Wild ass guess: It's enabled the same way that Pay Per View cable works. Your receiver has a unit with a serial number associated with your account. You call and request that serial # (effectively) be activated and the satelite radio broadcaster dumps it in the out of band data stream. All units (powered) receive the out of band data, check against their own serial and (de)activate accordingly.
I think it has more to do with Ben's idea of where the tick came from. In the original comics he (the Tick) was hinted at having a past (my comics are not with me at work, forgive a bended fact here or there) and even possibly an ex-wife. It seemed as though his mind had simply snapped and here he was trying to save a world he had failed to cope with in other ways. The Tick of those original comics wouldn't have said those things.
I was dismayed when I heard that line. In retrospect however, I find that it's not as much of a problem. This is not the comic and perhaps this Tick came from a slightly different place. Perhaps this is simply a way of allowing the Tick to be updated to todays urban vernacular.
More likely, I'm simply rationalizing a network jackass' attempt to bring the 13 year old boys into the audience by having a character say "bitch".
While I can say that I've discussed bungee jumping with the richest woman in the world while trying desperately to figure out how *not* to tell her how much I thought Bob stank during the name unveiling ceremony, I must say that I was not privy to His Billness' proposal scheme...
I'm too bad with names to say for certain. They *sound* familiar...
Re:The disaster that was Bob...
on
Do You Remember Bob?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Not Quite.
Karen Fries was the driving force behind Bob. Melinda was just part of the PM team associated with it.
I was on that team as a contract tester. It was my first job after dropping out of college. I'm terribly surprised I still work in the industry after being associated with that disaster. I did come away with some entertaining memories, however.
The original project codename was "Utopia" (actually, it might have been Utopia Home). I've still got a T-Shirt with the Petie the Parrot character on it and Utopia scrawled across in a kind of abstract architect font.
When the name Bob was revelaed, there was a meeting of all the team members and a bunch of muckety mucks. This incredibly cliche marketing consulting team was the group which came up with the name. They were all up in front of the room in their black turtle necks and black plastic framed glasses.
When they got through their powerpoint presentation to the name and the glasses wearing smiley face icon the room was deathly still except for Karen Fries excited squeal and clapping. She looked out over the crowd assembled and started to look cross - we got the message and started clapping.
Now I've been involved with more than a couple doomed projects since then (perhaps I'm some sort of CS pariah) but I've never seen a group of people so unhappy and depressed about their work.
A little while after that, I believe, Melinda got her engagement ring. There was another big party. The joke I always tell about that event is: "It was a pitty about her arm..." I'm sure, being a geek that Bill felt he had to make up for something there and prove to the world that this relatively attractive woman was indeed taken. The rock on her ring was as large as one of my knuckles. There's no way when wearing that ring she could put her hand in a tight pocket. It was one of the most ridiculous and sad things I've ever seen, yet there I was saying, "Wow, that's... great!"
We knew when we were working on Bob itself that it would be a disaster. At the time, Pentium computers were just coming out in the consumer space. A P90 was reqiured to run Bob with any sort of usability. Most of it was written in VB, back when VB had no chance to rival C in any task and just using the product was painful. These computers were 3-5 thousand dollars and we expected new computer users to buy them just to use a piece of even less functional than MS Works software?
The whole thing would have been unbelievalbe to me if I hadn't lived it myself.
Divx failed due to incredibly bad marketing and a woefully poor view of the market space they were attacking. Pan and Scan format, expensive - more expensive than an effectively equivolent VHS tape, no extra features, requires phone line connection (inconvinient). Why they thought people would go for this in the first place is beyond me.
CDs on the other hand are supposed to just work. The copy protection formats are not being touted as a feature - they're not being touted at all. Most of the discs using them are not labeled as such. Therefore, folks like your sister and the rest of the world don't know what their being sold.
This is why I think that simply boycotting the product won't help much. We (slashdot and associated interested folks) know this is a stupid idea and will avoid it appropriately. If the general populace isn't informed that this or that component (which is in high circulation) no longer works - then the sleeper will awaken and demand change. So beg, borrow, or steal the new copy protected discs (even buy them - we're not enough of a market segment to make a whit of difference in mainstream sales) and test them in every non-PC device you can find for incompatibility. Yell and Scream to the mainstream press that the product is broken. It will start with a couple of those "consumer interest" news reports and end with people demanding that the industry release product that works.
RIAA doesn't really care about tape copies becasue they are self-limiting. You can only get a real quality copy from the master and then only the first couple of times you actually use it (one of the biggest arguments for fair use copying there are).
With a CD you get a perfect copy - every time. I'm not talking about ripped MP3s here, but bitwise copies. Even MP3s are an improvement over tapes in this way - fidelity issues aside - you get the exact same MP3 each time it's moved or traded. If it's encoded well, you can hardly tell it's not the CD.
It's not about the noise - it's about their perception that we can make them irrelevant by making effectively perfect copies.
The Sony product failed because it was a high tech toy which didn't do what the people who would or could buy it wanted. The problem is that the majority of the Backstreet Boys CD buyers aren't concerned with being able to use a PC or rip the tunes, they're going to buy anyway.
Slashdot may be an informed group by and large, but our refusal to buy RIAA CDs won't cost them 1 cent in share price. They are going to continue with this idiocy until on of their "copy protection" schemes really keeps the disc from working on more than just a few car stereos.
How do we fight it? I'm guessing finding each of the component CD player units which fail to play the protected discs and call the news media each time it happens. If we can keep the 13 and 14 year olds from buying Discs because their mainstream player won't work due to safeguards which are easily circumvented - then we will have a real argument.
I don't completely disagree with you, my point simply is that this system will have the typical checks and balances that the fingerprint ID database has. As long as that is the case, I don't see a degradation of our rights or liberties.
All this is is an automation of the post office wanted posters in an effort to quickly identify people which are considered a danger. If it's used that way, I have no problem with it.
Now everything and anything can be misused to infringe on ones rights and liberties. With that in mind, what have we lost here? The records that you have traveled already exist. The fact that you visited the airport and that you traveled is a matter of record (even if you buy your ticket with cash, you must still present ID). The only potential loss is that if you drop off / pick up someone from an airport you could be subjected to identification by the system.
I fail to see this as a loss because there are already security cameras recording all of this information along with other systems which could be misused / comprimised to track you. If you park at the airport you know that your liscense plate has been photographed. If you pay for that parking with a credit card, you have been logged and identified. All of this information is available very quickly to law enforcement.
Admittedly, if you get fingered as a terrorist in the system you're going to be hassled PDQ. If that's a misidentification, you can be sure that the agency in charge of maintaining the information will want to update it to preclude the waste of resources involved in detaining you again. It would be an unfortuate thing for all involved if it were to happen but this is not much worse than a misidentification by a terminal clerk who is trying to match faces to the huge line of people checking in.
(I haven't checked your link yet, perhaps I should have...)
How different is a facial recognition system to the fingerprint database which already exists? How much worse? I find it difficult to fault the fingerprint database, which can also contain garbage and lead to false positive IDs.
My primary concern about Facial Recognition is that I doubt the tech is ready for prime time. As long as the database has additional identifying information such as a copy of fingerprint records, identifying marks, DNA, or whatever which can be used to firm the ID I have trouble doubting its usefulness or seeing the infringement of my rights.
The way I look at this is a simple comparison: If a crime is commited and a witness identifies a specific make, model, and color of vehicle which the suspect is driving but not the liscence tag, the police are likely to detain, and inconvinience, any individuals driving a car like that. Once identity is determined, the individual will either be arrested or sent on their way. Have their rights been infringed? I don't think so. How different is this from Facial Recognition?
Mis-identifications of the sort you cited are an unfortunate fact of life. Usually, when they occur it is possible to fix the database which caused them. Admittedly, this usually is a painful, beaurocratic process but it is possible. The Facial Recognition database would surely have such a feature.
Fortunately, or not, we still have the power of the lawsuit in America. If you are detained due to this technology (or for any other reason) unreasonably you'll get your cash reward and the investigators are painfully aware of that.
Your information about fly by wire is very incorrect. All that system does is remove the need for actual physical mechanical connections between the control apparatus (yoke and throttle among other things) and the system being controlled.
The computer can optimize the system and help the pilot do some things more correctly and efficiently (recover from stall) but it does not have any idea about surrounding obstacles.
The people who flew the aircraft need not have trained much more than picked up a copy of a Flight Simulator. As they did not need to take off or land the knowledge necessarry for someone already familiar with the mechanics of flight could have adequately familiarised themselves for the task at hand in a few days.
Their biggest concern would have been how to hit the tower as efficiently as possible so that they could be going at maximum speed with maximum fuel on board.
The only example of trained piloting that I'm aware of is the plane which attacked the Pentagon. From the reports, they flew very close to the ground in an attempt to reach the building as stealthily as possible. To perform those maneovers with a commercial jet would have taken some real training.
Baen, http://www.baen.com a publisher of much Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels, including my own favorite - David Weber, has had a number of their titles avaialble on the net for free for some time. The philosophy is that since many of these writers are relatively unknown, giving the public access to some of their work for free will generate future buisness. Many of the authors have been participating in the program and the books are available in several formats. I recommend checking them out.
Definately lick a stamp instead.
I remember an interview with one of Washington State's congresspeople from ~ a couple years ago. (Patty Murray? I'm not sure which it was.) She indicated that in general congresspeople receive huge stacks of communication which are essentially exactly the same. These come in through phone messages (including FAX), e-mail, and paper letters. Since most stuff essentially boils down to "I'm for X" or "I'm against X" as opposed to genuinely new ideas or information your messages essentially end up as tally counts for/against topic X.
When these tallys are generated, the delivering media are treated differently. At the time e-mail was relatively new - I'm sure these numbers have changed now. Essentially, they counted a real, paper letter as essentially 10 points. A phone call counted about 5. e-mail counted 1.
Her justification for this: e-mail is easier to send and phones are easier to dial, therefore more people can do it. This means that you don't necessarily feel as strongly if you send an e-mail and congress treats it appropriately.
___
I know I can't spell.
Actually, this isn't really the Voodoo architecture at all anymore. The V3+ boards are really based on the Banshee architecture, with some of the more advanced (SLI) features retrofit onto the chip. I recall reading an article at the time that 3dfx felt that the Banshee 2 just wasn't as sexy as the Voodoo 3 and therefore they went back to their franchise name.
And post the answer here. His e-mail address is prominently displayed all over his web site (site URL is included in his answers above). He took the time to corespond with me personally when I sent him some "silly fan mail" a couple years ago, he may be amiable to answering these sort of questions as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh drop it. He was referring to the legal term class in that a class is required to be defined for a Class Action lawsuit.
It's a joke. It's not bigotry. Deal with it.
Wild ass guess: It's enabled the same way that Pay Per View cable works. Your receiver has a unit with a serial number associated with your account. You call and request that serial # (effectively) be activated and the satelite radio broadcaster dumps it in the out of band data stream. All units (powered) receive the out of band data, check against their own serial and (de)activate accordingly.
I think it has more to do with Ben's idea of where the tick came from. In the original comics he (the Tick) was hinted at having a past (my comics are not with me at work, forgive a bended fact here or there) and even possibly an ex-wife. It seemed as though his mind had simply snapped and here he was trying to save a world he had failed to cope with in other ways. The Tick of those original comics wouldn't have said those things.
I was dismayed when I heard that line. In retrospect however, I find that it's not as much of a problem. This is not the comic and perhaps this Tick came from a slightly different place. Perhaps this is simply a way of allowing the Tick to be updated to todays urban vernacular.
More likely, I'm simply rationalizing a network jackass' attempt to bring the 13 year old boys into the audience by having a character say "bitch".
It doesn't get much press, but heat pollution is an issue in some areas.
While I can say that I've discussed bungee jumping with the richest woman in the world while trying desperately to figure out how *not* to tell her how much I thought Bob stank during the name unveiling ceremony, I must say that I was not privy to His Billness' proposal scheme...
Sorry!
I'm too bad with names to say for certain. They *sound* familiar...
Not Quite.
Karen Fries was the driving force behind Bob. Melinda was just part of the PM team associated with it.
I was on that team as a contract tester. It was my first job after dropping out of college. I'm terribly surprised I still work in the industry after being associated with that disaster. I did come away with some entertaining memories, however.
The original project codename was "Utopia" (actually, it might have been Utopia Home). I've still got a T-Shirt with the Petie the Parrot character on it and Utopia scrawled across in a kind of abstract architect font.
When the name Bob was revelaed, there was a meeting of all the team members and a bunch of muckety mucks. This incredibly cliche marketing consulting team was the group which came up with the name. They were all up in front of the room in their black turtle necks and black plastic framed glasses.
When they got through their powerpoint presentation to the name and the glasses wearing smiley face icon the room was deathly still except for Karen Fries excited squeal and clapping. She looked out over the crowd assembled and started to look cross - we got the message and started clapping.
Now I've been involved with more than a couple doomed projects since then (perhaps I'm some sort of CS pariah) but I've never seen a group of people so unhappy and depressed about their work.
A little while after that, I believe, Melinda got her engagement ring. There was another big party. The joke I always tell about that event is: "It was a pitty about her arm..." I'm sure, being a geek that Bill felt he had to make up for something there and prove to the world that this relatively attractive woman was indeed taken. The rock on her ring was as large as one of my knuckles. There's no way when wearing that ring she could put her hand in a tight pocket. It was one of the most ridiculous and sad things I've ever seen, yet there I was saying, "Wow, that's... great!"
We knew when we were working on Bob itself that it would be a disaster. At the time, Pentium computers were just coming out in the consumer space. A P90 was reqiured to run Bob with any sort of usability. Most of it was written in VB, back when VB had no chance to rival C in any task and just using the product was painful. These computers were 3-5 thousand dollars and we expected new computer users to buy them just to use a piece of even less functional than MS Works software?
The whole thing would have been unbelievalbe to me if I hadn't lived it myself.
Mine has been running well for 6+ months... Never had a problem.
Divx failed due to incredibly bad marketing and a woefully poor view of the market space they were attacking. Pan and Scan format, expensive - more expensive than an effectively equivolent VHS tape, no extra features, requires phone line connection (inconvinient). Why they thought people would go for this in the first place is beyond me.
CDs on the other hand are supposed to just work. The copy protection formats are not being touted as a feature - they're not being touted at all. Most of the discs using them are not labeled as such. Therefore, folks like your sister and the rest of the world don't know what their being sold.
This is why I think that simply boycotting the product won't help much. We (slashdot and associated interested folks) know this is a stupid idea and will avoid it appropriately. If the general populace isn't informed that this or that component (which is in high circulation) no longer works - then the sleeper will awaken and demand change. So beg, borrow, or steal the new copy protected discs (even buy them - we're not enough of a market segment to make a whit of difference in mainstream sales) and test them in every non-PC device you can find for incompatibility. Yell and Scream to the mainstream press that the product is broken. It will start with a couple of those "consumer interest" news reports and end with people demanding that the industry release product that works.
RIAA doesn't really care about tape copies becasue they are self-limiting. You can only get a real quality copy from the master and then only the first couple of times you actually use it (one of the biggest arguments for fair use copying there are).
With a CD you get a perfect copy - every time. I'm not talking about ripped MP3s here, but bitwise copies. Even MP3s are an improvement over tapes in this way - fidelity issues aside - you get the exact same MP3 each time it's moved or traded. If it's encoded well, you can hardly tell it's not the CD.
It's not about the noise - it's about their perception that we can make them irrelevant by making effectively perfect copies.
The Sony product failed because it was a high tech toy which didn't do what the people who would or could buy it wanted. The problem is that the majority of the Backstreet Boys CD buyers aren't concerned with being able to use a PC or rip the tunes, they're going to buy anyway.
Slashdot may be an informed group by and large, but our refusal to buy RIAA CDs won't cost them 1 cent in share price. They are going to continue with this idiocy until on of their "copy protection" schemes really keeps the disc from working on more than just a few car stereos.
How do we fight it? I'm guessing finding each of the component CD player units which fail to play the protected discs and call the news media each time it happens. If we can keep the 13 and 14 year olds from buying Discs because their mainstream player won't work due to safeguards which are easily circumvented - then we will have a real argument.
I don't completely disagree with you, my point simply is that this system will have the typical checks and balances that the fingerprint ID database has. As long as that is the case, I don't see a degradation of our rights or liberties.
All this is is an automation of the post office wanted posters in an effort to quickly identify people which are considered a danger. If it's used that way, I have no problem with it.
Now everything and anything can be misused to infringe on ones rights and liberties. With that in mind, what have we lost here? The records that you have traveled already exist. The fact that you visited the airport and that you traveled is a matter of record (even if you buy your ticket with cash, you must still present ID). The only potential loss is that if you drop off / pick up someone from an airport you could be subjected to identification by the system.
I fail to see this as a loss because there are already security cameras recording all of this information along with other systems which could be misused / comprimised to track you. If you park at the airport you know that your liscense plate has been photographed. If you pay for that parking with a credit card, you have been logged and identified. All of this information is available very quickly to law enforcement.
Admittedly, if you get fingered as a terrorist in the system you're going to be hassled PDQ. If that's a misidentification, you can be sure that the agency in charge of maintaining the information will want to update it to preclude the waste of resources involved in detaining you again. It would be an unfortuate thing for all involved if it were to happen but this is not much worse than a misidentification by a terminal clerk who is trying to match faces to the huge line of people checking in.
(I haven't checked your link yet, perhaps I should have...)
How different is a facial recognition system to the fingerprint database which already exists? How much worse? I find it difficult to fault the fingerprint database, which can also contain garbage and lead to false positive IDs.
My primary concern about Facial Recognition is that I doubt the tech is ready for prime time. As long as the database has additional identifying information such as a copy of fingerprint records, identifying marks, DNA, or whatever which can be used to firm the ID I have trouble doubting its usefulness or seeing the infringement of my rights.
The way I look at this is a simple comparison: If a crime is commited and a witness identifies a specific make, model, and color of vehicle which the suspect is driving but not the liscence tag, the police are likely to detain, and inconvinience, any individuals driving a car like that. Once identity is determined, the individual will either be arrested or sent on their way. Have their rights been infringed? I don't think so. How different is this from Facial Recognition?
Mis-identifications of the sort you cited are an unfortunate fact of life. Usually, when they occur it is possible to fix the database which caused them. Admittedly, this usually is a painful, beaurocratic process but it is possible. The Facial Recognition database would surely have such a feature.
Fortunately, or not, we still have the power of the lawsuit in America. If you are detained due to this technology (or for any other reason) unreasonably you'll get your cash reward and the investigators are painfully aware of that.
Your information about fly by wire is very incorrect. All that system does is remove the need for actual physical mechanical connections between the control apparatus (yoke and throttle among other things) and the system being controlled.
The computer can optimize the system and help the pilot do some things more correctly and efficiently (recover from stall) but it does not have any idea about surrounding obstacles.
The people who flew the aircraft need not have trained much more than picked up a copy of a Flight Simulator. As they did not need to take off or land the knowledge necessarry for someone already familiar with the mechanics of flight could have adequately familiarised themselves for the task at hand in a few days.
Their biggest concern would have been how to hit the tower as efficiently as possible so that they could be going at maximum speed with maximum fuel on board.
The only example of trained piloting that I'm aware of is the plane which attacked the Pentagon. From the reports, they flew very close to the ground in an attempt to reach the building as stealthily as possible. To perform those maneovers with a commercial jet would have taken some real training.
Interesting, If you change references to Spectrum in the comment to Music we have the same essential argument that the RIAA is making about MP3s.
I'm not saying they're right, but it is interesting.
Baen, http://www.baen.com a publisher of much Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels, including my own favorite - David Weber, has had a number of their titles avaialble on the net for free for some time. The philosophy is that since many of these writers are relatively unknown, giving the public access to some of their work for free will generate future buisness. Many of the authors have been participating in the program and the books are available in several formats. I recommend checking them out.
I believe that is a line from the Hitchhiker's Guide. A description of the Vogon ships if memory serves...
Definately lick a stamp instead. I remember an interview with one of Washington State's congresspeople from ~ a couple years ago. (Patty Murray? I'm not sure which it was.) She indicated that in general congresspeople receive huge stacks of communication which are essentially exactly the same. These come in through phone messages (including FAX), e-mail, and paper letters. Since most stuff essentially boils down to "I'm for X" or "I'm against X" as opposed to genuinely new ideas or information your messages essentially end up as tally counts for/against topic X. When these tallys are generated, the delivering media are treated differently. At the time e-mail was relatively new - I'm sure these numbers have changed now. Essentially, they counted a real, paper letter as essentially 10 points. A phone call counted about 5. e-mail counted 1. Her justification for this: e-mail is easier to send and phones are easier to dial, therefore more people can do it. This means that you don't necessarily feel as strongly if you send an e-mail and congress treats it appropriately. ___ I know I can't spell.
Actually, this isn't really the Voodoo architecture at all anymore. The V3+ boards are really based on the Banshee architecture, with some of the more advanced (SLI) features retrofit onto the chip. I recall reading an article at the time that 3dfx felt that the Banshee 2 just wasn't as sexy as the Voodoo 3 and therefore they went back to their franchise name.
And post the answer here. His e-mail address is prominently displayed all over his web site (site URL is included in his answers above). He took the time to corespond with me personally when I sent him some "silly fan mail" a couple years ago, he may be amiable to answering these sort of questions as well.
Those of us who truly enjoy bad Sci-Fi movies (Starship Troopers, the Aliens Sequels, ID4, etc.) for what they are now have something new to watch.