Yes, it's the problem of correlation verses causation. If you found in a survey that 90% of all serial killers chew gum, you may have found a correlation. However, this does not necessarily mean you can use causation to say that gum-chewers are more likely to become serial killers.
For the statistically inclined, the relationship is exellently explained by the wikipedia entry. Basically the theory goes that there may be some hidden or lurking variable that was not tested.
So in this case it could be that some violent criminals play CS, and many who play CS are violent. There may be some other factor involved though. I could even conjecture that perhaps crazy people do violent things a lot, and sometimes this includes video games.
Then I can take my virtual tourist bot and use it to RAIN FIREY DEATH TO THE MEATBAGS.
Yeah, great idea, but we're not even socially responsible to each other yet. When we are anonymous, we're even worse. Imagine if we were anonymous *and* could interact with objects in another place?
Actually, I remember seeing a virtual reality tour of the famous Notre Dame. We're seeing this sort of thing more and more, mostly with QuickTimeVR.
As with most of these technologies, I think companies are mostly still a little leary because the average computer is still a little bit underpowered. I'm a tech guy and I still use my 700mhz laptop for daily stuff.
I hear a lot about the impending 'death' of Gentoo. I'm a casual linux user, and have Gentoo on 2 machines. Can someone please tell me what the problem is? I don't see any glaring problems with Gentoo. Emerge is fantastic, services are handled flawlessly and in a way I understand. Portage always has 95% of the things I need.
What am I missing?
I love my Gentoo, but if there is something better, please fill me in. Oh, and telling me *why* your alternative is better would be nice also.
Umm, no. Product activation is something that has been tried a bunch of times, to no avail. While piracy is a problem, it doesn't mean it's an insurmountable one. For one thing, people *lose* money through piracy, and that sucks. That doesn't mean they make *no money* or even a drastically reduced amount. I think we all know the windows piracy problem helped establish it's market dominance.
Also on the "no longer being considered worth pandering to" note, I don't think I've ever seen any demographic ever cease to be marketed to due to piracy. Cable TV, lot's of pirates, still makes money. Dish TV, same. Windows, same. Any popular pc Game, same.
People keep thinking of piracy as something that can be eliminated, like polio. It's not some disease that threatens humanity. It's an aspect of human nature that has been around for quite some time (like, uh, pirates? You know, the swashbuckling kind?). There is a reason banks and large commercial retailers have insurance. Nobody has ever said "lets start a campain to stop bank robbery!" People are going to still rob banks, despite having 50 cameras and untold security. Some will succeed. If your business model relies on not having anyone *ever* steal from you, I suspect you have bigger problems. Does anyone have theft insurance? Why is that? Theft has been around a long time, why haven't we started 'The War On Theft'?
Now, making me give you my personal info to buy your product, that's fine, but don't expect me to do so. There are plenty of other games out there. Keep in mind this is the *single* player version that also requires activation. Would you buy console games this way? Oh yeah, that next Zelda is so cool, I'll just tell the Nintendo people my personal details, because I *know* they won't share them with anyone.
Please.
If you feel it's fine, you go right ahead, but in my mind at least, this is not a bright idea.
"I bet there are other applications in industries where large control boards are involved where this could be useful as well.
Yes, for example, when you need to reroute the phaser array through to the main deflector. This is useful in destroying large ships, placating energy-hungry life-forms, and removing plaque.
Another useful application is searching for the life.. forms, the leetle life-forms..
I just joined the ranks of the cell-phoned, sadly. And I miss being snobbish about it. Anyway, a cel-jammer device would still be useful. No, it's not my right to control your usage of your stuff, but if I had to tell every idiot that screaming about how your man left you into a cell phone or driving like and idiot while gesticulating wildly, I 'd go mad. Oh wait, I just did.
Yeah, I already stack stuff on mine, but it's going to die soon, and I'm getting this replacement. Now I'll stack the PS2 on something else, since it fits nicely anywhere.
This would be perfect for my current multimedia PS2 Linux set, any links to how this is done?
Not a Security Issue, but a conceptual concern
on
IE Shines On Broken Code
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
While it's great that IE can handle 'bad' web code, it really is a seperate issue from security. Now, when the other browsers actually *crash*, this is a concern. Yes crashes *can* be used to determine an exploit, but that doesn't mean they *do*.
To beat the dead horse of the car analogy, if my car doesn't start, it may be the entire electrical system, or maybe my battery is just dead. The moral is don't try to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
Meanwhile, I absolutely despise the fact that IE does handle a lot of 'bad' code. This is a side effect of the IE monopoly on the browsing world. We're not talking about it handling variables that arent declared before they are used or sumsuch. We're talking about code which *should* be causing errors. Since they don't cause errors most of the time (or are hidden from the user) and most web authors only test with IE, there is a massive amount of bad code on the net which is never fixed.
Now I'm glad that the author has found these crashing bugs in the other browsers. This obviously needs fixing, and I'm glad IE is at least stable when it encounters malformed code, but more error reporting needs to be done to the user on all browsers.
Summary:Good review, brings up great points, kudo's to MS for stability. Now everyone go back to work on your browsers and add blatant *THIS WEBSITE AUTHOR DOES NOT WRITE PROPER CODE* dialogs to all your error messages. It's the web author's fault, it's time we told them so.
Yes, even though the man almost singly created an entire game *genre* (the god game), he has a weak grasp on reality.
Seriously. Yeah, he probably doesn't sit down and code too often, and probably is more of a concepter than a coder. However, thinking you can make trees grow on a 700Mhz PC with customized graphic hardware isn't exactly out of touch with reality. *I* still think it can be done, and easily, it just doesn't fit within the scope of the game they created.
I bought it at EB, it was out of stock but I'll get it whenever they get some more. It's not like I'm dying to play it. It'll be a suprise whenever it shows up.
The price point is even on par with an 'upscale' portable system.
Let's be serious for a minute. What can the PSP offer me that is worth it's (expected) retail price? I really don't want to play my PS2 titles on the go, and the UMD media thing doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy either. Look at Wario Ware Inc. if you want to know why you will buy a DS. It's in the games man. The games.
Oh, and the price too.:)
The 3DO's, which were actually published by multiple consumer electronics giants, usually went for about $700 at launch. It was pretty ludicrous. I bought one for about $150 when the pricewars began, and it was actually a wonderful system. Many games, many exclusives.
No, not 'cheap' as in value menu, 'cheap' as getting a new car for $10k would be. Nice cellphones go for about $130 these days. If these prices remain similar with the new resolution, let's say a VGA phone is like $200. Even if the screen is the most expensive, it can be reliably said that you could do a dual LCD HMD w/o headtracking for around $600. This is 'cheap' for an HMD that would seem to you to be >50" screen.
I have been thinking this would be perfect for laptops. I would much rather have a nice set of glasses, however dorky, that I can use on a plane with my laptop. Complete privacy, and no loss (but a gain!) of screen real estate. How about a laptop that doesn't even have a screen? Extreme? Yes, but that would be fine for 90% of my on-the-go type of work.
I even met a dork wanna-be yesterday, so let's face it, with cellphones, pda's, gbas and the like becoming ever more popular, it's become chic to be dork.:)
Although there are some inexpensive HMDs available, it seems like driver support has been the hugest issue. I don't even *want* 3D stuff, like two independent displays, just make it so I can get rid of these LCDs.
Oh, and btw, can someone show me any HMDs on Linux? Any?
Or at a reduced cost. I'm sorry but although I agree these games are 'classic' (even though Zelda 2 is perhaps the worst of the entire series) $10 is more than enough to milk out of me for them.
A whole lot to discuss here. The question is essentially this.
Is the effect of internet access on console machines an asset or a liability?
The answer cannot be solved by a four-line/. comment unfortunately. This particular patch seems to be an excellent candidate for discussion though. This patch is both a bugfix (camera updates) and updated content (new moves/weapon).
First, bugfixes. It would be nice if we lived in a world where patches were unneccessary. In this world all developers felt a supreme responsibility to the user to release a bug-free, 100% enjoyable experience. This would mean that the developers would have unlimited budgets, unlimited time, and have volunteers test each part of a game. Those volunteers would of course not be allowed to 'leak' info about an unreleased game, lest someone review a beta of the game and destroy the games sales potential (think of the prerelease of 'The Hulk'). These users wouldn't need a non-disclosure agreement because they are perfect users who completely understand the development cycle of software, the retailing system, and the social environment in every market in which the game is released. There would be no bugs in any released version of any game, since the developers would *never* bow to any deadlines told to magazines, or orders from marketing to ship the product early.
Let's face reality though, this isn't going to happen. There will always be some low end developer looking to make a quick buck, and won't put in proper R&D.
Next, new content. Back in perfect world, those same developer also know exactly what everyone wanted in their game ahead of time, and included it all. Since they had unlimited feedback from testers and the public, this was not even an issue.
Obviously this is also unrealistic. What we want is perfect world, but it isn't going to happen due to human nature. Until then we need to vote with our dollars. Don't buy games that are buggy on release (*especially if they are fixed later*) but do buy games after they've added new content. It isn't the perfect solution, but it's the one that gets the job done.
The last thing is yes, the/. crowd is biased against Microsoft. If it were a PS2 or GC game there would be much less complaining. The problem is that Microsoft, and those making software for their products, have been known to use the rush/patch idea before, so there is legitimate concern for worry. It's up to the gamers of the world to tell those companies that we won't buy HaloXP 3.5 Service Pack 6a just because you didn't get it right the first time.
Add me to the list of happy Shuttle owners. I also have an SN41G2V2, with an AthlonXP2200. It's currently running mythTV and works great in the bedroom. Soon I will put one in the living room, and probably somewhere else too.
They're just great, and very, very quiet. Not silent, but damn near.
*If* I manage to do something useful, I will definetly add my contributions. As for right now, I have nothing in MythGame working. So my contribution is that earlier/. rant. For now.:)
Just in case you're thinking of doing it, MythTV is an excellent project. I just bought a Shuttle case and have MythTV running very nicely.
However, the emulator plugin MythGame has literally zero documentation and has a lot of weird issues which result in a lot of forum combing. As an example, the setup requires setting up many different paths for the different emulators. Well, do you specify path with the / or without? Just guess because some work some ways and others work others. Oh did I say path? Well guess what it *means* file.
It's been 3 weeks since I started playing with MythGame and I still can't get it to find any of my roms for any emulator.
Oh, and 'contact the author' is pretty much out, because finding him is extremely difficult and I don't think he replies very much from what I've heard. He started a great project but others will need to continue it. I'm looking at the sources as we speak.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's the problem of correlation verses causation . If you found in a survey that 90% of all serial killers chew gum, you may have found a correlation. However, this does not necessarily mean you can use causation to say that gum-chewers are more likely to become serial killers.
For the statistically inclined, the relationship is exellently explained by the wikipedia entry. Basically the theory goes that there may be some hidden or lurking variable that was not tested.
So in this case it could be that some violent criminals play CS, and many who play CS are violent. There may be some other factor involved though. I could even conjecture that perhaps crazy people do violent things a lot, and sometimes this includes video games.
Hmm. Nah, maybe it's the gum thing.
Then I can take my virtual tourist bot and use it to RAIN FIREY DEATH TO THE MEATBAGS.
Yeah, great idea, but we're not even socially responsible to each other yet. When we are anonymous, we're even worse. Imagine if we were anonymous *and* could interact with objects in another place?
Actually, I remember seeing a virtual reality tour of the famous Notre Dame. We're seeing this sort of thing more and more, mostly with QuickTimeVR.
As with most of these technologies, I think companies are mostly still a little leary because the average computer is still a little bit underpowered. I'm a tech guy and I still use my 700mhz laptop for daily stuff.
I hear a lot about the impending 'death' of Gentoo. I'm a casual linux user, and have Gentoo on 2 machines. Can someone please tell me what the problem is? I don't see any glaring problems with Gentoo. Emerge is fantastic, services are handled flawlessly and in a way I understand. Portage always has 95% of the things I need.
What am I missing?
I love my Gentoo, but if there is something better, please fill me in. Oh, and telling me *why* your alternative is better would be nice also.
Umm, no. Product activation is something that has been tried a bunch of times, to no avail. While piracy is a problem, it doesn't mean it's an insurmountable one. For one thing, people *lose* money through piracy, and that sucks. That doesn't mean they make *no money* or even a drastically reduced amount. I think we all know the windows piracy problem helped establish it's market dominance.
Also on the "no longer being considered worth pandering to" note, I don't think I've ever seen any demographic ever cease to be marketed to due to piracy. Cable TV, lot's of pirates, still makes money. Dish TV, same. Windows, same. Any popular pc Game, same.
People keep thinking of piracy as something that can be eliminated, like polio. It's not some disease that threatens humanity. It's an aspect of human nature that has been around for quite some time (like, uh, pirates? You know, the swashbuckling kind?). There is a reason banks and large commercial retailers have insurance. Nobody has ever said "lets start a campain to stop bank robbery!" People are going to still rob banks, despite having 50 cameras and untold security. Some will succeed. If your business model relies on not having anyone *ever* steal from you, I suspect you have bigger problems. Does anyone have theft insurance? Why is that? Theft has been around a long time, why haven't we started 'The War On Theft'?
Now, making me give you my personal info to buy your product, that's fine, but don't expect me to do so. There are plenty of other games out there. Keep in mind this is the *single* player version that also requires activation. Would you buy console games this way? Oh yeah, that next Zelda is so cool, I'll just tell the Nintendo people my personal details, because I *know* they won't share them with anyone.
Please.
If you feel it's fine, you go right ahead, but in my mind at least, this is not a bright idea.
Wow, I was just looking for an actual reference. Including a link is bonus points. Your +15 is in the mail.
"I bet there are other applications in industries where large control boards are involved where this could be useful as well.
Yes, for example, when you need to reroute the phaser array through to the main deflector. This is useful in destroying large ships, placating energy-hungry life-forms, and removing plaque.
Another useful application is searching for the life .. forms, the leetle life-forms ..
+10 to anyone who gets that last reference
I just joined the ranks of the cell-phoned, sadly. And I miss being snobbish about it. Anyway, a cel-jammer device would still be useful. No, it's not my right to control your usage of your stuff, but if I had to tell every idiot that screaming about how your man left you into a cell phone or driving like and idiot while gesticulating wildly, I 'd go mad. Oh wait, I just did.
Yeah, I already stack stuff on mine, but it's going to die soon, and I'm getting this replacement. Now I'll stack the PS2 on something else, since it fits nicely anywhere.
This would be perfect for my current multimedia PS2 Linux set, any links to how this is done?
While it's great that IE can handle 'bad' web code, it really is a seperate issue from security. Now, when the other browsers actually *crash*, this is a concern. Yes crashes *can* be used to determine an exploit, but that doesn't mean they *do*.
To beat the dead horse of the car analogy, if my car doesn't start, it may be the entire electrical system, or maybe my battery is just dead. The moral is don't try to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
Meanwhile, I absolutely despise the fact that IE does handle a lot of 'bad' code. This is a side effect of the IE monopoly on the browsing world. We're not talking about it handling variables that arent declared before they are used or sumsuch. We're talking about code which *should* be causing errors. Since they don't cause errors most of the time (or are hidden from the user) and most web authors only test with IE, there is a massive amount of bad code on the net which is never fixed.
Now I'm glad that the author has found these crashing bugs in the other browsers. This obviously needs fixing, and I'm glad IE is at least stable when it encounters malformed code, but more error reporting needs to be done to the user on all browsers.
Summary:Good review, brings up great points, kudo's to MS for stability. Now everyone go back to work on your browsers and add blatant *THIS WEBSITE AUTHOR DOES NOT WRITE PROPER CODE* dialogs to all your error messages. It's the web author's fault, it's time we told them so.
Yes, even though the man almost singly created an entire game *genre* (the god game), he has a weak grasp on reality.
Seriously. Yeah, he probably doesn't sit down and code too often, and probably is more of a concepter than a coder. However, thinking you can make trees grow on a 700Mhz PC with customized graphic hardware isn't exactly out of touch with reality. *I* still think it can be done, and easily, it just doesn't fit within the scope of the game they created.
I bought it at EB, it was out of stock but I'll get it whenever they get some more. It's not like I'm dying to play it. It'll be a suprise whenever it shows up.
Since I've never heard of it, and now I want it. Gonna go have to go find it now.
Baaaaa
It's hard to decide right now, with all the speculation going on. However, Nintendo has backwards compatibility, low-battery using cartridges innovative dual screen and not to mention a ridicoulsly awesome track record for good first party games.
The price point is even on par with an 'upscale' portable system.
Let's be serious for a minute. What can the PSP offer me that is worth it's (expected) retail price? I really don't want to play my PS2 titles on the go, and the UMD media thing doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy either. Look at Wario Ware Inc. if you want to know why you will buy a DS. It's in the games man. The games. Oh, and the price too.The 3DO's, which were actually published by multiple consumer electronics giants, usually went for about $700 at launch. It was pretty ludicrous. I bought one for about $150 when the pricewars began, and it was actually a wonderful system. Many games, many exclusives.
Well, I think most of the population can type at least one handed, so we're halfway there.
No, not 'cheap' as in value menu, 'cheap' as getting a new car for $10k would be. Nice cellphones go for about $130 these days. If these prices remain similar with the new resolution, let's say a VGA phone is like $200. Even if the screen is the most expensive, it can be reliably said that you could do a dual LCD HMD w/o headtracking for around $600. This is 'cheap' for an HMD that would seem to you to be >50" screen.
I have been thinking this would be perfect for laptops. I would much rather have a nice set of glasses, however dorky, that I can use on a plane with my laptop. Complete privacy, and no loss (but a gain!) of screen real estate. How about a laptop that doesn't even have a screen? Extreme? Yes, but that would be fine for 90% of my on-the-go type of work.
I even met a dork wanna-be yesterday, so let's face it, with cellphones, pda's, gbas and the like becoming ever more popular, it's become chic to be dork. :)
Although there are some inexpensive HMDs available, it seems like driver support has been the hugest issue. I don't even *want* 3D stuff, like two independent displays, just make it so I can get rid of these LCDs.
Oh, and btw, can someone show me any HMDs on Linux? Any?
Hopefully someday this will be a slashdot header.
AskSlashdot: Why can we not fix the friggin linux NTFS support?
Keep bringing it up, maybe someone will notice.
Offtopic? Not when people are using email for damn storage.
Or at a reduced cost. I'm sorry but although I agree these games are 'classic' (even though Zelda 2 is perhaps the worst of the entire series) $10 is more than enough to milk out of me for them.
A whole lot to discuss here. The question is essentially this.
Is the effect of internet access on console machines an asset or a liability?
The answer cannot be solved by a four-line /. comment unfortunately. This particular patch seems to be an excellent candidate for discussion though. This patch is both a bugfix (camera updates) and updated content (new moves/weapon).
First, bugfixes. It would be nice if we lived in a world where patches were unneccessary. In this world all developers felt a supreme responsibility to the user to release a bug-free, 100% enjoyable experience. This would mean that the developers would have unlimited budgets, unlimited time, and have volunteers test each part of a game. Those volunteers would of course not be allowed to 'leak' info about an unreleased game, lest someone review a beta of the game and destroy the games sales potential (think of the prerelease of 'The Hulk'). These users wouldn't need a non-disclosure agreement because they are perfect users who completely understand the development cycle of software, the retailing system, and the social environment in every market in which the game is released. There would be no bugs in any released version of any game, since the developers would *never* bow to any deadlines told to magazines, or orders from marketing to ship the product early.Let's face reality though, this isn't going to happen. There will always be some low end developer looking to make a quick buck, and won't put in proper R&D.
Next, new content. Back in perfect world, those same developer also know exactly what everyone wanted in their game ahead of time, and included it all. Since they had unlimited feedback from testers and the public, this was not even an issue.
Obviously this is also unrealistic. What we want is perfect world, but it isn't going to happen due to human nature. Until then we need to vote with our dollars. Don't buy games that are buggy on release (*especially if they are fixed later*) but do buy games after they've added new content. It isn't the perfect solution, but it's the one that gets the job done.
The last thing is yes, the /. crowd is biased against Microsoft. If it were a PS2 or GC game there would be much less complaining. The problem is that Microsoft, and those making software for their products, have been known to use the rush/patch idea before, so there is legitimate concern for worry. It's up to the gamers of the world to tell those companies that we won't buy HaloXP 3.5 Service Pack 6a just because you didn't get it right the first time.
too much reasing necessary...
There is so much irony with that sentence that I cannot even begin to be sarcastic. This does not happen often.
Add me to the list of happy Shuttle owners. I also have an SN41G2V2, with an AthlonXP2200. It's currently running mythTV and works great in the bedroom. Soon I will put one in the living room, and probably somewhere else too.
They're just great, and very, very quiet. Not silent, but damn near.
*If* I manage to do something useful, I will definetly add my contributions. As for right now, I have nothing in MythGame working. So my contribution is that earlier /. rant. For now. :)
Just in case you're thinking of doing it, MythTV is an excellent project. I just bought a Shuttle case and have MythTV running very nicely.
:)
However, the emulator plugin MythGame has literally zero documentation and has a lot of weird issues which result in a lot of forum combing. As an example, the setup requires setting up many different paths for the different emulators. Well, do you specify path with the / or without? Just guess because some work some ways and others work others. Oh did I say path? Well guess what it *means* file.
It's been 3 weeks since I started playing with MythGame and I still can't get it to find any of my roms for any emulator.
Oh, and 'contact the author' is pretty much out, because finding him is extremely difficult and I don't think he replies very much from what I've heard. He started a great project but others will need to continue it. I'm looking at the sources as we speak.
You have been warned.