This just goes to show you how useless Game Ratings are.
When Sega started game ratings back in the 90's I said that it wouldn't do a thing about kids getting the game they want, because the'll just go to Grandpa and get him to get it for them. apparently, If 8 year old's are gettting a hold of GTA then obviously I was right somewhere.
First of all, the rating system is inherently flawed. Where's the AO rating? GTA (or any Rockstar game for that matter) would be a shining canidate for an AO rating. At least then it would be more accurate rating then mature. Not that it matters, because the store would happily sell GTA to 8 year old Billy because he's got $50 dollars to buy it. and thats where the second problem comes in.
Their going to get their hands on it and their going to play it. And since censoring is not the answer and ratings obviously suck, then the parents need to be involved somewhere telling the kid that this stuff is not real life, and that in real life you go to prison and go meet your new friend Bubba.
Heh. Maybe the next GTA could simulate prison every time your arrested. and not in the "Manhunt" sort of way.
The Only DRM that I will support is Personal DRM. If I make a file and I want to be the only person to be able to open it, Great. If a Bank wants to use DRM as a way to protect it's customers from ID Theft, Great. The way I look at personal DRM is that it's another security layer to protect myself (or my company's) personal data.
Commercial DRM I don't support at all. If I buy a CD I expect that CD to play in anything I have for as long as I own that CD. Commercial DRM limits that. The Best Example is Windows XP. Yes I have to register it to use it and it works. Now what happens when MS decides to not support WinXP anymore? Can they guarantee that I can install WinXP and use it 20 years from now?
Both Personal and commercial DRM have issues when it comes to system recovery. I see this problem in WMP now. If you buy music on WMP and WinXP crashes, I hope you backed up your Encryption key, otherwise all your music is now worthless. The same goes with the Encrypting File system in WinXP, although that can be handled and minimized by a Domain server in a business environment.
so in summary: DRM in my control = Good DRM in Someone Else's Control = Bad
It amazing that so many people scream "Pyramid Scheme" when they see any of these things. Wikipedia uses is as their primary example of a pyramid scheme. Whats just as amazing is that there is people just as loud fighting back.
Google has a ton of articles debating this issue. The defenders tend to use the same arguments that I used in my project (Shaved 2 Tiers Maximum, Fixed Referrals) while the accusers use the powers of numbers (1+5*5^2*5^3=156, Best case sceneario 31/156=20% = Your Screwing 80% best case!) to justify their side.
So, your probably expecting me to side with the defenders becasue I'm in the running for a free item right? Actually I'm on both sides at the moment.
Logistically, it's a pyramid scheme. It draws users by making you draw new users, and they draw users, ETC. Beyond that is it gets fuzzy, however.
The first fuzzy thing is the shaving. since they shave you off you dont get additional rewards. the way it works in a traditional Pyramid Scheme, is I get involved for $1, then I get 5 others to chip in for $1, and so on an so forth. If five tiers go through, thats $3125. This doesn't happen in these offers, the most you could get under those in this example is $5. So in other words, your not getting an ipod everytime you sign up 10, and all of the 10 you signed up signed up 10, your just getting your ipod and leaving.
Now the first thing out of the accusers mouth is that it's still stealing $5 dollars. But is it stealing if you get services rendered? Lets change the game here and say you get involved by not chipping in $1 but buying a happy meal from Mc'donalds and you still get the $5 if you get the 5 others to buy happy meals. At this point your not giving up anything outright with zero return, your giving up your money to buy a (possibly discounted I might add) happy meal. (Something you might want to do anyway. You gotta eat someday.) the Pyramid is just an added incentive. You might not have bought the happy meal otherwise, but if you got it your going to eat it or at least play with the toy.
Now on top of that lets add Sharky the Middleman. Sharky sets up this said promotion of this "burgers for bucks" pyramid above, and is not involved in the pyramid in any way. in other words, he eats at Long John Silvers.
Now, the Clown at Mc'donalds gives sharky $0.40 each time Sharky and his plan sends a happy meal buyer through the store. At the most, 6 People net Sharky $2.40, OH NO! Sharky Got to pay you $5 and is short $2.60! Lucikly Sharky got friends in the "business" to lend him the $2.60.
Now of course his "Business Associates" are concerned. "How to hell do we get our $2.60 back" says the "CEO" in which Sharky, talking to his fish buddy that oddly sounds like Wil Smith, replies Apathy. Sharky is betting that the majority of people will fail at this and will recoup the loss that way.
So this is how it goes down. At best case sceneario (on our side), if we take the logistic approach, 1+5*5^2*5^3=156 are involved, 31 get stuff. 156*.40=$62.4 31*5=$155 which = $92.6 dollar loss. Thats right, they would lose money if everyone got 5 friends and so on. the bigger the best case sceneario the worse it gets. This would change with more referrals, but usually thats associated with a more costlier item. So in most cases it balances out.
Now what happens in a worst case sceneario, thats when it gets good for business, this logicially is 1+4*4^2*4^3=85, which means that You managed to get 4 referrals but not 5, all of your referrals ETC. 85*.40=34 which is a $34 dollar profit. doesn't sound too much considering the losses you can take, but when failure is above 80% it adds up.
Now for the point at hand. Since there is a risk of loss, it is NOT a Pyramid Scheme in the Defined sense. In a true Pyramid scheme, you cant lose if your on top. Period. Outside of the cops arresting you and letting you meet you new friend Bubba, your getting a ton of money with little to no invested capital. It's also not a Pyramid scheme in the way
It's crap like this that makes me glad I'm a Star Trek Fan.
Lucas, If it's really necessary to "remaster" the 4-6 episodes so many times, just start all over and get it over with. Apparently you think you made so many mistakes that the whole thing should be basicially replaced with a totally new concept to match the newer movies. The first trilogy was great for the 70's but thats not good enough for you so just quit beating the dead horse and start a fresh flogging with a living breathing steed. At least when you completely remake the entire 4-6 episodes you can say you made it in the perfect image and leave the old ones alone for once.
And 3D? Seriously, Did anyone see the torture that was Spy Kids 3D? Basicially all the 3D was was "WOW THATS COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN AND MOVING AROUND!" type of crap that you would get in one of those Sea World or Disney Rides. They could have made that entire movie in 2D and the only thing it would have lost is the time spent by the kid Actors sticking their arm or something else out to the audience so they go OOOO!!
If MS was serious about piracy, and in the back of their mind using this to combat Linux, then they should be handing this out in the streets for free. Period.
All they have to do is offer this as a free download, or include it with a MSN CD or something, Keep it crippled and stripped like it currently is, and have a icon on the desktop to upgrage it to XP home for a nominal fee. People building PC's on the street would probably use it simply because it keeps them more legal as well as it's totally free to them, and it gives MS a chance to reap something out of the PC's that would otherwise have a pirate OS on it.
what makes this even more scary is that it isn't technicially a bug.
There is nothing stopping the spyware company from getting a valid signature and packaging it. It happens all the time in IE. In fact, most of the spyware installers out there for IE are digitally signed.
Using Java, they could easily socially engineer you to download and trust this thing, use Java to find out what OS your running, download spyware/rootkits/etc for your particular PC OS and own your box totally independant of IE.
A lot of the reason why Firefox is so safe is because it doesn't support ActiveX and prompt you all day to install the legacy scumware stuff. If it did support ActiveX in any way it would be prompting you just like IE would, People would click on yes just like they do in IE, and people would get owned just like they do with IE. Since it supports Java, however, they will just gamble that you have Java and get you to do the same thing they were doing in ActiveX, only with Java instead.
The Spyware writers know that 99% of computer users dont know what they are doing and they exploit that, Pure and simple, And there's nothing that Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, or Steve Jobs is going to do about that. This is what Kevin Mitnick has been preaching for some time now, that social Engenering is the hackers favorite tool, and until anyone who writes internet enabled code understand that, there's going to be a really big security problem in the future.
Probably something like "How long will it take Apple to sue us?"
There's only three things that come out of Apple; Ipods, Macs and Lawsuits. For any company to blatently rip off one of Apple's designs takes a lot of guts, especially since Apple's got some of the scariest lawyers in the industry.
I'm really curious what was tested here. this article basicially states "We're killing ourselves" without much into how they got to that conclusion.
There's a ton of theorys on what is causing this. The only ones they flat out denied in the article was the solar and volcanic ones. They didn't go into detail on what theory's were tested, such as the Methane Hydrate Theory.
This is the theory that global warming is increasing because Methane Hydrate is being released in the form of Methane gas from the ocean disturbed by warmer currents. As the tempeature increases in the currents, more Methane is released, ETC until the gobal tempeature increases drasticially.
Unfortunatly, I can't find a lot of reliable data on this. It seems that the majority of nutcases have run with this theory. The Most reliable source I can find on this in a short period of time is at http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/ 3_Methane.htm.
It seems to me that all of these greenhouse scientists love to point the finger at humans alone, but don't look into a combination of natural occurances and human interaction. I'm not saying that we humans aren't doing our part to screw the earth up, but it seems that this could do much more damage then CO2 emmisions could ever do, and in a very short period of time, and there's a lot of historical data stating that it has happened in the past.
They wouldn't even have to go that far. Just explaining to them how much possible money you could be losing in free advertising is enough.
When people link to their site it's advertising. Yes it's a double edge sword to allow linking but regardless it's getting the orbitz site some publicity whether good or bad.
By not allowing links to your site in any form, their basicially relying on their Thunderbirds puppets and that gay sounding guy playing hide and seek to promote their site.
Word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising a company can have. Period. One person satisified/dissatified with your service will tell anyone interested in their product their experience. By not allowing people to post in their blogs or their site or even e-mail for that matter, your basicially cutting a large portion of free advertising you could be using to promote your business.
Hell. Spyware deletes Adaware if you want a precedent. There's a CWS varient that will close ANY antispyware app for months now. The most interesting one I've seen is one that host blackholes adaware to a site that downloads outdated ad-aware defs and redirects most of the popular download locations to one of the billion or so "The most wonderful spam me to death Search site in the world!!!" site.
A lot of spyware out there disables the anti-spyware that exists either by deleting it or not allowing it to update to get the latest defs. Just because their now targeting the MS antispyware offering as well as the other offerings they target 1) doesn't suprise me and 2) shouldn't suprise anybody else.
The real question is going to be if they can stop it from happening in the next beta release. I doubt they can, but it might be able to protect itself with it's real time scanning engine by not allowing you to modify the directory without your express permission or the registry keys it uses.
I personally like the ding-dong-the-wicked-witch-is-dead dept, but it's probably been outsourced to HP into some hole right now.
Seriously. It's time for change in that company back to what it used to be. What has been coming out of HP lately has been the biggest pile I can possibly conceive.
We have HP deskjet 600's that have outlasted 4 of the newer generation 4 number printers to date. The last series of deskjets they made that was any good was the 900 series deskjet. anything after that falls apart after 6 months or less.
The laserjets were just as bad too. We were seriously buying refurbed Laserjet 2200's and 4000's for the residence halls and staff printers because they didn't have the stupid "Buy HP toner cartrages at an insane price or else!" DRM chip on the cartrages, not to mention that they ran much longer than the new laserjets before needing a service kit.
All I have to say is good. Get the evil out and hopefully get HP back into the favor of the people who made them #1 in business printers.
high ID, open firewall ports, 200 sources, 3 days before file started downloading.
I'll admit that I dont share anything but what I'm downloading or downloaded during the session and try to share that as vigorusly as possible to spread as many chunks to other shares as possible. By design I tend to try to run Emule more like bittorrent. Once I get a chunk I get decent downloads around 10-40KB's and upload at about 25-30KB's but thats as soon as I get something to share. Also keep in mind that Clients dont care how many files your sharing. (becasue Leechers would spoof counts to valid clients or share a ton of useless files) As long as your uploading to them your getting a better queue rank. Since it's hard to upload what you dont have it's what causes the first chunk to be the most painful.
1) Make it so that the high priority only lasts until either a chunk is being reported, or you send the client 10-20mb (10 plus 10mb more of whatever might be needed to handle corruption) 2) As you said, Make it so that you only send the first chunk that was requested at high priority.
Of course this assumes that they are not sharing any of the file right now because they have no chunk available. If they have a chunk available the standard QR would apply.
#2 would be the best overall in case of corrupted data, since it can download as much as it needs but only the first chunk it requested. #1 gets rid of any loopholes altogether but is open for possible corruption. a combination of the 2 should be enough for most situations.
using the first chunk only doesn't help the problem, becasue then everyone will have the first chunk, and no one will download it, except for people just starting the file. File health wise it should be spread across multiple chunks to help distrubute the file faster.
There can be leeching under this still, because if the file is large enough and the userbase large enough, it can request different chunks from different clients and theoretically download the entire file this way. Smaller chunks would hinder this problem immensly, Also keep in mind that setting any active downloading file to release would have a similar (not as immediate however) effect and still use the current queue ranking with no modification.
There's nothing thats going to completely remove leeching from a network. it's going to happen, the idea however is to hinder leaching without hindering legitimate users. Currently emule hinders leechers very well but hurts legitimate users when they first start a download.
Yes it does, but in the process of making leechers and whatnot pay, it created a stingy client itself.
Emule's credit system is stingy because of how it's credit system works. First, It only trusts itself, which is good since you can't trust anyone else. Second, it only uploads on priority, in other words, the person that uploads the most to you gets the best queue rating and gets more download time from you.
So if for example you download File X, Client X will put you in the bottom of the queue unless Client X has ever downloaded from you in the past, which is statisticlly unlikely. It doesn't matter if you have file A-Z shared on your pc, as long as client X never wanted file A-Z and never downloaded files A-Z from you, your at the bottom of client X's queue.
Since you just started the download, you have nothing to share to the clients that have all or part of what you are downloading, so they will put you on the bottom of their queue. once you finally get a chunk you can share, the download speed increases since your sharing something to them and your rating is going up, but the process of getting the first chunk could take hours if not days in some cases.
Emule can fix this easily by doing one of two things. First, set the priority of uploads that you are actively downloading release priority. and set it back to auto once the file is completed, and second, giving clients with no chunks to download a Very high priority so that they can get something to share quicker and can give back to the network, Then once they get a chunk drop the priority to a standard client level.
If these prove to be legit, and Kazaa has to cough up logs, then the fun is over.
Frankly, Good for them. I never trusted Kazaa one second. There was something about it that I didn't like but could never really pinpoint on what it was outside of spyware infestation. Personally I was a ED2K fan until leeching made the devs put Anti-leeching programming into ED2K. Now all the ED2K clients are so stingy it takes days to get a file started.
I wonder how far back the logs go. With data like that the RIAA/MPAA could have a field day suing users.
The VOD, PPV and the Broadcast flag make sense for their MSTV service that their trying to sell as an addon to Media center.
The analog is probably the biggest waste overall however. The only thing I can think of that they are using it for is to Macrovision the AV jacks on your PC so you can't put Media center content on a VCR. Why you would want to do that when most of these systems have DVD burners is beyond me outside of maybe to protect Broadcast Flagged content.
Now All I need is a Mac Mini to test this on and I'm all set. Although I dont know why you would want to overclock a Mac Mini with the possibility of overheat looming over it.
That's where my other project (In My Sig) comes in. I know it's a snowballs chance in hell that I'll get one this way, but at least I'm doing something interesting with the data I'm getting from it.
The MSN Search right now is too new to get an accurate reading on how it is going to ultimately perform.
Google has been around for years spidering sites where MSN Search has only been around for a few months.
The real test is going to be a year from now, when it's had more than enough time to spider a good portion of the web. Even Google's search paled in comparison to Altavista at first until at least 6 months passed. After a year passed its searches were much better since a good portion of the web was spidered by it.
At this point in the game, It would have to be an absoletly amazing site to take Google out, and I don't think MSN Search is the site thats going to do it.
From what I've tested so far. It seems that it's getting more hits than google in some places, better links in others. Linux and Windows give much more hits in MSN than in Google. Linux searches in MSN tend to focus on the bigger portals rather than the Distros like google. Windows searches are somewhat strange, Google Likes Winzip while MSN likes Winamp on it's first page.
Searching for Firefox, Google wins 17mil to 1.2mil, but the news portion gives much more recent news than google. They both seem to focus on the same pages on the first page however.
Interface wise, you can definetly tell who their trying to emulate. It has a "It's Google with more blue color" Feeling to it. It's cached page content does not do autohighlighting like google, which is a big minus in my opinion. Adjustment wise, I think they got something with the Search Builder, especially with the Result rankings slider.
Overall, it seems like it use use some work search wise, but that could be just because it needs to do some more spidering. Even Google sucked Vs Altavista until it's spidering caught up. Only time will tell.
Seriously. Why would Mobil build and support an RFID system protected under a 40 bit key? I thought at the very least those speedpass systems had a 64 bit key.
I know that encryption isn't that important when true physical contact is involved (such as most credit cards, which have no encryption protection but are starting to get some with smartcards) but when it comes down to something that basicially broadcasts a credit card number, you would think that mobil would be a bit more concerned about it.
If I had a mobil speedpass I would be concerned, since a small device placed on top of a gas pump could easily passive eavesdrop on your speedpass and pass that information to would be criminals.
The car key, although just as disturbing, isn't as important to have a strong key since it would involve way too much work to basicially steal one car. To do it you would have to somehow read the signal from the key by bumping into the person leaving the car to active scan their rfid signal, (passive eavesdropping would not work well since it only sends the signal at startup when the person's going to be driving away) Decode it, and then use it to start the car once you bypass the physical key. It would be much easier and faster to steal a car without an immobilization system then to bypass it.
Slashdot Mirror
This just goes to show you how useless Game Ratings are.
When Sega started game ratings back in the 90's I said that it wouldn't do a thing about kids getting the game they want, because the'll just go to Grandpa and get him to get it for them. apparently, If 8 year old's are gettting a hold of GTA then obviously I was right somewhere.
First of all, the rating system is inherently flawed. Where's the AO rating? GTA (or any Rockstar game for that matter) would be a shining canidate for an AO rating. At least then it would be more accurate rating then mature. Not that it matters, because the store would happily sell GTA to 8 year old Billy because he's got $50 dollars to buy it. and thats where the second problem comes in.
Their going to get their hands on it and their going to play it. And since censoring is not the answer and ratings obviously suck, then the parents need to be involved somewhere telling the kid that this stuff is not real life, and that in real life you go to prison and go meet your new friend Bubba.
Heh. Maybe the next GTA could simulate prison every time your arrested. and not in the "Manhunt" sort of way.
The Only DRM that I will support is Personal DRM. If I make a file and I want to be the only person to be able to open it, Great. If a Bank wants to use DRM as a way to protect it's customers from ID Theft, Great. The way I look at personal DRM is that it's another security layer to protect myself (or my company's) personal data.
Commercial DRM I don't support at all. If I buy a CD I expect that CD to play in anything I have for as long as I own that CD. Commercial DRM limits that. The Best Example is Windows XP. Yes I have to register it to use it and it works. Now what happens when MS decides to not support WinXP anymore? Can they guarantee that I can install WinXP and use it 20 years from now?
Both Personal and commercial DRM have issues when it comes to system recovery. I see this problem in WMP now. If you buy music on WMP and WinXP crashes, I hope you backed up your Encryption key, otherwise all your music is now worthless. The same goes with the Encrypting File system in WinXP, although that can be handled and minimized by a Domain server in a business environment.
so in summary:
DRM in my control = Good
DRM in Someone Else's Control = Bad
It amazing that so many people scream "Pyramid Scheme" when they see any of these things. Wikipedia uses is as their primary example of a pyramid scheme. Whats just as amazing is that there is people just as loud fighting back.
Google has a ton of articles debating this issue. The defenders tend to use the same arguments that I used in my project (Shaved 2 Tiers Maximum, Fixed Referrals) while the accusers use the powers of numbers (1+5*5^2*5^3=156, Best case sceneario 31/156=20% = Your Screwing 80% best case!) to justify their side.
So, your probably expecting me to side with the defenders becasue I'm in the running for a free item right? Actually I'm on both sides at the moment.
Logistically, it's a pyramid scheme. It draws users by making you draw new users, and they draw users, ETC. Beyond that is it gets fuzzy, however.
The first fuzzy thing is the shaving. since they shave you off you dont get additional rewards. the way it works in a traditional Pyramid Scheme, is I get involved for $1, then I get 5 others to chip in for $1, and so on an so forth. If five tiers go through, thats $3125. This doesn't happen in these offers, the most you could get under those in this example is $5. So in other words, your not getting an ipod everytime you sign up 10, and all of the 10 you signed up signed up 10, your just getting your ipod and leaving.
Now the first thing out of the accusers mouth is that it's still stealing $5 dollars. But is it stealing if you get services rendered? Lets change the game here and say you get involved by not chipping in $1 but buying a happy meal from Mc'donalds and you still get the $5 if you get the 5 others to buy happy meals. At this point your not giving up anything outright with zero return, your giving up your money to buy a (possibly discounted I might add) happy meal. (Something you might want to do anyway. You gotta eat someday.) the Pyramid is just an added incentive. You might not have bought the happy meal otherwise, but if you got it your going to eat it or at least play with the toy.
Now on top of that lets add Sharky the Middleman. Sharky sets up this said promotion of this "burgers for bucks" pyramid above, and is not involved in the pyramid in any way. in other words, he eats at Long John Silvers.
Now, the Clown at Mc'donalds gives sharky $0.40 each time Sharky and his plan sends a happy meal buyer through the store. At the most, 6 People net Sharky $2.40, OH NO! Sharky Got to pay you $5 and is short $2.60! Lucikly Sharky got friends in the "business" to lend him the $2.60.
Now of course his "Business Associates" are concerned. "How to hell do we get our $2.60 back" says the "CEO" in which Sharky, talking to his fish buddy that oddly sounds like Wil Smith, replies Apathy. Sharky is betting that the majority of people will fail at this and will recoup the loss that way.
So this is how it goes down. At best case sceneario (on our side), if we take the logistic approach, 1+5*5^2*5^3=156 are involved, 31 get stuff. 156*.40=$62.4 31*5=$155 which = $92.6 dollar loss. Thats right, they would lose money if everyone got 5 friends and so on. the bigger the best case sceneario the worse it gets. This would change with more referrals, but usually thats associated with a more costlier item. So in most cases it balances out.
Now what happens in a worst case sceneario, thats when it gets good for business, this logicially is 1+4*4^2*4^3=85, which means that You managed to get 4 referrals but not 5, all of your referrals ETC. 85*.40=34 which is a $34 dollar profit. doesn't sound too much considering the losses you can take, but when failure is above 80% it adds up.
Now for the point at hand. Since there is a risk of loss, it is NOT a Pyramid Scheme in the Defined sense. In a true Pyramid scheme, you cant lose if your on top. Period. Outside of the cops arresting you and letting you meet you new friend Bubba, your getting a ton of money with little to no invested capital. It's also not a Pyramid scheme in the way
It's crap like this that makes me glad I'm a Star Trek Fan.
Lucas, If it's really necessary to "remaster" the 4-6 episodes so many times, just start all over and get it over with. Apparently you think you made so many mistakes that the whole thing should be basicially replaced with a totally new concept to match the newer movies. The first trilogy was great for the 70's but thats not good enough for you so just quit beating the dead horse and start a fresh flogging with a living breathing steed. At least when you completely remake the entire 4-6 episodes you can say you made it in the perfect image and leave the old ones alone for once.
And 3D? Seriously, Did anyone see the torture that was Spy Kids 3D? Basicially all the 3D was was "WOW THATS COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN AND MOVING AROUND!" type of crap that you would get in one of those Sea World or Disney Rides. They could have made that entire movie in 2D and the only thing it would have lost is the time spent by the kid Actors sticking their arm or something else out to the audience so they go OOOO!!
If MS was serious about piracy, and in the back of their mind using this to combat Linux, then they should be handing this out in the streets for free. Period.
All they have to do is offer this as a free download, or include it with a MSN CD or something, Keep it crippled and stripped like it currently is, and have a icon on the desktop to upgrage it to XP home for a nominal fee. People building PC's on the street would probably use it simply because it keeps them more legal as well as it's totally free to them, and it gives MS a chance to reap something out of the PC's that would otherwise have a pirate OS on it.
what makes this even more scary is that it isn't technicially a bug.
There is nothing stopping the spyware company from getting a valid signature and packaging it. It happens all the time in IE. In fact, most of the spyware installers out there for IE are digitally signed.
Using Java, they could easily socially engineer you to download and trust this thing, use Java to find out what OS your running, download spyware/rootkits/etc for your particular PC OS and own your box totally independant of IE.
A lot of the reason why Firefox is so safe is because it doesn't support ActiveX and prompt you all day to install the legacy scumware stuff. If it did support ActiveX in any way it would be prompting you just like IE would, People would click on yes just like they do in IE, and people would get owned just like they do with IE. Since it supports Java, however, they will just gamble that you have Java and get you to do the same thing they were doing in ActiveX, only with Java instead.
The Spyware writers know that 99% of computer users dont know what they are doing and they exploit that, Pure and simple, And there's nothing that Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, or Steve Jobs is going to do about that. This is what Kevin Mitnick has been preaching for some time now, that social Engenering is the hackers favorite tool, and until anyone who writes internet enabled code understand that, there's going to be a really big security problem in the future.
Probably something like "How long will it take Apple to sue us?"
There's only three things that come out of Apple; Ipods, Macs and Lawsuits. For any company to blatently rip off one of Apple's designs takes a lot of guts, especially since Apple's got some of the scariest lawyers in the industry.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;165005
How about spyware is to adware as buford Tannen is to Biff Tannen?
:)
It's a bad anology AND it has something to do with Back to the future!
I'm really curious what was tested here. this article basicially states "We're killing ourselves" without much into how they got to that conclusion.
/ 3_Methane.htm.
There's a ton of theorys on what is causing this. The only ones they flat out denied in the article was the solar and volcanic ones. They didn't go into detail on what theory's were tested, such as the Methane Hydrate Theory.
This is the theory that global warming is increasing because Methane Hydrate is being released in the form of Methane gas from the ocean disturbed by warmer currents. As the tempeature increases in the currents, more Methane is released, ETC until the gobal tempeature increases drasticially.
Unfortunatly, I can't find a lot of reliable data on this. It seems that the majority of nutcases have run with this theory. The Most reliable source I can find on this in a short period of time is at http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles
It seems to me that all of these greenhouse scientists love to point the finger at humans alone, but don't look into a combination of natural occurances and human interaction. I'm not saying that we humans aren't doing our part to screw the earth up, but it seems that this could do much more damage then CO2 emmisions could ever do, and in a very short period of time, and there's a lot of historical data stating that it has happened in the past.
They wouldn't even have to go that far. Just explaining to them how much possible money you could be losing in free advertising is enough.
When people link to their site it's advertising. Yes it's a double edge sword to allow linking but regardless it's getting the orbitz site some publicity whether good or bad.
By not allowing links to your site in any form, their basicially relying on their Thunderbirds puppets and that gay sounding guy playing hide and seek to promote their site.
Word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising a company can have. Period. One person satisified/dissatified with your service will tell anyone interested in their product their experience. By not allowing people to post in their blogs or their site or even e-mail for that matter, your basicially cutting a large portion of free advertising you could be using to promote your business.
Hell. Spyware deletes Adaware if you want a precedent. There's a CWS varient that will close ANY antispyware app for months now. The most interesting one I've seen is one that host blackholes adaware to a site that downloads outdated ad-aware defs and redirects most of the popular download locations to one of the billion or so "The most wonderful spam me to death Search site in the world!!!" site.
A lot of spyware out there disables the anti-spyware that exists either by deleting it or not allowing it to update to get the latest defs. Just because their now targeting the MS antispyware offering as well as the other offerings they target 1) doesn't suprise me and 2) shouldn't suprise anybody else.
The real question is going to be if they can stop it from happening in the next beta release. I doubt they can, but it might be able to protect itself with it's real time scanning engine by not allowing you to modify the directory without your express permission or the registry keys it uses.
I personally like the ding-dong-the-wicked-witch-is-dead dept, but it's probably been outsourced to HP into some hole right now.
Seriously. It's time for change in that company back to what it used to be. What has been coming out of HP lately has been the biggest pile I can possibly conceive.
We have HP deskjet 600's that have outlasted 4 of the newer generation 4 number printers to date. The last series of deskjets they made that was any good was the 900 series deskjet. anything after that falls apart after 6 months or less.
The laserjets were just as bad too. We were seriously buying refurbed Laserjet 2200's and 4000's for the residence halls and staff printers because they didn't have the stupid "Buy HP toner cartrages at an insane price or else!" DRM chip on the cartrages, not to mention that they ran much longer than the new laserjets before needing a service kit.
All I have to say is good. Get the evil out and hopefully get HP back into the favor of the people who made them #1 in business printers.
high ID, open firewall ports, 200 sources, 3 days before file started downloading.
I'll admit that I dont share anything but what I'm downloading or downloaded during the session and try to share that as vigorusly as possible to spread as many chunks to other shares as possible. By design I tend to try to run Emule more like bittorrent. Once I get a chunk I get decent downloads around 10-40KB's and upload at about 25-30KB's but thats as soon as I get something to share. Also keep in mind that Clients dont care how many files your sharing. (becasue Leechers would spoof counts to valid clients or share a ton of useless files) As long as your uploading to them your getting a better queue rank. Since it's hard to upload what you dont have it's what causes the first chunk to be the most painful.
There's actually two ways of handling that.
1) Make it so that the high priority only lasts until either a chunk is being reported, or you send the client 10-20mb (10 plus 10mb more of whatever might be needed to handle corruption)
2) As you said, Make it so that you only send the first chunk that was requested at high priority.
Of course this assumes that they are not sharing any of the file right now because they have no chunk available. If they have a chunk available the standard QR would apply.
#2 would be the best overall in case of corrupted data, since it can download as much as it needs but only the first chunk it requested. #1 gets rid of any loopholes altogether but is open for possible corruption. a combination of the 2 should be enough for most situations.
using the first chunk only doesn't help the problem, becasue then everyone will have the first chunk, and no one will download it, except for people just starting the file. File health wise it should be spread across multiple chunks to help distrubute the file faster.
There can be leeching under this still, because if the file is large enough and the userbase large enough, it can request different chunks from different clients and theoretically download the entire file this way. Smaller chunks would hinder this problem immensly, Also keep in mind that setting any active downloading file to release would have a similar (not as immediate however) effect and still use the current queue ranking with no modification.
There's nothing thats going to completely remove leeching from a network. it's going to happen, the idea however is to hinder leaching without hindering legitimate users. Currently emule hinders leechers very well but hurts legitimate users when they first start a download.
Yes it does, but in the process of making leechers and whatnot pay, it created a stingy client itself.
Emule's credit system is stingy because of how it's credit system works. First, It only trusts itself, which is good since you can't trust anyone else. Second, it only uploads on priority, in other words, the person that uploads the most to you gets the best queue rating and gets more download time from you.
So if for example you download File X, Client X will put you in the bottom of the queue unless Client X has ever downloaded from you in the past, which is statisticlly unlikely. It doesn't matter if you have file A-Z shared on your pc, as long as client X never wanted file A-Z and never downloaded files A-Z from you, your at the bottom of client X's queue.
Since you just started the download, you have nothing to share to the clients that have all or part of what you are downloading, so they will put you on the bottom of their queue. once you finally get a chunk you can share, the download speed increases since your sharing something to them and your rating is going up, but the process of getting the first chunk could take hours if not days in some cases.
Emule can fix this easily by doing one of two things. First, set the priority of uploads that you are actively downloading release priority. and set it back to auto once the file is completed, and second, giving clients with no chunks to download a Very high priority so that they can get something to share quicker and can give back to the network, Then once they get a chunk drop the priority to a standard client level.
If these prove to be legit, and Kazaa has to cough up logs, then the fun is over.
Frankly, Good for them. I never trusted Kazaa one second. There was something about it that I didn't like but could never really pinpoint on what it was outside of spyware infestation. Personally I was a ED2K fan until leeching made the devs put Anti-leeching programming into ED2K. Now all the ED2K clients are so stingy it takes days to get a file started.
I wonder how far back the logs go. With data like that the RIAA/MPAA could have a field day suing users.
Either that, or the afterlife doesn't have a DMCA equivilant. :)
Not Exactly.
The VOD, PPV and the Broadcast flag make sense for their MSTV service that their trying to sell as an addon to Media center.
The analog is probably the biggest waste overall however. The only thing I can think of that they are using it for is to Macrovision the AV jacks on your PC so you can't put Media center content on a VCR. Why you would want to do that when most of these systems have DVD burners is beyond me outside of maybe to protect Broadcast Flagged content.
Hey that's my Birtyday! Thats great timing on their part.
Now All I need is a Mac Mini to test this on and I'm all set. Although I dont know why you would want to overclock a Mac Mini with the possibility of overheat looming over it.
That's where my other project (In My Sig) comes in. I know it's a snowballs chance in hell that I'll get one this way, but at least I'm doing something interesting with the data I'm getting from it.
The MSN Search right now is too new to get an accurate reading on how it is going to ultimately perform.
Google has been around for years spidering sites where MSN Search has only been around for a few months.
The real test is going to be a year from now, when it's had more than enough time to spider a good portion of the web. Even Google's search paled in comparison to Altavista at first until at least 6 months passed. After a year passed its searches were much better since a good portion of the web was spidered by it.
At this point in the game, It would have to be an absoletly amazing site to take Google out, and I don't think MSN Search is the site thats going to do it.
Anything's got to be better than all of the IANAL posts you typicially get here in a legal situation :)
From what I've tested so far. It seems that it's getting more hits than google in some places, better links in others. Linux and Windows give much more hits in MSN than in Google. Linux searches in MSN tend to focus on the bigger portals rather than the Distros like google. Windows searches are somewhat strange, Google Likes Winzip while MSN likes Winamp on it's first page.
Searching for Firefox, Google wins 17mil to 1.2mil, but the news portion gives much more recent news than google. They both seem to focus on the same pages on the first page however.
Interface wise, you can definetly tell who their trying to emulate. It has a "It's Google with more blue color" Feeling to it. It's cached page content does not do autohighlighting like google, which is a big minus in my opinion. Adjustment wise, I think they got something with the Search Builder, especially with the Result rankings slider.
Overall, it seems like it use use some work search wise, but that could be just because it needs to do some more spidering. Even Google sucked Vs Altavista until it's spidering caught up. Only time will tell.
Seriously. Why would Mobil build and support an RFID system protected under a 40 bit key? I thought at the very least those speedpass systems had a 64 bit key.
I know that encryption isn't that important when true physical contact is involved (such as most credit cards, which have no encryption protection but are starting to get some with smartcards) but when it comes down to something that basicially broadcasts a credit card number, you would think that mobil would be a bit more concerned about it.
If I had a mobil speedpass I would be concerned, since a small device placed on top of a gas pump could easily passive eavesdrop on your speedpass and pass that information to would be criminals.
The car key, although just as disturbing, isn't as important to have a strong key since it would involve way too much work to basicially steal one car. To do it you would have to somehow read the signal from the key by bumping into the person leaving the car to active scan their rfid signal, (passive eavesdropping would not work well since it only sends the signal at startup when the person's going to be driving away) Decode it, and then use it to start the car once you bypass the physical key. It would be much easier and faster to steal a car without an immobilization system then to bypass it.