I would play Half-life + Counterstrike under WINE on Linux, and eventually it got to the point where you needed to run Punkbuster to be able to play it online. Basically, the servers look for Punkbuster to scan your system for cheat tools and make sure that everything looks kosher before they let you play.
I downloaded Punkbuster and was sure that it wouldn't like the looks of WINE's environment. I connected to the server, waited for it to verify and... it worked! I was feeling two types of way when that happened.
1. WINE is god damn amazing.
2. Punkbuster is stupid. I could have any number of hacks running under Linux, I could have been running WINE under ptrace() the entire time, injecting evil as needed into the Counterstrike game world, and Punkbuster would have been completely oblivious to it. No matter how hard it tried it would never be able to inspect the host Linux system for evil. Client side anti-cheat systems are doomed.
I purchased a GBA transfer cable so that I could develop a videogame using someone else's content. I developed a demo and sent it to the creator. The creator appeared not to like the idea. Since the product was dead, I released it to the general public, code only.
Does that sound like video game piracy to you?
Yes, in addition to booting an image over the cable (that's how multiplayer games work, in addition to my game demo), the GBA transfer cable allows you to copy ROMs onto blank cartridges. Some people could use that for illegal file copying purposes, but I don't think the amateur developer market needs to die because some people copy content illegally.
Console makers argue piracy, but these lawsuits are just as much about the manufacturer maintaining their ability to create artficial supply in the market.
If they were just confined to space, that is, nations took turns destroying each other's satellites that would be, well, completely terrifyingly intolerable. But that would be puppies and fairies and sunshine compared to, say, orbital Ion Cannons (Command & Conquer style) being used to vaporize ground targets.
There you'd be, out for a stroll through the neighborhood walking your dog, waving hello to the neighbors, complimenting them on their fine garden. Birds are chirping happily, blue skies, sun's shining pleasantly, not a care in the world. Miles up in the sky, a pattern matching algorithm on an orbital Ion Cannon thought you walked a lot like the head of some enemy state. You're vaporized. Your dog keeps walking, smoldering leash end dragging behind him. No one else seemed to notice the flash.
Once they switched processors and added colors and tried to have mass market appeal, I think they killed their core culture, which is a shame. Now every PDA looks more or less the same, and we all kind of remember the Palm for what it was, not what it is.
Not that I could ever stand to use the things on a day-to-day basis, no matter how hard I tried. (Fantasy of an original Palm being released in a world with pervasive net access)
If big DSL provider and big cable provider are locked in a dead heat battle, DSL provider can gain a competitive edge by opening up their DSL lines to third party ISPs.
Why? Because, in NYC, there is absolutely no way in hell I will ever pick Verizon when I can pick Time Warner Cable. But I just may also pick AceDSL. Little guy gets the business, and Verizon would gladly take 50% of DSL fee instead of 100% of no DSL fee or 0% of cable fee.
It's virtually impossible to keep unauthorized parties off of your AP using out of the box software.
WEP? Known cryptographic challenges, can be cracked in a trivial amount of time using automated tools.
Access list of MAC addresses? Almost every wireless NIC allows you to watch traffic, and many allow you to reprogram the MAC address. You can watch someone authenticate at Starbucks, record their MAC address, then when they walk away, you just set your MAC address to theirs and you continue using their open session. I can't imagine why it wouldn't work.
Service providers deal with a lot of shit from authorities. Even when I worked at a small mom & pop ISP with 5000 customers we'd have to respond to a search warrant on a monthly basis, and they just don't won't accept "the log files were deleted 5 months ago" for an answer. The owner had to show up in court many times and swear that yes, the systems do purge them periodically.
I can only imagine what Rackspace has had to deal with in the past, so when the FBI came by and said "terrorism" they must've shivered at the thought of answering why they can't find something. So they just make it the FBI's problem by handing over the whole disk.
Does this qualify as a chilling effect? The letter of the order said that Rackspace just had to produce specific files, but Rackspace was so afraid of the FBI (from past encounters, perhaps) that they went that far above and beyond?
Aside from having shittier coverage in cities, these providers are better about embracing technology and opening their networks.
I can't help but to wonder what this means for customers. Nextel has been pushing mobile devices as business tools for a long time (walkie-talkie feature, sophisticated pager-like functionality, etc.) whereas Sprint seems to focus more on casual use (they provide the dialtone for Virgin Mobile). Hopefully they continue to build on these areas instead of chip away at them...
Consolidation in this area is kind of disturbing since these companies are already gigantic and impersonal, but if it leads to some standardization, perhaps ISVs can start rolling out useful content/functionality for mobile devices instead of just selling Britney Spears and N'SYNC ringtones.
A good way to define "large site" is "beyond the hardware capabilities of a single computer". For example, if you made a hand optimized assembly version of Slashdot that had its own network driver, TCP/IP stack, etc. its load would still probably be beyond the role of any one commodity computer.
When you throw this kind of a load at computers, many basic assumptions start to break -- you inevitably exercise a use case that is quite uncommon with no off-the-shelf solution that fits the bill quite right.
Of course, since large sites mean big business, vendors want you to believe that their solution can grow towards infinity. But don't be fooled: there are no silver bullets.
Getting into a religious war over what RDBMS, language, OS, etc. to use is pointless -- you just cannot avoid refactoring/rewriting major chunks of a project through its lifetime. It is undeniable.
Better to pick what your group is most comfortable with and just take it from there.
How can someone compete fairly knowing what they aren't legally allowed to disclose? I'm not sure, but I don't think this is the answer.
Generally, if you are gainfully employed at company A, are under NCA, and quit to go work at direct competitor, company B, courts generally frown upon that.
However, if you were once gainfully employed at company A, under NCA, was fired by company A, and found a job at direct competitor, company B, courts generally say company A cannot prevent you from earning a living -- no matter what the contract says.
No, the actual product has won people over -- they're called average people.
The day they release a product that wins me over, that is, someone who works in technology, is the day they go out of business, because I do not have the same standards that the average computer user does and there are a lot less of ME
Someone showed me ICQ in the mid-90s. I downloaded it. "How cute" I thought as I talked to the friend who had sent it to me. I added some other people I knew of that had it to my contact list.
Then hours later he sent me another message, interrupting me.
Then other people interrupted me.
I thought I'd be clever and start a chat room, figuring that if I invited my friends to a chat room we could have a passive discussion in he background without interruptions -- like IRC. But the chat rooms never stayed up for long due to technical limitations. Eventually I checked netstat and found that the chat rooms were some kind of weird peer-to-peer chat. Ick.
I deleted ICQ.
Yeah, well their member base exploded and then AOL built their own/bought ICQ, Yahoo and MSN and thousands more entered the market. Now it seems to be The New Communications Medium.
Good thing I don't invest in tech companies, since my gut would've been to bet against all of these technologies.
Microsoft's platform is the standard because they focused on the business of the software products market. They promised something to independent software vendors and delivered it-- a single platform that any developer no matter how big or small can target. At the same time they pushed hard to get this platform on as many PCs as possible, breaking kneecaps along the way when necessary.
They achieved a form of write once run anywhere. In 1985.
It does not matter what's under the hood, it mattered that the ISV only had to write one binary and not have to spend the money supporting two dozen incompatible platforms. Even Java cannot match this (I know, because I have to deal with it).
Today there must be half a billion PCs that the ISV can generate one single binary for, and with that you've covered what, 90% of the market?
Linux needs to offer big marketshare (doesn't have) and good developer support (has, sorta) for ISVs to care about it, because Microsoft proved that most ISVs won't bother targetting more than one major platform.
There are plenty of physical and mental health benefits involved in studying a martial art, but there is the undeniable fact that I am much more prone to violence now.
I'll walk into so many situations with a belief that I can overpower a problem with brute strength or with a precision strike to a body part, whether it makes sense or not. I have the hammer so everything looks like a nail.
I don't think I act on these urges, but I'm sure others might disagree.
Video games never encouraged this kind of behavior in me since video game problem solving is entirely confined within your head.
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
Hey Taco, why don't you post Slashdot's availability?
'Hot Coffee' depicts a blowjob. There'll be no new life coming from that (pun intended, I guess).
That's what this one doctor thought when another doctor performed fellatio upon him. Boy, wasn't he suprised when he was subsequently hit with a palimony suit?
What would the reason be to put it in there then? Perhaps the publicity that they are getting now?
The game is rated "mature". If you can develop a relationship with a girlfriend, and you can also pick up scantily clad hookers and screw them so well that they squeal with delight, and you can also indiscriminately kill a row of people from afar, and also kill someone in vivid close up detail, work out at the gym and watch your muscles grow, or watch your character get fat at a burger joint to impress a girlfriend, why would having sex with girlfriend be such a departure from the rest of the theme of the game?
The development team was probably entrusted with total creative freedom. As it neared release and was shown to people in the company who understand the American political landscape, they probably told them to nix some features, including the graphic sex with girlfriend one ("but leave in the prostitutes, that never gets old").
I don't understand why the "mature" rating still doesn't apply.
Pull people out of their cars and drive away in them
Steal military weapons
Destroy property
Injure and kill completely innocent bystanders
Develop a criminal enterprise
Carry out the orders of corrupt police officers
Pick up prostitutes
Burn down a pot farm
and so far it's been pretty smooth sailing, but once you can have vivid consensual sex, but only through extensive third party modification, everyone flips out?!
are just endless -- there was one company that put me to work for many many billable hours trying to figure out why WordPerfect was suffering huge performance issues in certain cases. Never did solve it, end result cost far more than a new workstation would have.
I told them (in the beginning) that with the amount of money they would be spending, they could've just replaced his workstation outright (his was the only machine in the office with the problem). They deferred to another admin's judgement and he veto'ed the idea, demanding the "proper" solution.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't think you could fool punkbuster if it was looking for your specific WINE setup.
"Looking for WINE"? What, would it stop me from playing if I were using WINE? That would be blocking a completely legitimate user.
I would play Half-life + Counterstrike under WINE on Linux, and eventually it got to the point where you needed to run Punkbuster to be able to play it online. Basically, the servers look for Punkbuster to scan your system for cheat tools and make sure that everything looks kosher before they let you play.
I downloaded Punkbuster and was sure that it wouldn't like the looks of WINE's environment. I connected to the server, waited for it to verify and... it worked! I was feeling two types of way when that happened.
1. WINE is god damn amazing.
2. Punkbuster is stupid. I could have any number of hacks running under Linux, I could have been running WINE under ptrace() the entire time, injecting evil as needed into the Counterstrike game world, and Punkbuster would have been completely oblivious to it. No matter how hard it tried it would never be able to inspect the host Linux system for evil. Client side anti-cheat systems are doomed.
I purchased a GBA transfer cable so that I could develop a videogame using someone else's content. I developed a demo and sent it to the creator. The creator appeared not to like the idea. Since the product was dead, I released it to the general public, code only.
Does that sound like video game piracy to you?
Yes, in addition to booting an image over the cable (that's how multiplayer games work, in addition to my game demo), the GBA transfer cable allows you to copy ROMs onto blank cartridges. Some people could use that for illegal file copying purposes, but I don't think the amateur developer market needs to die because some people copy content illegally.
Console makers argue piracy, but these lawsuits are just as much about the manufacturer maintaining their ability to create artficial supply in the market.
If they were just confined to space, that is, nations took turns destroying each other's satellites that would be, well, completely terrifyingly intolerable. But that would be puppies and fairies and sunshine compared to, say, orbital Ion Cannons (Command & Conquer style) being used to vaporize ground targets.
There you'd be, out for a stroll through the neighborhood walking your dog, waving hello to the neighbors, complimenting them on their fine garden. Birds are chirping happily, blue skies, sun's shining pleasantly, not a care in the world. Miles up in the sky, a pattern matching algorithm on an orbital Ion Cannon thought you walked a lot like the head of some enemy state. You're vaporized. Your dog keeps walking, smoldering leash end dragging behind him. No one else seemed to notice the flash.
*shiver*
Nonsense lawsuits are only shown to be nonsense lawsuits after lots and lots of money is spent.
I have no idea how big Lik-Sang is, I just bought a GBA transfer cable from them awhile back once. For legitimate purposes, honest!
Simple and to the point.
Once they switched processors and added colors and tried to have mass market appeal, I think they killed their core culture, which is a shame. Now every PDA looks more or less the same, and we all kind of remember the Palm for what it was, not what it is.
Not that I could ever stand to use the things on a day-to-day basis, no matter how hard I tried. (Fantasy of an original Palm being released in a world with pervasive net access)
If big DSL provider and big cable provider are locked in a dead heat battle, DSL provider can gain a competitive edge by opening up their DSL lines to third party ISPs.
Why? Because, in NYC, there is absolutely no way in hell I will ever pick Verizon when I can pick Time Warner Cable. But I just may also pick AceDSL. Little guy gets the business, and Verizon would gladly take 50% of DSL fee instead of 100% of no DSL fee or 0% of cable fee.
It's virtually impossible to keep unauthorized parties off of your AP using out of the box software.
WEP? Known cryptographic challenges, can be cracked in a trivial amount of time using automated tools.
Access list of MAC addresses? Almost every wireless NIC allows you to watch traffic, and many allow you to reprogram the MAC address. You can watch someone authenticate at Starbucks, record their MAC address, then when they walk away, you just set your MAC address to theirs and you continue using their open session. I can't imagine why it wouldn't work.
Service providers deal with a lot of shit from authorities. Even when I worked at a small mom & pop ISP with 5000 customers we'd have to respond to a search warrant on a monthly basis, and they just don't won't accept "the log files were deleted 5 months ago" for an answer. The owner had to show up in court many times and swear that yes, the systems do purge them periodically.
I can only imagine what Rackspace has had to deal with in the past, so when the FBI came by and said "terrorism" they must've shivered at the thought of answering why they can't find something. So they just make it the FBI's problem by handing over the whole disk.
Does this qualify as a chilling effect? The letter of the order said that Rackspace just had to produce specific files, but Rackspace was so afraid of the FBI (from past encounters, perhaps) that they went that far above and beyond?
Aside from having shittier coverage in cities, these providers are better about embracing technology and opening their networks.
I can't help but to wonder what this means for customers. Nextel has been pushing mobile devices as business tools for a long time (walkie-talkie feature, sophisticated pager-like functionality, etc.) whereas Sprint seems to focus more on casual use (they provide the dialtone for Virgin Mobile). Hopefully they continue to build on these areas instead of chip away at them...
Consolidation in this area is kind of disturbing since these companies are already gigantic and impersonal, but if it leads to some standardization, perhaps ISVs can start rolling out useful content/functionality for mobile devices instead of just selling Britney Spears and N'SYNC ringtones.
If Microsoft did this the article summary would be critical, instead of a subtle compliment.
You're all whores.
For small web site, it really doesn't matter.
Same is true for a large site.
A good way to define "large site" is "beyond the hardware capabilities of a single computer". For example, if you made a hand optimized assembly version of Slashdot that had its own network driver, TCP/IP stack, etc. its load would still probably be beyond the role of any one commodity computer.
When you throw this kind of a load at computers, many basic assumptions start to break -- you inevitably exercise a use case that is quite uncommon with no off-the-shelf solution that fits the bill quite right.
Of course, since large sites mean big business, vendors want you to believe that their solution can grow towards infinity. But don't be fooled: there are no silver bullets.
Getting into a religious war over what RDBMS, language, OS, etc. to use is pointless -- you just cannot avoid refactoring/rewriting major chunks of a project through its lifetime. It is undeniable.
Better to pick what your group is most comfortable with and just take it from there.
How can someone compete fairly knowing what they aren't legally allowed to disclose? I'm not sure, but I don't think this is the answer.
Generally, if you are gainfully employed at company A, are under NCA, and quit to go work at direct competitor, company B, courts generally frown upon that.
However, if you were once gainfully employed at company A, under NCA, was fired by company A, and found a job at direct competitor, company B, courts generally say company A cannot prevent you from earning a living -- no matter what the contract says.
No, the actual product has won people over -- they're called average people.
The day they release a product that wins me over, that is, someone who works in technology, is the day they go out of business, because I do not have the same standards that the average computer user does and there are a lot less of ME
Least of all me.
Someone showed me ICQ in the mid-90s. I downloaded it. "How cute" I thought as I talked to the friend who had sent it to me. I added some other people I knew of that had it to my contact list.
Then hours later he sent me another message, interrupting me.
Then other people interrupted me.
I thought I'd be clever and start a chat room, figuring that if I invited my friends to a chat room we could have a passive discussion in he background without interruptions -- like IRC. But the chat rooms never stayed up for long due to technical limitations. Eventually I checked netstat and found that the chat rooms were some kind of weird peer-to-peer chat. Ick.
I deleted ICQ.
Yeah, well their member base exploded and then AOL built their own/bought ICQ, Yahoo and MSN and thousands more entered the market. Now it seems to be The New Communications Medium.
Good thing I don't invest in tech companies, since my gut would've been to bet against all of these technologies.
Microsoft's platform is the standard because they focused on the business of the software products market. They promised something to independent software vendors and delivered it-- a single platform that any developer no matter how big or small can target. At the same time they pushed hard to get this platform on as many PCs as possible, breaking kneecaps along the way when necessary.
They achieved a form of write once run anywhere. In 1985.
It does not matter what's under the hood, it mattered that the ISV only had to write one binary and not have to spend the money supporting two dozen incompatible platforms. Even Java cannot match this (I know, because I have to deal with it).
Today there must be half a billion PCs that the ISV can generate one single binary for, and with that you've covered what, 90% of the market?
Linux needs to offer big marketshare (doesn't have) and good developer support (has, sorta) for ISVs to care about it, because Microsoft proved that most ISVs won't bother targetting more than one major platform.
...ever since I took up a martial art.
There are plenty of physical and mental health benefits involved in studying a martial art, but there is the undeniable fact that I am much more prone to violence now.
I'll walk into so many situations with a belief that I can overpower a problem with brute strength or with a precision strike to a body part, whether it makes sense or not. I have the hammer so everything looks like a nail.
I don't think I act on these urges, but I'm sure others might disagree.
Video games never encouraged this kind of behavior in me since video game problem solving is entirely confined within your head.
Personally I think 94.8% is pretty awful. I don't think 99.4% is very good either. But there is no doubt that audio quality is getting better. I only maintain my land line now for my HD Tivo to dial out from.
Hey Taco, why don't you post Slashdot's availability?
Thought so.
'Hot Coffee' depicts a blowjob. There'll be no new life coming from that (pun intended, I guess).
That's what this one doctor thought when another doctor performed fellatio upon him. Boy, wasn't he suprised when he was subsequently hit with a palimony suit?
What would the reason be to put it in there then? Perhaps the publicity that they are getting now?
The game is rated "mature". If you can develop a relationship with a girlfriend, and you can also pick up scantily clad hookers and screw them so well that they squeal with delight, and you can also indiscriminately kill a row of people from afar, and also kill someone in vivid close up detail, work out at the gym and watch your muscles grow, or watch your character get fat at a burger joint to impress a girlfriend, why would having sex with girlfriend be such a departure from the rest of the theme of the game?
The development team was probably entrusted with total creative freedom. As it neared release and was shown to people in the company who understand the American political landscape, they probably told them to nix some features, including the graphic sex with girlfriend one ("but leave in the prostitutes, that never gets old").
I don't understand why the "mature" rating still doesn't apply.
The game allows you to...
- Pull people out of their cars and drive away in them
- Steal military weapons
- Destroy property
- Injure and kill completely innocent bystanders
- Develop a criminal enterprise
- Carry out the orders of corrupt police officers
- Pick up prostitutes
- Burn down a pot farm
and so far it's been pretty smooth sailing, but once you can have vivid consensual sex, but only through extensive third party modification, everyone flips out?!Would paranoia.com exist today? Probably not, because it doesn't exist today.
I'm suprised thirdworldtraveler.com doesn't have ads all over it yet.
are just endless -- there was one company that put me to work for many many billable hours trying to figure out why WordPerfect was suffering huge performance issues in certain cases. Never did solve it, end result cost far more than a new workstation would have.
I told them (in the beginning) that with the amount of money they would be spending, they could've just replaced his workstation outright (his was the only machine in the office with the problem). They deferred to another admin's judgement and he veto'ed the idea, demanding the "proper" solution.
Ambigious? Inquirers shown bread and circuses?
Anyone remember any other company like this?
If there was no longer a need for something, it would become obsolete on its own. Demanding that something become obsolete is quite suspicious.