anyone with @mediaone.com will have to get a new email address... AND anyone with @attbroadband.com will have to get a new address as well.
What does attbroadband.com have to do with mediaone? Probably nothing, they just said to themselves "well we're going to piss off 100000 subscribers by making them change their email addresses, what's a few thousand more? Then they'll all look the same!"
Cuz we all know how much marketing people like to make everything look pretty =)
good point... public transit gets nasty as the day wears on.
IF the cars are all public then you'd have to deal with it... but if people could own their own unit and just use the public rail system you'd be able to look after your own stuff.
Of course you'd have to be able to self-drive the thing or you'd never be able to park it at the mall =)
I think I saw something similar to these in an issue of Popular Science not long ago... personal transports that could auto-drive you to your destination. Instead of working on the bus/train schedule and having to travel to the station you would use your personal transport, drive it to the nearest on-ramp and set the auto-pilot.
Places like North America that already have a huge transportation infrastructure would find it expensive to implement one of these, good to see that some European countries are testing them out now.
I dont know about some of you, but I hate driving. I'd much rather have an automated transport that could take me where I need to go without having to deal with Metro transit and all the crazies on the bus.
If you use a Mac you can't listen to this CD on your computer. If you run linux you cant listen to this CD on your computer. Some CD players have problems with these CDs. You cant listen to them on your mp3 player, and you cant copy them to your hard drive.
Someone explain to me how limiting a consumers options is a good thing... the copy protection will be broken eventually anyway, why go through all this effort? for the experience?
Yes it's possible... some DVDs out now allow you to seamlessly integrate the deleted scenes into the original movie.
It's not exactly a "real-world" game
on
Uplink
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· Score: 4, Informative
I tried out Uplink a while ago, i'm surprised it's just getting to/. now.
The reason there aren't many screen shots is because it's not an FPS and it's not a RTS.. it's more like a text-based SIM. You basically take on the "role" of a hacker for hire. Everything is done in-game and you get emails from the company that hired you containing tasks (ie servers to hack into, jobs to complete).
You download "tools" from the company server and you get paid for jobs you complete. More complex jobs require more expensive tools so you have to save up for them.
It's interesting, but it doesnt exactly reflect the real world. Nothing you learn in-game could help you hack into a bank or anything.
Good to see some Canadian companies making the headlines.
The article says they're among several firms searching the waters around Cuba for shipwrecks, many of which are belived to have been carrying gold and valuables when they sank. It's purly for scientific research of course =)
The RealOne music service will let subscribers download 100 songs onto their computers every month for $9.95. It also offers 100 "streams", a radio-like feature where the songs are not stored on a computer's hard drive.
I dont want "radio-like streams", I want digital high-quality music to go with my digital high-quality stereo system. Strike 1.
If a subscriber to RealOne Music lets his membership lapse, he loses access to music that was already downloaded. In effect, this means subscribers are renting the music more than actually buying it.
That ain't gonna cut it... People wont pay rediculous fees and then lose everything they collected when times are tough and they have to make some sacrifices on "extra expenses". Strike 2.
Analysts say the label-backed services have some advantages over the free-song sites. The quality of the file transfer - which is crucial to how the music sounds - is guaranteed to be high, which is not so on free sites. And the labels' services also offer protection from viruses.
guaranteed high-quality? streams are plagued by Internet slowdowns, and the MP3s I download now are 160+kbps. and "protection from viruses"?? how many viruses do you know that are sent in MP3 files?? the marketing spin-jockeys are hard at work.
But there are other obstacles, too. Neither service will allow users to transfer songs to portable devices or to CDs -- both considered essential features by many online music fans.
so.. you're forced to sit at your computer and listen to the songs that you dont own. what a great deal! lemme get my visa!
While both services are expected to offer about 100,000 songs when they launch, subscribers to one service will not be able to hear songs on the rival.
limited catalog and competing formats... strike 4, 5, 6, and 7.
you're out. stop wasting everyone's time with your stupid ideas on "how to help people not break the laws that we wrote in the first place".
I've seen a few reviews for "Behind Enemy Lines" and the good reviews seem to be dead even with the bad ones.
From what I've seen of the previews it seems to be a "go team America, bring our boys home" kinda movie, but the methods they use to get there are pretty lame. The special-effects shots look great, but if it's all show and no meat then I'm not interested.
I read another reviewer talk about the main character's adventures by saying "standing on a ridge, making a target of himself, running in the open, etc, etc"? Stuff like that may look good on the big screen but in real life it'll get you an ass-full of lead.
What the hell kinda domain name is that? hard to remember, hard to spell correctly and no sex appeal.
In all the vastness of the universe and all the possible domain names to choose from, you picked that one? Maybe it's time to let it go and find a new domain name, any lawyer looking at that one is just going to laugh and ask why you'd want it back.
It didn't disintegrate.. it exploded just above the ground with enough force to flatten the trees for miles around. Even a smaller-sized asteroid can cause a lot of damage when it explodes, as shown in the matchstick forest experiments.
Far easier to make a meanigful mis-click/drag/drop than it is to make a meanigful typo, and often easier to correct
You think so? I find it much easier to use a gui than a command line when moving/copying/deleting files. That right-click menu comes in handy, I can move entire directories across multiple networked drives in seconds with 3 clicks, while in DOS it would be much more convoluted, and you wouldnt have a recycle bin to hold those "mistakenly deleted" files...
I can't count the number of times I've tried doing some file management in DOS (usually while Windows was crapped out) and thought "man this would be so much easier in Windows".
Oh and let's not forget Scandisk... that oh-so-helpful windows tool to keep your drive in top-condition. The other day windows stopped working because of a faulty long-filename. I ran scandisk from the DOS prompt (because Windows would NOT load) and it told me "we found errors but couldnt fix them, run scandisk for windows". Gee thanks...
Now that I think back... weren't Win95/98/ME/2K all supposed to be "the death of DOS"... but years later and it's still around.
Those numbers seem a little high to me... and I have a few questions. (My company does video-capture and storage security systems so i know these issues do come up)
Are you capturing in digital format? Are you sure that your systems are even capturing at 30fps?
It's unlikely that any digital conversion device(s) would be able to handle the input from 1000+ cameras and then be able to get that data to a central storage location through a local network.... the bandwidth needed for something like that would be incredible (90 MB/s ??), perhaps even requiring it's own seperate gigabit fibre network. Even in a high-end server with several devices connected to it you'd be lucky to capture 20fps.
But if you were able to get it done, storage options would probably consist of some type of RAID array (with a HUGE number of disks to be able to hold 8TB/day).
Storing that much data indefinately would require enormous rooms dedicated to storage devices, which may not be feasible. Storing data for a week or even a month would be a challenge in itself.
Having things in digital format is nice for indexing and fast retrieval, but in this case it may be too costly. Storing data on video tape may not be as fast or convenient, but it's much easier to store 2 twelve-hour tapes per day per camera than it is to set up and maintain 8 Terra-bytes of hard drive space per day.
Before the radio-carbon dating and the physics of glow curves and AMS testing and all the other modern techniques were available, archaeologists were digging in the dirt looking for "old-stuff" to examine. It's a natural human behaviour, a curiousity to know where we came from.
So what did people use in the old days? Their eyes and their brains. Observations and an understanding of basic anatomy, history and geology are tools that you can take anywhere, don't require an expensive lab, and never need new batteries.
Today's technology may be nailing down more accurate dating, but human experience out in the field is still you're best place to start in an archaeological dig. While the two should compliment each other, the people who rely on machines to do all the work for them don't really understand what it means to be an archaeologist.
It's not spent on a "space shuttle", it's spent on exploration and scientific research. The shuttle is merely a tool.
I'd say that money is well spent considering the modern benefits that have come from space exploration (new materials, medical research, technology advances, etc).
Promises Promises... optical computing was promised a long time ago, along with persistant RAM and lots of other vapourware. The problem with optical computing is how to trap and store the light...
Maybe this is an intermediary step.. instead of trying to do everything with light we'll start with the component connectors and go from there.
Having several high-bandwidth optical links to the CPU would definatly speed things up, but there will always be another bottleneck to deal with.... I'd be more concerned with the optical/digital conversion process that would have to take place every time a new signal is sent. Wouldnt that be a lot of overhead?
And don't forget the new Serial ATA standard that's supposed to greatly speed up the transfer speeds for hard drives... still another way of using good old metal connectors.
I'm not picky, I'll take any system performance enhancements I can get.
MTT (part of Aliant) runs the local DSL service in Halifax. In NS the DSL system is called MPowered, in NB it's called VIBE (even though it's technically the same company running both). Last month MTT rolled out the Vibe Vision service (television over phone lines) just like the service offered in Moncton. It may be a digital signal but the transmission quality just cant compete with cable in most areas. But like you said it's still a new service so there are bound to be growing pains.
No one else has access to the DSL lines so they can't offer any other services.
Are you sure? I've heard of a local company (in Halifax) doing auto-dialing marketing. Some poor guy in the newsgroup would get several calls a day from the auto-dialer... he just kept getting madder and madder but had no one to swear at since it was computer-dialed. =)
One or two times a day I receive calls with nobody on the other end. I usually say "Hello..... Hello??? Anybody there?" for a while and then hang up.
I have been told that this is a telemarketing system seeing if my number is "good". Is there any truth to this?
Most likely... they program their computers to try a number several times. If someone answers it gets flagged as "active" and you go into the caller databse.
The same thing happened to my parents last month. Every day for a week they get ghost calls (no one on the other end), then a week later someone calls to ofer them a credit card, carpet cleaning, etc.
The Telezapper is basically a tone generator, it just sends out a special tone when you pick up the line. In theory it's a good idea but I see 2 things wrong with it:
#1 - Why is it so expensive? ($75 Cdn (or was that US) that I saw it advertised for) Surely someone else can make a tone-generator for much less than that.
#2 - It doesn't work for direct-dialed numbers. Surely there are a number of telemarketing firms out there that dont use computer-dialed lists, in which case a tone-generator would be useless.
I use a cell phone and while I do get the occasional wrong number I have never received a call from a telemarketer. My parents do though, and they'd love a way to get them to stop.
We've had both of these services available and reliable, for years
Reliable would be the key word... neither is without it's problems depending on where you live and who you talk to (eastlink has stability problems in some areas, MTT has quality problems with Vibe Vision, and BOTH need some help with running Tech Support).
But at least we get some choice... I will always prefer to get some services from each, that way a single cable break wont leave you in the dark.
A "liar" is someone who intentionally makes false claims in order to deceive others... McMaster is an established inventor who's worth millions, but because he has an idea for an engine that contradicts current combustion-engine models some people will label him as being "crazy". I don't know if his engine works, but I'm willing to keep an open mind, unlike some people.
And I said "a lot of brilliant people have been labelled "quacks" throughout their careers", not "a lot of quacks turned out to be not-quite crazy after-all"... there is a difference.
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Congrats Taco, ya big dork =)
What does attbroadband.com have to do with mediaone? Probably nothing, they just said to themselves "well we're going to piss off 100000 subscribers by making them change their email addresses, what's a few thousand more? Then they'll all look the same!"
Cuz we all know how much marketing people like to make everything look pretty =)
IF the cars are all public then you'd have to deal with it... but if people could own their own unit and just use the public rail system you'd be able to look after your own stuff.
Of course you'd have to be able to self-drive the thing or you'd never be able to park it at the mall =)
Places like North America that already have a huge transportation infrastructure would find it expensive to implement one of these, good to see that some European countries are testing them out now.
I dont know about some of you, but I hate driving. I'd much rather have an automated transport that could take me where I need to go without having to deal with Metro transit and all the crazies on the bus.
Someone explain to me how limiting a consumers options is a good thing... the copy protection will be broken eventually anyway, why go through all this effort? for the experience?
Yes it's possible... some DVDs out now allow you to seamlessly integrate the deleted scenes into the original movie.
The reason there aren't many screen shots is because it's not an FPS and it's not a RTS.. it's more like a text-based SIM. You basically take on the "role" of a hacker for hire. Everything is done in-game and you get emails from the company that hired you containing tasks (ie servers to hack into, jobs to complete).
You download "tools" from the company server and you get paid for jobs you complete. More complex jobs require more expensive tools so you have to save up for them.
It's interesting, but it doesnt exactly reflect the real world. Nothing you learn in-game could help you hack into a bank or anything.
I would have liked to have watched that. TV and learning, who'd have thought?
The article says they're among several firms searching the waters around Cuba for shipwrecks, many of which are belived to have been carrying gold and valuables when they sank. It's purly for scientific research of course =)
I dont want "radio-like streams", I want digital high-quality music to go with my digital high-quality stereo system. Strike 1.
If a subscriber to RealOne Music lets his membership lapse, he loses access to music that was already downloaded. In effect, this means subscribers are renting the music more than actually buying it.
That ain't gonna cut it... People wont pay rediculous fees and then lose everything they collected when times are tough and they have to make some sacrifices on "extra expenses". Strike 2.
Analysts say the label-backed services have some advantages over the free-song sites. The quality of the file transfer - which is crucial to how the music sounds - is guaranteed to be high, which is not so on free sites. And the labels' services also offer protection from viruses.
guaranteed high-quality? streams are plagued by Internet slowdowns, and the MP3s I download now are 160+kbps. and "protection from viruses"?? how many viruses do you know that are sent in MP3 files?? the marketing spin-jockeys are hard at work.
But there are other obstacles, too. Neither service will allow users to transfer songs to portable devices or to CDs -- both considered essential features by many online music fans.
so.. you're forced to sit at your computer and listen to the songs that you dont own. what a great deal! lemme get my visa!
While both services are expected to offer about 100,000 songs when they launch, subscribers to one service will not be able to hear songs on the rival.
limited catalog and competing formats... strike 4, 5, 6, and 7.
you're out. stop wasting everyone's time with your stupid ideas on "how to help people not break the laws that we wrote in the first place".
From what I've seen of the previews it seems to be a "go team America, bring our boys home" kinda movie, but the methods they use to get there are pretty lame. The special-effects shots look great, but if it's all show and no meat then I'm not interested.
I read another reviewer talk about the main character's adventures by saying "standing on a ridge, making a target of himself, running in the open, etc, etc"? Stuff like that may look good on the big screen but in real life it'll get you an ass-full of lead.
What the hell kinda domain name is that? hard to remember, hard to spell correctly and no sex appeal.
In all the vastness of the universe and all the possible domain names to choose from, you picked that one? Maybe it's time to let it go and find a new domain name, any lawyer looking at that one is just going to laugh and ask why you'd want it back.
It didn't disintegrate.. it exploded just above the ground with enough force to flatten the trees for miles around. Even a smaller-sized asteroid can cause a lot of damage when it explodes, as shown in the matchstick forest experiments.
You think so? I find it much easier to use a gui than a command line when moving/copying/deleting files. That right-click menu comes in handy, I can move entire directories across multiple networked drives in seconds with 3 clicks, while in DOS it would be much more convoluted, and you wouldnt have a recycle bin to hold those "mistakenly deleted" files...
I can't count the number of times I've tried doing some file management in DOS (usually while Windows was crapped out) and thought "man this would be so much easier in Windows".
Oh and let's not forget Scandisk... that oh-so-helpful windows tool to keep your drive in top-condition. The other day windows stopped working because of a faulty long-filename. I ran scandisk from the DOS prompt (because Windows would NOT load) and it told me "we found errors but couldnt fix them, run scandisk for windows". Gee thanks...
Now that I think back... weren't Win95/98/ME/2K all supposed to be "the death of DOS"... but years later and it's still around.
Are you capturing in digital format? Are you sure that your systems are even capturing at 30fps?
It's unlikely that any digital conversion device(s) would be able to handle the input from 1000+ cameras and then be able to get that data to a central storage location through a local network.... the bandwidth needed for something like that would be incredible (90 MB/s ??), perhaps even requiring it's own seperate gigabit fibre network. Even in a high-end server with several devices connected to it you'd be lucky to capture 20fps.
But if you were able to get it done, storage options would probably consist of some type of RAID array (with a HUGE number of disks to be able to hold 8TB/day).
Storing that much data indefinately would require enormous rooms dedicated to storage devices, which may not be feasible. Storing data for a week or even a month would be a challenge in itself.
Having things in digital format is nice for indexing and fast retrieval, but in this case it may be too costly. Storing data on video tape may not be as fast or convenient, but it's much easier to store 2 twelve-hour tapes per day per camera than it is to set up and maintain 8 Terra-bytes of hard drive space per day.
Before the radio-carbon dating and the physics of glow curves and AMS testing and all the other modern techniques were available, archaeologists were digging in the dirt looking for "old-stuff" to examine. It's a natural human behaviour, a curiousity to know where we came from.
So what did people use in the old days? Their eyes and their brains. Observations and an understanding of basic anatomy, history and geology are tools that you can take anywhere, don't require an expensive lab, and never need new batteries.
Today's technology may be nailing down more accurate dating, but human experience out in the field is still you're best place to start in an archaeological dig. While the two should compliment each other, the people who rely on machines to do all the work for them don't really understand what it means to be an archaeologist.
I'd say that money is well spent considering the modern benefits that have come from space exploration (new materials, medical research, technology advances, etc).
Maybe this is an intermediary step.. instead of trying to do everything with light we'll start with the component connectors and go from there.
Having several high-bandwidth optical links to the CPU would definatly speed things up, but there will always be another bottleneck to deal with.... I'd be more concerned with the optical/digital conversion process that would have to take place every time a new signal is sent. Wouldnt that be a lot of overhead?
And don't forget the new Serial ATA standard that's supposed to greatly speed up the transfer speeds for hard drives... still another way of using good old metal connectors.
I'm not picky, I'll take any system performance enhancements I can get.
No one else has access to the DSL lines so they can't offer any other services.
Are you sure? I've heard of a local company (in Halifax) doing auto-dialing marketing. Some poor guy in the newsgroup would get several calls a day from the auto-dialer... he just kept getting madder and madder but had no one to swear at since it was computer-dialed. =)
I have been told that this is a telemarketing system seeing if my number is "good". Is there any truth to this?
Most likely... they program their computers to try a number several times. If someone answers it gets flagged as "active" and you go into the caller databse.
The same thing happened to my parents last month. Every day for a week they get ghost calls (no one on the other end), then a week later someone calls to ofer them a credit card, carpet cleaning, etc.
#1 - Why is it so expensive? ($75 Cdn (or was that US) that I saw it advertised for) Surely someone else can make a tone-generator for much less than that.
#2 - It doesn't work for direct-dialed numbers. Surely there are a number of telemarketing firms out there that dont use computer-dialed lists, in which case a tone-generator would be useless.
I use a cell phone and while I do get the occasional wrong number I have never received a call from a telemarketer. My parents do though, and they'd love a way to get them to stop.
Reliable would be the key word... neither is without it's problems depending on where you live and who you talk to (eastlink has stability problems in some areas, MTT has quality problems with Vibe Vision, and BOTH need some help with running Tech Support).
But at least we get some choice... I will always prefer to get some services from each, that way a single cable break wont leave you in the dark.
And I said "a lot of brilliant people have been labelled "quacks" throughout their careers", not "a lot of quacks turned out to be not-quite crazy after-all"... there is a difference.
They've got some more info on the engine (including a neat little animated pic of the theoretical engine in operation).