And I thought it was already here. While reading TFA I couldn't help but think. Wow, that's dense. That's really dense. Surely nothing could be that dense short of Microsoft programmers?
Yeah, look, sorry it's early and that's the best I got at the moment. Live it up!
The issue here is to stop people access child porn. While I hate to be a black sheep, if you take speed away from a speed addict, they turn to meth or cocaine. You take ecstasy away from an addict and they turn to heroin.
What will pedophiles turn to if you take child porn away from their browsers at home?
Personally, if something like this ever went through, I would become more worried about kids on the street.
Put offenders into rehabilitation, or stop their contact or do something with a little common sense. This sort of knee jerk reaction solves nothing and generally creates more trouble than anything.
Yes, minimum specs is what you go for, but minimum specs is not how the majority of people play, and it's that problem of finding out how things scale past that point that is the difficulty.
Example: "Some Game" has min specs at a P4 with 1gig ram and a 128meg graphics card with hardware T&L. That makes it play at an acceptable 25 frames at 800x600 res on low detail textures (256x256) and with low shadows and no AA.
The hard thing is to work out how well it will play on PC's when you bump it up to say:
1) 1920x1600 resolution.
2) Drop in high detail volumetric shadows.
3) Use 1024x1024 (or bigger) textures and shaders.
4) Dump in a whole load of particle effects.
5) Add in anti aliasing.
6) Use cards that support physics engines.
7) Profit (Sorry, couldn't help it)... but you get the idea.
Having a console where you know the exact everything about everything is awesome because people won't touch things like the examples above. You might not be able to get it running in super high resolution with all those little fancy things going, but you know how EVERY gamer will see it. For a developer, you can't ask for much more.
Okay, to back up the original post, I used to contract for Epicgames on the Unreal series. When developing for the main PC market, we were constantly rolling our specs and expectations forward and backwards, gain some here, lose some there, roll up with this new tech etc. When porting to consoles everything was set in lovely stone. This is the amount of memory you have, this is how much transfer you have. It is amazingly much easier to do development work when you have limits like "Your textures for this level/environment cannot be more than xxx megs total" or "your level has to be under xxx megs in file size to load properly". This is black and white. You know the performance you will get, you won't see a shift here or there. On the other hand, working with the PC development, it's not black and white, it's all a shifting gradient.
Let me use a slashdot friendly car analogy.
Working with a console is like buying a little hatchback and keeping it factory standard. You know how fast it goes, you know how much you can pop into the back before it gets too much. Working with PC's is like going to a custom car show. Each one is different, you don't know how fast they go and you don't even know if there is space beside the subs in the back to fit any luggage.
Which one can potentially be better is a no brainer, but which one is easier to plan around is just as plain.
Actually, surface tension PULLS water into a sponge. It's the exact same way that a tree sucks water up through the root system. If you look at a container with water it in, you will see a miniscus along the edges. If the tube is narrow enough, this pulls the water up and into it.
Come on slashdotters, this is grade eight science!
Firstly, you chances are small. This you must take into account. Your only chance lies in letting the stuff dry out and stay clean. This is what I would suggest:
Well, speaking from rescuing mobile phones (the only things I have managed to get that wet that was more complicated than a wireless keyboard) I would suggest that you give your gear a solid wash under warm water (preferably before it dries out totally). You want to try to wash out all the other stuff before it gets dry and hard to remove. It was already wet, so some clean water won't hurt too much more. Also you want to try to wash away any chemicals (especially those conductive salts that keep water in) that may degrade (eat into) the electronics. Next you want to let it dry really well. Not too quickly, you don't want the moisture to boil away or anything like that, pop it into either a gentle sunny spot with lots of air movement or stick a swivel fan to blow air through it. Then wait wait wait. Don't be tempted to try to turn anything on till it's really dry inside.
Again, I would say your chances are quite slim, but if you have a good old fashioned amplifier for example, there may not be too much high complexity electronics in it. If you have a fancy pants DTS or similar with small computers etc in it, you are likely out of luck. For things to work after water, generally the less electronics and the more electrics, the more likely you are of getting it alive again.
My old ericsson GF337 survived a dip in a chlorine pool, a freshwater lake and a spin in my front loader with this sort of care. My Nokia 8250 survived a spin in the wash only then died after a second time. So far, I haven't got anything else that wet.
speculates that the operators of HerbalKing simply passed on to associates the keys to the automated, 35,000-strong botnet, and the spam flow didn't miss a beat
If they sent the keys to that botnet via email. If it got eaten up by the other ends spam filters, that would be irony indeed.
With shocking disregard to their personal privacy, at least 10 people volunteered to release their entire medical records and DNA sequences in order to get their DNA decoded and analyzed.
Or, just possibly, they are rational individuals who lack the privacy fetish and extremism so common on Slashdot.
Quick Slashies! An imposter! Grab your flaming brands and pitchforks! We have an angry mob to form!
Given the way the US army counts casualties from either side, I thought the only things that lived in Iraq were camels, insurgents and US Troops doing tours.
For the most part, I wish that we could fix things with one big government. I really doubt it would be so, but I think what I am trying to say is that I would be at least a little open to the idea that it wouldn't be only bad.
I am aware that there will always be some form of discrimination wherever you go, that there won't truly be a total utopia no matter what - but it would be nice wouldn't it?
Yeah, I did see that the schools bit was from the other dude, but it was really late and I wanted to get out of work, so I killed two birds with one stone.
I don't think that it does counter my original point though. I cannot imagine that a US government would keep a US citizen working for $5 a day and slug them with a $2 a day interest bill for loans given. I can't imagine an Australian government contriving to have me live in squalor while I was working to support other Aussies living in comparable luxury. At the moment we "allow" governments and banks to do this because it's an "us and them" mentality - I would hope that should a single government be in place it would treat all of it's citizens equally well.
While I'm here, the world government controlled education is incompatible with freedom, both in your first point. How can you be free if a government agent tells you how to think?
As for things like government controlled education is incompatible with freedom - how exactly? In Australia education is government controlled and it's (no offense) a much higher standard than most American schools (I am guessing that you guys are American). There are of course private schools but the drive comes from government. The curriculum is set by the state and taught by either public or private institutions.
In most of posts here that are directed against NOT having a central government, the idea is that people would lose various freedoms by having it so. How is a single world government any different to a single USA government though? All the states joined together and decided to be ruled by one bunch of people. From where I stand it seems that the government treats people reasonably well. You vote them in, you vote them out. You have a local council government, then a city/municipality council, then a state government then a federal government. Why would it be any different if there was one in the world? It would simply mean that (given the two countries I assume we come from) there would be the exact same thing as there is in Australia right now, and the exact same thing as in America right now, with one more higher level where all countries were equal and it looked for the good of all rather than for the good of one.
Quote from the link: Debtor countries have deprived their people of basic necessities in order to provide the private banks and the public agencies of the rich countries with the equivalent of six Marshall Plans (the programme of assistance offered by the US to Europe after the Second World War).
Have these extraordinary outflows served to reduce the absolute size of the debt burden? Not a bit: in spite of paying out more than $1,300 billion between 1982 and 1990, the debtor countries as a group began the 1990s a full 61 per cent more in debt than they were in 1982. Sub-Saharan Africaâ(TM)s debt increased by 113 per cent during this period.
I wouldn't say sympathize and I am happy not to hide behind anything. My point is that it could have benefits that we currently don't have. I can't see it realistically working, but if you put away the fear for a moment, look at these points and please tell me how a single unified government in the world would be bad for the following:
1) Every human on earth is an equal citizen of the world with a right to education, freedom and peace.
2) The third world wouldn't be kept in perpetual debt for the benefit of the first world. It would be beneficial to bring up the technology and bring around a higher level of living for all.
3) Despots and tyrants would not be able to struggle over small impoverished countries to the detriment of the people within them.
I am not naive enough to think that we as a world are anywhere NEAR ready to remove our borders, but I am also not close minded enough to dream that it might not have benefits. The idea itself doesn't HAVE to be totally Orwellian, nor does it needingly walk straight down the path of THX 1138 or the hard to navigate website. If you want to go down the path of oppressive government structures, look at things like A Clockwork Orange where the government for all of its power was still at the mercy of public opinion and a slave to the masses that it sought to control so desperately.
Interpol is dangerously close to a one-world-government type deal. If you're into "global democracy" and the entire world under one flag, then an international police on the internet is probably no big deal to you.
Yeah, look, sorry, I can't disagree more. Interpol is not remotely close to a one-world-government deal at all. Those guys are lucky to be able to help a handful of governments catch a handful of criminals when all parties want them in prison.
While I think that an "internet police" is a laughable idea in that it would be impossible to unify all the countries with access to the internet under one police umbrella, I think doing so could have some fantastic opportunities that/. seems to have missed as the "oh gawd, the government is after my rights" folks jumped right out onto the bandwagon here first. Think about these tasks that I would love to see internet police on the case for:
1) Spam.
2) Spam.
3) Trojans on websites
4) Browser Hijacking
5) Fleecing through fake Paypal/Bank/Money websites
I am aware that point one and two may look the same, but I feel it would be in most people's minds enough to warrant those two places. If I could have a "report this as spam" button in my email client and know that it would actually go somewhere to someone to do something, man, that would be a sweet thing indeed. What's this? A website that opens a bazzilion popup windows and refuses to let me close my windows? BAM! Hit that police button right there!
Come on slashies, have a look at some of the positive possibilities here. Don't make me have to use a car analogy!
This is why you firstly don't let them know who you are and secondly make sure that even if they do find out it was hacked proper - byt the time their PR and fixing machine gets switched on, enough people will have been pissed off so that any attempt just makes them look more inept.
If I was a person who wanted to get this thrown out the window, I wouldn't look at trying to convince people that it is bad. I wouldn't look at how it could be abused. I would much rather be looking at how to misuse it myself. I mean what better way to show potentially how bad a system is than to get into the "black list of hashes" and add some. Add lots. Like a real lot. Every email suddenly gets a warning message with details of why. Yes it was hacked. Yes the public outrage will be huge. It would be so huge that it would end up getting shit-canned pretty damned quickly.
Best way to get anyone to get rid of something is to make them hate it. All my email blocked today? You bastards! Turn that thing off.
Superman is on a list. So are all the other people who wear their undies on the outside. He is likely to be one of those sex offender types. Seriously. And Joe Whistleblower? He blew his last whistle trying to protest in a safe zone away from everyone else where the media couldn't have access to him.
I really worry about the direction of America. For such a powerful country in the world, your government is really really managing to dick things up.
Day One: This is Roger's aroma. Note the hint of slight mildew. Roger has foot fungus.
Day Two: Ahhh, now this is distinct. You will note the spicey waft. Srini is a big fan of a good curry.
Day Three: This should be a breeze now, Natalie is a total sports fanatic. Actually, you could probably smell her from the OUTSIDE of the ship.
Day Four:.....
Slashdot Mirror
And I thought it was already here. While reading TFA I couldn't help but think. Wow, that's dense. That's really dense. Surely nothing could be that dense short of Microsoft programmers?
Yeah, look, sorry it's early and that's the best I got at the moment. Live it up!
Sorry, I got a little lost with your technical talk there. Could you please repost this with a slashdot friendly car analogy?
1) Find bacteria ...
2) Feed Bacteria
3)
4) Profit!!!
The issue here is to stop people access child porn. While I hate to be a black sheep, if you take speed away from a speed addict, they turn to meth or cocaine. You take ecstasy away from an addict and they turn to heroin.
What will pedophiles turn to if you take child porn away from their browsers at home?
Personally, if something like this ever went through, I would become more worried about kids on the street.
Put offenders into rehabilitation, or stop their contact or do something with a little common sense. This sort of knee jerk reaction solves nothing and generally creates more trouble than anything.
Yes, minimum specs is what you go for, but minimum specs is not how the majority of people play, and it's that problem of finding out how things scale past that point that is the difficulty.
Example: "Some Game" has min specs at a P4 with 1gig ram and a 128meg graphics card with hardware T&L. That makes it play at an acceptable 25 frames at 800x600 res on low detail textures (256x256) and with low shadows and no AA.
The hard thing is to work out how well it will play on PC's when you bump it up to say:
1) 1920x1600 resolution.
2) Drop in high detail volumetric shadows.
3) Use 1024x1024 (or bigger) textures and shaders.
4) Dump in a whole load of particle effects.
5) Add in anti aliasing.
6) Use cards that support physics engines.
7) Profit (Sorry, couldn't help it)... but you get the idea.
Having a console where you know the exact everything about everything is awesome because people won't touch things like the examples above. You might not be able to get it running in super high resolution with all those little fancy things going, but you know how EVERY gamer will see it. For a developer, you can't ask for much more.
Okay, to back up the original post, I used to contract for Epicgames on the Unreal series. When developing for the main PC market, we were constantly rolling our specs and expectations forward and backwards, gain some here, lose some there, roll up with this new tech etc. When porting to consoles everything was set in lovely stone. This is the amount of memory you have, this is how much transfer you have. It is amazingly much easier to do development work when you have limits like "Your textures for this level/environment cannot be more than xxx megs total" or "your level has to be under xxx megs in file size to load properly". This is black and white. You know the performance you will get, you won't see a shift here or there. On the other hand, working with the PC development, it's not black and white, it's all a shifting gradient.
Let me use a slashdot friendly car analogy.
Working with a console is like buying a little hatchback and keeping it factory standard. You know how fast it goes, you know how much you can pop into the back before it gets too much. Working with PC's is like going to a custom car show. Each one is different, you don't know how fast they go and you don't even know if there is space beside the subs in the back to fit any luggage.
Which one can potentially be better is a no brainer, but which one is easier to plan around is just as plain.
Actually, surface tension PULLS water into a sponge. It's the exact same way that a tree sucks water up through the root system. If you look at a container with water it in, you will see a miniscus along the edges. If the tube is narrow enough, this pulls the water up and into it.
Come on slashdotters, this is grade eight science!
I think the site got slashed, I can't view the vids :(
Firstly, you chances are small. This you must take into account. Your only chance lies in letting the stuff dry out and stay clean. This is what I would suggest:
Well, speaking from rescuing mobile phones (the only things I have managed to get that wet that was more complicated than a wireless keyboard) I would suggest that you give your gear a solid wash under warm water (preferably before it dries out totally). You want to try to wash out all the other stuff before it gets dry and hard to remove. It was already wet, so some clean water won't hurt too much more. Also you want to try to wash away any chemicals (especially those conductive salts that keep water in) that may degrade (eat into) the electronics. Next you want to let it dry really well. Not too quickly, you don't want the moisture to boil away or anything like that, pop it into either a gentle sunny spot with lots of air movement or stick a swivel fan to blow air through it. Then wait wait wait. Don't be tempted to try to turn anything on till it's really dry inside.
Again, I would say your chances are quite slim, but if you have a good old fashioned amplifier for example, there may not be too much high complexity electronics in it. If you have a fancy pants DTS or similar with small computers etc in it, you are likely out of luck. For things to work after water, generally the less electronics and the more electrics, the more likely you are of getting it alive again.
My old ericsson GF337 survived a dip in a chlorine pool, a freshwater lake and a spin in my front loader with this sort of care. My Nokia 8250 survived a spin in the wash only then died after a second time. So far, I haven't got anything else that wet.
speculates that the operators of HerbalKing simply passed on to associates the keys to the automated, 35,000-strong botnet, and the spam flow didn't miss a beat
If they sent the keys to that botnet via email. If it got eaten up by the other ends spam filters, that would be irony indeed.
Or, just possibly, they are rational individuals who lack the privacy fetish and extremism so common on Slashdot.
Quick Slashies! An imposter! Grab your flaming brands and pitchforks! We have an angry mob to form!
Can't see why you'd want such a Frankenstein jobby one at home.
When I show this sort of enthusiasm for such a pointless cause, I believe I am showing symptoms of:
1) Boredom
2) Having too much money
3) Boredom, no really, still bored
4) Internet is down at my house
They have people in Iraq?
*insert strong political statement*
Given the way the US army counts casualties from either side, I thought the only things that lived in Iraq were camels, insurgents and US Troops doing tours.
Not really sure where that came up from.
For the most part, I wish that we could fix things with one big government. I really doubt it would be so, but I think what I am trying to say is that I would be at least a little open to the idea that it wouldn't be only bad.
I am aware that there will always be some form of discrimination wherever you go, that there won't truly be a total utopia no matter what - but it would be nice wouldn't it?
Yeah, I did see that the schools bit was from the other dude, but it was really late and I wanted to get out of work, so I killed two birds with one stone.
While I'm here, the world government controlled education is incompatible with freedom, both in your first point. How can you be free if a government agent tells you how to think?
As for things like government controlled education is incompatible with freedom - how exactly? In Australia education is government controlled and it's (no offense) a much higher standard than most American schools (I am guessing that you guys are American). There are of course private schools but the drive comes from government. The curriculum is set by the state and taught by either public or private institutions.
In most of posts here that are directed against NOT having a central government, the idea is that people would lose various freedoms by having it so. How is a single world government any different to a single USA government though? All the states joined together and decided to be ruled by one bunch of people. From where I stand it seems that the government treats people reasonably well. You vote them in, you vote them out. You have a local council government, then a city/municipality council, then a state government then a federal government. Why would it be any different if there was one in the world? It would simply mean that (given the two countries I assume we come from) there would be the exact same thing as there is in Australia right now, and the exact same thing as in America right now, with one more higher level where all countries were equal and it looked for the good of all rather than for the good of one.
2) The third world wouldn't be kept in perpetual debt for the benefit of the first world.
[citation needed]
Are you kidding? Fine.
Citation
Quote from the link:
Debtor countries have deprived their people of basic necessities in order to provide the private banks and the public agencies of the rich countries with the equivalent of six Marshall Plans (the programme of assistance offered by the US to Europe after the Second World War). Have these extraordinary outflows served to reduce the absolute size of the debt burden? Not a bit: in spite of paying out more than $1,300 billion between 1982 and 1990, the debtor countries as a group began the 1990s a full 61 per cent more in debt than they were in 1982. Sub-Saharan Africaâ(TM)s debt increased by 113 per cent during this period.
I wouldn't say sympathize and I am happy not to hide behind anything. My point is that it could have benefits that we currently don't have. I can't see it realistically working, but if you put away the fear for a moment, look at these points and please tell me how a single unified government in the world would be bad for the following:
1) Every human on earth is an equal citizen of the world with a right to education, freedom and peace.
2) The third world wouldn't be kept in perpetual debt for the benefit of the first world. It would be beneficial to bring up the technology and bring around a higher level of living for all.
3) Despots and tyrants would not be able to struggle over small impoverished countries to the detriment of the people within them.
I am not naive enough to think that we as a world are anywhere NEAR ready to remove our borders, but I am also not close minded enough to dream that it might not have benefits. The idea itself doesn't HAVE to be totally Orwellian, nor does it needingly walk straight down the path of THX 1138 or the hard to navigate website. If you want to go down the path of oppressive government structures, look at things like A Clockwork Orange where the government for all of its power was still at the mercy of public opinion and a slave to the masses that it sought to control so desperately.
Interpol is dangerously close to a one-world-government type deal. If you're into "global democracy" and the entire world under one flag, then an international police on the internet is probably no big deal to you.
Yeah, look, sorry, I can't disagree more. Interpol is not remotely close to a one-world-government deal at all. Those guys are lucky to be able to help a handful of governments catch a handful of criminals when all parties want them in prison.
/. seems to have missed as the "oh gawd, the government is after my rights" folks jumped right out onto the bandwagon here first. Think about these tasks that I would love to see internet police on the case for:
While I think that an "internet police" is a laughable idea in that it would be impossible to unify all the countries with access to the internet under one police umbrella, I think doing so could have some fantastic opportunities that
1) Spam.
2) Spam.
3) Trojans on websites
4) Browser Hijacking
5) Fleecing through fake Paypal/Bank/Money websites
I am aware that point one and two may look the same, but I feel it would be in most people's minds enough to warrant those two places. If I could have a "report this as spam" button in my email client and know that it would actually go somewhere to someone to do something, man, that would be a sweet thing indeed. What's this? A website that opens a bazzilion popup windows and refuses to let me close my windows? BAM! Hit that police button right there!
Come on slashies, have a look at some of the positive possibilities here. Don't make me have to use a car analogy!
Oh stop, this common sense? This simple solution? Preposterous! Outrageous! Disgusting!
Still nothing compared to the DRM on the game. When oh when will companies learn?
This is why you firstly don't let them know who you are and secondly make sure that even if they do find out it was hacked proper - byt the time their PR and fixing machine gets switched on, enough people will have been pissed off so that any attempt just makes them look more inept.
Interesting. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter :)
If I was a person who wanted to get this thrown out the window, I wouldn't look at trying to convince people that it is bad. I wouldn't look at how it could be abused. I would much rather be looking at how to misuse it myself. I mean what better way to show potentially how bad a system is than to get into the "black list of hashes" and add some. Add lots. Like a real lot. Every email suddenly gets a warning message with details of why. Yes it was hacked. Yes the public outrage will be huge. It would be so huge that it would end up getting shit-canned pretty damned quickly.
Best way to get anyone to get rid of something is to make them hate it. All my email blocked today? You bastards! Turn that thing off.
Superman is on a list. So are all the other people who wear their undies on the outside. He is likely to be one of those sex offender types. Seriously. And Joe Whistleblower? He blew his last whistle trying to protest in a safe zone away from everyone else where the media couldn't have access to him.
I really worry about the direction of America. For such a powerful country in the world, your government is really really managing to dick things up.
Training Plan:
.....
Day One: This is Roger's aroma. Note the hint of slight mildew. Roger has foot fungus.
Day Two: Ahhh, now this is distinct. You will note the spicey waft. Srini is a big fan of a good curry.
Day Three: This should be a breeze now, Natalie is a total sports fanatic. Actually, you could probably smell her from the OUTSIDE of the ship. Day Four: