I didn't really like the second episode much at all... The ending was a little too cruel to Fry, after everything. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but it also felt a little out of sorts for the show as a whole. The first felt like a "Well, lets pick ourselves up again and get going.", so it wasn't bad. A little roundabout-confusing, but I think that was the point.
Also, some of the humour felt a little... Forced? Blatant? Over-explained? Like the reference to CSI Miami -- I mean, the joke worked fine, but having to spell out the punchline felt a little like insulting the audience and explaining it with a reference to a thousand-year-old TV show (by Futurama's count) was a little jarring. I know it's Futurama, but suspension of disbelief still needs something to hold on to.
Speaking of theatres, even in just the past 12-18 months, the amount of ads (not previews, but ads) has tripled or more. Five years ago, you'd sit through some (maybe) corny slides if you were early, and then 3-5 movie trailers. A year ago, you'd sit through those corny slides, an ad (maybe two), and then 3-5 movie trailers.
The most recent movie I saw in theatre (with about a 14-month gap between theatre visits) had the corny slideshows, about 7 ads, and around 3 previews. Talk about overkill on the ads.
Parent may have a point -- probably not a troll. It's important to note that a large number of players (not the 'hardcore' ones you often hear about, mind you) play more for the social aspect than sheerly the gameplay. Even a number of the 'hardcore' ones don't play for the gameplay so much as the sense of accomplishment (which is often where the slippery slope towards 'addiction' comes in).
It works really well on Firefox for me (32-bit binary on Windows 7 64-bit). Hovers around 1-2% CPU usage except the one place others are noting a large spike -- up to about 6-8% in my case. Of course my computer's specs are pretty high -- i7-930 at 3.5 GHz, hyper-threaded, with 6GB of RAM -- but nothing absurd.
I didn't even have to tweak my addons (as I use noscript in its "allow same-domain" mode out of convenience/laziness) -- and I'm running Flashblock (so audio cannot be played in Flash), Adblock Plus, and NoScript.
Hell, I was doing this in the mid-late nineties (even the librarian coming to find you bit, sometimes!). My later school(s) eventually upgraded to a barcode on a student ID card (laminated piece of business card-weight paper), but even that was pretty 'retro' at the time.
Diablo II, yes. Not Diablo. I had to crack that myself (random aside for those trying it on Windows 7 -- be sure to disable DEP for Diablo.exe, set it to run in 256 colours, at 640x480, and without desktop composition).
Warcraft III, however, also no longer requires a CD. I don't know if Warcraft or Warcraft II still do (or ever did, given the age of the games).
I tried to use the Google SSL, but it kept (at random times) redirecting me from https://www.google.com/ (even directly through a browser search query) to the frontpage of Google Canada (my location). The inconsistency as to whether it'll redirect or provide results makes it worthless to me.
As the summary pointed out, it's doing an end-run around the requirements for warrants (and I believe that's what the 4th Amendment pertains to -- I'm Canadian, so I'm going on some vague memories here). Imagine if all the police had to do to search you, your home, and all your belongings was to arrest you -- no judge involved at any point -- and then are able use anything they find in those searches against you at any point in the future. Not a good situation from my perspective, but that's what this is setting up with DNA.
Re:Sounds like a Case of the Spostas
on
Flash Is Not a Right
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Have you played some of the Flash games on websites like Newgrounds? Some of them are truly amazing games -- visually, stylistically, and from gameplay perspectives. Back when Adobe was doing their Flash compiler beta testing, developers of some of those games actually ported them to the iPhone and sold them, such as Canabalt (Newgrounds, iTunes store). (I'm surprised its still on the iTunes store, actually. Apple never has been consistent about implementing their rules, though...)
These sort of ports are what is being lost. Creating a 'spam app' with Objective-C is nearly as easy -- creating a work of gaming art, like some high-quality Flash games, is not.
I don't think this is really true. Apple has specifically said tools that allow programming in other languages are allowed.
Um, yes it is true. They have a very short list of 'approved' languages.
Specifically, this:
3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
Emphasis mine. This bans anything not coded in Objective-C, C, or C++ (as far as native code goes -- and only JavaScript in WebKit for interpreted languages), as well as banning any third-party toolkits, frameworks, and most libraries (even if they're written in one of the 'approved' languages). About the only thing they haven't dictated (yet) is what text editors you can use to write the code.
No, this is automatic at the hardware level -- not a manual switch. In fact, it's more or less useless on desktop machines (as someone excellently explained above) since the speed improvements are small. On laptops with >2 cores, however, it seems to be very, very nice. A fairly easy way to have both reasonably powerful parallel processing with multiple cores, fairly fast single-thread processing, and not creating a level of heat that could damage components.
Also, if you're overclocking a desktop (which is insanely easy on any modern chip), it'll probably be the first thing you turn off. Boosting the speed in one core unpredictably can both cause instabilities at higher overclocks and is even more pointless than normal, as you're almost certain to get much higher speeds at all times out of the chip than it would have run at even with the highest 'turbo' mode at default settings.
One interesting thing to note is that, at least in Canada, the street view people will not drive along a road marked as private by a sign. The front of the town house I'm living in is not photographed, seemingly as a result of the "Private road, enter at own risk." sign (though they did catch a nice picture of my car sitting outside the garage from a public road).
On another note, the photographing over high fences (I'd assume 6+ feet high, given your description) strikes me as decidedly illegal. These people are obviously actively trying to protect their privacy, and Google is blatantly disregarding that.
From some of the other comments on this story, from sysadmins fixing this, it sounds like it hits near completely- or completely-patched XP machines. That's extremely silly a thing to just 'whoops' on.
If you use a quantum computer, it can be brute-forced approximately as though it were AES-64. The only thing needed to 'defeat' a quantum computer (for symmetric encryption) is to double the length of your symmetric key. Algorithms like AES won't be going anywhere (though AES itself, with the theoretical weaknesses in AES-256, probably will be replaced sooner rather than later).
What's actually in danger is RSA (and some other public key algorithms), though the record for factoring on a quantum computer is still somewhere around 20-30 (in decimal), last I heard.
I'm using a Blackberry 9700 right now and it's reasonably responsive (though I don't make heavy use of complex applications), but the battery lasts forever and I essentially never have to reboot it or anything (except for large software updates).
Read the 'exceptions' list. Exception (a) applies to your situation (father giving you a gift), and exception (f) applies to both your situation and the grandparent's banker's situation (Christmas gifts). For your situation, there would be no value limit on such a gift (exception (a) places no limit on value), and for the grandparent's situation, $20 would certainly be 'reasonable' (the limit on exception (f)) for a Christmas gift.
Oh man, nostalgia. I loved Gnome 1.4. Particularly gmc (the old file manager). Simple, clean, and fast -- Nautilus was so terrible initially that I made several efforts atreplacing it with gmc. I don't remember if I was ever sucessful, as it was years ago.
Sure, it got better over several releases (I remember ~2.6-2.8 beginning to be usable again, I believe), but I never have liked new-Gnome as much as old-Gnome -- though XFCE is a somewhat reasonable 'replacement' for it these days.
In Mass Effect 2, I actually missed some of the Mako segments. It served to break up the constant flow a little bit, and made the world feel that much larger. That was badly missing, to me, in Mass Effect 2. While I could do without most of the planetary side-mission Mako travel, the travel sequences on plot worlds seemed to actually work very well, to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't really like the second episode much at all... The ending was a little too cruel to Fry, after everything. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but it also felt a little out of sorts for the show as a whole. The first felt like a "Well, lets pick ourselves up again and get going.", so it wasn't bad. A little roundabout-confusing, but I think that was the point.
Also, some of the humour felt a little... Forced? Blatant? Over-explained? Like the reference to CSI Miami -- I mean, the joke worked fine, but having to spell out the punchline felt a little like insulting the audience and explaining it with a reference to a thousand-year-old TV show (by Futurama's count) was a little jarring. I know it's Futurama, but suspension of disbelief still needs something to hold on to.
Social insurance and spaceflight are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine if you swap two wars for a space program, we could be halfway to Mars by now (at least).
Data storage costs balloon, and it becomes almost impossible to find any actual personal emails amongst the deluge of crap.
Isn't spam already 95% of emails, or something around there? Sounds like you'd barely need to lift a finger.
It's part of the 'theatre experience'.
Speaking of theatres, even in just the past 12-18 months, the amount of ads (not previews, but ads) has tripled or more. Five years ago, you'd sit through some (maybe) corny slides if you were early, and then 3-5 movie trailers. A year ago, you'd sit through those corny slides, an ad (maybe two), and then 3-5 movie trailers.
The most recent movie I saw in theatre (with about a 14-month gap between theatre visits) had the corny slideshows, about 7 ads, and around 3 previews. Talk about overkill on the ads.
Not specifically, but you can do it the same way you block non-Flash ads -- by using a plain old adblocker with a correct filer set.
Parent may have a point -- probably not a troll. It's important to note that a large number of players (not the 'hardcore' ones you often hear about, mind you) play more for the social aspect than sheerly the gameplay. Even a number of the 'hardcore' ones don't play for the gameplay so much as the sense of accomplishment (which is often where the slippery slope towards 'addiction' comes in).
But, it's Apple's 40% of nothing, dammit.
It works really well on Firefox for me (32-bit binary on Windows 7 64-bit). Hovers around 1-2% CPU usage except the one place others are noting a large spike -- up to about 6-8% in my case. Of course my computer's specs are pretty high -- i7-930 at 3.5 GHz, hyper-threaded, with 6GB of RAM -- but nothing absurd.
I didn't even have to tweak my addons (as I use noscript in its "allow same-domain" mode out of convenience/laziness) -- and I'm running Flashblock (so audio cannot be played in Flash), Adblock Plus, and NoScript.
Hell, I was doing this in the mid-late nineties (even the librarian coming to find you bit, sometimes!). My later school(s) eventually upgraded to a barcode on a student ID card (laminated piece of business card-weight paper), but even that was pretty 'retro' at the time.
Diablo II, yes. Not Diablo. I had to crack that myself (random aside for those trying it on Windows 7 -- be sure to disable DEP for Diablo.exe, set it to run in 256 colours, at 640x480, and without desktop composition).
Warcraft III, however, also no longer requires a CD. I don't know if Warcraft or Warcraft II still do (or ever did, given the age of the games).
I tried to use the Google SSL, but it kept (at random times) redirecting me from https://www.google.com/ (even directly through a browser search query) to the frontpage of Google Canada (my location). The inconsistency as to whether it'll redirect or provide results makes it worthless to me.
As the summary pointed out, it's doing an end-run around the requirements for warrants (and I believe that's what the 4th Amendment pertains to -- I'm Canadian, so I'm going on some vague memories here). Imagine if all the police had to do to search you, your home, and all your belongings was to arrest you -- no judge involved at any point -- and then are able use anything they find in those searches against you at any point in the future. Not a good situation from my perspective, but that's what this is setting up with DNA.
Have you played some of the Flash games on websites like Newgrounds? Some of them are truly amazing games -- visually, stylistically, and from gameplay perspectives. Back when Adobe was doing their Flash compiler beta testing, developers of some of those games actually ported them to the iPhone and sold them, such as Canabalt (Newgrounds, iTunes store). (I'm surprised its still on the iTunes store, actually. Apple never has been consistent about implementing their rules, though...)
These sort of ports are what is being lost. Creating a 'spam app' with Objective-C is nearly as easy -- creating a work of gaming art, like some high-quality Flash games, is not.
I don't think this is really true. Apple has specifically said tools that allow programming in other languages are allowed.
Um, yes it is true. They have a very short list of 'approved' languages.
Specifically, this:
3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
Emphasis mine. This bans anything not coded in Objective-C, C, or C++ (as far as native code goes -- and only JavaScript in WebKit for interpreted languages), as well as banning any third-party toolkits, frameworks, and most libraries (even if they're written in one of the 'approved' languages). About the only thing they haven't dictated (yet) is what text editors you can use to write the code.
No, this is automatic at the hardware level -- not a manual switch. In fact, it's more or less useless on desktop machines (as someone excellently explained above) since the speed improvements are small. On laptops with >2 cores, however, it seems to be very, very nice. A fairly easy way to have both reasonably powerful parallel processing with multiple cores, fairly fast single-thread processing, and not creating a level of heat that could damage components.
Also, if you're overclocking a desktop (which is insanely easy on any modern chip), it'll probably be the first thing you turn off. Boosting the speed in one core unpredictably can both cause instabilities at higher overclocks and is even more pointless than normal, as you're almost certain to get much higher speeds at all times out of the chip than it would have run at even with the highest 'turbo' mode at default settings.
Oddly enough that doesn't work in "view source" mode. I had to use Firebug to check the source code instead.
One interesting thing to note is that, at least in Canada, the street view people will not drive along a road marked as private by a sign. The front of the town house I'm living in is not photographed, seemingly as a result of the "Private road, enter at own risk." sign (though they did catch a nice picture of my car sitting outside the garage from a public road).
On another note, the photographing over high fences (I'd assume 6+ feet high, given your description) strikes me as decidedly illegal. These people are obviously actively trying to protect their privacy, and Google is blatantly disregarding that.
They could never have (with their current number of seats) 140 to 70. It would have to become 140 to 66, to match their 206 total.
From some of the other comments on this story, from sysadmins fixing this, it sounds like it hits near completely- or completely-patched XP machines. That's extremely silly a thing to just 'whoops' on.
If you use a quantum computer, it can be brute-forced approximately as though it were AES-64. The only thing needed to 'defeat' a quantum computer (for symmetric encryption) is to double the length of your symmetric key. Algorithms like AES won't be going anywhere (though AES itself, with the theoretical weaknesses in AES-256, probably will be replaced sooner rather than later).
What's actually in danger is RSA (and some other public key algorithms), though the record for factoring on a quantum computer is still somewhere around 20-30 (in decimal), last I heard.
How's the battery life, out of curiosity?
I'm using a Blackberry 9700 right now and it's reasonably responsive (though I don't make heavy use of complex applications), but the battery lasts forever and I essentially never have to reboot it or anything (except for large software updates).
(if they merely wanted to cut out Adobe from the beginning, they could have changed their policy much earlier)
Ah, but then Adobe could have halted development and marketing of this feature earlier than a week before launch.
The timing is too 'perfect' to be coincidental.
This says you're wrong.
Read the 'exceptions' list. Exception (a) applies to your situation (father giving you a gift), and exception (f) applies to both your situation and the grandparent's banker's situation (Christmas gifts). For your situation, there would be no value limit on such a gift (exception (a) places no limit on value), and for the grandparent's situation, $20 would certainly be 'reasonable' (the limit on exception (f)) for a Christmas gift.
Oh man, nostalgia. I loved Gnome 1.4. Particularly gmc (the old file manager). Simple, clean, and fast -- Nautilus was so terrible initially that I made several efforts atreplacing it with gmc. I don't remember if I was ever sucessful, as it was years ago.
Sure, it got better over several releases (I remember ~2.6-2.8 beginning to be usable again, I believe), but I never have liked new-Gnome as much as old-Gnome -- though XFCE is a somewhat reasonable 'replacement' for it these days.
In Mass Effect 2, I actually missed some of the Mako segments. It served to break up the constant flow a little bit, and made the world feel that much larger. That was badly missing, to me, in Mass Effect 2. While I could do without most of the planetary side-mission Mako travel, the travel sequences on plot worlds seemed to actually work very well, to me.