Even without going all the way to cloning the RFID or transponder apparatus, as long as an invalid code or handshake sequence causes the toll boot to fail you just have to rig a bad copy with a small activation delay to attack a toll boot with a DOS. Go through the toll boot as usual and throw your decoy tag on the roadside and every car going through will fail to activate the receiver. And if you feel particularly devious you just need the device to turn on and off randomly...
They are building.
I mean, it's not like you are saving that many keystrokes that it even makes a difference, and if you have to be a grammar nazi you may as well go the whole way!
The newest Sam&Max series of games spring to mind. I bought the entire first season, and am reasonably satisfied. Some episodes where better, some less, but overall they make a decent game.
I usually do buy my games, and THEN download a pirated version. I know, it sounds stupid, but I hate the localized versions (I live in Italy) because of the bad dubbing and dubious translations (ok, "anello" is a translation for "ring", but not when applied to a bell on an hotel desk. Gabriel Knight 3 anyone?). On top of that, when playing games on a laptop, carrying with me the original CD's and DVD's when i am on the move is a bit of a chore. They use up space, they can get easily damaged, the copy-protection is invasive and can even cause system instability and driver conflicts. I have recently bought a few games through Steam, and for the moment I am fairly satisfied. However, what will happen when the steam servers will go offline?
But think what they could achieve if they had pivots capable of unlimited rotation! Props and rotors are actually very efficient, more so than flapping wings. An helicopter can fly and hover with a power to weight ratio that would make it impossible for any animal. And I have yet to see a swallow fly at mach 2.
That's not exactly 100% accurate. Microsoft has somehow "promised" they'll implement "interoperability" with ODF, while at the same time requesting OASIS to let them have a shot at maintaining the ODF standard, or at least this is what I gather from their latest letters on the argument. I don't know why, but this worries me a bit.
Not that I'd ever suspect Microsoft of any foul play, like for example trying to embed their proprietary and patent encumbered technologies in the ODF standard. After all their past behaviour is a clear example of integrity!
(this post features sarcasm tags for easier interpretation by the humor impaired)
Ultimately, if a movie has to be reproduced on a display it will be possible to copy it. Adding more restrictions will just cause administrative trouble, increase costs, and drive the file sharers (those that share copyrighted material) into more secretive ways to share files. But the one thing to keep in mind is: what is the PURPOSE of copyright? Right now the movie and music industry is desperately trying to persuade the world that copyrights are meant to guarantee a monopoly on an artwork. The actual reason for copyright law is to afford a minimal amount of protection for an artist so that he may continue to produce his art. By all means, introduce strong legislation to protect copyright holders, but reduce the amount of time a copyright can stay in effect. If a company makes one movie, and cashes in on that movie for the next 70 years without making anything anymore, in my opinion it doesn't deserve to maintain the copyright. Originally it was in the range of 7-15 years, perhaps it's time to lower the bar again
Not to mention the fact that at one time the content must be in memory unencrypted. Grab a memory snapshot, and copy that, and you got the unencrypted content. Eventually something has to be read, the only uncompromisable content is the one that you can't read, therefore is useless.
I'd rather strap to my head an helmet with motion tracking (wiimote hack?) and one or two of those new cheap laser projectors that can make an 800*600 image and are the size of a cigarette packet. Would probably get seasick within seconds due to the image lagging behind the head tracking, though. Bah, better go play Ultimate Disk In The Dark instead.
Re:Potentially crazy suggestion:
on
Dealing With Dialup
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· Score: 5, Informative
or just place it under the roof. They sell purpose-made fiberglass roof tiles that will match the existing ones after a little creative weathering, and are microwave transparent.
It's been repeated to death, but that was an obvious prompting:
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither"
Thomas Jefferson, American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826
I agree with that, having to wear a silly hat in order to use the PC for anything other than games (or VR, military applications... anyway not day-to-day computing) doesn't sound practical. And I doubt that eye tracking is currently achieved without some sort of head mounted contraption either. For example, how would you recognize which user of the ones currently looking at the screen should be tracked?
But if you can live with plain head tracking you can use either the commercial TrackIR (http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/) or the open source (but win32 only) FreeTrack (http://www.free-track.net/english/).
You probably are more interested in something implemented in a head mounted display, but don't see why the same approach can't be used with an HMD, keeping the setup simpler overall. Or perhaps in conjunction with shutter glasses, to get a "window on the 3D world" effect
Imagine using this feature to render highly detailed 3D images only where the user is actually looking. The peripheral vision is almost useless, the actual area that does most of the seeing is in the center of the retina. The brain fills in the blanks and keeps a mental image of what you are seeing that gets updated through rpid eye movement. With a smart setup this could be translated in a huge screen that appears to have a large resolution in every direction while keeping the processing power requirements still accessible. The mouse is a great interface, I don't see any reason to replace that just yet.
Install Blender, open Blender, press F12 and you have a render of a cube. The default scene in a new Blender install comes with a plain cube, a camera aimed at it and a point light. If you want a sphere delete the cube and add a sphere. If you want it to be coloured add a material to it. Nothing beats reading the documentation to find out how something works
using a heat powered heat pump. I was looking at stirling cycle engines th other day, and at vortex tubes. There's some interesting old tech that could be used for new tasks...
Not really, it is quite possible... they already do this in Brazil somewhat. Grow sugar cane, distill it in methanol and use it as fuel. You don't even need to alter the engine. The problem is that to do this you need to wipe out a rather large portion of amazon forest, and use it to produce fuel rather than food. And tearing down the forest is bad for the environment, NOT because it uses up CO2 to produce O2 (it doesn't really, uses up almost the same amount of O2 it produces, and puts out almost the same amount of CO2 it uses. The oceans are what gives us fresh air) but because it throws the equilibrium off. Growing plants for fuel is more efficient than creating a solar farm, but we don't really ave the space for it.
Not sure bout that. This incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 has not been cleared yet, and some radar tapes that could have been interesting have mysteriously disappeared, including those of an US carrier that was docked in the Naples port. And I have seen some impressive pictures of an Alitalia DC8 landing with a hole between the two left egines after being struck by an IR missile a few years earlier. Apparently the missile couldn't decide between the two engines and struck in the middle. Credit goes for the plane to hold together with both wing spars damaged and a fuel tank punched from side to side not catching fire.
Indeed. They'd just use a 20mm gun on the approach or departure path, and you can't do anything to stop bullets. If you only have a range of 4 or 5 km, why would you need a guided weapon to down such a giant lumbering beast? AA guns worked well enough for bombers in WW2, and nowadays predictor gunsights are much more efficient (and cheaper!)
If an F15 was to get at 2km from its target he'd go winchester (use his cannon) or risk missing the target altogether. AA missiles are fast, but have a really hard time maneuvering. And tracking a "cold" target with an IR missile isn't easy either. Incidentally, I think RAF Nimrods are armed with a couple of sidewinders for self defence, so I guess it can have a chance of evading a missile if it has a chance of firing one
Or even some grow some fuel... or some paper, as long as CO2 is reclaimed from the atmosphere. IF we really have a problem of too much CO2 being left in the atmosphere the only solution is to capture it and convert it into a form that won't be burned again, as can be paper, tar, diamonds, wooden furniture... But the amount of carbon present on planet earth has been pretty much constant in the last few million years, save for the odd meteor strike. The fuel we are burning is solar energy fossilized. I read (in some earlier post?) that researchers are working on extracting combustible oils from algae, I think this would have a smaller environmental impact than photovoltaic and eolic generation, since it could be probably achieved in a continuous cycle plant.
Slashdot Mirror
Even without going all the way to cloning the RFID or transponder apparatus, as long as an invalid code or handshake sequence causes the toll boot to fail you just have to rig a bad copy with a small activation delay to attack a toll boot with a DOS. Go through the toll boot as usual and throw your decoy tag on the roadside and every car going through will fail to activate the receiver. And if you feel particularly devious you just need the device to turn on and off randomly...
They are building. I mean, it's not like you are saving that many keystrokes that it even makes a difference, and if you have to be a grammar nazi you may as well go the whole way!
The newest Sam&Max series of games spring to mind. I bought the entire first season, and am reasonably satisfied. Some episodes where better, some less, but overall they make a decent game.
I usually do buy my games, and THEN download a pirated version. I know, it sounds stupid, but I hate the localized versions (I live in Italy) because of the bad dubbing and dubious translations (ok, "anello" is a translation for "ring", but not when applied to a bell on an hotel desk. Gabriel Knight 3 anyone?). On top of that, when playing games on a laptop, carrying with me the original CD's and DVD's when i am on the move is a bit of a chore. They use up space, they can get easily damaged, the copy-protection is invasive and can even cause system instability and driver conflicts. I have recently bought a few games through Steam, and for the moment I am fairly satisfied. However, what will happen when the steam servers will go offline?
Unless you are talking about Windows
But think what they could achieve if they had pivots capable of unlimited rotation! Props and rotors are actually very efficient, more so than flapping wings. An helicopter can fly and hover with a power to weight ratio that would make it impossible for any animal. And I have yet to see a swallow fly at mach 2.
Doesn't sound to me as such a great achievement. Sure, it's a small RC ornitopther, but it will hardly be the first, and as someone pointed out a prop will work better, even at small sizes. There are quite a few examples of planes under 3 grams on the RCGroups indoor forums, in particular these entries: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596219 (mg range brushless motors) http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=841147 (solar powered < 500 mg project) http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=892415 (390mg Plane - Video)
That's not exactly 100% accurate. Microsoft has somehow "promised" they'll implement "interoperability" with ODF, while at the same time requesting OASIS to let them have a shot at maintaining the ODF standard, or at least this is what I gather from their latest letters on the argument. I don't know why, but this worries me a bit. Not that I'd ever suspect Microsoft of any foul play, like for example trying to embed their proprietary and patent encumbered technologies in the ODF standard. After all their past behaviour is a clear example of integrity! (this post features sarcasm tags for easier interpretation by the humor impaired)
... until MS decided to kill the weak one and use the good one.
Hem, for a given value of good. I'd have used the words "better one" instead
Ultimately, if a movie has to be reproduced on a display it will be possible to copy it. Adding more restrictions will just cause administrative trouble, increase costs, and drive the file sharers (those that share copyrighted material) into more secretive ways to share files. But the one thing to keep in mind is: what is the PURPOSE of copyright? Right now the movie and music industry is desperately trying to persuade the world that copyrights are meant to guarantee a monopoly on an artwork. The actual reason for copyright law is to afford a minimal amount of protection for an artist so that he may continue to produce his art. By all means, introduce strong legislation to protect copyright holders, but reduce the amount of time a copyright can stay in effect. If a company makes one movie, and cashes in on that movie for the next 70 years without making anything anymore, in my opinion it doesn't deserve to maintain the copyright. Originally it was in the range of 7-15 years, perhaps it's time to lower the bar again
Not to mention the fact that at one time the content must be in memory unencrypted. Grab a memory snapshot, and copy that, and you got the unencrypted content. Eventually something has to be read, the only uncompromisable content is the one that you can't read, therefore is useless.
I'd rather strap to my head an helmet with motion tracking (wiimote hack?) and one or two of those new cheap laser projectors that can make an 800*600 image and are the size of a cigarette packet. Would probably get seasick within seconds due to the image lagging behind the head tracking, though. Bah, better go play Ultimate Disk In The Dark instead.
or just place it under the roof. They sell purpose-made fiberglass roof tiles that will match the existing ones after a little creative weathering, and are microwave transparent.
It's been repeated to death, but that was an obvious prompting: "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither" Thomas Jefferson, American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826
I agree with that, having to wear a silly hat in order to use the PC for anything other than games (or VR, military applications... anyway not day-to-day computing) doesn't sound practical. And I doubt that eye tracking is currently achieved without some sort of head mounted contraption either. For example, how would you recognize which user of the ones currently looking at the screen should be tracked?
But if you can live with plain head tracking you can use either the commercial TrackIR (http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/) or the open source (but win32 only) FreeTrack (http://www.free-track.net/english/). You probably are more interested in something implemented in a head mounted display, but don't see why the same approach can't be used with an HMD, keeping the setup simpler overall. Or perhaps in conjunction with shutter glasses, to get a "window on the 3D world" effect
Imagine using this feature to render highly detailed 3D images only where the user is actually looking. The peripheral vision is almost useless, the actual area that does most of the seeing is in the center of the retina. The brain fills in the blanks and keeps a mental image of what you are seeing that gets updated through rpid eye movement. With a smart setup this could be translated in a huge screen that appears to have a large resolution in every direction while keeping the processing power requirements still accessible. The mouse is a great interface, I don't see any reason to replace that just yet.
Install Blender, open Blender, press F12 and you have a render of a cube. The default scene in a new Blender install comes with a plain cube, a camera aimed at it and a point light. If you want a sphere delete the cube and add a sphere. If you want it to be coloured add a material to it. Nothing beats reading the documentation to find out how something works
using a heat powered heat pump. I was looking at stirling cycle engines th other day, and at vortex tubes. There's some interesting old tech that could be used for new tasks...
Not really, it is quite possible... they already do this in Brazil somewhat. Grow sugar cane, distill it in methanol and use it as fuel. You don't even need to alter the engine. The problem is that to do this you need to wipe out a rather large portion of amazon forest, and use it to produce fuel rather than food. And tearing down the forest is bad for the environment, NOT because it uses up CO2 to produce O2 (it doesn't really, uses up almost the same amount of O2 it produces, and puts out almost the same amount of CO2 it uses. The oceans are what gives us fresh air) but because it throws the equilibrium off. Growing plants for fuel is more efficient than creating a solar farm, but we don't really ave the space for it.
Not sure bout that. This incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 has not been cleared yet, and some radar tapes that could have been interesting have mysteriously disappeared, including those of an US carrier that was docked in the Naples port. And I have seen some impressive pictures of an Alitalia DC8 landing with a hole between the two left egines after being struck by an IR missile a few years earlier. Apparently the missile couldn't decide between the two engines and struck in the middle. Credit goes for the plane to hold together with both wing spars damaged and a fuel tank punched from side to side not catching fire.
Indeed. They'd just use a 20mm gun on the approach or departure path, and you can't do anything to stop bullets. If you only have a range of 4 or 5 km, why would you need a guided weapon to down such a giant lumbering beast? AA guns worked well enough for bombers in WW2, and nowadays predictor gunsights are much more efficient (and cheaper!)
If an F15 was to get at 2km from its target he'd go winchester (use his cannon) or risk missing the target altogether. AA missiles are fast, but have a really hard time maneuvering. And tracking a "cold" target with an IR missile isn't easy either. Incidentally, I think RAF Nimrods are armed with a couple of sidewinders for self defence, so I guess it can have a chance of evading a missile if it has a chance of firing one
Or even some grow some fuel... or some paper, as long as CO2 is reclaimed from the atmosphere. IF we really have a problem of too much CO2 being left in the atmosphere the only solution is to capture it and convert it into a form that won't be burned again, as can be paper, tar, diamonds, wooden furniture... But the amount of carbon present on planet earth has been pretty much constant in the last few million years, save for the odd meteor strike. The fuel we are burning is solar energy fossilized. I read (in some earlier post?) that researchers are working on extracting combustible oils from algae, I think this would have a smaller environmental impact than photovoltaic and eolic generation, since it could be probably achieved in a continuous cycle plant.
Ok, more than 5000 comments... but has any proposed standard ever reached 10,000?