What happens if the company who rents me my apartment goes under? Do I lose my place to live?
Bad, bad analogy. In the case of an apartment complex, you've two key differences from renting software:
The smaller difference is that a physical asset, such as a building, is less likely to be forgetten during asset liquidation. An intangible, such as license key generation, is much easier to "lose". In the Slashdot article text, they specificially mention the "free use" key as an option that only kicks in under the absence of a new company picking up the key generation/licensing duties.
The more important difference is that, in the case of an apartment, there are laws that protect you from getting kicked out in the street. In addition, you've got a binding contract with the rental agency to lease the apartment. In most software cases, the only contract is a one-sided EULA. Furthermore, the software company doesn't have to initiate a process similar to eviction in order to stop you from using the software -- they merely have to fail to issue new license keys.
This is an issue that strikes near and dear to my heart. I've been trying to (legally) get my hands on the source to a number of old MBBS games, so I could run them, primarily out of nostalgia.
Unfortunately, it looks like most of the companies that did the interesting games have vanished. Even Galacticomm, the company that sold MBBS, sold it to a company called NetVillage, which is now marketing it as corporate groupware.
I've also looked into running some of the old DOS-based doors via DOSemu, but I really don't want to go through the grief of getting them up and running only to have the registration checks get returned. I have neither the time nor the expertise to crack them in the absence of a legitimate reg code.
Well, I had loved the game engine from I and II -- I enjoy typing, I enjoyed the versatility that being able to type arbitrary text gave me, and I felt that the addition of mouse-based spell targetting in the second game added to the engine without losing anything.
Then QFG3 came along, as part of Sierra's new "pure mouse" school of thought. I was less than happy with this decision. I was also less than happy with having to make my character repeatedly train his physical attributes in order to stay even remotely viable in the new world. But I accepted these changes and still enjoyed the game all the way through to the end. I didn't replay it multiple times (unlike the earlier games), but I still had fun.
And then I saw QFG4 on the store shelf. The question in my mind was not "Should I buy this?", but rather "How much money do I have on me?" I happily headed home, new purchase in hand, only to discover...
Sierra had shipped a bug-laden, poorly tested pathetic excuse for a piece of software. As much as I disliked the mouse-only interface, I could live with that. I couldn't live with the game crashing every 20-30 minutes. It takes real effort to turn a hardcore fan off of a series like Quest for Glory, but they managed to do it. Because of my experiences, I never bothered getting QFG5.
And, as a random aside, Erasmus from QFG1/2 (can't remember if he was in 3 and I didn't play 4 far enough to find out if he was in it) was a significant influence in my choice of online nicknames. (The other factor being, of course, Charles Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. But I wouldn't have gone with the name if it weren't for my earlier exposure to Mr. Razzle Dazzle Rootbeer.)
i am failrly sure that the probability doesn't change depending on the actual colour of the hat.
First off, my solution is predicated on the (incorrect) notion that the answers were being done in order, rather than simultaneously.
That being said, the key difference was that their solution failed when the hats were the same color (regardless of color), while my solution failed when all the hats were a single, (arbitrarily) predetermined color. So they failed in the cases of RRR or BBB always, while my algorithm would fail in only BBB. RRR comes up 12.5% of the time, thus indicating the difference between the two success rates.
But, of course, I had solved the wrong problem, so trying to compare the two solutions isn't really accurate.
Re:I think you're right, Erasmus; here's even bett
on
The Three Hat Problem
·
· Score: 1
Not a bad result, but here's a small patch: If the first guy sees only blue hats he has to take a blind guess. Sure, his chances are only 50% but if he followed your rules that turn would be lost inevitably--so this patch cuts the error rate of your method in half.
If you take another peek at what I wrote, player 1 arbitrarily chooses 'red' if he sees both player 2 and player 3 with 'blue' hats. Him choosing 'red' should be the same as a blind guess -- he wins 50% of the time. However, I chose to hardcode his guess into the algorithm so that it made things easier to conceptually analyze (BBB would be the only losing case).
Under your patch, they'd win half the time when it was RBB and half the time when it was BBB, which should come out the same as winning mine where they win all the time as RBB and none of the time as BBB.
Also, by making each arbitrary guess 'red', it makes it really easy to code an algorithm for the guesses, since each person uses an identical thought process:
If someone after me has a red hat, I will pass to them so that they may win. If no one after me has a red hat, I will guess red.
Well, it's possible we both misunderstood the problem, because this is just too easy... But whatever. So this might be a good solution to a different problem.
That is, indeed, the case. The thing we've missed is that the players must answer simultaneously, so player 3 can't predicate his answer on the fact that player 1 and player 2 failed to answer. Personally, though, I had enough fun fiddling with the non-simultaneous case, even if it isn't as mathematically significant.
The National Archives only accepts data in ASCII format. They view text as the lowest common denominator [...] You can understand their posistion after you sit down and think..this is our American history...
So I'm sitting down and thinking, but I still don't understand their position. I can appreciate both the importance of ASCII text and its accessibility (hell, I still use lynx to browse the web), but I can't understand why you would restrict yourself to only text.
Consider the following:
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the surface of the moon.
--versus--
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the surface of the moon. Here is a picture, in an open, documented graphics format.
There's just too much history that's more than just pure text. I can understand trying to make as much material as possible available as text, but you can't let such a decision allow you to exclude relevant materials that're more than just text.
I think that a good poll question would be "Which episode of the Ultima series was the best?"
Personally, I think Ultima 4-6 was just pure gold. Ultima 1, 2, and 3, while nifty from a nostalgia standpoint, had this "I'm throwing together a fantasy world or something." sort of feel. Once he hit 4 was where coherency started to develop. However, 5 and especially 6 kept building upon that world and outdoing the previous ones. I remember being completely wowed by 6's concept of "The entire overworld is one scale."
Finally, I used to like 7, but these days I can't help but view it as the ramp leading up to 8. I don't think I managed to make it past the first town in 8. My disappointment was on the par with Quest for Glory 4. I suppose I should be thankful that 8 cured me of my Ultima addiction before UO came about.
Not sure you read the rules of the puzzle correctly.
That was, indeed, my problem. I didn't realize that they had to guess simultaneously. Had the players been able to guess in order, mine would've worked. (And still would've tied back to the hamming code concept.)
I've come up with what (I think) is a better solution than the one presented in the article. Feel free to poke holes in it if I'm wrong.
In the article, in the 3 hat case, they've got a 75% chance of winning (their solution generated a loss if all 3 hats were the same color). I've managed to come up with an 87.5% chance of winning, instead:
Player 3's strategy will be to always guess 'red'. Player 2's strategy will be to guess 'red' only if Player 3's hat is 'blue'. Otherwise, Player 2 passes, knowing Player 3 will win. Player 1's strategy will be to guess 'red' only if Player 2 and Player 3 both have 'blue'. Otherwise, Player 1 passes, knowing Player 2 or Player 3 will win it.
The only time this solution will fail is the case where all three hats are blue. This occurs 1 out of 8 times (12.5%).
In the 15 player case mentioned later on, the article claims they've got a situation that works 15 out of 16 times (93.75%). Using my method above, it should work 99.99% of the time.
In the immortal words of Joel Hodgson, "What do you think, sirs?"
Instead of dyanamic jails (how would you save your ASCII porn?), a better solution might be to use an OS with Secure Levels
Take a second look at the last line of my post, where I mention any saved files get chown'd back to the user. This could be further refined by doing a "safe copy" back into the user's directory. For example, ~/lynx-jail/textfiles/foo.txt would get copied over to ~/textfiles/foo.txt, provided that there are no dotfiles in the path (thus a malicious application couldn't create ~/lynx-jail/.rhosts) and provided that nothing gets copied overwritten by the copy (thus defeating someone attempting to create ~/lynx-jail/Mail/received). You could make this even slicker by specifying that certain files (such as those ending in.txt) may be appended automagically if they already exist. Or it could prompt the user for resolution.
And if you wanted to get really fancy, you could put all the changes under CVS, so that the files within the lynx-jail get checked in.
I've yet to look into any of the more secure operating systems, but one advantage of my system is that it'd require few-to-no changes in the kernel. This is especially desirable if it's going to take awhile before such systems are fully tested and deployed on a regular basis.
So what's my bottom line here? "Is encryption really secure?"
Next time, how about reading the article before going off half-cocked? As usual, the Slashdot story has a less-than-accurate summary line. However, if you read the last paragraph (i.e. where we get to the actual question after wading through the background material), it reads "So what are good practices to adopt when using encryption software?". The supplicant then goes on to ask about some particular possibilities for improving overall security (such as keeping your key on a disk). Given that security practices are often as important as security software, I don't see where the problem is.
As far as possible solutions go, one interesting possibility might be dynamically generated chroot jails for network clients. For example, every time I start up lynx, my ~/.lynxrc and ~/lynx_bookmarks would get copied to ~/lynx-jail. Lynx would then be run out of ~/lynx-jail using a dynamically generated "nobody" user account. After lynx terminates, the config files get copied back and any saved files get chown'd over to my normal user account.
I wonder if they were to move to Canada if they would be safe from private lawsuits by Americans.
IANAL, but as I understand it, the fact that they would still be doing business in the US would provide at least some exposure to still being sued. I honestly have no clue, however, about how any actual international treaties would affect the situation. But, as a wild ass guess, I suspect such a move would, at least, provide some protection against the DOJ trying to directly manipulate and split the company itself -- but the US would still be free to interfere with the MS business that still would take place within the US borders. Of course, there's also the factor that MS is currently a publically traded company on a US-based stock exchange. I don't know what effect that would have on things.
Had it not been for 3D spoiling the variety and quality of games
Other things that've been responsible for spoiling the variety and quality of games:
Gauntlet - Popularized "quarter suckers"
Street Fighter 2 - Popularized "fighting games"
Duck Hunt - Eventually led to numerous "shoot at stuff" arcade variants
Graphics - Was to games what television was to books
There's always something out there for the less talented, formulaic game designers to latch on to and copy. If it wasn't cloning 3D first-person shooters, it would be cloning 2D side-scrolling platform games or 2D real-time strategy games or...
You're still going to have to carry a monitor around
That, of course, will be the topic of next week's Ask Slashdot: "How can I build a smaller monitor? I've heard I can get a nasty shock even when it's unplugged. What parts should I avoid touching?"
Seriously, it's easier to carry one bulky monitor and one small case (even if it's still separate trips) than it is to carry one bulky monitor and one large case, especially if you're dragging them somewhere like a 3rd floor apartment.
Hell, maybe his friend even has some extra monitors lying around. A cheap monitor is still significantly cheaper than a "cheap" PC with enough oomph to keep up with contemporary FPSes.
As oppose to what? Having the last two parts of a two part editorial?
Given that the end of the second part speaks of an additional upcoming part, it's appears to be at least a three part editorial.
Personally, I wish Slashdot would wait until these things were complete before posting the story. It'd be rather nice not having to worry about remembering to go back to a site that I otherwise don't visit. I could understand if it were an issue that was time sensitive or one where the Slashdot traffic was important to the outcome, but neither seems to be the case here.
Everytime we see a post from Taco that contains a link to a QuickTime video we hear him whining "Of course, it doesn't work in Linux so I can't see it."
I can think of a number of reasons why the two situations are slightly different:
Reboot Time Overhead In a dual-boot situation, it's not hard to see the difference between rebooting for several hours of game play versus rebooting just to view a 5 minute video clip. In the later case, the hassle of rebooting is a disproportionately large portion of the entire task.
Gaming Precludes Multitasking Most games tend to suck most-to-all of your attention. While you may have peaks and lulls in the Diablo excitement level, you generally have to actively control your character for even the mundane task of travelling through completely purged levels (assuming they haven't added an autowalk feature to Diablo II). With a video clip, on the other hand, (especially if it's a talk, lecture, or a similar thing where the visual contents consist of long periods of pictures of J. Random Person just moving his/her mouth and occasionally gesturing), it's generally possible to get other tasks done. Depending on what those other tasks are, you may feel less than fully productive when working from a Windows box (especially if you don't use Windows often enough to justify going through the trouble of installing all the Unix-like utilities and tools for Windows that you can get your hands on).
Games -> Code, Video -> Information I understand the technological and economic reasons that prevent Linux versions of most games -- the games are generally non-free (in both beer and speech), porting takes work, work generally takes money (due to the non-free factor), and that money generally needs to be recouped by selling copies of the port. While, ideally, I wouldn't complain if a game company were to start releasing all the games for free (either one), I would have to question their business sense. (Apologies for any inaccuracies in the following; I'm not well-versed in most of the video details.) With video, on the other hand, the people providing it are generally doing so in a "come one, come all, see our video clip" information provider manner. There are ways they can avoid making their information unviewable to a certain minority of computer users. However, due to ignorance, laziness, or any of a number of other possible factors, they've failed in part of their "information provider" role.
for instance, someone who has used ms word and part of koffice would be instant flaimbait if they were to say that they found the animated paperclip useful. i'm kind of expecting to be modded down myself due to my different ideas...
Personally, I've never felt I couldn't express my mind on a subject, even if it does deviate from what's considered the "typical" Slashdot line. I've found it also helps to provide a bit more rationale than just "foo sucks" or "foo rules". For example, I wouldn't have any qualms against posting the following (to use your animated paperclip example):
I haven't used koffice, but I have used both Office 2000 and Star Office 5.2. I have no qualms against stating that, as annoying as the paper clip guy can be, he
was more useful than Star Office's help agent thing. Furthermore, Office's help agent was easy enough to turn off. The best I've been able to accomplish with Star Office is getting the damn help agent to start minimized/scrolled up as this stupid bar on the right side of my screen. I hate Star Office with a passion. It manages to reproduce all of the negatives and few of the positives of both MS Office and Windows, globs it into a single monolithic application, and then adds numerous extra bugs.
Now I'll admit that there are times when the Slashdot moderation system fails. However, I think for the most part, I don't think it overly reenforces just a single opinion. For example, even though I disagree with your post, both I and some moderator have both found it interesting. I also find that people seem to be too quick to label their own posts as "I know I'll get modded down for this..." People underrate the diversity of thought and opinion on Slashdot. I'd consider its opposite to be something like "News for Jocks" rather than "News for people who think Microsoft products are good and Linux is too confusing" -- and even that isn't a given; I'm sure there are a number of athletically active Slashdot readers.
Oh great. Now I'm gonna have nightmares involving Greg Proops and Ryan Stiles fighting to the death, while Tony Slattery tries to guess what type of robot each of them are.
Useless trivia: That was just the first novel, however. The second novel (2010) used the facts/dialogue from the first movie and even went so far as to rewrite parts of the first book, via flashbacks, to match the first movie. It seriously annoyed the hell out of me. While reading the first book, I was perpetually annoyed by all the dialogue that almost matched the movie. While reading the second book, I was perpetually annoyed that he attempted to destroy all my careful mental coping with the issues from the first book.
As I said, I'd never even tried the backdoor. But I did notice that people were upset over it. I'm not saying that TiVo isn't allowed to pull it (and it's not like they killed a selling point), but people are certainly missing the fact that it's gone. As for people hacking in a replacement, there's the whole issue of the myworld application being closed.
2) Capacities weren't "reduced on hacked TiVos." The new OS just requires a little more space.
I thought I did a decent job of explaining that it wasn't TiVo going after hacked units, but rather was an aspect of the update taking up more space. Besides, there's a certain "high score" factor in having a TiVo with a lot of hours.
3) If you know about the change, how can you not know about the fix?
I'm not an avid reader of the TiVo hacking forum. I read it for a few weeks starting with right before I decided to get my TiVo, then stopped reading. I probably wouldn't have even known 2.0 was finally rolling out, except that I was having problems with my TiVo and decided to go digging for repair tips. Despite having thrown a second harddrive in the thing, I've still never hooked a machine up to the serial port -- there's no PC nearby and either lugging the TiVo/TV to the PC or the PC to the TiVo would've been a pain. Even worse, if the BIOS password isn't "factory", I'm going to have to go through all the trouble of recracking the case.
Furthermore, I'd argue that the change in autocorrection is something that would also be visible to someone who wasn't into hacking their TiVo. Part of the beauty of the TiVo is that, while there are all kinds of fun ways to get into the system and such, it's also nice and simple from a J. Random Consumer standpoint. And if J. Random Consumer has also been using his TiVo for 6 months or so, he's going to notice that suddenly the FF is off. Personally, I never even bothered to figure out the timing for the 3rd FF speed -- the 2nd speed still got me through a commercial break in about 10 seconds, gave me a chance to see if there were any interesting commercials (I've been known to stop, go back, and watch commercials that interest me), and still autocorrected almost perfectly. I've got it down to a science.
I've gotten all my season passes crammed in there with the workaround from the FAQ. I'm happy with my TiVo. I'm more than happy -- I've gone around convincing other people how great TiVo is (which, admittedly, isn't that difficult to do). I, personally, feel no need to upgrade. Without such a need, any negatives (no matter how small or trivial) aren't being outweighed by any positives.
But you do have a choice -- until you get 2.0 you don't *need* the service for the thing to work.
I know I don't need it, but to me "2.0 + service" is still a better deal than "1.3 + no service", especially given that I've got a dozen or more season passes (with conflicts carefully resolved used the old workaround in the TiVo FAQ). However, that won't stop me from complaining that I'd still be happier with just "1.3 + service". Plus, I've already paid for the service (the two day new unit trial was enough to convince me to go with lifetime).
Amusingly enough, this has some very current relevance to the TiVo, as well. Around the end of March, TiVo started rolling out version 2.0 of their software to the general public. For the most part, it's an upgrade that fixes a few bugs and improves a lot of the functionality. However, like the ReplayTV "upgrade", it's not voluntary unless you're willing to forego the guide data (which provides most of the functionality of the unit -- I know I wouldn't bother if I had to manually enter programming times; I may be smart enough to do it, but I'm also lazy).
There are at least 3 "negative" features in the new TiVo release:
Removal of the 30-second skip backdoor (there was a backdoor code that gave your TiVo a 30-second skip button like ReplayTV has; never used it personally)
Capacity reduction for hacked TiVos (this isn't a delibrate attempt to attack the hacked units; however, some of the new features automatically grab extra storage space on "larger" units -- the TiVo produced units with enough capacity to trigger this feature already have that space reserved)
Autocorrection jump-back changes (when you hit play after fast-forwarding, the TiVo jumps back a bit to autocorrect for human reactions; personally I'm totally comfortable with the way it is now and am dreading the changes)
If the upgrades were completely optional, I'd be more than happy to stick with my existing version of the software. I love my TiVo. It works great. I don't want them changing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Bad, bad analogy. In the case of an apartment complex, you've two key differences from renting software:
The smaller difference is that a physical asset, such as a building, is less likely to be forgetten during asset liquidation. An intangible, such as license key generation, is much easier to "lose". In the Slashdot article text, they specificially mention the "free use" key as an option that only kicks in under the absence of a new company picking up the key generation/licensing duties.
The more important difference is that, in the case of an apartment, there are laws that protect you from getting kicked out in the street. In addition, you've got a binding contract with the rental agency to lease the apartment. In most software cases, the only contract is a one-sided EULA. Furthermore, the software company doesn't have to initiate a process similar to eviction in order to stop you from using the software -- they merely have to fail to issue new license keys.
This is an issue that strikes near and dear to my heart. I've been trying to (legally) get my hands on the source to a number of old MBBS games, so I could run them, primarily out of nostalgia.
Unfortunately, it looks like most of the companies that did the interesting games have vanished. Even Galacticomm, the company that sold MBBS, sold it to a company called NetVillage, which is now marketing it as corporate groupware.
I've also looked into running some of the old DOS-based doors via DOSemu, but I really don't want to go through the grief of getting them up and running only to have the registration checks get returned. I have neither the time nor the expertise to crack them in the absence of a legitimate reg code.
Well, I had loved the game engine from I and II -- I enjoy typing, I enjoyed the versatility that being able to type arbitrary text gave me, and I felt that the addition of mouse-based spell targetting in the second game added to the engine without losing anything.
Then QFG3 came along, as part of Sierra's new "pure mouse" school of thought. I was less than happy with this decision. I was also less than happy with having to make my character repeatedly train his physical attributes in order to stay even remotely viable in the new world. But I accepted these changes and still enjoyed the game all the way through to the end. I didn't replay it multiple times (unlike the earlier games), but I still had fun.
And then I saw QFG4 on the store shelf. The question in my mind was not "Should I buy this?", but rather "How much money do I have on me?" I happily headed home, new purchase in hand, only to discover...
Sierra had shipped a bug-laden, poorly tested pathetic excuse for a piece of software. As much as I disliked the mouse-only interface, I could live with that. I couldn't live with the game crashing every 20-30 minutes. It takes real effort to turn a hardcore fan off of a series like Quest for Glory, but they managed to do it. Because of my experiences, I never bothered getting QFG5.
And, as a random aside, Erasmus from QFG1/2 (can't remember if he was in 3 and I didn't play 4 far enough to find out if he was in it) was a significant influence in my choice of online nicknames. (The other factor being, of course, Charles Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. But I wouldn't have gone with the name if it weren't for my earlier exposure to Mr. Razzle Dazzle Rootbeer.)
First off, my solution is predicated on the (incorrect) notion that the answers were being done in order, rather than simultaneously.
That being said, the key difference was that their solution failed when the hats were the same color (regardless of color), while my solution failed when all the hats were a single, (arbitrarily) predetermined color. So they failed in the cases of RRR or BBB always, while my algorithm would fail in only BBB. RRR comes up 12.5% of the time, thus indicating the difference between the two success rates.
But, of course, I had solved the wrong problem, so trying to compare the two solutions isn't really accurate.
If you take another peek at what I wrote, player 1 arbitrarily chooses 'red' if he sees both player 2 and player 3 with 'blue' hats. Him choosing 'red' should be the same as a blind guess -- he wins 50% of the time. However, I chose to hardcode his guess into the algorithm so that it made things easier to conceptually analyze (BBB would be the only losing case).
Under your patch, they'd win half the time when it was RBB and half the time when it was BBB, which should come out the same as winning mine where they win all the time as RBB and none of the time as BBB.
Also, by making each arbitrary guess 'red', it makes it really easy to code an algorithm for the guesses, since each person uses an identical thought process:
If someone after me has a red hat, I will pass to them so that they may win. If no one after me has a red hat, I will guess red.
Well, it's possible we both misunderstood the problem, because this is just too easy... But whatever. So this might be a good solution to a different problem.
That is, indeed, the case. The thing we've missed is that the players must answer simultaneously, so player 3 can't predicate his answer on the fact that player 1 and player 2 failed to answer. Personally, though, I had enough fun fiddling with the non-simultaneous case, even if it isn't as mathematically significant.
So I'm sitting down and thinking, but I still don't understand their position. I can appreciate both the importance of ASCII text and its accessibility (hell, I still use lynx to browse the web), but I can't understand why you would restrict yourself to only text.
Consider the following:
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the surface of the moon.
--versus--
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the surface of the moon. Here is a picture, in an open, documented graphics format.
There's just too much history that's more than just pure text. I can understand trying to make as much material as possible available as text, but you can't let such a decision allow you to exclude relevant materials that're more than just text.
Personally, I think Ultima 4-6 was just pure gold. Ultima 1, 2, and 3, while nifty from a nostalgia standpoint, had this "I'm throwing together a fantasy world or something." sort of feel. Once he hit 4 was where coherency started to develop. However, 5 and especially 6 kept building upon that world and outdoing the previous ones. I remember being completely wowed by 6's concept of "The entire overworld is one scale."
Finally, I used to like 7, but these days I can't help but view it as the ramp leading up to 8. I don't think I managed to make it past the first town in 8. My disappointment was on the par with Quest for Glory 4. I suppose I should be thankful that 8 cured me of my Ultima addiction before UO came about.
That was, indeed, my problem. I didn't realize that they had to guess simultaneously. Had the players been able to guess in order, mine would've worked. (And still would've tied back to the hamming code concept.)
Owel, back to the drawing board.
In the article, in the 3 hat case, they've got a 75% chance of winning (their solution generated a loss if all 3 hats were the same color). I've managed to come up with an 87.5% chance of winning, instead:
Player 3's strategy will be to always guess 'red'.
Player 2's strategy will be to guess 'red' only if Player 3's hat is 'blue'. Otherwise, Player 2 passes, knowing Player 3 will win.
Player 1's strategy will be to guess 'red' only if Player 2 and Player 3 both have 'blue'. Otherwise, Player 1 passes, knowing Player 2 or Player 3 will win it.
The only time this solution will fail is the case where all three hats are blue. This occurs 1 out of 8 times (12.5%).
In the 15 player case mentioned later on, the article claims they've got a situation that works 15 out of 16 times (93.75%). Using my method above, it should work 99.99% of the time.
In the immortal words of Joel Hodgson, "What do you think, sirs?"
Take a second look at the last line of my post, where I mention any saved files get chown'd back to the user. This could be further refined by doing a "safe copy" back into the user's directory. For example, ~/lynx-jail/textfiles/foo.txt would get copied over to ~/textfiles/foo.txt, provided that there are no dotfiles in the path (thus a malicious application couldn't create ~/lynx-jail/.rhosts) and provided that nothing gets copied overwritten by the copy (thus defeating someone attempting to create ~/lynx-jail/Mail/received). You could make this even slicker by specifying that certain files (such as those ending in .txt) may be appended automagically if they already exist. Or it could prompt the user for resolution.
And if you wanted to get really fancy, you could put all the changes under CVS, so that the files within the lynx-jail get checked in.
I've yet to look into any of the more secure operating systems, but one advantage of my system is that it'd require few-to-no changes in the kernel. This is especially desirable if it's going to take awhile before such systems are fully tested and deployed on a regular basis.
Next time, how about reading the article before going off half-cocked? As usual, the Slashdot story has a less-than-accurate summary line. However, if you read the last paragraph (i.e. where we get to the actual question after wading through the background material), it reads "So what are good practices to adopt when using encryption software?". The supplicant then goes on to ask about some particular possibilities for improving overall security (such as keeping your key on a disk). Given that security practices are often as important as security software, I don't see where the problem is.
As far as possible solutions go, one interesting possibility might be dynamically generated chroot jails for network clients. For example, every time I start up lynx, my ~/.lynxrc and ~/lynx_bookmarks would get copied to ~/lynx-jail. Lynx would then be run out of ~/lynx-jail using a dynamically generated "nobody" user account. After lynx terminates, the config files get copied back and any saved files get chown'd over to my normal user account.
That's an understatement. Pole position (all the way back in 1982) featured an in-game billboard for Centipede.
IANAL, but as I understand it, the fact that they would still be doing business in the US would provide at least some exposure to still being sued. I honestly have no clue, however, about how any actual international treaties would affect the situation. But, as a wild ass guess, I suspect such a move would, at least, provide some protection against the DOJ trying to directly manipulate and split the company itself -- but the US would still be free to interfere with the MS business that still would take place within the US borders. Of course, there's also the factor that MS is currently a publically traded company on a US-based stock exchange. I don't know what effect that would have on things.
Other things that've been responsible for spoiling the variety and quality of games:
There's always something out there for the less talented, formulaic game designers to latch on to and copy. If it wasn't cloning 3D first-person shooters, it would be cloning 2D side-scrolling platform games or 2D real-time strategy games or...
That, of course, will be the topic of next week's Ask Slashdot: "How can I build a smaller monitor? I've heard I can get a nasty shock even when it's unplugged. What parts should I avoid touching?"
Seriously, it's easier to carry one bulky monitor and one small case (even if it's still separate trips) than it is to carry one bulky monitor and one large case, especially if you're dragging them somewhere like a 3rd floor apartment.
Hell, maybe his friend even has some extra monitors lying around. A cheap monitor is still significantly cheaper than a "cheap" PC with enough oomph to keep up with contemporary FPSes.
Given that the end of the second part speaks of an additional upcoming part, it's appears to be at least a three part editorial.
Personally, I wish Slashdot would wait until these things were complete before posting the story. It'd be rather nice not having to worry about remembering to go back to a site that I otherwise don't visit. I could understand if it were an issue that was time sensitive or one where the Slashdot traffic was important to the outcome, but neither seems to be the case here.
I can think of a number of reasons why the two situations are slightly different:
Reboot Time Overhead
In a dual-boot situation, it's not hard to see the difference between rebooting for several hours of game play versus rebooting just to view a 5 minute video clip. In the later case, the hassle of rebooting is a disproportionately large portion of the entire task.
Gaming Precludes Multitasking
Most games tend to suck most-to-all of your attention. While you may have peaks and lulls in the Diablo excitement level, you generally have to actively control your character for even the mundane task of travelling through completely purged levels (assuming they haven't added an autowalk feature to Diablo II). With a video clip, on the other hand, (especially if it's a talk, lecture, or a similar thing where the visual contents consist of long periods of pictures of J. Random Person just moving his/her mouth and occasionally gesturing), it's generally possible to get other tasks done. Depending on what those other tasks are, you may feel less than fully productive when working from a Windows box (especially if you don't use Windows often enough to justify going through the trouble of installing all the Unix-like utilities and tools for Windows that you can get your hands on).
Games -> Code, Video -> Information
I understand the technological and economic reasons that prevent Linux versions of most games -- the games are generally non-free (in both beer and speech), porting takes work, work generally takes money (due to the non-free factor), and that money generally needs to be recouped by selling copies of the port. While, ideally, I wouldn't complain if a game company were to start releasing all the games for free (either one), I would have to question their business sense. (Apologies for any inaccuracies in the following; I'm not well-versed in most of the video details.) With video, on the other hand, the people providing it are generally doing so in a "come one, come all, see our video clip" information provider manner. There are ways they can avoid making their information unviewable to a certain minority of computer users. However, due to ignorance, laziness, or any of a number of other possible factors, they've failed in part of their "information provider" role.
Personally, I've never felt I couldn't express my mind on a subject, even if it does deviate from what's considered the "typical" Slashdot line. I've found it also helps to provide a bit more rationale than just "foo sucks" or "foo rules". For example, I wouldn't have any qualms against posting the following (to use your animated paperclip example):
Now I'll admit that there are times when the Slashdot moderation system fails. However, I think for the most part, I don't think it overly reenforces just a single opinion. For example, even though I disagree with your post, both I and some moderator have both found it interesting. I also find that people seem to be too quick to label their own posts as "I know I'll get modded down for this..." People underrate the diversity of thought and opinion on Slashdot. I'd consider its opposite to be something like "News for Jocks" rather than "News for people who think Microsoft products are good and Linux is too confusing" -- and even that isn't a given; I'm sure there are a number of athletically active Slashdot readers.
Oh great. Now I'm gonna have nightmares involving Greg Proops and Ryan Stiles fighting to the death, while Tony Slattery tries to guess what type of robot each of them are.
Useless trivia: That was just the first novel, however. The second novel (2010) used the facts/dialogue from the first movie and even went so far as to rewrite parts of the first book, via flashbacks, to match the first movie. It seriously annoyed the hell out of me. While reading the first book, I was perpetually annoyed by all the dialogue that almost matched the movie. While reading the second book, I was perpetually annoyed that he attempted to destroy all my careful mental coping with the issues from the first book.
As I said, I'd never even tried the backdoor. But I did notice that people were upset over it. I'm not saying that TiVo isn't allowed to pull it (and it's not like they killed a selling point), but people are certainly missing the fact that it's gone. As for people hacking in a replacement, there's the whole issue of the myworld application being closed.
2) Capacities weren't "reduced on hacked TiVos." The new OS just requires a little more space.
I thought I did a decent job of explaining that it wasn't TiVo going after hacked units, but rather was an aspect of the update taking up more space. Besides, there's a certain "high score" factor in having a TiVo with a lot of hours.
3) If you know about the change, how can you not know about the fix?
I'm not an avid reader of the TiVo hacking forum. I read it for a few weeks starting with right before I decided to get my TiVo, then stopped reading. I probably wouldn't have even known 2.0 was finally rolling out, except that I was having problems with my TiVo and decided to go digging for repair tips. Despite having thrown a second harddrive in the thing, I've still never hooked a machine up to the serial port -- there's no PC nearby and either lugging the TiVo/TV to the PC or the PC to the TiVo would've been a pain. Even worse, if the BIOS password isn't "factory", I'm going to have to go through all the trouble of recracking the case.
Furthermore, I'd argue that the change in autocorrection is something that would also be visible to someone who wasn't into hacking their TiVo. Part of the beauty of the TiVo is that, while there are all kinds of fun ways to get into the system and such, it's also nice and simple from a J. Random Consumer standpoint. And if J. Random Consumer has also been using his TiVo for 6 months or so, he's going to notice that suddenly the FF is off. Personally, I never even bothered to figure out the timing for the 3rd FF speed -- the 2nd speed still got me through a commercial break in about 10 seconds, gave me a chance to see if there were any interesting commercials (I've been known to stop, go back, and watch commercials that interest me), and still autocorrected almost perfectly. I've got it down to a science.
I've gotten all my season passes crammed in there with the workaround from the FAQ. I'm happy with my TiVo. I'm more than happy -- I've gone around convincing other people how great TiVo is (which, admittedly, isn't that difficult to do). I, personally, feel no need to upgrade. Without such a need, any negatives (no matter how small or trivial) aren't being outweighed by any positives.
I know I don't need it, but to me "2.0 + service" is still a better deal than "1.3 + no service", especially given that I've got a dozen or more season passes (with conflicts carefully resolved used the old workaround in the TiVo FAQ). However, that won't stop me from complaining that I'd still be happier with just "1.3 + service". Plus, I've already paid for the service (the two day new unit trial was enough to convince me to go with lifetime).
Yup. This thread mentions the (select - play - select - 3 - 0 - select) code for 1.3 units. It turns skip-to-live into a 30 second skip.
Win95.Babylonia (discovered December of '99) does exactly that.
There are at least 3 "negative" features in the new TiVo release:
If the upgrades were completely optional, I'd be more than happy to stick with my existing version of the software. I love my TiVo. It works great. I don't want them changing it.