If I spot a giant hole into a bank vault when walking down the alley and resist the temptation once and point it out then walk back by next week and it is still an open hole... the only logical explanation is that the bank wants me to have the money. It is an implicit gift!
My penis thought the same thing about my ex's ass.
I'd much rather see a java implementation using lots and lots of redstone. Then you could theoretically run minecraft on minecraft in infinite regression. This could cause the end of the world so I'd be careful.
Oh No! Don't Tell the GCC developers! We're all be DOOMED!
A lifetime of experience to a computer cluster with several thousand cores, and several billion Hz of operational frequency, per core, can be passed in a very short time.
How?
Step 0: Turn on the AI cluster.
Step 1: Wait a very short time.
Step 2: Turn off the AI cluster.
Step 3: You and the AI just had the experience of a lifetime.
So it is NOT that "the PC is dying" or that anybody is trading their fricking laptops or desktops for some dinky ass smartphone, its the simple fact that for nearly 6 years PCs have been insanely overpowered so people see no need to buy a new one when they can't stress the old.
As a developer, it's not that I can't push a system to it's limits, it's that the glacial console cycle has a chilling effect on progress. In order to give you better games we need more detailed assets and physics computation power, but we have to look at the market and sell what people are able to play -- We have to compress our effort in such a way that it's useful to the widest range of players.
With PC-only games you can put something out that requires some really high end stuff -- needing lots of RAM (texture and vertices), and lots of compute (shaders, physics, logic) -- and in 18 months your min sys req. is half of what the high end systems offer. That is to say that folks can catch up really quickly such that in two years time the high end becomes mid-range, and around the 3year mark the system specs required are considered low-end.
With a Console or Cross Platform game you have to go by the most common denominator. It takes double effort to re-topo models to and re-rig them for animation, scale down physics and shaders, and test them, etc. in order to make a game the best it can be on each platform. That's why you get a PC game that looks damn near the same as a console game. Look, games made for one system requirement still run on better hardware years later, what we need is to have upgradable game consoles, and if they're going to be that powerful then 3rd parties need to be able to sell parts and users need to be able to run whatever software they want on them so they don't have to have a PC in addition to the other General Purpose computer (console). Except we already have game consoles like that, they're call PCs, so really we just need consoles to DIE.
MMOS? Seriously? That's one type of game that targets the low and mid range systems because they make the most money when more people can play the game. Typically they have system requirements that were easy to meet even 8 years ago. It's not that they can't push the system, it's that they look at their target market, and make the game accordingly -- Also, you can't upgrade and require better systems for an MMO too quickly because people will stop paying subscriptions when the game suddenly breaks. So, MMOs are bottom of the barrel spec-wise, just above mobile and casual games.
Publishers won't pay for the physics and graphics to get revamped / resampled (well, except for textures & sound since the process can be automated), so modern games are predominantly tied to the console levels. Now you know why it is that "for nearly 6 years PCs have been insanely overpowered", they only seem that way because you're talking about playing games, and game developers are making insanely underpowered games.
For people who actually NEED the power, say folks like me who do video transcoding while running accurate physics simulations of sound propagation for commercial acoustic design and/or industrial noise abatement, and would like to still be able to work in their CAD suite with multiple detailed 3D views open, it is quite clearly NOT a "simple fact" that PCs are "insanely overpowered", that's fucking ridiculous you fool! The systems are never powerful enough.
You're welcome for those nice zig zaggy walls near freeways that keep your neighborhoods quieter, and for industrial plants that don't cause hearing loss. Games? Pfffah! Gimme a break kid, go get a real lawn to shout from.
This is the Information Age. More Information means More Power. Openness equates to giving the public more power. Governments will be as secretive and/or obfuscatory as possible. Just look at the legal system. You shouldn't have to study all laws and every legal finding (case law) just to effectively represent yourself in court. By making the information system overly complex, even to a point where each court has different procedures for evidence submittal, more power is removed from the common person -- One must trust someone else's knowledge to even stand a chance of defending themselves from their government (that should scare the crap out of everyone).
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein
Yet, we go the other route when it comes to the laws that rule us? That's Insanity! (Hint: look up what Einstein says about Insanity)
I'm sorry. This "Open Government" has so very little chance of success. It would give citizens more information, thus more power and control over their governments. It is so rare for a government to give back a power once they've taken it for themselves that historically the only way for citizens to get the powers back is via revolt. Consider the PATRIOT Act. These powers were said to only be needed temporarily, the PATRIOT act was supposed to have expired by now. We were panicking and seemed to be under immediate threat, so the government used our fear to take powers, and they have not given them back, nor will such infrormation control ever be relinquished by them. FTWA
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France: roving wiretaps, searches of business records (the "library records provision"), and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves" — individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups. Republican leaders questioned if the use of the Autopen met the constitutional requirements for signing a bill into law.
And yet, the citizens have no similar investigative process for government officials. There is a huge disparity of information / power here...
These are just a few examples of how our own government shies away from public knowledge and tends toward secrecy and obfuscation, there are many others at nearly every turn of any nation's pages of history. The more secrecy and bureaucratic obfuscation, the less transparency, the less accountability, the less control the people have over their government, and the more power the government has over the public. In the Information Age, such control of information wields even greater power.
I know that a nation's fate doesn't have to be the same as all other nations who have embraced secrecy and avoided accountability, but I don't see any modern nation veering from the course to avoid assured destruction; Instead they accelerate. Note, however, that although "Open Government" has hardly any chance to succeed at all, it does have the best chance of success now than it ever has before.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Hell, I'd rather find a fellow adult co-worker who games to blow off steam than wonder when that quiet shy guy in the corner cube is gonna suddenly snap one day and murder the entire office because he can't seem to find an outlet to deal with adult stress.
Oh, now where's your sense of adventure!?
You'd finally get to put to use the experience games have been training you for your whole life, and you're just going to spoil everything simply because you don't get to be the protagonist? For shame!
To think: If only you'd have maintained an uncomfortable association with the quiet fellow instead, your workplace niceties could have got you a role as one of those annoying white shirted wankers who pop out to keep folks with good reflexes from getting the high score.
if I pay for a certain speed, I expect that speed as a minimum, with 24x7 maximum download and upload rate as my *limits* - in otherwords, unlimited.
Anything less is a lie, and a contract / agreement violation, period.
Then you must not read contracts before you sign them. The speeds quoted are "Up To" a certain speed, not Pipes Saturated at bandwidth X with Five Nines Uptime. I'm with you though. They need to be forced to advertise their minimum speeds for both up and down, or at least give us an average speed.
If the aim was to "fairly monetize a high fixed cost", then in no rational sense of fairness does overselling their bandwidth seem fair. Also, it doesn't really matter if folks are streaming traffic in off-peak times, the hardware to meet peak demand spikes must exist. It's the overselling that drives up those usage spikes. The answer is to stop overselling. Also, they're making money hand over fist, electricity and maintenance costs are barely visible on the bar graph compared to profits.
I do. 300 Baud is a nice reading speed... But First!...
He who would negotiateth a handshake of that breadth must answer me these questions three, Ere the ATDT ye see...
0. What is your FidoNet node address?
1. What number of in & out dials have you?
2. Whatis the land area coverage of an unladen local call?
The one check that the founders of the US government gave the people is the power for a jury to refuse a law be upheld. That is the only protection we have against the rule of unjust law. In today's legal climate however, juries are instructed to behave precisely the way a Judge says, and jury findings can be ignored if it's found by the judge to oppose a matter of law.
Every trial should necessarily put the law on trial as well. We have plenty of law making bodies, but THERE IS NO LAW UNMAKING BODY. Not anymore. That power has been stripped from the people, and we can no longer perform our duty to keep the Judicial branch in line. Might as well not even have the requirement for a "jury of peers" anymore -- They're not educated as to their duty and are now used as mere formalities, coached by lawyers and judges alike to narrow their minds and even presume the law to be correct when deliberating! This is hardly different than a Judgement as a Matter of Law by a Judge!
Beside the Supreme Court, only Jurors can legally stand against the unjust rule of law and say, "This law is unjust, the consequence for breaching it are null and void."
Well, I'm sure the folks writing the code that talks to the API will have to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. Such an agreement states that the if you let slip the information under any means that you agree you've irreparably harmed the discloser of information. That's the most damaging kind of harm there is, which may even be on the same level as a murder if you think about it, esp. considering the amount of money the disclosee risks forfeiting.
The state of computer security and information security security in general is so ridiculously near non-existent in any sense of the word that it would be foolish to sign any NDA, not just one for an eKitchenSink API. There is not a single common desktop or server OS that can not be readily breached by someone of with sufficient knowledge; Indeed the NSA and even China's Cyber Army has asserted they hold 0-day expolits for every OS. Do you think there's a super intelligent breed of hacker they've developed to obtain this power, or do you think that there are crackers & hackers with such skills that they happened to recruit? If the latter do you think they've recruited them ALL? -or- even a significant percentage?
So, here we have a situation where I can not in good faith sign a contract saying essentially that I won't ever disclose information to 3rd parties while there are more 3rd parties every day who can just reach into my systems and take that data at any time. These are not hypothetical statements, my security has been breached before. Now I only use Linux and use MS Win via VM; However even these precautions aren't enough to prevent a diligent hacker from discovering an exploit or a cracker with a few thousand dollars from buying said exploit... Not that I'm saying I live in constant fear of being compromised, on the contrary, I most assuredly do not fear because I don't sign that type of NDA and take on such risks. I need not fear, only keep backups in case a compromise occurs. When faced with eating a fish that may or may not be deathly poisonous vs one that is known not to be fatally dangerous, I choose the latter.
I always refuse to sign those sorts of contracts and instead propose that any disclosure by me to a 3rd party has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have been a willful disclosure, and that unwillful disclosures include but are not limited to having my own security breached. It's worth noting that many companies will not agree to such terms, and in such cases I simply move along to another bid. In other words, I've naturally gravitated toward working predominantly on (improving) open source software to add a feature that a business needs/wants because a simple risk analysis prevents me from signing most any proprietary NDA. What of the company's own employees? Do they bear such risk of irreparable harm to their business and sign away right to defend themselves against such claims where information leakage has occurred if their workstation is targeted by crackers?
Also, If I've got to disclose my Application Idea prior to accessing the API then I'm at a severe disadvantage. This is the Information Age, you'd do well to learn a bit of information politics. I'm doing the work to come up with an Idea that may or may not even be possible via their API, and giving that work to them for free for the CHANCE that I might be ALLOWED to benefit from the idea? Say they turn down the idea, can they not simply run off and create the app themselves now? If not, if the NDA is bidirectional and they will not disclose my Idea, then they are doomed. I will simply propose hundreds of ideas under that contract, and drag them into court as soon as another app implements the features I've described... I don't even have to develop anything! If the risk is not bidirectional, then it's not worth the chance to take considering the market share, and that other markets for ideas exist.
Finally, If you want to prevent unlicensed 3rd party API usage then implement a secure code signing chain and make the API
The hardware should be fluid resistant, but your resistance is futile. Don't tell me you haven't learned the Osmosis trick. It saves a lot of drinking time just bathing in it, and since you're not going to put it in your mouth you can even eliminate most trips to the toilet.
No, these drivers are never going to be fully Open Source at the same time they give access to all the hardware capabilities.
I think "never" is a bit too strong of a word, maybe if you're talking for the current cards, perhaps, but Intel has seemed to be able to provide open source Linux graphics drivers.
True, true, they don't make the same cards as the high end guys do, but it's closed minded to even think that disparate computing model w/ discrete GPUs is going to last forever.
IMO, I'd rather do everything in software rasterizer -- Pixel & Vertex shaders still don't give me the same sort of control I had doing everything CPU side... We use hardware for the speed, but it's just a crutch -- a band-aid -- have to write the whole GPU pipeline myself anyway except now it's shaders instead of CPU side code, and with the slow main RAM to GPU bottleneck in the way, it prevents all sorts of wonderful physics -- No, don't get me wrong, you can do awesome stuff on the GPU, I've written whole applications in there, majority of game state and all physics in the GPU with CPU side code just providing the raw data streaming and control input / networking, but it's still terribly limited and a PITA to code that way. Heterogeneous computing will let us do some really awesome stuff, but what we need is just tons of parallelism in the CPUs / FPUs and a fast frame buffer -- then it would be just like the good ol' days. It's coming. The line between GPU and CPU is blurring. And when that happens, You can kiss your "never" goodbye.
Hey, remember when the FPU wasn't always just a given? Heh, yeah, had to chose between SX vs DX, and even then only special programs utilized the advanced "math co-processor", and most programs had to be written as if it wasn't there because you couldn't rely on it being present. Hey, remember when you couldn't count on the computer being able to perform multiple threads in hardware? Hey, remember when computers were single core?
Hey, remember when GPUs and CPUs used to be separate things?
So long as you keep your software updated then there's not really much of a point other than the chance you'll spread an infected file onward without being infected yourself.
Think. No, that's not good enough, think some more: Viruses (we are explicitly talking viruses here, says "Antivirus" right in the test and headline) exploit unpatched vulnerabilities (mistakes) in software. Patched software is immune to the prior vulnerabilities, so AV won't "protect" you from things you're immune to. It also won't protect you from viruses with signatures that it doesn't know about. So, What's the point of wasting all those CPU cycles scanning? Oh, maybe you got infected and it could remove it later? WRONG. Viruses actually mutate, say a malware author snags a virus, they reverse engineer how the payload is delivered and they change the payload to theirs and send it on its way -- The malware can even install other malware once it gets running. So, the (automated) removal options/instructions are probably not complete if the code has ever had a chance to run before. Ah, so now you may be thinking that it's exactly the reason why you'd waste CPU time on an AV scan, to detect infection so at least you'll know -- Except that's just silly. Think. If you were a spy and I asked you if you were a spy then would you say yes? An AV running in an infected machine can not reliably determine the state of the infected machine. AV: "Any Viruses here" Virus: "Nope!"
Often times I'll get people telling me, no matter which AV product they're using, that their machine is working strange, slower, showing adverts and wrong websites, and their AV will be chugging along saying everything is fine. You get more reliable warning from the malware itself! "You may have been Infected with 2042 viruses!" the scareware will prompt every boot, while Norton, or McAfee, or AVG, or ANY AV product I run across the infected machine says the coast is clear. You can't "remove" malware -- Nuke it from orbit, and re-install, it's the only way to be sure.
Look, people, hardware supports virtualization now. If you're NOT running your Windows boxen in a VM, then you're not concerned enough about security to benefit from an anti-virus anyway. Boot from a known clean state, maybe even a LiveCD/USB then do your virus scanning from there if you want to be able to detect anything with any degree of certainty, and even then it's questionable. If your data partition is separate from your (virtual) OS partitions then you can just always run (or restore) from a known good snapshot, and install updates to the known good snapshots, then make another snapshot before you do anything else.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, I don't have to worry about such things as much anymore because I use an OS that gets the patches out much faster than MS does, but I can certainly see where the people who understand the issues in Microsoft might realize that Antivirus isn't really the right option anyway, it's just a waste of time and there are other better solutions... Windows Steady State (or whatever it's called now), for example.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
- Albert Einstein
Not to shatter your conspiratorial fantasy, but this research was actually funded by BP. A lot of big oil companies are investing in alternate energy these days as a hedge for when oil is no longer needed. They say, "We're not in the oil business, we're in the energy business."
Correction: A lot of big oil companies are interested in patenting alternate energy sources these days, because patents can stifle innovation...
When the Catholic Church tells its members to absolutely cut off all communciation with anyone who badmouths them, at all, ever, then we can talk about how Scientology is in any way similar to religions.
So, basically unless they're exactly like Scientology then we can't discuss the similarities? Fuck you, that false dichotomy, and any other apologist for any organization that has anything like "excommunication". I won't even go into how similar the infiltration and intimidation tactics are, even if one is a bit worse than the other... I'll just pose the question: Do you really think a US presidential candidate could claim to be anything but Christian and still win the election?
When you point a finger at someone else remember that there are three pointing right back at you.
Yes, Just imagine it! Ultrasonic Welding of Plastics!
Re:Geeky art doesn't have to be so specialized
on
The Geek Art Movement
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· Score: 1
Agreed. I mount my computer components on a single acrylic sheet and hang them on the wall. Some have mistaken them for art, but it's just functional to me, up off the floor, easy to manage... I've thought of adding some sort of picture-like frames, but meh, whatever.
Them: Oh that's a cool piece, very cyber punk, it's all what is it?
Me: I guess it sort of is a form of geek art. That's my computer.
Them: Obviously, but like which one? An old 386 or 486 or something?
Me: No, and stop touching the fan. Look, Forget about it... Check out this game I'm working on.
Them: Oh that's neat... Woah, these computer/screen all in ones are pretty powerful, I was thinking of getting one, but... it's pricy and not upgradable, eh?
Me: No, upgrading is even easier, so is cleaning, and the lexan is pretty cheap. That's just a regular monitor.
Them: Huh? Oh I get it... I've never seen a keyboard/CPU hybrid, computers have come a long way since smartphones, eh?
Me: Yes, yes they have...
Appolgies to my hipster cousin, though I doubt he'll be reading this...
The track you by timestamp and IP and OS, etc. Even if (especially if) you're not logged in, so of course it doesn't matter if you're signed in or not, the profile they have on you is the same.
Link to more Nasa's images.
TFA says the elongated shape is likely do to interaction with a neighboring galaxy, which may have also spawned a nearby dwarf galaxy; Both visible primarily thanks to the ultraviolet instrumentation.
The tidal dwarf candidate is brighter in the ultraviolet than other
regions of the galaxy, a sign it bears a rich supply of hot young
stars less than 200 million years old.
Scan the debris for life-signs.
Sir, we've detected the stench of several human survivors... From the smell, French I'd say... Eh, Jean Luc? Intriguing, there is a 87.391% probability the remains are of a cargo ship;
The wreckage seems to be covered in some form of condiment,
and the flames are producing an odor signature similar to pork barbe-- That's ENOUGH, Data!
Slashdot Mirror
So, which party do you recommend that has an "adult" focus and aren't just a bunch of liars?
That's easy: Tupperware Party.
If I spot a giant hole into a bank vault when walking down the alley and resist the temptation once and point it out then walk back by next week and it is still an open hole... the only logical explanation is that the bank wants me to have the money. It is an implicit gift!
My penis thought the same thing about my ex's ass.
Turns out, you were both wrong.
It's much easier to get folks hooked on Minecraft, just show them how to craft heroin.
I'd much rather see a java implementation using lots and lots of redstone. Then you could theoretically run minecraft on minecraft in infinite regression. This could cause the end of the world so I'd be careful.
Oh No! Don't Tell the GCC developers! We're all be DOOMED!
A lifetime of experience to a computer cluster with several thousand cores, and several billion Hz of operational frequency, per core, can be passed in a very short time.
How?
Step 0: Turn on the AI cluster.
Step 1: Wait a very short time.
Step 2: Turn off the AI cluster.
Step 3: You and the AI just had the experience of a lifetime.
So it is NOT that "the PC is dying" or that anybody is trading their fricking laptops or desktops for some dinky ass smartphone, its the simple fact that for nearly 6 years PCs have been insanely overpowered so people see no need to buy a new one when they can't stress the old.
As a developer, it's not that I can't push a system to it's limits, it's that the glacial console cycle has a chilling effect on progress. In order to give you better games we need more detailed assets and physics computation power, but we have to look at the market and sell what people are able to play -- We have to compress our effort in such a way that it's useful to the widest range of players.
With PC-only games you can put something out that requires some really high end stuff -- needing lots of RAM (texture and vertices), and lots of compute (shaders, physics, logic) -- and in 18 months your min sys req. is half of what the high end systems offer. That is to say that folks can catch up really quickly such that in two years time the high end becomes mid-range, and around the 3year mark the system specs required are considered low-end.
With a Console or Cross Platform game you have to go by the most common denominator. It takes double effort to re-topo models to and re-rig them for animation, scale down physics and shaders, and test them, etc. in order to make a game the best it can be on each platform. That's why you get a PC game that looks damn near the same as a console game. Look, games made for one system requirement still run on better hardware years later, what we need is to have upgradable game consoles, and if they're going to be that powerful then 3rd parties need to be able to sell parts and users need to be able to run whatever software they want on them so they don't have to have a PC in addition to the other General Purpose computer (console). Except we already have game consoles like that, they're call PCs, so really we just need consoles to DIE.
MMOS? Seriously? That's one type of game that targets the low and mid range systems because they make the most money when more people can play the game. Typically they have system requirements that were easy to meet even 8 years ago. It's not that they can't push the system, it's that they look at their target market, and make the game accordingly -- Also, you can't upgrade and require better systems for an MMO too quickly because people will stop paying subscriptions when the game suddenly breaks. So, MMOs are bottom of the barrel spec-wise, just above mobile and casual games.
Publishers won't pay for the physics and graphics to get revamped / resampled (well, except for textures & sound since the process can be automated), so modern games are predominantly tied to the console levels. Now you know why it is that "for nearly 6 years PCs have been insanely overpowered", they only seem that way because you're talking about playing games, and game developers are making insanely underpowered games.
For people who actually NEED the power, say folks like me who do video transcoding while running accurate physics simulations of sound propagation for commercial acoustic design and/or industrial noise abatement, and would like to still be able to work in their CAD suite with multiple detailed 3D views open, it is quite clearly NOT a "simple fact" that PCs are "insanely overpowered", that's fucking ridiculous you fool! The systems are never powerful enough.
You're welcome for those nice zig zaggy walls near freeways that keep your neighborhoods quieter, and for industrial plants that don't cause hearing loss. Games? Pfffah! Gimme a break kid, go get a real lawn to shout from.
This is the Information Age. More Information means More Power. Openness equates to giving the public more power. Governments will be as secretive and/or obfuscatory as possible. Just look at the legal system. You shouldn't have to study all laws and every legal finding (case law) just to effectively represent yourself in court. By making the information system overly complex, even to a point where each court has different procedures for evidence submittal, more power is removed from the common person -- One must trust someone else's knowledge to even stand a chance of defending themselves from their government (that should scare the crap out of everyone).
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein
Yet, we go the other route when it comes to the laws that rule us? That's Insanity! (Hint: look up what Einstein says about Insanity)
I'm sorry. This "Open Government" has so very little chance of success. It would give citizens more information, thus more power and control over their governments. It is so rare for a government to give back a power once they've taken it for themselves that historically the only way for citizens to get the powers back is via revolt. Consider the PATRIOT Act. These powers were said to only be needed temporarily, the PATRIOT act was supposed to have expired by now. We were panicking and seemed to be under immediate threat, so the government used our fear to take powers, and they have not given them back, nor will such infrormation control ever be relinquished by them. FTWA
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France: roving wiretaps, searches of business records (the "library records provision"), and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves" — individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups. Republican leaders questioned if the use of the Autopen met the constitutional requirements for signing a bill into law.
And yet, the citizens have no similar investigative process for government officials. There is a huge disparity of information / power here...
These are just a few examples of how our own government shies away from public knowledge and tends toward secrecy and obfuscation, there are many others at nearly every turn of any nation's pages of history. The more secrecy and bureaucratic obfuscation, the less transparency, the less accountability, the less control the people have over their government, and the more power the government has over the public. In the Information Age, such control of information wields even greater power.
I know that a nation's fate doesn't have to be the same as all other nations who have embraced secrecy and avoided accountability, but I don't see any modern nation veering from the course to avoid assured destruction; Instead they accelerate. Note, however, that although "Open Government" has hardly any chance to succeed at all, it does have the best chance of success now than it ever has before.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights" (from Sid Meir's Alpha Centauri)
Hell, I'd rather find a fellow adult co-worker who games to blow off steam than wonder when that quiet shy guy in the corner cube is gonna suddenly snap one day and murder the entire office because he can't seem to find an outlet to deal with adult stress.
Oh, now where's your sense of adventure!?
You'd finally get to put to use the experience games have been training you for your whole life, and you're just going to spoil everything simply because you don't get to be the protagonist? For shame!
To think: If only you'd have maintained an uncomfortable association with the quiet fellow instead, your workplace niceties could have got you a role as one of those annoying white shirted wankers who pop out to keep folks with good reflexes from getting the high score.
No GG's for you, spoilsport.
if I pay for a certain speed, I expect that speed as a minimum, with 24x7 maximum download and upload rate as my *limits* - in otherwords, unlimited.
Anything less is a lie, and a contract / agreement violation, period.
Then you must not read contracts before you sign them. The speeds quoted are "Up To" a certain speed, not Pipes Saturated at bandwidth X with Five Nines Uptime. I'm with you though. They need to be forced to advertise their minimum speeds for both up and down, or at least give us an average speed.
If the aim was to "fairly monetize a high fixed cost", then in no rational sense of fairness does overselling their bandwidth seem fair. Also, it doesn't really matter if folks are streaming traffic in off-peak times, the hardware to meet peak demand spikes must exist. It's the overselling that drives up those usage spikes. The answer is to stop overselling. Also, they're making money hand over fist, electricity and maintenance costs are barely visible on the bar graph compared to profits.
Let no wool in your eye: Caps are Greed Based.
Who wants to play tw2002 on my moon server?
I do. 300 Baud is a nice reading speed...
But First!...
He who would negotiateth a handshake of that breadth must answer me these questions three, Ere the ATDT ye see...
0. What is your FidoNet node address?
1. What number of in & out dials have you?
2. What is the land area coverage of an unladen local call?
The one check that the founders of the US government gave the people is the power for a jury to refuse a law be upheld. That is the only protection we have against the rule of unjust law. In today's legal climate however, juries are instructed to behave precisely the way a Judge says, and jury findings can be ignored if it's found by the judge to oppose a matter of law.
Every trial should necessarily put the law on trial as well. We have plenty of law making bodies, but THERE IS NO LAW UNMAKING BODY. Not anymore. That power has been stripped from the people, and we can no longer perform our duty to keep the Judicial branch in line. Might as well not even have the requirement for a "jury of peers" anymore -- They're not educated as to their duty and are now used as mere formalities, coached by lawyers and judges alike to narrow their minds and even presume the law to be correct when deliberating! This is hardly different than a Judgement as a Matter of Law by a Judge!
Beside the Supreme Court, only Jurors can legally stand against the unjust rule of law and say, "This law is unjust, the consequence for breaching it are null and void."
Well, I'm sure the folks writing the code that talks to the API will have to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. Such an agreement states that the if you let slip the information under any means that you agree you've irreparably harmed the discloser of information. That's the most damaging kind of harm there is, which may even be on the same level as a murder if you think about it, esp. considering the amount of money the disclosee risks forfeiting.
The state of computer security and information security security in general is so ridiculously near non-existent in any sense of the word that it would be foolish to sign any NDA, not just one for an eKitchenSink API. There is not a single common desktop or server OS that can not be readily breached by someone of with sufficient knowledge; Indeed the NSA and even China's Cyber Army has asserted they hold 0-day expolits for every OS. Do you think there's a super intelligent breed of hacker they've developed to obtain this power, or do you think that there are crackers & hackers with such skills that they happened to recruit? If the latter do you think they've recruited them ALL? -or- even a significant percentage?
So, here we have a situation where I can not in good faith sign a contract saying essentially that I won't ever disclose information to 3rd parties while there are more 3rd parties every day who can just reach into my systems and take that data at any time. These are not hypothetical statements, my security has been breached before. Now I only use Linux and use MS Win via VM; However even these precautions aren't enough to prevent a diligent hacker from discovering an exploit or a cracker with a few thousand dollars from buying said exploit... Not that I'm saying I live in constant fear of being compromised, on the contrary, I most assuredly do not fear because I don't sign that type of NDA and take on such risks. I need not fear, only keep backups in case a compromise occurs. When faced with eating a fish that may or may not be deathly poisonous vs one that is known not to be fatally dangerous, I choose the latter.
I always refuse to sign those sorts of contracts and instead propose that any disclosure by me to a 3rd party has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have been a willful disclosure, and that unwillful disclosures include but are not limited to having my own security breached. It's worth noting that many companies will not agree to such terms, and in such cases I simply move along to another bid. In other words, I've naturally gravitated toward working predominantly on (improving) open source software to add a feature that a business needs/wants because a simple risk analysis prevents me from signing most any proprietary NDA. What of the company's own employees? Do they bear such risk of irreparable harm to their business and sign away right to defend themselves against such claims where information leakage has occurred if their workstation is targeted by crackers?
Also, If I've got to disclose my Application Idea prior to accessing the API then I'm at a severe disadvantage. This is the Information Age, you'd do well to learn a bit of information politics. I'm doing the work to come up with an Idea that may or may not even be possible via their API, and giving that work to them for free for the CHANCE that I might be ALLOWED to benefit from the idea? Say they turn down the idea, can they not simply run off and create the app themselves now? If not, if the NDA is bidirectional and they will not disclose my Idea, then they are doomed. I will simply propose hundreds of ideas under that contract, and drag them into court as soon as another app implements the features I've described... I don't even have to develop anything! If the risk is not bidirectional, then it's not worth the chance to take considering the market share, and that other markets for ideas exist.
Finally, If you want to prevent unlicensed 3rd party API usage then implement a secure code signing chain and make the API
Protip: To prevent shellacking just dump some fuel stabilizer in it before you put it away for the winter. Good advice for all small engines.
The hardware should be fluid resistant, but your resistance is futile. Don't tell me you haven't learned the Osmosis trick. It saves a lot of drinking time just bathing in it, and since you're not going to put it in your mouth you can even eliminate most trips to the toilet.
Ahhh, Beeffee.
No, these drivers are never going to be fully Open Source at the same time they give access to all the hardware capabilities.
I think "never" is a bit too strong of a word, maybe if you're talking for the current cards, perhaps, but Intel has seemed to be able to provide open source Linux graphics drivers.
True, true, they don't make the same cards as the high end guys do, but it's closed minded to even think that disparate computing model w/ discrete GPUs is going to last forever.
IMO, I'd rather do everything in software rasterizer -- Pixel & Vertex shaders still don't give me the same sort of control I had doing everything CPU side... We use hardware for the speed, but it's just a crutch -- a band-aid -- have to write the whole GPU pipeline myself anyway except now it's shaders instead of CPU side code, and with the slow main RAM to GPU bottleneck in the way, it prevents all sorts of wonderful physics -- No, don't get me wrong, you can do awesome stuff on the GPU, I've written whole applications in there, majority of game state and all physics in the GPU with CPU side code just providing the raw data streaming and control input / networking, but it's still terribly limited and a PITA to code that way. Heterogeneous computing will let us do some really awesome stuff, but what we need is just tons of parallelism in the CPUs / FPUs and a fast frame buffer -- then it would be just like the good ol' days. It's coming. The line between GPU and CPU is blurring. And when that happens, You can kiss your "never" goodbye.
Hey, remember when the FPU wasn't always just a given? Heh, yeah, had to chose between SX vs DX, and even then only special programs utilized the advanced "math co-processor", and most programs had to be written as if it wasn't there because you couldn't rely on it being present. Hey, remember when you couldn't count on the computer being able to perform multiple threads in hardware? Hey, remember when computers were single core?
Hey, remember when GPUs and CPUs used to be separate things?
So long as you keep your software updated then there's not really much of a point other than the chance you'll spread an infected file onward without being infected yourself.
Think. No, that's not good enough, think some more: Viruses (we are explicitly talking viruses here, says "Antivirus" right in the test and headline) exploit unpatched vulnerabilities (mistakes) in software. Patched software is immune to the prior vulnerabilities, so AV won't "protect" you from things you're immune to. It also won't protect you from viruses with signatures that it doesn't know about. So, What's the point of wasting all those CPU cycles scanning? Oh, maybe you got infected and it could remove it later? WRONG. Viruses actually mutate, say a malware author snags a virus, they reverse engineer how the payload is delivered and they change the payload to theirs and send it on its way -- The malware can even install other malware once it gets running. So, the (automated) removal options/instructions are probably not complete if the code has ever had a chance to run before. Ah, so now you may be thinking that it's exactly the reason why you'd waste CPU time on an AV scan, to detect infection so at least you'll know -- Except that's just silly. Think. If you were a spy and I asked you if you were a spy then would you say yes? An AV running in an infected machine can not reliably determine the state of the infected machine. AV: "Any Viruses here" Virus: "Nope!"
Often times I'll get people telling me, no matter which AV product they're using, that their machine is working strange, slower, showing adverts and wrong websites, and their AV will be chugging along saying everything is fine. You get more reliable warning from the malware itself! "You may have been Infected with 2042 viruses!" the scareware will prompt every boot, while Norton, or McAfee, or AVG, or ANY AV product I run across the infected machine says the coast is clear. You can't "remove" malware -- Nuke it from orbit, and re-install, it's the only way to be sure.
Look, people, hardware supports virtualization now. If you're NOT running your Windows boxen in a VM, then you're not concerned enough about security to benefit from an anti-virus anyway. Boot from a known clean state, maybe even a LiveCD/USB then do your virus scanning from there if you want to be able to detect anything with any degree of certainty, and even then it's questionable. If your data partition is separate from your (virtual) OS partitions then you can just always run (or restore) from a known good snapshot, and install updates to the known good snapshots, then make another snapshot before you do anything else.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, I don't have to worry about such things as much anymore because I use an OS that gets the patches out much faster than MS does, but I can certainly see where the people who understand the issues in Microsoft might realize that Antivirus isn't really the right option anyway, it's just a waste of time and there are other better solutions... Windows Steady State (or whatever it's called now), for example.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
- Albert Einstein
Not to shatter your conspiratorial fantasy, but this research was actually funded by BP. A lot of big oil companies are investing in alternate energy these days as a hedge for when oil is no longer needed. They say, "We're not in the oil business, we're in the energy business."
Correction: A lot of big oil companies are interested in patenting alternate energy sources these days, because patents can stifle innovation...
When the Catholic Church tells its members to absolutely cut off all communciation with anyone who badmouths them, at all, ever, then we can talk about how Scientology is in any way similar to religions.
So, basically unless they're exactly like Scientology then we can't discuss the similarities? Fuck you, that false dichotomy, and any other apologist for any organization that has anything like "excommunication". I won't even go into how similar the infiltration and intimidation tactics are, even if one is a bit worse than the other... I'll just pose the question: Do you really think a US presidential candidate could claim to be anything but Christian and still win the election?
When you point a finger at someone else remember that there are three pointing right back at you.
"one nation under god" indeed.
Marking data as code at runtime then executing it is dumb.
JIT is bad, mmkay?
Yes, Just imagine it! Ultrasonic Welding of Plastics!
Agreed. I mount my computer components on a single acrylic sheet and hang them on the wall. Some have mistaken them for art, but it's just functional to me, up off the floor, easy to manage... I've thought of adding some sort of picture-like frames, but meh, whatever.
Them: Oh that's a cool piece, very cyber punk, it's all what is it?
Me: I guess it sort of is a form of geek art. That's my computer.
Them: Obviously, but like which one? An old 386 or 486 or something?
Me: No, and stop touching the fan. Look, Forget about it... Check out this game I'm working on.
Them: Oh that's neat... Woah, these computer/screen all in ones are pretty powerful, I was thinking of getting one, but... it's pricy and not upgradable, eh?
Me: No, upgrading is even easier, so is cleaning, and the lexan is pretty cheap. That's just a regular monitor.
Them: Huh? Oh I get it... I've never seen a keyboard/CPU hybrid, computers have come a long way since smartphones, eh?
Me: Yes, yes they have...
Appolgies to my hipster cousin, though I doubt he'll be reading this...
The track you by timestamp and IP and OS, etc. Even if (especially if) you're not logged in, so of course it doesn't matter if you're signed in or not, the profile they have on you is the same.
Link to more Nasa's images.
TFA says the elongated shape is likely do to interaction with a neighboring galaxy, which may have also spawned a nearby dwarf galaxy; Both visible primarily thanks to the ultraviolet instrumentation.
The tidal dwarf candidate is brighter in the ultraviolet than other
regions of the galaxy, a sign it bears a rich supply of hot young
stars less than 200 million years old.
Hmm, Sounds about like Hollywood...
Scan the debris for life-signs.
Sir, we've detected the stench of several human survivors... From the smell, French I'd say... Eh, Jean Luc?
Intriguing, there is a 87.391% probability the remains are of a cargo ship;
The wreckage seems to be covered in some form of condiment,
and the flames are producing an odor signature similar to pork barbe--
That's ENOUGH, Data!
HAL: I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I don't give a fuck.