The Phantom console has creamed vaporware from the beggining. HarcOCP did what good journalists do, they made a good faith effort to investigate the company to see if it was legit. All the evidence they were able to collect points to it being a scam. The company has not been willing or able to put forward any evidence they are developing an actual product, or even that any of the statements made by HardOCP are false beyond vague legal threats. The article is fair in that it presents the evidence found by the reporters and doesn't deliberatly omit contradictory evidence. All Infinium Labs needs to do to settle the issue is present one of the working prototypes they claim to have.
Where does this BS come from? I live in South Florida, and watched the election debacle firsthand. Despite following closely, I never heard these stories direct from a credible source, instead they started to show up long after it was over from various crackpots. Please present evidence, cause I'd like to have our (democratic) supervisor of elections arrested if it's true. The reality of the matter is nothing really unusual happened, it just so happened Florida turned it's vote in last so Florida became the fighting ground. If you believe voting is actually 100% accurate anywhere you are deluding yourself.
Re:Don't Knock US/Imperial/SAE Measurements!
on
Mars Rovers Update
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· Score: 1
When building a one-off component in the U.S., it is ussually much easier and cheaper to use english measurements instead of metric. The reason being, everything is sold in english units, and metric is usually pretty hard to find unless you order it. In a perfect world, metric would be the better system, but as it is the old english units work better in practice. The most important thing is consistency (which was NASA's problem). Pick a system and stick with it through an entire project and you won't have to worry about it. It's not like converting inches to feet is really all that much more difficult then metric units anyway.
I play Puzzle Pirates, and it's success is due solely to the efforts of the admins. The actual programmers all play the game, and anyone can stop and have a chat with them. They play a hands on role tweaking the economy and punishing players who cause grief. There are no levels, only your skill at the puzzles, so even first day players can be useful. Taking on new players is often rewarded because you get an excellent new crew member after a few weeks of training. Puzzle Pirates pretty much proves the atmosphere and quality of a MMORPG is depndent on the attentiveness of the developers.
I used to play Gameboy games on my visor deluxe, the lack of a color screen is probably all that kept a NES emulator from being developed. My PocketPC emulates NES, SNES, Genesis, MAME supported arcade machines, and probably a few others. I have a rom cart for my GBA that lets me play NES games on their as well. I applaud the author for writing an emulator for such an old platform, but it's nothing to get excited about.
Computer models dont mean shit if you can't test them against real viruses occasionally. If you never do real testing you will never know where your model is wrong. You can either let researchers work and learn how to make and stop GE viruses or you can hide your head in the sand until a crackpot gets ahold of it and catches the world unprepared.
While I don't doubt the US has just as large (if not larger) spam problem then the rest of the world, these statistics are useless. They dont explain anything you need to make use of the data. What counts as a spam message? All unsoliticited emails ? What about "legitimate" spam with a working opt-out link, or all that crap people willingly sign-up for. How is the country of origin determined? Most spam tries it's hardest to conceal it's origins. It can be difficult to determine the country of origin of legitimate traffic. Finally, how was the spam collected? I can't think of a way to quickly collect a lot of spam without introducing a bias. Finally, do comprimised machines count? Does the location of the person causing them to send spam count, or the comprimised machine? If they want their data to be taken seriously, they need to be open about the process they used to get it. Also it seems a little convenient a company that sells anti-spam software in the American and European market claims those countries produce the most spam.
This is a troll. You can update from a fresh install of XP with 1 restart. It requires one more if you install a service pack. 99% of the updates on XP don't require a restart, they just tell you it won't take effect until the next restart. Furthermore, windows update can run entirely in the background as well, and automatically grab and install critical updates. Microsoft also supplies all the tools to run your own patch server, so in a corporate enviroment you can control when the computers on your network are patched. Windows tends to suggest restarts that aren't neccesary, just click cancel and your done. It's not a huge deal anyway, my relatively modest XP box goes from off to desktop in well under a minute, so I don't think anyone is really dieing from having to restart.
Not to pick on Finland, but you made an example out of it. Does Finland have an army capable of defending it from any country in the world? If not, then Finland is not free. Finland has to toe the line with the international community if it want's security and protection. The great thing about the U.S. is we cooperate (when we do) with the international community when we want to, and feel it's beneficial. It's a fact of life, the weak are at the mercy of the strong unless they have strong friends (who impose their own restrictions).
I'm not surprised a filter beat the human, considering the study used a sample of 5849 messages. As the sample size increases, the filter's accuray will increase, and the human's will decrease. Furthermore the higher the spam/real ration, the better the filter will do in comparison to a human trying to sort at a reasonable speed. The reason being humans tend to skim, and rairly actually read entire subjects, much less messages. Give a human 5000 messages and an hour and he will probably make some mistakes. On the other hand, in 10 messages, the human will probably be 100% correct. Most email filters rely on this already, as they tend to err on the side of caution. With the bulk of the spam taken out, it is not a burden to have the human check the iffy bits. Furthermore the type of email can mislead humans. A business-type email sent to someone's personal email is much more likely to be mistaken as spam, and vice versa. The main disadvantage of automated filtering is people generally have an idea of when a really important e-mail is going to come (the type that false positives are completely unacceptable) and who it will be from.
If you try to install some new hardware and XP doesnt have the driver, you are in the same position as you are with Linux. Except with XP you are pretty much garunteed the driver actually exists. Furthermore I reinstalled XP about a week ago, and it took a total of two reboots. Once to install the OS, once after I ran windows update. Here's a hint, just because an installer tells you to reboot doesnt generally mean you have to. I had a fully functional, secure, updated system in under 2 hours. Including DL time for updates. Most of that is in custom configuring various parts of the install. At school I've done default XP reinstalls in under 15 minutes (copying the cd to the hard drive in advance helps). Linux has a lot going for it, but modern versions of Windows has installing pretty much down.
I've heard of these studies before, and it's worth pointing out that men (generally) designed the games as well. So if men have somewhat different methods of processing navigation and spatial information, and they design a game, they would probably tend to design it in a way that best suited the man. For this reason, if nothing else, at the absolute highest level the men could have a small advantage. I doubt it would matter much at the "average" online level, because people universally suck (This is why players with the slightest ounce of ability are often accused of cheating on public servers). That said I think women and men should compete in the same tournament, as only by establishing their presence in the community can they achieve long term equality.
Damn, a guy on slashdot said it isn't gonna happen. Guess we should all go home. People are working on colonizing Mars, and once we get our thumbs out our asses and start exploring again, it might turn out to be a lot easier then you think.
If you can't rip open and reassemble the guts of a mac, you have problems. I've worked extensively with both platforms, and with the exceptions of the iMacs, the Macs tend to be much easier to take apart and work on. Pc's have made great strides with the advent of the modder community (and finally some decent PC cases) but the consumer stuff is still garbage. That said, you can't build your own mac from scratch, but that's not their objective.
-The internet is useful to the community, and with widespread broadband, could be even more useful.
-There are lots of great technical advances made by internet users. To deprive people the bands so a tiny minority can putz around on it deprives the entire scientific and technical community of these discoveries.
-We, the people, own the spectrum, and let you use it. Your rights in the matter end at your right to vote.
There are many other reasons why ham bands should be given to more useful purposes.
Exempting basic laws is probably a good idea. Consider all the crap that gets passed due ot it being attached to neccesary budget bills. In most cases failure to pass these bills could theoretically shut down the government, so both sides get in a sshoving match over how much they can get away with. Imagine if they got the chance every couple years to attach things to murder laws. At best you give the minority party a great chance to fillibuster to get their way on something else. It's best to do it right once with some iron-clad law anyone can usderstand then open it up to constant revision and loopholing.
Free speech gives you the right to say it, (if anyone is willing to listen to it is another matter, but I digress). It doesn't change the fact that you are responsible for what you say. Given that Al Queda is a terrorist organization, with the express intent of committing terrorist acts against America and it's citizens, if you claim to support them, you are claiming to support their actions. I think law enforcement is justified in investigating someone who proudly and publicly displays they support terrorist acts on Americans, even if they do not have any involvement with commiting such acts yet. They would proceed to investigate you and your background, make sure you don't have access to any sensitive potential targets (i.e. you don't also work at the nuclear plant) and whether you have engaged in suspicous behavior that would point to you being actively involved in a terrorist organization. Presumably, all these checks would come up false, and they would write you off as a loon, and make a note somewhere you shouldn't be trusted with positions that give you access to restricted information or areas. If they hunted down and locked up everyone who expressed that opinion, Guantannimo would be full of idiots with conspiracy theories and delusions of grandeur. It's pretty conceited to think the FBI or what have you has nothing better to do then look through slashdot forums for terrorist sympathizers and abduct them and lock them up in Guantanimo. That said, when your trying to anticipate the next terrorist attack, it makes sense to look at the people who stand up and say "Hey, I liked that last terrorist attack, it was a great idea". I for one say don't ever say anything or write anything you aren't willing to stand behind and accept the consequences of. I know as an American I have the right to stand up and say whatever ideals I hold. What do I need anonymity for? If I took the effort to say it, I'm willing to stand for it, not hide in the shadows. Anonymity is for when you fear swift reprisal just for trying to say something. America lets you say your peace, and hang yourself. If you want to incriminate yourself, the government won't stop you. If you want to express an unpopular opinion, the government won't stop you. We are the only nation in the world I've ever heard of that let's various militia groups, who have expressed an interest in the fall of the present government arm and train themselves as long as they obey the law.
How is this insightful? The link is to a picture with no context, and there is no information in the post at all. Is the author suggesting these autonomous vehicles will be used to lay land mines in the third world? If so, I'd like to point out the U.S. Military no longer uses anti-infantry land mines, and even if they did, they will lay them fancy unmanned truck or not. Also considering we try to recover them when they have served their purpose, an unmanned vehicle would probably be better at pinpointing the exact location it buried a mine in the first place. And finally, what third world country did we put mines in? Ussually we wind up trying to clean them up from someone else's conflict. Unless the author is suggesting the army is spending all this money to develop trucks for the express pupose of removing 3rd world children's limbs, in which case I would point out the manned version would probably cost less.
Wrong. Do you think getting rid of corporations will magically make all businessmen honest? Corruption and secret dealings have been going on in business as long business has been around. A corporation isn't inherently evil, if the law was actually applied it would be a useful construct. A corporation allows investors to invest in a company without opening themselves to liability. But shouldn't investors be liable for what their money does? Probably, but in reality noone would invest in large companies they cannot control as individuals if they were liable for all it's actions. For that reason the shareholder's nominate executives. The executives get paid handsomly for taking responsibility for the company. Instead of throwing away corporations, period, just make executives criminally liable for the actions of their company. If they are doing their job they should know everything that company does. If executives were dragged to prison when a corporation did something illegal, they would think twice about using shady business practices and would have to earn their inflated salaries.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think NeoGeo even had Street Fighter 2. All the Street Fighter 2 machines I've ever seen (or emulated) were for the Capcom CPS system. The emulator you used probably supported both systems, and you played the rom for the CPS Street Fighter. That said, if you want to experience the greatness of SNK, play Metal Slug, King of Fighters, and Samurai Showdown. The NeoGeo is the king of 2D arcade games, and SNK has made some of the best games of all time for it.
Try doing rap or being a DJ. Then you will realize they do require talent. The yfact they require talent is shown by just how many horrible rappers and DJ's are out there. Furthermore, people tend to like the music they grew up with, and chances are you don't like it just because it's not what you are used to. Just about every generation has complained about the newfangled music of the next. And finally, a synth that's "just as good" and $9,450 cheaper is "better" to a producer, and unless it causes attendance to drop at the show, which it might, it's a good business decision.
Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air.
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
Bill O'Reily is the living personification of incendiary rhetoric. I hardly consider his opinion to be non-biased. His idea of discussion and debate is to spout random claims, with no evidence, and when someone calls him on it, call them stupid. I'm sure it makes for great ratings, and that's probably the point, but he is hardly credible. When I see him willing to debate the people he attacks in a forum he does not control, I will be willing to give his opinion merit.
Member-owned cooperative, eh? Why don't you just put up a big sign that says communist hippies. I'll take my corporate anal-raping like an patriotic American any day.
I liked the movie, but one thing bugged the crap out of me. In the book, the temptation of the ring to humans plays a major role. The ring is the ultimate test of character, and to be able to resist it shows the humans are ready to live without the elves. Aragorn, Faramir, and Boromir all face the temptation of the ring. Boromir falls for it, but redeems himself in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
The Phantom console has creamed vaporware from the beggining. HarcOCP did what good journalists do, they made a good faith effort to investigate the company to see if it was legit. All the evidence they were able to collect points to it being a scam. The company has not been willing or able to put forward any evidence they are developing an actual product, or even that any of the statements made by HardOCP are false beyond vague legal threats. The article is fair in that it presents the evidence found by the reporters and doesn't deliberatly omit contradictory evidence. All Infinium Labs needs to do to settle the issue is present one of the working prototypes they claim to have.
Where does this BS come from? I live in South Florida, and watched the election debacle firsthand. Despite following closely, I never heard these stories direct from a credible source, instead they started to show up long after it was over from various crackpots. Please present evidence, cause I'd like to have our (democratic) supervisor of elections arrested if it's true. The reality of the matter is nothing really unusual happened, it just so happened Florida turned it's vote in last so Florida became the fighting ground. If you believe voting is actually 100% accurate anywhere you are deluding yourself.
When building a one-off component in the U.S., it is ussually much easier and cheaper to use english measurements instead of metric. The reason being, everything is sold in english units, and metric is usually pretty hard to find unless you order it. In a perfect world, metric would be the better system, but as it is the old english units work better in practice. The most important thing is consistency (which was NASA's problem). Pick a system and stick with it through an entire project and you won't have to worry about it. It's not like converting inches to feet is really all that much more difficult then metric units anyway.
I play Puzzle Pirates, and it's success is due solely to the efforts of the admins. The actual programmers all play the game, and anyone can stop and have a chat with them. They play a hands on role tweaking the economy and punishing players who cause grief. There are no levels, only your skill at the puzzles, so even first day players can be useful. Taking on new players is often rewarded because you get an excellent new crew member after a few weeks of training. Puzzle Pirates pretty much proves the atmosphere and quality of a MMORPG is depndent on the attentiveness of the developers.
I used to play Gameboy games on my visor deluxe, the lack of a color screen is probably all that kept a NES emulator from being developed. My PocketPC emulates NES, SNES, Genesis, MAME supported arcade machines, and probably a few others. I have a rom cart for my GBA that lets me play NES games on their as well. I applaud the author for writing an emulator for such an old platform, but it's nothing to get excited about.
Computer models dont mean shit if you can't test them against real viruses occasionally. If you never do real testing you will never know where your model is wrong. You can either let researchers work and learn how to make and stop GE viruses or you can hide your head in the sand until a crackpot gets ahold of it and catches the world unprepared.
While I don't doubt the US has just as large (if not larger) spam problem then the rest of the world, these statistics are useless. They dont explain anything you need to make use of the data. What counts as a spam message? All unsoliticited emails ? What about "legitimate" spam with a working opt-out link, or all that crap people willingly sign-up for. How is the country of origin determined? Most spam tries it's hardest to conceal it's origins. It can be difficult to determine the country of origin of legitimate traffic. Finally, how was the spam collected? I can't think of a way to quickly collect a lot of spam without introducing a bias. Finally, do comprimised machines count? Does the location of the person causing them to send spam count, or the comprimised machine? If they want their data to be taken seriously, they need to be open about the process they used to get it. Also it seems a little convenient a company that sells anti-spam software in the American and European market claims those countries produce the most spam.
not surprising, considering animated Dragonball Z fights totally, totally suck.
This is a troll. You can update from a fresh install of XP with 1 restart. It requires one more if you install a service pack. 99% of the updates on XP don't require a restart, they just tell you it won't take effect until the next restart. Furthermore, windows update can run entirely in the background as well, and automatically grab and install critical updates. Microsoft also supplies all the tools to run your own patch server, so in a corporate enviroment you can control when the computers on your network are patched. Windows tends to suggest restarts that aren't neccesary, just click cancel and your done. It's not a huge deal anyway, my relatively modest XP box goes from off to desktop in well under a minute, so I don't think anyone is really dieing from having to restart.
Not to pick on Finland, but you made an example out of it. Does Finland have an army capable of defending it from any country in the world? If not, then Finland is not free. Finland has to toe the line with the international community if it want's security and protection. The great thing about the U.S. is we cooperate (when we do) with the international community when we want to, and feel it's beneficial. It's a fact of life, the weak are at the mercy of the strong unless they have strong friends (who impose their own restrictions).
I'm not surprised a filter beat the human, considering the study used a sample of 5849 messages. As the sample size increases, the filter's accuray will increase, and the human's will decrease. Furthermore the higher the spam/real ration, the better the filter will do in comparison to a human trying to sort at a reasonable speed. The reason being humans tend to skim, and rairly actually read entire subjects, much less messages. Give a human 5000 messages and an hour and he will probably make some mistakes. On the other hand, in 10 messages, the human will probably be 100% correct. Most email filters rely on this already, as they tend to err on the side of caution. With the bulk of the spam taken out, it is not a burden to have the human check the iffy bits. Furthermore the type of email can mislead humans. A business-type email sent to someone's personal email is much more likely to be mistaken as spam, and vice versa. The main disadvantage of automated filtering is people generally have an idea of when a really important e-mail is going to come (the type that false positives are completely unacceptable) and who it will be from.
If you try to install some new hardware and XP doesnt have the driver, you are in the same position as you are with Linux. Except with XP you are pretty much garunteed the driver actually exists. Furthermore I reinstalled XP about a week ago, and it took a total of two reboots. Once to install the OS, once after I ran windows update. Here's a hint, just because an installer tells you to reboot doesnt generally mean you have to. I had a fully functional, secure, updated system in under 2 hours. Including DL time for updates. Most of that is in custom configuring various parts of the install. At school I've done default XP reinstalls in under 15 minutes (copying the cd to the hard drive in advance helps). Linux has a lot going for it, but modern versions of Windows has installing pretty much down.
I've heard of these studies before, and it's worth pointing out that men (generally) designed the games as well. So if men have somewhat different methods of processing navigation and spatial information, and they design a game, they would probably tend to design it in a way that best suited the man. For this reason, if nothing else, at the absolute highest level the men could have a small advantage. I doubt it would matter much at the "average" online level, because people universally suck (This is why players with the slightest ounce of ability are often accused of cheating on public servers). That said I think women and men should compete in the same tournament, as only by establishing their presence in the community can they achieve long term equality.
Damn, a guy on slashdot said it isn't gonna happen. Guess we should all go home. People are working on colonizing Mars, and once we get our thumbs out our asses and start exploring again, it might turn out to be a lot easier then you think.
If you can't rip open and reassemble the guts of a mac, you have problems. I've worked extensively with both platforms, and with the exceptions of the iMacs, the Macs tend to be much easier to take apart and work on. Pc's have made great strides with the advent of the modder community (and finally some decent PC cases) but the consumer stuff is still garbage. That said, you can't build your own mac from scratch, but that's not their objective.
-The internet is useful to the community, and with widespread broadband, could be even more useful.
-There are lots of great technical advances made by internet users. To deprive people the bands so a tiny minority can putz around on it deprives the entire scientific and technical community of these discoveries.
-We, the people, own the spectrum, and let you use it. Your rights in the matter end at your right to vote.
There are many other reasons why ham bands should be given to more useful purposes.
Exempting basic laws is probably a good idea. Consider all the crap that gets passed due ot it being attached to neccesary budget bills. In most cases failure to pass these bills could theoretically shut down the government, so both sides get in a sshoving match over how much they can get away with. Imagine if they got the chance every couple years to attach things to murder laws. At best you give the minority party a great chance to fillibuster to get their way on something else. It's best to do it right once with some iron-clad law anyone can usderstand then open it up to constant revision and loopholing.
Free speech gives you the right to say it, (if anyone is willing to listen to it is another matter, but I digress). It doesn't change the fact that you are responsible for what you say. Given that Al Queda is a terrorist organization, with the express intent of committing terrorist acts against America and it's citizens, if you claim to support them, you are claiming to support their actions. I think law enforcement is justified in investigating someone who proudly and publicly displays they support terrorist acts on Americans, even if they do not have any involvement with commiting such acts yet. They would proceed to investigate you and your background, make sure you don't have access to any sensitive potential targets (i.e. you don't also work at the nuclear plant) and whether you have engaged in suspicous behavior that would point to you being actively involved in a terrorist organization. Presumably, all these checks would come up false, and they would write you off as a loon, and make a note somewhere you shouldn't be trusted with positions that give you access to restricted information or areas. If they hunted down and locked up everyone who expressed that opinion, Guantannimo would be full of idiots with conspiracy theories and delusions of grandeur. It's pretty conceited to think the FBI or what have you has nothing better to do then look through slashdot forums for terrorist sympathizers and abduct them and lock them up in Guantanimo. That said, when your trying to anticipate the next terrorist attack, it makes sense to look at the people who stand up and say "Hey, I liked that last terrorist attack, it was a great idea". I for one say don't ever say anything or write anything you aren't willing to stand behind and accept the consequences of. I know as an American I have the right to stand up and say whatever ideals I hold. What do I need anonymity for? If I took the effort to say it, I'm willing to stand for it, not hide in the shadows. Anonymity is for when you fear swift reprisal just for trying to say something. America lets you say your peace, and hang yourself. If you want to incriminate yourself, the government won't stop you. If you want to express an unpopular opinion, the government won't stop you. We are the only nation in the world I've ever heard of that let's various militia groups, who have expressed an interest in the fall of the present government arm and train themselves as long as they obey the law.
How is this insightful? The link is to a picture with no context, and there is no information in the post at all. Is the author suggesting these autonomous vehicles will be used to lay land mines in the third world? If so, I'd like to point out the U.S. Military no longer uses anti-infantry land mines, and even if they did, they will lay them fancy unmanned truck or not. Also considering we try to recover them when they have served their purpose, an unmanned vehicle would probably be better at pinpointing the exact location it buried a mine in the first place. And finally, what third world country did we put mines in? Ussually we wind up trying to clean them up from someone else's conflict. Unless the author is suggesting the army is spending all this money to develop trucks for the express pupose of removing 3rd world children's limbs, in which case I would point out the manned version would probably cost less.
Wrong. Do you think getting rid of corporations will magically make all businessmen honest? Corruption and secret dealings have been going on in business as long business has been around. A corporation isn't inherently evil, if the law was actually applied it would be a useful construct. A corporation allows investors to invest in a company without opening themselves to liability. But shouldn't investors be liable for what their money does? Probably, but in reality noone would invest in large companies they cannot control as individuals if they were liable for all it's actions. For that reason the shareholder's nominate executives. The executives get paid handsomly for taking responsibility for the company. Instead of throwing away corporations, period, just make executives criminally liable for the actions of their company. If they are doing their job they should know everything that company does. If executives were dragged to prison when a corporation did something illegal, they would think twice about using shady business practices and would have to earn their inflated salaries.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think NeoGeo even had Street Fighter 2. All the Street Fighter 2 machines I've ever seen (or emulated) were for the Capcom CPS system. The emulator you used probably supported both systems, and you played the rom for the CPS Street Fighter. That said, if you want to experience the greatness of SNK, play Metal Slug, King of Fighters, and Samurai Showdown. The NeoGeo is the king of 2D arcade games, and SNK has made some of the best games of all time for it.
Try doing rap or being a DJ. Then you will realize they do require talent. The yfact they require talent is shown by just how many horrible rappers and DJ's are out there. Furthermore, people tend to like the music they grew up with, and chances are you don't like it just because it's not what you are used to. Just about every generation has complained about the newfangled music of the next. And finally, a synth that's "just as good" and $9,450 cheaper is "better" to a producer, and unless it causes attendance to drop at the show, which it might, it's a good business decision.
Bill O'Reily is the living personification of incendiary rhetoric. I hardly consider his opinion to be non-biased. His idea of discussion and debate is to spout random claims, with no evidence, and when someone calls him on it, call them stupid. I'm sure it makes for great ratings, and that's probably the point, but he is hardly credible. When I see him willing to debate the people he attacks in a forum he does not control, I will be willing to give his opinion merit.
Member-owned cooperative, eh? Why don't you just put up a big sign that says communist hippies. I'll take my corporate anal-raping like an patriotic American any day.
I liked the movie, but one thing bugged the crap out of me. In the book, the temptation of the ring to humans plays a major role. The ring is the ultimate test of character, and to be able to resist it shows the humans are ready to live without the elves. Aragorn, Faramir, and Boromir all face the temptation of the ring. Boromir falls for it, but redeems himself in the end.