My half-assed guess is that it's a property of the craters. At the proper angles, the light that doesn't get immediately absorbed is reflected to another part of the same surface. So instead of reflecting x% of the light hitting the surface, it reflects x% of x%.
Re:dead before it was online
on
Sim-Dud?
·
· Score: 1
That's very nice that you didn't play it. However, that doesn't change the fact that "The Sims" was the number one selling PC game of all time, with over 7 million copies sold. The online version may have its problems, but a lack of popularity of its predecessor sure as hell isn't one of them.
Re:Read the slashbox!!!
on
Tetris AI System
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Try reading the end of the post you're responding to. At first, he's
only commenting on a computer science fact, that there are no
polynomial time optimal solutions for NP-Hard problems.
However, he mentions that it's possible to brute force NP-Hard
problems for small cases and he also mentions that the Tetris
game use is restricted.
Or, to sum it up, NP-Hard isn't hard (even for an optimal solution) if
N is small.
"Ah, but many direct-to-video/DVD titles still sell for about $20 each, as well."
I had forgotten about those. I honestly have no clue where they'd fit in.
"I can't fathom any other reason why a CD costing $18+ can still lose money when it can sell more than a copy of Shanghai Noon on DVD that costs only $15."
Huh?
Checking Amazon, Shanghai Noon on DVD is $25.49. The average CD price on there seems to be between $14 and $15 (random sampling: Britney Spears' "Oops I did it again" is $14.99; the Beatles' "White Album" is $14.00 per disc (2 disc set, $27.99); The Pixies' "Surfer Rosa" is $11.98; Faith Hill's "Cry" is $13.49).
"Are you for or against the current prices on CD's?"
As a consumer, I'd prefer prices to be as low as possible. However, I generally find the current price-per-entertainment ratio of CDs to be acceptable.
Putting on a more objective hat though, I'd say that CD prices would be more fair if the major factors artificially limiting competition were removed. The two biggest problems I see are collusion on the part of record labels to keep the price higher than normal and the entire payola/airplay problem that prevents viable independent competition. Tackle those, and the free market should theoretically do the rest.
"It still begs the question, how much profit should be made on a piece of plastic that only cost a dollar to fully produce, bits and all?"
First, it's kind of hard to put a per-unit price on the production of the bits. It's a fixed, upfront cost that will eventually be spread across each CD sold.
Second, if you assume that the anti-competitive issues are resolved, then I just don't see any reason to limit the profit. In a free market, a competitor can come along and undercut the prices.
"For one, "Signs" must have cost millions to make. I don't have
the amount at hand, but I must imagine that it cost over 10 million
dollars. Now, how much does it cost to produce a single album for a
group? Less than a million?"
You're forgetting about ticket sales. For the cost of making "Signs",
the studio got something they could show in the movie theatre, and
something they could slap on DVD. By the time you go out to buy it,
they've most likely already made back their initial investment (and
then some).
With an album, on the other hand, people wouldn't pay to go to a
concert hall nad have the studio recordings played for them. Instead,
they (quite reasonably) demand a separate, live performance from the
artists who made the album. That places constraints on both how many
performances can be done (no musician can match the 3264 different
venues all showing Signs on opening weekend) and it places constraints
on how much money the investor can recoup (as concert sales are
generally regarded as the area where the artist, a key part of every
single live performance, can attempt to make back some of the money
that crappy recording contracts cheat them out of).
Overall, it boils down to two different economic models. You could've
just as easily compared an album to a computer game with a modest
budget, and you would've come out favoring the album. Sure, at the
base level, it's all intellectual property, but the details are a key
part of the pricing. (And I haven't even really touched on supply and
demand issues, which further differentiate the products.)
"Yes, but she was the CEO. Surely she had some input into the
direction her company was heading?"
She was head of an industry organization, not a company. If Hillary
Rosen had declared that the RIAA was no longer interested in pursuing
copyright infringement, such a statement would not magically change
the opinions of the people in charge of Sony, Vivendi, and the other
large companies that actually make up the music industry and own the
actual copyrights to the music being shared.
Re:why would i buy?
on
Cross-Site-TRACE
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"why would i go buy the book, when i just downloaded the pdf for
free?"
For the same reason that you'd go see a concert of a band that allows
you to trade bootlegs of their concerts. The content may be the same,
but the presentation of the for-pay version is in a format that is
usually considered more desirable.
"The only assumption is that gravity propagates instantly, at least
in the Honor Harrington universe. I say it makes no use of wave theory
because it doesn't attempt to use modulation, just states."
Right, but that seems to be exactly what the article's debunking --
there is no instant propagation of gravity. Wave theory really isn't
an issue. The information about changes in gravity, whether it's
modulation or pulses, is apparently still bounded by the speed of
light.
Also, I suppose you could argue that the HH universe is operating
under subtly different rules so that gravity is magically instanteous,
but then you're drifting from the science fiction genre over into
space fantasy. And down that road lies madness and midichlorians.
David Weber's Honor Harrington series, for one. I'm not sure off-hand which specific books he used it in, but gravity-pulse based communication was used by the protagonists to provide remote probes that communicated with FTL speeds back to the ships.
"So Verisign is selling what service if domain names aren't property of some sort?"
You answered your own question. If domain names aren't property, Verisign is still selling a service.
For example, imagine if you pay me $10 to stand on a street corner for an hour and tell anyone who asks about Soporific that his Slashdot uid is 595477. 5 people come up and ask about you, and I answer them all. There's no property I've sold there (and I certainly have no control over your Slashdot handle or its uid), but I've still performed a service.
Now imagine you pay $70 to Verisign so that during the next two years, when anyone asks about soporific.com, they tell those people what the IP addresses for some DNS servers that happen to answer questions about soporific.com.
Two fairly similar services, which don't require the notion of property to work. Of course all that being said, I do believe that domain names are a sort of property. It's just that Verisign's legitimacy isn't predicated on them having to be property.
"People learn at young age to work with PCs and new technology,
which is also eductaion IMHO."
To a degree, yes. But I think you're over-inflating the importance of
video games.
First, I admit that playing computer games on an Apple ][ is what got
me into computers. I started playing with them when I was 2,
programming when I was 5, and I graduated summa cum laude with a BS in
Computer Science. They've definitely been influential on where I've
headed in life.
However, so many video games these days are on consoles. There's only
so much a kid can learn from playing GTA:VC on a PS2. When I was
playing games on the Apple, I learned some of the DOS 3.3 commands out
of necessity. With a console, what can they discover? There's no
gradual progression from "generic end-user" to "low-level hacker" --
the only alternative is jumping directly into the deep end of using a
modchip to produce and run your own software. And that's something
that's not going to happen if the person hasn't already learned more
from another venue.
Furthermore, there's a diminishing level of education returns even in
a PC context. A kid might learn quite a bit about basic computer
tasks in order to install a game like Counter-Strike. Once it's
installed, however, the bulk of the useful learning is over. Aside
from the occasional video driver update, the 20th hour of racking up
frags is just as education-free as the 19th.
Overall, attempting to ennoble videogames by claiming that the
education they detract from is comparable to the education they
produce is absurd. You just aren't learning that much, for the most
part, while playing videogames.
"Like, is there anything to prevent Microsoft from just randomly calling up the project with a bunch of dummy clients that submit the REAL x-box key a couple times to the "i've checked this and it's not the key" list?"
It's a 2048-bit RSA key. The amount of time taken to crack this will almost certainly be longer than the 5 year life of the X-box. Microsoft would have to be moronically stupid to risk sending the real key to cracking people in an effort to derail the system.
So what're you boycotting? The brand of mini-R/C car that was advertised in the spam? All mini-R/C cars? Anyone who sells mini-R/C cars?
Seriously, the only entities it makes sense to boycott are the ones who are responsible for or who actively or passively endorse the spam. Odds are, the manufacturer and the legitimate retailers have no connection to the spam you received.
"This is the same guy who hosts the pointless trivia show on Comedy Central "Win Ben Stein's Money"."
Just because he's done some acting doesn't mean he's not smart. Here's his bio from his website. Valedictorian from Yale Law school. Speech writer for Nixon. Trial lawyer for the FTC. We aren't talking about some random schmuck off the street who just happens to have his own TV show.
"Something that is better than actually transferring money to someone else, before checking the merchandise, is to earmark the money (but don't do the transfer)."
Uh, that's what an escrow account is. Under normal
circumstances, it's a neutral, trusted third-party that holds the
money and only turns it over to the seller once the merchandise is
verified. The problem is that the crooks are using escrow sites that
aren't really neutral, trusted third-parties.
"Honestly have you ever been to a retail store which deals in
pirated CDs? Is this really a problem in Amerika today?"
To reiterate what the poster above you said, "RTFA first." The
article specifically mentions who they went after, "The Recording
Industry Association of America said Monday it is demanding a halt to
illegal music sales at gas stations, convenience stores, groceries and
some small music stores that the group has identified as offering
illegal copies of music recordings."
It sounds like they were mainly focusing on small, non-music oriented
businesses. We aren't talking about a Specs Music or Tower Records
here. We're talking about something like a privately-owned gas
station with a single private owner who might have bought some stuff
from a shady supplier.
"I'd say a qualified "yes". Many of my favorite all-time sci-fi movies were done on shoestring budgets: Logan's Run, Farenheit 451, Soylent Green , the first Star Wars, The Blob, Godzilla, etc."
Those movies were only on shoestring budgets by motion picture standards.
(Figures from IMDB)
Star Wars -- $11 million
Logan's Run -- $9 million
The Blob (1988) -- $8.247 million
The Blob (1958) -- $240,000
Fahrenheit 451 -- No budget listed
Soylent Green -- No budget listed
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! -- No budget listed
A quick google on "average budget" "porn film", turns up a figure that the average porn budget is $25,000 (article here). That means, by porn budget standards, even the 1958 version of The Blob is a mega blockbuster. Star Wars and Logan's Run are off the charts.
Now I agree with you that there's more to a movie than just its budget. If nothing else, Waterworld ($175 million wasted) proves that point. However, even though money doesn't make the movie, it's hard to make a movie -- even a simple, story-driven one -- without money. And attempting to make regular movies on a porn budget would be a lose-lose scenario for everyone. Yes, there'd be less cases of the MPAA exercises its (hotly contested, at least on Slashdot) rights, but that's because there'd be no reason to -- the bulk of what would be available would be comparable to what's currently freely available on sites like ifilm.com.
"The MPAA claims that video over the net has to be locked up in a chastity belt in order to survive. Yet, the porn industry has been able to thrive even in a highly saturated market."
On the other hand, the MPAA has a much greater financial investment per film. If major motion pictures operated on porn-level budgets, would most geeks still be really looking forward to "The Two Towers" or "The Matrix Reloaded"?
They've done that at times. For example, the humor site somethingawful.com (delibrately not linked to avoid bandwidth problems) was missing from google's pages for a few months. When contacted on the issue, all they would do was cryptically cite their policy of removing abusive sites (presumably stuff like link farms that artificially inflate ratins), and they would say that they couldn't discuss the particular reason this site was removed. Within the past week, the site popped back up with no explaination, and no further action on the part of the webmaster.
"What possible reason is there to still run version 5.2?"
Upgrading is a hassle, especially for a machine I use infrequently.
5.2 does what I need it to; the only advantage of a newer version would be active security/bug fixes.
I'm not sure I have enough harddrive space. Newer versions of Redhat are naturally going to take up more space, and this machine is running older hardware.
Anyway, I don't have a problem with Redhat dropping support for 5.2 (though I'm getting a little antsy as we use 6.2 at work, and I really don't need 7.x or 8.x features). However, the entire point was that older Linux releases get EOL'd just the same as older Windows releases.
"2.0 is still a supported kernel release. If you have an issue, there's a maintainer out there supporting you."
An operating system is more than just a kernel. The bulk of the errata that Redhat puts out are for things other than the kernel. Skimming the errata for 7.3 turns up security fixes for xinetd, samba, the kernel, glibc, kerberos, and so forth. Making sure your kernel is up to date isn't going to help you if you get rooted via another means.
And even though the individual maintainers for things like xinetd and samba may still be doing their job, they may no longer be maintaining the fork that was used for a given Redhat distribution. Furthermore, even if they were maintaining it, you'd have to individually watch releases for the different packages you use. In short, you'd essentially be doing the work of a distribution maintainer.
Slashdot Mirror
My half-assed guess is that it's a property of the craters. At the proper angles, the light that doesn't get immediately absorbed is reflected to another part of the same surface. So instead of reflecting x% of the light hitting the surface, it reflects x% of x%.
That's very nice that you didn't play it. However, that doesn't change the fact that "The Sims" was the number one selling PC game of all time, with over 7 million copies sold. The online version may have its problems, but a lack of popularity of its predecessor sure as hell isn't one of them.
Or, to sum it up, NP-Hard isn't hard (even for an optimal solution) if N is small.
A PS2 with the Linux kit running Zork (or pretty much any other Infocom game) under a Z-code interpreter would do the trick.
I had forgotten about those. I honestly have no clue where they'd fit in.
"I can't fathom any other reason why a CD costing $18+ can still lose money when it can sell more than a copy of Shanghai Noon on DVD that costs only $15."
Huh?
Checking Amazon, Shanghai Noon on DVD is $25.49. The average CD price on there seems to be between $14 and $15 (random sampling: Britney Spears' "Oops I did it again" is $14.99; the Beatles' "White Album" is $14.00 per disc (2 disc set, $27.99); The Pixies' "Surfer Rosa" is $11.98; Faith Hill's "Cry" is $13.49).
As a consumer, I'd prefer prices to be as low as possible. However, I generally find the current price-per-entertainment ratio of CDs to be acceptable.
Putting on a more objective hat though, I'd say that CD prices would be more fair if the major factors artificially limiting competition were removed. The two biggest problems I see are collusion on the part of record labels to keep the price higher than normal and the entire payola/airplay problem that prevents viable independent competition. Tackle those, and the free market should theoretically do the rest.
"It still begs the question, how much profit should be made on a piece of plastic that only cost a dollar to fully produce, bits and all?"
First, it's kind of hard to put a per-unit price on the production of the bits. It's a fixed, upfront cost that will eventually be spread across each CD sold. Second, if you assume that the anti-competitive issues are resolved, then I just don't see any reason to limit the profit. In a free market, a competitor can come along and undercut the prices.
You're forgetting about ticket sales. For the cost of making "Signs", the studio got something they could show in the movie theatre, and something they could slap on DVD. By the time you go out to buy it, they've most likely already made back their initial investment (and then some).
With an album, on the other hand, people wouldn't pay to go to a concert hall nad have the studio recordings played for them. Instead, they (quite reasonably) demand a separate, live performance from the artists who made the album. That places constraints on both how many performances can be done (no musician can match the 3264 different venues all showing Signs on opening weekend) and it places constraints on how much money the investor can recoup (as concert sales are generally regarded as the area where the artist, a key part of every single live performance, can attempt to make back some of the money that crappy recording contracts cheat them out of).
Overall, it boils down to two different economic models. You could've just as easily compared an album to a computer game with a modest budget, and you would've come out favoring the album. Sure, at the base level, it's all intellectual property, but the details are a key part of the pricing. (And I haven't even really touched on supply and demand issues, which further differentiate the products.)
She was head of an industry organization, not a company. If Hillary Rosen had declared that the RIAA was no longer interested in pursuing copyright infringement, such a statement would not magically change the opinions of the people in charge of Sony, Vivendi, and the other large companies that actually make up the music industry and own the actual copyrights to the music being shared.
For the same reason that you'd go see a concert of a band that allows you to trade bootlegs of their concerts. The content may be the same, but the presentation of the for-pay version is in a format that is usually considered more desirable.
Right, but that seems to be exactly what the article's debunking -- there is no instant propagation of gravity. Wave theory really isn't an issue. The information about changes in gravity, whether it's modulation or pulses, is apparently still bounded by the speed of light.
Also, I suppose you could argue that the HH universe is operating under subtly different rules so that gravity is magically instanteous, but then you're drifting from the science fiction genre over into space fantasy. And down that road lies madness and midichlorians.
David Weber's Honor Harrington series, for one. I'm not sure off-hand which specific books he used it in, but gravity-pulse based communication was used by the protagonists to provide remote probes that communicated with FTL speeds back to the ships.
You answered your own question. If domain names aren't property, Verisign is still selling a service.
For example, imagine if you pay me $10 to stand on a street corner for an hour and tell anyone who asks about Soporific that his Slashdot uid is 595477. 5 people come up and ask about you, and I answer them all. There's no property I've sold there (and I certainly have no control over your Slashdot handle or its uid), but I've still performed a service.
Now imagine you pay $70 to Verisign so that during the next two years, when anyone asks about soporific.com, they tell those people what the IP addresses for some DNS servers that happen to answer questions about soporific.com.
Two fairly similar services, which don't require the notion of property to work. Of course all that being said, I do believe that domain names are a sort of property. It's just that Verisign's legitimacy isn't predicated on them having to be property.
It seems to only be for households that they already have an agreement with.
To a degree, yes. But I think you're over-inflating the importance of video games.
First, I admit that playing computer games on an Apple ][ is what got me into computers. I started playing with them when I was 2, programming when I was 5, and I graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Computer Science. They've definitely been influential on where I've headed in life.
However, so many video games these days are on consoles. There's only so much a kid can learn from playing GTA:VC on a PS2. When I was playing games on the Apple, I learned some of the DOS 3.3 commands out of necessity. With a console, what can they discover? There's no gradual progression from "generic end-user" to "low-level hacker" -- the only alternative is jumping directly into the deep end of using a modchip to produce and run your own software. And that's something that's not going to happen if the person hasn't already learned more from another venue.
Furthermore, there's a diminishing level of education returns even in a PC context. A kid might learn quite a bit about basic computer tasks in order to install a game like Counter-Strike. Once it's installed, however, the bulk of the useful learning is over. Aside from the occasional video driver update, the 20th hour of racking up frags is just as education-free as the 19th.
Overall, attempting to ennoble videogames by claiming that the education they detract from is comparable to the education they produce is absurd. You just aren't learning that much, for the most part, while playing videogames.
It's a 2048-bit RSA key. The amount of time taken to crack this will almost certainly be longer than the 5 year life of the X-box. Microsoft would have to be moronically stupid to risk sending the real key to cracking people in an effort to derail the system.
Seriously, the only entities it makes sense to boycott are the ones who are responsible for or who actively or passively endorse the spam. Odds are, the manufacturer and the legitimate retailers have no connection to the spam you received.
Just because he's done some acting doesn't mean he's not smart. Here's his bio from his website. Valedictorian from Yale Law school. Speech writer for Nixon. Trial lawyer for the FTC. We aren't talking about some random schmuck off the street who just happens to have his own TV show.
Uh, that's what an escrow account is. Under normal circumstances, it's a neutral, trusted third-party that holds the money and only turns it over to the seller once the merchandise is verified. The problem is that the crooks are using escrow sites that aren't really neutral, trusted third-parties.
To reiterate what the poster above you said, "RTFA first." The article specifically mentions who they went after, "The Recording Industry Association of America said Monday it is demanding a halt to illegal music sales at gas stations, convenience stores, groceries and some small music stores that the group has identified as offering illegal copies of music recordings."
It sounds like they were mainly focusing on small, non-music oriented businesses. We aren't talking about a Specs Music or Tower Records here. We're talking about something like a privately-owned gas station with a single private owner who might have bought some stuff from a shady supplier.
Those movies were only on shoestring budgets by motion picture standards.
(Figures from IMDB)
Star Wars -- $11 million
Logan's Run -- $9 million
The Blob (1988) -- $8.247 million
The Blob (1958) -- $240,000
Fahrenheit 451 -- No budget listed
Soylent Green -- No budget listed
Godzilla, King of the Monsters! -- No budget listed
A quick google on "average budget" "porn film", turns up a figure that the average porn budget is $25,000 (article here). That means, by porn budget standards, even the 1958 version of The Blob is a mega blockbuster. Star Wars and Logan's Run are off the charts.
Now I agree with you that there's more to a movie than just its budget. If nothing else, Waterworld ($175 million wasted) proves that point. However, even though money doesn't make the movie, it's hard to make a movie -- even a simple, story-driven one -- without money. And attempting to make regular movies on a porn budget would be a lose-lose scenario for everyone. Yes, there'd be less cases of the MPAA exercises its (hotly contested, at least on Slashdot) rights, but that's because there'd be no reason to -- the bulk of what would be available would be comparable to what's currently freely available on sites like ifilm.com.
On the other hand, the MPAA has a much greater financial investment per film. If major motion pictures operated on porn-level budgets, would most geeks still be really looking forward to "The Two Towers" or "The Matrix Reloaded"?
Try rereading the post. He said a cluster of honeypots. $60,000 per machine per day times 14 machines times 14 days equals 11.76 million dollars.
They've done that at times. For example, the humor site somethingawful.com (delibrately not linked to avoid bandwidth problems) was missing from google's pages for a few months. When contacted on the issue, all they would do was cryptically cite their policy of removing abusive sites (presumably stuff like link farms that artificially inflate ratins), and they would say that they couldn't discuss the particular reason this site was removed. Within the past week, the site popped back up with no explaination, and no further action on the part of the webmaster.
Anyway, I don't have a problem with Redhat dropping support for 5.2 (though I'm getting a little antsy as we use 6.2 at work, and I really don't need 7.x or 8.x features). However, the entire point was that older Linux releases get EOL'd just the same as older Windows releases.
An operating system is more than just a kernel. The bulk of the errata that Redhat puts out are for things other than the kernel. Skimming the errata for 7.3 turns up security fixes for xinetd, samba, the kernel, glibc, kerberos, and so forth. Making sure your kernel is up to date isn't going to help you if you get rooted via another means.
And even though the individual maintainers for things like xinetd and samba may still be doing their job, they may no longer be maintaining the fork that was used for a given Redhat distribution. Furthermore, even if they were maintaining it, you'd have to individually watch releases for the different packages you use. In short, you'd essentially be doing the work of a distribution maintainer.