It has been observed through twenty something years of firsthand experimentation with computer games that they do in fact offer the chance to deal some virtual destruction, which brings with it an immense sense of satisfaction....and these assholes needed how much money to come to the same conclusion!?
I just had to buy a new joystick so I could carry on playing XvT. Love that game.
WoW doesn't interest me. Nothing produced by Zynga interests me. EA can take what they've done to the C&C franchise (since and including that godawful Dune game that came out in 2001) and stick it up their arses. In fact, very little in the way of recent titles interests me. It's all so "samey". In fact, the latest game I play (since World of Tanks) is Need For Speed: The Run.
I am a sim junkie. Make it look great (not merely good, but GREAT) on a triple-head and I'm happy. Better sit down, I'm about to praise Microsoft: Flight Simulator 2000 is the best thing to happen to the PC, ever. Forty Gig of usermods helps somewhat;)
YET Microsoft just reported record Q4 profits. They don't sell that many retail Winx licenses these days, XBox is a loss leader as far as hardware goes (always has been, the Mk.I box sold for 1/5 the price of equivalent PC hardware when it came out); the money is in the games and payfor phone support and service contracts.
several points (not all covered here, these are just a few that immediately popped into my head):
-from the telemetry they can determine how exactly the materials and structure failed. From this better material and structure design for slower aircraft making them more survivable; -from the telemetry they can determine the high stress points on a craft travelling at such a speed (I can imagine, the leading edges of the control surfaces, the wingtips and the nose will get stupendously hot and massive vortices spilling from the trailing edges may have had something to do with the failure of the superstructure). Again, this leads to improvements in aircraft design; -from observation and telemetry they can determine the aerodynamic stresses at the moment of failure.
As lessons previously learned: in reinforced carbon composite skinning, it is known that several thin and continuous layers are far stronger than a single thick, segmented layer. This principle is used in hulls on sporting boats, as hull integrity at speed is kinda important. When we learn how to spin alloys into a contiguous undulating skin we'll be doing well.
Consider also that without such pioneers as Chuck Yeager we would not have transsonic or supersonic airliners. We would not know how to compensate for TS turbulence, or how differently control surfaces behave across the sound barrier, or how baffles slow intake air enough so as not to shatter fan blades, or most importantly, how the human body reacts to such unnatural velocities.
Because one of the most important conditions for ANY person, corporation or Government to be doing business with any bank which has either primary or regional headquarters in Switzerland (read: most of them) is that they lay the fuck off of Switzerland? Plus the fact that it the Swiss have a higher number of firearms in private hands than in police or government hands - 3.4 million versus less than 360,000. Are you going to invade a country where half the population are trained in, and have immediate access to, automatic weapons?
Interesting link (others please read for yourself, I have no intention of summarising here). To put your mind at ease, Philip; I make the assertion, to borrow an analogy on that page, based upon the fact that in the search for tigers I made a very careful sweep of the passenger seat of my motor conveyance and found no tigers. In the same vein I always sit facing the door with my back to the wall (not a window) and my electronic reader has no wireless link; therefore, no person could read over my shoulder nor could they remotely defeat any communications interlocks to gain access to the data contained therein.
Security through obscurity? Seriously bad idea when it comes to dealing with other peoples' money. You just don't know who is the wrong person to piss off, until their card details (and their PIN!?) are published...
part of the audit trail is keeping track of how many copies are around and where they are. In most cases, where I was concerned, there was one hard copy (the client kept this), two digital copies (client had one on sealed and encrypted WORM, I had the other to work with - also encrypted), and that's it. Losing decryption keys is always a risk, but as long as they're not kept with the media itself then there's little risk of the data leaking in decrypted format. Mine're kept in my head in a thin walled glass vial. Slightest jar or stress and whoops! All gone.
Due to the nature of the information it's easy to figure out what you couldn't talk about to a casual acquaintance over a beer. That would be pretty much anything remotely connected with work.
Yeah. The raised eyebrows I got when conversation turned to "So, what do you do for a living?"..."Um... sorry, that's classified..." or to make it a bit less like I'm pretending to be some international assassin, "Analyst".
apparently not, the IDE model can always stream data faster than it can run the tape. That said, I've always been a fan of the XDR Soundburst - where a climbing tone at the beginning of each side is used to gauge the quality of the tape. If any part of the XDR tone drops... let's just say, I don't have many IEC Type I tapes. They're all Type II (CrO2) or Type IV (Metal). And yes, the heads are designed to be very responsive and very sensitive for the tape to stream that fast. My only real concern is the number of times I'd have to clean the heads of oxide buildup...
It does. It's a very specific NDA, it has to be considering the information it's protecting and from whom. Once the contract terminates (for whatever reason), the data is invariably rendered irretrievable. I've had four out of probably three hundred clients actually ask for their files, the rest have asked for it to be disposed of.
I can also proudly make the assertion that I have never had a data breach.
I deal with slightly different NDAs. The ones I deal with have stipulated in them, no expiration except with the express written consent of all parties in the contract. Upon termination of the NDA, all information concerning the data subject (who is invariably one of the signatories to the contract) is returned to that individual following the transfer of a token sum (£1 Sterling) to the Data Controller, who then certifies under penalty of perjury that any and all copies of said data have been destroyed. The Certificate of Destruction is then copied to the recipient of the data who signs it and also signs off the last line of the audit. A copy of the audit is kept by the DC and one goes to the recipient. By the end of it all the DC has is the wet-signed copy of the audit and the wet-signed copy of the CoD.
If the NDA is not terminated by arrangement, it does not expire. Simple as that.
I won't apologise, but coders are a Dime a dozen these days. I'll find one who is confident in his abilities enough not to have to worry about my firing his arse if he fucks up.
Easy dig: 3.5" floppy Easy dig: 5.25" floppy (though the controller might be a problem since I have an ISA card for it and no motherboard with an ISA slot - that said I do have a Commodore CP/M external drive as well) Easy dig: 3" floppy (take your pick: I have a Sinclair +3, access to a still functioning Amstrad CPW6128, and a custom wired bare drive to RS232 serial interface) Easy dig: DC300 tape Easy dig: HP Colorado 8 DAT (one internal with PCI controller card and one external SCSI) Easy dig: LS120 (have a drive in my old but still used file server) Easy dig: Zip250 (ditto), also an external Zip100
What I would really love to get my hands on is a pristine Mark I Plusdeck IDE cassette drive - it has to be the IDE one because you couldn't stream both sides of a 90-minute tape at once in 90 seconds with the USB version - and I have a LOT of tapes which would take literally years to rip at 1x.
When you buy something you own it. It's yours, to do with as you wish - even if your intent is to sell it on immediately. It's called free market economy. Deal with it.
- Energy: The theory is there, as is a practically unlimited supply of helium-3 on the Moon. That's a stopover just to refuel and the ready technology for controlled nuclear fusion. Step n-1: permanent lunar base. - Food/water: OK, the water bit is easy: pretty much the simplest polyatomic compound in existence, it has many uses including oxygen generation (photoelectrics/hydroponics?), and it can be recycled to an infinite degree. It's also pretty dense, so storage isn't much of a problem. Food is a simple matter of growing your own, for which a garden needs to be built and the necessary skills present to maintain it to the point where it is a constantly replenishable source of chemical energy and other essential nutrients. Such gardens can be located on the lunar colony, in orbit around Earth, the Moon or Mars (better yet, all three), with a limited supply onboard to be replenished during stopovers during the trip. - Psychological studies: impacts on long-term enclosure in tin can environments (ask the Russians), in small groups of less than half a dozen (ask the Russians or any political prisoner), and application of these studies to determine the suitability of any candidate for the mission as to their likely responses to such conditions and steps that can be taken to mitigate any negative effects such as cabin fever - wouldn't do the mission any good to have someone suddenly decide they're going for a walk without a spacesuit on. Strike that, it'd be an End-Of-Mission event. - Damage control. We're talking about micrometeoroid strikes, radiation surges, orbital anomalies, structural failures, electronic failures, and the training required to recover from those.
There's just a few. There's a lot more, probably even more that I wouldn't think of if I wrote a thousand pages on it, never mind two. I think the eggheads are talking about a robotic mission here. For which I would suggest a small, semi-autonomous probe with the ability to cover large distances rapidly (neutrally buoyant craft with fan engines?) and the ability to take and analyse samples with the equipment it has onboard. So, some serious miniaturisation technology, probably some endlessly renewable power source (printed PV array?), redundant systems (or more than one probe)... it could be done with technology we have now, the question is how to utilise what we have, or how to adapt what we have to do what we want?
in a perfect world, DoJ has the obligation to go through all the storage units and search for stolen property, impounding the entire contents of each unit they find stolen property in; the rest, once checked, are allowed usual access for the keyholders to remove their property but Storage-R-Us would not be allowed to take money, put anything else into storage or sign up new clients *while the investigation is ongoing*. Running cost would be met by DoJ while they carry out their investigation *only if their activity prevents Storage-R-Us from carrying on normal trading*. If, at the conclusion of the investigation and any subsequent court case, Storage-R-Us are found to be active contributory/accessory to any crime, then the DoJ would be able to claim back the running costs on top of any other costs so accrued. This would break even very large companies. If it goes the other way round (Storage-R-Us found not to be contributory) then the company would be able to claim excessive costs (ie interest on loans unpaid while accounts are frozen) from the DoJ, who of course have the financial backing of the Federal Reserve via the Treasury which equals a bottomless pit.
Course, this isn't a perfect world, this is the Real World where Government agencies are above the Laws and Statutes they codify and apply to Everyone Else. The DoJ can do what the fuck they like, and if that means shutting down MU or Storage-R-Us because **AA has a hissy fit at the possibility that they might be enabling civil infringement, then tough titties.
...did the penguins topple over backwards as they watched the satellite pass overhead? (OK I know it's a popular myth, long propagated by bored RAF pilots and long debunked by British Antarctic Survey experiments, but it's still a funny image).
Just where do you suppose those who don't eat meat obtain the nutrients they would otherwise miss? Magic? We are evolved to derive energy from protein (otherwise we wouldn't be dentally equipped to process the stuff) on a much higher scale than from plant matter (which is why we do not have three stomachs). Consider your argument again when you realise that plant energy is locked inside cellulose packets which we as an organism are incapable of chemically processing: the only energy released is from those cells which are mechanically rendered during the chewing process.
not half as stupid as replacing the incandescent light with a cold fluorescent tube filled with a substance with known carcinogenic properties - which sanitation engineers then refuse to move just in case they break!
um... I think he's operating outside his job description. Clue: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Nothing about ocean there, if he wants in that crowd he's in the wrong agency - he wants the NOAA.
tell you what; I'll keep eating meat, you turn into a methane factory. BTW, methane is a byproduct of the breakdown of plant matter and is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases known, so get around *that*.
I don't know if the Nike analogy fits here - a pair of sneakers isn't something uniquely identifiable like an IMEI, nor is it something that can be bricked. Back to the phone thing: a brick signal sits on the server until the phone is activated. When it signals the nearest cell to register on the network, it receives, instead of an ACK, a BRICK. End of phone. The important point here is that when you brick a handset you're not bricking the SIM (which carries the number), you're bricking the handset (which carries the IMEI which is what the apparatus uses to signal the cell to register). So it doesn't matter if you simply change the SIM, the phone will still be bricked. You have to change the IMEI, which is seriously low level firmware stuff.
What a lot of people don't realise is that by turning the phone off you're not actually turning it off. It is still trackable as long as the battery is still in place and holds a charge (test this yourself by holding a phone near an amp and listen for the buzz). Hence, it is also still brickable. If carriers were more receptive to implementing bricking then jacking phones would become a lot more expensive as yes, Johnny Jacker would have to whip out the battery before he gets around the corner and leave it out until he can get it to someone with the gear to spoof the IMEI.
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It has been observed through twenty something years of firsthand experimentation with computer games that they do in fact offer the chance to deal some virtual destruction, which brings with it an immense sense of satisfaction. ...and these assholes needed how much money to come to the same conclusion!?
I just had to buy a new joystick so I could carry on playing XvT. Love that game.
WoW doesn't interest me.
Nothing produced by Zynga interests me.
EA can take what they've done to the C&C franchise (since and including that godawful Dune game that came out in 2001) and stick it up their arses.
In fact, very little in the way of recent titles interests me. It's all so "samey". In fact, the latest game I play (since World of Tanks) is Need For Speed: The Run.
I am a sim junkie. Make it look great (not merely good, but GREAT) on a triple-head and I'm happy. ;)
Better sit down, I'm about to praise Microsoft: Flight Simulator 2000 is the best thing to happen to the PC, ever. Forty Gig of usermods helps somewhat
YET Microsoft just reported record Q4 profits. They don't sell that many retail Winx licenses these days, XBox is a loss leader as far as hardware goes (always has been, the Mk.I box sold for 1/5 the price of equivalent PC hardware when it came out); the money is in the games and payfor phone support and service contracts.
several points (not all covered here, these are just a few that immediately popped into my head):
-from the telemetry they can determine how exactly the materials and structure failed. From this better material and structure design for slower aircraft making them more survivable;
-from the telemetry they can determine the high stress points on a craft travelling at such a speed (I can imagine, the leading edges of the control surfaces, the wingtips and the nose will get stupendously hot and massive vortices spilling from the trailing edges may have had something to do with the failure of the superstructure). Again, this leads to improvements in aircraft design;
-from observation and telemetry they can determine the aerodynamic stresses at the moment of failure.
As lessons previously learned: in reinforced carbon composite skinning, it is known that several thin and continuous layers are far stronger than a single thick, segmented layer. This principle is used in hulls on sporting boats, as hull integrity at speed is kinda important. When we learn how to spin alloys into a contiguous undulating skin we'll be doing well.
Consider also that without such pioneers as Chuck Yeager we would not have transsonic or supersonic airliners. We would not know how to compensate for TS turbulence, or how differently control surfaces behave across the sound barrier, or how baffles slow intake air enough so as not to shatter fan blades, or most importantly, how the human body reacts to such unnatural velocities.
Yet another reason for me not to set foot on an aircraft bound for the United States.
Seriously, you had me sold at having to remove my shoes at check-in.
Because one of the most important conditions for ANY person, corporation or Government to be doing business with any bank which has either primary or regional headquarters in Switzerland (read: most of them) is that they lay the fuck off of Switzerland? Plus the fact that it the Swiss have a higher number of firearms in private hands than in police or government hands - 3.4 million versus less than 360,000. Are you going to invade a country where half the population are trained in, and have immediate access to, automatic weapons?
Interesting link (others please read for yourself, I have no intention of summarising here). To put your mind at ease, Philip; I make the assertion, to borrow an analogy on that page, based upon the fact that in the search for tigers I made a very careful sweep of the passenger seat of my motor conveyance and found no tigers. In the same vein I always sit facing the door with my back to the wall (not a window) and my electronic reader has no wireless link; therefore, no person could read over my shoulder nor could they remotely defeat any communications interlocks to gain access to the data contained therein.
Security through obscurity? Seriously bad idea when it comes to dealing with other peoples' money. You just don't know who is the wrong person to piss off, until their card details (and their PIN!?) are published...
part of the audit trail is keeping track of how many copies are around and where they are. In most cases, where I was concerned, there was one hard copy (the client kept this), two digital copies (client had one on sealed and encrypted WORM, I had the other to work with - also encrypted), and that's it. Losing decryption keys is always a risk, but as long as they're not kept with the media itself then there's little risk of the data leaking in decrypted format. Mine're kept in my head in a thin walled glass vial. Slightest jar or stress and whoops! All gone.
Due to the nature of the information it's easy to figure out what you couldn't talk about to a casual acquaintance over a beer. That would be pretty much anything remotely connected with work.
Yeah. The raised eyebrows I got when conversation turned to "So, what do you do for a living?" ..."Um... sorry, that's classified..." or to make it a bit less like I'm pretending to be some international assassin, "Analyst".
Both are true. Not the assassin bit.
apparently not, the IDE model can always stream data faster than it can run the tape. That said, I've always been a fan of the XDR Soundburst - where a climbing tone at the beginning of each side is used to gauge the quality of the tape. If any part of the XDR tone drops... let's just say, I don't have many IEC Type I tapes. They're all Type II (CrO2) or Type IV (Metal). And yes, the heads are designed to be very responsive and very sensitive for the tape to stream that fast. My only real concern is the number of times I'd have to clean the heads of oxide buildup...
It does. It's a very specific NDA, it has to be considering the information it's protecting and from whom. Once the contract terminates (for whatever reason), the data is invariably rendered irretrievable. I've had four out of probably three hundred clients actually ask for their files, the rest have asked for it to be disposed of.
I can also proudly make the assertion that I have never had a data breach.
I deal with slightly different NDAs. The ones I deal with have stipulated in them, no expiration except with the express written consent of all parties in the contract. Upon termination of the NDA, all information concerning the data subject (who is invariably one of the signatories to the contract) is returned to that individual following the transfer of a token sum (£1 Sterling) to the Data Controller, who then certifies under penalty of perjury that any and all copies of said data have been destroyed. The Certificate of Destruction is then copied to the recipient of the data who signs it and also signs off the last line of the audit. A copy of the audit is kept by the DC and one goes to the recipient. By the end of it all the DC has is the wet-signed copy of the audit and the wet-signed copy of the CoD.
If the NDA is not terminated by arrangement, it does not expire. Simple as that.
I won't apologise, but coders are a Dime a dozen these days. I'll find one who is confident in his abilities enough not to have to worry about my firing his arse if he fucks up.
hmmm...
Easy dig: 3.5" floppy
Easy dig: 5.25" floppy (though the controller might be a problem since I have an ISA card for it and no motherboard with an ISA slot - that said I do have a Commodore CP/M external drive as well)
Easy dig: 3" floppy (take your pick: I have a Sinclair +3, access to a still functioning Amstrad CPW6128, and a custom wired bare drive to RS232 serial interface)
Easy dig: DC300 tape
Easy dig: HP Colorado 8 DAT (one internal with PCI controller card and one external SCSI)
Easy dig: LS120 (have a drive in my old but still used file server)
Easy dig: Zip250 (ditto), also an external Zip100
What I would really love to get my hands on is a pristine Mark I Plusdeck IDE cassette drive - it has to be the IDE one because you couldn't stream both sides of a 90-minute tape at once in 90 seconds with the USB version - and I have a LOT of tapes which would take literally years to rip at 1x.
When you buy something you own it. It's yours, to do with as you wish - even if your intent is to sell it on immediately. It's called free market economy. Deal with it.
...or the one from The Black hole? Not the orange one that looked like Zax fucked a dustbin (B.O.B. LF 28), the huge red one.
...some obstacles need to be dealt with:
- Energy: The theory is there, as is a practically unlimited supply of helium-3 on the Moon. That's a stopover just to refuel and the ready technology for controlled nuclear fusion. Step n-1: permanent lunar base.
- Food/water: OK, the water bit is easy: pretty much the simplest polyatomic compound in existence, it has many uses including oxygen generation (photoelectrics/hydroponics?), and it can be recycled to an infinite degree. It's also pretty dense, so storage isn't much of a problem. Food is a simple matter of growing your own, for which a garden needs to be built and the necessary skills present to maintain it to the point where it is a constantly replenishable source of chemical energy and other essential nutrients. Such gardens can be located on the lunar colony, in orbit around Earth, the Moon or Mars (better yet, all three), with a limited supply onboard to be replenished during stopovers during the trip.
- Psychological studies: impacts on long-term enclosure in tin can environments (ask the Russians), in small groups of less than half a dozen (ask the Russians or any political prisoner), and application of these studies to determine the suitability of any candidate for the mission as to their likely responses to such conditions and steps that can be taken to mitigate any negative effects such as cabin fever - wouldn't do the mission any good to have someone suddenly decide they're going for a walk without a spacesuit on. Strike that, it'd be an End-Of-Mission event.
- Damage control. We're talking about micrometeoroid strikes, radiation surges, orbital anomalies, structural failures, electronic failures, and the training required to recover from those.
There's just a few. There's a lot more, probably even more that I wouldn't think of if I wrote a thousand pages on it, never mind two. I think the eggheads are talking about a robotic mission here. For which I would suggest a small, semi-autonomous probe with the ability to cover large distances rapidly (neutrally buoyant craft with fan engines?) and the ability to take and analyse samples with the equipment it has onboard. So, some serious miniaturisation technology, probably some endlessly renewable power source (printed PV array?), redundant systems (or more than one probe)... it could be done with technology we have now, the question is how to utilise what we have, or how to adapt what we have to do what we want?
in a perfect world, DoJ has the obligation to go through all the storage units and search for stolen property, impounding the entire contents of each unit they find stolen property in; the rest, once checked, are allowed usual access for the keyholders to remove their property but Storage-R-Us would not be allowed to take money, put anything else into storage or sign up new clients *while the investigation is ongoing*. Running cost would be met by DoJ while they carry out their investigation *only if their activity prevents Storage-R-Us from carrying on normal trading*. If, at the conclusion of the investigation and any subsequent court case, Storage-R-Us are found to be active contributory/accessory to any crime, then the DoJ would be able to claim back the running costs on top of any other costs so accrued. This would break even very large companies. If it goes the other way round (Storage-R-Us found not to be contributory) then the company would be able to claim excessive costs (ie interest on loans unpaid while accounts are frozen) from the DoJ, who of course have the financial backing of the Federal Reserve via the Treasury which equals a bottomless pit.
Course, this isn't a perfect world, this is the Real World where Government agencies are above the Laws and Statutes they codify and apply to Everyone Else. The DoJ can do what the fuck they like, and if that means shutting down MU or Storage-R-Us because **AA has a hissy fit at the possibility that they might be enabling civil infringement, then tough titties.
...did the penguins topple over backwards as they watched the satellite pass overhead? (OK I know it's a popular myth, long propagated by bored RAF pilots and long debunked by British Antarctic Survey experiments, but it's still a funny image).
wow, way to read what isn't there.
You *are* really that dumb.
Just where do you suppose those who don't eat meat obtain the nutrients they would otherwise miss? Magic? We are evolved to derive energy from protein (otherwise we wouldn't be dentally equipped to process the stuff) on a much higher scale than from plant matter (which is why we do not have three stomachs). Consider your argument again when you realise that plant energy is locked inside cellulose packets which we as an organism are incapable of chemically processing: the only energy released is from those cells which are mechanically rendered during the chewing process.
not half as stupid as replacing the incandescent light with a cold fluorescent tube filled with a substance with known carcinogenic properties - which sanitation engineers then refuse to move just in case they break!
um... I think he's operating outside his job description. Clue: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Nothing about ocean there, if he wants in that crowd he's in the wrong agency - he wants the NOAA.
tell you what; I'll keep eating meat, you turn into a methane factory. BTW, methane is a byproduct of the breakdown of plant matter and is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases known, so get around *that*.
pfft! I have antique glassware that's more radioactive than store-prepped spent fuel - and I drink out of it. No ill effects. BLARP!
I don't know if the Nike analogy fits here - a pair of sneakers isn't something uniquely identifiable like an IMEI, nor is it something that can be bricked. Back to the phone thing: a brick signal sits on the server until the phone is activated. When it signals the nearest cell to register on the network, it receives, instead of an ACK, a BRICK. End of phone. The important point here is that when you brick a handset you're not bricking the SIM (which carries the number), you're bricking the handset (which carries the IMEI which is what the apparatus uses to signal the cell to register). So it doesn't matter if you simply change the SIM, the phone will still be bricked. You have to change the IMEI, which is seriously low level firmware stuff.
What a lot of people don't realise is that by turning the phone off you're not actually turning it off. It is still trackable as long as the battery is still in place and holds a charge (test this yourself by holding a phone near an amp and listen for the buzz). Hence, it is also still brickable. If carriers were more receptive to implementing bricking then jacking phones would become a lot more expensive as yes, Johnny Jacker would have to whip out the battery before he gets around the corner and leave it out until he can get it to someone with the gear to spoof the IMEI.