I think that before we commence with the jumping about and running arms atwitter, we need to answer two questions:
How close were the barracks to the transmitter?
What is the blast radius of a Tomahawk?
I don't have time to get into all the posts I've seen so far, but let me say this: I have never been prouder to be an Amarican as I am now.
From the overwhelming heroism of the rescue workers to the outpouring of support, to the surprising backbone of our leadership, we seem to be doing this right.
Yes, America has screwed up before. We will again, I'm sure. We're all humans. But this time, I think we've got it. This is a war, you know, formally declared.
We're *still* trying to keep casualties military and not civilian. We've given the Taliban nearly a month to figure it out and they stubbornly refused. Well then, that's tough shit for them, isn't it?
Whether or not the food/propaganda drops are sincere, it's valid military startegy. We're there to win this one and I don't think we're going to see another Vietnam or Iraq.
I've only signed up for 2 of these my whole life. One was a Sam's card my parents actually pay for and use. My wife uses it occasionally too, but Sam's sucks donkey with their Discover or check only crap.
The other was at a Kroker in Tennessee, which was only used once, ever.
In neither case did I read the paperwork. What does it say regarding misuse or deception? Do you agree by accepting the card to not share it or otherwise fudge the data?
Maybe people on Slashdot can brainstorm ways to increase the bandwidth of these things in the short term (i.e. cost-ineffective combination of lines)...
Well, if money is really no object, why stop at cost-ineffective line-aggregation tricks? Why not send every correspondent in the field with a Delta and a CommSat and a laser uplink (some assemply reqired)?
*I'm* not annoyed. In fact, I think it's pretty sad how many people dive in without even a basic understanding of what they're doing.
In the U.S. (and elsewhere, I assume) gun and boater safety classes are strongly encouraged. You have to pass a driver's license exam. You can't even buy power tools without "safety glasses and earplugs recommended".
But anyone can buy a PC and be doing God knows what in minutes, and then when their ignorance catches up to them and they've been SirCammed or they lose a drive full of the grandkids stuff or whatever, they wail and gnash their teeth.
I'm not saying we need a MinCompLit, but we need something. I'm perfectly happy on a command line or reg-hacking, but nobody should *HAVE* to. There should be a way for all OS designers to set up their systems so that novices can do no harm and experts like us can tweak, reconfig and otherwise bastardise to our heart's content.
GTRacer
- My DC doesn't have this problem, but then...
On the whole, I agree with your point. But what the/. community is forgetting is the key difference between people whose lives are pervaded by computing, and people with computers pervading *our* lives.
My mom is a competent user. But never in a lifetime would she know how to reassociate a file type. She has a crutch in that she can call me and I can either talk her through her problems or go visit her.
I'm continually stunned by the "expected level" of expertise the industry assumes (or fails to live up to). Case in point: the millions of new DSL users with cheap PC's and 24/7 access. My best friend has had me over twice now to fix his machine from malicious ad/spyware stuffed in his registry.
Just how are people supposed to know this stuff? Where are they supposed to learn it?
I'm no friend of the Empire, but they do have a track record of obfuscation. Even if the answer (in 95/98) is a simple right-click, that's a skill that I bet a high percentage of users don't have or understand: "Right-click on this icon, please" [left-click] "OK, I clicked right on top of it. Now what?"
Microsoft has slowly been coming around to the idea of security throughout key configs. Why not take the "A script is accessing..." IE pop-ups and extend them to anything that touches non-app keys in the reg? And, as previously suggested, an audit app that can clearly show you what's associated where, what runs on startup for whom, and validates key DLL versions?
I have a PS2, a DC, and an N64 (long live GE). A lot of times, especially with rentals, I find myself stuck because of a lack of instruction manual or because it's 3:30am and I can't think straight.
Before I snagged my DC, I would've had to wait until morning to check GameFAQs. Now, I just switch inputs to the DC (or save the DC game in progress), boot up, search, and then power off and back to the game.
I'd love the ability to VNC from my living room to work on my website. And it's a lot easier to check those *special* sites in a different room...
I don't think this will affect any of us in the next 5 years or so, even if the mere discussion of it is chilling.
What I see is a future in, say, 25 years, where I'm teaching my grandson how to disable the copy controls in our State-supplied EntBox so we can watch old DVD-format movies I had in the attic. I'm teaching him how to shield the GPS trackers in his car (serviceable ONLY at State centers) so he can go to Bible Study/IP Revolution meetings. I'm teaching him how to run an ancient PC we keep buried and wrapped in lead to prevent its detection.
Dammit, I should be teaching him how to fish.
Listen, I'm not a super-paranoid individual, but I honestly see the potential, years down the road, where we've lost our IP freedoms bit by bit until we don't remember what fair use was...
I had a large image file collection back in the day. Some of my faves came indirectly from Rusty & Eddie's.
I remember hearing on the news that a massive pirate BBS was taken down. When I saw the name I almost fell down. All this time and I thought they were a multimedia site!
Disclaimer - I never called them directly because it was L/D and I never phreaked nor had the cash to pay for such.
GTRacer
- The Communications Hex - Elsinore - The Neighborhood - Jax's finest BBSes!
If you were a record/movie/other IP exec high on hubris like Zaphod fresh from the TPV, would you stop at anything less than *WORLD DOMINATION*?
I undersand any content creator's rights and interests in what they create. What I don't get is why the middlemen feel the need to control us once we've already bought into their empire.
Who here thinks that if the major labels/studios had launched a Napster of their own, before any other P2P, with a per-track price of say, fifty cents, that they would now control all the world's money? And they'd have more control than they do now!
But no-O-o, they had to dismiss new tech as either irrelevant or evil and now all consumers find themselves screwed because now that Pandora is out of the box, their only recourse is to hide behind bought laws and legislators...
HA! Well, you're right, but for those of us who run small family-oriented servers, those 16 probes per, and the 16 emails from my IDS *DO* dramatically slow me down.
Fortunately, Apache is immune, and I haven't had any real problems. But with Nimda, and to a lesser extent, CR, I have to lose email service for about an hour a day while the error reports clog my inbox.
I want the logs to give to our ISP (since most of the top probers are on our subnet) but I'm thinking I may have to compromise my IDS to cut out some of the crap...
The Bloodhound Gang, from Hooray for Boobies. Next...
GTRacer
- Hooray!
A child's perspective...
on
XBox Delayed
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Ha-haa!
</NelsonM>
GTRacer
- Where is my Linux for PS2? C'mon guys, i wanna MAME!
Re:Incorrect about PC similarities
on
XBox Delayed
·
· Score: 1
Even the USB for the controllers has been altered... to require XBoxers to fork over more dough for "XBox" brand keyboards and mice when standard USB ones do just fine on PS2...
XBox = Ex-box
GTRacer
- Hardcore enough to want one anyway, along with GCN...
What, with every 5th farking vertical line missing?
I had that game for about 24 hours. I love Activision, and after the sheer joy and nostalgia that was the Atari/Midway collection running on Digital Eclipse's emu, I expected more great retrogaming.
I grew up with an Atari 2600 and many bought or borrowed Activision carts. I thought I was going to really gorge on the 20+ games on that disc.
Whoever wrote the graphics system for that collection blew it bigtime. It looks like the end result of using a 640x480 LCD projector with an 800x600 display! The whole thing shimmers and any one-pixel vertical line that moves horizontally (bullets) will shimmer in and out.
Gah! Traded it in towards MGS anyway.
GTRacer
- Would buy version 2.0 if they fixed the gfx
The point of the Deep Space series of missions, of which the Mars Polar Lander was #2 and went AWOL, was to test new tech for next to nothing (in NASA terms).
Do any of you realise that DS1, apart from being 8 revs away from the greatest Trek ever, was powered by an ion engine? You know, like Star Wars?
Plus, when the nav system went tits up, they were able to retask other optical instruments to allow for autonomous piloting.
DS1 wasn't even supposed to make it this far. IIRC, it was expected to have a 3-month primary mission to test the equipment. Then, if there was enough gas in the tank and the thing still worked, they were going to find something else for it.
An asteroid flyby and now a comet encounter...not bad for $12 mil!
P.S. I'm a bit biased on this one - I watched the launch and have read every one of the oddball logs posted by Dr. Raymond.
(I don't have time to read the 300+ messages here, so forgive me if there's a redundancy)
The decline for me came when arcades shifted from mostly-unlimited skills-based games to time or resource-limited luck-fests.
I can name a dozen games from "back in the day" that I could play for 30 minutes to a couple of hours on one play. I didn't care if it cost 25 cents or a buck. The point was I could play as long as my skill (and maybe a little luck) held out.
My best example? The original Atari Star Wars sit-down vector unit. I could easily play until I gave up because I had memorized the patterns and as long as I executed my moves and avoided things, I played until my bum fell asleep. My best game was a 5.5 hour marathon which saw me rolling over 99 levels and scoring over 32 mil. I finally walked away because the clots in my legs were breaking free and headed to my brain.
Nowadays, with the exception of pinball, I can't readily name any games where you can play based on skill. It's either timed, lapped, or rounded in such a way that you finish in about 5-10 minutes, regardless. And no free plays, either!
I still like arcades, but at least on my PS2, DreamCast and N64, I can keep at it until I decide it's time to quit.
I still have most of my Construx, right along with tons of Legos^H.
My two favorite Construx creations were a fairly accurate GunStar from The Last Starfighter, complete with Death Blossom panels, and a not-quite six foot tall droid.
The droid used the green turntables in most of the joints, stacked 2 high so you had two "plates" on one end and one on the other. Sucker was tough.
It was fully articulated and could wear clothes. This last bit was nearly disastrous as I left him standing in the living room one night and my dad woke up and nearly bashed 'im.
I had endless fun trying to see where I could sit him. Best place was at the wheel of my parents' car. Wish I had a pic!
I've tried in vain to find auctions of bulk "classic" Construx, not the new crap Hasbro (?) put out. I especially need many of those green turntables. I want another droid. IG-88!
GTRacer
- Would not be who I am without building toys
Look, I loved that Konami added Monkeyboy to the DDR lineup. Shows they're supporting Xbox;)
I've been saying this since X was announced months ago: It'll start strong and early adopters and non-partisan geeks will make for good early sales numbers.
Then, total lack of an overseas market and GCN's arrival will mean Xbox becomes <reverb>The PC Port Dumping Ground of Doom!</reverb>
I'll agree with you about the broadband killing dialup tho'.
I won't agree on the PS2 issue (entirely): Yes, goofy architecture, but it seems to be worth it to many devs, and seeing that PS2's Christmas should be "solid", and GCN's going to be on every 12-year-old's list, I don't know where Xbox will be.
Oh wait, yes I do. Last. Don't get me wrong - I want Xbox to do well, if only to keep PS2 and GCN (does anyone know why the hell it's GCN and not NGC?) on their toes...
Let's met here 6 months after launch and see who's closer to being right.
Well there you have it. I've learned two things today! Or maybe remembered from my senior English Lit classes, 10 years ago. Yes-s-s, I *DID* know that the star-cross'd lovers were from rival Houses. Curse my lack of recall and over-eager desire to be pedantic...
Slashdot Mirror
How close were the barracks to the transmitter?
What is the blast radius of a Tomahawk?
I don't have time to get into all the posts I've seen so far, but let me say this: I have never been prouder to be an Amarican as I am now.
From the overwhelming heroism of the rescue workers to the outpouring of support, to the surprising backbone of our leadership, we seem to be doing this right.
Yes, America has screwed up before. We will again, I'm sure. We're all humans. But this time, I think we've got it. This is a war, you know, formally declared.
We're *still* trying to keep casualties military and not civilian. We've given the Taliban nearly a month to figure it out and they stubbornly refused. Well then, that's tough shit for them, isn't it?
Whether or not the food/propaganda drops are sincere, it's valid military startegy. We're there to win this one and I don't think we're going to see another Vietnam or Iraq.
GTRacer
- Will fly F15 sorties for free
The other was at a Kroker in Tennessee, which was only used once, ever.
In neither case did I read the paperwork. What does it say regarding misuse or deception? Do you agree by accepting the card to not share it or otherwise fudge the data?
GTRacer
- Still doesn't really care...
Well, if money is really no object, why stop at cost-ineffective line-aggregation tricks? Why not send every correspondent in the field with a Delta and a CommSat and a laser uplink (some assemply reqired)?
GTRacer
- Oh well...
In the U.S. (and elsewhere, I assume) gun and boater safety classes are strongly encouraged. You have to pass a driver's license exam. You can't even buy power tools without "safety glasses and earplugs recommended".
But anyone can buy a PC and be doing God knows what in minutes, and then when their ignorance catches up to them and they've been SirCammed or they lose a drive full of the grandkids stuff or whatever, they wail and gnash their teeth.
I'm not saying we need a MinCompLit, but we need something. I'm perfectly happy on a command line or reg-hacking, but nobody should *HAVE* to. There should be a way for all OS designers to set up their systems so that novices can do no harm and experts like us can tweak, reconfig and otherwise bastardise to our heart's content.
GTRacer
- My DC doesn't have this problem, but then...
My mom is a competent user. But never in a lifetime would she know how to reassociate a file type. She has a crutch in that she can call me and I can either talk her through her problems or go visit her.
I'm continually stunned by the "expected level" of expertise the industry assumes (or fails to live up to). Case in point: the millions of new DSL users with cheap PC's and 24/7 access. My best friend has had me over twice now to fix his machine from malicious ad/spyware stuffed in his registry.
Just how are people supposed to know this stuff? Where are they supposed to learn it?
I'm no friend of the Empire, but they do have a track record of obfuscation. Even if the answer (in 95/98) is a simple right-click, that's a skill that I bet a high percentage of users don't have or understand: "Right-click on this icon, please" [left-click] "OK, I clicked right on top of it. Now what?"
Microsoft has slowly been coming around to the idea of security throughout key configs. Why not take the "A script is accessing..." IE pop-ups and extend them to anything that touches non-app keys in the reg? And, as previously suggested, an audit app that can clearly show you what's associated where, what runs on startup for whom, and validates key DLL versions?
GTRacer
- When Konqueror is as good as IE 5.5...
Before I snagged my DC, I would've had to wait until morning to check GameFAQs. Now, I just switch inputs to the DC (or save the DC game in progress), boot up, search, and then power off and back to the game.
I'd love the ability to VNC from my living room to work on my website. And it's a lot easier to check those *special* sites in a different room...
GTRacer
- "It's for a Soc class, I swear!"
What I see is a future in, say, 25 years, where I'm teaching my grandson how to disable the copy controls in our State-supplied EntBox so we can watch old DVD-format movies I had in the attic. I'm teaching him how to shield the GPS trackers in his car (serviceable ONLY at State centers) so he can go to Bible Study/IP Revolution meetings. I'm teaching him how to run an ancient PC we keep buried and wrapped in lead to prevent its detection.
Dammit, I should be teaching him how to fish.
Listen, I'm not a super-paranoid individual, but I honestly see the potential, years down the road, where we've lost our IP freedoms bit by bit until we don't remember what fair use was...
GTRacer
- I don't remember signing anything...
I had a large image file collection back in the day. Some of my faves came indirectly from Rusty & Eddie's.
I remember hearing on the news that a massive pirate BBS was taken down. When I saw the name I almost fell down. All this time and I thought they were a multimedia site!
Disclaimer - I never called them directly because it was L/D and I never phreaked nor had the cash to pay for such.
GTRacer
- The Communications Hex - Elsinore - The Neighborhood - Jax's finest BBSes!
Damn, soon they'll be after us for humming songs we heard on the radio... :P
GTRacer
- *listening to Racer X ripped from legally-purchased CD*
If you were a record/movie/other IP exec high on hubris like Zaphod fresh from the TPV, would you stop at anything less than *WORLD DOMINATION*?
I undersand any content creator's rights and interests in what they create. What I don't get is why the middlemen feel the need to control us once we've already bought into their empire.
Who here thinks that if the major labels/studios had launched a Napster of their own, before any other P2P, with a per-track price of say, fifty cents, that they would now control all the world's money? And they'd have more control than they do now!
But no-O-o, they had to dismiss new tech as either irrelevant or evil and now all consumers find themselves screwed because now that Pandora is out of the box, their only recourse is to hide behind bought laws and legislators...
GTRacer
- See sig. See sig run. Run sig run.
Fortunately, Apache is immune, and I haven't had any real problems. But with Nimda, and to a lesser extent, CR, I have to lose email service for about an hour a day while the error reports clog my inbox.
I want the logs to give to our ISP (since most of the top probers are on our subnet) but I'm thinking I may have to compromise my IDS to cut out some of the crap...
GTRacer
- Apache on WinNT...Mmmm!
Offtopic? He started it! My reply was on-topic to its parent, y'know!
Geez, this and my Nelson crack (which *WAS* on-topic, BTW) on the "XBox delayed" thread have cost me dearly...
GTRacer
- Guesses this will be Strike 3!
Huh, smart guy?
GTRacer
- Thinks Vib Ribbon is hella cool
Japanese has a perfectly good "hard" G sound: fS. And it has a "T", too, fg. And a fr. I think you're thinking of the whole L-R thing.
If you're going to make fun of something, at least do it right.
IHBT. IHL. HAND...I know, I know.
GTRacer
Will speak Nihongo someday...
GTRacer
- Hooray!
Ha-haa!
</NelsonM>
GTRacer
- Where is my Linux for PS2? C'mon guys, i wanna MAME!
XBox = Ex-box
GTRacer
- Hardcore enough to want one anyway, along with GCN...
I had that game for about 24 hours. I love Activision, and after the sheer joy and nostalgia that was the Atari/Midway collection running on Digital Eclipse's emu, I expected more great retrogaming.
I grew up with an Atari 2600 and many bought or borrowed Activision carts. I thought I was going to really gorge on the 20+ games on that disc.
Whoever wrote the graphics system for that collection blew it bigtime. It looks like the end result of using a 640x480 LCD projector with an 800x600 display! The whole thing shimmers and any one-pixel vertical line that moves horizontally (bullets) will shimmer in and out.
Gah! Traded it in towards MGS anyway.
GTRacer
- Would buy version 2.0 if they fixed the gfx
The point of the Deep Space series of missions, of which the Mars Polar Lander was #2 and went AWOL, was to test new tech for next to nothing (in NASA terms).
Do any of you realise that DS1, apart from being 8 revs away from the greatest Trek ever, was powered by an ion engine? You know, like Star Wars?
Plus, when the nav system went tits up, they were able to retask other optical instruments to allow for autonomous piloting.
DS1 wasn't even supposed to make it this far. IIRC, it was expected to have a 3-month primary mission to test the equipment. Then, if there was enough gas in the tank and the thing still worked, they were going to find something else for it.
An asteroid flyby and now a comet encounter...not bad for $12 mil!
P.S. I'm a bit biased on this one - I watched the launch and have read every one of the oddball logs posted by Dr. Raymond.
C'mon, NASA, where's DS3?
GTRacer
- Wants to be first at something
The decline for me came when arcades shifted from mostly-unlimited skills-based games to time or resource-limited luck-fests.
I can name a dozen games from "back in the day" that I could play for 30 minutes to a couple of hours on one play. I didn't care if it cost 25 cents or a buck. The point was I could play as long as my skill (and maybe a little luck) held out.
My best example? The original Atari Star Wars sit-down vector unit. I could easily play until I gave up because I had memorized the patterns and as long as I executed my moves and avoided things, I played until my bum fell asleep. My best game was a 5.5 hour marathon which saw me rolling over 99 levels and scoring over 32 mil. I finally walked away because the clots in my legs were breaking free and headed to my brain.
Nowadays, with the exception of pinball, I can't readily name any games where you can play based on skill. It's either timed, lapped, or rounded in such a way that you finish in about 5-10 minutes, regardless. And no free plays, either!
I still like arcades, but at least on my PS2, DreamCast and N64, I can keep at it until I decide it's time to quit.
GTRacer
- DC + Internet + pr0n = Odd...
The first was pitted against an air cannon to hurl pumpkins against a three-foot high wall some distance away. Treb wins.
The other was in the goofy season where the teams wore the black suits with yellow or orange reflective tape. Were these one-off specials?
Anyhoo, it was a treb v. a ballista in an attempt to knock a "king" out of a parapet window.
Treb lost, but barely.
Either way, trebs are quite the business!
GTRacer
- Would still rather have a MkIII Supra...
My two favorite Construx creations were a fairly accurate GunStar from The Last Starfighter, complete with Death Blossom panels, and a not-quite six foot tall droid.
The droid used the green turntables in most of the joints, stacked 2 high so you had two "plates" on one end and one on the other. Sucker was tough.
It was fully articulated and could wear clothes. This last bit was nearly disastrous as I left him standing in the living room one night and my dad woke up and nearly bashed 'im.
I had endless fun trying to see where I could sit him. Best place was at the wheel of my parents' car. Wish I had a pic!
I've tried in vain to find auctions of bulk "classic" Construx, not the new crap Hasbro (?) put out. I especially need many of those green turntables. I want another droid. IG-88!
GTRacer
- Would not be who I am without building toys
'Member it didn't sell south of the border and after much hair-pulling, GM execs figured it out?
Maybe in 6 months Bill will wake up to the fact that his new console didn't make it because of language issues in English-speaking territories:
Xbox == Ex-box
That, or maybe it's because nobody can use that stupid-ass controller... Anyone checked out that thing's mass yet? Is it bending space-time?
GTRacer
- Likes the new Zelda
Look, I loved that Konami added Monkeyboy to the DDR lineup. Shows they're supporting Xbox ;)
I've been saying this since X was announced months ago: It'll start strong and early adopters and non-partisan geeks will make for good early sales numbers.
Then, total lack of an overseas market and GCN's arrival will mean Xbox becomes <reverb>The PC Port Dumping Ground of Doom!</reverb>
I'll agree with you about the broadband killing dialup tho'.
I won't agree on the PS2 issue (entirely): Yes, goofy architecture, but it seems to be worth it to many devs, and seeing that PS2's Christmas should be "solid", and GCN's going to be on every 12-year-old's list, I don't know where Xbox will be.
Oh wait, yes I do. Last. Don't get me wrong - I want Xbox to do well, if only to keep PS2 and GCN (does anyone know why the hell it's GCN and not NGC?) on their toes...
Let's met here 6 months after launch and see who's closer to being right.
GTRacer
- Now owns all 3 GT's and a GT3 Demo
Well there you have it. I've learned two things today! Or maybe remembered from my senior English Lit classes, 10 years ago. Yes-s-s, I *DID* know that the star-cross'd lovers were from rival Houses. Curse my lack of recall and over-eager desire to be pedantic...
Later!
GTRacer
- Sits with egg on face -