This from the man who agreed with Steve Gibson about how raw sockets in WinXP was going to destroy the internet. Seeing as how slashdot still exists, I think he may be just a little bit off base.
The bottom line, regardless of how tasteless you may find RtCW or Day of Defeat, is that they are video games created in the USA, a country which grants its citizens freedom of expression. Therefore, no one has a right to ban them.
If you don't like the content, don't buy it, or don't play it. I fail to see why we should allow groups of people to determine what we should or should not be allowed to do, since we (assuming we're all 18 or older) are legal adults.
Now, in the case of letting kids play it, that's up to the kid's parents, and the issue of parenting is one that is strictly up to the parents. I am not a parent (I'm 18), however, common sense dictates that a 13 year old kid should not be allowed to buy games with a "Mature 17+" rating.
I know that Cisco had some messy issues about privatizing their work on the routers that they did while still at college, wouldn't this fall under the same category of attempting to privatize and earn money off of research/work done with the state's money at a state-owned facility?
I think that, if the internet had been privatized when it was first created, we wouldn't see anywhere near the amount of growth and diversity we have today.
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the RGB Mars book series, in which a space elevator was built on Mars. If I remember correctly (it's been a while since I read it), they modified the orbit of Deimos (or Phobos, I forget which) to geosynchronous, grabbed an asteroid or two from the asteroid belt, and had self-replicating robots build a factory there and start "spinning" diamond-filament threads.
By the time the asteroid got to Mars, most of the cable was already built, at which point it was anchored at a massive hold on the surface, and elevator cars were constructed to go up and down the elevator, using counterweights.
I believe that the problem of balancing it if you tried to "launch" something off the top of the platform was to simply give it a little push away, let it float off on it's own, and then use it's own engines to propel it.
Although it may seem a bit farfetched, I think that within the next decade, technology will allow us to realistically dream of doing this, although since we don't have nice-sized moons like Deimos or Phobos, we'd need to bring a bunch of asteroids in, which would make plenty of people on Earth rather anxious.
Still, it's a great theory, and perhaps some day we can get space elevators for cheap transportation into space.
Although Ogg Vorbis seems to be more promising than MP3, WMA, RA, or any of the other formats out there, for filesize and quality, it's lacking something. MP3 is by far the most supported format, not just in software, but in hardware. There are MP3 CD players, portable MP3 players, as well as tons of software on every platform imaginable.
Because of this, as well as the popularity of programs such as Morpheus/Kazaa, Napster, Gnutella, and so on, that help you find MP3s, the public equates "digital music" with "MP3," and so Ogg Vorbis is already a step behind, publicity wise.
The public opinion will be almost impossible to change, as normally, whichever company/standard/format grabs the opinion first, and is popular enough, is what stays. Regardless of quality. It's dismaying, but I don't think that we'll see, at least for another year or two, Ogg Vorbis having anywhere near the level of popularity as MP3s, as far as hardware devices.
Try the demo? I downloaded it, extracted it, went to run it, and it promtly crashed. Maybe I'll make a note of the URL and check back later, but if they certify it for "Win95 and up", and it crashes on my Win2000 gaming rig, I'm a little dubious.
My friend visited a few weeks ago from another state, bringing his PS2 and GTA3 with him. After we spent a good 8 hours playing it and laughing hysterically, we thought the game was the greatest thing ever.
When my friend returned, and e-mailed us the next week saying that he had won an XBox, I decided that I was going to hijack a car, GTA3 style, and come visit him. So I walked out to one of the campus parking lots with a PS2 controller, hit the "jack car" button, and waited to see myself open the door and jump in. It didn't work.
This game crushes the hopes of college students everywhere. This is precisely why it should be banned from Australia, and the US, too.
I'm currently a student at the University of Maryland we have Internet2 connectivity. Stolen from OIT's network throughput page is:
A 75Mbps connection to Qwest Communications for commodity internet traffic.
An Gigabit Ethernet connection to MAX (Mid Atlantic Crossroads), a consortium of local research institutions, through which we have high speed connectivity to those institutions as well as the NSF vBNS network and the Internet2 Abilene Network.
An ATM connection to UMATS, the intercampus network of the University System of Maryland for connectivity with other USM schools.
Internet2 gives me downloads very close to the theoretical max of the 10megabit connection to my room, which is great for being an ultra-low-ping bastard in games. With the gigabit connection, the ping times to basically any location on Internet2 is the same as if it was on your LAN.
To answer the IPv4 vs. IPv6 question, it uses the same IPv4 that the rest of the world uses, it just appears to be more infrastructure to speed up things.
Could someone explain the difference between a Local Area Network and a Personal Area Network? What constitutes the difference, or is it just a marketing term? I have (what I believe to be) a Local Area Network in my room. It consists of my computers, which are my personal property. Should I be calling it a Personal Area Network instead?
I'm currently running 10.1 (5G64) and have ran many other builds of OSX, both pre-10.0, 10.0.x, and pre-10.1. In all of those builds, I've never seen MS IE auto-launch a hqx as the article at Macintouch claims. I first heard about this last night, checked with several of my friends who also use 10.1, and we were unable to duplicate the security hole.
Personally, I think it's something written by a person who misconfigured their system and is looking to blame Microsoft for more things.
By all means, ban using Fat32 file systems. That'll be the fastest way to topple Microsoft and force a move to either Linux or MacOS, which will benefit the world.
Just imagine all the fun you could have, playing practical jokes on people who haven't got a clue how to secure their brand new *nix box.
Things like live porn and back episodes of southpark can be safely ignored.
If they are using this idea, then we can insert our secret terrorist conversations inside video broadcasts on the web. Just imagine, you're sitting there, watching a streaming porn feed, and suddenly you get Middle Eastern terrorist information coming across the screen.
Because it costs several million dollars to make a "good movie", while it costs not near that to make a "good album"... besides, people are ripping off VHS from the internet via ASF files or what-have-you. I don't hear the movie companies screaming in outrage over that, although admittedly, it isn't as big as mp3s.
Sure, I have taken mp3s from Napster, plenty of em. But, when I found the mp3s that I liked, I went out and bought the CDs, and if I didn't like the mp3s, then I deleted them. Is that illegal? I don't know.
It's like taking an album off the shelf, listening to it, and then choosing to buy it. Much like you can do at some modern bookstores (like Borders). The only difference is, you are able to listen to a much wider range through Napster and you are able to buy them through Amazon if you like. I think that Napster offers many people that choice.
Yes, I agree that there are many people who remorselessly steal mp3s and never think twice, and never have the slightest intention of buying the album. Those people are the ones who are, IMHO, breaking the law. Not the ones who download and delete or download and buy.
I completely agree with you. Us/.ers and others who are well versed in the internet are squabbling amongst ourselves over whether we should protect our right to rip people off or our right to not be ripped off.
We need to stand together, unified, against the RIAA and whoever else tries to attack copyright law and the free internet. As the saying goes "United we stand, divided we fall." Well, it's right.
Gawyn PS: somebody give the guy above me some more points!
Wait, with a black hole, wouldn't it ONLY be able to capture photons if they have mass? I recall a black hole being described as an object with such a huge mass that it draws all particles, including light, to it, not letting them escape.
Well, in that case, light has mass, and therefore, *loses his train of thought*... i dunno, a lotta physics assumptions are wrong I'm guessing.. i've never taken physics.
One thing thats been bugging me about this is this: doesn't mass have light? If not, then why should something with no mass by affected by the medium that it passes through?
For example, the 3.0x10^8 m/s is the speed of light in a vaccuum, the speed of light in water, air, etc. is slightly less because the light impacts the particles.. if it has no mass, it wouldn't have to worry about impacting other particles.
Also, how exactly can the prepared medium (cesium gas if I remember correctly) cause the light to go faster than in a vaccuum? I haven't had a physics course, but I've talked with many of my friends who have, and I don't understand that very well..
First of all, some enterprising soul needs to create a worm that does nothing more than add to a tally of computers hit by the worm. Then send this to many people, and see how much of the windows population actually listens to all of the "do not open unexpected attachments" letters.
I can't claim that I'm perfect, I try to help my high-school be immune from these things, but my dad opened the ILOVEYOU e-mail at work... and he works for the Coast Guard computer systems.
What needs to be done:
Change the defaults for Outlook, etc. so that worms like the ILOVEYOU worm and its rip-offs cannot be automatically run.
EDUCATE! The mindless windows user tries to make things as simple as possible, so they set themselves up for attack
I can sympathize with both sides, I used to use Windows at home, and was once one of the people who would have opened a letter like that, now I have a Mac and a Linux machine, and have changed the defaults on the family's windows machines so that no matter what my parents do, they can't be hit.
Education needs to come about, and Microsoft isn't going to educate anybody, unless they make the bouncing paperclip start telling people about computer security, although I'm not sure that we would want people to hear Microsoft's version of computer security.
Slashdot Mirror
This from the man who agreed with Steve Gibson about how raw sockets in WinXP was going to destroy the internet. Seeing as how slashdot still exists, I think he may be just a little bit off base.
Gawyn
The bottom line, regardless of how tasteless you may find RtCW or Day of Defeat, is that they are video games created in the USA, a country which grants its citizens freedom of expression. Therefore, no one has a right to ban them.
If you don't like the content, don't buy it, or don't play it. I fail to see why we should allow groups of people to determine what we should or should not be allowed to do, since we (assuming we're all 18 or older) are legal adults.
Now, in the case of letting kids play it, that's up to the kid's parents, and the issue of parenting is one that is strictly up to the parents. I am not a parent (I'm 18), however, common sense dictates that a 13 year old kid should not be allowed to buy games with a "Mature 17+" rating.
Gawyn
I know that Cisco had some messy issues about privatizing their work on the routers that they did while still at college, wouldn't this fall under the same category of attempting to privatize and earn money off of research/work done with the state's money at a state-owned facility?
I think that, if the internet had been privatized when it was first created, we wouldn't see anywhere near the amount of growth and diversity we have today.
Gawyn
VisualRoute provides a similar service and is normally pretty accurate.
Gawyn
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the RGB Mars book series, in which a space elevator was built on Mars. If I remember correctly (it's been a while since I read it), they modified the orbit of Deimos (or Phobos, I forget which) to geosynchronous, grabbed an asteroid or two from the asteroid belt, and had self-replicating robots build a factory there and start "spinning" diamond-filament threads.
By the time the asteroid got to Mars, most of the cable was already built, at which point it was anchored at a massive hold on the surface, and elevator cars were constructed to go up and down the elevator, using counterweights.
I believe that the problem of balancing it if you tried to "launch" something off the top of the platform was to simply give it a little push away, let it float off on it's own, and then use it's own engines to propel it.
Although it may seem a bit farfetched, I think that within the next decade, technology will allow us to realistically dream of doing this, although since we don't have nice-sized moons like Deimos or Phobos, we'd need to bring a bunch of asteroids in, which would make plenty of people on Earth rather anxious.
Still, it's a great theory, and perhaps some day we can get space elevators for cheap transportation into space.
Gawyn
Although Ogg Vorbis seems to be more promising than MP3, WMA, RA, or any of the other formats out there, for filesize and quality, it's lacking something. MP3 is by far the most supported format, not just in software, but in hardware. There are MP3 CD players, portable MP3 players, as well as tons of software on every platform imaginable.
Because of this, as well as the popularity of programs such as Morpheus/Kazaa, Napster, Gnutella, and so on, that help you find MP3s, the public equates "digital music" with "MP3," and so Ogg Vorbis is already a step behind, publicity wise.
The public opinion will be almost impossible to change, as normally, whichever company/standard/format grabs the opinion first, and is popular enough, is what stays. Regardless of quality. It's dismaying, but I don't think that we'll see, at least for another year or two, Ogg Vorbis having anywhere near the level of popularity as MP3s, as far as hardware devices.
Gawyn
Try the demo? I downloaded it, extracted it, went to run it, and it promtly crashed. Maybe I'll make a note of the URL and check back later, but if they certify it for "Win95 and up", and it crashes on my Win2000 gaming rig, I'm a little dubious.
Gawyn
My friend visited a few weeks ago from another state, bringing his PS2 and GTA3 with him. After we spent a good 8 hours playing it and laughing hysterically, we thought the game was the greatest thing ever.
When my friend returned, and e-mailed us the next week saying that he had won an XBox, I decided that I was going to hijack a car, GTA3 style, and come visit him. So I walked out to one of the campus parking lots with a PS2 controller, hit the "jack car" button, and waited to see myself open the door and jump in. It didn't work.
This game crushes the hopes of college students everywhere. This is precisely why it should be banned from Australia, and the US, too.
Gawyn
I'm currently a student at the University of Maryland we have Internet2 connectivity. Stolen from OIT's network throughput page is:
A 75Mbps connection to Qwest Communications for commodity internet traffic.
An Gigabit Ethernet connection to MAX (Mid Atlantic Crossroads), a consortium of local research institutions, through which we have high speed connectivity to those institutions as well as the NSF vBNS network and the Internet2 Abilene Network.
An ATM connection to UMATS, the intercampus network of the University System of Maryland for connectivity with other USM schools.
Internet2 gives me downloads very close to the theoretical max of the 10megabit connection to my room, which is great for being an ultra-low-ping bastard in games. With the gigabit connection, the ping times to basically any location on Internet2 is the same as if it was on your LAN.
To answer the IPv4 vs. IPv6 question, it uses the same IPv4 that the rest of the world uses, it just appears to be more infrastructure to speed up things.
Gawyn
Could someone explain the difference between a Local Area Network and a Personal Area Network? What constitutes the difference, or is it just a marketing term? I have (what I believe to be) a Local Area Network in my room. It consists of my computers, which are my personal property. Should I be calling it a Personal Area Network instead?
Gawyn
I'm currently running 10.1 (5G64) and have ran many other builds of OSX, both pre-10.0, 10.0.x, and pre-10.1. In all of those builds, I've never seen MS IE auto-launch a hqx as the article at Macintouch claims. I first heard about this last night, checked with several of my friends who also use 10.1, and we were unable to duplicate the security hole.
Personally, I think it's something written by a person who misconfigured their system and is looking to blame Microsoft for more things.
Gawyn
By all means, ban using Fat32 file systems. That'll be the fastest way to topple Microsoft and force a move to either Linux or MacOS, which will benefit the world.
Just imagine all the fun you could have, playing practical jokes on people who haven't got a clue how to secure their brand new *nix box.
Gawyn
Things like live porn and back episodes of southpark can be safely ignored.
If they are using this idea, then we can insert our secret terrorist conversations inside video broadcasts on the web. Just imagine, you're sitting there, watching a streaming porn feed, and suddenly you get Middle Eastern terrorist information coming across the screen.
Gawyn
"will be perfectly able to rip his CD collection w/o learning anything more complicated than his VCR."
How much of the populace can properly program a VCR? Not much. I think you overestimate a bit.
Gawyn
Because it costs several million dollars to make a "good movie", while it costs not near that to make a "good album" ... besides, people are ripping off VHS from the internet via ASF files or what-have-you. I don't hear the movie companies screaming in outrage over that, although admittedly, it isn't as big as mp3s.
Sure, I have taken mp3s from Napster, plenty of em. But, when I found the mp3s that I liked, I went out and bought the CDs, and if I didn't like the mp3s, then I deleted them. Is that illegal? I don't know.
It's like taking an album off the shelf, listening to it, and then choosing to buy it. Much like you can do at some modern bookstores (like Borders). The only difference is, you are able to listen to a much wider range through Napster and you are able to buy them through Amazon if you like. I think that Napster offers many people that choice.
Yes, I agree that there are many people who remorselessly steal mp3s and never think twice, and never have the slightest intention of buying the album. Those people are the ones who are, IMHO, breaking the law. Not the ones who download and delete or download and buy.
Gawyn
I completely agree with you. Us /.ers and others who are well versed in the internet are squabbling amongst ourselves over whether we should protect our right to rip people off or our right to not be ripped off.
We need to stand together, unified, against the RIAA and whoever else tries to attack copyright law and the free internet. As the saying goes "United we stand, divided we fall." Well, it's right.
Gawyn
PS: somebody give the guy above me some more points!
Wait, with a black hole, wouldn't it ONLY be able to capture photons if they have mass? I recall a black hole being described as an object with such a huge mass that it draws all particles, including light, to it, not letting them escape.
... i dunno, a lotta physics assumptions are wrong I'm guessing.. i've never taken physics.
Well, in that case, light has mass, and therefore, *loses his train of thought*
Joe
One thing thats been bugging me about this is this: doesn't mass have light? If not, then why should something with no mass by affected by the medium that it passes through?
For example, the 3.0x10^8 m/s is the speed of light in a vaccuum, the speed of light in water, air, etc. is slightly less because the light impacts the particles.. if it has no mass, it wouldn't have to worry about impacting other particles.
Also, how exactly can the prepared medium (cesium gas if I remember correctly) cause the light to go faster than in a vaccuum? I haven't had a physics course, but I've talked with many of my friends who have, and I don't understand that very well..
Thanks,
Joe
I can't claim that I'm perfect, I try to help my high-school be immune from these things, but my dad opened the ILOVEYOU e-mail at work... and he works for the Coast Guard computer systems.
What needs to be done:
- Change the defaults for Outlook, etc. so that worms like the ILOVEYOU worm and its rip-offs cannot be automatically run.
- EDUCATE! The mindless windows user tries to make things as simple as possible, so they set themselves up for attack
I can sympathize with both sides, I used to use Windows at home, and was once one of the people who would have opened a letter like that, now I have a Mac and a Linux machine, and have changed the defaults on the family's windows machines so that no matter what my parents do, they can't be hit.Education needs to come about, and Microsoft isn't going to educate anybody, unless they make the bouncing paperclip start telling people about computer security, although I'm not sure that we would want people to hear Microsoft's version of computer security.
My two cents,
Gawyn