Rob has a point. But that's nothing to MMORPGs. People have been known to play themselves to death. I mean literally, as in playing for several days without food or sleep, and then dropping dead.
Perhaps there's a place in the limbic system you can stimulate and cause pleasure -- that wouldn't suprise me. But that's not a "pleasure center". That idea comes from a simplistic neo-phrenological model of brain architecture.
That's the usual misconception about clinical depression -- that it's just a fancy way of saying "unhappy". But to doctors it describes various syndromes where a person's mental function is "depressed". It means not just a bad mood, but an inability to feel a good mood. Or to think clearly, respond to events, and a lot of other inabilities.
Moving a person with such a condition onto another planet where everything's perfect might help them feel better. Or not. People with a built-in capacity for depression can get depressed -- even suicidal -- over things that most people wouldn't even notice.
Thing is, the word "depression" doesn't really explain anything. It's just a handy label for a wide variety of conditions, some fairly well understood, others hardly understood at all. So it ends up being a dumping bin for any condition with mostly psychological symptoms that a doctor can't explain through physical disease. So really depression is "diagnosed" only by elimination -- and it often happens that the doctor has not eliminated all other possibilities.
Niven didn't actually invent the "tasp". Like a lot of his concepts, it was just regurgitated magazine articles and folklore. In this case, there was a story circulating that somebody had wired a lever into the "pleasure center" of a rat's brain. Another lever dispensed the rat's food supply. Supposedly, the rat was so caught up in pressing the pleasure lever, it never got around to pushing the food lever, and starved to death.
As usual, Niven did manage to turn this concept into interesting stories. Though (as usual) he also rather beat the idea to death. But the sad thing is that the whole concept is probably either an urban legend or a distortion of real research. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "pleasure center". It is true that things directly induce pleasure in the brain also tend to override basic drives, such as hunger -- something every crack addict demonstrates.
As a fallen angel, you should know more about evil. Evil doesn't just happen, there's always a reason. In the case of big corporations, it's the continual pressure from investors to improve the bottom line, no matter how many kittens you have to kill. Google's founders resisted this, first by holding off their IPO as long as they could, and then by coming up with an unusual voting arrangement that makes it hard for outsiders to force decisions on them.
Of course it could always happen that Brin and Page will listen to Emperor Palpatine and go over to the Dark Side. If they start wearing silly costumes, perhaps we should worry.
I can't seem to find anything about address spoofing in the RFC, and I'm not at all clear on how it would work. Perhaps you could amplify and/or point to specific passages in the RFC.
The authors of the RFC makes some general statements about using firewalls in conjunction with NATs, but I don't see any strong arguments for them.
Perhaps there's some miscommunication here, due to that frustrating word "firewall". This strained analogy with masonry firewalls used in construction has been applied to all kind of boundry networking technology -- including NATs. Perhaps for the purpose of this discussion we should talk about "filters", which is how the RFC seems to use the term.
In any case, I'm not going to claim that NAT routers are a cure-all for security problems. But they do do one thing extremely well -- they prevent people from scanning ports on your system. Which is where this discussions started.
You do make a good point. But the do-it-yourself alternative (and that includes Soekris boxes) is not practical for most people. Though I suppose paying some geek you trust to set up a box for you is possibly more secure than buying an off-the-shelf box from a faceless company. Leaving two issues: How do you find a geek you can trust? (That friendly guy next door might disappear tomorrow, whereas Cisco will always be around to sue.) And how much extra are you willing to spend for that extra measure of security?
So all you have to do is make every single machine on the Internet totally secure from hacking. No weak passwords, so stolen authentication, no unpatched security holes. Yeah, that's easy.
There should always be a router between any personal system and the Internet. Not a kludgy firewall/filter, mind you, but a simple NAT-translation router that puts your machine in a private address space. Hackers can't hack what they can't get to.
OK, running P2P software is a slight hassle, but it isn't that hard to expose ports on a case-by-case basis. Certainly a lot simpler than fucking around with firewall softare.
Since a good firmware-based router costs less than a full suite of security software, this is a no-brainer.
Of course, it doesn't work with the "Spirit of the Internet" that says that every system on the net can provide services to or use services from any other system. But you know what? That "spirit" is long gone -- it only worked when the Internet was an academic toy.
Shortly afterwards I was in a situation where I needed a multitool *now*...
I'm trying to imagine a situation where you have to have a multitool and nothing else. I mean, a multitool doesn't do anything unique, it just does it in a small (and rather clumsy) package.
This book appeart to be for people who already know XML, but need to work on their technique. (I refuse to use that vague term "advanced users".) If you're an XML newbie, you probably need to buy The XML Bible from the same author, Yeah, the title is dumb (computer book publishers have a thing for dumb titles) and the CD is screwed up. But I know of no other book that will allow your typical HTML hacker to make the transition to XML so easily.
That would be a valid point if Michael Dell made all decisions for Dell Computer by himself. But he doesn't. And even if he did, he wouldn't be a very good CEO if he made decision like this one based solely on his personal relationships.
Yeah, all those people think shit is ambrosia, so what right have I to suggest that it's shit?
All I can go by is what I see. I see a lot of bad dialogue, an overripe sense of the dramatic, and generally a lot of stuff that makes me nauseous. If other people hand out awards for that, that's their problem.
Though I can't help but notice that a lot of the awards you point to are for technical stuff ("Emmy nomination for Individual Achievement in Hairstyling For a Series"!) or simply meeting somebody's idea of political correctness ("Jewish Televimage Award"). I'd be a little more impressed if they'd received a single non-technical Emmy -- but only a little bit, considering the shows that usually get Emmys.
It's funny how B5 fans sneer at Firefly, and Firefly fans love to make fun of B5. As soon as I saw "best sci-fi stories ever produced" I started imagining the whole scene described in the usual Straczynski/Ellison overblown, overhyped, corny prose:
Since the down of time, the struggle between evil studio moguls and the forces of righteous entertain...
Naw, I just can't do it. Makes me nauseous. But you know what I mean.
Slashdot Mirror
You accept that there is. Neuroscientists have a rather more sophisticated model.
Rob has a point. But that's nothing to MMORPGs. People have been known to play themselves to death. I mean literally, as in playing for several days without food or sleep, and then dropping dead.
Thank you for sharing. One can never have too much BS in one's life.
Perhaps there's a place in the limbic system you can stimulate and cause pleasure -- that wouldn't suprise me. But that's not a "pleasure center". That idea comes from a simplistic neo-phrenological model of brain architecture.
Moving a person with such a condition onto another planet where everything's perfect might help them feel better. Or not. People with a built-in capacity for depression can get depressed -- even suicidal -- over things that most people wouldn't even notice.
Thing is, the word "depression" doesn't really explain anything. It's just a handy label for a wide variety of conditions, some fairly well understood, others hardly understood at all. So it ends up being a dumping bin for any condition with mostly psychological symptoms that a doctor can't explain through physical disease. So really depression is "diagnosed" only by elimination -- and it often happens that the doctor has not eliminated all other possibilities.
As usual, Niven did manage to turn this concept into interesting stories. Though (as usual) he also rather beat the idea to death. But the sad thing is that the whole concept is probably either an urban legend or a distortion of real research. I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "pleasure center". It is true that things directly induce pleasure in the brain also tend to override basic drives, such as hunger -- something every crack addict demonstrates.
Already been tried!
OK, another assertion that a firewall is required -- without any explanation as to why. Although I suppose security blankets are always useful.
When you invent the security measure that works agains everything, be sure to let the Nobel comittee know.
Of course it could always happen that Brin and Page will listen to Emperor Palpatine and go over to the Dark Side. If they start wearing silly costumes, perhaps we should worry.
So the real issue is not securing your system, it's finding someone to blame? Whatever.
Sorry, we can't hire a programmer who doesn't document his source code. Good luck with your job search.
The authors of the RFC makes some general statements about using firewalls in conjunction with NATs, but I don't see any strong arguments for them.
Perhaps there's some miscommunication here, due to that frustrating word "firewall". This strained analogy with masonry firewalls used in construction has been applied to all kind of boundry networking technology -- including NATs. Perhaps for the purpose of this discussion we should talk about "filters", which is how the RFC seems to use the term.
In any case, I'm not going to claim that NAT routers are a cure-all for security problems. But they do do one thing extremely well -- they prevent people from scanning ports on your system. Which is where this discussions started.
You do make a good point. But the do-it-yourself alternative (and that includes Soekris boxes) is not practical for most people. Though I suppose paying some geek you trust to set up a box for you is possibly more secure than buying an off-the-shelf box from a faceless company. Leaving two issues: How do you find a geek you can trust? (That friendly guy next door might disappear tomorrow, whereas Cisco will always be around to sue.) And how much extra are you willing to spend for that extra measure of security?
So all you have to do is make every single machine on the Internet totally secure from hacking. No weak passwords, so stolen authentication, no unpatched security holes. Yeah, that's easy.
OK, running P2P software is a slight hassle, but it isn't that hard to expose ports on a case-by-case basis. Certainly a lot simpler than fucking around with firewall softare.
Since a good firmware-based router costs less than a full suite of security software, this is a no-brainer.
Of course, it doesn't work with the "Spirit of the Internet" that says that every system on the net can provide services to or use services from any other system. But you know what? That "spirit" is long gone -- it only worked when the Internet was an academic toy.
This book appeart to be for people who already know XML, but need to work on their technique. (I refuse to use that vague term "advanced users".) If you're an XML newbie, you probably need to buy The XML Bible from the same author, Yeah, the title is dumb (computer book publishers have a thing for dumb titles) and the CD is screwed up. But I know of no other book that will allow your typical HTML hacker to make the transition to XML so easily.
That would be a valid point if Michael Dell made all decisions for Dell Computer by himself. But he doesn't. And even if he did, he wouldn't be a very good CEO if he made decision like this one based solely on his personal relationships.
All I can go by is what I see. I see a lot of bad dialogue, an overripe sense of the dramatic, and generally a lot of stuff that makes me nauseous. If other people hand out awards for that, that's their problem.
Though I can't help but notice that a lot of the awards you point to are for technical stuff ("Emmy nomination for Individual Achievement in Hairstyling For a Series"!) or simply meeting somebody's idea of political correctness ("Jewish Televimage Award"). I'd be a little more impressed if they'd received a single non-technical Emmy -- but only a little bit, considering the shows that usually get Emmys.
You mean you can't find another actor who can't spout pretentious crap?
When you say it's not "great" you probably mean it doesn't have all the corny, overdone thud and blunder of B5. A point in its favor.
I had Airtunes confused with another gadget. My mistake.
Using lossless compression won't degrade the music -- but pushing it through a low-end FM transmitter certainly will.