OK, elementary physics for you - a lesson in torque. When a multi-hundred ton plane crashes at 400 miles an hour into the top of a hundred story building, that's a lot of force. It's nothing compared to the force on the foundation - the foundation was fubared the moment the planet hit. It was a matter of time before it fell, the gradual destruction of the top portion and the massive whole didn't help anyone either. I'm watching the second impact on TV right now, and the thing flew all the way through the building. No building in a non-earthquake prone area is built to survive anything even close to resembling this. It could've been flooded with water and the result would be the same.
The great thing about compressing by looking at the frame changes is that the more you do so, the faster the frames come in, and then there's even less difference between them. Kind of like that Dr. Seuss story about the kid mowing the lawn in reverse.
What's really odd about this is that Borders, like most retail outlets, really does little to combat shoplifting other than post signs like "we prosecute shoplifting" and placing token (and often fake) security cameras. I've known several people in retail marketing and they had rules stating that they could not stop someone shoplifting. They could try and guilt them into retreat ("My what a bulging purse you have") or something, but were not allowed to actually accuse the person. The retailers are too scared of lawsuits to do this. At stores like Best Buy with higher value items, they have security systems where official guards will monitor cameras and then get conclusive evidence, but at clothes outlets and places like Borders, there's no such security. There are tons of folks who go around casually stealing items, walk out, and then go across town to return the items to a different store for cash or credit. It's amazing how many upper middle class people do this. I guess it's some way to break the monotany of suburban life.
It doesn't matter if you want to upgrade. All new computers will come with XP and all old version of the Microsoft OSs will raise dramatically in price. Because it is a radically different OS from 9x/ME, Microsoft will be able to justify making products incompatible with older OSs - they planned to do this with 98 over 95, but couldn't get enough people to switch. Expect one of the next few DirectX releases to be XP only, new MS product releases to be either XP only or have XP only features (integrated messaging, whatever). Plus, with many people having aging computers, and with the economy turning around (well, that's debatable), and with more people networking their homes, there'll undoubtedly be a market for XP.
People have predicted the demise of MS forever - they are in a perfect position right now though barring any government action. Somehow I doubt Ashcroft appointed lawyers are going to be terribly aggressive in this new stage of the trial, but we'll see eh? There are the individual state cases, but even those are receding - see New Mexico's settlement with MS.
I'm moving into an 18x10 room for three people in two days, so merely having to persist in a 10x10 space for 8 hours a day doesn't seem so bad. I will say that working in any sort of cubicle has to be the most depressing thing I can think of. I interned at a large company a couple summers ago and vowed never to return to a cubicle again. Unless, that is, I find a company that lets me paint the cube, tear out the flourescent lights, and install a soundproof door and roof. Those are my demands - you hear! Really it was more of an atmospheric problem with the whole confinement concept than a space issue though. My cube was probably more like 7x5 and I had plenty of room for papers, computers (laptop, docking station, monitorx2, test platform tower pc), bags, whatever. I even had an empty CDR box lying around, a box for photoshop, a box for dreamweaver, who knows what else. No space problem what-so-ever.
The one problem being that colleges are having a hell of a time with people's computers getting set up wrong and then left with the student not knowing what to do. I'm headed to Illinois, and they have a pretty extensive technical support staff with "experts" in all the dorms and whatnot. They highly recommend an all-windows setup so that they can make sure that file sharing is turned off and that the computer is set up with the university-recommended virus scanner. They actually say in the handbook not to install Linux because it is more prone to virus and to only get installation help from certified staff (don't want rogue students installing backdoors when configuring others' computers). I imagine this is probably a big problem for university groups wanting to distribute free Linux CDs and help with installation.
Good point that slashdot should have pointed to, say, the ArsTechnica article on the advantages of the PPC architecture instead of the Apple propaganda. Despite that, no one can doubt that there is a "Megahertz Myth" to a great extent, though perhaps not the the extent Apple suggests. Look at the AMD vs. Intel race right now - people assume that the fastest p3/4 is faster than the fastest Athlon without actually looking at performance results.
It doesn't actually take 90 minutes per frame to render. That is if the rendering was done on a single CPU. Square used a massive renderfarm so each frame took a variable amount of time based on the complexity of the rendered image and the fraction of the farm dedicated to that particular render operation. That's why you see things like "Final Fantasy took 1 million years to render" or whatever when you know it isn't exactly true. Look at ArsTechnica where they did an interview with some people from Square about the rendering process. I think there was even a slashdot article about it.
And yes, it's a little rediculous for NVidia to suggest that their card is 100k times faster than Square's rendering hardware for FF-TSW. But what's more rediculous is that yahoo took that statement and printed it in its article with no explanation of exactly what NVidia means when they say that.
I imagine it is against the rules of combat or the geneva convention or whatever it is. We also tried unsuccesfully to either commit or fund assasination attempts against Castro and Hussein, not to mention that we just broke the ABM and Kyoto treaties so it's not like we give a flip about international law anyway. Oh yeah, there's also the whole Sklyarov situation - who knows how many international laws we're breaking with that one.
What's really awkward is that with the tremendously valuable natural resources of the Congo (this article's focus, diamonds), it could have a standard of living nearing that of the richer middle eastern countries. Too bad western exploitation ruined the country. Have you heard about the new movie about the assasination of the Congolese president? How accurate is that to what you hear from your friends?
"Now here comes my admittedly controversial point: the vast majority of the world is still like that. The Congo basin is still like that. The evil greedy capitalist colonial corporations have nothing to do with it. There are all kinds of funky diseases, famines, and ethnic infighting in the area. If anything, the establishment of mining and factories will add stability to the region, since the companies want to protect their money and investment."
Do you have any clue about how horriby western involvment hurt the development of the Congo? The exploitation, enslavement, and murder of natives by the Dutch? I bet you also don't know that right when the Congo-basin residents were getting their act together following Dutch withdrawal their democratically elected president was assasinated, most likely with US involvement, because of fears of socialism. Today, armed bandits force natives to mine diamonds and control the market with brutality (I think amnesty international has something on this). Guess where the majority of US diamonds come from. Yeah, it's definitely their fault. The wheels of progress have done a whole fucking lot for the Congo.
Re:It's not like they haven't announced the patch
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 2
A couple things-
-Microsoft didn't even update their own webservers completely - windowsupdate and hotmail were both hit by the "Hacked by Chinese" varient, so how do they expect their customers to update? Their response that the customers are at fault is ludicrous in light of this.
-The patches issued by MS are not at all easy to apply. I've talked to people who have Windows 2000 with the latest service pack, go to the update site and are told they have to have an older service pack version to get the patch.
Assume that anyone within physical range can communicate on the network as a valid user. Keep in mind that an adversary may utilize a sophisticated antenna with much longer range than found on a typical 802.11 PC card.
Does anyone remember the article a while ago, I think in Wired, that detailed the escapades of a couple guys bombing around Silicon Valley with a directional antenna hooked to an 802.11 card? Hell, at that time most of the networks they checked weren't even using any encryption (I think Sun was the worst offender - not sure though).
Hmmmmm... I remember burning through Crichton novels in a bit over 4 hours when I was 10 or 11. I may have not read them as in-depth as possible, but really, what can you glean from a Crichton novel? 8 hours isn't an underestimate. You'd be suprised how much you can read if you actually sit down for 8 hours without distractions.
I think the level of profit taking has increased substantially in the last 10 years. Just look at the price difference between free-domain and copywrited works. There is a company that publishes Notes from the Underground for $2, Flatland for $1, etc. The newest Stephan King thriller will easily set you back $13 in paperback. Now the Stephan King novel is twice as long as notes from the underground, but you're still left with a $13-$4 = $9 markup from cost (assuming the Notes publisher makes no cash) which works out to about 200%. I know paper costs have gone up substantially, but not that much. I used to be able to buy new paperbacks for $5 and now they're $12. That's pretty rediculous. I've gone to purchasing almost entirely free domain works because I spend half the money for a book of at least equal caliber. Admitedly it's nothing compared to the markup on music, but it's got to be more than 50%.
Yeah, but sometimes generalization is the only way to get your point across. I surely noticed differences between the different countries in my recent trip, but you can't go presenting evidence on a country by country basis. On the whole, European medical care is more socialized than the US's - and it tends to work better.
Yeah, the FDA is horrible. We should go back to the days of "The Jungle" that instigated its formation. If it weren't for a lax US drug policy, antibiotics might be somewhat effective today. The more socialized health care system in Europe has a mandantory 24 hour waiting period prior to antibiotic use - we hand them out like candy. Medical regulation is a good thing. Profit taking shouldn't happen in the industry of saving lives, but it does.
Or, more appropriately, why doesn't Sklyarov turn around and sue them for 50k plus a bit more for causing his detainment with a false afidavit. I think the fact that they refused to prosecute in civil court is exceptional evidence that they perjured themselves.
Except the accussation is that the US is charging Sklyarov with a bogus crime that they never intend to prosecute - in effect kidnapping him to use in exchange for Tobin. And besides, Tobin was arrested in relation to possession of pot and alleged espionage - two charges that, together, go beyond breaking the DMCA (at least in the US).
Somehow, bogus US accusations get more credit than ones in other countries. When US citizens in foreign countries are charged with espionage (in China, Russia), it's an outrage. When we expell 50+ russians for alleged espionage, we applaud the president for avenging Russia's heinous crime of turning Robert Hansen. Read this to see just how bogus Russia's charges are. Call me crazy, but they seem a little more well-founded than those against Sklyarov. And seeing how the US is pulling out all the stops to get him back, as opposed to say, that kid in Singapore, I'd imagine there is a good chance that he actually was engaging in some form of espionage. And hell, look at his training.
Microsoft: It's a monopoly. They can't do what ever they want. If there was only one kind of tire available, and I produced my own, I imagine I could ask for a car without tires and tow it away... I imagine I'd get some strange looks, but it would happen.
I do believe he was using a bit of the old sarcasm there - judging by the reference to Brave New World at the end anyway. I think that 95% of the world can agree that having an official version of the news is a bad thing. We are, however, moving very closely to that today. All the major networks are owned by multinational corporations who have the same interests. Notice how little news there was about the G8 summit protests beyond the one protester getting shot in the head, and then blaming all the violence on a small fraction of the protesters. Now go to indymedia and see how they report it. I'm not saying that indymedia is not sensationalist or that they are entirely accurate, just that the truth has to lie somewhere in between.
Except the reason people are drawn to many movies is because of the big names attached to them. I doubt you can advertise "Husky Male 4" as the voice behind Timmy the Benevolent Bulldog and expect the same audience as if Tom Hanks were doing the character. Then again, if they made up a movie reviewer (Dave Manning), they could always make up an actor.
On a related note, was anyone else utterly offended by those alcatel commercials? I didn't even know what alcatel was (now I know they are a french wireless telco co. that tried to buy verizon and was trying to get American recognition), but I immediately chose not to buy their products. Somehow, I doubt their product has the same effect as MLK's speech. The worst part is that the CG wasn't even good! I said, "now why did they go and take the MLK Quake model and stick him in a poorly rendered Washington mall" before I noticed the point they were trying to make. At least in the Lou Gehrig commercial they had the sense not to pan the camera around and show what a polygonal catastrophe he was. At least the commercial with Fred Astaire (I think) and the vacuum looked good.
Adobe could still lose. Skylarov was arrested based on sworn testimony from Adobe. Adobe then backed out, saying there was no case. Hmmmm... what's the word... as yes: perjury. Should Skylarov be freed, he will have a definite case against Adobe, the FBI, et al. Sort of, but not entirely, like the Steve Jackson Games debacle, but with a higher potential to effect existing law.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, elementary physics for you - a lesson in torque. When a multi-hundred ton plane crashes at 400 miles an hour into the top of a hundred story building, that's a lot of force. It's nothing compared to the force on the foundation - the foundation was fubared the moment the planet hit. It was a matter of time before it fell, the gradual destruction of the top portion and the massive whole didn't help anyone either. I'm watching the second impact on TV right now, and the thing flew all the way through the building. No building in a non-earthquake prone area is built to survive anything even close to resembling this. It could've been flooded with water and the result would be the same.
The great thing about compressing by looking at the frame changes is that the more you do so, the faster the frames come in, and then there's even less difference between them. Kind of like that Dr. Seuss story about the kid mowing the lawn in reverse.
What's really odd about this is that Borders, like most retail outlets, really does little to combat shoplifting other than post signs like "we prosecute shoplifting" and placing token (and often fake) security cameras. I've known several people in retail marketing and they had rules stating that they could not stop someone shoplifting. They could try and guilt them into retreat ("My what a bulging purse you have") or something, but were not allowed to actually accuse the person. The retailers are too scared of lawsuits to do this. At stores like Best Buy with higher value items, they have security systems where official guards will monitor cameras and then get conclusive evidence, but at clothes outlets and places like Borders, there's no such security. There are tons of folks who go around casually stealing items, walk out, and then go across town to return the items to a different store for cash or credit. It's amazing how many upper middle class people do this. I guess it's some way to break the monotany of suburban life.
It doesn't matter if you want to upgrade. All new computers will come with XP and all old version of the Microsoft OSs will raise dramatically in price. Because it is a radically different OS from 9x/ME, Microsoft will be able to justify making products incompatible with older OSs - they planned to do this with 98 over 95, but couldn't get enough people to switch. Expect one of the next few DirectX releases to be XP only, new MS product releases to be either XP only or have XP only features (integrated messaging, whatever). Plus, with many people having aging computers, and with the economy turning around (well, that's debatable), and with more people networking their homes, there'll undoubtedly be a market for XP.
People have predicted the demise of MS forever - they are in a perfect position right now though barring any government action. Somehow I doubt Ashcroft appointed lawyers are going to be terribly aggressive in this new stage of the trial, but we'll see eh? There are the individual state cases, but even those are receding - see New Mexico's settlement with MS.
I'm moving into an 18x10 room for three people in two days, so merely having to persist in a 10x10 space for 8 hours a day doesn't seem so bad. I will say that working in any sort of cubicle has to be the most depressing thing I can think of. I interned at a large company a couple summers ago and vowed never to return to a cubicle again. Unless, that is, I find a company that lets me paint the cube, tear out the flourescent lights, and install a soundproof door and roof. Those are my demands - you hear! Really it was more of an atmospheric problem with the whole confinement concept than a space issue though. My cube was probably more like 7x5 and I had plenty of room for papers, computers (laptop, docking station, monitorx2, test platform tower pc), bags, whatever. I even had an empty CDR box lying around, a box for photoshop, a box for dreamweaver, who knows what else. No space problem what-so-ever.
The one problem being that colleges are having a hell of a time with people's computers getting set up wrong and then left with the student not knowing what to do. I'm headed to Illinois, and they have a pretty extensive technical support staff with "experts" in all the dorms and whatnot. They highly recommend an all-windows setup so that they can make sure that file sharing is turned off and that the computer is set up with the university-recommended virus scanner. They actually say in the handbook not to install Linux because it is more prone to virus and to only get installation help from certified staff (don't want rogue students installing backdoors when configuring others' computers). I imagine this is probably a big problem for university groups wanting to distribute free Linux CDs and help with installation.
Good point that slashdot should have pointed to, say, the ArsTechnica article on the advantages of the PPC architecture instead of the Apple propaganda. Despite that, no one can doubt that there is a "Megahertz Myth" to a great extent, though perhaps not the the extent Apple suggests. Look at the AMD vs. Intel race right now - people assume that the fastest p3/4 is faster than the fastest Athlon without actually looking at performance results.
It doesn't actually take 90 minutes per frame to render. That is if the rendering was done on a single CPU. Square used a massive renderfarm so each frame took a variable amount of time based on the complexity of the rendered image and the fraction of the farm dedicated to that particular render operation. That's why you see things like "Final Fantasy took 1 million years to render" or whatever when you know it isn't exactly true. Look at ArsTechnica where they did an interview with some people from Square about the rendering process. I think there was even a slashdot article about it.
And yes, it's a little rediculous for NVidia to suggest that their card is 100k times faster than Square's rendering hardware for FF-TSW. But what's more rediculous is that yahoo took that statement and printed it in its article with no explanation of exactly what NVidia means when they say that.
I imagine it is against the rules of combat or the geneva convention or whatever it is. We also tried unsuccesfully to either commit or fund assasination attempts against Castro and Hussein, not to mention that we just broke the ABM and Kyoto treaties so it's not like we give a flip about international law anyway. Oh yeah, there's also the whole Sklyarov situation - who knows how many international laws we're breaking with that one.
What's really awkward is that with the tremendously valuable natural resources of the Congo (this article's focus, diamonds), it could have a standard of living nearing that of the richer middle eastern countries. Too bad western exploitation ruined the country. Have you heard about the new movie about the assasination of the Congolese president? How accurate is that to what you hear from your friends?
"Now here comes my admittedly controversial point: the vast majority of the world is still like that. The Congo basin is still like that. The evil greedy capitalist colonial corporations have nothing to do with it. There are all kinds of funky diseases, famines, and ethnic infighting in the area. If anything, the establishment of mining and factories will add stability to the region, since the companies want to protect their money and investment."
Do you have any clue about how horriby western involvment hurt the development of the Congo? The exploitation, enslavement, and murder of natives by the Dutch? I bet you also don't know that right when the Congo-basin residents were getting their act together following Dutch withdrawal their democratically elected president was assasinated, most likely with US involvement, because of fears of socialism. Today, armed bandits force natives to mine diamonds and control the market with brutality (I think amnesty international has something on this). Guess where the majority of US diamonds come from. Yeah, it's definitely their fault. The wheels of progress have done a whole fucking lot for the Congo.
A couple things-
-Microsoft didn't even update their own webservers completely - windowsupdate and hotmail were both hit by the "Hacked by Chinese" varient, so how do they expect their customers to update? Their response that the customers are at fault is ludicrous in light of this.
-The patches issued by MS are not at all easy to apply. I've talked to people who have Windows 2000 with the latest service pack, go to the update site and are told they have to have an older service pack version to get the patch.
Assume that anyone within physical range can communicate on the network as a valid user. Keep in mind that an adversary may utilize a sophisticated antenna with much longer range than found on a typical 802.11 PC card.
Does anyone remember the article a while ago, I think in Wired, that detailed the escapades of a couple guys bombing around Silicon Valley with a directional antenna hooked to an 802.11 card? Hell, at that time most of the networks they checked weren't even using any encryption (I think Sun was the worst offender - not sure though).
Hmmmmm... I remember burning through Crichton novels in a bit over 4 hours when I was 10 or 11. I may have not read them as in-depth as possible, but really, what can you glean from a Crichton novel? 8 hours isn't an underestimate. You'd be suprised how much you can read if you actually sit down for 8 hours without distractions.
I think the level of profit taking has increased substantially in the last 10 years. Just look at the price difference between free-domain and copywrited works. There is a company that publishes Notes from the Underground for $2, Flatland for $1, etc. The newest Stephan King thriller will easily set you back $13 in paperback. Now the Stephan King novel is twice as long as notes from the underground, but you're still left with a $13-$4 = $9 markup from cost (assuming the Notes publisher makes no cash) which works out to about 200%. I know paper costs have gone up substantially, but not that much. I used to be able to buy new paperbacks for $5 and now they're $12. That's pretty rediculous. I've gone to purchasing almost entirely free domain works because I spend half the money for a book of at least equal caliber. Admitedly it's nothing compared to the markup on music, but it's got to be more than 50%.
Yeah, but sometimes generalization is the only way to get your point across. I surely noticed differences between the different countries in my recent trip, but you can't go presenting evidence on a country by country basis. On the whole, European medical care is more socialized than the US's - and it tends to work better.
Yeah, I was generalizing - not all of Europe has that rule. But in the countries I visited (Greece and others) that was the standard.
Yeah, the FDA is horrible. We should go back to the days of "The Jungle" that instigated its formation. If it weren't for a lax US drug policy, antibiotics might be somewhat effective today. The more socialized health care system in Europe has a mandantory 24 hour waiting period prior to antibiotic use - we hand them out like candy. Medical regulation is a good thing. Profit taking shouldn't happen in the industry of saving lives, but it does.
Or, more appropriately, why doesn't Sklyarov turn around and sue them for 50k plus a bit more for causing his detainment with a false afidavit. I think the fact that they refused to prosecute in civil court is exceptional evidence that they perjured themselves.
Yeah... I guess that's why the record companies dolled her up in a schoolgirl outfit for her debut - to preserver her image as an adult.
Except the accussation is that the US is charging Sklyarov with a bogus crime that they never intend to prosecute - in effect kidnapping him to use in exchange for Tobin. And besides, Tobin was arrested in relation to possession of pot and alleged espionage - two charges that, together, go beyond breaking the DMCA (at least in the US).
Somehow, bogus US accusations get more credit than ones in other countries. When US citizens in foreign countries are charged with espionage (in China, Russia), it's an outrage. When we expell 50+ russians for alleged espionage, we applaud the president for avenging Russia's heinous crime of turning Robert Hansen. Read this to see just how bogus Russia's charges are. Call me crazy, but they seem a little more well-founded than those against Sklyarov. And seeing how the US is pulling out all the stops to get him back, as opposed to say, that kid in Singapore, I'd imagine there is a good chance that he actually was engaging in some form of espionage. And hell, look at his training.
Microsoft: It's a monopoly. They can't do what ever they want. If there was only one kind of tire available, and I produced my own, I imagine I could ask for a car without tires and tow it away... I imagine I'd get some strange looks, but it would happen.
I do believe he was using a bit of the old sarcasm there - judging by the reference to Brave New World at the end anyway. I think that 95% of the world can agree that having an official version of the news is a bad thing. We are, however, moving very closely to that today. All the major networks are owned by multinational corporations who have the same interests. Notice how little news there was about the G8 summit protests beyond the one protester getting shot in the head, and then blaming all the violence on a small fraction of the protesters. Now go to indymedia and see how they report it. I'm not saying that indymedia is not sensationalist or that they are entirely accurate, just that the truth has to lie somewhere in between.
Except the reason people are drawn to many movies is because of the big names attached to them. I doubt you can advertise "Husky Male 4" as the voice behind Timmy the Benevolent Bulldog and expect the same audience as if Tom Hanks were doing the character. Then again, if they made up a movie reviewer (Dave Manning), they could always make up an actor.
On a related note, was anyone else utterly offended by those alcatel commercials? I didn't even know what alcatel was (now I know they are a french wireless telco co. that tried to buy verizon and was trying to get American recognition), but I immediately chose not to buy their products. Somehow, I doubt their product has the same effect as MLK's speech. The worst part is that the CG wasn't even good! I said, "now why did they go and take the MLK Quake model and stick him in a poorly rendered Washington mall" before I noticed the point they were trying to make. At least in the Lou Gehrig commercial they had the sense not to pan the camera around and show what a polygonal catastrophe he was. At least the commercial with Fred Astaire (I think) and the vacuum looked good.
Adobe could still lose. Skylarov was arrested based on sworn testimony from Adobe. Adobe then backed out, saying there was no case. Hmmmm... what's the word... as yes: perjury. Should Skylarov be freed, he will have a definite case against Adobe, the FBI, et al. Sort of, but not entirely, like the Steve Jackson Games debacle, but with a higher potential to effect existing law.