I totally agree with you. This sort of technology could amount to censorship if not used properly. Just because some information is "fringe", doesn't mean someone won't find it useful. Hopefully they'll keep this in mind when implementing the software.
Another advantage, which no one seems to have mentioned, is that fuel cells make aircraft far less *explosive*. Without gasoline, they are no longer flying bombs. Aircraft security issues are returned to pre-9/11 status.
There was an article on New Scientist about some technology similar to this. It would analyze what parts of a web page were hit the most, and bring those to the foreground (think bigger, bolder links), and shrink or kill off the unused links.
It's all part of the process of creating a more "intellegent" web.
A new gravity map of the Earth suggests that if you want to lose weight you should go to India, where the pull of gravity is slightly less than it is elsewhere on the planet.
Since you weight less, wouldn't you be expending less energy when you move, and therefore get less excercise, and therefore get fatter?
The CD-key is similarly annoying. I can see the point if they are going to check for online gaming, but why do they insist on needing it for single player games? (I rarely game online at all) Even for online gaming, they can only block 2 people trying to connect to the same gameserver with the same key - they could do this just by storing a serial number that the game uses on each CD, avoiding the silly mistake-prone key typing.
Once the game is installed, it shouldn't bother you. It's a single, one-time key entry, and any mistakes you make typing it in will be picked up immediately. It also seems lot easier to have a CD-key than it is to produce serial numbers for CDs. I could be wrong, but I thought they were all exact copies. Otherwise CDDB would be ineffective, wouldn't it?
It is also a very effective form of copy protection. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem letting friends copy my game. But, now, if they want a copy, they need a key. They could either randomly generate one with a keygen (and risk screwing someone else over) or use mine, in which case we wouldn't be able to play together, or even on different servers at the same time. The readme says that the keys are checked with a master server.
And that's what makes it such great copy protection. You don't need the CD once the game is installed, and you can copy it easily enough. But you won't risk losing functionality!
Allow me to post a portion of the readme:
Some Common Sense About Your CD Key: It's important to remember
that your CD Key is unique. No other copy of the game will have
that key code. You need to treat that code as something valuable -
protecting it from loss or theft. Without it, you cannot
reinstall the game, or play on-line. You may not be able to
replace the key without some difficulty and expense. Think carefully
about allowing someone to borrow your CD Key. The Return to Castle
Wolfenstein Multiplayer Master Server will not allow duplicate
keys on-line at the same time. Don't be fooled by claims about CD
Key generators. Not only do they not work, but many "create"
additional CD Keys by stealing and transmitting the keys of gamers
who try to make new keys.
Assuming you know a geek or are a geek that is still employed, chances are, you could use something to relieve stress. Here are a few gift ideas in that vein:
1. A one-hour professional massage. Or a whole day at a spa.
2. Some nice fresh loose-leaf herbal tea. Tea teaches you patience, and forces you to sit down and relax for a while.
"The ring holds the atom in the center like a hula hoop containing a basketball," said Scheinberg.
Have you ever seen Micheal Jordan do that trick were he spins a basketball around inside of a hula hoop?
No? That's because it's damn hard!
Actually, this sounds like a nifty application of technology. Even if the device has targetting capabilities to rival the US missles that blew up the hospitals in Afghanistan (wink), it'll probably do less damage to normal cells than chemo.
I played a few of the games from the contest last year, and most of them were great. My favorite was one where you played a djinn (or genie). Instead of operating like a human, the author created a system of movement based on fulfilling your destiny. If you took an action that was contrary to your destiny, you would lose power. Once all your power was gone, you were dead. It was a neat paradigm shift.
There is currently a virtual sit-in going on at the WTO's web site. From the web page:
The WTO-Qatar Virtual Sit-In is simply a web page that repeatedly asks the WTO website (www.wto.org) for a nonexistent page called 'people_before_profit.' It does this for as long as you leave the Virtual Sit-In page open. With each request the WTO server takes note; If enough people join the Virtual Sit-In, administrators will realize that thousands of requests are being made for people_before_profit but that people_before_profit is not found at the WTO.
Slightly OT: Does anybody know if this is considered a DOS attack? If enough people participated (essentially a malicious Slashdot effect), could the creators of the page on geocities be held responsible? Could I, for posting this message?
Re:Yes, when you open the deadly 32nd chamber of /
on
Slash 2.2.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
I've managed to bite, scratch, and claw my way up to 25 points, and it's a bit disappointing to find out (finally) that I have to make 40 or better to get that precious posting bonus.
I've got a question for you. I've got about 30 karma, and I get a check box on the post comment form that says "No Score +1 Bonus". I'll check it this time because this is pretty offtopic.
The question is: Does something more happen at 40 or better?
"What do you do when it isn't fun any more, but you'd like it to be?"
It sounds to me like you need something more exciting and challenging.
Do you remember the Slashdot poll a few weeks back, the one asking "What's your favorite chemical?" I suggest that you start dropping acid or taking a few tabs of E before going to class. When you start developing projects that include subroutines to clear out your reality buffer, you know you're going somewhere.
After a few quarters of that, you will find the essence of CS, or you will drop out of college and go wander around India for a years. Come to think of it, India has a burgeoning tech sector, so you can't lose.
In the immortal words of Chef: "Remember, children, that there is a time and a place for everything. And that place is college."
If you can afford it, and you want really pristine sounding audio, get a breakout box. I use the Echo Layla24, and I love it. Because the D/A converter is in an external box with its own power supply, you don't get any hum or interference from the PC. At $700, it's a bit expensive, and used mostly for home studio work, but Echo has a few cheaper models that would serve the same function, like Gina.
(No, I don't work for Echo, or have any stock. I just think they are a kick-ass company. Not to mention their excellent [eh-hem] Windows driver support).
Listen to the Unibomber
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 2
He may have been morally dispicable, but Theodore Kazinsky had a lot to say on the matter of globalization (or, more generally, the negative effects of industrialized society). Although the Manifesto was published in several major newspapers, not too many people really paid attention to what he was trying to say.
I guess that's understandable, given that he was into blowing people up. Draw the parallel to the terrorists. The mass media is mostly dousing any legitmacy they may have in their criticism of the USA (mostly unvocalized criticism, but look at their target). Which is unfortunate, because we could learn a lot from our enemies.
The corporations that now drive our industrial/technological society and gain the most from it are the key to understanding the fringe's criticism and hatred of the US. Rather than simply dismissing Kazinsky as a Luddite, consider that he and other dissenting voices may actually be trying to tell us something genuinely important.
This isn't a troll. Read the Manifesto, and momentarly set aside the fact that Ted was a bomber (although, appearantly not insane). Well you are at it, set aside your attachment to your confortable lifestyle and try to look at the bigger picture.
Systems like this have obvious value: they can be used to fight terrorism. They also have uses that most Slashdot users fear: tapping private communications between users that don't present any real danger to national security, and using that information against those users.
When would they do this? What if myself and several friends were to make a plan to engage in questionable, though not necessarly illegal, behavior, for instance, Critical mass? The FBI could use our plans to stop us even before we begin riding.
David Brin suggests, in The Transparent Society, that surviellence mechanisms such as this are on the rise, and our best hope of retaining our freedom is to "watch the watchers". We need to the ability to monitor what the FBI is monitoring. Granted, in cases like this, that would be difficult to do without making private communications public. But if we are to accept these intrusions (which, hopefully, we won't), we need a way to keep the monitoring agencies in check.
I play on AutoCAD all day, and I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to adapt some fractal algorithims to AutoCAD Visual Basic. You'd probably be limited in resolution/iterations by the amount of system memory, and you could only use 256 colors, but otherwise it would work.
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
-------
of course, posting this could get me branded as a terrorist...
We bitch about civil liberties because we realize how important they are.
How important will PGP be to you when your entire home is destroyed by bombs/planes or wiped out by plague?
How important will your safety be when agents from the Office of Homeland Safety come to take away your home because they found out you were using PGP and therefore must be a terrorist? And you will have no judge to decide whether or not they were justified, because you'll be rotting away in a dark cell somewhere, all in the name of national security.
... a SUNSET clause.
As several people have pointed out, the Senate version does not have a sunset clause.
Someone else pointed out that in the past, when we sacrificed certain things during wartime (think food and fuel rations), we were quick to get back to the way things were as soon as the war was over. Why? Because the loss of those freedoms was very in-your-face. The difference between food and gas rations, and "privacy-rations", is that you don't notice wiretapping. See my point? As soon as this so-called war is over, there is no reason for anybody to jump up and down and say they want their privacy back, because they won't even know it is gone until it is too late.
Greenpeace has set up an easy-to-use form that you can use to contact your Sentators and Representatives. Of course, it is appearantly too late to worry about your Senators. Perhaps a letter reprimanding them for their vote is in order.
Announcer: (Eric Idle) Are you embarrassed easily? I am. But it's nothing to worry about, it's all part of growing up and being British. This course is designed to eliminate embarrassment, to enable you to talk freely about rude objects, to look at awkward and embarrassing things and to point at people's privates. The course has been designed by Dr. Carl Gruber of the 'Institute of Going a Bit Red' in Helsinki. Here he himself introduces the course.
Dr Gruber: (Michael Palin) Hello my name is Carl Gruber. Thank you for inviting me into your home. My method is the result of six years work here at the institute in which subjects were exposed to simulated embarrassment predicaments over a prolonged fart, period, time (sound of him farting). Sorry. Lesson one, Words. Do any of these words (farts) embarrass you?
Echo Audio uses a breakout box which has excellent sound quality. The breakout box doesn't use the same power supply as the PC, so you don't have any noise issues. They have a PCMCIA adapter in the works right now.
This is precisely the kind of thing that is going to get our boys killed. Bert was a secret agent! Now, by talking about it on some of the bigger news sites, the terrorists are going to figure out who he is. His cover's blown: he's doomed!
Slashdot Mirror
you want them to stay complete
I totally agree with you. This sort of technology could amount to censorship if not used properly. Just because some information is "fringe", doesn't mean someone won't find it useful. Hopefully they'll keep this in mind when implementing the software.
Another advantage, which no one seems to have mentioned, is that fuel cells make aircraft far less *explosive*. Without gasoline, they are no longer flying bombs. Aircraft security issues are returned to pre-9/11 status.
There was an article on New Scientist about some technology similar to this. It would analyze what parts of a web page were hit the most, and bring those to the foreground (think bigger, bolder links), and shrink or kill off the unused links.
It's all part of the process of creating a more "intellegent" web.
...so their governments can pervert the Net to deny their citizens basic freedoms.
Shouldn't that be "un-pervert the Net"?
Francis E. Deck would be proud.
A new gravity map of the Earth suggests that if you want to lose weight you should go to India, where the pull of gravity is slightly less than it is elsewhere on the planet.
Since you weight less, wouldn't you be expending less energy when you move, and therefore get less excercise, and therefore get fatter?
The CD-key is similarly annoying. I can see the point if they are going to check for online gaming, but why do they insist on needing it for single player games? (I rarely game online at all) Even for online gaming, they can only block 2 people trying to connect to the same gameserver with the same key - they could do this just by storing a serial number that the game uses on each CD, avoiding the silly mistake-prone key typing.
Once the game is installed, it shouldn't bother you. It's a single, one-time key entry, and any mistakes you make typing it in will be picked up immediately. It also seems lot easier to have a CD-key than it is to produce serial numbers for CDs. I could be wrong, but I thought they were all exact copies. Otherwise CDDB would be ineffective, wouldn't it?
It is also a very effective form of copy protection. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem letting friends copy my game. But, now, if they want a copy, they need a key. They could either randomly generate one with a keygen (and risk screwing someone else over) or use mine, in which case we wouldn't be able to play together, or even on different servers at the same time. The readme says that the keys are checked with a master server.
And that's what makes it such great copy protection. You don't need the CD once the game is installed, and you can copy it easily enough. But you won't risk losing functionality!
Allow me to post a portion of the readme:
Some Common Sense About Your CD Key: It's important to remember
that your CD Key is unique. No other copy of the game will have
that key code. You need to treat that code as something valuable -
protecting it from loss or theft. Without it, you cannot
reinstall the game, or play on-line. You may not be able to
replace the key without some difficulty and expense. Think carefully
about allowing someone to borrow your CD Key. The Return to Castle
Wolfenstein Multiplayer Master Server will not allow duplicate
keys on-line at the same time. Don't be fooled by claims about CD
Key generators. Not only do they not work, but many "create"
additional CD Keys by stealing and transmitting the keys of gamers
who try to make new keys.
[pirate voice] I'm sooooooo scaaaaarred!
Assuming you know a geek or are a geek that is still employed, chances are, you could use something to relieve stress. Here are a few gift ideas in that vein:
1. A one-hour professional massage. Or a whole day at a spa.
2. Some nice fresh loose-leaf herbal tea. Tea teaches you patience, and forces you to sit down and relax for a while.
3. Some yoga or martial arts lessons.
4. An eighth of an ounce of weed and a blow job.
Merry xmas!
"The ring holds the atom in the center like a hula hoop containing a basketball," said Scheinberg.
Have you ever seen Micheal Jordan do that trick were he spins a basketball around inside of a hula hoop?
No? That's because it's damn hard!
Actually, this sounds like a nifty application of technology. Even if the device has targetting capabilities to rival the US missles that blew up the hospitals in Afghanistan (wink), it'll probably do less damage to normal cells than chemo.
I played a few of the games from the contest last year, and most of them were great. My favorite was one where you played a djinn (or genie). Instead of operating like a human, the author created a system of movement based on fulfilling your destiny. If you took an action that was contrary to your destiny, you would lose power. Once all your power was gone, you were dead. It was a neat paradigm shift.
Click here to participate.
Slightly OT: Does anybody know if this is considered a DOS attack? If enough people participated (essentially a malicious Slashdot effect), could the creators of the page on geocities be held responsible? Could I, for posting this message?
There is no Slashdot.
Mu.
I've managed to bite, scratch, and claw my way up to 25 points, and it's a bit disappointing to find out (finally) that I have to make 40 or better to get that precious posting bonus.
I've got a question for you. I've got about 30 karma, and I get a check box on the post comment form that says "No Score +1 Bonus". I'll check it this time because this is pretty offtopic.
The question is: Does something more happen at 40 or better?
Thanks.
"What do you do when it isn't fun any more, but you'd like it to be?"
It sounds to me like you need something more exciting and challenging.
Do you remember the Slashdot poll a few weeks back, the one asking "What's your favorite chemical?" I suggest that you start dropping acid or taking a few tabs of E before going to class. When you start developing projects that include subroutines to clear out your reality buffer, you know you're going somewhere.
After a few quarters of that, you will find the essence of CS, or you will drop out of college and go wander around India for a years. Come to think of it, India has a burgeoning tech sector, so you can't lose.
In the immortal words of Chef: "Remember, children, that there is a time and a place for everything. And that place is college."
If you can afford it, and you want really pristine sounding audio, get a breakout box. I use the Echo Layla24, and I love it. Because the D/A converter is in an external box with its own power supply, you don't get any hum or interference from the PC. At $700, it's a bit expensive, and used mostly for home studio work, but Echo has a few cheaper models that would serve the same function, like Gina.
(No, I don't work for Echo, or have any stock. I just think they are a kick-ass company. Not to mention their excellent [eh-hem] Windows driver support).
He may have been morally dispicable, but Theodore Kazinsky had a lot to say on the matter of globalization (or, more generally, the negative effects of industrialized society). Although the Manifesto was published in several major newspapers, not too many people really paid attention to what he was trying to say.
I guess that's understandable, given that he was into blowing people up. Draw the parallel to the terrorists. The mass media is mostly dousing any legitmacy they may have in their criticism of the USA (mostly unvocalized criticism, but look at their target). Which is unfortunate, because we could learn a lot from our enemies.
The corporations that now drive our industrial/technological society and gain the most from it are the key to understanding the fringe's criticism and hatred of the US. Rather than simply dismissing Kazinsky as a Luddite, consider that he and other dissenting voices may actually be trying to tell us something genuinely important.
This isn't a troll. Read the Manifesto, and momentarly set aside the fact that Ted was a bomber (although, appearantly not insane). Well you are at it, set aside your attachment to your confortable lifestyle and try to look at the bigger picture.
And if you really want to have some fun, take this Al Gore vs. the Unibomber Quiz.
Good luck.
Systems like this have obvious value: they can be used to fight terrorism. They also have uses that most Slashdot users fear: tapping private communications between users that don't present any real danger to national security, and using that information against those users.
When would they do this? What if myself and several friends were to make a plan to engage in questionable, though not necessarly illegal, behavior, for instance, Critical mass? The FBI could use our plans to stop us even before we begin riding.
David Brin suggests, in The Transparent Society, that surviellence mechanisms such as this are on the rise, and our best hope of retaining our freedom is to "watch the watchers". We need to the ability to monitor what the FBI is monitoring. Granted, in cases like this, that would be difficult to do without making private communications public. But if we are to accept these intrusions (which, hopefully, we won't), we need a way to keep the monitoring agencies in check.
I play on AutoCAD all day, and I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to adapt some fractal algorithims to AutoCAD Visual Basic. You'd probably be limited in resolution/iterations by the amount of system memory, and you could only use 256 colors, but otherwise it would work.
Oh, yeah, then there is the pricetag on AutoCAD.
Since returning from the depths of space, do find Earth life to be unsatisifing? Would you say that this is the primary cause of your drug habit?
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
-------
of course, posting this could get me branded as a terrorist...
We bitch about civil liberties because we realize how important they are.
... a SUNSET clause.
How important will PGP be to you when your entire home is destroyed by bombs/planes or wiped out by plague?
How important will your safety be when agents from the Office of Homeland Safety come to take away your home because they found out you were using PGP and therefore must be a terrorist? And you will have no judge to decide whether or not they were justified, because you'll be rotting away in a dark cell somewhere, all in the name of national security.
As several people have pointed out, the Senate version does not have a sunset clause.
Someone else pointed out that in the past, when we sacrificed certain things during wartime (think food and fuel rations), we were quick to get back to the way things were as soon as the war was over. Why? Because the loss of those freedoms was very in-your-face. The difference between food and gas rations, and "privacy-rations", is that you don't notice wiretapping. See my point? As soon as this so-called war is over, there is no reason for anybody to jump up and down and say they want their privacy back, because they won't even know it is gone until it is too late.
Watch the watchers.
Greenpeace has set up an easy-to-use form that you can use to contact your Sentators and Representatives. Of course, it is appearantly too late to worry about your Senators. Perhaps a letter reprimanding them for their vote is in order.
God save us from a totalitarian State.
Announcer: (Eric Idle) Are you embarrassed easily? I am. But it's nothing to worry about, it's all part of growing up and being British. This course is designed to eliminate embarrassment, to enable you to talk freely about rude objects, to look at awkward and embarrassing things and to point at people's privates. The course has been designed by Dr. Carl Gruber of the 'Institute of Going a Bit Red' in Helsinki. Here he himself introduces the course.
Dr Gruber: (Michael Palin) Hello my name is Carl Gruber. Thank you for inviting me into your home. My method is the result of six years work here at the institute in which subjects were exposed to simulated embarrassment predicaments over a prolonged fart, period, time (sound of him farting). Sorry. Lesson one, Words. Do any of these words (farts) embarrass you?
Assistant: (John Cleese) Shoe, megaphone, grunties.
Dr Gruber: Now lets go on to something ruder.
Assistant: Wankle rotary engine.
...
My apologies to Monty Python
Echo Audio uses a breakout box which has excellent sound quality. The breakout box doesn't use the same power supply as the PC, so you don't have any noise issues. They have a PCMCIA adapter in the works right now.
This is precisely the kind of thing that is going to get our boys killed. Bert was a secret agent! Now, by talking about it on some of the bigger news sites, the terrorists are going to figure out who he is. His cover's blown: he's doomed!