That sort of defeats the whole RPG aspect, now doesn't it? The whole point of an RPG is that you DO get to play as someone you're not, do things you can't; so for example, Joe Burgerflipper could go home and play in your afore mentioned hypothetical Cyberpunk world as some badass decker (to use Shadowrun terminology) while he himself barely can turn on his own system. What you've described is a masive multiplayer puzzle game, which is a seperate, perhaps undertapped genre unto itself. You're looking more for Myst multiplayer, or UT 2004 with more puzzle elements, while the MMORPG experience is more geared towards trying to provide the paper-and-pencil role-play gaming experience in electronic form.
If another user is using an insecure product, say MicroSoft Outlook [Express], and that system becomes compromised as a direct result of said vulnerability, it then becomes a public issue. At that point, as a member of the public, it becomes my problem.
If I can secure one not-mine box by having the user switch to a more secure solution (doesn't have to be open source, that just usually tends to be the most viable solution), thus preventing it from becoming compromised and Yet-Another-Net-Zombie, then I have done a great public service by reducing the number of potential zombie systems by one. Do that many times by OSS-thumping and I reduce the number of potential zomies by that many systems.
User L over there may be happy using Outlook or IE, but I'm not happy that his||her system is also silently running attempts to crack my system and generating excessive network traffic looking for others to infect. Insecure systems affect everyone.
My Apache logs re filled with IIS exploit attempts, from infected IIS servers, and that makes me unhappy.
if the colors are less red because of white-balance/normalization issues as suggested by contrast differences between images with pure white vs. images without: 1) the images with white, like the cleaner airbags, would show the planet as it should, as each filter would contain the same normalization calibration from the presence of white light. Images pieced together with the raw data do NOT match the press-released images in these instances.
2) The sky in the images reconstructed from raw data should show up as almost perfectly white. In most all instances, it does not. It appears quite cyan to light blue.
I'd rather believe the guys at NASA honestly believe they are providing the press with what they believe are the correct colors, and are simply clueless when it comes to photography. Great engineers and scientists they may be, but photographers they are not.
BattleTech! Yes, with the advent of the neurohelm we will find 90 meters IS a sufficient distance for gattling cannon fire, and discover ways to increase bore size and yet somehow DECREASE range in artillary.
As long as my Locust looks like a Crusher Joe and my Marauder looks like a Glaug, I'll be happy.
I started, as so many others, at a Uni. Heh, supporting, of all things, a bank of Macs:)
Installled MacOS X Server, saw it was BSD, had a field semester. Following semester dropped out to pursue a career as a Solaris admin with some IT consultants who ended up laying off the majority of their staff over the course of this past year. I got the axe 6 months ago and have been out of work ever since.
Hmm... anyone know how best to get back IN to adminning? I loved it, but opporotunities for getting back in right now seem pretty bleak. At least in the Sillicon Valley/San Francisco area.
--
The Xiphos
I had no idea the Mom&Pop ISP's were dying.
My parents have been using the same local ISP for nearly a decade now, and they seem to be doing quite well.
I myself have been using the same ISP since moving out 5 years ago, and have been quite pleased with the service. I don't require much in the user-support area, but the supply of a shell account, solid uptime, and a goodly array of available ISP-side newsgroups where discussion (or just general blather) on a good many subjects both technical and social are fairly active. These ISPs seem to be doing well for themselves, being able to afford regular hardware upgrades.
I can't imagine ever NOT going with a local ISP. --
Oh, I dunno. Maybe it's just a Silicon Valley thing, but I find a great many of the companies I've worked at now offer such perks as standard. Any company without at least a ping-pong or fuss-ball table must be substandard. Or at the VERY least, free drinks.
I'll agree with the 6-figure digit. That's pushing things. Always disturbs me whenever I hear of the new guy who just got hired at some rediculous 6-digit figure. I get intensly jealous.
But ya GOTTA have the ping-pong table. Heck, what else are we supposed to do during new system installs/upgrades, and periods of stability? Stare at the screen?:)
As for IT shortage, I know a good many IT people who have great difficulty getting a job, even after lowering their standards. Not for any lack of talent, mind. Largely because non-techies seem to want to pidgeon-hole IT positions, even though any good tech should have enough of a grasp on the basics to apply their knowledge across the board. Never mind if one can administrate a Solaris system, a good deal of that could carry over to administering a network [Cable monkeys!]. Heck, any good admin worth their salt probably started out making their own cables! And don't even get me started on Web Development (the cushy IT job). I remember HTML tags. It used to be called word procesing in programs like Word Star. And people need front ends to do this? All you need is vi/emacs/pico/nano/ed/echo! Feh! I tell ya, the techs these days... FEEBLE MINDED!
I've lost track of my original point, and am now rambling. Umm... Dreamcasts are good alternatives to Ping-Pong tables. Especially if you offer Soul Calibur. --
Hm. Lessee... I've been submitting this story for how many years now? 3? AND it looks to have run before? What's the diff? Near as I can tell, it's in english this time. Big whoop. If ya want MORE info, go see the original source: http://www.honda.co.jp/robot/or do a quick search on Yahoo for Honda Humanoid. Didn't get anything new out of this. -- Xiphos - yeah, bite me. --
Umm... no:) To clarify, I can compile and place the 2.2.14 kernel on a floppy, still have room for a few basic tools, then boot from that floppy, and do just about everything I need to from the floppy (yes I can, I just did it over the weekend to troubleshoot what was going wrong with my new hardware, including the HDD controllers which, for a few bootups, were disconnected altogether. Turned out to be bad RAM, but I digress) I couldn't have done that with NT. DOS, sure noproblem, except it had a bugger of a time finding the network hardware (which, incidentally, was one of the items compiled in mentioned kernel:)*
believe it or not X and KDE and GNOME and their attendant libs are part of the OS to most people.
And to most people, lemmings are cute critters that will spontaneously commit suicide en masse. Your point?
*-Actually, if you think about it, the fact that *NIXes are inherently networking and distributable, it sort of negates the entire premise of the original argument:) --
Cars are enormously better than they were 15 years ago
Oh, I don't know about that. I drive a 21 year old 200SX. It gets about 30mpg, has just over 100Hp, and aside from a few problems from just being plain old (starting to leak some oil, funny noises starting to crop up, dings and scratches) runs just as well as my freinds 2yr old Neon Sport, except his Neon only gets about 25mpg. In fact, the 21yr-old 200SX got better ratings on last years CA emmissions check than many 1999 models. Maybe old Scramble's a fluke, maybe Nissan/Datsun just managed to build really kickass cars. Maybe the former owner was an exceptional mechanic. All I know is it's really freaking reliable. When it comes time to replace the old buggy, I think one of Honda's hybrid cars will be in the top running on my list, though:) --
Ah, the good old days. You forgot the Tandy workstation, great graphics as well
Mmm... can't say as I ever did anything on one of those. Fiddled with some early Tandy robotics equipment (really basic follow-the-line and RC type stuffs), but that's about it.
What about manually ATDTing our 300 baud modems to the one or two local BBS's in an area
I bow to your decrepency, being a very late comer in the game. Though I did manually dial out, never on anything slower than a 1200... although on a few occasions I DID have the fun task of trying to get my brand-spanking new 14.4 to try and speak down to one of my fav BBS' aging 300. Never did manage.
Hmmm... a linux-based BBS over telnet... I know they exist, I used to occasion a couple. Anyone gots any source? Or do I gotta code my own? (It won't be pretty in the latter case, but not wholly impossible:) --
Ya young whippersnapper yahoo!;) To help put things in perspective: 14.4 modems were just brand-new, hardly supported by anyone. 2400 and 9600 baud were considered normal and blazingly fast respectively. Windows 3.1 was brand spanking new, 486's were not yet on the market, their developers were still dealing with heat issues, Amiga and Macintosh were still kings in the graphics dept., and fidonet was about as close as any of us got to replicating the universities Internet thingy. Ah, the ANSI-animated tales of Fire and Ice (anyone remember those? Probably the best animated series to come down the fidonet pieline).
Checking out that article that considers the dog parallell mentioned up above: "...a full 92 percent [of dog owners] go on the Internet specifically to interact with other dog owners." But, Rob R. Barron, guy behind the parallelling dog study states, "So many people, just wasting their days, not interacting with their fellow human" So, just who and what are these other dog owners?:) [fwiw, I agree with H, it's amusing]
On a more serious note, this does raise some interesting points. As stated a few posts up, by Slashdot-Terminal, it seems to largely be those who are in the older age bracket (though not exclusively so... afterall, I'm here;) But even within that bracket, you get isolationists. Now, I'm no statician, and haven't dealt with statistics since... I'd rather not admit how long ago HighSchool was:) ANYhow, what I have noticed, and what many of these studies seem to never delve into, is that those who grew up with and around computers seem to have an easier time using them for comminicative and solcial purposes. I, for instance, remember growing up with such beasts as the Sinclair, Zenith Heath, and TI-99. When modems became readily available in my area, those of us who had been the computer-weenies nearly suspended for hacking into school records from the computer lab (Ha! _I_ had 8088's and 386's in MY Highschool!) started forming BBS communities. Many of my longest lasting and most solid freindships were developed Back in the Day. Ah for the sound of my new, blazingly fast 2400baud... Dang, I keep digressing:) By contrast, the majority of our classmates throughout the state school system were NOT connected. To them, we would go home and hole ourselves up with our computers, never to be seen outside of school. Were we actually isolated? No, but to the non-geeks, we appeared so. And so I get to my point: Now, we have a wide range of generations who suddenly find themselves feeling as though the computer is being forced upon them; if they don't get a computer, don't get connected, somehow they'll be left out. Some manage to find out there IS community, IS interaction & whathaveyou out here in the digital realm, but many more never do. To the masses, the internet and the web are synonymous. Especially now with web-based e-mail interfaces, people do not realize just how limited port 80 is. Usenet, irc, online multiplayer games such as Diablo or Quake, MU*'s... all foreign concepts. Now their children, or at least it would seem a good many of them (again, I've done no formal study on this, so this is really all tounge-in-cheek), have at one point learned about these things, and communicate with peers through them. I can see where problems can arise from this, all with regards to internet censorship and "protecting our children" [protect from what?], but that's a whole other article:) Anyway, back to my point; a lot of these studies seem to be run by the people who did NOT grow up with these mediums, do NOT understand how it could be a form of community and interaction, and thus are not qualified to properly study it's unique social structure at this time. Likewise, it may help steer those who otherwise WOULD end up mindless zombies (please be refraining from your luser=mindless zombie jokes, tempting as they are:) from trying to enter a world they do not, and likely never will, fully grasp or understand (note: If you are one of these people who came in relatively late in the game, and did manage to find your niche, then kudos! That statement applies to you not), but keep them in the "real" world they know how to interact with and otherwise be a producing member of society. So, do I agree with this study? No, it is incomplete, failing to take into account all aspects of net use. Do I think this is a useful study? Yes, but not for the reasons intended by the researchers.
I should go now, for I have rambled enough on company time:)
Bearing in mind I dang near failed High School biology, and never did pursue it in college much beyong marine biology...
IIRC, it has something to do with fire lacking any real structured data. Life, as we understand it, is the continuation and passing along of data in the form of DNA strands. Cells lacking this data have been discovered, observed to multiply, divide, etc, but are not considered alive primarily because this data string controlling the cell behavior is missing. Same with fire; it has no controll center, no real structure... it's fairly chaotic, and does not really promote order, only entropy. As to considering it a life form if one didn't know better, where do you think ideas of fire elemntals come from?:)
As for non-carbon based life, all I can say is Sweet, it's Cybertron! --
Slashdot Mirror
Look at that error message. It's not your schools filters blocking you.
(Re?)Read the TOR setup FAQ's. They are numerous and helpful.
That sort of defeats the whole RPG aspect, now doesn't it? The whole point of an RPG is that you DO get to play as someone you're not, do things you can't; so for example, Joe Burgerflipper could go home and play in your afore mentioned hypothetical Cyberpunk world as some badass decker (to use Shadowrun terminology) while he himself barely can turn on his own system. What you've described is a masive multiplayer puzzle game, which is a seperate, perhaps undertapped genre unto itself.
You're looking more for Myst multiplayer, or UT 2004 with more puzzle elements, while the MMORPG experience is more geared towards trying to provide the paper-and-pencil role-play gaming experience in electronic form.
Yeah, that's a pretty nice delusion you've got going there.
This may have already been said, but:
If another user is using an insecure product, say MicroSoft Outlook [Express], and that system becomes compromised as a direct result of said vulnerability, it then becomes a public issue. At that point, as a member of the public, it becomes my problem.
If I can secure one not-mine box by having the user switch to a more secure solution (doesn't have to be open source, that just usually tends to be the most viable solution), thus preventing it from becoming compromised and Yet-Another-Net-Zombie, then I have done a great public service by reducing the number of potential zombie systems by one. Do that many times by OSS-thumping and I reduce the number of potential zomies by that many systems.
User L over there may be happy using Outlook or IE, but I'm not happy that his||her system is also silently running attempts to crack my system and generating excessive network traffic looking for others to infect. Insecure systems affect everyone.
My Apache logs re filled with IIS exploit attempts, from infected IIS servers, and that makes me unhappy.
if the colors are less red because of white-balance/normalization issues as suggested by contrast differences between images with pure white vs. images without:
1) the images with white, like the cleaner airbags, would show the planet as it should, as each filter would contain the same normalization calibration from the presence of white light. Images pieced together with the raw data do NOT match the press-released images in these instances.
2) The sky in the images reconstructed from raw data should show up as almost perfectly white. In most all instances, it does not. It appears quite cyan to light blue.
I'd rather believe the guys at NASA honestly believe they are providing the press with what they believe are the correct colors, and are simply clueless when it comes to photography. Great engineers and scientists they may be, but photographers they are not.
BattleTech! Yes, with the advent of the neurohelm we will find 90 meters IS a sufficient distance for gattling cannon fire, and discover ways to increase bore size and yet somehow DECREASE range in artillary.
As long as my Locust looks like a Crusher Joe and my Marauder looks like a Glaug, I'll be happy.
I started, as so many others, at a Uni. Heh, supporting, of all things, a bank of Macs :)
Installled MacOS X Server, saw it was BSD, had a field semester. Following semester dropped out to pursue a career as a Solaris admin with some IT consultants who ended up laying off the majority of their staff over the course of this past year. I got the axe 6 months ago and have been out of work ever since.
Hmm... anyone know how best to get back IN to adminning? I loved it, but opporotunities for getting back in right now seem pretty bleak. At least in the Sillicon Valley/San Francisco area.
--
The Xiphos
I had no idea the Mom&Pop ISP's were dying. My parents have been using the same local ISP for nearly a decade now, and they seem to be doing quite well. I myself have been using the same ISP since moving out 5 years ago, and have been quite pleased with the service. I don't require much in the user-support area, but the supply of a shell account, solid uptime, and a goodly array of available ISP-side newsgroups where discussion (or just general blather) on a good many subjects both technical and social are fairly active. These ISPs seem to be doing well for themselves, being able to afford regular hardware upgrades. I can't imagine ever NOT going with a local ISP.
--
Oh, I dunno. Maybe it's just a Silicon Valley thing, but I find a great many of the companies I've worked at now offer such perks as standard. Any company without at least a ping-pong or fuss-ball table must be substandard. Or at the VERY least, free drinks.
:)
I'll agree with the 6-figure digit. That's pushing things. Always disturbs me whenever I hear of the new guy who just got hired at some rediculous 6-digit figure. I get intensly jealous.
But ya GOTTA have the ping-pong table. Heck, what else are we supposed to do during new system installs/upgrades, and periods of stability? Stare at the screen?
As for IT shortage, I know a good many IT people who have great difficulty getting a job, even after lowering their standards. Not for any lack of talent, mind. Largely because non-techies seem to want to pidgeon-hole IT positions, even though any good tech should have enough of a grasp on the basics to apply their knowledge across the board. Never mind if one can administrate a Solaris system, a good deal of that could carry over to administering a network [Cable monkeys!]. Heck, any good admin worth their salt probably started out making their own cables! And don't even get me started on Web Development (the cushy IT job). I remember HTML tags. It used to be called word procesing in programs like Word Star. And people need front ends to do this? All you need is vi/emacs/pico/nano/ed/echo! Feh! I tell ya, the techs these days... FEEBLE MINDED!
I've lost track of my original point, and am now rambling. Umm... Dreamcasts are good alternatives to Ping-Pong tables. Especially if you offer Soul Calibur.
--
Hm. Lessee... I've been submitting this story for how many years now? 3? AND it looks to have run before? What's the diff? Near as I can tell, it's in english this time. Big whoop. If ya want MORE info, go see the original source: http://www.honda.co.jp/robot/or do a quick search on Yahoo for Honda Humanoid. Didn't get anything new out of this. -- Xiphos - yeah, bite me.
--
Linux is just as bloated as windows
:) :)*
:)
Umm... no
To clarify, I can compile and place the 2.2.14 kernel on a floppy, still have room for a few basic tools, then boot from that floppy, and do just about everything I need to from the floppy (yes I can, I just did it over the weekend to troubleshoot what was going wrong with my new hardware, including the HDD controllers which, for a few bootups, were disconnected altogether. Turned out to be bad RAM, but I digress)
I couldn't have done that with NT. DOS, sure noproblem, except it had a bugger of a time finding the network hardware (which, incidentally, was one of the items compiled in mentioned kernel
believe it or not X and KDE and GNOME and their attendant libs are part of the OS to most people.
And to most people, lemmings are cute critters that will spontaneously commit suicide en masse. Your point?
*-Actually, if you think about it, the fact that *NIXes are inherently networking and distributable, it sort of negates the entire premise of the original argument
--
Cars are enormously better than they were 15 years ago
:)
Oh, I don't know about that. I drive a 21 year old 200SX. It gets about 30mpg, has just over 100Hp, and aside from a few problems from just being plain old (starting to leak some oil, funny noises starting to crop up, dings and scratches) runs just as well as my freinds 2yr old Neon Sport, except his Neon only gets about 25mpg. In fact, the 21yr-old 200SX got better ratings on last years CA emmissions check than many 1999 models.
Maybe old Scramble's a fluke, maybe Nissan/Datsun just managed to build really kickass cars. Maybe the former owner was an exceptional mechanic. All I know is it's really freaking reliable.
When it comes time to replace the old buggy, I think one of Honda's hybrid cars will be in the top running on my list, though
--
Ah, the good old days. You forgot the Tandy workstation, great graphics as well
:)
Mmm... can't say as I ever did anything on one of those. Fiddled with some early Tandy robotics equipment (really basic follow-the-line and RC type stuffs), but that's about it.
What about manually ATDTing our 300 baud modems to the one or two local BBS's in an area
I bow to your decrepency, being a very late comer in the game. Though I did manually dial out, never on anything slower than a 1200... although on a few occasions I DID have the fun task of trying to get my brand-spanking new 14.4 to try and speak down to one of my fav BBS' aging 300. Never did manage.
Hmmm... a linux-based BBS over telnet... I know they exist, I used to occasion a couple. Anyone gots any source? Or do I gotta code my own? (It won't be pretty in the latter case, but not wholly impossible
--
I miss the concrete coffeehouse.
--
"...a full 92 percent [of dog owners] go on the Internet specifically to interact with other dog owners."
But, Rob R. Barron, guy behind the parallelling dog study states, "So many people, just wasting their days, not interacting with their fellow human"
So, just who and what are these other dog owners?
[fwiw, I agree with H, it's amusing]
On a more serious note, this does raise some interesting points. As stated a few posts up, by Slashdot-Terminal, it seems to largely be those who are in the older age bracket (though not exclusively so... afterall, I'm here ;) But even within that bracket, you get isolationists. Now, I'm no statician, and haven't dealt with statistics since... I'd rather not admit how long ago HighSchool was :) ANYhow, what I have noticed, and what many of these studies seem to never delve into, is that those who grew up with and around computers seem to have an easier time using them for comminicative and solcial purposes. I, for instance, remember growing up with such beasts as the Sinclair, Zenith Heath, and TI-99. When modems became readily available in my area, those of us who had been the computer-weenies nearly suspended for hacking into school records from the computer lab (Ha! _I_ had 8088's and 386's in MY Highschool!) started forming BBS communities. Many of my longest lasting and most solid freindships were developed Back in the Day. Ah for the sound of my new, blazingly fast 2400baud... Dang, I keep digressing :) By contrast, the majority of our classmates throughout the state school system were NOT connected. To them, we would go home and hole ourselves up with our computers, never to be seen outside of school. Were we actually isolated? No, but to the non-geeks, we appeared so. :) :) from trying to enter a world they do not, and likely never will, fully grasp or understand (note: If you are one of these people who came in relatively late in the game, and did manage to find your niche, then kudos! That statement applies to you not), but keep them in the "real" world they know how to interact with and otherwise be a producing member of society.
And so I get to my point: Now, we have a wide range of generations who suddenly find themselves feeling as though the computer is being forced upon them; if they don't get a computer, don't get connected, somehow they'll be left out. Some manage to find out there IS community, IS interaction & whathaveyou out here in the digital realm, but many more never do. To the masses, the internet and the web are synonymous. Especially now with web-based e-mail interfaces, people do not realize just how limited port 80 is. Usenet, irc, online multiplayer games such as Diablo or Quake, MU*'s... all foreign concepts. Now their children, or at least it would seem a good many of them (again, I've done no formal study on this, so this is really all tounge-in-cheek), have at one point learned about these things, and communicate with peers through them. I can see where problems can arise from this, all with regards to internet censorship and "protecting our children" [protect from what?], but that's a whole other article
Anyway, back to my point; a lot of these studies seem to be run by the people who did NOT grow up with these mediums, do NOT understand how it could be a form of community and interaction, and thus are not qualified to properly study it's unique social structure at this time. Likewise, it may help steer those who otherwise WOULD end up mindless zombies (please be refraining from your luser=mindless zombie jokes, tempting as they are
So, do I agree with this study? No, it is incomplete, failing to take into account all aspects of net use. Do I think this is a useful study? Yes, but not for the reasons intended by the researchers.
I should go now, for I have rambled enough on company time :)
--
IIRC, it has something to do with fire lacking any real structured data. Life, as we understand it, is the continuation and passing along of data in the form of DNA strands. Cells lacking this data have been discovered, observed to multiply, divide, etc, but are not considered alive primarily because this data string controlling the cell behavior is missing. Same with fire; it has no controll center, no real structure... it's fairly chaotic, and does not really promote order, only entropy.
As to considering it a life form if one didn't know better, where do you think ideas of fire elemntals come from?
As for non-carbon based life, all I can say is
Sweet, it's Cybertron!
--