You'd have to define "useful" before I could give you a better answer. But I think the answer is probably something like "no," for qualified degrees of "useful." And "all this excess DNA" too -- they call it "junk," but it's not literally Junk. Some of if just isn't understood yet. Some of it is valuable filler like padding unused fields in a fixed-length data packet.
(* Important note: I have absolutely no qualifications to be commenting on this topic.)
While I only slightly doubt your credentials, your credentials probably shouldn't even enter into the claim you are making about the article being incorrect. If you'd like to point out just one or two ways in which is it incorrect, then we all benefit in two important ways: 1) We don't have to rely on your credentials to evaluate your claim, and 2) We'll all have learned something new and interesting.
Please consider another reply containing something other than bald assertion. It's not very scientistic of you, if I may coin a word.
Okay, so he's got a script that will let him send the contents of this document.cookie to his kitchen server by including them in a request for a.gif.
Wouldn't that just give him the cookie(s) used by the e-mail (if such a thing is even possible?)? It wouldn't send him all the reader's cookies, would it? Certainly not the one for the matter transference server, right? Isn't this described "hack" impossible as described? Maybe with a good source of brownian motion, and an activation of the infinite improbability drive...
I can't see how that's supported by the fucking article.
I'm not a linux gaming apologist. It sucks on Linux, I can't deny. I've not tried crossover, but I DO subscribe to Transgaming. I've only been able to get a couple of old games to run well enough to play after much tweaking. Lately I find it's easier, in fact, to get a CD crack and use regular-old-wine for most of the games I would play.
My examples are Fallout II and Planescape: Torment. Both reasonably old games. I was completely, and utterly unable to get either one to install under Cedega. Both installed, and after using CD cracks, played on regular Wine. Although it DID take considerable trying of different settings to hit on a configuration that was useable given my parameters: I wanted it to play in a Window, not take up the full screen. Both worked full-screen right off the bat.
I, personally, find the Cedega interface (point2play) to be nasty and difficult to use. But I admit they're trying very hard to make it easier -- the buit in updater/upgrader has always been nice, and the recent addition of a database of game settings for a variety of games is also nice -- although as usual none of the games *I* am interested in is on the list!
That's all I guess. I don't have any mystical insight... just my report as a user. I guess it might be interesting to some that Wine often works "better" than Cedega.
What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment
They're going to get to that; right now R&D is tied up trying to find a way to factor large prime numbers.
*Booth*? Rarely. Pay telephones, though -- I see all the time. I can't imagine they're only around out here (near Chicago) -- maybe you just aren't aware of them. They are one of those things that's so ubiquitous that you hardly notice them. Then again, there certainly are less than there once were; it used to be unthinkable that a gas station wouldn't have a pay phone.
Here's what's interesting, though -- I encountered a pay TOILET less than four years ago, at a Metra station. Ten cents if you'd like to get in the bathroom door. I was riding the Metra quite a bit at the time, so I can't recall which station it was. Someplace up near Vernon Hills, I believe.
Abortion, for example - people will argue until the end of time whether it should or shouldn't be allowed, and there is no real objective truth to be had there because it is a strictly moral question.
Offtopic, I know, but it needs to be said.
It is not a moral issue. It's a religious issue.
If you feel otherwise, frame me an argument against abortion without bringing in any religion or religious ideas.
Because normal, adjusted people do not prostitute themselves so they can watch TV.
The Internet - Guys (since most of you are), how long would you have to go without email before you'd have sex with another guy for $5 so you could use an Internet Cafe? (That's if you wouldn't do it for free, anyway.)
You have a distorted view of drug use. *MOST* addicts, while perfectly addicted, will not suck a man's dick to get their fix. You are thinking of a stereotype made up by Hollywood to help make drug use seem more evil.
What kind of yardstick is this for measuring addiction anyhow? By your reasoning, 99.999% of male alcholics aren't alcoholic, just because they wouldn't have sex with another man.
Honestly, I think you've confused GAY with ADDICT. I know they're both considered terrible things in our culture, but they're not interchangable.
Controllers haven't *always* been "strangely left-handed." Old arcade machines, my Atari 2600, the old TRS-80 sticks, and countless sticks for my Commodore-64 all were stick-for-the-right-hand and buttons-for-the-left.
Making the switch with my NES was awkward, as I recall, but not too much so.
After a few months of using the linux Citrix client (official) we ran into an interesting thing, that I didn't see spelled out anywhere else.
The server ran out of licenses. Apparently Windows includes the proper client access license, but linux does not somehow and needs to be purchased separately? Unfortunately I can't be authoritative on this issue since rather than solve it (and other issues), we discontinued use of the Windows server. But I do suggest you look into it before any large deployment.
I'd like to add to this that the most commonly used techniques for cheating don't involve changing anything in the code, but rather using some tricks (look 'em up) to ensure that your Xbox is chosen as the server for the game, at which point you can do all kinds of fun things with the traffic routing through your network (like delaying packets for all your opponents). Again, nothing mucking about with CRCs is going to help.
For those of you saying, "What kind of crack is he smoking -- the Xbox HDD is only 8-10G" let me be clear... even when doing a software mod, I still put in a larger HDD.
Since you can't modify the disc content (if you did you'd need to run a modchip and if you're running a modchip when you log into Xbox Live MS can detect that and ban your sorry ass).
You don't know what you're talking about.
I don't cheat because I don't play online games because I can't stand f-ing cheaters, okay?
That said, you're just wrong. I've modded about a dozen Xboxes. None of them using a modchip, all done in software. When I am finished modding an Xbox:
1) You can connect and play on Xbox live. The SOFTWARE mod, no modchip, creates a virtual disc that looks to MS like an unmodded box. HARDWARE modchips usually come with kill switches so you can flip in a regular BIOS just like that. You can play on Xbox Live with either a hardware or software mod. Period. 2) You run all the games from copies on your Xbox hard drive. Modifying those bits is as easy as writing to a hard disc... which ain't hard.
You *can* play a game off a disc, but you wouldn't want to. Load times playing off the hard disc are WAY faster. Loading times for games played off the disc frustrate the hell out of me. It's why I've copied all my LEGITIMATELY PURCHASED games onto my Xbox HDD. It makes things like Fable or Jade empire actually playable.
I would think something as simple as a CRC or date check would be simple enough, once you download the content it shouldn't ever change so the CRC should always pass and the modified date should never change.
All you do is change the code to respond with the appropriate CRC instead of the real CRC. You can't stop people like this. You wrote a nice post, you got modded informative, but you're just plain wrong.
In one of William Gibson's novels ("Virtual Light?" I dunno... one of the ones after his writing turned awful anyhow) the main character keeps a label on his milk jug that says, "MILK EXPERIMENT." It's perfectly normal milk, he just does it to keep his roommates out.
Yours is like that, only you can put it on anything -- "Sandwich Experiment" doesn't work as well.
The example of the stoting gazelle is from Richard Dawkins excellent book, "The Blind Watchmaker." Or maybe it was in "The Selfish Gene." I'm going to assume it's in "Selfish Gene" because I have my copy of "Blind Watchmaker" handy and the only mention of Gazelles is in another context.
If you're interested at all in evolution/genetics, read the latter. If you're interested in evolution vs. creationism, read the former. In any case if you haven't read Dawkins, you don't know evolution as well as you think you do*.
I'd love to tell you the reason proposed for stoting but I forget - there's a lot of information in those books!
(* exceptions made for actual evolutionary scientists)
If I bought a right to use it, I should be able to get another copy of the medium if mine was damaged or destroyed for the cost of the medium+shipping.
Software companies used to do just this. I remember the warranty in the back of nearly every videogame I purchased in the 80s (mostly for my C-128) had a disclaimer to the effect of if the media were ruined, you could send them in plus a small fee to get a replacement. Some wanted the original manual as well. Prior to '95, I worked on the Microsoft Help Desk (for MS-DOS) and at the time we had the ability within the tech support program to ship replacement media for everything from Windows for Workgroups to Microsoft's assembler.
So here's an interesting question... I've heard this argument a lot of times, but has anyone actually tried to get replacement media in this decade? Maybe it's actually possible.
savvy enough to avoid typing "how to kill your wife" in a search box?
It makes me want to cry to even read that phrase.
The day that searching for "how to kill your wife" is a problem, all by itself, that's the day the thought police have taken over.
"Aren't you SMART ENOUGH to know better than to search for 'how to kill your wife!?'"
No, I'm SMART ENOUGH to know a fucking web-search doesn't mean I'm going to kill my wife. Or even thinking about it. You people with your knee-jerk reaction, "This must be wrong!" or "How could he search for that!" or "he must be STUPID to search for that!" make me sick -- literally, I feel ill.
You could make me feel worse, though. At least you're not suggesting legislation to make this sort of search illegal.
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
17556639 photo of death
17556639 photo of death
17556639 death
17556639 dead people photos
17556639 photo of dead people
17556639 www.murderdpeople.com
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crash photo
If you want this person investigated, you are worse than the "thought police." First off, it's clear (to me, at least) that this guy isn't thinking about killing anyone. He just wants to see some gory photos. "steakandcheese" is a site like rotten.com. Even if he is thinking about killing someone, that's OK. There's a comment further down on the site you linked to that I find to be "insightful" about an old twilight zone episode. The main character could read minds and he reads the mind of a bank security guard who is thinking about robbing the bank! He has the man investigated, but nothing comes out of it. In the end, the guard admits he was thinking about robbing the bank... in fact he's thought about it almost every day. It's just a fantasy he has to make the day go faster... not something he'd ever act on.
And having been a regular visitor to rotten.com in the past myself, I know that just wanting to see some of the reality of death that we tend to keep hidden in American society is not a crime. It's not even thinking of a crime. It's perfectly natural and healthy curiosity. Neither is daydreaming about terrible things you would never do -- or want to have happen -- in real life. Fantasy is normal and healthy.
In fact, if you've never been to rotten.com or a similar site, I'd recommend you go sometime.
No, I don't mean that I'm convicted of a felony, or an illegal immigrant. I'm a natural-born US citizen with a clean record over the age of 18.
But I still don't have a vote.
Why?
The electoral college. I can vote if I want, but my vote doesn't count. The votes from the Electoral College do count. And you know what? They're under zero obligation to vote the way I voted, or the way I want them to vote -- even if my vote is in the majority. They can vote however they want. The entire electoral college was created specifically because the founders of this country assumed (rightly, in my opinion) that the average American is too stupid to have a say in politics.
It's people like you who say, "Go get the vote out!" that are incorrect. My vote is literally worthless, and yours too.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever read "The Story of Mel?"
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html
DNA works a lot like Mel's code.
You'd have to define "useful" before I could give you a better answer. But I think the answer is probably something like "no," for qualified degrees of "useful." And "all this excess DNA" too -- they call it "junk," but it's not literally Junk. Some of if just isn't understood yet. Some of it is valuable filler like padding unused fields in a fixed-length data packet.
(* Important note: I have absolutely no qualifications to be commenting on this topic.)
EspressoJim -
While I only slightly doubt your credentials, your credentials probably shouldn't even enter into the claim you are making about the article being incorrect. If you'd like to point out just one or two ways in which is it incorrect, then we all benefit in two important ways: 1) We don't have to rely on your credentials to evaluate your claim, and 2) We'll all have learned something new and interesting.
Please consider another reply containing something other than bald assertion. It's not very scientistic of you, if I may coin a word.
escape(document.cookie)
.gif.
Okay, so he's got a script that will let him send the contents of this document.cookie to his kitchen server by including them in a request for a
Wouldn't that just give him the cookie(s) used by the e-mail (if such a thing is even possible?)? It wouldn't send him all the reader's cookies, would it? Certainly not the one for the matter transference server, right? Isn't this described "hack" impossible as described? Maybe with a good source of brownian motion, and an activation of the infinite improbability drive...
Obviously I don't do JavaScript. Anyone?
I can't see how that's supported by the fucking article.
I'm not a linux gaming apologist. It sucks on Linux, I can't deny. I've not tried crossover, but I DO subscribe to Transgaming. I've only been able to get a couple of old games to run well enough to play after much tweaking. Lately I find it's easier, in fact, to get a CD crack and use regular-old-wine for most of the games I would play.
My examples are Fallout II and Planescape: Torment. Both reasonably old games. I was completely, and utterly unable to get either one to install under Cedega. Both installed, and after using CD cracks, played on regular Wine. Although it DID take considerable trying of different settings to hit on a configuration that was useable given my parameters: I wanted it to play in a Window, not take up the full screen. Both worked full-screen right off the bat.
I, personally, find the Cedega interface (point2play) to be nasty and difficult to use. But I admit they're trying very hard to make it easier -- the buit in updater/upgrader has always been nice, and the recent addition of a database of game settings for a variety of games is also nice -- although as usual none of the games *I* am interested in is on the list!
That's all I guess. I don't have any mystical insight... just my report as a user. I guess it might be interesting to some that Wine often works "better" than Cedega.
-Chris
What would be cool is if Microsoft released software that allowed someone to simultaneously open multiple O/S's at the same time in a non-virtualized environment
They're going to get to that; right now R&D is tied up trying to find a way to factor large prime numbers.
*Booth*? Rarely. Pay telephones, though -- I see all the time. I can't imagine they're only around out here (near Chicago) -- maybe you just aren't aware of them. They are one of those things that's so ubiquitous that you hardly notice them. Then again, there certainly are less than there once were; it used to be unthinkable that a gas station wouldn't have a pay phone.
Here's what's interesting, though -- I encountered a pay TOILET less than four years ago, at a Metra station. Ten cents if you'd like to get in the bathroom door. I was riding the Metra quite a bit at the time, so I can't recall which station it was. Someplace up near Vernon Hills, I believe.
So is a cow and a chicken, but if you're like most Americans, you ate one today.
Foetuses aren't "people" by any meaningful definition of "people." Again, I welcome you to explain to me why you feel otherwise.
Abortion, for example - people will argue until the end of time whether it should or shouldn't be allowed, and there is no real objective truth to be had there because it is a strictly moral question.
Offtopic, I know, but it needs to be said.
It is not a moral issue. It's a religious issue.
If you feel otherwise, frame me an argument against abortion without bringing in any religion or religious ideas.
The BK King is a 1 on the off-putting scale. The Quizno's "SpongeMonkeys" go to 11.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8oRwkPY04qc
The *do* have a lot to answer for, I agree.
Too bad they're dead.
I guess you could almost call it "poetic justice," eh?
Because normal, adjusted people do not prostitute themselves so they can watch TV.
The Internet - Guys (since most of you are), how long would you have to go without email before you'd have sex with another guy for $5 so you could use an Internet Cafe? (That's if you wouldn't do it for free, anyway.)
You have a distorted view of drug use. *MOST* addicts, while perfectly addicted, will not suck a man's dick to get their fix. You are thinking of a stereotype made up by Hollywood to help make drug use seem more evil.
What kind of yardstick is this for measuring addiction anyhow? By your reasoning, 99.999% of male alcholics aren't alcoholic, just because they wouldn't have sex with another man.
Honestly, I think you've confused GAY with ADDICT. I know they're both considered terrible things in our culture, but they're not interchangable.
Controllers haven't *always* been "strangely left-handed." Old arcade machines, my Atari 2600, the old TRS-80 sticks, and countless sticks for my Commodore-64 all were stick-for-the-right-hand and buttons-for-the-left.
Making the switch with my NES was awkward, as I recall, but not too much so.
After a few months of using the linux Citrix client (official) we ran into an interesting thing, that I didn't see spelled out anywhere else.
The server ran out of licenses. Apparently Windows includes the proper client access license, but linux does not somehow and needs to be purchased separately? Unfortunately I can't be authoritative on this issue since rather than solve it (and other issues), we discontinued use of the Windows server. But I do suggest you look into it before any large deployment.
Hey, I didn't mean to be such a jerk about it. The latest versions of Nknave's Ndure go to some pretty impressive lengths to fool XBL.
I'm sure you know how to find out more from there. "The usual places" and all.
I'd like to add to this that the most commonly used techniques for cheating don't involve changing anything in the code, but rather using some tricks (look 'em up) to ensure that your Xbox is chosen as the server for the game, at which point you can do all kinds of fun things with the traffic routing through your network (like delaying packets for all your opponents). Again, nothing mucking about with CRCs is going to help.
For those of you saying, "What kind of crack is he smoking -- the Xbox HDD is only 8-10G" let me be clear... even when doing a software mod, I still put in a larger HDD.
Since you can't modify the disc content (if you did you'd need to run a modchip and if you're running a modchip when you log into Xbox Live MS can detect that and ban your sorry ass).
You don't know what you're talking about.
I don't cheat because I don't play online games because I can't stand f-ing cheaters, okay?
That said, you're just wrong. I've modded about a dozen Xboxes. None of them using a modchip, all done in software. When I am finished modding an Xbox:
1) You can connect and play on Xbox live. The SOFTWARE mod, no modchip, creates a virtual disc that looks to MS like an unmodded box. HARDWARE modchips usually come with kill switches so you can flip in a regular BIOS just like that. You can play on Xbox Live with either a hardware or software mod. Period.
2) You run all the games from copies on your Xbox hard drive. Modifying those bits is as easy as writing to a hard disc... which ain't hard.
You *can* play a game off a disc, but you wouldn't want to. Load times playing off the hard disc are WAY faster. Loading times for games played off the disc frustrate the hell out of me. It's why I've copied all my LEGITIMATELY PURCHASED games onto my Xbox HDD. It makes things like Fable or Jade empire actually playable.
I would think something as simple as a CRC or date check would be simple enough, once you download the content it shouldn't ever change so the CRC should always pass and the modified date should never change.
All you do is change the code to respond with the appropriate CRC instead of the real CRC. You can't stop people like this. You wrote a nice post, you got modded informative, but you're just plain wrong.
That's awesome.!
In one of William Gibson's novels ("Virtual Light?" I dunno... one of the ones after his writing turned awful anyhow) the main character keeps a label on his milk jug that says, "MILK EXPERIMENT." It's perfectly normal milk, he just does it to keep his roommates out.
Yours is like that, only you can put it on anything -- "Sandwich Experiment" doesn't work as well.
The example of the stoting gazelle is from Richard Dawkins excellent book, "The Blind Watchmaker." Or maybe it was in "The Selfish Gene." I'm going to assume it's in "Selfish Gene" because I have my copy of "Blind Watchmaker" handy and the only mention of Gazelles is in another context.
If you're interested at all in evolution/genetics, read the latter. If you're interested in evolution vs. creationism, read the former. In any case if you haven't read Dawkins, you don't know evolution as well as you think you do*.
I'd love to tell you the reason proposed for stoting but I forget - there's a lot of information in those books!
(* exceptions made for actual evolutionary scientists)
If I bought a right to use it, I should be able to get another copy of the medium if mine was damaged or destroyed for the cost of the medium+shipping.
Software companies used to do just this. I remember the warranty in the back of nearly every videogame I purchased in the 80s (mostly for my C-128) had a disclaimer to the effect of if the media were ruined, you could send them in plus a small fee to get a replacement. Some wanted the original manual as well. Prior to '95, I worked on the Microsoft Help Desk (for MS-DOS) and at the time we had the ability within the tech support program to ship replacement media for everything from Windows for Workgroups to Microsoft's assembler.
So here's an interesting question... I've heard this argument a lot of times, but has anyone actually tried to get replacement media in this decade? Maybe it's actually possible.
savvy enough to avoid typing "how to kill your wife" in a search box?
It makes me want to cry to even read that phrase.
The day that searching for "how to kill your wife" is a problem, all by itself, that's the day the thought police have taken over.
"Aren't you SMART ENOUGH to know better than to search for 'how to kill your wife!?'"
No, I'm SMART ENOUGH to know a fucking web-search doesn't mean I'm going to kill my wife. Or even thinking about it. You people with your knee-jerk reaction, "This must be wrong!" or "How could he search for that!" or "he must be STUPID to search for that!" make me sick -- literally, I feel ill.
You could make me feel worse, though. At least you're not suggesting legislation to make this sort of search illegal.
Your comment is marked "insightful"
That is sad. "Funny" sure. But "Insightful?"
Here's the person's searches in question:
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
17556639 photo of death
17556639 photo of death
17556639 death
17556639 dead people photos
17556639 photo of dead people
17556639 www.murderdpeople.com
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crash photo
If you want this person investigated, you are worse than the "thought police." First off, it's clear (to me, at least) that this guy isn't thinking about killing anyone. He just wants to see some gory photos. "steakandcheese" is a site like rotten.com. Even if he is thinking about killing someone, that's OK. There's a comment further down on the site you linked to that I find to be "insightful" about an old twilight zone episode. The main character could read minds and he reads the mind of a bank security guard who is thinking about robbing the bank! He has the man investigated, but nothing comes out of it. In the end, the guard admits he was thinking about robbing the bank... in fact he's thought about it almost every day. It's just a fantasy he has to make the day go faster... not something he'd ever act on.
And having been a regular visitor to rotten.com in the past myself, I know that just wanting to see some of the reality of death that we tend to keep hidden in American society is not a crime. It's not even thinking of a crime. It's perfectly natural and healthy curiosity. Neither is daydreaming about terrible things you would never do -- or want to have happen -- in real life. Fantasy is normal and healthy.
In fact, if you've never been to rotten.com or a similar site, I'd recommend you go sometime.
Especially Super Mario Brothers 2.
How can I change the system? I don't have a vote.
No, I don't mean that I'm convicted of a felony, or an illegal immigrant. I'm a natural-born US citizen with a clean record over the age of 18.
But I still don't have a vote.
Why?
The electoral college. I can vote if I want, but my vote doesn't count. The votes from the Electoral College do count. And you know what? They're under zero obligation to vote the way I voted, or the way I want them to vote -- even if my vote is in the majority. They can vote however they want. The entire electoral college was created specifically because the founders of this country assumed (rightly, in my opinion) that the average American is too stupid to have a say in politics.
It's people like you who say, "Go get the vote out!" that are incorrect. My vote is literally worthless, and yours too.