Possible, yes. Probable? No. I'd love to find out someone was crazy-glueing gumstix to the wall in public places near me, I'd have a nice collection of gumstix for 5 seconds work with a mini pry bar.
I have been around for a long time, but like I explained, it was more "people paranoid enough to use sneakernet so as to avoid internet tracking are paranoid enough not to open word docs with macros turned on/run exes etc."
This is actually something I considered for a moment as I was posting the above message, but tossed aside as being overly paranoid. Yes, a USB-drive-that-isn't-actually-a-USB-drive-but-is-actually-a-tiny-computer, a custom piece of hardware, might be able to find a vulnerability. Normally I'd think the tinfoil hat must be too tight if someone was worried about this, but in recent light of all this NSA spying on the world crap, I guess the option of "the terrorist state has won and I am giving in to fear" is perhaps a valid one. I await Brian Krebs' story on this in the future.
Ahhh, I got ya. Yes, I do remember spending some time running around the first couple of area, watching the NPC's watch me, and being impressed by how creepy it felt.
OK, so the only people who need to be scared are people that would download a file named "RunMeToMakeFacebookFaster.exe" and execute it...but those folks are already boned by every Nigerian Prince on teh internetz, so I don't worry about them. The government already knows the state of every bit on their computers.
I might be wrong, lord knows who actually uses these things, but it sounded like it was aimed at the sort of paranoid people who worry about the government tracking their files, and wouldn't be silly enough to run software they found laying in the street. It could be that they are actually used exclusively by cool hipsters with Macbooks though.
Really? I was not so impressed by HL2: the linear levels drove me nuts. I was playing Deus Ex 2 at the same time, and while HL2 was prettier and had better physics, the gameplay and AI was far inferior. In the Deus Ex games every NPC had "spatial awareness", reacted to the situation at hand, but the situation at hand could take on so many forms depending on how you approached that part of the level. HL2 promised cool reactive AI, but what I saw was very scripted responses with no variety. The much vaunted "squad tactics AI", that was promoted in pre-release videos was not actually there, etc.
How do they "load software to track who is downloading"? Do thumb drives now have the capability to execute software on their own? Can that software access your files and ID you over a USB port?
Methinks you don't understand the technologies involved here. Everything to do with computers isn't a computer; specifically, USB flash drives are not computers.
This is sneakernet with anonymous strangers. I don't know about you, but that is a new one on me. It used to be I knew who I was getting the floppy disk from.
In this particular instance, having seen the state of many roadside toilets along the highway in Quebec over the years, I agree with the choice. Many are fine, but the filthiest/most run down bathrooms I have ever seen have all been in Quebec (and not just along the highway; the worst hotel bathroom was in Quebec as well...although, to be fair, so was the nicest).
Yes, it was easy to see the evolutionary trail of Harpoon in The Hunt for Red October game I was talking about. Those games presented us with a simplistic set of graphics that were meant to represent what the actual naval consoles displayed and most of the action happened "in our heads", but managed to provide us with very tense situations and lots of true nail-biting, scary moments. Loved Harpoon, was trying to remember the name of that game earlier today. Thanks for reminiscing!
The Hunt for Red October was made into at least two video games; I played the more complex "simulator-style" game on the Amiga, and it was actually a fantastic game.
Looks like the submitter confused irony with "damning". Not exactly great journalistic writing in the summaries provided by submitters lately. Meh, that's what we get for paying them absolutely nothing I guess.
Being well-educated makes soldiers fight better? Interesting concept. For a differing opinion on this subject, try this movie: A Midnight Clear http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102443/?ref_=sr_1
This. Someday the terrorists are going to figure out that killing people BEFORE boarding the plane is easier, and just as effective, as blowing up the plane. After all, there is this nice bottleneck at the TSA screening area where everyone is packed together, but no one has been screened for bombs yet.
Hehe, Facebook is concerned as well, but their concern is more along the lines of "private data is valuable, so sell all we can without getting sued or driving away all the product (users)". I'm sure they have lawyers who spend all day talking about privacy, 24/7.
Could you point me towards more information on this? I like the sound of this "sell out my neighbours on ebay" plan. Not all my neighbours, mind you, just one in particular.
They are a mega-corporation whose main business involves selling software that interoperates with both their own and other software, and there is a lot of data exchange involved, covering the scale from OS's to apps to large networked DBs. Practically everything they do either directly impacts user data or has the potential to do so, so of course they are concerned about user privacy issues. Whether they are concerned enough to say no the NSA is...well, it seems in light of recent news that we can say they are not concerned enough.
The link to "news for nerds' is pretty tenuous in this case. Something is big in FB and Twitterspace, so that makes it news for nerds? I thought nerds were the people that most shunned semi-useless crap like FB and Twitter.
AAA game companies are going to want a much better input API than SDL/Allegro. Luckily Valve will give them one: that fancy-schmancy new controller is going to come with a fancy-schmancy new API from Valve. Hopefully they give us a nice kb/mouse API to work with too.
>I'm not convinced by the controller design since it seems to lack the haptic feedback of twin stick
I thought that one of teh things Valve was pitching was much-improved haptic feedback. From http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/ : "Haptics Trackpads, by their nature, are less physical than thumbsticks. By themselves, they are “light touch” devices and don’t offer the kind of visceral feedback that players get from pushing joysticks around. As we investigated trackpad-based input devices, it became clear through testing that we had to find ways to add more physicality to the experience. It also became clear that “rumble”, as it has been traditionally implemented (a lopsided weight spun around a single axis), was not going to be enough. Not even close.
The Steam Controller is built around a new generation of super-precise haptic feedback, employing dual linear resonant actuators. These small, strong, weighted electro-magnets are attached to each of the dual trackpads. They are capable of delivering a wide range of force and vibration, allowing precise control over frequency, amplitude, and direction of movement.
This haptic capability provides a vital channel of information to the player - delivering in-game information about speed, boundaries, thresholds, textures, action confirmations, or any other events about which game designers want players to be aware. It is a higher-bandwidth haptic information channel than exists in any other consumer product that we know of. As a parlour trick they can even play audio waveforms and function as speakers."
Why is this modded down? Satire and mockery are the perfect tools to combat terrorism. This is not a new idea, I thought it was well-known that the best way to combat fear tactics and the self-aggrandizing publicity-hunting of terrorist attacks was to make fun of them.
They actually are not overly effective at blocking child porn, are they? I can find it with a quick google search. Would you be all that upset if they blocked piracy as ineffectively as they actually block child porn?
It is not some super-effective Google filter that makes child porn harder to find on the internet; it is the relatively small amount of child porn out there, as different police agencies jump on whatever they find and prosecute people. If they jumped on piracy as hard as child porn, their would be a lot less piracy as well. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why they will never do that. Don't confuse your problems with finding child porn with Google filtering; it's got very little to do with the latter, despite what John Whittingdale MP might claim.
Slashdot Mirror
Possible, yes. Probable? No. I'd love to find out someone was crazy-glueing gumstix to the wall in public places near me, I'd have a nice collection of gumstix for 5 seconds work with a mini pry bar.
I have been around for a long time, but like I explained, it was more "people paranoid enough to use sneakernet so as to avoid internet tracking are paranoid enough not to open word docs with macros turned on/run exes etc."
This is actually something I considered for a moment as I was posting the above message, but tossed aside as being overly paranoid. Yes, a USB-drive-that-isn't-actually-a-USB-drive-but-is-actually-a-tiny-computer, a custom piece of hardware, might be able to find a vulnerability. Normally I'd think the tinfoil hat must be too tight if someone was worried about this, but in recent light of all this NSA spying on the world crap, I guess the option of "the terrorist state has won and I am giving in to fear" is perhaps a valid one. I await Brian Krebs' story on this in the future.
Ahhh, I got ya. Yes, I do remember spending some time running around the first couple of area, watching the NPC's watch me, and being impressed by how creepy it felt.
No, but both hotels were in the same city: Montreal.
OK, so the only people who need to be scared are people that would download a file named "RunMeToMakeFacebookFaster.exe" and execute it...but those folks are already boned by every Nigerian Prince on teh internetz, so I don't worry about them. The government already knows the state of every bit on their computers.
I might be wrong, lord knows who actually uses these things, but it sounded like it was aimed at the sort of paranoid people who worry about the government tracking their files, and wouldn't be silly enough to run software they found laying in the street. It could be that they are actually used exclusively by cool hipsters with Macbooks though.
Really? I was not so impressed by HL2: the linear levels drove me nuts. I was playing Deus Ex 2 at the same time, and while HL2 was prettier and had better physics, the gameplay and AI was far inferior. In the Deus Ex games every NPC had "spatial awareness", reacted to the situation at hand, but the situation at hand could take on so many forms depending on how you approached that part of the level. HL2 promised cool reactive AI, but what I saw was very scripted responses with no variety. The much vaunted "squad tactics AI", that was promoted in pre-release videos was not actually there, etc.
How do they "load software to track who is downloading"? Do thumb drives now have the capability to execute software on their own? Can that software access your files and ID you over a USB port?
Methinks you don't understand the technologies involved here. Everything to do with computers isn't a computer; specifically, USB flash drives are not computers.
This is sneakernet with anonymous strangers. I don't know about you, but that is a new one on me. It used to be I knew who I was getting the floppy disk from.
In this particular instance, having seen the state of many roadside toilets along the highway in Quebec over the years, I agree with the choice. Many are fine, but the filthiest/most run down bathrooms I have ever seen have all been in Quebec (and not just along the highway; the worst hotel bathroom was in Quebec as well...although, to be fair, so was the nicest).
Yes, it was easy to see the evolutionary trail of Harpoon in The Hunt for Red October game I was talking about. Those games presented us with a simplistic set of graphics that were meant to represent what the actual naval consoles displayed and most of the action happened "in our heads", but managed to provide us with very tense situations and lots of true nail-biting, scary moments. Loved Harpoon, was trying to remember the name of that game earlier today. Thanks for reminiscing!
The Hunt for Red October was made into at least two video games; I played the more complex "simulator-style" game on the Amiga, and it was actually a fantastic game.
Looks like the submitter confused irony with "damning". Not exactly great journalistic writing in the summaries provided by submitters lately. Meh, that's what we get for paying them absolutely nothing I guess.
Being well-educated makes soldiers fight better? Interesting concept.
For a differing opinion on this subject, try this movie: A Midnight Clear
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102443/?ref_=sr_1
This. Someday the terrorists are going to figure out that killing people BEFORE boarding the plane is easier, and just as effective, as blowing up the plane. After all, there is this nice bottleneck at the TSA screening area where everyone is packed together, but no one has been screened for bombs yet.
Hehe, Facebook is concerned as well, but their concern is more along the lines of "private data is valuable, so sell all we can without getting sued or driving away all the product (users)". I'm sure they have lawyers who spend all day talking about privacy, 24/7.
Could you point me towards more information on this? I like the sound of this "sell out my neighbours on ebay" plan. Not all my neighbours, mind you, just one in particular.
They are a mega-corporation whose main business involves selling software that interoperates with both their own and other software, and there is a lot of data exchange involved, covering the scale from OS's to apps to large networked DBs. Practically everything they do either directly impacts user data or has the potential to do so, so of course they are concerned about user privacy issues. Whether they are concerned enough to say no the NSA is...well, it seems in light of recent news that we can say they are not concerned enough.
The link to "news for nerds' is pretty tenuous in this case. Something is big in FB and Twitterspace, so that makes it news for nerds? I thought nerds were the people that most shunned semi-useless crap like FB and Twitter.
AAA game companies are going to want a much better input API than SDL/Allegro. Luckily Valve will give them one: that fancy-schmancy new controller is going to come with a fancy-schmancy new API from Valve. Hopefully they give us a nice kb/mouse API to work with too.
>I'm not convinced by the controller design since it seems to lack the haptic feedback of twin stick
I thought that one of teh things Valve was pitching was much-improved haptic feedback. From http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/ :
"Haptics
Trackpads, by their nature, are less physical than thumbsticks. By themselves, they are “light touch” devices and don’t offer the kind of visceral feedback that players get from pushing joysticks around. As we investigated trackpad-based input devices, it became clear through testing that we had to find ways to add more physicality to the experience. It also became clear that “rumble”, as it has been traditionally implemented (a lopsided weight spun around a single axis), was not going to be enough. Not even close.
The Steam Controller is built around a new generation of super-precise haptic feedback, employing dual linear resonant actuators. These small, strong, weighted electro-magnets are attached to each of the dual trackpads. They are capable of delivering a wide range of force and vibration, allowing precise control over frequency, amplitude, and direction of movement.
This haptic capability provides a vital channel of information to the player - delivering in-game information about speed, boundaries, thresholds, textures, action confirmations, or any other events about which game designers want players to be aware. It is a higher-bandwidth haptic information channel than exists in any other consumer product that we know of. As a parlour trick they can even play audio waveforms and function as speakers."
Sounds great to me.
Why is this modded down? Satire and mockery are the perfect tools to combat terrorism. This is not a new idea, I thought it was well-known that the best way to combat fear tactics and the self-aggrandizing publicity-hunting of terrorist attacks was to make fun of them.
>No one has written a C++ program that uses all its power.
And no one should; it will usually lead to totally unreadable ( and often inefficient) code if you attempt it.
They actually are not overly effective at blocking child porn, are they? I can find it with a quick google search. Would you be all that upset if they blocked piracy as ineffectively as they actually block child porn?
It is not some super-effective Google filter that makes child porn harder to find on the internet; it is the relatively small amount of child porn out there, as different police agencies jump on whatever they find and prosecute people. If they jumped on piracy as hard as child porn, their would be a lot less piracy as well. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why they will never do that. Don't confuse your problems with finding child porn with Google filtering; it's got very little to do with the latter, despite what John Whittingdale MP might claim.
Stop using Java versions and switch to Python programs that do the same sort of thing; some educational institutions are doing that right now.