Shatner's site seems more like a glorified forum, a great place to find people who share the same interest, but that isn't what Facebook is for.
If I were going to draw a comparison with an existing site, I'd compare it to deviantART, but for sci-fi. It's a social networking site in the sense that's intended for people with a common interest to network with each other - but it's not taking on Facebook.
But suggesting that it is will likely get more attention.
You may not be aware of this, but they have a Twitter account devoted to the PlayStation and a blog. Sadly, the blog doesn't record the time when the entries were posted, but you may notice the 13-hour stretch between "slim consoles still work" and - well, actually, if you follow the link, it basically reiterates that slim consoles are working.
Then complete silence until the 24-hour period ended, followed by a brief announcement that "hey, it works again!" and then completely ignoring that it ever happened. Instead they've posted several blog entries that conveniently knock the PSN outage way down the page.
Do they intend to fix this issue with a patch? Can they? Does it even matter? Who knows, they certainly aren't saying. All they've said is "oops, sorry" and, well, that's it. Not even a "we're still looking into this matter."
Of course, based on the vague "if we get new information we'll keep you posted," I get the impression that this isn't the fault of the people running the blog, it's that the PlayStation group themselves are simply not bothering to communicate. Maybe they're still looking into it, maybe they aren't, but the community managers apparently have no idea based on the weasel-wording on the blog. And that would be a problem that Sony should address.
But in any case, I still have to wonder: why in the hell does a reduced instruction set computer have a buggy leap-year function? Why the hell does it care what the human-readable date is? All it needs to do is keep track of "units of time since a known start point." Let the OS worry about what the human time is.
I tried that, yet the system was still bugged. It would make sense if there was a hidden clock not able to be directly set by the end user for things like DRM. Since Sony has downloadable movie rentals, which can only be viewed for 48 hours after payment. It would follow that there's an extra timer which one can't over-ride to get more time with the rental.
Yeah, but even so, it shouldn't care about leap years. In fact, it shouldn't care about human time at all. All such a clock really needs to do is continually increment some value every unit of time. Then, it just needs three pieces of information to determine if it's in the rental period:
1. The time the rental period start, in "clock units."
2. How long the rental period lasts, in "clock units."
3. The current clock time.
Is "start time" + "rental period" less than "current time?" Then it's still in the rental period. Absolutely no knowledge of the Gregorian calendar required.
As one of the owners of a console that got bit by this bug (and the last revision to support PS2 backwards-compatibility), I'm still rather pissed off by this bug.
First off, it's ridiculously stupid. I'd love to hear an explanation from Sony about how, exactly, they managed to have this bug exist in the first place. First off, I'd love to know why the internal clock considers 2010 a leap year but what I'd also like to know is 1) why this "internal clock" is different from the PS3 clock, which knows 2010 isn't a leap year, and 2) why this "internal clock" works on dates in the first place and not on "units of time offset from a known date."
I mean, it's apparently an internal hardware clock, right? It's not user visible. So why, exactly, is it storing dates and not just being a clock?
I'm sure someone's going to say that I should "just get over it, it's just a video game console" which is true. And honestly, I never really was angry at being locked out of my PS3 for 24 hours. What I'm still pissed about is Sony's piss-poor handling of the entire incident. Which, I suppose, given their track record, I really shouldn't be that surprised about.
Ubuntu just works too, except for all the times when it doesn't. But those times, you can actually google the problem and fix it yourself.
Until you find out that A) it's a known bug; B) it was fixed two months ago; and C) the fix won't be backported to the current release.
Yes, there is a real bug I'm thinking of - ironically, it has to do with the included Samba in Ubuntu 9.10 not working with Apple's Time Capsule. It's fixed in Lucid Lynx. It won't be fixed in 9.10. I tried using the Lucid Lynx packages on 9.10, but that didn't work. I was able to get it to work by compiling Samba manually, but - well, let's just say I'm already well outside what the "average user" can be expected to do.
2. These days it is practically, if not absolutely, impossible to write bug free code. Why?
To expand on that, here's a simple anecdote. I wrote a Java program that simply updated a database with new values. This involved loading a database driver and untold other code.
So I go to run it and the Java VM crashes. Bwah? I try to figure out why, but I can't find anything that's changed since the last time I ran it other than the data it was loading. I run it again, and it works perfectly.
What went wrong the first time? Was it:
1. A bug in the Java VM?
2. A bug in the Linux OS that the Java VM was running on?
3. A bug in the VirtualBox VM that the Linux OS was running on?
4. A bug in the Windows XP OS that the VirtualBox VM was running on?
5. A bug in the hardware that the Windows XP OS was running on?
I have no clue - about all I can say is that judging from the stacktrace generated in the HotSpot crash report, it crashed somewhere in the HotSpot JIT. Why? No clue.
Isn't one of the things a rootkit does is attempt to prevent detection?
How do you know that they don't try and match checksums, only the rootkit was returning the "correct" data in order to hide its presence? I mean, it is in the system file that handles reading data from hard drives, which sounds like the perfect place to put in code designed to stealth out the rootkit.
Not that I can get to the article ("Error establishing a database connection"), so I have no idea if that's the case, but it seems quite possible to me that if it's a rootkit, it's actively hiding from detection, which would seem to let Microsoft off the hook. Except for however the rootkit infected the machine in the first place.
I did not like Hayden Christensen's acting, but I also believe that a good director would've fixed that.
The funniest thing (to me, at least) in Episode III was listening to James Earl Jones try and mimic Hayden Christensen when the new Darth Vader asked about Padme.
Which may mean that the director actually wanted Anakin to sound like that.
Or, if you're using Apple's Xcode, Command-[. Damn if that doesn't piss me off. Sure, it's consistent with the "standard" Apple keyboard shortcuts. But tab/shift-tab is simply easier to type and the way to do it in every other IDE I use.
Simple: Turn on the option that makes tabs visible. At least, that's how I do it in Eclipse, I don't know if there's a similar option in Visual Studio, but I'd assume there is.
Granted some people might find visual whitespace to be a bit annoying, but it does solve the problem of accidentally mixing tabs and spaces.
You forget the open beta, which was going on for several weeks prior to World of Warcraft's release. WoW was dominating gaming well before its official release date. Don't forget, the open beta wasn't just in progress when VtM:B was released, it was also free.:)
The randomness of failures suggests that Firefox writes to a random location memory that is important in some systems and not others. That's crucial in an unstable, poorly designed OS like Windows XP. Linux merely throws Firefox off the system.
What that suggests to me is that your memory is bad. Try running memtest and see if it reports any errors. Even if it doesn't, it might be heat related.
I've had issues with Firefox crashing in the past (although mostly due to my playing around with XPCOM while writing an extension), but I've never seen it crash the OS. If it's crashing the OS, it seems highly likely to me that there's something physically wrong with your system.
After all, even Linux crashes when the CPU physically falls out of its socket. (Don't try that at home.)
The last time I was routinely crashing Windows XP was due to an overheating issue with my graphics card. It'd run fine until I tried to play a game. Start up a game and then after a while, boom: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.
Plus, some of the pieces are identical, so swapping them doesn't create two unique images. Some of the pieces are gradients, so that they can be rotated in any of four directions to create a unique image. Others, on the other hand, are a solid color, and since the pieces are both vertically and horizontally symmetrical, the rotation doesn't matter. Both of those need to be taken into account to figure out how many permutations there are that create distinct images.
I mean, sure, you'd think that if the phone network was IP-based, you'd be able to get general Internet access through it, too. Is that really the case, though?
First issue, is this VOIP-to-the-home, or just VOIP-to-the-switch-box? A logical first step would be to switch over to VOIP just before the last-mile, to allow people to keep their existing phones - which (I think) would kill dial-up and faxes. A later second step would be to move the final transition point to the telephone box at the house.
And even if it is running VOIP all the way to the home, you have to assume that the telco will allow people to connect to the Internet via their network. This is something regulation can solve (by forcing the issue), but still, that means new equipment. And most likely new fees. And quite possibly a loss of choice over ISP.
So there will have to be some concession to people still using dial-up - especially if they're not planning on moving the entire network to VOIP all at once.
Doubt it, since I had the same problems with my headphones (non-USB) when plugged into the headphone jack on the front of the machine. (Although in that case, there was a long wire that plugged into a special port on the MB and then ran in front of a whole bunch of noisy electronics to make it to the front of the case.)
Although my speakers did die, so, you might be on to something...
My computer makes noise when progress bars move and when you scroll windows or move them around.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with the absolutely abysmal shielding between the integrated sound card and the sound output port, which is conveniently located right next to the graphics card.
Although for some strange reason, the noises go away when I use a USB headset...
(It's really annoying while playing games, though: during quiet sections, there's a continuous "buzz" from the graphics card. Which is part of the reason why I have a USB headset.)
(WARNING: clicking on that link may be dangerous to your mental health.)
Apparently. It was blocked by the firewall at work as "porn." I guess whoever categorized that page went insane and has developed a fetish for Under Construction GIFs.
The science is a problem because it's completely bogus. You can't tell what country a person is from this way; you can only tell generalities, such as what region they've been living in the last year, or what their ancestry is. It's pseudo-science.
But, but, on CSI, they can tell where someone lived for the past ten years to the city, just by using a hair sample! Are you trying to tell me that CSI is just pseudo-science?! It's well known that police scientists can do anything. The impossible just requires a montage with techno music.
(Sidenote: I'm actually thinking of an episode of Law & Order: SVU, where they apparently were able to determine a murder victim was from the Ukraine (I think) based on "geographic isotope analysis" of her hair - or something like that. (I don't remember the technobabble they used to justify it.) My real point is that people see this happen on TV all the time and just kind of accept that it must be based on reality - after all, TV would never lie to them, right?)
I had to ship mine back to Nintendo twice. Does that count?
Of course, in my case, the console still worked. It just had graphical glitches over the screen that made some parts of some games nearly impossible to play through.
And I got a really nice letter of apology from Nintendo about needing a second repair.
So, now we just need another anecdote and we'll have data, right?:)
It's not a problem, so much, as it is a question of whether the new Home content is actually going to be worth anything or if it's all going to be worthless options locked behind a pay wall.
The article says that Home will be getting "new character customization options" - are we expected to pay for these? Since they're currently charging money for the current "character customization options" in the forms of virtual clothing, it seems quite likely that these new options may simply be more paid clothing.
Likewise, the new areas are apparently branded advertising areas. (The examples given were an Audi and SingStar area.) Will there be anything to do there? Or is it yet more walking around 3D models with the option to buy branded clothing?
In other words, is Home still a virtual shopping mall where the only things you can buy are virtual goods that can only be used inside the virtual shopping mall? That's the problem - there's nothing to do in Home except buy useless digital junk.
So, new changes coming to Home. More customization options. More places. Neat, I guess.
Except for the part where they apparently think people are willing to pay $0.29 for a pair of shoes that no one is going to see. Likewise the $5 to buy a new "personal apartment" that basically no one except yourself is ever going to see. (Sure, you can invite friends over to your virtual apartment but, really, how much is it worth to have your virtual self live in the Ghostbusters station?)
Not to mention the charges on logo-ed shirts. I can't remember prices, but I think those were in the $0.50-$1 range. So I'm expected to pay money to be a walking virtual advertisement. Sure...
If the Home avatars had any use outside of Home (like the Miis and the Xbox Live Avatars) I could almost see the more pathetic fanboys paying money to dress them up in a T-shirt with a Ghostbuster logo on it. But $0.50 for a virtual shirt that can only be seen in a single virtual space in which there is essentially nothing to do? Please!
Last time I checked (which was a month ago, so not terribly long ago) PlayStation Home was still just like this Penny Arcade cartoon. The only difference I found from the beta last year is that the stores now actually sell something rather than being completely empty.
Half-false. There are New Balance factories in the US.
However, when I went looking for a way to find a New Balance shoe that was made in the US, I failed. All the New Balance shoes I've ever seen were stamped "Made In China."
They seem to have greatly fixed up their website now, though. There's now a "Made In USA" section for men's and women's shoes. So if you want to buy one of the small fraction of shoes that are made in the US, you can.
Slashdot Mirror
Shatner's site seems more like a glorified forum, a great place to find people who share the same interest, but that isn't what Facebook is for.
If I were going to draw a comparison with an existing site, I'd compare it to deviantART, but for sci-fi. It's a social networking site in the sense that's intended for people with a common interest to network with each other - but it's not taking on Facebook.
But suggesting that it is will likely get more attention.
For the ultimate in security, I recommend 65536.
I tried that, but it keeps on binding to completely random ports whenever I start the daemon.
You may not be aware of this, but they have a Twitter account devoted to the PlayStation and a blog. Sadly, the blog doesn't record the time when the entries were posted, but you may notice the 13-hour stretch between "slim consoles still work" and - well, actually, if you follow the link, it basically reiterates that slim consoles are working.
Then complete silence until the 24-hour period ended, followed by a brief announcement that "hey, it works again!" and then completely ignoring that it ever happened. Instead they've posted several blog entries that conveniently knock the PSN outage way down the page.
Do they intend to fix this issue with a patch? Can they? Does it even matter? Who knows, they certainly aren't saying. All they've said is "oops, sorry" and, well, that's it. Not even a "we're still looking into this matter."
Of course, based on the vague "if we get new information we'll keep you posted," I get the impression that this isn't the fault of the people running the blog, it's that the PlayStation group themselves are simply not bothering to communicate. Maybe they're still looking into it, maybe they aren't, but the community managers apparently have no idea based on the weasel-wording on the blog. And that would be a problem that Sony should address.
But in any case, I still have to wonder: why in the hell does a reduced instruction set computer have a buggy leap-year function? Why the hell does it care what the human-readable date is? All it needs to do is keep track of "units of time since a known start point." Let the OS worry about what the human time is.
I tried that, yet the system was still bugged. It would make sense if there was a hidden clock not able to be directly set by the end user for things like DRM. Since Sony has downloadable movie rentals, which can only be viewed for 48 hours after payment. It would follow that there's an extra timer which one can't over-ride to get more time with the rental.
Yeah, but even so, it shouldn't care about leap years. In fact, it shouldn't care about human time at all. All such a clock really needs to do is continually increment some value every unit of time. Then, it just needs three pieces of information to determine if it's in the rental period:
1. The time the rental period start, in "clock units."
2. How long the rental period lasts, in "clock units."
3. The current clock time.
Is "start time" + "rental period" less than "current time?" Then it's still in the rental period. Absolutely no knowledge of the Gregorian calendar required.
As one of the owners of a console that got bit by this bug (and the last revision to support PS2 backwards-compatibility), I'm still rather pissed off by this bug.
First off, it's ridiculously stupid. I'd love to hear an explanation from Sony about how, exactly, they managed to have this bug exist in the first place. First off, I'd love to know why the internal clock considers 2010 a leap year but what I'd also like to know is 1) why this "internal clock" is different from the PS3 clock, which knows 2010 isn't a leap year, and 2) why this "internal clock" works on dates in the first place and not on "units of time offset from a known date."
I mean, it's apparently an internal hardware clock, right? It's not user visible. So why, exactly, is it storing dates and not just being a clock?
I'm sure someone's going to say that I should "just get over it, it's just a video game console" which is true. And honestly, I never really was angry at being locked out of my PS3 for 24 hours. What I'm still pissed about is Sony's piss-poor handling of the entire incident. Which, I suppose, given their track record, I really shouldn't be that surprised about.
Ubuntu just works too, except for all the times when it doesn't. But those times, you can actually google the problem and fix it yourself.
Until you find out that A) it's a known bug; B) it was fixed two months ago; and C) the fix won't be backported to the current release.
Yes, there is a real bug I'm thinking of - ironically, it has to do with the included Samba in Ubuntu 9.10 not working with Apple's Time Capsule. It's fixed in Lucid Lynx. It won't be fixed in 9.10. I tried using the Lucid Lynx packages on 9.10, but that didn't work. I was able to get it to work by compiling Samba manually, but - well, let's just say I'm already well outside what the "average user" can be expected to do.
2. These days it is practically, if not absolutely, impossible to write bug free code. Why?
To expand on that, here's a simple anecdote. I wrote a Java program that simply updated a database with new values. This involved loading a database driver and untold other code.
So I go to run it and the Java VM crashes. Bwah? I try to figure out why, but I can't find anything that's changed since the last time I ran it other than the data it was loading. I run it again, and it works perfectly.
What went wrong the first time? Was it:
1. A bug in the Java VM?
2. A bug in the Linux OS that the Java VM was running on?
3. A bug in the VirtualBox VM that the Linux OS was running on?
4. A bug in the Windows XP OS that the VirtualBox VM was running on?
5. A bug in the hardware that the Windows XP OS was running on?
I have no clue - about all I can say is that judging from the stacktrace generated in the HotSpot crash report, it crashed somewhere in the HotSpot JIT. Why? No clue.
Isn't one of the things a rootkit does is attempt to prevent detection?
How do you know that they don't try and match checksums, only the rootkit was returning the "correct" data in order to hide its presence? I mean, it is in the system file that handles reading data from hard drives, which sounds like the perfect place to put in code designed to stealth out the rootkit.
Not that I can get to the article ("Error establishing a database connection"), so I have no idea if that's the case, but it seems quite possible to me that if it's a rootkit, it's actively hiding from detection, which would seem to let Microsoft off the hook. Except for however the rootkit infected the machine in the first place.
I did not like Hayden Christensen's acting, but I also believe that a good director would've fixed that.
The funniest thing (to me, at least) in Episode III was listening to James Earl Jones try and mimic Hayden Christensen when the new Darth Vader asked about Padme.
Which may mean that the director actually wanted Anakin to sound like that.
Or, if you're using Apple's Xcode, Command-[. Damn if that doesn't piss me off. Sure, it's consistent with the "standard" Apple keyboard shortcuts. But tab/shift-tab is simply easier to type and the way to do it in every other IDE I use.
Simple: Turn on the option that makes tabs visible. At least, that's how I do it in Eclipse, I don't know if there's a similar option in Visual Studio, but I'd assume there is.
Granted some people might find visual whitespace to be a bit annoying, but it does solve the problem of accidentally mixing tabs and spaces.
The game was released with only a week to live.
You forget the open beta, which was going on for several weeks prior to World of Warcraft's release. WoW was dominating gaming well before its official release date. Don't forget, the open beta wasn't just in progress when VtM:B was released, it was also free. :)
It sold something like 5 million copies.
RTFA: they address that point:
Can a game that sold five million units really be a turkey?
If it still doesn't make money, it can.
Apparently the licensing costs for the Matrix license and the cost to run an MMORPG meant that they simply didn't make money on the game.
And the article admits:
And while Enter the Matrix is not entirely to blame, it is symptomatic of the whole sorry saga [of Atari's decline].
The randomness of failures suggests that Firefox writes to a random location memory that is important in some systems and not others. That's crucial in an unstable, poorly designed OS like Windows XP. Linux merely throws Firefox off the system.
What that suggests to me is that your memory is bad. Try running memtest and see if it reports any errors. Even if it doesn't, it might be heat related.
I've had issues with Firefox crashing in the past (although mostly due to my playing around with XPCOM while writing an extension), but I've never seen it crash the OS. If it's crashing the OS, it seems highly likely to me that there's something physically wrong with your system.
After all, even Linux crashes when the CPU physically falls out of its socket. (Don't try that at home.)
The last time I was routinely crashing Windows XP was due to an overheating issue with my graphics card. It'd run fine until I tried to play a game. Start up a game and then after a while, boom: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.
And anyway, since pedantry loves company
And on that note:
Plus, some of the pieces are identical, so swapping them doesn't create two unique images. Some of the pieces are gradients, so that they can be rotated in any of four directions to create a unique image. Others, on the other hand, are a solid color, and since the pieces are both vertically and horizontally symmetrical, the rotation doesn't matter. Both of those need to be taken into account to figure out how many permutations there are that create distinct images.
But can you do dial-up over VOIP?
I mean, sure, you'd think that if the phone network was IP-based, you'd be able to get general Internet access through it, too. Is that really the case, though?
First issue, is this VOIP-to-the-home, or just VOIP-to-the-switch-box? A logical first step would be to switch over to VOIP just before the last-mile, to allow people to keep their existing phones - which (I think) would kill dial-up and faxes. A later second step would be to move the final transition point to the telephone box at the house.
And even if it is running VOIP all the way to the home, you have to assume that the telco will allow people to connect to the Internet via their network. This is something regulation can solve (by forcing the issue), but still, that means new equipment. And most likely new fees. And quite possibly a loss of choice over ISP.
So there will have to be some concession to people still using dial-up - especially if they're not planning on moving the entire network to VOIP all at once.
Doubt it, since I had the same problems with my headphones (non-USB) when plugged into the headphone jack on the front of the machine. (Although in that case, there was a long wire that plugged into a special port on the MB and then ran in front of a whole bunch of noisy electronics to make it to the front of the case.)
Although my speakers did die, so, you might be on to something...
My computer makes noise when progress bars move and when you scroll windows or move them around.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with the absolutely abysmal shielding between the integrated sound card and the sound output port, which is conveniently located right next to the graphics card.
Although for some strange reason, the noises go away when I use a USB headset...
(It's really annoying while playing games, though: during quiet sections, there's a continuous "buzz" from the graphics card. Which is part of the reason why I have a USB headset.)
(WARNING: clicking on that link may be dangerous to your mental health.)
Apparently. It was blocked by the firewall at work as "porn." I guess whoever categorized that page went insane and has developed a fetish for Under Construction GIFs.
The science is a problem because it's completely bogus. You can't tell what country a person is from this way; you can only tell generalities, such as what region they've been living in the last year, or what their ancestry is. It's pseudo-science.
But, but, on CSI, they can tell where someone lived for the past ten years to the city, just by using a hair sample! Are you trying to tell me that CSI is just pseudo-science?! It's well known that police scientists can do anything. The impossible just requires a montage with techno music.
(Sidenote: I'm actually thinking of an episode of Law & Order: SVU, where they apparently were able to determine a murder victim was from the Ukraine (I think) based on "geographic isotope analysis" of her hair - or something like that. (I don't remember the technobabble they used to justify it.) My real point is that people see this happen on TV all the time and just kind of accept that it must be based on reality - after all, TV would never lie to them, right?)
I had to ship mine back to Nintendo twice. Does that count?
Of course, in my case, the console still worked. It just had graphical glitches over the screen that made some parts of some games nearly impossible to play through.
And I got a really nice letter of apology from Nintendo about needing a second repair.
So, now we just need another anecdote and we'll have data, right? :)
It's not a problem, so much, as it is a question of whether the new Home content is actually going to be worth anything or if it's all going to be worthless options locked behind a pay wall.
The article says that Home will be getting "new character customization options" - are we expected to pay for these? Since they're currently charging money for the current "character customization options" in the forms of virtual clothing, it seems quite likely that these new options may simply be more paid clothing.
Likewise, the new areas are apparently branded advertising areas. (The examples given were an Audi and SingStar area.) Will there be anything to do there? Or is it yet more walking around 3D models with the option to buy branded clothing?
In other words, is Home still a virtual shopping mall where the only things you can buy are virtual goods that can only be used inside the virtual shopping mall? That's the problem - there's nothing to do in Home except buy useless digital junk.
So, new changes coming to Home. More customization options. More places. Neat, I guess.
Except for the part where they apparently think people are willing to pay $0.29 for a pair of shoes that no one is going to see. Likewise the $5 to buy a new "personal apartment" that basically no one except yourself is ever going to see. (Sure, you can invite friends over to your virtual apartment but, really, how much is it worth to have your virtual self live in the Ghostbusters station?)
Not to mention the charges on logo-ed shirts. I can't remember prices, but I think those were in the $0.50-$1 range. So I'm expected to pay money to be a walking virtual advertisement. Sure...
If the Home avatars had any use outside of Home (like the Miis and the Xbox Live Avatars) I could almost see the more pathetic fanboys paying money to dress them up in a T-shirt with a Ghostbuster logo on it. But $0.50 for a virtual shirt that can only be seen in a single virtual space in which there is essentially nothing to do? Please!
Last time I checked (which was a month ago, so not terribly long ago) PlayStation Home was still just like this Penny Arcade cartoon. The only difference I found from the beta last year is that the stores now actually sell something rather than being completely empty.
Which would mean something if the consoles themselves weren't produced exclusively by companies based in countries that use NTSC. :P
Half-false. There are New Balance factories in the US.
However, when I went looking for a way to find a New Balance shoe that was made in the US, I failed. All the New Balance shoes I've ever seen were stamped "Made In China."
They seem to have greatly fixed up their website now, though. There's now a "Made In USA" section for men's and women's shoes. So if you want to buy one of the small fraction of shoes that are made in the US, you can.