Since pieces can be captured, you can replay spaces more than once.
There is a situation (called "Ko", if my memory is correct) where either person can play, make a capture, the next person plays back, make a capture, and repeat ad-naseum. There's a rule of play that prohibits this direct back-and-forth -- you have to play elsewhere first.
So what happens if three of these situations occur? I capture at X. Opponent goes and captures at Y. I capture at Z. Opponent captures at X. I capture at Y. Opponent captures at Z. Repeat.
Players won't get such a situation. They know better. Computers? How long will you compute for?
Are you certain of this? July 31st I sold something (wound up going for $1.06... wow.) where I said that I accepted paypal cash, but not credit card, and when payment arrived (paypal credit card) my options were to "upgrade" or refuse it.
Since a paypal merchant account charges on all incoming transactions, not just credit cards (unless that changed since I last read the TOS over there), I declined it, and the person was goign to ship me $1 by mail.
Which I'm still waiting for, btw.
So, at least 3 weeks ago, you did not have to upgrade to payscam to use ebay.
> why on earth would any P2P author even consider implementing something a blatantly stupid as a tracking mechanism?
Lets say you get a P2P system set up that can easily transmit stuff, can easily search stuff, and has little or no "Data is lost/unavailable" problems.
Lets say it comes standard with Windows NG (next generation).
Lets say that there's lots and lots of standard support tools for it.
Now, you've got these anonymous P2P systems on the fringe, and trackable P2P in the mainstream.
Suddenly, the presense of illegal stuff on the anonymous P2P is used to attack and make anonymous P2P illegal. Note that P2P is still available, widely, so it's considered a valid method of distributing stuff. And being trackable is no different than having a box produced by a known company.
Result? Since P2P is not considered a press, anonimity is not protected by the constitution; since it is used primarily for illegal stuff (the legal stuff is on the trackable P2P), anon P2P becomes 100% illegal.
Bottom line? Keep using anon P2P for legal stuff, or you won't be able to use it at all.
> The primary justification for following a first to file policy is that there is a lot of difficulty in proving prior art, or more importantly proving LACK of prior art on unpatented inventions.
This is only a problem because of "Lets keep everything hidden until we're ready to file".
Imagine a system where any proposed invention was made public for a "prior art shootdown" before being released. OK, not the details, but rather
1. Here is the problem that is stated as being addressed. 2. Here is the current state of "what's known", as described in the patent.
You have 6 months to respond with any "work in progress", or older prior art that may have been overlooked.
With a system like that in place, imaging how hard it would be to patent things like "A way to make a cursor move over a screen without having to store stuff in an off-screen buffer" (Use xor), or "A way to generate true LRU paging from standard yes/no paging hardware" (clock sweeps), or "A way to include any document inside any other" (use reference links), or <insert your favorite here>.
Note that two of those three have been patented at least once; I still can't understand why no one implements true LRU paging.
The idea here is just like open source: Many eyes will spot something that a few patent examiners will miss.
It might be better if paid examiners actually spent the time needed, which would backlog the patent queue, resulting in more examiners being hired. But since they won't, we have to outsource to the people who are affected by the bad patents.
It still won't stop bad laws that required patenting the wheel, but at least they can fix those laws.
Class and objects, including polymorphism, with no noticable runtime overhead. Everything of interest is either known at compile time or link time.
By the time you're at run time, nothing is worse than "fetch a pointer from a known offset, subroutine call to that pointer".
There is no "Ask the class for the routine that provides this method name". There is no "Check the table of methods for a method with this atom number". There is no "Load this class in from a database because it wasn't loaded before". There is no "Bundle X has never been loaded yet, so add it in now at runtime, slowing the program down".
And, you have to admit, being able to say things like
Complex a,b,c, x1, x2...
x1 = -b + sqrt((b * b - 4 * a * c) / 2a)
is really nice, readable code. Just try turning that one line into method calls to objects of type (Complex *) in objective C.
C gave you efficient, fast code.
Objective C gives you nice, convinient, easy to use objects. But it makes some types of operations (such as math operations) harder.
C++ takes away some of that convenience, some of that ease of use, and gives you speed in return. And, as seen, with operator overload it makes some math type of operations much easier.
And, we all know, memory is cheap, so massive code bloat for templates isn't a problem at all, right?
This may sound silly, but are you certain that those studies were unbiased?
I was under the impression that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down because early mechanical typewritters had a very slow rate of keystroke without causing jams.
In any event, there are a number of things that seem strange to me about keyboards:
1. Normal touch typing has the right hand fingers stroking up and to the left, in a nice natural extension, but left hand fingers stroking up and to the right -- opps, left, requiring an unnatural bend in the wrist on the left.
2. Even split keyboards keep the left-hand keys angled in the wrong direction.
3. The "y" key is easier for me to hit with my left big finger than my right big finger; ditto the B with my right big finger. On split keyboards, these keys are never duplicated -- they always assume that you use textbook perfect strokes. Why?
4. There is no system (as far as I know) that allows programs to say "Key at location X" versus "Key with symbol Y printed on it" versus "Key intended to send Z".
Keycodes, as I understand them, are "Key intended to send Z". But different keyboards (such as american versus finnish) send different keycodes for keys at the same location. And I'm not sure that every keyboard layout uses the same keycode for "a" no matter where it is.
There are many, many programs that use keys based on location on the keyboard; these programs don't actually care which key letter is on the keys, only the location. But it's impossible to properly move those programs to Dvorak, because location is now broken.
As for the numpad, there are four possible uses of the numpad keys:
1. Numbers. 2. Arrows, including diagonals (very useful for Civ type games). 3. Mouse movement (keyboard mouse) 4. Normal arrows plus home/end/pg up/pg down (in other words, what's printed on them). 5. Laptop letter keys:-).
Ok, that's 5 uses.
Tell me how many modifier keys you need to properly use the numpad. Combine Numlock and Capslock, and ignore the laptop keys, and you can make it happen. But I haven't seen any software that actually does this.
As for ctrl versus capslock and location: Who in their bleep can use the side of their palm to hit ctrl and still type keys? I just tried that, and I cannot do that at all. It is far easier to move my fingers over and press the old ctrl location (the new caps lock location), and then A or Z or C.
Finally, am I the only person that thinks the pinky fingers are both weaker and shorter, making them unusable for typing, and therefor use a 5-6 finger (plus thumb) typing system that has hands moving around all over?
First, some quick thoughts: 1. "There are exactly zero gods" is just as much a statement of faith as "There are exactly one god" or "It is impossible for us to tell the truth about the number of gods". The only truly open view is "We don't know yet." 2. Do not confuse problems caused by religion with problems caused by dictatorships. The idea of "I set the rules, disagree with me and die" is not about religion. Problems with dictatorships are not limited to disputes about god. 3. Science and religion are orthogonal. They do not interfere with each other in the least. See Kepler, Newton, and Einstein for starters. (Heck, Einstein even wanted to tell God what He could not do with His dice.)
"I just believe in the empirical. If God comes down from Heaven and starts talking to me tomorrow, I'll believe in God. I just like having proof of something before I let it shape my worldview. I'm silly like that.
That's not "belief in the empirical". That's belief in what's proven. If something has not been proven, it doesn't exist.
Have vegetables been proven healthy? If not, don't eat them -- they have no calories, and are a waste of money, right?
Heck, go farther -- what's the "base" belief that needs to be challenged? Is the world flat? That person claiming a round world -- what's the proof? Wouldn't someone on the other side fall off? How obviously silly.
For that matter, has global warming been proven? Or is it just a naturally occurring cycle of temperatures, yes, higher than the last 100-200 years, but not out of line for the last 2000 years. No need to change our behavior drastically, we just adjust to nature as it changes to slightly hotter on its own.
"The difference is that if you eat McDonald's every day, it will probably kill you, but it won't have any direct effect on me. However, if some nut with a suitcase bomb steps onto my subway train with a plan to get his 72 virgins, that is very much everyone else's problem.
And how does that differ from the person who lost their job, and has a machine gun?
Do not assume that the "72 virgins" has anything to do with it. Plain and simple, people will do what seems to be the best course of action. If they have nothing left to lose, and can gain a little pleasure from hurting someone, they will. Never mind that religions teach acceptance of what you have, not wanting/being jealous of what someone else has, or patience and work for a better future. Some nutcase comes along, and what happens? "Oh, he's just an isolated victim of the economy". "Oh, look -- a religious fanatic -- lets blame everyone of that religion".
Now, if you want to say "The desire for what that person has has driven our technological advancement", and use that to argue against religion, go right ahead. It's also driven wars. It's driven slavery. It's driven destruction of the ecology. Etc.
Good? Bad? Both?
Neither. Religion is a tool for dealing with the challenges life gives you. Desire for technological advancement is a tool for dealing with the challenges life gives you.
Any tool can be used for good or evil. It's all about the user.
Is your reason for your research to improve humanity? Make a buck? Get more production out of every "wasted" piece of the ecology?
My claim: The threat of war/fear of loss has driven technology more than anything else. Newton and Kepler (and many, many others -- see Greece, Renaissance, etc.) showed that technological advancement can occur without this. Maybe slower, but perhaps more balanced?
"If you want something a little more close to home, look at the control that Christians are intent on exercising on other peoples' decisions about gay marriage, drugs and abortion. Or the insistence that everyone else's children be taught fairy tales in biology class. Or the fact that the Christian voting bloc was the swing vote that put that monkey idiot president of ours in power. I
Can't wait till a company gets so desperate it sues itself. (I bet it's already happened and I get lots of links).
Does the whole MP3.com situation count? (Sued by IP company X; X winds up owning the company (now worth much less); X turns around and sues the lawers that told MP3.com that this was a viable idea in the first place).
[sigh]. So what happens when the next generation of people in charge are people who have been "burned" by the MPAA/RIAA/etc groups and actually start legislating in favor of the people?
I recall reading about a study that indicated that "successful" companies that operated purely for short-term gain tended to last about 40 years, while those that operated from employee and customer quality/service operated for about 100 years. No link, sadly (watch someone reply with link). Granted, there's a time bias -- what a company could do 100 years ago is very different than what a company could do 40 years ago -- as well as the "infant death" concern of most businesses -- but if this is really true, what does it take to replace the big company, "Federal Government, Inc" now that it's well past 40?
When average investors (or brand new investors) are being allocated IPO shares it's a good idea to run away from the deal.
Redhat, Google.
I was one of those "I tried to purchase RedHat, but that bleepy company stopped me" people. (Sadly, I was stopped at step one, and had no paper trail at all. Hence, no recovery suit.)
If the plan is to help the stock price go up, rather than increase supply, Vonage should buy back stock. Such a move would decrease supply of shares in the market and send a message of confidence.
But think of how much more they can buy if they rebuy at 10 or 11, and by forcing the price down just a little more, they stand to make almost an immediate 40% profit rebuying their stock at a lower rate.
Think about it:
1. Company officers will be seen buying large values of stock. 2. Stock will be seen as hitting a bottom, and stablizing, with an upturn at the end (as company officers buy the now cheap stock) 3. Company releases a new press release about their latest happening
Suddenly, they get a "target $18" slapped on them by a trading company (hmm, isn't one of those trading / stock reviewing companies responsible for the IPO in the first place?), and people buy, and the price goes up.
I cannot help but wonder, how long until someone manages to make some kind of pseudo-VMware program that allows you to run the XBox 360's XBox emulators on a Macintosh, or a Playstation 3?
Well, lets see. You'd need to know the 360's hardware, to emulate so the 360 emulator program will run on your other system. You'd need the same processor (power PC) to get decent speed. You'd have to have that chip be virtualizable, either natively, or else VMWare/FreeVM style.
And, finally, you'll have to break the encryption system that will inevitably be used on any program sent over the wire or stored on the HD, and the decryption key will be in some sort of hidden, protected storage, with the unrestricted bit turned off, turning the system into one where only a priveleged process can get access to it, and there's no way for an end user process to get priveleged. We've seen this sort of approach in satellite boxes and elsewhere.
How long? Not until a developer somewhere leaks a development kit. Should be by christmas.
That's right. Either through a phone company, or through a cable company.
Can the cable company provide VoIP? SBC says no, cause they can't provide ToIP. SBC wants to shut it down by regulating cable companies to their (SBC's) benefit.
Even if that wasn't the problem, how much do you pay for a cable modem?
What's the price of cable + vonage versus phone + DSL?
Believe it or not, I can get phone service + DSL for the price of a cable modem (plus the upgrade to digital, plus the required digital box, plus the outlet fee. Or, I could avoid digital cable, and save $1 per month. Wow.) out here. But then, our cable company (adelphia) is being forced to change (but we're not getting the better of the two takeovers where I live.)
Incidently, if you do wind up getting ToIP, what happens next when they put in a ?VR into that ToIP service? Doesn't that turn into internetvideorecorder.com, that got shut down? Oh, right, -- this time a big company is doing it.
>> Page 27, line 18 of the patent states that the claimed method can compress without loss *all* files by at least one bit:
the direct bit encode method of the present invention is effective for
reducing an input string by one bit regardless of the bit pattern of the
input string. >> Then it lies.
I have a file of 30,000 bits. I run your compression system, I get a file of 29,999 bits.
Ok, repeat 29,999 more times. Am I down to a single bit?
There has to come a point at which you cannot compress any farther. Furthur. Whatever.
"/etc" is ALMOST the same as HKLM./etc, on most unixen, is on a file system designed to store 512 or 1024 byte blocks of data at a time.
Registry, on the other hand, is a file system designed to store small (1-4 byte) objects at a time, or strings if it has to.
Linux does (finally) have a file system that can handle short pieces of data -- it's ReiserFs. And, it can also handle large pieces of data -- it can replace the root file system, handle both large and small data, and work nicely.
So the registry finally got a file system interface, so it's not like you live in / all the time, with no "cd" command, and have to type in/home/users/k/ke/keybounce/applications/microsoft/ microsoft_office/settings/outlook/profile/main_ide ntity/ every time? Good.
So now I can use "cd" to move around the registry tree? Cat/type to view the settings? Echo to set a setting? I can actually use it easily in a shell script with cygwin stuff?
Finally.
Or, not.
The feature is described on page 10 (save you some time):
Sorry, attempting to provide what is in there runs into slash dot's "Lameness Filter" (I am not joking). It tells me to use less junk characters.
But, briefly, in the unix world: cd/path/to/use cd ~ ls cat file
In the windows world?
C: D: set-location HKLM:\
Want to move around within that file system? cd \windows\system32\ cd %user_profile% But alas, no alias for the user's My Documents.
Bah, I should not try to make database posts without a little p-coding as well.
Ultimately, you're developing a distributed relational DB. Either you need to refer all new additions through a uniquing site (which will prevent duplication, and eliminate the need for large UUID's all over the place), or you'll need to have a way to unique duplications together at each end (which is yet more tables for recombining entries).
Alright, I admit it: My RDBM experience is primarily non distributed; where it is distributed, each client is working on their own area at a time and using a global checkout model. Someone who knows distributed mass updating RDMBs can give you a real working solution to the music ID tags, and make it a viable standard.
It sounds like you are really looking for a relational DB format of ID tagging.
A song can have many authors. An author can have many names An author can have many songs A name can have many authors
You need a many-many for song/artist, for artist/name, for name/artist ("Monkeys", for example, may not mean the same people today as it used to), etc.
In fact, you'll have many/many tables EVERYWHERE in a really complete system, and you're going to want some way to transfer information from one DB to another DB maintaining the same many/many intermediate information as you transfer across DB's...
> Secondly, it's a waste to have an extra entry just for that one song.
You will wind up having to use a lot of UUID's in pairs for each table entry, and you'll have a lot of those entries. Last time I checked, generating a UUID took 16 bytes, so each line of each many/many table is a 32 byte entry, and each song will trigger many many/many entries.
Alright, Civ 4 is supposed to be completely moddable, right?
Ok.
1. Can it duplicate AC? -- Can you create units by parts, rather than only specific predesigned units? -- Will there be any sort of modifications to the base landscape (flattening mountain ranges, etc)
2. Will there be any game-based terrain modifications? -- Floods -- Earthquakes -- Elevations -- areas above or below sea water -- Ability to construct dams/levees/pumps -- Ability to attack enemy dams/etc -- Global warming causing change in weather and sea levels over the entire map -- Ice age/global cooling doing similar things
3. Will the networking/multiplayer code work, work well, and be included in the original game?
(grumble grumble civ2 network grumble grumble)
-- Using TCP to send information to other games -- Not waiting around for a response from everyone, but just going ahead with the assumption that TCP will succede or close. -- If I'm playing at 60 seconds per turn, in a three player game, then if I hit "done", I know that I have at least 120 seconds, plus however much time was left on my clock, before my next 60 seconds of moving units begins to count down, EVEN IF THE OTHERS END THEIR TURN EARLY. If not, then I cannot afford to ever end my turn early. -- Not throwing away any changes that I'm in the middle of doing to a city just because the other players have passed the turn back to me -- let me finish what I'm doing (counting down my time, if necessary). -- Dealing with the time needed for negotiations, etc. -- Realistic time limits for units and cities that do not penalize people with lots of small cities.
4. Will you be continuing the traditional civ approach of "This unit has lived for thousands of years", or will you even consider switching to a "This civilization has military influence in this area" approach?
5. Can the sight ranges be changed? In particular, can the default/base sight range be made 2 instead of 1, can city development range be increased, etc.
6. Can growing nearby cities merge into megacities? Think, in particular, of the Los Angeles megacity.
7. Can a single civilization develop more than one tech at a time? I've never built any tech improvement when playing non-cheating computer AI's because, frankly, I can get to the maximum tech development in C3 without it.
8. Can we get automatic slider and city adjustment for country and cities, PLEASE. -- In civ 3, I found that I could adjust the tax / research / entertainment global settings, and the per city settings (who was an entertainer, etc) to get a maximum benefit. I had to do this in every city, each turn.
It got boring very fast. It was impossible to do in multiplayer given the time settings. It is something that the computer could do for me, and I should never HAVE to do that much micromanagement.
9. Will we please see meaningful revolts/civil war? -- Historically, civil war and revolts have been real concerns to deal with. -- Historically, all the civ games have delt with it with slider and city adjustments. -- The "Civilization" and "Advanced civilization" board games made civil war a very real concern, even if it was handled unrealistically.
Tech tree: 10. Will related techs give a price reduction? Can we create such a system with a mod?
11. Will the tech tree be seperated into theoretical and applied branches? -- Theoretical advancements lead to other theoretical advancements -- Applied advancements yeild new units, and a discount on "near future" advancements (after all, you know what you're doing).
12. Will first units of a given type have "prototype" status?
13. Will the tech tree be... Sorry, I can't really phrase this in a question. Here's a description of what I'd like to be able to do.
For a mod that has dual magic and technology research, I'd like to say that you can leave the stone age with either A - Metal working, wh
>> More and more people being able to use your credit score to decide any/every thing of their business with you. >>
> That's not government or even the credit bureaus.
Individual lenders make the decision using the information provided.
Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian are the the information providing business - they don't offer or deny credit.
The scores measure risk. >
Here's the problems:
1. It isn't just credit lenders that use FICO scores. Somehow, an employer is able to tell how good of an employee you are based on your FICO. Heck, a landlord can use FICO to tell if you are likely to pay rent, even though rent payment (and MANY other monthly payments) are not reported on FICO.
2. The claim that FICO measures risk: Has that ever been tested?
The test is simple enough: Offer a good credit card to a randomly selected group of people. Compare the actual payback rates to the FICO scores. See how well it lines up.
Has any credit company actually tried it?
3. It's not "Your score isn't good enough, we won't do business with you". It's "Your score is low. We'll still do business with you, but we'll charge you more".
Switch the law to require A, and I have no problem. Competition will take over from there.
Allowing B allows lots of loopholes and problems in lending.
The bottom line: If two people borrow the same amount of money, at the same time, from the same lender, and make the exact same repayments, why can they be allowed to owe very different amounts?
4. FICO issues (not complete) a: Only reports payments to banks b: Fails to account for "You were charged higher rates for your lower income, making you more likely to have a problem, causing a feedback loop". In other words, once you get a low score, you are more likely to get a lower score. c: Assumes "One size fits all", that a single number covers EVERYTHING.
Some lenders might want to know how good you are at paying back every month, on time, because they have to repay their lenders.
Some lenders might want to know their total return -- best cases are people who pay late and get interest and fees.
Some lenders feel that your last 3 years predict the next one. Others feel that the last 7 predict the next one. Others feel that the last 7 months (You've had a job past the 6 month mark? Great, that's all we need to know) are enough.
Between lack of complete information, the negative feedback loop, the "one size fits all", and (as far as I know) the completely untested nature of the claim, no one can say that FICO measures risk. They are just arbitrarily assigned numbers designed to remove liability from the system.
Can you sue the bank for discriminatory lending? Nope -- FICO decision. Can you sue the credit reporting companies? Nope -- federal law, go through the process, lose 3-6 months, deal with identity theft, lose 2-3 years in the process, locked down credit report means you'll lose opportunities given to random people with open reports, etc. Can you sue the FICO people? Nope. They're just giving out a number based on information given to them. It's not their fault if the numbers are used for inappropriate usage.
> But FICO scores aren't evil, they aren't the mark of the beast, Fair and Issac aren't part of the Illuminati and scores and the credit bureaus which provide the information that goes into them and the company which calculates and provides them aren't an evil fascist conspiracy. > FICO isn't evil, just meaningless. Fair/Issac aren't the illuminati; I don't think they are quite the literati. Credit bureaus aren't an evil conspiricy, they just sell a product.
It's the usage of those three, and the combination of (A) the way those three are allowed to be used, and (B) the lack of any recourse (no liability anywhere in the system) to correct how they are used.
(How did Eminent Domain on a patent get to this? Well, both are talking about a lack of ability to sue...)
> You're nobody and you're not unique or interesting.
That is the problem. Everyone is unique. Everyone is interesting.
All 6 billion people on this planet. (Watch someone post under me with "6.5" or whatever).
There is nothing unique about being unique There is nothing interesting about being interesting.
The idea that "Only interesting people should post" is silly.
Far better to say "Only interesting ideas/information should be posted".
How do you tell what's interesting? If it's not interesting to you, might it be interesting to others?
How do you find things that are interesting to you?
That last one is hard. Search engines are not it. Web rings are not it. Hmm...
Maybe something that puts RSS feeds from ring sites into a ring update overview?
But even then, a site may have posts on lots and lots of different topics (slashdot:-). We'd need the ring update rss (rurss) to ring articles instead of sites.
This really isn't trolling. It may be off topic, but it isn't trolling.
1. exalts the nation and party above the individual, with the state apparatus being supreme.
Nation above the individual: Patriot act, Bush's "You're either with us or with the enemy" speeches, etc.
Party above the individual: Republican's "No abortion" policy.
State supreme: Pushing judges that want to expand the interstate commerce clause to regulate EVERYTHING, including california only medical marijuana.
2. stresses loyalty to a single leader, and submission to a single culture.
More of "You're with us or against us". The whole "We have 55%, so we'll push our agenda into law for everyone".
(Remember: Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting that vote.)
3. engages in economic totalitarianism through the creation of a Corporatist State, where the divergent economic and social interests of different races and classes are combined with the interests of the State.
Hmm... well, this will probably get me modded down for something, but:
a. Corporations get large tax breaks, incentives, etc., and b. More and more corporations get control over individuals, by a society that requires you to do business with them, and those corporations requiring that you sign contracts giving up rights. Said "You give up your rights in order to do business with us" upheld by courts.
See: Any music/software "shrinkwrap" license. Any credit card company. Any software system/Windows OS/modern computer (excluding Linux). Probably more. See: General need for insurance, and the general impossibility of self insurance. See: More and more people being able to use your credit score to decide any/every thing of their business with you.
"Combined with the interest of the state". Well, we're looking at high unemployment, lots of foreigners being imported to work, more and more people getting into financial binds, new bankrupcy laws that basically make your finances all government business for 3-5 years, etc.
I won't go as far as to say "Everyone is a criminal, we can arrest anyone at any time", but some states are making criminals work for the state, right?
Who would have won if TiVo had simply said "No" to Macrovision's new terms. If they said, We'll risk losing people who can't watch your DRM content, but you'll lose millions of viewers and be hated by all of them.
Actually, we've seen this before.
We used to have Dish. At one point, a number of stations -- including an over the air broadcast station -- were taken off, and all had a text message displayed saying "Tell Viacom that Dish users want to be able to see these stations".
I think it took 2 days for Viacom to drop their demand to Dish, and restore service.
The middle layer provider really DOES control things. After all, if you control the path from the content provider to the content consumer, the provider needs you to reach them.
Tivo had -- HAD -- the ability to use that control. They gave in.
Several years ago, there was an article talking about regions and Dvds.
The bottom line: region free, or adapting players, can be fooled. It's one thing for the DVD code to ask "Are you a region 1 player? Good, you can play this". But they can also ask "Are you a region 2 player? Ok, don't play. Are you a region 3 player? Ok, don't play." Etc.
With the need to know whether to answer yes or no, you get into trouble.
With any "official" player limiting to 5 changes (or so it seems), that will quickly get into problems.
Thankfully, we know the decryption now, we can use friendly DVD software that changes freely. Oh wait -- didn't they lose a court case on that?
It *probably* falls under good old 18 USC 1030 as well.
I just read that statute.
It starts with a section protecting any computer data (sounds good), oh, wait, that the government, by law, or executive order, says must be kept secret for reasons of national defense, foreign relations, or atomic energy concerns... IF that information would hurt the US, or help another nation.
Meanwhile, if it doesn't hurt the US, doesn't help another nation, then it's all right. It's OK to help an indidual this way.
So looking at the other sections.
Section (2) protects any department or agency of the federal government without any loopholes (nice, wish we had that protection), any financial institution, any credit reporting agency (equifax, etc), or "information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication". Note that neither of the first two parts of this section has the interstate or foreign communications restriction. (Yea, that picky article one of the constitution here.)
But notice that bold phrase: Protected Computer.
(3) protects against any unauthorized use of a federal computer. (4) protects against some unauthorized use of a private computer, if you are trying to commit fraud, futher the intended fraud, and get anything of value beyond just the computer time itself. Hmm, why don't we get the same protection the feds get?
(5) protects a protected computer from being hacked to cause physical injury, modification of medical information, or loss of $5,000 per year. So you can destroy a computer (valued at $2000 or less) if the data on the hard drive is unchanged and can be recovered. (Go ahead and flash the bios.) Oh, and a section that sounds like the patriot act, (5) (b) (v) protecting "a computer system used by or for a government entity in furtherance of the administration of justice, national defense, or national security" from any actual or potential damage. Gee, I'd like that to cover my computer at home.
(6) protects against some trafficing in passwords for the purpose of fraud, to the extend allowed by the constitution. But if you're not doing it for fraud, go right ahead.
(7) protects from extortion by threatening a protected computer
So, if you're not causing fraud, and you're not bothering a government computer, or a financial site, this has almost no effect on you.
And all those references to protected computer :
"Your honor, the prosecution's computer cannot be considered protected. They do not use basic security practices, they use administrator access for normal day to day operations, they have not disabled any questionable defaults of their operating system, they are connected to the internet, and they are running Microsoft Windows. Clearly, that is not a protected comptuer, and as such, gets no protection from this law."
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You assume a finite play space.
Since pieces can be captured, you can replay spaces more than once.
There is a situation (called "Ko", if my memory is correct) where either person can play, make a capture, the next person plays back, make a capture, and repeat ad-naseum. There's a rule of play that prohibits this direct back-and-forth -- you have to play elsewhere first.
So what happens if three of these situations occur?
I capture at X. Opponent goes and captures at Y. I capture at Z. Opponent captures at X. I capture at Y. Opponent captures at Z. Repeat.
Players won't get such a situation. They know better.
Computers? How long will you compute for?
Are you certain of this? July 31st I sold something (wound up going for $1.06 ... wow.) where I said that I accepted paypal cash, but not credit card, and when payment arrived (paypal credit card) my options were to "upgrade" or refuse it.
Since a paypal merchant account charges on all incoming transactions, not just credit cards (unless that changed since I last read the TOS over there), I declined it, and the person was goign to ship me $1 by mail.
Which I'm still waiting for, btw.
So, at least 3 weeks ago, you did not have to upgrade to payscam to use ebay.
> why on earth would any P2P author even consider implementing something a blatantly stupid as a tracking mechanism?
Lets say you get a P2P system set up that can easily transmit stuff, can easily search stuff, and has little or no "Data is lost/unavailable" problems.
Lets say it comes standard with Windows NG (next generation).
Lets say that there's lots and lots of standard support tools for it.
Now, you've got these anonymous P2P systems on the fringe, and trackable P2P in the mainstream.
Suddenly, the presense of illegal stuff on the anonymous P2P is used to attack and make anonymous P2P illegal. Note that P2P is still available, widely, so it's considered a valid method of distributing stuff. And being trackable is no different than having a box produced by a known company.
Result? Since P2P is not considered a press, anonimity is not protected by the constitution; since it is used primarily for illegal stuff (the legal stuff is on the trackable P2P), anon P2P becomes 100% illegal.
Bottom line? Keep using anon P2P for legal stuff, or you won't be able to use it at all.
> The primary justification for following a first to file policy is that there is a lot of difficulty in proving prior art, or more importantly proving LACK of prior art on unpatented inventions.
This is only a problem because of "Lets keep everything hidden until we're ready to file".
Imagine a system where any proposed invention was made public for a "prior art shootdown" before being released. OK, not the details, but rather
1. Here is the problem that is stated as being addressed.
2. Here is the current state of "what's known", as described in the patent.
You have 6 months to respond with any "work in progress", or older prior art that may have been overlooked.
With a system like that in place, imaging how hard it would be to patent things like "A way to make a cursor move over a screen without having to store stuff in an off-screen buffer" (Use xor), or "A way to generate true LRU paging from standard yes/no paging hardware" (clock sweeps), or "A way to include any document inside any other" (use reference links), or <insert your favorite here>.
Note that two of those three have been patented at least once; I still can't understand why no one implements true LRU paging.
The idea here is just like open source: Many eyes will spot something that a few patent examiners will miss.
It might be better if paid examiners actually spent the time needed, which would backlog the patent queue, resulting in more examiners being hired. But since they won't, we have to outsource to the people who are affected by the bad patents.
It still won't stop bad laws that required patenting the wheel, but at least they can fix those laws.
And ultimately, people said, "If we can only support one case of letters, do you want to see 'god' in all lower case?"
So, instead of risking all lowercase 'god', we have all uppercase "GOD".
(At least, this is what I was told back in 1980).
What is C++ best at?
...
Class and objects, including polymorphism, with no noticable runtime overhead. Everything of interest is either known at compile time or link time.
By the time you're at run time, nothing is worse than "fetch a pointer from a known offset, subroutine call to that pointer".
There is no "Ask the class for the routine that provides this method name". There is no "Check the table of methods for a method with this atom number". There is no "Load this class in from a database because it wasn't loaded before". There is no "Bundle X has never been loaded yet, so add it in now at runtime, slowing the program down".
And, you have to admit, being able to say things like
Complex a,b,c, x1, x2
x1 = -b + sqrt((b * b - 4 * a * c) / 2a)
is really nice, readable code. Just try turning that one line into method calls to objects of type (Complex *) in objective C.
C gave you efficient, fast code.
Objective C gives you nice, convinient, easy to use objects. But it makes some types of operations (such as math operations) harder.
C++ takes away some of that convenience, some of that ease of use, and gives you speed in return. And, as seen, with operator overload it makes some math type of operations much easier.
And, we all know, memory is cheap, so massive code bloat for templates isn't a problem at all, right?
(sigh).
How did we get from Caps Lock to C++ again?
This may sound silly, but are you certain that those studies were unbiased?
:-).
I was under the impression that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down because early mechanical typewritters had a very slow rate of keystroke without causing jams.
In any event, there are a number of things that seem strange to me about keyboards:
1. Normal touch typing has the right hand fingers stroking up and to the left, in a nice natural extension, but left hand fingers stroking up and to the right -- opps, left, requiring an unnatural bend in the wrist on the left.
2. Even split keyboards keep the left-hand keys angled in the wrong direction.
3. The "y" key is easier for me to hit with my left big finger than my right big finger; ditto the B with my right big finger. On split keyboards, these keys are never duplicated -- they always assume that you use textbook perfect strokes. Why?
4. There is no system (as far as I know) that allows programs to say "Key at location X" versus "Key with symbol Y printed on it" versus "Key intended to send Z".
Keycodes, as I understand them, are "Key intended to send Z". But different keyboards (such as american versus finnish) send different keycodes for keys at the same location. And I'm not sure that every keyboard layout uses the same keycode for "a" no matter where it is.
There are many, many programs that use keys based on location on the keyboard; these programs don't actually care which key letter is on the keys, only the location. But it's impossible to properly move those programs to Dvorak, because location is now broken.
As for the numpad, there are four possible uses of the numpad keys:
1. Numbers.
2. Arrows, including diagonals (very useful for Civ type games).
3. Mouse movement (keyboard mouse)
4. Normal arrows plus home/end/pg up/pg down (in other words, what's printed on them).
5. Laptop letter keys
Ok, that's 5 uses.
Tell me how many modifier keys you need to properly use the numpad. Combine Numlock and Capslock, and ignore the laptop keys, and you can make it happen. But I haven't seen any software that actually does this.
As for ctrl versus capslock and location: Who in their bleep can use the side of their palm to hit ctrl and still type keys? I just tried that, and I cannot do that at all. It is far easier to move my fingers over and press the old ctrl location (the new caps lock location), and then A or Z or C.
Finally, am I the only person that thinks the pinky fingers are both weaker and shorter, making them unusable for typing, and therefor use a 5-6 finger (plus thumb) typing system that has hands moving around all over?
First, some quick thoughts:
1. "There are exactly zero gods" is just as much a statement of faith as "There are exactly one god" or "It is impossible for us to tell the truth about the number of gods". The only truly open view is "We don't know yet."
2. Do not confuse problems caused by religion with problems caused by dictatorships. The idea of "I set the rules, disagree with me and die" is not about religion. Problems with dictatorships are not limited to disputes about god.
3. Science and religion are orthogonal. They do not interfere with each other in the least. See Kepler, Newton, and Einstein for starters. (Heck, Einstein even wanted to tell God what He could not do with His dice.)
"I just believe in the empirical. If God comes down from Heaven and starts talking to me tomorrow, I'll believe in God. I just like having proof of something before I let it shape my worldview. I'm silly like that.
That's not "belief in the empirical". That's belief in what's proven. If something has not been proven, it doesn't exist.
Have vegetables been proven healthy? If not, don't eat them -- they have no calories, and are a waste of money, right?
Heck, go farther -- what's the "base" belief that needs to be challenged? Is the world flat? That person claiming a round world -- what's the proof? Wouldn't someone on the other side fall off? How obviously silly.
For that matter, has global warming been proven? Or is it just a naturally occurring cycle of temperatures, yes, higher than the last 100-200 years, but not out of line for the last 2000 years. No need to change our behavior drastically, we just adjust to nature as it changes to slightly hotter on its own.
"The difference is that if you eat McDonald's every day, it will probably kill you, but it won't have any direct effect on me. However, if some nut with a suitcase bomb steps onto my subway train with a plan to get his 72 virgins, that is very much everyone else's problem.
And how does that differ from the person who lost their job, and has a machine gun?
Do not assume that the "72 virgins" has anything to do with it. Plain and simple, people will do what seems to be the best course of action. If they have nothing left to lose, and can gain a little pleasure from hurting someone, they will. Never mind that religions teach acceptance of what you have, not wanting/being jealous of what someone else has, or patience and work for a better future. Some nutcase comes along, and what happens? "Oh, he's just an isolated victim of the economy". "Oh, look -- a religious fanatic -- lets blame everyone of that religion".
Now, if you want to say "The desire for what that person has has driven our technological advancement", and use that to argue against religion, go right ahead. It's also driven wars. It's driven slavery. It's driven destruction of the ecology. Etc.
Good? Bad? Both?
Neither. Religion is a tool for dealing with the challenges life gives you. Desire for technological advancement is a tool for dealing with the challenges life gives you.
Any tool can be used for good or evil. It's all about the user.
Is your reason for your research to improve humanity? Make a buck? Get more production out of every "wasted" piece of the ecology?
My claim: The threat of war/fear of loss has driven technology more than anything else.
Newton and Kepler (and many, many others -- see Greece, Renaissance, etc.) showed that technological advancement can occur without this. Maybe slower, but perhaps more balanced?
"If you want something a little more close to home, look at the control that Christians are intent on exercising on other peoples' decisions about gay marriage, drugs and abortion. Or the insistence that everyone else's children be taught fairy tales in biology class. Or the fact that the Christian voting bloc was the swing vote that put that monkey idiot president of ours in power. I
Can't wait till a company gets so desperate it sues itself. (I bet it's already happened and I get lots of links).
Does the whole MP3.com situation count? (Sued by IP company X; X winds up owning the company (now worth much less); X turns around and sues the lawers that told MP3.com that this was a viable idea in the first place).
[sigh]. So what happens when the next generation of people in charge are people who have been "burned" by the MPAA/RIAA/etc groups and actually start legislating in favor of the people?
I recall reading about a study that indicated that "successful" companies that operated purely for short-term gain tended to last about 40 years, while those that operated from employee and customer quality/service operated for about 100 years. No link, sadly (watch someone reply with link). Granted, there's a time bias -- what a company could do 100 years ago is very different than what a company could do 40 years ago -- as well as the "infant death" concern of most businesses -- but if this is really true, what does it take to replace the big company, "Federal Government, Inc" now that it's well past 40?
When average investors (or brand new investors) are being allocated IPO shares it's a good idea to run away from the deal.
Redhat, Google.
I was one of those "I tried to purchase RedHat, but that bleepy company stopped me" people. (Sadly, I was stopped at step one, and had no paper trail at all. Hence, no recovery suit.)
If the plan is to help the stock price go up, rather than increase supply, Vonage should buy back stock. Such a move would decrease supply of shares in the market and send a message of confidence.
But think of how much more they can buy if they rebuy at 10 or 11, and by forcing the price down just a little more, they stand to make almost an immediate 40% profit rebuying their stock at a lower rate.
Think about it:
1. Company officers will be seen buying large values of stock.
2. Stock will be seen as hitting a bottom, and stablizing, with an upturn at the end (as company officers buy the now cheap stock)
3. Company releases a new press release about their latest happening
Suddenly, they get a "target $18" slapped on them by a trading company (hmm, isn't one of those trading / stock reviewing companies responsible for the IPO in the first place?), and people buy, and the price goes up.
Any takers?
I cannot help but wonder, how long until someone manages to make some kind of pseudo-VMware program that allows you to run the XBox 360's XBox emulators on a Macintosh, or a Playstation 3?
Well, lets see. You'd need to know the 360's hardware, to emulate so the 360 emulator program will run on your other system. You'd need the same processor (power PC) to get decent speed. You'd have to have that chip be virtualizable, either natively, or else VMWare/FreeVM style.
And, finally, you'll have to break the encryption system that will inevitably be used on any program sent over the wire or stored on the HD, and the decryption key will be in some sort of hidden, protected storage, with the unrestricted bit turned off, turning the system into one where only a priveleged process can get access to it, and there's no way for an end user process to get priveleged. We've seen this sort of approach in satellite boxes and elsewhere.
How long? Not until a developer somewhere leaks a development kit. Should be by christmas.
> I'm so glad I have Vonage.
Only problem is, how do you get Vonage?
That's right. Either through a phone company, or through a cable company.
Can the cable company provide VoIP? SBC says no, cause they can't provide ToIP. SBC wants to shut it down by regulating cable companies to their (SBC's) benefit.
Even if that wasn't the problem, how much do you pay for a cable modem?
What's the price of cable + vonage versus phone + DSL?
Believe it or not, I can get phone service + DSL for the price of a cable modem (plus the upgrade to digital, plus the required digital box, plus the outlet fee. Or, I could avoid digital cable, and save $1 per month. Wow.) out here. But then, our cable company (adelphia) is being forced to change (but we're not getting the better of the two takeovers where I live.)
Incidently, if you do wind up getting ToIP, what happens next when they put in a ?VR into that ToIP service? Doesn't that turn into internetvideorecorder.com, that got shut down? Oh, right, -- this time a big company is doing it.
>>
Page 27, line 18 of the patent states that the claimed method can compress
without loss *all* files by at least one bit:
the direct bit encode method of the present invention is effective for
reducing an input string by one bit regardless of the bit pattern of the
input string.
>>
Then it lies.
I have a file of 30,000 bits. I run your compression system, I get a file of 29,999 bits.
Ok, repeat 29,999 more times. Am I down to a single bit?
There has to come a point at which you cannot compress any farther. Furthur. Whatever.
Actually, it's not "/etc".
/etc, on most unixen, is on a file system designed to store 512 or 1024 byte blocks of data at a time.
/home/users/k/ke/keybounce/applications/microsoft/ microsoft_office/settings/outlook/profile/main_ide ntity/ every time? Good.
/path/to/use
"/etc" is ALMOST the same as HKLM.
Registry, on the other hand, is a file system designed to store small (1-4 byte) objects at a time, or strings if it has to.
Linux does (finally) have a file system that can handle short pieces of data -- it's ReiserFs. And, it can also handle large pieces of data -- it can replace the root file system, handle both large and small data, and work nicely.
So the registry finally got a file system interface, so it's not like you live in / all the time, with no "cd" command, and have to type in
So now I can use "cd" to move around the registry tree? Cat/type to view the settings? Echo to set a setting? I can actually use it easily in a shell script with cygwin stuff?
Finally.
Or, not.
The feature is described on page 10 (save you some time):
Sorry, attempting to provide what is in there runs into slash dot's "Lameness Filter" (I am not joking). It tells me to use less junk characters.
But, briefly, in the unix world:
cd
cd ~
ls
cat file
In the windows world?
C:
D:
set-location HKLM:\
Want to move around within that file system?
cd \windows\system32\
cd %user_profile%
But alas, no alias for the user's My Documents.
or,
set-location SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
Want to see what's there?
dir
get-childitem
Oh, one gives you the filenames, the other gives you files and contents.
To see the contents of a "file"?
get-property . restrictanonymous
To change it?
set-property -path . -property restrictanonymous -value 1
Now, can someone tell me why I can't just cat/type to see the old value, and echo to change it?
Lameness filter, heh.
Bah, I should not try to make database posts without a little p-coding as well.
Ultimately, you're developing a distributed relational DB. Either you need to refer all new additions through a uniquing site (which will prevent duplication, and eliminate the need for large UUID's all over the place), or you'll need to have a way to unique duplications together at each end (which is yet more tables for recombining entries).
Alright, I admit it: My RDBM experience is primarily non distributed; where it is distributed, each client is working on their own area at a time and using a global checkout model. Someone who knows distributed mass updating RDMBs can give you a real working solution to the music ID tags, and make it a viable standard.
It sounds like you are really looking for a relational DB format of ID tagging.
...
A song can have many authors.
An author can have many names
An author can have many songs
A name can have many authors
You need a many-many for song/artist, for artist/name, for name/artist ("Monkeys", for example, may not mean the same people today as it used to), etc.
In fact, you'll have many/many tables EVERYWHERE in a really complete system, and you're going to want some way to transfer information from one DB to another DB maintaining the same many/many intermediate information as you transfer across DB's
> Secondly, it's a waste to have an extra entry just for that one song.
You will wind up having to use a lot of UUID's in pairs for each table entry, and you'll have a lot of those entries. Last time I checked, generating a UUID took 16 bytes, so each line of each many/many table is a 32 byte entry, and each song will trigger many many/many entries.
Were you trying to save space somehow?
How do those of us in the states watch the new Dr. Who?
Alright, Civ 4 is supposed to be completely moddable, right?
...
Ok.
1. Can it duplicate AC?
-- Can you create units by parts, rather than only specific predesigned units?
-- Will there be any sort of modifications to the base landscape (flattening mountain ranges, etc)
2. Will there be any game-based terrain modifications?
-- Floods
-- Earthquakes
-- Elevations -- areas above or below sea water
-- Ability to construct dams/levees/pumps
-- Ability to attack enemy dams/etc
-- Global warming causing change in weather and sea levels over the entire map
-- Ice age/global cooling doing similar things
3. Will the networking/multiplayer code work, work well, and be included in the original game?
(grumble grumble civ2 network grumble grumble)
-- Using TCP to send information to other games
-- Not waiting around for a response from everyone, but just going ahead with the assumption that TCP will succede or close.
-- If I'm playing at 60 seconds per turn, in a three player game, then if I hit "done", I know that I have at least 120 seconds, plus however much time was left on my clock, before my next 60 seconds of moving units begins to count down, EVEN IF THE OTHERS END THEIR TURN EARLY. If not, then I cannot afford to ever end my turn early.
-- Not throwing away any changes that I'm in the middle of doing to a city just because the other players have passed the turn back to me -- let me finish what I'm doing (counting down my time, if necessary).
-- Dealing with the time needed for negotiations, etc.
-- Realistic time limits for units and cities that do not penalize people with lots of small cities.
4. Will you be continuing the traditional civ approach of "This unit has lived for thousands of years", or will you even consider switching to a "This civilization has military influence in this area" approach?
5. Can the sight ranges be changed? In particular, can the default/base sight range be made 2 instead of 1, can city development range be increased, etc.
6. Can growing nearby cities merge into megacities? Think, in particular, of the Los Angeles megacity.
7. Can a single civilization develop more than one tech at a time? I've never built any tech improvement when playing non-cheating computer AI's because, frankly, I can get to the maximum tech development in C3 without it.
8. Can we get automatic slider and city adjustment for country and cities, PLEASE.
-- In civ 3, I found that I could adjust the tax / research / entertainment global settings, and the per city settings (who was an entertainer, etc) to get a maximum benefit. I had to do this in every city, each turn.
It got boring very fast. It was impossible to do in multiplayer given the time settings. It is something that the computer could do for me, and I should never HAVE to do that much micromanagement.
9. Will we please see meaningful revolts/civil war?
-- Historically, civil war and revolts have been real concerns to deal with.
-- Historically, all the civ games have delt with it with slider and city adjustments.
-- The "Civilization" and "Advanced civilization" board games made civil war a very real concern, even if it was handled unrealistically.
Tech tree:
10. Will related techs give a price reduction? Can we create such a system with a mod?
11. Will the tech tree be seperated into theoretical and applied branches?
-- Theoretical advancements lead to other theoretical advancements
-- Applied advancements yeild new units, and a discount on "near future" advancements (after all, you know what you're doing).
12. Will first units of a given type have "prototype" status?
13. Will the tech tree be
Sorry, I can't really phrase this in a question. Here's a description of what I'd like to be able to do.
For a mod that has dual magic and technology research, I'd like to say that you can leave the stone age with either
A - Metal working, wh
>>
More and more people being able to use your credit score to decide any/every thing of their business with you.
>>
>
That's not government or even the credit bureaus.
Individual lenders make the decision using the information provided.
Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian are the the information providing business - they don't offer or deny credit.
The scores measure risk.
>
Here's the problems:
1. It isn't just credit lenders that use FICO scores. Somehow, an employer is able to tell how good of an employee you are based on your FICO. Heck, a landlord can use FICO to tell if you are likely to pay rent, even though rent payment (and MANY other monthly payments) are not reported on FICO.
2. The claim that FICO measures risk: Has that ever been tested?
The test is simple enough: Offer a good credit card to a randomly selected group of people. Compare the actual payback rates to the FICO scores. See how well it lines up.
Has any credit company actually tried it?
3. It's not "Your score isn't good enough, we won't do business with you".
It's "Your score is low. We'll still do business with you, but we'll charge you more".
Switch the law to require A, and I have no problem. Competition will take over from there.
Allowing B allows lots of loopholes and problems in lending.
The bottom line: If two people borrow the same amount of money, at the same time, from the same lender, and make the exact same repayments, why can they be allowed to owe very different amounts?
4. FICO issues (not complete)
a: Only reports payments to banks
b: Fails to account for "You were charged higher rates for your lower income, making you more likely to have a problem, causing a feedback loop". In other words, once you get a low score, you are more likely to get a lower score.
c: Assumes "One size fits all", that a single number covers EVERYTHING.
Some lenders might want to know how good you are at paying back every month, on time, because they have to repay their lenders.
Some lenders might want to know their total return -- best cases are people who pay late and get interest and fees.
Some lenders feel that your last 3 years predict the next one. Others feel that the last 7 predict the next one. Others feel that the last 7 months (You've had a job past the 6 month mark? Great, that's all we need to know) are enough.
Between lack of complete information, the negative feedback loop, the "one size fits all", and (as far as I know) the completely untested nature of the claim, no one can say that FICO measures risk. They are just arbitrarily assigned numbers designed to remove liability from the system.
Can you sue the bank for discriminatory lending? Nope -- FICO decision.
Can you sue the credit reporting companies? Nope -- federal law, go through the process, lose 3-6 months, deal with identity theft, lose 2-3 years in the process, locked down credit report means you'll lose opportunities given to random people with open reports, etc.
Can you sue the FICO people? Nope. They're just giving out a number based on information given to them. It's not their fault if the numbers are used for inappropriate usage.
>
But FICO scores aren't evil, they aren't the mark of the beast, Fair and Issac aren't part of the Illuminati and scores and the credit bureaus which provide the information that goes into them and the company which calculates and provides them aren't an evil fascist conspiracy.
>
FICO isn't evil, just meaningless.
Fair/Issac aren't the illuminati; I don't think they are quite the literati.
Credit bureaus aren't an evil conspiricy, they just sell a product.
It's the usage of those three, and the combination of (A) the way those three are allowed to be used, and (B) the lack of any recourse (no liability anywhere in the system) to correct how they are used.
(How did Eminent Domain on a patent get to this? Well, both are talking about a lack of ability to sue...)
> You're nobody and you're not unique or interesting.
:-). We'd need the ring update rss (rurss) to ring articles instead of sites.
That is the problem. Everyone is unique. Everyone is interesting.
All 6 billion people on this planet. (Watch someone post under me with "6.5" or whatever).
There is nothing unique about being unique
There is nothing interesting about being interesting.
The idea that "Only interesting people should post" is silly.
Far better to say "Only interesting ideas/information should be posted".
How do you tell what's interesting? If it's not interesting to you, might it be interesting to others?
How do you find things that are interesting to you?
That last one is hard. Search engines are not it. Web rings are not it. Hmm...
Maybe something that puts RSS feeds from ring sites into a ring update overview?
But even then, a site may have posts on lots and lots of different topics (slashdot
Keybounce
p.s. "Squiggleslash"? I love the name
This really isn't trolling. It may be off topic, but it isn't trolling.
1. exalts the nation and party above the individual, with the state apparatus being supreme.
Nation above the individual: Patriot act, Bush's "You're either with us or with the enemy" speeches, etc.
Party above the individual: Republican's "No abortion" policy.
State supreme: Pushing judges that want to expand the interstate commerce clause to regulate EVERYTHING, including california only medical marijuana.
2. stresses loyalty to a single leader, and submission to a single culture.
More of "You're with us or against us". The whole "We have 55%, so we'll push our agenda into law for everyone".
(Remember: Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting that vote.)
3. engages in economic totalitarianism through the creation of a Corporatist State, where the divergent economic and social interests of different races and classes are combined with the interests of the State.
Hmm... well, this will probably get me modded down for something, but:
a. Corporations get large tax breaks, incentives, etc., and
b. More and more corporations get control over individuals, by a society that requires you to do business with them, and those corporations requiring that you sign contracts giving up rights. Said "You give up your rights in order to do business with us" upheld by courts.
See: Any music/software "shrinkwrap" license. Any credit card company. Any software system/Windows OS/modern computer (excluding Linux). Probably more. See: General need for insurance, and the general impossibility of self insurance. See: More and more people being able to use your credit score to decide any/every thing of their business with you.
"Combined with the interest of the state". Well, we're looking at high unemployment, lots of foreigners being imported to work, more and more people getting into financial binds, new bankrupcy laws that basically make your finances all government business for 3-5 years, etc.
I won't go as far as to say "Everyone is a criminal, we can arrest anyone at any time", but some states are making criminals work for the state, right?
Who would have won if TiVo had simply said "No" to Macrovision's new terms. If they said, We'll risk losing people who can't watch your DRM content, but you'll lose millions of viewers and be hated by all of them.
Actually, we've seen this before.
We used to have Dish.
At one point, a number of stations -- including an over the air broadcast station -- were taken off, and all had a text message displayed saying "Tell Viacom that Dish users want to be able to see these stations".
I think it took 2 days for Viacom to drop their demand to Dish, and restore service.
The middle layer provider really DOES control things. After all, if you control the path from the content provider to the content consumer, the provider needs you to reach them.
Tivo had -- HAD -- the ability to use that control. They gave in.
Several years ago, there was an article talking about regions and Dvds.
The bottom line: region free, or adapting players, can be fooled. It's one thing for the DVD code to ask "Are you a region 1 player? Good, you can play this". But they can also ask "Are you a region 2 player? Ok, don't play. Are you a region 3 player? Ok, don't play." Etc.
With the need to know whether to answer yes or no, you get into trouble.
With any "official" player limiting to 5 changes (or so it seems), that will quickly get into problems.
Thankfully, we know the decryption now, we can use friendly DVD software that changes freely. Oh wait -- didn't they lose a court case on that?
It *probably* falls under good old 18 USC 1030 as well.
... IF that information would hurt the US, or help another nation.
I just read that statute.
It starts with a section protecting any computer data (sounds good), oh, wait, that the government, by law, or executive order, says must be kept secret for reasons of national defense, foreign relations, or atomic energy concerns
Meanwhile, if it doesn't hurt the US, doesn't help another nation, then it's all right. It's OK to help an indidual this way.
So looking at the other sections.
Section (2) protects any department or agency of the federal government without any loopholes (nice, wish we had that protection), any financial institution, any credit reporting agency (equifax, etc), or "information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication". Note that neither of the first two parts of this section has the interstate or foreign communications restriction. (Yea, that picky article one of the constitution here.)
But notice that bold phrase: Protected Computer.
(3) protects against any unauthorized use of a federal computer.
(4) protects against some unauthorized use of a private computer, if you are trying to commit fraud, futher the intended fraud, and get anything of value beyond just the computer time itself. Hmm, why don't we get the same protection the feds get?
(5) protects a protected computer from being hacked to cause physical injury, modification of medical information, or loss of $5,000 per year. So you can destroy a computer (valued at $2000 or less) if the data on the hard drive is unchanged and can be recovered. (Go ahead and flash the bios.) Oh, and a section that sounds like the patriot act, (5) (b) (v) protecting "a computer system used by or for a government entity in furtherance of the administration of justice, national defense, or national security" from any actual or potential damage. Gee, I'd like that to cover my computer at home.
(6) protects against some trafficing in passwords for the purpose of fraud, to the extend allowed by the constitution. But if you're not doing it for fraud, go right ahead.
(7) protects from extortion by threatening a protected computer
So, if you're not causing fraud, and you're not bothering a government computer, or a financial site, this has almost no effect on you.
And all those references to protected computer :
"Your honor, the prosecution's computer cannot be considered protected. They do not use basic security practices, they use administrator access for normal day to day operations, they have not disabled any questionable defaults of their operating system, they are connected to the internet, and they are running Microsoft Windows. Clearly, that is not a protected comptuer, and as such, gets no protection from this law."