Did anyone here see the movie 'Toys'? It's a messed-up movie, but one that has some relavance here. To make a long story short, they hooked video games (Flight simulators, FPS, etc.) to small military weapons. You controled the weapons through the video game interface. I believe that this is what they mean. The 'pilot' won't be in the aircraft, but at a central control station on the ground reacting to the information presented on the displays. Most of the flying and basic stuff would be done by computers on the aircraft, but the general decision making would be by the controller on the ground.
Allow me to be the devil's advocate for a moment.... In their mind, that site is a crime scene. And when you connect to it, you are walking into a crime scene. So naturally, they put that person on the suspect list. They don't know if it was one person or a group of people so they will question everyone that has connections to it both past and present.
It's unfortunite that he had his box taken just for probing the site, but they are just trying to be thorough. Our profession is a different kind of animal. There is almost no physical distinction between good and bad and determining intent is hard unless you have all the facts. You can't just put a sniffer on a LAN and say that this packet is good and that one is evil. A curious person looks exactly the same as a criminal in the log files. What can you do besides being careful?
I just hope they give him his computer back or he recieves just compensation for it.
Just because something is missing does not imply that they had to break in to take it. Here's a little story.
Once upon a time, I was attending a particular university and had some rather difficult classes. These classes were very lab-work intensive and it was hightly possible that you could not get it all done during the day. Therefore, you could get these special passes that would allow you to gain access to the rooms that you needed. The campus police would check your ID and the pass and unlock the specified rooms for you. This building had lots of expensive equipment in it, but it was locked up. Sounds safe enough, but.... at a certain time in the early morning hours the custodians would enter the building and begin to clean.
The first time I saw this happen I could not believe it, but this is what they did. They went into every room in the whole building, unlocked all the doors, turned on all the lights, and then went to a remote part of the building and listened to music while they took a break. All the expensive equipment was just sitting there, not to mention all the professor's offices in the building were wide open. The building would remain like that for hours until they would slowly take out the trash in each room and vaccume the floor.
So, it's 3am....do you know where your custodians are?
I doubt it happened like that example, but I would not rule out an inside job. Especially since they knew where and what and took nothing else. Lets say that an employee is disgruntled and instead of going 'postal' he sells-out to a competitor. He uses his badge and access to take it or move it.
Yes, being able to read intelligent posts on a topic is the pure form of/., not reporting news. I want to hear the stuff that the papers left out and/or a better explanation of the story. If a paper or magizine butchers a technology story, I know I can come here to read intelligent opinions on the subject. It is a true gem when you find a post from an author that knows what they're talking about and can express one or more sides of the issue elliquently. These discussions elevate our thinking and allow us to view more than one side of an issue and think for ourselves and draw our own conclusions. Sure, lots of crap gets posted too but the trolls and such get modded down (most of the time) and the good posts float to the top, if you use that feature. People can post all the crap they want, but the good ones will stand out.
Slashdot is about the exchange of opinions, intelligent discussions, and thinking for yourself.....not reporting news.
It's in the Constitution. I wish more people would realize this. The Legislative branch is the one that passes our laws and taxes. From the 50's to the early 90's our Legislative branch has been controlled by the Democrats. All we got out of them was a tax and spend government. In the 80's the Republican minority passed a tax cut and Reagan got re-elected. In the 90's Bush signed a tax raise and lost the next election. The pattern is self evident. When I look at my paystub and see that 1/3 of my money is going to the government I can not believe that anyone could honestly vote for a Democrat, or anyone, that would raise taxes.
The real problem is that we elect idiots to the legislative branch. Smart people realize you shouldn't spend more than you make. They're running businesses, making money, and want nothing to do with politics. They realize that the right thing to do is not always the popluar thing to do. When they do run, they make horrible candidates because they piss-off interest groups and get bad press. So who do we elect? Morons. Whishy-washy people that can't balance their check-book, let alone the budget, and make decisions based polls and popularity rather than what's right and best for the country.
But how can we get decent people elected? By the time they are ready to be supported by the major parties, they have been corrupted already by special interests and the system.
Asimov wrote about more than just robots. IMO, two of his best "End of the World/Universe" stories have nothing to do with robots at all. The first is called "The Last Question" and deals with entropy. I forget what the other is called but it is about a binary star system that has a planet that is always in daylight except for once every thousand years. Interesting.
Or what about the time Homer sledded down from the new top of Mt. Springfield using a frozen dead guy. I believe that was the "power sauce bar" episode.
Miscommunication or lack of communication gives me major headaches when I'm trying to work on a project. Once, I tried to tell the project manager that we needed new boards or different software because the software we used needs 64 bits of data when our boards could only give 32 bits. The manager insisted that I make it work, anyway. I told the manager that I could not get 64 bits out of a 32 bit chip. I was removed from that team shortly there after. I was glad to leave.
Managers not only have to realize the limits of their employees but also the limits of the environment and tools that they have to work with. A friend of mine works with 20 developers that need to use a piece of software that only has 1 licence. One. Management refuses to buy any more. They all need to use it everyday for several hours at a time. Needless to say, they don't get much done.
Another friend works in a networking department and they cut his team down from 10 to two people. Two guys keeping the entire network up. I'm glad I don't own THAT stock.
Right now, I am the sole coder on a support team for an application we bought that is used corporate wide by everyone. Just me and 75,000 lines of code that I didn't write. Thank god for grep. Did I mention it uses recursion a lot?
Naturally, the application does not mirror the processes of the company so Management needs major modifications done to the app so it fits in better to what they already do. Great. Now I have to re-write a quarter of it and add even more. Well, at least I'll be familiar with those lines. Now if I can only convince Management to stop telling various departments to use my development server instead of production. Maybe then I'll be able to work on the code changes with out getting e-mails about it not working.
Right now the only thing that keeps me going is the money and my love of coding.
pertaining to the last part, I know of a few individuals that work in the networking department of a college and they told me that they can use the ATM network tools to cut the bandwith down during normal work hours. IOW, from 9am - 9pm, the amout of bandwidth that traffic to napster.com can take up will be restricted to the bandwidth of a 56K modem while traffic elsewhere will be unrestricted. Basically, they are cut off from using more bandwidth. After hours the restrictions are lifted.
To a university or institution, it's a problem of resource allocation. You have to make sure that each user can get a fair share of the bandwidth. So naturally you limit the throughput for network hogs to give others a fair chance. On the flip side, the same technology can be used to assure that a bandwidth intensive application can get what it needs. I remember that they originally wanted to use the ATM network so they could carve out a portion and set it aside for video conferencing.
Let us not forget that our bodies build up a tolerance to drugs. In the long run, you need more of whatever drug or chemical to get the same level of stimulation. So having glands in our bodies that produce caffiene all the time would be a waste because our bodies would just become use to that level and we would feel nothing from it. Having them pumping through our veins all the time may not be the best solution.
Instead, have glands that we can "control" in some fashion. When we need the caffiene, we have the gland make it. When we need the medicine, we have the gland make it. When we don't need it anymore, we turn it off.
Weirding Modules...sweet! I wonder if my name is a killing word?
"Long live the fighters!"
Re:And in related news....
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You know, this reminds me of a Star Trek: TNG episode.... the one where Warf gets all religious and believes his prayers brought that Kilingon guy back from the dead.... what was his name... Que-less or something?
,Vince Foster, probably did not shoot himself. I remember when it happend I heard and read all sorts of articles on how the investigation made illogical conclusions and ignored pieces of evidence like the location of the gun and the probability that the body was moved after being shot. I remember feeling disgruntled about it, but then again there was not much I could do about it. The majority of the new media is decidedly liberal and would never think of tarnishing a liberal president. The only reason they covered the Monica thing was because they were forced to do it or they would miss the boat.
News people are political creatures at heart and they push coverage of issues according to their agenda. It's like they are on a giant "power trip" where they believe that what ever they write or say will influence millions to their point of view. That's what really turned me off to TV news....a few facts and then lots of speculation and conjecture with a distinct slant. I prefer to do my own thinking and make my own conclusions, thank you very much. Give me more facts and less speculation.
I don't even watch TV anymore. I don't even have cable. (That's $50 a month to spend on other things.) Like in the movie "Fight Club", after a month I was not even missing TV. My 32" TV is for my video games and my DVD's. Yet, I can get as much or as little news as I need from radio and the internet. I can browse through the facts and listen to all sides of the arguments, not just one. I can come here and hear how Napster users don't want to pay $16 for a CD, how Napster.com says it is not violating copyrights, how RIAA say they are being robbed of their revenue stream, and how artists hardly see a dime of any of it no matter what happens. I can listen to all of them and form my own opinions instead of regurgitating what some news anchor's telepromptor reads.
Re:There are many interesting questions to be aske
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I agree with David in that computer history belongs in the universities. Even to go as far as saying that it should be a requirement for CS degrees. I had a class called Computer Organization which turned into a psudo-history class only because our professor was so interested in it and that he loved to go on long winding tangents.:) I found the history lessons very interesting and it was a shame that the only way we could learn about the past is through our professers reminiscing of the days of punch cards.
There should be a required class that covers the history of computers and technology as a part of a CS degree. Learning history is important. Studying history is the only whay you can know how and why things came to be as they are today. By studying the trends of the past you can gain an idea of where things are going. It's just too important to leave out.
This could very easily turn into a large debate between the gamers that want a simple and fun game to kill time and the others that want a complex and challenging world/environment to interact with. (I would classify myself as the latter, although I do enjoy both at times)
On one hand, large envolving games, Ultima Online & EverQuest, take too much time and are a burden on the gamers that don't want become that deeply engrossed in the game. I knew a few guys that would take turns playing the same Ultima character around the clock. They did it just so they could advance the character quickly. I doubt the masses would purchase a game that required that level of commitment. This is where the adventure and the flight simulators reside.
On the other hand, games that are quick to learn and master cannot hold the interest of some gamers for more than a week. They become bored with it. They beat it and then...that's pretty much it. They don't want to pay $50 for a game that won't see them through the week. Again, the masses would probably play a copy their friends gave them because they were bored with it instead of buy it themselves. Here you can find the space combat games and the real-time strategy games.
The sucessful games are the ones that find the middle grounds. Blizzard did fine jobs with Diablo and WarCraft/StarCraft games. They tried to keep things relatively simple, but allowed for a little of the deeper game play. IOW, you could take the game to the level that you are comfortable with. But even so, I felt that Diablo was not complex enough while at the same time some friends felt it took too long to play.
Can both kinds of gamers be pleased with the same game? I believe it is possible. Games could be made that are very simple and quick to play in the small scale while at the same time can be very complex on a large scale. For example, a virtual world where people interact with it in different ways all at the same time. One person would be in FPS mode where they run around a la Quake style blasting things, another person could be runing a SimCity like game where they are building a city all the while the quake dude is running around in it. Someone else could be flying a jet over the city in their flight simulator perspective. While all of this is going on, someone has an overhead realtime strategy view where they build things in certain places and try to influence the others to take certain actions. Battles could involve all participants. The gamer in the flight simulator could drop a smart bomb on the quake guy. Then a gamer in a tank/mech could shoot down the jet. The gamer in the real-time mode could tell the others where the tank/mech was so they could blast it. Of course, this game would be MASSIVE. At least the server would be. The more CPU's the better. Definately an internet game. It would probably cost so much to make that you could never expect to gain a profit from selling it. Oh well...
Never happen. All of his toys are marketed toward the kids. To make a Star Wars movie that they could not go and see would be disasterous. He would lose millions in merchandising. (If you need more help in understanding this, go watch Spaceballs again and pay attention to when Lonestar, Barf, Vespa, and Dot find Yogert.)
Of course, he's going to have to flirt with an 'R' rating at some point. Luke and Leia don't just appear out of thin air. We all know what has to happen. Sometime in the next movie or two there will have to be either a love scene between Anakin and Amidala or a hint of one. The question will be 'Can Lucas have a love scene AND still keep the PG-13 rating?' I don't know. I have no clue about how the MPAA handles love scenes when they do ratings. It's very possible that we could see nothing. Who knows?
Don't want them to find you? Simple. Block the signal. This could be done by physical means using metal that would block the signals to and from the chip or by some form of ECM to jam the signals to and from. You might even be able to short it out with a powerful magnet. Unless they have devised a way to break a bunch of physical laws, the signal can be blocked. And that's if they don't have the stomach to cut it out. I doubt you could apply this technology on people that don't want it.
Games are like Music in a way. If a game is good then in time it becomes a classic. Someday Quake and StarCraft will be considered "classic". They are great games. The problem is not if the games get recognition as being great, that is evident when they are played, but that a lot of gamers out there have NEVER played them at all. A bunch of those games are pushing 20 years old. Many of today's teenagers were not even born when these games debuted. The Atari, Coleco, and Intellivison were all acient history by the time they were older. Their earliest memories are probably of Super Mario Bros. on their dad's old Nintendo.
I'm finding it very hard to continue writing this without going into pointless nostalga so I'll end with my point. If you haven't played these games, PLAY them. Find a buddy with an old deck. Download an emulator. Maybe you'll get bored with them, but then again maybe not. They are different games than today. You have to think a little differently. Perhaps that is just what you need to bring a little spice back into your gaming. Classics have stood the test of time. If you give them a try and let them have a chance you won't be dissapointed.
We drive cars with internal combustion engines powered by gasoline because it is the easiest and cheapest way to do it. The other fuel alternatives are still relatively expensive, or inefficient....but, some day they will not be. Some day, when people do the math again, the other fuels and concepts will be cheaper. Then that is the way it will be done.
How will that be so? When the price of gas rises high enough, or advanced technology drops the price of alternatives. That will make them more affordable and there by swinging the door wide open for them. As of right now, that's just not the case. Gas stations are everywhere, you would need to have that kind of coverage and availability for the alternative that will replace gas. That will take a lot of money.
So, when will this happen? How should I know...but, I can guess that it is not going to be too soon. I'm sure the automakers have done some investigations into this through R&D. Frankly, the reason we don't see them moving toward alternative fuels for all their new model cars is probably because they have figured out that it's too soon. [perhaps the hybrids are an experiment to test the timing of this] Gas is still the best solution right now and in the near future. When the time is right, when it is more profitable for them to do so, they will switch to alternative fuels. You'll wake up one day and it will just begin to happen. I wouldn't worry about it. But then again, I don't worry about much at all.:)
I know this guy who does packet radio. He's a member of one of those amateur radio clubs and put up a tower for packet radio next to the repeater they run. It's pretty cool. I helped him work out the ground work with it by doing an independent research project back when I was in college. It seems relatively simple, although the equiment was not particularly cheap. We had a laptop hooked up to a box, I think it was called a TNC (I was just the coder, he was the hardware guy), which then connected to his portable radio. At his home, he had a similar setup on a base unit connected to his LAN which was firewalled into his ISP over a dedicated line. We had TCP/IP running over the airwaves and we could easily telnet from his laptop to anywhere. It was pretty cool. Our final demo was having the professor jump in his car and check his mail while we drove around the block. He could not afford good equipment so the connection speed was slow, but I believe you could easily check email, either by telnet or POP, and possibly use the web if you were patient.
Now I don't know anything about security issues. I guess it would depend on how everything was set up. I would imagine that there could be a simple way to encrypt stuff or whatever. All he made was a wireless hub, of sorts.
On a side note, I recently passed the Technician No-Code test myself. I can barely wait to try it.
Looks like we are close to making Scotty's Impulse engines. Sweet!:)
Seriously, advanced propulsion technologies like this are going to be responsible for putting mankind in the position to be able to really explore the solarsystem. But this should not be done too quickly.
The space programs of the United States and Russia have mostly been used for short-term, near-sighted political purposes. [The space shuttle being an exception] It's about time that the use of space programs grew-up a little. In that light, it is good to see this effort to develop better technology rather than just throwing something together with the technology at hand.
Honestly, we can't go to Mars or even the Moon that well with the existing propulsion systems. How much of the Saturn V rocket actually returned to Earth? Just the tiny Command Module. The rest of the rocket carried the LEM, The Service Module, but mainly it was fuel to power the conventional engines. We can't keep doing that. That's like sending out Columbus with his large ships and all that can make it back are row-boats.
Technologies like the X-33, Plasma engines, and a practical, perminent space station are what we need to explore. A reusable, self-contained ship that can take of from the surface of a planet and go straight into orbit that can dock with a space station wich can dock with a large inter-planetary transport, which could take the resuable ship to the Moon, Mars, or where ever. A perminent, well thought out set up like this could be more than enough to allow for exploration, let alone commercial ventures.
The real question I have is: Do we have the wisdom to make real, long-term plans for this technology?
We all know how that saying goes. [especially you ST:TNG fans] There is always a "golden era" of something where that particular item, culture, government, profession, or whatever was the best it ever was. But all things change and for whatever reason there is a decline. Back in the early part of the 20th century the steel industry was king. Now, how many cities have the "old steel mill" that takes up several blocks, that's completely rusted and falling appart, and is a terrible eye-sore surrounded by a chain-link fence. That's just one example. Perhaps we should all listen to the lyrics of our "The times they are a changing" MP3's by Bob Dylan a little more closely. I can even see the end of my own profession, Software Engineering. Some day, some where, somebody will create a computer, for lack of a better term, that will program it's self to do the job at hand. AI, quantum computing, or whatever it will use...it will completely replace us. Instead of having large teams working for years, this machine will do it in seconds on the fly.
How do we [Software Engineers] fight change like that? Do we have the ACM hire a bunch of lawyers to form the Software Engineer Association of America [SEAA] and sue the pants off of the creaters of this machine? Do we hire lobbyists to push laws that restrict it's use so the SEAA can go "cease and desist" crazy? You can, but not me. It would be like you're on the Titanic and throwing rocks at the iceberg because you're mad that it ruined your ship. No thanks, I'll be busy finding something that will keep me afloat until a new ship comes along, thank you very much.
People that own homes in areas where the climate is sunny for most of the year should seriously think about putting some nice sized solar panels on their roof. Think about it, there would be an initial upfront cost of purchasing the panels and installation, but after that the energy would be pumped back into your home [and the power grid itself if you produce enough]. In the long run you would eventually recover the initial costs through savings. Instead of pulling all your electricity from the power company, you would get a little from your panels, which means you wouldn't have to pay for it, and over time it will slowly add up.
I remember that there was some experimental home down in Florida that was just a double-wide trailer home with solar panels for singles. They claimed that not only could they run the house off of it, but actually produced more than they used from time to time and would recieve credit vouchers from the local electric company.
This was a while ago, too. I'm sure that the technology is better now. And you could go as far as you want with it. Just a power supplement to try to save a little money when you're running the AC all day in the summer or go full bore and see if you can try to power totally off of it. I wouldn't mind giving the former a try myself if I owned a home.
I don't remember the name of it, but it was the one pinball game based on Baseball. You could play it by yourself or against a friend by taking turns using the batting and pitching buttons, and switching every half inning. The board was a large baseball diamond. There were lights that indicated if the bases were occupied by runners. In the center of the diamond there was a hole covered by a rubber flap, which is where the ball came out after a pitch was selected either by your opponent or a randomly by the machine, in single player mode.
Fastball, Curveball, Changup, and Screwball were the pitches. And let me tell you, the fastball had some serious heat. The machine would put spin on the ball for the two breaking pitches. The Curveball was espcially nasty with a sharp, last second change of direction [it seemed more like a Slider].
There was one flipper, shaped like a bat which had an almost 270 degree range. You could also pinch hit, the strength of the flipper was determined by the statistics of the current batter, and try to steal.
Outcomes were decided by indicator lights in front of the wall in the back of the board which were pictures of fielders. Out, Single, Double, Triple, or Home Run. The percentage, type, and left-right location of the lights changed according the the statistics of the batter also.
One of the coolest features of the game was the Home Run ramp. At various times throughout the game, the ramp would pop up behind second. If you hit the ball just right you could sent it flying into the upper deck for a home run.
When the game first came out, it's gimmick was that for each run you scored, it would give you baseball cards that were despensed on the lower right on the front of the game. I collected cards back then so I thought this was the coolest game in the world. I lost track of how much money I dumped into those things. I STILL dump quarters in to play when ever I see it around.
This obviously is yet another example of taking advantage of that little check box that says "Hide MS-DOS file extension for types that are registered", which can be found on a windows explorer menu under View --> Options and clicking on the View tab. Once that is checked, the.exe extensions are "hidden" from the user and the only way they have of knowing what kind of file they see is by the icon they see, which can be changed to be whatever the originator of the file wants. Naturally, they see an icon typically associated with an AVI file and think "cool, a movie...I wonder what it is..." and click on it to watch without ever suspecting that it is in fact not a video clip, but an EXE file. Most windows users don't even know about that checkbox and that it's usually checked for them by default. They just assume that the icon is true and run with it. Oh well...
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone here see the movie 'Toys'? It's a messed-up movie, but one that has some relavance here. To make a long story short, they hooked video games (Flight simulators, FPS, etc.) to small military weapons. You controled the weapons through the video game interface. I believe that this is what they mean. The 'pilot' won't be in the aircraft, but at a central control station on the ground reacting to the information presented on the displays. Most of the flying and basic stuff would be done by computers on the aircraft, but the general decision making would be by the controller on the ground.
It's unfortunite that he had his box taken just for probing the site, but they are just trying to be thorough. Our profession is a different kind of animal. There is almost no physical distinction between good and bad and determining intent is hard unless you have all the facts. You can't just put a sniffer on a LAN and say that this packet is good and that one is evil. A curious person looks exactly the same as a criminal in the log files. What can you do besides being careful?
I just hope they give him his computer back or he recieves just compensation for it.
Once upon a time, I was attending a particular university and had some rather difficult classes. These classes were very lab-work intensive and it was hightly possible that you could not get it all done during the day. Therefore, you could get these special passes that would allow you to gain access to the rooms that you needed. The campus police would check your ID and the pass and unlock the specified rooms for you. This building had lots of expensive equipment in it, but it was locked up. Sounds safe enough, but.... at a certain time in the early morning hours the custodians would enter the building and begin to clean.
The first time I saw this happen I could not believe it, but this is what they did. They went into every room in the whole building, unlocked all the doors, turned on all the lights, and then went to a remote part of the building and listened to music while they took a break. All the expensive equipment was just sitting there, not to mention all the professor's offices in the building were wide open. The building would remain like that for hours until they would slowly take out the trash in each room and vaccume the floor.
So, it's 3am....do you know where your custodians are?
I doubt it happened like that example, but I would not rule out an inside job. Especially since they knew where and what and took nothing else. Lets say that an employee is disgruntled and instead of going 'postal' he sells-out to a competitor. He uses his badge and access to take it or move it.
Slashdot is about the exchange of opinions, intelligent discussions, and thinking for yourself.....not reporting news.
The real problem is that we elect idiots to the legislative branch. Smart people realize you shouldn't spend more than you make. They're running businesses, making money, and want nothing to do with politics. They realize that the right thing to do is not always the popluar thing to do. When they do run, they make horrible candidates because they piss-off interest groups and get bad press. So who do we elect? Morons. Whishy-washy people that can't balance their check-book, let alone the budget, and make decisions based polls and popularity rather than what's right and best for the country.
But how can we get decent people elected? By the time they are ready to be supported by the major parties, they have been corrupted already by special interests and the system.
Asimov wrote about more than just robots. IMO, two of his best "End of the World/Universe" stories have nothing to do with robots at all. The first is called "The Last Question" and deals with entropy. I forget what the other is called but it is about a binary star system that has a planet that is always in daylight except for once every thousand years. Interesting.
Or what about the time Homer sledded down from the new top of Mt. Springfield using a frozen dead guy. I believe that was the "power sauce bar" episode.
Miscommunication or lack of communication gives me major headaches when I'm trying to work on a project. Once, I tried to tell the project manager that we needed new boards or different software because the software we used needs 64 bits of data when our boards could only give 32 bits. The manager insisted that I make it work, anyway. I told the manager that I could not get 64 bits out of a 32 bit chip. I was removed from that team shortly there after. I was glad to leave.
Managers not only have to realize the limits of their employees but also the limits of the environment and tools that they have to work with. A friend of mine works with 20 developers that need to use a piece of software that only has 1 licence. One. Management refuses to buy any more. They all need to use it everyday for several hours at a time. Needless to say, they don't get much done.
Another friend works in a networking department and they cut his team down from 10 to two people. Two guys keeping the entire network up. I'm glad I don't own THAT stock.
Right now, I am the sole coder on a support team for an application we bought that is used corporate wide by everyone. Just me and 75,000 lines of code that I didn't write. Thank god for grep. Did I mention it uses recursion a lot? Naturally, the application does not mirror the processes of the company so Management needs major modifications done to the app so it fits in better to what they already do. Great. Now I have to re-write a quarter of it and add even more. Well, at least I'll be familiar with those lines. Now if I can only convince Management to stop telling various departments to use my development server instead of production. Maybe then I'll be able to work on the code changes with out getting e-mails about it not working.
Right now the only thing that keeps me going is the money and my love of coding.
To a university or institution, it's a problem of resource allocation. You have to make sure that each user can get a fair share of the bandwidth. So naturally you limit the throughput for network hogs to give others a fair chance. On the flip side, the same technology can be used to assure that a bandwidth intensive application can get what it needs. I remember that they originally wanted to use the ATM network so they could carve out a portion and set it aside for video conferencing.
Instead, have glands that we can "control" in some fashion. When we need the caffiene, we have the gland make it. When we need the medicine, we have the gland make it. When we don't need it anymore, we turn it off.
"Long live the fighters!"
You know, this reminds me of a Star Trek: TNG episode.... the one where Warf gets all religious and believes his prayers brought that Kilingon guy back from the dead.... what was his name... Que-less or something?
News people are political creatures at heart and they push coverage of issues according to their agenda. It's like they are on a giant "power trip" where they believe that what ever they write or say will influence millions to their point of view. That's what really turned me off to TV news....a few facts and then lots of speculation and conjecture with a distinct slant. I prefer to do my own thinking and make my own conclusions, thank you very much. Give me more facts and less speculation.
I don't even watch TV anymore. I don't even have cable. (That's $50 a month to spend on other things.) Like in the movie "Fight Club", after a month I was not even missing TV. My 32" TV is for my video games and my DVD's. Yet, I can get as much or as little news as I need from radio and the internet. I can browse through the facts and listen to all sides of the arguments, not just one. I can come here and hear how Napster users don't want to pay $16 for a CD, how Napster.com says it is not violating copyrights, how RIAA say they are being robbed of their revenue stream, and how artists hardly see a dime of any of it no matter what happens. I can listen to all of them and form my own opinions instead of regurgitating what some news anchor's telepromptor reads.
There should be a required class that covers the history of computers and technology as a part of a CS degree. Learning history is important. Studying history is the only whay you can know how and why things came to be as they are today. By studying the trends of the past you can gain an idea of where things are going. It's just too important to leave out.
On one hand, large envolving games, Ultima Online & EverQuest, take too much time and are a burden on the gamers that don't want become that deeply engrossed in the game. I knew a few guys that would take turns playing the same Ultima character around the clock. They did it just so they could advance the character quickly. I doubt the masses would purchase a game that required that level of commitment. This is where the adventure and the flight simulators reside.
On the other hand, games that are quick to learn and master cannot hold the interest of some gamers for more than a week. They become bored with it. They beat it and then...that's pretty much it. They don't want to pay $50 for a game that won't see them through the week. Again, the masses would probably play a copy their friends gave them because they were bored with it instead of buy it themselves. Here you can find the space combat games and the real-time strategy games.
The sucessful games are the ones that find the middle grounds. Blizzard did fine jobs with Diablo and WarCraft/StarCraft games. They tried to keep things relatively simple, but allowed for a little of the deeper game play. IOW, you could take the game to the level that you are comfortable with. But even so, I felt that Diablo was not complex enough while at the same time some friends felt it took too long to play.
Can both kinds of gamers be pleased with the same game? I believe it is possible. Games could be made that are very simple and quick to play in the small scale while at the same time can be very complex on a large scale. For example, a virtual world where people interact with it in different ways all at the same time. One person would be in FPS mode where they run around a la Quake style blasting things, another person could be runing a SimCity like game where they are building a city all the while the quake dude is running around in it. Someone else could be flying a jet over the city in their flight simulator perspective. While all of this is going on, someone has an overhead realtime strategy view where they build things in certain places and try to influence the others to take certain actions. Battles could involve all participants. The gamer in the flight simulator could drop a smart bomb on the quake guy. Then a gamer in a tank/mech could shoot down the jet. The gamer in the real-time mode could tell the others where the tank/mech was so they could blast it. Of course, this game would be MASSIVE. At least the server would be. The more CPU's the better. Definately an internet game. It would probably cost so much to make that you could never expect to gain a profit from selling it. Oh well...
Of course, he's going to have to flirt with an 'R' rating at some point. Luke and Leia don't just appear out of thin air. We all know what has to happen. Sometime in the next movie or two there will have to be either a love scene between Anakin and Amidala or a hint of one. The question will be 'Can Lucas have a love scene AND still keep the PG-13 rating?' I don't know. I have no clue about how the MPAA handles love scenes when they do ratings. It's very possible that we could see nothing. Who knows?
Don't want them to find you? Simple. Block the signal. This could be done by physical means using metal that would block the signals to and from the chip or by some form of ECM to jam the signals to and from. You might even be able to short it out with a powerful magnet. Unless they have devised a way to break a bunch of physical laws, the signal can be blocked. And that's if they don't have the stomach to cut it out. I doubt you could apply this technology on people that don't want it.
I'm finding it very hard to continue writing this without going into pointless nostalga so I'll end with my point. If you haven't played these games, PLAY them. Find a buddy with an old deck. Download an emulator. Maybe you'll get bored with them, but then again maybe not. They are different games than today. You have to think a little differently. Perhaps that is just what you need to bring a little spice back into your gaming. Classics have stood the test of time. If you give them a try and let them have a chance you won't be dissapointed.
How will that be so? When the price of gas rises high enough, or advanced technology drops the price of alternatives. That will make them more affordable and there by swinging the door wide open for them. As of right now, that's just not the case. Gas stations are everywhere, you would need to have that kind of coverage and availability for the alternative that will replace gas. That will take a lot of money.
So, when will this happen? How should I know...but, I can guess that it is not going to be too soon. I'm sure the automakers have done some investigations into this through R&D. Frankly, the reason we don't see them moving toward alternative fuels for all their new model cars is probably because they have figured out that it's too soon. [perhaps the hybrids are an experiment to test the timing of this] Gas is still the best solution right now and in the near future. When the time is right, when it is more profitable for them to do so, they will switch to alternative fuels. You'll wake up one day and it will just begin to happen. I wouldn't worry about it. But then again, I don't worry about much at all. :)
Now I don't know anything about security issues. I guess it would depend on how everything was set up. I would imagine that there could be a simple way to encrypt stuff or whatever. All he made was a wireless hub, of sorts.
On a side note, I recently passed the Technician No-Code test myself. I can barely wait to try it.
Seriously, advanced propulsion technologies like this are going to be responsible for putting mankind in the position to be able to really explore the solarsystem. But this should not be done too quickly.
The space programs of the United States and Russia have mostly been used for short-term, near-sighted political purposes. [The space shuttle being an exception] It's about time that the use of space programs grew-up a little. In that light, it is good to see this effort to develop better technology rather than just throwing something together with the technology at hand.
Honestly, we can't go to Mars or even the Moon that well with the existing propulsion systems. How much of the Saturn V rocket actually returned to Earth? Just the tiny Command Module. The rest of the rocket carried the LEM, The Service Module, but mainly it was fuel to power the conventional engines. We can't keep doing that. That's like sending out Columbus with his large ships and all that can make it back are row-boats.
Technologies like the X-33, Plasma engines, and a practical, perminent space station are what we need to explore. A reusable, self-contained ship that can take of from the surface of a planet and go straight into orbit that can dock with a space station wich can dock with a large inter-planetary transport, which could take the resuable ship to the Moon, Mars, or where ever. A perminent, well thought out set up like this could be more than enough to allow for exploration, let alone commercial ventures.
The real question I have is: Do we have the wisdom to make real, long-term plans for this technology?
How do we [Software Engineers] fight change like that? Do we have the ACM hire a bunch of lawyers to form the Software Engineer Association of America [SEAA] and sue the pants off of the creaters of this machine? Do we hire lobbyists to push laws that restrict it's use so the SEAA can go "cease and desist" crazy? You can, but not me. It would be like you're on the Titanic and throwing rocks at the iceberg because you're mad that it ruined your ship. No thanks, I'll be busy finding something that will keep me afloat until a new ship comes along, thank you very much.
I remember that there was some experimental home down in Florida that was just a double-wide trailer home with solar panels for singles. They claimed that not only could they run the house off of it, but actually produced more than they used from time to time and would recieve credit vouchers from the local electric company.
This was a while ago, too. I'm sure that the technology is better now. And you could go as far as you want with it. Just a power supplement to try to save a little money when you're running the AC all day in the summer or go full bore and see if you can try to power totally off of it. I wouldn't mind giving the former a try myself if I owned a home.
Fastball, Curveball, Changup, and Screwball were the pitches. And let me tell you, the fastball had some serious heat. The machine would put spin on the ball for the two breaking pitches. The Curveball was espcially nasty with a sharp, last second change of direction [it seemed more like a Slider].
There was one flipper, shaped like a bat which had an almost 270 degree range. You could also pinch hit, the strength of the flipper was determined by the statistics of the current batter, and try to steal.
Outcomes were decided by indicator lights in front of the wall in the back of the board which were pictures of fielders. Out, Single, Double, Triple, or Home Run. The percentage, type, and left-right location of the lights changed according the the statistics of the batter also.
One of the coolest features of the game was the Home Run ramp. At various times throughout the game, the ramp would pop up behind second. If you hit the ball just right you could sent it flying into the upper deck for a home run.
When the game first came out, it's gimmick was that for each run you scored, it would give you baseball cards that were despensed on the lower right on the front of the game. I collected cards back then so I thought this was the coolest game in the world. I lost track of how much money I dumped into those things. I STILL dump quarters in to play when ever I see it around.
This obviously is yet another example of taking advantage of that little check box that says "Hide MS-DOS file extension for types that are registered", which can be found on a windows explorer menu under View --> Options and clicking on the View tab. Once that is checked, the .exe extensions are "hidden" from the user and the only way they have of knowing what kind of file they see is by the icon they see, which can be changed to be whatever the originator of the file wants. Naturally, they see an icon typically associated with an AVI file and think "cool, a movie...I wonder what it is..." and click on it to watch without ever suspecting that it is in fact not a video clip, but an EXE file. Most windows users don't even know about that checkbox and that it's usually checked for them by default. They just assume that the icon is true and run with it. Oh well...