be better for other tasks, like the one he was doing?
I have not seen the movie you mentioned with the VR, but it sounds a lot like the book Disclosure. IIRC, it was supposed to be like the old way, because it wasn't meant for the tech-savvy. It was a dumbing down of real interfaces for Luddite users.
WOPR?
SphereUI?
Took the AP test. Local Tech College doesn't honor it for Economics, for some BS reason. Also no way to opt out of the course by test or paper. Ah well, it was an easy A.
There is a nigh-infinite number of possible combinations of hardware and software. An operating system that 'just works' is pretty damn hard to do if you're not going to be Apple. Vista breaks stuff. We knew that one going in, with all the talk about revamping and cutting off some of the backwards compatibility. Yes, Microsoft should have let ATI and nVidia in on the secrets before market, but this is how things progress.
Real world analogy, the U.S. is a lot less horse-friendly than it used to be. It's getting tough to even find a hitching post. This was a natural consequence of going to automobiles. Vista is attempting to advance operating systems, and the fact that horses aren't supported anymore is logical. They lose a few points for not making a smooth transition.
Searches. Windows Vista beats the pants off my Windows XP with Google Desktop. IPv6 is fully integrated. They killed off a bunch of backwards compatibility, which has hosed some older programs. The interface is nice, but not necessary. Stack protection.
Don't forget that we're comparing the recently released Vista to XP, which has been out for years. Of course XP is going to be winning popularity contests right now. Same thing would have happened when XP was released if it wasn't following up ME. I've worked with people who want to keep their Windows 98 machines, for crying out loud. But very few people move backward from a mature OS. There may still be people who like Windows 98, but there aren't people who use Windows XP, and say "Gee, I wish I was using 98 instead." So shall it be with Vista when it matures.
Yes. Hire an amoeba.
Ok, are there any programmers around to tell me the best language to use to program an amoeba?
Not quite. He seems to advocate not having to go through the class if you already know enough to get into the class after it. Suppose, for example, that I had the world's best economics teacher in high school (Here's to you, Mr. McCaffery). I regularly paid no attention during my college economics class, and aced all the exams. This is an extreme case to be sure, but I'm sure most of us can come up with a college class we took that we gained very little or nothing from. I'm torn on this issue, because I've had classes which were complete wastes of time, and I've had classes which, despite adding nothing to my understanding of the material, were very much necessary in terms of 'unrelated' skills gained, including such things as precision and concision in writing, logical analysis of events and their consequences, and so on. This, from a class on electrical circuits.
I don't know how this should play out, but I'd hate to have others miss out on that circuits class.
Why should it be a mouse? If we compare it to a shark, we've got much more flexible cartilage. Such a robot might be capable of passing through spaces smaller than the smallest dimension of the largest structural member. Even better would be if we went with an amoeba or something similar, where there are no bones at all, merely controlled motive forces. Are there any engineering specialists around to tell me if there's any good way to do something like that?
My apologies, file systems are not my specialty. I'm sure there's some file system that is both vulnerable to being deleted, and is obscure enough to fool teams of forensic experts into thinking it's random crap after the format. This seemed less expensive than my original plan of 'do everything off an external drive, and apply belt sander if necessary.' Also less likely to put dangerous stuff in the lungs.
I'm going to go out on a limb, and assume that the RIAA is not as good as the FBI at finding files. I would consider it to be a nontrivial matter to try to pull mp3s from a formatted partition previously using an esoteric file system. If you like, you could run some secure deletion utilities on the dead partition prior to turning the partition into just another part of C:. The whole point to this is that there is nothing obviously missing. People, forensics experts included, will see what they expect to. If all the obvious evidence points to 'This is the wrong guy,' the natural course is to look for a different guy. Toss in the preponderance of evidence suggesting that the RIAA doesn't know a filesharing fiend from a deceased septuagenarian, and you've got yourself a successful case.
It seems to me the easiest way to do this is with a dual-boot computer. Say one partition running Windows XP with NTFS, the other one running Linux with Reiser or ext3. When someone decides that you've been breaking the law, just extend your Windows Partition over the full drive. Windows doesn't accept that partitions without recognizable file systems exist, so it will happily format the Linux partition and convert the file structure to NTFS for you. Give them your computer, they'll find no trace of illegal data/software. It's a pain to rebuild afterwards, but it's better than having a stack of evidence.
This is one of the many great things about Heroes. NBC has all the episodes available to watch free online. Each episode will get maybe 3 minutes of advertising, total. And while the advertisement is running, the next section is loading. It's stuff like this that makes me happy as a consumer.
If anyone reading this knows who thought that up, tell them that they get kudos.
Troll? Or are you going to post a link or two to some reputable web pages? James Randi says no, and has a million dollars on the line. Princeton just shut down PEAR a few months ago, and had no observations that fell outside of 1 standard deviation from average. Best shot you have is that government agencies have spent lots of money trying to develop these kinds of abilities for soldiers, spies, assassins, and what have you, and if they figured it out, they wouldn't tell us. Either provide research that doesn't come from Doctor Spengler, or go away.
I'll need to get a sheet, of course, but I'm definitely going to need to have at least a hundred Darth Vader stamps for use as well. I don't even write that many letters.
I've done some computer work for a local real estate outfit. The computers there all got OpenOffice and Firefox. Turns out an important website for them (Paragon, if anyone cares) is not friendly with any browser except IE. I've called them, and talked to a support guy who said that he wished they supported Firefox too, but nothing was likely to change. So, the person who uses a Mac there is out of luck.
OpenOffice is disliked for the performance hit. Apparently the people there have gotten very used to some of the features of Word, not to mention the compatibility problems between PowerPoint and Impress. They would rather spend the money, and who am I to tell them no?
Hey, I've got some copyright protection from this company called Starforce. Software doesn't hurt hardware, so I'm sure it's all in your imagination when it destroys your CD drive.
I'm waiting for lawsuits with the defense: "It's only 85% bestiality!"
The system, as you describe it, is extremely vulnerable to being gamed. Something like, I upload copyrighted files from an anonymous account that I only use at the local Internet cafe, or whatever. Then I go home, wait a half hour, and win a CD. When the same people who cause problems are rewarded for fixing them, the incentive is to make more trouble, not clean it up.
If I remember my computing history, Ctrl-Alt-Del was picked because that was a keystroke combination that would never be accidentally pressed. There was nothing even close to it that did anything. The whole point was to be intentional.
Now they want to put it on a single button, surrounded by other tiny buttons? Someone had a real winner of an idea there...
I see a new phishing scam on the horizon. Screw "You may already be a winner," we've got "You may already be a lawsuit victim. You have been sued, to settle, Paypal $500 to phishman54. We thank you for your prompt acknowledgement of these conditions."
Saw article headline.
Assumed MS Paint.
Was already forming snarky comment about dipping a RJ-45 connector in primer to give network security.
Now I feel more and less stupid at the same time.
"They're already on probation, sir."
"Then we'll put them on...double secret probation."
That's a bad assumption. I would suggest that the percentage of people who maliciously exploit Linux after finding a flaw is lower than the number of people who maliciously exploit Windows after finding a flaw. Part of that is that Linux supports peer review, so anyone who finds a flaw can also fix it in short order, and gain geek cred by getting their name commented into the source, or whatever the Linux community does to honor contributors. If you find a flaw in Windows, it's probably not something that's user fixable. If it is, and you tell Microsoft about the flaw and the fix, there will be a waiting period of a couple weeks while they review the code, and then it might be anonymously attached in a Windows Update.
People who spend this kind of time and effort on something generally like to be recognized for it, and the easy path on Windows is to release an exploit in the wild, rather than telling the authorities. This is less a technology issue than a psychology issue.
So you're saying that if there is no monetary value in doing something, it will not be done? This is wrong no matter what hat you wear. On the white hat side of programming, we've got all of Open Source. On the black hat side, we've got people who release viruses for fun, rather than profit. Money is only one motivation for people, and it's generally not the strongest one for most people.