Why are we shooting for photorealistic CG TV shows? I can understand the use of CG technology for putting characters in dangerous situations where actors can't be used, or creating shots that would be difficult or impossible to attain through other means. But why have total shows created of it, are actors *that* much more expensive than the combined cost of the brilliant artists and voice actors? Sure its a cool use of technology, but why is this going onto TV rather than staying on a geek's drawing board somewhere? As someone else already pointed out, they haven't got it quite right yet, with lack of blinking and other minute movements. What's the motivation behind this type of project, aside from the "cool hack" factor?
When was the last time you played a game you honestly thought was innovative?
For me, it's been a long time. IMO GTA3 is close but not quite ground-breaking. The concept was new, missions in a big city as a gangster, but it still had a lot of old concepts like shoot stuff, blow stuff up, shoot stuff, drive cars, and shoot stuff. There are two games I'm looking forward to playing: Star Wars Galaxies and Doom3, but I can't say either of them are anything new once you get passed the fancy graphics. Where are all the radically new ideas for games like we had 10 years ago?
I have to say I like third edition much better than second. It's much easier to play and to convince newbies to play because mysterious concepts like THAC0 have been eliminated in favor of a more intuitive system. I wouldn't say it was sheerly a sales-motivated release, it was also an improvement.
On a semirelevant note, I modified an IRC bot I wrote to roll arbitrary numbers of dice of arbitrary sides and print totals to the channel so if for some reason you're playing over IRC you don't have to rely on any person to roll dice, this way everyone can see the roll. See here.
But will a terrorist start because a child steals a loaf of bread from him? No, there are many things that we would consider not something to have blame for.
How can you be so sure? The Nazis killed men, women, and children based on Hitlers twisted interpretations of religion. There is no pit too low for some to stoop.
As for your religious arguments, I gave up trying to argue with religious zealots long ago. Your collective mental prison is none of my concern if you wouldn't leave it even given the key.
Most Americans know that's just government propaganda. We reallize the attacks are because Bin Laden is annoyed at our medaling in the war in his holy land. Unfortunately until the ignorant masses stop believing everything they read we can't really use political means to tell the people in power that having troops there has become more of a liability than a help and they should be removed. On the flip side, if the terrorists got what they want we would send the wrong message: that we can be pushed around.
Stop their mouths by being without blame - then when they murder ask why. They will stand condemned by their own words.
The terrorists claim to be followers of Islam, a religion that preaches peace, yet they still kill, maim, and destroy. It is apparent that showing them the contradiction in their behavior and beliefs gets us no where. Additionally it is impossible to be "without blame". I can "blame" you for doing something I see as wrong and you see as right. Who's wrong?
If you have no fault then God will testify on your behalf whether you die or not You're making the dangerous assumption that God exists. The same assumption that the terrorists make that allow them to do the things they do. It'd be interesting to see if we would be in a better world tomorrow if we could eliminate religion today. Of course that's impossible, I'm just musing.
Why do athletes, that contribute NOTHING to society, get paid the most in our society? I wouldn't say most. See this. Someone will no doubt argue the people compared there are roughly equal contributors.
Many years ago my high school used a Fortres product (may or may not have been the one you're talking about but the idea sounds the same). It worked well enough for keeping the majority of average high school students out of trouble but the lab techs had no problem hacking through it. At one point there was an old system with Fortres on it which no one knew the password to, and so the lab techs were asked to take Fortres down so the machine could be updated and so forth. We succeeded in minutes, and consequently I've been skeptical of the usefulness of products like this one ever since.
When a person steals money or property, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines use the value of the property lost, damaged, or destroyed as the loss amount. This formula works well with tangible property, but when the property at issue is information, or in my case source code, does the same formula reflect the true intended or actual loss?
Big brother, even then, didn't seem to realize that in order for an owner to be completely deprived of the value of the property, its owner has to actually be completely deprived of the property. In my experience, very few people(read: none that I can think of) want to steal information (i.e. take and deprive its owner of it), but a great many would like a copy of it. File sharing analogies abound.
The first is that it used one UDP to spread: no waiting around for the three-way TCP handshake, no hanging waiting for a reply, just send and move on to the next one.
Indeed. I've been coining the term "rapid-fire-and-forget worm".
There was a class at my university that had a grading scale resembling 80-100 A, 60-80 B, etc... After seeing everyone getting A's, the president of the university ordered that the class be made harder. What did they do? The department head made the scale 94-100 A, 87-94 B, etc... Not terrible if you're majoring in subject of the course, but that wasn't the case with the majority of the students in this class.
Grades are suppose to be a basis by which to judge performance, if we arbitrarily change the values required for certain grades they become completely meaningless. Class-wide grading curves are a necessary evil to counteract poor teaching, poor text book, etc...
IIRC Brooks talks about that in the directors commentary on the DVD. "Skoorb" didn't sound quite right so they changed it slightly. Another bit of trivia: the scene with Dark Helmet playing with the dolls was completely adlibbed by Rick Morranis(sp?), Brooks just told him the concept, no dialogue, and they shot it.
That can be modified. During the AYB craze the server I frequented had that plant alert, it ran admin mod and a couple other similar mods whose names escape me. There might have even been a version where it said that, I can't remember.
When the current is on, the window is clear. But flip a switch to turn the current off and the glass goes opaque, allowing it to be used as a projection screen for watching television or DVDs. The flanking casement windows become the speakers.
Seems to me this sort of thing would be a good replacement for blinds if you're into the 'wow' factor or have some reason to want a particular room to be very dark some of the time when its daylight out. They haven't invented a translucent TV as the/. article implies. Oh, and I do hereby coin the phrase "turn [on|off] the windows". Apparently the projector is included with the package.
Windows that switch from transparent to opaque were introduced years ago by several window manufacturers, but they never caught on with consumers.
So apparently what these people have done is nail two things together that have never been nailed together before.
Using a proprietary OS would make it much harder for a single, easy to write virus to be unleashed. If there's a widespread use of the same OS, what's to stop spread?
How so? Windows is a proprietary OS and has more than its fair share of virii which spread partially because of the gaping security holes found by outsiders without access to the code. All a potential virus writer would need is access to one of these cars to start probing it for vulnerabilities. If you're meaning that a virus couldn't jump from a computer's OS to a car's and possibly back again (and therefore couldn't spread over an internet made of computers); I wouldn't be so sure, cross-platform virii exist. Personally I'd never drive a car where the computer has any control over critical systems.
(OT: reminds me of a sig I saw somewhere that read: "As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing")
I've seen quite a few of Gobbles posts on bugtraq and as far as I can remember they never gives advance notice to the vendor, frightingly, I haven't heard too many rejections of their previous claims on bugtraq. And don't be too sure this Gobbles is a "guy", this is from one of the other posts: GOBBLES Security Labs (GSL) is currently the largest non-profit security team in the world, with over 17 active members that are dedicated to bringing cutting edge material to the public that other groups are too afraid and/or selfish to do. Unlike some groups, GSL is at least honest about their intentions -- GSL members want fame and glory. We're not out to make friends (re: fat kid).
This organization has always struck me as a blackhat group, and (unfortunately) not script kiddies.
If I were the RIAA, I'd be very, very afraid of what backdoors he'd planted that could come back and bite them in their own ass. IIRC, the email thats the subject of this story something to the effect of "we're building a DDoS network from this same technology". So there were never any questions on that front. Frightening.
for militaristic use, to defend the country against enemies, domestic or foreign, that threaten the freedom of the country. It's a democratic failsafe against government.
And suppose you believe the government the government has tripped that failsafe. What are you going to do? Start shooting cops? Shoot the president? After gunning you down or capturing and executing you the government would simply start a propoganda campaign against you and everyone who shared your opinions. Your life would end, and you would provide them the perfect excuse to hunt down everyone else who shared your opinions. In short you would become the next Al Queda. They've even got the perfect term to use in any propoganda war they choose to start, and use it atleast 13 times in every sentence when they're trying to convince the lemmings (read: majority) in this country that something is a Good Idea, you know the term I mean. The fact is your gun doesn't protect jackshit, and we're at their mercy if they ever decide democracy went out of style. The true failsafe is that there are a whole lot of people in positions of power and it would take the colaboration and secrecy of an enormous number of them to orchestrate any sort of legal or organized undermining of the goverment (remind anyone else of political parties?). Think of the government as a kind of internet: a few nodes go bad now and then, hopefully we can still route around them, and they don't take too many others down with them.
And for all the "external enemy" types: The constitution was written in a time before stategic aerial bombardment, thermonuclear weapons, ICBMs, and MIRVs. Anyone without military training and sophisticated weapons equipment can't make a damned bit of difference in a real war against a real military. When the constitution was written, they could. I challenge you to defend yourself against an incoming cruise missile with your assault rifle. Don't think the enemy will be stupid enough to send in troops for you to whack until he's glassed your city one or twice from several thousand miles away.
I hope you're right that SMTP is on the way out, however I like my free email. What about a system similar to a trusted computing base, with email addresses, any address that isn't in your web of trust can't send you an email. Some method for tracing through the web to find who you're trusting that trusts a spammer could quickly put an end to unwanted email. The problem of spammers breaking into systems still exists, but thats no worse off than we are now. Traversing such a web might be a problem. P2P tech might even work though its probably a better idea to stick with client-server. Seems it could be implemented as filtering software(with its own protocol in addition to SMTP) or a new protocol. Ideas? Thoughts? Elaborations? Something I missed?
Slashdot Mirror
Why are we shooting for photorealistic CG TV shows? I can understand the use of CG technology for putting characters in dangerous situations where actors can't be used, or creating shots that would be difficult or impossible to attain through other means. But why have total shows created of it, are actors *that* much more expensive than the combined cost of the brilliant artists and voice actors? Sure its a cool use of technology, but why is this going onto TV rather than staying on a geek's drawing board somewhere? As someone else already pointed out, they haven't got it quite right yet, with lack of blinking and other minute movements. What's the motivation behind this type of project, aside from the "cool hack" factor?
So you're out your hundred bucks and want to expose your buddy to avoid paying up eh?
When was the last time you played a game you honestly thought was innovative?
For me, it's been a long time. IMO GTA3 is close but not quite ground-breaking. The concept was new, missions in a big city as a gangster, but it still had a lot of old concepts like shoot stuff, blow stuff up, shoot stuff, drive cars, and shoot stuff. There are two games I'm looking forward to playing: Star Wars Galaxies and Doom3, but I can't say either of them are anything new once you get passed the fancy graphics. Where are all the radically new ideas for games like we had 10 years ago?
I have to say I like third edition much better than second. It's much easier to play and to convince newbies to play because mysterious concepts like THAC0 have been eliminated in favor of a more intuitive system. I wouldn't say it was sheerly a sales-motivated release, it was also an improvement.
On a semirelevant note, I modified an IRC bot I wrote to roll arbitrary numbers of dice of arbitrary sides and print totals to the channel so if for some reason you're playing over IRC you don't have to rely on any person to roll dice, this way everyone can see the roll. See here.
But will a terrorist start because a child steals a loaf of bread from him? No, there are many things that we would consider not something to have blame for.
How can you be so sure? The Nazis killed men, women, and children based on Hitlers twisted interpretations of religion. There is no pit too low for some to stoop.
As for your religious arguments, I gave up trying to argue with religious zealots long ago. Your collective mental prison is none of my concern if you wouldn't leave it even given the key.
Most Americans know that's just government propaganda. We reallize the attacks are because Bin Laden is annoyed at our medaling in the war in his holy land. Unfortunately until the ignorant masses stop believing everything they read we can't really use political means to tell the people in power that having troops there has become more of a liability than a help and they should be removed. On the flip side, if the terrorists got what they want we would send the wrong message: that we can be pushed around.
Stop their mouths by being without blame - then when they murder ask why. They will stand condemned by their own words.
The terrorists claim to be followers of Islam, a religion that preaches peace, yet they still kill, maim, and destroy. It is apparent that showing them the contradiction in their behavior and beliefs gets us no where. Additionally it is impossible to be "without blame". I can "blame" you for doing something I see as wrong and you see as right. Who's wrong?
If you have no fault then God will testify on your behalf whether you die or not
You're making the dangerous assumption that God exists. The same assumption that the terrorists make that allow them to do the things they do. It'd be interesting to see if we would be in a better world tomorrow if we could eliminate religion today. Of course that's impossible, I'm just musing.
Why do athletes, that contribute NOTHING to society, get paid the most in our society?
I wouldn't say most. See this. Someone will no doubt argue the people compared there are roughly equal contributors.
See the Cathy Rogers interview, first question.
Many years ago my high school used a Fortres product (may or may not have been the one you're talking about but the idea sounds the same). It worked well enough for keeping the majority of average high school students out of trouble but the lab techs had no problem hacking through it. At one point there was an old system with Fortres on it which no one knew the password to, and so the lab techs were asked to take Fortres down so the machine could be updated and so forth. We succeeded in minutes, and consequently I've been skeptical of the usefulness of products like this one ever since.
When a person steals money or property, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines use the value of the property lost, damaged, or destroyed as the loss amount. This formula works well with tangible property, but when the property at issue is information, or in my case source code, does the same formula reflect the true intended or actual loss?
Big brother, even then, didn't seem to realize that in order for an owner to be completely deprived of the value of the property, its owner has to actually be completely deprived of the property. In my experience, very few people(read: none that I can think of) want to steal information (i.e. take and deprive its owner of it), but a great many would like a copy of it. File sharing analogies abound.
The first is that it used one UDP to spread: no waiting around for the three-way TCP handshake, no hanging waiting for a reply, just send and move on to the next one.
Indeed. I've been coining the term "rapid-fire-and-forget worm".
There was a class at my university that had a grading scale resembling 80-100 A, 60-80 B, etc... After seeing everyone getting A's, the president of the university ordered that the class be made harder. What did they do? The department head made the scale 94-100 A, 87-94 B, etc... Not terrible if you're majoring in subject of the course, but that wasn't the case with the majority of the students in this class.
Grades are suppose to be a basis by which to judge performance, if we arbitrarily change the values required for certain grades they become completely meaningless. Class-wide grading curves are a necessary evil to counteract poor teaching, poor text book, etc...
IIRC Brooks talks about that in the directors commentary on the DVD. "Skoorb" didn't sound quite right so they changed it slightly. Another bit of trivia: the scene with Dark Helmet playing with the dolls was completely adlibbed by Rick Morranis(sp?), Brooks just told him the concept, no dialogue, and they shot it.
That can be modified. During the AYB craze the server I frequented had that plant alert, it ran admin mod and a couple other similar mods whose names escape me. There might have even been a version where it said that, I can't remember.
When the current is on, the window is clear. But flip a switch to turn the current off and the glass goes opaque, allowing it to be used as a projection screen for watching television or DVDs. The flanking casement windows become the speakers.
/. article implies. Oh, and I do hereby coin the phrase "turn [on|off] the windows". Apparently the projector is included with the package.
Seems to me this sort of thing would be a good replacement for blinds if you're into the 'wow' factor or have some reason to want a particular room to be very dark some of the time when its daylight out. They haven't invented a translucent TV as the
Windows that switch from transparent to opaque were introduced years ago by several window manufacturers, but they never caught on with consumers.
So apparently what these people have done is nail two things together that have never been nailed together before.
Using a proprietary OS would make it much harder for a single, easy to write virus to be unleashed. If there's a widespread use of the same OS, what's to stop spread?
How so? Windows is a proprietary OS and has more than its fair share of virii which spread partially because of the gaping security holes found by outsiders without access to the code. All a potential virus writer would need is access to one of these cars to start probing it for vulnerabilities. If you're meaning that a virus couldn't jump from a computer's OS to a car's and possibly back again (and therefore couldn't spread over an internet made of computers); I wouldn't be so sure, cross-platform virii exist. Personally I'd never drive a car where the computer has any control over critical systems.
(OT: reminds me of a sig I saw somewhere that read: "As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing")
I've seen quite a few of Gobbles posts on bugtraq and as far as I can remember they never gives advance notice to the vendor, frightingly, I haven't heard too many rejections of their previous claims on bugtraq. And don't be too sure this Gobbles is a "guy", this is from one of the other posts:
GOBBLES Security Labs (GSL) is currently the largest non-profit security team in the world, with over 17 active members that are dedicated to bringing cutting edge material to the public that other groups are too afraid and/or selfish to do. Unlike some groups, GSL is at least honest about their intentions -- GSL members want fame and glory. We're not out to make friends (re: fat kid).
This organization has always struck me as a blackhat group, and (unfortunately) not script kiddies.
If I were the RIAA, I'd be very, very afraid of what backdoors he'd planted that could come back and bite them in their own ass.
IIRC, the email thats the subject of this story something to the effect of "we're building a DDoS network from this same technology". So there were never any questions on that front. Frightening.
it's amazing what some people would rather have then money
Some would argue that money is a means, not an end.
I want software that actually RUNS!
*ducks*
I remember years ago when I was browsing Doom's source seeing colorful for loop variable names, such as "for (int fuck = 0; fuck 10; fuck++) {"
See here and my sig.
for militaristic use, to defend the country against enemies, domestic or foreign, that threaten the freedom of the country. It's a democratic failsafe against government.
And suppose you believe the government the government has tripped that failsafe. What are you going to do? Start shooting cops? Shoot the president? After gunning you down or capturing and executing you the government would simply start a propoganda campaign against you and everyone who shared your opinions. Your life would end, and you would provide them the perfect excuse to hunt down everyone else who shared your opinions. In short you would become the next Al Queda. They've even got the perfect term to use in any propoganda war they choose to start, and use it atleast 13 times in every sentence when they're trying to convince the lemmings (read: majority) in this country that something is a Good Idea, you know the term I mean. The fact is your gun doesn't protect jackshit, and we're at their mercy if they ever decide democracy went out of style. The true failsafe is that there are a whole lot of people in positions of power and it would take the colaboration and secrecy of an enormous number of them to orchestrate any sort of legal or organized undermining of the goverment (remind anyone else of political parties?). Think of the government as a kind of internet: a few nodes go bad now and then, hopefully we can still route around them, and they don't take too many others down with them.
And for all the "external enemy" types: The constitution was written in a time before stategic aerial bombardment, thermonuclear weapons, ICBMs, and MIRVs. Anyone without military training and sophisticated weapons equipment can't make a damned bit of difference in a real war against a real military. When the constitution was written, they could. I challenge you to defend yourself against an incoming cruise missile with your assault rifle. Don't think the enemy will be stupid enough to send in troops for you to whack until he's glassed your city one or twice from several thousand miles away.
I hope you're right that SMTP is on the way out, however I like my free email. What about a system similar to a trusted computing base, with email addresses, any address that isn't in your web of trust can't send you an email. Some method for tracing through the web to find who you're trusting that trusts a spammer could quickly put an end to unwanted email. The problem of spammers breaking into systems still exists, but thats no worse off than we are now. Traversing such a web might be a problem. P2P tech might even work though its probably a better idea to stick with client-server. Seems it could be implemented as filtering software(with its own protocol in addition to SMTP) or a new protocol. Ideas? Thoughts? Elaborations? Something I missed?
neither can dead people
Depends on how much rigor mortis they have.