That's why you patronize servers with attentive and fair admins. I used to play on BF1942 MP demo servers for ages (I've found it's much easier to organize a quick pickup game with the demo than the full version, the retail version servers seem to follow the mantra of if you aren't in a 'clan' you aren't worthy to play) until I finally got fed up with all the servers out there where teamkillers were allowed to just go off and do whatever they wanted. It was enough to get me to start my own server with a handful of admins, told to strictly enforce the rules. One or two teamkills might be forgiven, if an admin wasn't present to see the circumstances, but beyond that you're out. It seems to be a recipe most people on my server enjoy.
However, when you get up to the 100+ player range, you're going to start getting to the point where you almost need a full-time admin who isn't really playing but is just fielding requests for the other in-game admins to deal with the complaints. Although on said MP demo server there's typically a 1:8 ratio of admins to players, so I suppose holding to that ratio and giving 12 players admin abilities might help balance the load.
If only GT had you deal with fuel consumption as well as tire wear. Sail past the competition in endurance races when they stop for fuel and you've still got half a tank:D
Not to feed the AC's, but everyone who's bitching about this does realize that the reason Slashdot has been getting heavier on the April Fool's stories the past few years is precisely because people bitch about it. The editors are becoming cynical little bastards (check out the latest poll, in direct defiance of people who constantly bitch about lack of options), and for that, I salute them.
The people elected George Bush though the same process we have for many, many years. Get over it. You've got another election coming up in 8 months, concentrate on bitching about that one instead.
An interesting thought. So you're suggesting that allow the backend, the meat and bones of WMP, to be allowed in the OS, but the frontend is its own application, which can be removed, yet keep the core functionality that other portions of Windows or the API's may require? I suppose that does make a great deal of sense. But even so, don't you feel that it's Microsoft's right to do pretty much whatever they feel is acceptable with their own software? Barring illegal practices, naturally.
Oh come now, this is Slashdot, since when has that mattered?
The underlying themes are quite the same, though. The government unfairly sticking its nose in a company's private business, pretty much telling them how their operating system has to work. Yes, they have been convicted of monopolistic practices, but this seems like a pretty piss-poor way to deal with it. Imagine the fun if Microsoft decided, as is their right, someday to prevent future versions of Windows from running third-party apps.
It's unfortunate, yes, that the W3C, being the official standards body for the web, isn't really treated as such. The fact is, though, that given IE's prevalence, it has pretty much become a de facto standard.
I actually wasn't speaking so much about its compliance with the W3C, as that developers can count on it being present, and that it will (for the most part) render pages the same way and respond to their programs predictably, rather than having to potentially write additional code in an application which wishes to make use of web browser functionality to continue functioning whether the user has IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc. installed.
Your comparison is a stretch, at best. IE is, love it or hate it, an integral part of Windows these days. I don't know that it's too tightly integrated with Windows Explorer, but if I recall the help system in Windows runs through IE, Windows Update is just a bookmark to a website, and IE is a nice standard HTML rendering engine for Windows developers to use. It serves many purposes and is, for all intents and purposes, a pretty vital piece of software when it comes to Windows.
A car stereo is little more than an accessory. It plays music, sometimes acts as a clock, or shows pretty crappy LCD pictures. I don't know that I've ever seen a stereo that doubled as a tachometer or gas gauge (although I'm sure someone can prove me wrong.)
Perhaps a better comparison would be IE is to Windows as bolts are to an automobile. (I realize this comparison is also flawed, but at the moment I can't come up with anything closer.)
Let that be a lesson folks; don't let your software company become ultra-successful. Otherwise you lose the right to decide what you do with your IP, the government gets to.
I've been wondering ever since I got SSBM what Fire Emblem is all about, this review was very comprehensive (at least to me), it's a great overview of the series. Now I just wish I could find fan-translated ROMs of the games. Or I could actually go out and learn to read Japanese, but naaah.
Heh, well, it actually was written by his wife (then married to someone else, just as he was married to another woman at the time) about her feelings for Cash. She had her sister (I believe) perform it, Johnny heard it, liked it, got hopped up on something one night and dreamt about a mariachi band, and thus, the legend was born.
...launching counter attacks to clean infected hosts!
They're just that, 'attacks.' Unauthorized access to users' machines with the intent of installing software without the users' knowledge (even with, it makes no difference.)
It's a nice idea in spirit, the Community (I hate that term) working to automatically protect those who can't help themselves (sounds rather elitist, doesn't it). But in the end, it's no better than your average hacker / skript kiddie futzing around with your machines.
But think of what we're doing to the soldiers' privacy! Sure, now it's just RFID tags on the crates, but next it'll be RFID tags on every M-16, Stinger missile launcher, and grenade! The government will be able to track each individual soldier and know what they're doing with these weapons! They might even sell this information to third-party arms manufacturers for 'marketing research!'
See, this is what ticks me off about most slashdotters; if they can find any potentially bad use for a tool, it's instantly evil. If you think about it long enough, I'm sure you can find an ill-intentioned use for any tool, but does that mean it's bad? I can cut down a tree with my chainsaw, or I can go cut my neighbor in half. Why, with that new wrench I got, I can tighten my leaky garden hose AND loosen the bolts on the schoolyard bully's bike!
Anyway, with that out of the way (you don't fit the above category, you're quite sensible in your approach), yes, it's an unfortunate effect of society (at least American) these days that typically if something can be exploited by an individual or corporation for their game, it often will. Which means, unfortunately, we need to legislate the construction and use of such devices, to allow the consumers to prosecute those whom we trust to obey the law and not make a buck at our expense using whatever information they can gather through these boxes.
Certainly at this point, it wouldn't appear offhand that there is much if any legislation regarding these things, but they're still not terribly mainstream (at least in terms of pubic perception.) I would hope that sometime soon when more manufacturers start using these things it will become more of a general-knowledge issue. At the moment, though, they seem to still be in their infancy, judging by some of the articles I've found on the subjects (difficulty being able to retrieve data from devices after a collision, GM alone using 10 different cables on various models, etc.)
They aren't even obligated to tell you. They might sell that data to lots of other companies, together with information about what kind of consumer you are, etc.
However, before they do all this, they'll definitely need to include this in their fine print legal notices, so at least someone would notice I'm sure, the EFF or the like. But as for the average consumer, yes, they probably wouldn't be aware of this.
However, I would believe that if, as you and I both mentioned, these things become mandatory, it would be relatively well spelled-out as to what the manufacturer can actually do with the data, and even what kinds of data they can record. A quick Google on automotive black box turns up a link to, among other things, a Slashdot story from way back in 2002 about the IEEE developing a standard for automotive black boxes. Digging around on the IEEE site, I found a homepage for their MVEDR (Motor Vehicle Event Data Recorders project. I don't have Acrobat or PowerPoint installed though, so I can't read many of their documents regarding the project.
In short, it would seem to me that once these things become commonplace, everyone's going to be jumping over the manufacturers to make sure they behave with the data. Although, my faith in humanity and America may be too high.
What do you do, for example, in an accident where one car has a blackbox recorder and it shows the car was speeding, while the other car doesn't have a recorder? It may have been speeding much more, but that may be much harder to prove.
That would be, in my mind, a case where the police would have to resort to good ol' fashioned accident reconstruction, do things the way they do these days. Although, given the data from the one car, they may be able to utilize that solid data to aid in the reconstruction; if they know what one car was doing (relatively so), then it should make it easier since they only have one total unknown.
Furthermore, the information in these recorders can be used for other purposes: a private investigator can potentially find out how far you have been driving to your extramarital affair and what roads you have probably taken, and so can Mr. Ashcroft and his goons.
I don't know for sure, but if these black boxes operate as aircraft boxes do, I believe they will only store a certain time's worth of information. Presumably, a steady flow is going in, storing say 30 seconds worth. Once the sensors are triggered to tell the car it's been in an accident, it'd stop recording and preserve those 30 seconds worth. Furthermore, unless these things have GPS or the like in it, I don't know that a PI would even bother trying to figure out where someone has been going given the kind of data that is presumably available (acceleration rate, velocity, pitch, etc.)
If these things are such a good idea, then politicians should make them mandatory. Of course, that proposal is probably going to be an uphill battle. But to stick only the drivers with this who don't know any better not to have one just isn't fair.
I agree, these things should be made mandatory, after a nice round of PR appearances explaining how these things work (within reason, don't want people screwing too badly with their boxes like the article's poster wants to do), and showing that these things are useful for what they do.
Just because you were speeding doesn't mean you are guilty in that case. The woman may have slammed on her brakes in the middle of the highway for no good reason, and the fact that you were 15 mph over the speed limit (like everybody else, her included, although her cheap and unsafe 1979 Honda CVC may not show that) may make little difference.
Well, again, as you said, it's a bit one-sided if not all the vehicles involved have these boxes. Upon arriving at the scene though, I'm sure the police would be able to instantly recognize that it wasn't just a case of driving too fast; A collision starting with a hit at 15mph (driver A doing 65, driver B doing 80) is going to be much different from a 65mph or 80mph collision.)
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That's why you patronize servers with attentive and fair admins. I used to play on BF1942 MP demo servers for ages (I've found it's much easier to organize a quick pickup game with the demo than the full version, the retail version servers seem to follow the mantra of if you aren't in a 'clan' you aren't worthy to play) until I finally got fed up with all the servers out there where teamkillers were allowed to just go off and do whatever they wanted. It was enough to get me to start my own server with a handful of admins, told to strictly enforce the rules. One or two teamkills might be forgiven, if an admin wasn't present to see the circumstances, but beyond that you're out. It seems to be a recipe most people on my server enjoy.
However, when you get up to the 100+ player range, you're going to start getting to the point where you almost need a full-time admin who isn't really playing but is just fielding requests for the other in-game admins to deal with the complaints. Although on said MP demo server there's typically a 1:8 ratio of admins to players, so I suppose holding to that ratio and giving 12 players admin abilities might help balance the load.
If only GT had you deal with fuel consumption as well as tire wear. Sail past the competition in endurance races when they stop for fuel and you've still got half a tank :D
Hillary Clinton had JFK Jr. assassinated.
Well, kudos to the submitter and whoever put it up.
Not to feed the AC's, but everyone who's bitching about this does realize that the reason Slashdot has been getting heavier on the April Fool's stories the past few years is precisely because people bitch about it. The editors are becoming cynical little bastards (check out the latest poll, in direct defiance of people who constantly bitch about lack of options), and for that, I salute them.
Bush 271, Gore 266
The people elected George Bush though the same process we have for many, many years. Get over it. You've got another election coming up in 8 months, concentrate on bitching about that one instead.
An interesting thought. So you're suggesting that allow the backend, the meat and bones of WMP, to be allowed in the OS, but the frontend is its own application, which can be removed, yet keep the core functionality that other portions of Windows or the API's may require? I suppose that does make a great deal of sense. But even so, don't you feel that it's Microsoft's right to do pretty much whatever they feel is acceptable with their own software? Barring illegal practices, naturally.
Oh come now, this is Slashdot, since when has that mattered?
The underlying themes are quite the same, though. The government unfairly sticking its nose in a company's private business, pretty much telling them how their operating system has to work. Yes, they have been convicted of monopolistic practices, but this seems like a pretty piss-poor way to deal with it. Imagine the fun if Microsoft decided, as is their right, someday to prevent future versions of Windows from running third-party apps.
It's unfortunate, yes, that the W3C, being the official standards body for the web, isn't really treated as such. The fact is, though, that given IE's prevalence, it has pretty much become a de facto standard.
I actually wasn't speaking so much about its compliance with the W3C, as that developers can count on it being present, and that it will (for the most part) render pages the same way and respond to their programs predictably, rather than having to potentially write additional code in an application which wishes to make use of web browser functionality to continue functioning whether the user has IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, etc. installed.
Your comparison is a stretch, at best. IE is, love it or hate it, an integral part of Windows these days. I don't know that it's too tightly integrated with Windows Explorer, but if I recall the help system in Windows runs through IE, Windows Update is just a bookmark to a website, and IE is a nice standard HTML rendering engine for Windows developers to use. It serves many purposes and is, for all intents and purposes, a pretty vital piece of software when it comes to Windows.
A car stereo is little more than an accessory. It plays music, sometimes acts as a clock, or shows pretty crappy LCD pictures. I don't know that I've ever seen a stereo that doubled as a tachometer or gas gauge (although I'm sure someone can prove me wrong.)
Perhaps a better comparison would be IE is to Windows as bolts are to an automobile. (I realize this comparison is also flawed, but at the moment I can't come up with anything closer.)
Eh, let them block it. Someday they'll need it and hopefully die as a result of the call center not being able to locate them.
Let that be a lesson folks; don't let your software company become ultra-successful. Otherwise you lose the right to decide what you do with your IP, the government gets to.
On an unrelated note, thank you for so eloquently detailing why Linux still has a long way to go for widespread acceptance on the desktop...
I've been wondering ever since I got SSBM what Fire Emblem is all about, this review was very comprehensive (at least to me), it's a great overview of the series. Now I just wish I could find fan-translated ROMs of the games. Or I could actually go out and learn to read Japanese, but naaah.
Ugh, I can't wait for the day that fixed-height/width webpages go the way of the tag...
Better than Boston, at least. All we have a something like 12-character red messageboards which perpetually say "READY...".
All hail the MBTA.
Reminds me of arcologies in SimCity 2000.
:-P
Also makes me think of what it would be like to live in a mall. Certainly seems to bear some resemblance to that.
Heh, well, it actually was written by his wife (then married to someone else, just as he was married to another woman at the time) about her feelings for Cash. She had her sister (I believe) perform it, Johnny heard it, liked it, got hopped up on something one night and dreamt about a mariachi band, and thus, the legend was born.
lol, I don't think I've ever seen someone type h0z3r before. Is that the Canadian dialect of leetspeak?
:-P
Either way, bravo. Canadians represent, yo!
...launching counter attacks to clean infected hosts!
They're just that, 'attacks.' Unauthorized access to users' machines with the intent of installing software without the users' knowledge (even with, it makes no difference.)
It's a nice idea in spirit, the Community (I hate that term) working to automatically protect those who can't help themselves (sounds rather elitist, doesn't it). But in the end, it's no better than your average hacker / skript kiddie futzing around with your machines.
But think of what we're doing to the soldiers' privacy! Sure, now it's just RFID tags on the crates, but next it'll be RFID tags on every M-16, Stinger missile launcher, and grenade! The government will be able to track each individual soldier and know what they're doing with these weapons! They might even sell this information to third-party arms manufacturers for 'marketing research!'
Quite right. I enjoy making 'edgy' (by Slashdot standards) posts. Please, see my crowning achievement. I'm still quite proud of that one.
See, this is what ticks me off about most slashdotters; if they can find any potentially bad use for a tool, it's instantly evil. If you think about it long enough, I'm sure you can find an ill-intentioned use for any tool, but does that mean it's bad? I can cut down a tree with my chainsaw, or I can go cut my neighbor in half. Why, with that new wrench I got, I can tighten my leaky garden hose AND loosen the bolts on the schoolyard bully's bike!
Anyway, with that out of the way (you don't fit the above category, you're quite sensible in your approach), yes, it's an unfortunate effect of society (at least American) these days that typically if something can be exploited by an individual or corporation for their game, it often will. Which means, unfortunately, we need to legislate the construction and use of such devices, to allow the consumers to prosecute those whom we trust to obey the law and not make a buck at our expense using whatever information they can gather through these boxes.
Certainly at this point, it wouldn't appear offhand that there is much if any legislation regarding these things, but they're still not terribly mainstream (at least in terms of pubic perception.) I would hope that sometime soon when more manufacturers start using these things it will become more of a general-knowledge issue. At the moment, though, they seem to still be in their infancy, judging by some of the articles I've found on the subjects (difficulty being able to retrieve data from devices after a collision, GM alone using 10 different cables on various models, etc.)
They aren't even obligated to tell you. They might sell that data to lots of other companies, together with information about what kind of consumer you are, etc.
However, before they do all this, they'll definitely need to include this in their fine print legal notices, so at least someone would notice I'm sure, the EFF or the like. But as for the average consumer, yes, they probably wouldn't be aware of this.
However, I would believe that if, as you and I both mentioned, these things become mandatory, it would be relatively well spelled-out as to what the manufacturer can actually do with the data, and even what kinds of data they can record. A quick Google on automotive black box turns up a link to, among other things, a Slashdot story from way back in 2002 about the IEEE developing a standard for automotive black boxes. Digging around on the IEEE site, I found a homepage for their MVEDR (Motor Vehicle Event Data Recorders project. I don't have Acrobat or PowerPoint installed though, so I can't read many of their documents regarding the project.
In short, it would seem to me that once these things become commonplace, everyone's going to be jumping over the manufacturers to make sure they behave with the data. Although, my faith in humanity and America may be too high.
What do you do, for example, in an accident where one car has a blackbox recorder and it shows the car was speeding, while the other car doesn't have a recorder? It may have been speeding much more, but that may be much harder to prove.
That would be, in my mind, a case where the police would have to resort to good ol' fashioned accident reconstruction, do things the way they do these days. Although, given the data from the one car, they may be able to utilize that solid data to aid in the reconstruction; if they know what one car was doing (relatively so), then it should make it easier since they only have one total unknown.
Furthermore, the information in these recorders can be used for other purposes: a private investigator can potentially find out how far you have been driving to your extramarital affair and what roads you have probably taken, and so can Mr. Ashcroft and his goons.
I don't know for sure, but if these black boxes operate as aircraft boxes do, I believe they will only store a certain time's worth of information. Presumably, a steady flow is going in, storing say 30 seconds worth. Once the sensors are triggered to tell the car it's been in an accident, it'd stop recording and preserve those 30 seconds worth. Furthermore, unless these things have GPS or the like in it, I don't know that a PI would even bother trying to figure out where someone has been going given the kind of data that is presumably available (acceleration rate, velocity, pitch, etc.)
If these things are such a good idea, then politicians should make them mandatory. Of course, that proposal is probably going to be an uphill battle. But to stick only the drivers with this who don't know any better not to have one just isn't fair.
I agree, these things should be made mandatory, after a nice round of PR appearances explaining how these things work (within reason, don't want people screwing too badly with their boxes like the article's poster wants to do), and showing that these things are useful for what they do.
Just because you were speeding doesn't mean you are guilty in that case. The woman may have slammed on her brakes in the middle of the highway for no good reason, and the fact that you were 15 mph over the speed limit (like everybody else, her included, although her cheap and unsafe 1979 Honda CVC may not show that) may make little difference.
Well, again, as you said, it's a bit one-sided if not all the vehicles involved have these boxes. Upon arriving at the scene though, I'm sure the police would be able to instantly recognize that it wasn't just a case of driving too fast; A collision starting with a hit at 15mph (driver A doing 65, driver B doing 80) is going to be much different from a 65mph or 80mph collision.)