Channel 4, for the non-UK types, is a terrestrial broadcast UK tv station, which although has had it's low points, actually has a lot of good quality original shows and documentaries. If I had to choose between the BBC and C4, I'd probably go for the latter. As it happens, I have to choose the latter, as only C4 make some of their programmes available for streaming over the internet.
C4 uses Real for their streaming. I signed up from the US and paid the 5UKP monthly fee. When I tried to view the streams, I was told that they were only available to UK residents. I simply changed my location setting in the account details to say UK, added a UK postcode, then I was able to view the streams without problem. The Texas billing address didn't seem to phase it. It's sad that I have to use this underhand tactic to get at what I'm happily paying for. They could probably make a lot more money if they loosened these artificial restrictions a bit.
A bit extreme. What they should do is make sure they never include any links in emails, instead telling the customer to log on to the main bank site. They'll also need to force the fact down the customer's neck that no legitimate email will contain links.
I had one from the Bank of America a few weeks ago reminding me of how quick and easy it is for me to pay bills online through their bill paying service. There were links to the online banking pages, including the login, on the server "bankofamerica1.com". I'm sat there scratching my head and resorting to whois enquiries to make sure bankofamerica1.com belongs to the Bank of America. I'd suddenly got very worried because I'd previously clicked a link in a similar BofA email and logged in. The fact that it was just advertising a feature rather than the more obvious "log in here to verify your account details" caught me off guard. It could have so easily been a subtle phishing tactic.
"The game was present in the victim's home, not the killer's... This may present a problem for those looking to turn this case to their own ends."
I've trawled through most of the links but I can't find where this quote was taken from. I've seen contradicting quotes stating that a copy of the game was removed from the killer's home by police. So which is it? Have I just gone blind?
I have a subscription to access premium content provided through Real. As this requires me to use RealPlayer for Windows, I guess I don't use it willingly as such. While the older Linux versions may have played the video fine, it didn't appear to support the login process for premium content. This has brought the transition from Windows to Linux in my household to a grinding halt.
So, has anyone had any luck accessing premium streams with this new version?
There was a pretty good rule of thumb in the early 80s, and to some extents it still holds today: how exciting, fantastic and wonderful the game cover is, is inversely proportional to how good the game actually is. I was lured several times by drawings of vast space battles, with sleek fighter craft attacking horribly beweaponed starcruisers, through a haze of laser fire and explosions... only to find the game has a triangle firing squares at a couple of advancing, um, rectangles with legs.
Of course, in those days, you had to use your imagination, which I think lent to more immersive gameplay. Sometimes, though, the gulf between the expectations raised by the game cover, and the actual game was just that bit too wide...
Ok, so that was abused, but falls a little short in the "still working" dept.
I had a monitor that gradually became harder and harder to turn on. Turned out that a dry joint on a resistor had gradually burned a hole about the size of a dime / five pence piece in the main circuit board. The guy who repaired it determined that the burnt edges of the hole were actually conducting just enough electricity to trip some kind of breaker, hence it would turn itself off just after I turned it on. Fortunately, no components had been damaged, so after cleaning up the hole and patching the circuit tracks with wire, it worked fine.
And by bus, I mean one of those big vehicle type things, with wheels.
Mid 90's, the company I was working for was having a recruitment push, which involved several of us developers moving our dev machines onto a converted bus, which was then driven to the local university. The idea was that we'd do some work, show the students what we do, ply them with free beer and convince them that ours was a good career choice.
Unfortunately, the only place we could park was next to the psychology department - the furthest point on the campus from the computing dept. As a result, 99% of the people we managed to coax onto the bus were only interested in the beer.
Anyway, the whole day was finished off nicely when the driver turned off the generator. For some reason this must have created an almighty power surge. My Mac Quadra, sitting underneath one of the tables, even though it was turned off, suddenly sounded like a deep fat frier, accompanied by a large plume of smoke. We yanked the power cord, but the damage had been done. Fortunately, the hard drive was fine, and we were able to swap this into a spare machine. I know at least the PSU was destroyed, but I can't recall if the motherboard had survived.
I think the only thing we achieved with this recruitment drive was a small section in the local paper saying how a local firm was attempting to recruit students with free beer.:/
I first tried the avi with Windows Media Player; it went off looking for a codec and finally decided it couldn't download one, which sounds like what's happened to you. I found it worked fine with the free divx player, so maybe this will help you, too?
I know... I was hoping people would be distracted by the new poll, so went straight for saving the movie file. Started at abour 120k/s, finished around 27k/s.:)
As the article says, there's not much content beyond the exploding earth and "don't panic" message. Still, I'm a big hitch-hikers fan, and it gave me goosebumps. You can go stick your Star Wars prequel, I don't care anymore. I just hope they don't go and f%ck up this film!
Large boxes are good when they're used properly. I remember games like the old infocom adventures and others that used to stuff their boxes with all kinds of booklets, help sheets, maps, posters, cards - things that would actually add to the game, not just fill space, and would encourage you to buy the game. Trouble is, many publishers just ended up in a race to see who had the biggest box, and therefore the biggest presence on the store shelf, even though the huge box may only contain a single CD jewel case. Games in small boxes got lost amongst them.
I, for one, was glad when they settled on the DVD style case, because at least I could get a dozen games on my shelf and still have room for something else. I do miss all the additional box contents, but seeing as very few publishers were going to that extent anymore, there's little real loss.
About five years ago, a friend of mine spent about 300 UKP (about $550) on a flashy universal remote control with touchscreen and user-definable operations and button sets. It was the fabled dogs danglies. Unfortunately, it suffered from one major drawback (apart from the price). While you could set up wonderful sequences like turn on the TV, DVD player, set the amp to AUX, dim the lights, close the curtains, etc, there was no way of the remote knowing if the target device had received the signal correctly. If the cat walked past at the wrong time, or you simply weren't pointing the remote in the right direction, you'll find everything turned on but the tv. You'll then be listening to the movie starting while you're jabbing the remote looking for the tv control screen.
When all these devices support a common, open, bi-directional messaging system, then I'll consider it, but at this stage.. feh!
I hadn't heard of valgrind, so I looked it up. Unfortunately, this is isn't an x86 architecture, nor is it running Linux. The target machine has a multitude of sub-processors that mostly communicate via DMA. Odds are that the debugger was halting the main CPU at a critical point, starving something of the data it needed, and locking part of the system.
Barely related, but from article about the onboard computer:
"each time a 1201 or 1202 alarm appeared, the computer rebooted, restarted the important stuff, like steering the descent engine and occurred."
It's a good job they weren't rebooting any modern system + OS, otherwise they'd have left just another inconsequential moon crater rather than footprints.
The article describes how the cat manages to turn by rotating parts of its body without actually pushing against anything, or breaking any laws of physics. I think NASA would be very interested in this because it would mean a robot in a 0-g environment could alter its rotation without having to resort to firing chemical or compressed gas engines. Which is pretty cool. Has anything else like this been attempted?
I'll admit, though, that my initial thought was that the robot being in a situation where there is no clearly defined up or down, would do nothing apart from declare itself to be the right way up already. This may explain why NASA hasn't invited me to help out on any missions lately.
I found a new variant a couple of months ago. A bug that only occurs when I try looking for it. I found it while debugging something else, but tracing it through was causing the target machine to lock up completely every time on the most innocent of instructions. Run the code freely, and it would be fine. The odds are it was just the debugging process was messing with some critical timing of something in the hardware. As to what exactly, shall remain a mandelbug, but it was certainly a brainache at the time.
I installed Mandrake 10 about a week ago in a bid to get away from the continual battle against adware/spyware and the like. It all went pretty smoothly, except my HP scanner is apparently unsupported, and I'm unable to access premium content through RealPlayer. Not being able to log in for premium content through RealPlayer is forcing the selection of Windows XP whenever the machine is started up. It might not seem to be a major issue, but at the moment it's one of the more frequently used apps on this machine.
Additionally, font rendering in Opera seems terrible, which is a shame as that has become our browser of choice. Mozilla does a much better job out of the box. I have not yet tackled the drivers for the ATI video card, along with support for the TV tuner, beyond idle googling.
When I'm really brave, I'll tackle the wireless network and internet connection sharing. *shudder*
If anyone has had any luck with RealPlayer premium content under Linux, please let me know! TBH, I think it's version 8 I grabbed, but I've since learnt there's a version 10. Maybe that'll make the difference, but I need to find an hour or so to try it!
That was my initial thought. Well, the first part anyway. I can only assume they were (at least attempting to) scam several people through the same setup at the same time. I'm sure they didn't send out just the one email. What we don't know is how many other people fell for it and gathered up the full $8000 requested. They must have been disappointed that this guy didn't manage the full amount, but still squeezed what they could out of him.
Slashdot Mirror
Channel 4, for the non-UK types, is a terrestrial broadcast UK tv station, which although has had it's low points, actually has a lot of good quality original shows and documentaries. If I had to choose between the BBC and C4, I'd probably go for the latter. As it happens, I have to choose the latter, as only C4 make some of their programmes available for streaming over the internet.
C4 uses Real for their streaming. I signed up from the US and paid the 5UKP monthly fee. When I tried to view the streams, I was told that they were only available to UK residents. I simply changed my location setting in the account details to say UK, added a UK postcode, then I was able to view the streams without problem. The Texas billing address didn't seem to phase it. It's sad that I have to use this underhand tactic to get at what I'm happily paying for. They could probably make a lot more money if they loosened these artificial restrictions a bit.
A bit extreme. What they should do is make sure they never include any links in emails, instead telling the customer to log on to the main bank site. They'll also need to force the fact down the customer's neck that no legitimate email will contain links.
I had one from the Bank of America a few weeks ago reminding me of how quick and easy it is for me to pay bills online through their bill paying service. There were links to the online banking pages, including the login, on the server "bankofamerica1.com". I'm sat there scratching my head and resorting to whois enquiries to make sure bankofamerica1.com belongs to the Bank of America. I'd suddenly got very worried because I'd previously clicked a link in a similar BofA email and logged in. The fact that it was just advertising a feature rather than the more obvious "log in here to verify your account details" caught me off guard. It could have so easily been a subtle phishing tactic.
Having spent a year dead for tax reasons, I seem to have missed all this. So, are CDs now fairly priced, or what?
"The game was present in the victim's home, not the killer's... This may present a problem for those looking to turn this case to their own ends."
I've trawled through most of the links but I can't find where this quote was taken from. I've seen contradicting quotes stating that a copy of the game was removed from the killer's home by police. So which is it? Have I just gone blind?
"Willingly" hmmm...
I have a subscription to access premium content provided through Real. As this requires me to use RealPlayer for Windows, I guess I don't use it willingly as such. While the older Linux versions may have played the video fine, it didn't appear to support the login process for premium content. This has brought the transition from Windows to Linux in my household to a grinding halt.
So, has anyone had any luck accessing premium streams with this new version?
There was a pretty good rule of thumb in the early 80s, and to some extents it still holds today: how exciting, fantastic and wonderful the game cover is, is inversely proportional to how good the game actually is. I was lured several times by drawings of vast space battles, with sleek fighter craft attacking horribly beweaponed starcruisers, through a haze of laser fire and explosions... only to find the game has a triangle firing squares at a couple of advancing, um, rectangles with legs.
Of course, in those days, you had to use your imagination, which I think lent to more immersive gameplay. Sometimes, though, the gulf between the expectations raised by the game cover, and the actual game was just that bit too wide...
Ok, so that was abused, but falls a little short in the "still working" dept.
I had a monitor that gradually became harder and harder to turn on. Turned out that a dry joint on a resistor had gradually burned a hole about the size of a dime / five pence piece in the main circuit board. The guy who repaired it determined that the burnt edges of the hole were actually conducting just enough electricity to trip some kind of breaker, hence it would turn itself off just after I turned it on. Fortunately, no components had been damaged, so after cleaning up the hole and patching the circuit tracks with wire, it worked fine.
And by bus, I mean one of those big vehicle type things, with wheels.
:/
Mid 90's, the company I was working for was having a recruitment push, which involved several of us developers moving our dev machines onto a converted bus, which was then driven to the local university. The idea was that we'd do some work, show the students what we do, ply them with free beer and convince them that ours was a good career choice.
Unfortunately, the only place we could park was next to the psychology department - the furthest point on the campus from the computing dept. As a result, 99% of the people we managed to coax onto the bus were only interested in the beer.
Anyway, the whole day was finished off nicely when the driver turned off the generator. For some reason this must have created an almighty power surge. My Mac Quadra, sitting underneath one of the tables, even though it was turned off, suddenly sounded like a deep fat frier, accompanied by a large plume of smoke. We yanked the power cord, but the damage had been done. Fortunately, the hard drive was fine, and we were able to swap this into a spare machine. I know at least the PSU was destroyed, but I can't recall if the motherboard had survived.
I think the only thing we achieved with this recruitment drive was a small section in the local paper saying how a local firm was attempting to recruit students with free beer.
Oh, it's a colour scheme, is it? I thought my monitor was running low on ink.
I mean, you don't stuff the jewel cases back into the original packaging, do you?
Well... hrmm... (shuffles uncomfortably)... you know... yes!
How strange am I?
I first tried the avi with Windows Media Player; it went off looking for a codec and finally decided it couldn't download one, which sounds like what's happened to you. I found it worked fine with the free divx player, so maybe this will help you, too?
There was a link to the movie website, although that too is sadly lacking in content.
I know... I was hoping people would be distracted by the new poll, so went straight for saving the movie file. Started at abour 120k/s, finished around 27k/s. :)
As the article says, there's not much content beyond the exploding earth and "don't panic" message. Still, I'm a big hitch-hikers fan, and it gave me goosebumps. You can go stick your Star Wars prequel, I don't care anymore. I just hope they don't go and f%ck up this film!
I'm not so sure when it comes to the packaging.
Large boxes are good when they're used properly. I remember games like the old infocom adventures and others that used to stuff their boxes with all kinds of booklets, help sheets, maps, posters, cards - things that would actually add to the game, not just fill space, and would encourage you to buy the game. Trouble is, many publishers just ended up in a race to see who had the biggest box, and therefore the biggest presence on the store shelf, even though the huge box may only contain a single CD jewel case. Games in small boxes got lost amongst them.
I, for one, was glad when they settled on the DVD style case, because at least I could get a dozen games on my shelf and still have room for something else. I do miss all the additional box contents, but seeing as very few publishers were going to that extent anymore, there's little real loss.
About five years ago, a friend of mine spent about 300 UKP (about $550) on a flashy universal remote control with touchscreen and user-definable operations and button sets. It was the fabled dogs danglies. Unfortunately, it suffered from one major drawback (apart from the price). While you could set up wonderful sequences like turn on the TV, DVD player, set the amp to AUX, dim the lights, close the curtains, etc, there was no way of the remote knowing if the target device had received the signal correctly. If the cat walked past at the wrong time, or you simply weren't pointing the remote in the right direction, you'll find everything turned on but the tv. You'll then be listening to the movie starting while you're jabbing the remote looking for the tv control screen.
When all these devices support a common, open, bi-directional messaging system, then I'll consider it, but at this stage.. feh!
Sony are producing a commemorative edition Moonlander(tm) monitor with a max resolution of 904x913. Allegedly.
I hadn't heard of valgrind, so I looked it up. Unfortunately, this is isn't an x86 architecture, nor is it running Linux. The target machine has a multitude of sub-processors that mostly communicate via DMA. Odds are that the debugger was halting the main CPU at a critical point, starving something of the data it needed, and locking part of the system.
We already have to overcome the linux is only for geeks issue. Do we want add on the screaming fanatic with no grasp on reality issue as well.
Well, Microsoft have Steve Ballmer - perhaps the OS game requires you to be linked with a sweaty screaming guy?
Bigger is always better, unless you're talking about /. uids or cell phones.
Barely related, but from article about the onboard computer:
"each time a 1201 or 1202 alarm appeared, the computer rebooted, restarted the important stuff, like steering the descent engine and occurred."
It's a good job they weren't rebooting any modern system + OS, otherwise they'd have left just another inconsequential moon crater rather than footprints.
The article describes how the cat manages to turn by rotating parts of its body without actually pushing against anything, or breaking any laws of physics. I think NASA would be very interested in this because it would mean a robot in a 0-g environment could alter its rotation without having to resort to firing chemical or compressed gas engines. Which is pretty cool. Has anything else like this been attempted?
I'll admit, though, that my initial thought was that the robot being in a situation where there is no clearly defined up or down, would do nothing apart from declare itself to be the right way up already. This may explain why NASA hasn't invited me to help out on any missions lately.
I found a new variant a couple of months ago. A bug that only occurs when I try looking for it. I found it while debugging something else, but tracing it through was causing the target machine to lock up completely every time on the most innocent of instructions. Run the code freely, and it would be fine. The odds are it was just the debugging process was messing with some critical timing of something in the hardware. As to what exactly, shall remain a mandelbug, but it was certainly a brainache at the time.
Don't worry. They've gone to great lengths to let the whole world know it's implanted in his arm, when actually it's in his left leg.
I installed Mandrake 10 about a week ago in a bid to get away from the continual battle against adware/spyware and the like. It all went pretty smoothly, except my HP scanner is apparently unsupported, and I'm unable to access premium content through RealPlayer. Not being able to log in for premium content through RealPlayer is forcing the selection of Windows XP whenever the machine is started up. It might not seem to be a major issue, but at the moment it's one of the more frequently used apps on this machine.
Additionally, font rendering in Opera seems terrible, which is a shame as that has become our browser of choice. Mozilla does a much better job out of the box. I have not yet tackled the drivers for the ATI video card, along with support for the TV tuner, beyond idle googling.
When I'm really brave, I'll tackle the wireless network and internet connection sharing. *shudder*
If anyone has had any luck with RealPlayer premium content under Linux, please let me know! TBH, I think it's version 8 I grabbed, but I've since learnt there's a version 10. Maybe that'll make the difference, but I need to find an hour or so to try it!
That was my initial thought. Well, the first part anyway. I can only assume they were (at least attempting to) scam several people through the same setup at the same time. I'm sure they didn't send out just the one email. What we don't know is how many other people fell for it and gathered up the full $8000 requested. They must have been disappointed that this guy didn't manage the full amount, but still squeezed what they could out of him.