Re:Reminds me of when Isaac Asimov...
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Free Books Online
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True. Many of my friends collect hard covers, and the key word is collect. They buy the big fancy book partly just to have it sit on the shelf and look pretty.
I on the other hand already have over a thousand books and don't need them to be bigger. I prefer small and portable over large and clunky.
I do dislike how they sell the books, with the hardcovers being the ones the author makes money off of. I'd much rather buy the paperback that I find convenient and tip the author an extra buck or two.
Many authors are offended if people wait for the paperbacks, but excuse me, it's not worth the extra $20 for a bigger, less useful book, just to make a little more money for them.
If I offer you a contract to rob a bank (or any other illegal action), you can 'agree' to that contract, but it isn't binding. Similarly, I can offer a contract to a six-year old, they can agree and not be bound.
Or, I can offer you a contract where you pay me but receive nothing (not something of little value, but nothing) and you can agree without being bound because it's not a valid contract.
Microsoft is offering you the use of software you already paid for, that's of zero value because they don't have the right to deny its use, so you can 'agree' to the contract without being bound.
Doesn't work. The server is the one that authenticates the key, if the key doesn't match, the server doesn't let you on.
Now, the server can run that hack, and they often do, because many people (myself included) don't like the idea of a product that you can't use without permission, even after you paid for it.
Besides, when is the gap the widest? When only a few people/agencies have one. If the NSA and a few top universities have computers then the gap is huge because only the richest of the rich can get time on one. But if the technology is developed into a cheap commodity it might still only be directly accesible by the rich, but it'll trickle down eventually.
In a world of ten supercomputers, there's no way a poor african tribesman would *ever* get near one, let alone get to run a job on one. But with the current computer situation he could get a c64 or such fairly easily. I myself learned most of my programming foundation on an Apple 2, the concepts still apply directly. This way the poor have-not could train himself in the new technology and eventually become a have and in the process directly help many have-nots.
The cheaper we can make technology, the more likely it is that someone poor will have access to it. If only universities (and three-letter agencies) ever develop quantum computing then it'll never reach the less fortunate.
If you don't want a faster computer, you're not an imaginative person. Either that, or you can't program.
I can use any ammount of speed I get. Easily.
Fractals are cool, but you can't zoom around any deeper than the very surface at realtime. I'd love to be able to view fractals much faster. I started on an apple 2 that took eight hours to render a shallow julia set, my current P3 800 does that in seconds, my Athlon 900 is even faster.
Then there are my experiments in modelling. I wrote a simple program for viewing the output of an equation on x and y in 3d. When I wrote it in the late 80s it took about a minute to draw a screen. Now, unaccelerated (no 3d card) it runs fast enough for a realtime display.
Give me a more powerful CPU and I'll model more complex equations, or in more detail. Or I'll view deeper fractals, or do one of a million interesting computation problems that are currently out of my reach due to CPU speed.
If the only thing you can think of that requires a fast CPU is Quake, then you'd probably be happy with a PS2 and WebTV.
All the problems I've ever had with IRC have been with operators. Every single one of them.
I've argued, even flamed (and been flamed) before, but that's the same thing that happens anywhere else. But then an operator sees this (or is told about it) and the stupid twit takes it upon themselves to save everyone from themselves, by banning them from a channel or from a server.
If someone without operator status doesn't like what you say, they either ignore you (/ignore or similar) or tell you, then the world goes on. If someone with operator status doesn't like you, you get kicked, gagged, banned, etc.
IMHO the IRC networks shouldn't have channel ops, just a/ignore that really works (blocks everything, at the server). That way nobody could own a channel, or conversely, take it away. If someone said something you didn't like, you could/ignore them. If you didn't, it'd be obvious that you cared more about taking away their ability to say something that you did about just not hearing it.
And, for the uses where a private controllable (and secret) channel is desired, unnamed (and thus undesirable to control) channels that are created when you invite someone to a private chat should let the creator add and remove people at will. So if I need to talk to someone about something I create a temporary numbered channel such as #18327349 (randomly assigned, how thrilling) where I can kick someone from and nobody can join without an invite.
This way nobody could control the obvious places of gathering, #linux, #c, #quake, etc. These would always be free and open. But if anyone really wanted to talk about something private they could go off to a special temporary channel with their friends and have all the necessary control.
But, it'll never fly. I proposed this to a few IRC addicts once and the reason they gave for not wanting this is that they couldn't give and remove power by giving certain people ops and adding them to the bot. It was all a power trip to them.
That was when I stopped using IRC except for technical matters (asking and answering questions on programming channels, etc.)
I had an idea like this, but just using timing. I figure that in most areas people get the same network feed, and thus the same commercial breaks, even if with different commercials. So just knowing that a certain time range is commercials would let the player skip them. The problem is that someone would have to enter the codes by single-framing through the show at the start and end, for every commercial break. But if that part was mostly automated it'd be a lot easier.
It could even rip out things that didn't have CC, if they were bracketted by commercials, figuring that they were either previews, commercials, or news flashes.
Record it on the computer and DiVX it, that way you can replay it to tape without any generational loss, or burn it, or send it to people. (Like me!) It sounds like a pretty cool show and it'd be a shame if it died and nobody ever saw those episodes.
If you really want it, don't make the tape your primary source.
The solution to that problem is to brand games 'X-Box Approved' (and trademark that) so that the public can tell which ones are MS certified. The rest just say something that isn't a trademarked phrase, such as 'Works with an MS(r) X-Box(tm)'. Much the same as replacement windshield wipers saying 'Works with Ford(r) F150(tm) and etc...'
The reason that MS wants to license games has sweet fuck nothing to do with quality, it's because they sell the console at a loss and want to make up for it with the game sales. And since they don't write the games, they want a piece of the games that other people make.
There's nothing (legally) that they can do to stop someone from sitting down and writing a game for the X-Box. In fact, reverse-engineering any piracy prevention measures to make your game work with them is about the only use allowed for under the DMCA (which would only hit US game companies anyways.) I'm sure MS would lie, cheat, and steal, throwing fake lawsuits at anyone who tried this, but then that's their tactic with everything.
It's not like everyone has a certain ammount of money/time that they're willing to put into any charitable cause, for which all causes compete. It's not a zero-sum equation.
If I'm willing to send $50 to the EFF, that doesn't mean that if the EFF wasn't there I'd send $50 to another charity. It means that the EFF supports a cause that interests me and that I wish to support.
That's all independent from starving children, or any other cause.
The problem with the electoral college isn't the idea of breaking the country into small ridings, many of which a party/person must win to be elected. That makes sense, that's what keeps politicians visiting small states even though they could win with only bigger states if all votes were pooled.
But, the system is broken when it comes to the application of these state votes.
The electoral college voters aren't required to vote the way the voters in their state voted. If the EC wanted, they could reverse a 99% popular vote.
That's the part that should be thrown out, an EC voter who doesn't vote the popular vote should be considered to have committed an offense on the level of vote tampering.
But then, with those votes guaranteed to go for the popular vote, we could ditch the whole EC step and just put all of the state's votes directly towards the winner of the popular election.
I know that's not what happened in Florida, but it's the biggest problem in the electoral part of USA politics.
(The other biggest problem, imho, is that campaign contributions are considered bribery, and taking them isn't considered treason.)
I think the USA (and Canada) would both benefit from a better system of actually casting votes, as have been outlined on/. recently, but that's a minor problem next to corruption and the EC not being mandated to follow the wishes of the people.
I'd guess that our rythms are longer than the day in order to help us adjust to lengthening days, otherwise we'd have a hard time from Dec 22nd on, when we started to get tired hours ahead of the sunset.
Bright lights, melatonin, and excessive alarm clocks couldn't lock me to a regular schedule, I tended to keep a 26-30 hour day. Except when I stayed up a very long time, as you say, because I had to interact with the 24h world one day.
I've got a sleep disorder, or rather, a sleep timing disorder (I sleep fine, no apnea or anything). My sleep cycle wasn't linked to the sun so I found myself following roughly a 26-30 hour day, I'd guess it's 28 +/- 2 hours based on how interested I was in whatever I was doing at the time.
Anyways, my sleep rolled around, to where I'd have visited all ends of the pattern in a week or so.
I was never overly tired (beyond normal for a geek who skips sleep every few 'nights' etc) or sick, so I'd say that my body didn't rely on the 28 hour cycle.
I've had friends who didn't work get off the 24 hour cycle and they seemed just fine. It just meant that they stayed out of bright sunlight for a while and didn't try to sleep on regular cues. They were just fine when they were on a longer cycle, and when they put effort into it (got jobs, or girlfriends) they were able to adjust fairly easily.
My sleep disorder prevented me from changing cycles as easily, but I think my experience was similar to theirs while on that schedule - I felt just fine and was able to live a regular healthy life.
(It's a good thing that I could do contracting work from home.)
Do you have U5 for the IBM by any chance? I'd be interested in getting it, or the data files for the underworld, and writing a little program to translate it into a workable map.
The best way would be simple examination of the data files. In the Ultima 3-5 days I used to sector edit (floppies) stuff onto the maps, like in 4, horses and ships. You could board them and ride/sail away, leaving another behind. It was kinda convenient.
Anyways, I played so much that I could recognize terrain features in the ascii representation as I scrolled by.
I think it's 256 units in each direction, 16x16 map units of 16x16 squares each.
If you're going to do it by playing, then use the gems, it's much easier than walking around looking at all the detail.
But, whatever you do, make sure to note how to travel from one section to another using teleportation, it's really hard to figure out when glancing into gems.
I think it's safe to assume we'd be around the middle of the pack, evolution wise, if all life started at the same time as it did on Earth. A few asteroids, slightly different conditions... We could have arrive anytime around now, plus or minus a hundred million years.
Now even 200 years is a huge difference, to our culture. We weren't using radio/etc at all back then, let alone as much as we could.
If there's a bell-curve distribution of times at which races achieve our level of sentience/society/etc, and we're at the middle of that curve, then there're races which are at either end, the ones at one end may still be protozoa now, and the ones at the other end would have had civilizations like ours before mammals existed on Earth.
So, relative to what you must assume the high-end would be, we're probably fairly low, having come only far enough to recently begin asking these sorts of questions.
Then, there's the theory (is it fact?) that stellar evolution is faster towards to galactic core, with brighter, hotter, much more shortly lived stars, which would have produced those elements that life (as we know it) requires in a small fraction of the time that it took for our small cool stars to do it out here on the rim of the galaxy.
And a quick note, I think the original poster knew the speed of light lag was for both directions, I think they refered to that when they said we've only been broadcasting for a hundred years so only systems under 50ly away COULD be responsing by now. I think you just misread it.
Trying to connect (specifically, not just in numeric order) to a subseven port is much like actually trying a master key, or trying various root passwords. It shows specific intent to go where you aren't wanted.
But webservers, ftp servers, telnet, are all ways that you can legitimately access a computer. Connecting, noting a logic message, and disconnecting is just a way of seeing what's out there. As long as no login attempt is made (aside from anonymous FTP) then no attempt is made to gain access to something that is intended to be private.
There is no good physical metaphor, except maybe knocking. Wandering around looking for doors, knocking when you find them. Jiggling the handle or trying master keys is a whole different story.
Nah, the only person who sounds unsafe (due to gun) in your house the someone who opens the door in the middle of the night.
And you said you'd give them a second (if only one) and/or look for a gun, before shooting, so you're not the type to fire through the door because the knob jiggles.
I'd imagine, from how you know the laws in the various areas (and those are mostly correct, as I remember them) that you're also practiced in shooting, and probably have ammo specifically selected to not penetrate walls and such.
On a related note, but not to just you...
Just because you're in Texas doesn't mean you can shoot someone for jiggling your doorknob at night. You don't know why they're doing it, if they're drunk and at the wrong house that's a murder charge. You might get off, if you could prove that the person was looking to break in, but there are many cases in which they aren't guilty of criminal mischief... Just banging on door (let alone jiggling) to wake people up and run away (a common teenager prank) may violate some noise bylaws, and maybe curfews, and perhaps trespassing in some cases, but there's nothing there that legally justifies a citizens arrest, let alone shooting the person.
(If someone walks up your front walk, and doesn't open a gate (marked as to discourage them) or other barrier, it's not trespassing. It's the same way that while a parking lot is owned by a company, it's treated as a public area for the application of most laws, if it's accessible to the public more than a certain ammount of the year (and not marked as private, with no public parking...)
This is so that your neighbor can come over and knock on your door without being guilty of trespassing.
So, this all boils down to, if you shoot someone for jiggling your doorknob you will be tried for murder and likely convicted, regardless of which state you live in.
But, this isn't relevant to portscans. Portscans do the minimum they can and still detect a waiting connection. It's more analogous to shining a flashlight on a doorknob, which is just enough to let you know if it exists.
This *may* be illegal if the police link you to break and enters and can prove that this is how you look for targets, but then this is true of anything. If you open/close your venetian blinds to signal a hitman, you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, even though opening the blinds isn't a crime.
It could be noise on one of the input lines. Do you have 'cable' plugged in? If so, unplug it. Watch the movie now, see if the brightness changes.
In my old apartment the cable wasn't properly grounded and I got fairly subtle rolling light/dark bars. Subtle during TV that is, when I watched a DVD movie they stood out like an emboss filter.
Unplug the cable TV and it went back to normal...
So I bought a push-connect for my coax (it's only cable TV, the quality is a moot issue) and wrapped that around under the TV so I could unplug it when I watched something on the other inputs. It was a cheap hack, but handy.
If Iraq is doing this, they'll be massively disapointed when the find out that they can't get anywhere near the stated performance out of the PS2 without very skilled programmers, all of whom are making six figures writing game engines. They'll have a hard time recruiting anyone "For the glory of Iraq."
If they were doing this, they'd be setting up a cluster of durons, the general purpose CPU and the huge selection of optimizing compilers make the x86 the ideal choice to simulate nuclear explosions on.
A PS2 might be a bit cheaper, with the company footing some of the hardware cost, but I could build a cluster-ready duron for $500 that would massively outperform it in all but the most biased of benchmarks.
But, it's a funny joke, reminiscent of the Macintosh ads.
(We should hope the Iraqis *are* doing this, it'd mean they're no threat at all. It's be like buying C64s to use as targetting computers in SCUDs.)
As it is the job of a construction company to build the buildings their clients pay for. But if they don't agree with the politics of their client or the proposed use of the building, they're free to skip the job.
For instance, a company whose owner doesn't believe in the death penalty would probably not take a contract to build an execution chamber at a prison.
Similarly, a lawyer can decide who they want to represent (in most not criminal cases). If they represent some reprehensible slime, they lower themselves to their client's level.
I feel perfectly justified in tarring the client AND the lawyer with the same brush, if the lawyer knows full well what their client is trying to do.
In many cases, if you completely disclaim responsibility in a warranty, that warranty becomes void, and/or it is a criminal act to do so.
For instance, I can sell you a computer *as-is* with *no warranty what-so-ever* and if you get it home and find out it's made of cardboard, or that I tested it found out that it didn't work, then sold it merely *as-is* instead of *broken*, you can return it.
If I sell you something, like a lamp, and the warranty says that the lamp contains no user-servicable parts including the bulb, and that if you mess with it the warranty is void, it's fraud. The light-bulb *is* user-servicable and to say otherwise is a lie for monetary gain, which contains all the needed elements for fraud.
So if Adobe said that their software is not reverse-engineerable in any way, knowing full well that even the oppressive DMCA says otherwise, they run the risk of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of their customers, or having the whole EULA rendered completely null and void, including any restrictions they might be legally entitled to make.
So they did the smart thing and claimed only the rights they might expect they have under current law.
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True. Many of my friends collect hard covers, and the key word is collect. They buy the big fancy book partly just to have it sit on the shelf and look pretty.
I on the other hand already have over a thousand books and don't need them to be bigger. I prefer small and portable over large and clunky.
I do dislike how they sell the books, with the hardcovers being the ones the author makes money off of. I'd much rather buy the paperback that I find convenient and tip the author an extra buck or two.
Many authors are offended if people wait for the paperbacks, but excuse me, it's not worth the extra $20 for a bigger, less useful book, just to make a little more money for them.
If I offer you a contract to rob a bank (or any other illegal action), you can 'agree' to that contract, but it isn't binding. Similarly, I can offer a contract to a six-year old, they can agree and not be bound.
Or, I can offer you a contract where you pay me but receive nothing (not something of little value, but nothing) and you can agree without being bound because it's not a valid contract.
Microsoft is offering you the use of software you already paid for, that's of zero value because they don't have the right to deny its use, so you can 'agree' to the contract without being bound.
Doesn't work. The server is the one that authenticates the key, if the key doesn't match, the server doesn't let you on.
Now, the server can run that hack, and they often do, because many people (myself included) don't like the idea of a product that you can't use without permission, even after you paid for it.
Besides, when is the gap the widest? When only a few people/agencies have one. If the NSA and a few top universities have computers then the gap is huge because only the richest of the rich can get time on one. But if the technology is developed into a cheap commodity it might still only be directly accesible by the rich, but it'll trickle down eventually.
In a world of ten supercomputers, there's no way a poor african tribesman would *ever* get near one, let alone get to run a job on one. But with the current computer situation he could get a c64 or such fairly easily. I myself learned most of my programming foundation on an Apple 2, the concepts still apply directly. This way the poor have-not could train himself in the new technology and eventually become a have and in the process directly help many have-nots.
The cheaper we can make technology, the more likely it is that someone poor will have access to it. If only universities (and three-letter agencies) ever develop quantum computing then it'll never reach the less fortunate.
If you don't want a faster computer, you're not an imaginative person. Either that, or you can't program.
I can use any ammount of speed I get. Easily.
Fractals are cool, but you can't zoom around any deeper than the very surface at realtime. I'd love to be able to view fractals much faster. I started on an apple 2 that took eight hours to render a shallow julia set, my current P3 800 does that in seconds, my Athlon 900 is even faster.
Then there are my experiments in modelling. I wrote a simple program for viewing the output of an equation on x and y in 3d. When I wrote it in the late 80s it took about a minute to draw a screen. Now, unaccelerated (no 3d card) it runs fast enough for a realtime display.
Give me a more powerful CPU and I'll model more complex equations, or in more detail. Or I'll view deeper fractals, or do one of a million interesting computation problems that are currently out of my reach due to CPU speed.
If the only thing you can think of that requires a fast CPU is Quake, then you'd probably be happy with a PS2 and WebTV.
All the problems I've ever had with IRC have been with operators. Every single one of them.
/ignore that really works (blocks everything, at the server). That way nobody could own a channel, or conversely, take it away. If someone said something you didn't like, you could /ignore them. If you didn't, it'd be obvious that you cared more about taking away their ability to say something that you did about just not hearing it.
I've argued, even flamed (and been flamed) before, but that's the same thing that happens anywhere else. But then an operator sees this (or is told about it) and the stupid twit takes it upon themselves to save everyone from themselves, by banning them from a channel or from a server.
If someone without operator status doesn't like what you say, they either ignore you (/ignore or similar) or tell you, then the world goes on. If someone with operator status doesn't like you, you get kicked, gagged, banned, etc.
IMHO the IRC networks shouldn't have channel ops, just a
And, for the uses where a private controllable (and secret) channel is desired, unnamed (and thus undesirable to control) channels that are created when you invite someone to a private chat should let the creator add and remove people at will. So if I need to talk to someone about something I create a temporary numbered channel such as #18327349 (randomly assigned, how thrilling) where I can kick someone from and nobody can join without an invite.
This way nobody could control the obvious places of gathering, #linux, #c, #quake, etc. These would always be free and open. But if anyone really wanted to talk about something private they could go off to a special temporary channel with their friends and have all the necessary control.
But, it'll never fly. I proposed this to a few IRC addicts once and the reason they gave for not wanting this is that they couldn't give and remove power by giving certain people ops and adding them to the bot. It was all a power trip to them.
That was when I stopped using IRC except for technical matters (asking and answering questions on programming channels, etc.)
I had an idea like this, but just using timing. I figure that in most areas people get the same network feed, and thus the same commercial breaks, even if with different commercials. So just knowing that a certain time range is commercials would let the player skip them. The problem is that someone would have to enter the codes by single-framing through the show at the start and end, for every commercial break. But if that part was mostly automated it'd be a lot easier.
It could even rip out things that didn't have CC, if they were bracketted by commercials, figuring that they were either previews, commercials, or news flashes.
Record it on the computer and DiVX it, that way you can replay it to tape without any generational loss, or burn it, or send it to people. (Like me!) It sounds like a pretty cool show and it'd be a shame if it died and nobody ever saw those episodes.
If you really want it, don't make the tape your primary source.
The solution to that problem is to brand games 'X-Box Approved' (and trademark that) so that the public can tell which ones are MS certified. The rest just say something that isn't a trademarked phrase, such as 'Works with an MS(r) X-Box(tm)'. Much the same as replacement windshield wipers saying 'Works with Ford(r) F150(tm) and etc...'
The reason that MS wants to license games has sweet fuck nothing to do with quality, it's because they sell the console at a loss and want to make up for it with the game sales. And since they don't write the games, they want a piece of the games that other people make.
There's nothing (legally) that they can do to stop someone from sitting down and writing a game for the X-Box. In fact, reverse-engineering any piracy prevention measures to make your game work with them is about the only use allowed for under the DMCA (which would only hit US game companies anyways.) I'm sure MS would lie, cheat, and steal, throwing fake lawsuits at anyone who tried this, but then that's their tactic with everything.
It's not like everyone has a certain ammount of money/time that they're willing to put into any charitable cause, for which all causes compete. It's not a zero-sum equation.
If I'm willing to send $50 to the EFF, that doesn't mean that if the EFF wasn't there I'd send $50 to another charity. It means that the EFF supports a cause that interests me and that I wish to support.
That's all independent from starving children, or any other cause.
The problem with the electoral college isn't the idea of breaking the country into small ridings, many of which a party/person must win to be elected. That makes sense, that's what keeps politicians visiting small states even though they could win with only bigger states if all votes were pooled.
/. recently, but that's a minor problem next to corruption and the EC not being mandated to follow the wishes of the people.
But, the system is broken when it comes to the application of these state votes.
The electoral college voters aren't required to vote the way the voters in their state voted. If the EC wanted, they could reverse a 99% popular vote.
That's the part that should be thrown out, an EC voter who doesn't vote the popular vote should be considered to have committed an offense on the level of vote tampering.
But then, with those votes guaranteed to go for the popular vote, we could ditch the whole EC step and just put all of the state's votes directly towards the winner of the popular election.
I know that's not what happened in Florida, but it's the biggest problem in the electoral part of USA politics.
(The other biggest problem, imho, is that campaign contributions are considered bribery, and taking them isn't considered treason.)
I think the USA (and Canada) would both benefit from a better system of actually casting votes, as have been outlined on
I'd guess that our rythms are longer than the day in order to help us adjust to lengthening days, otherwise we'd have a hard time from Dec 22nd on, when we started to get tired hours ahead of the sunset.
I've got a very similar sleep disorder.
Bright lights, melatonin, and excessive alarm clocks couldn't lock me to a regular schedule, I tended to keep a 26-30 hour day. Except when I stayed up a very long time, as you say, because I had to interact with the 24h world one day.
It did, I lived it for a while.
I've got a sleep disorder, or rather, a sleep timing disorder (I sleep fine, no apnea or anything). My sleep cycle wasn't linked to the sun so I found myself following roughly a 26-30 hour day, I'd guess it's 28 +/- 2 hours based on how interested I was in whatever I was doing at the time.
Anyways, my sleep rolled around, to where I'd have visited all ends of the pattern in a week or so.
I was never overly tired (beyond normal for a geek who skips sleep every few 'nights' etc) or sick, so I'd say that my body didn't rely on the 28 hour cycle.
I've had friends who didn't work get off the 24 hour cycle and they seemed just fine. It just meant that they stayed out of bright sunlight for a while and didn't try to sleep on regular cues. They were just fine when they were on a longer cycle, and when they put effort into it (got jobs, or girlfriends) they were able to adjust fairly easily.
My sleep disorder prevented me from changing cycles as easily, but I think my experience was similar to theirs while on that schedule - I felt just fine and was able to live a regular healthy life.
(It's a good thing that I could do contracting work from home.)
Do you have U5 for the IBM by any chance? I'd be interested in getting it, or the data files for the underworld, and writing a little program to translate it into a workable map.
EMail me.
16 minutes, 35 seconds. On nightmare difficulty.
:)
12 minutes, 54 seconds on the easiest.
And 59 minutes, 31 seconds with 100% kills and secrets discovered.
Shorter, in fact, than Pitfall.
Not that I could do that, but that's the time the speedrunners at Quake Done Quick achieved...
http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/
The best way would be simple examination of the data files. In the Ultima 3-5 days I used to sector edit (floppies) stuff onto the maps, like in 4, horses and ships. You could board them and ride/sail away, leaving another behind. It was kinda convenient.
Anyways, I played so much that I could recognize terrain features in the ascii representation as I scrolled by.
I think it's 256 units in each direction, 16x16 map units of 16x16 squares each.
If you're going to do it by playing, then use the gems, it's much easier than walking around looking at all the detail.
But, whatever you do, make sure to note how to travel from one section to another using teleportation, it's really hard to figure out when glancing into gems.
I think it's safe to assume we'd be around the middle of the pack, evolution wise, if all life started at the same time as it did on Earth. A few asteroids, slightly different conditions... We could have arrive anytime around now, plus or minus a hundred million years.
Now even 200 years is a huge difference, to our culture. We weren't using radio/etc at all back then, let alone as much as we could.
If there's a bell-curve distribution of times at which races achieve our level of sentience/society/etc, and we're at the middle of that curve, then there're races which are at either end, the ones at one end may still be protozoa now, and the ones at the other end would have had civilizations like ours before mammals existed on Earth.
So, relative to what you must assume the high-end would be, we're probably fairly low, having come only far enough to recently begin asking these sorts of questions.
Then, there's the theory (is it fact?) that stellar evolution is faster towards to galactic core, with brighter, hotter, much more shortly lived stars, which would have produced those elements that life (as we know it) requires in a small fraction of the time that it took for our small cool stars to do it out here on the rim of the galaxy.
And a quick note, I think the original poster knew the speed of light lag was for both directions, I think they refered to that when they said we've only been broadcasting for a hundred years so only systems under 50ly away COULD be responsing by now. I think you just misread it.
Trying to connect (specifically, not just in numeric order) to a subseven port is much like actually trying a master key, or trying various root passwords. It shows specific intent to go where you aren't wanted.
But webservers, ftp servers, telnet, are all ways that you can legitimately access a computer. Connecting, noting a logic message, and disconnecting is just a way of seeing what's out there. As long as no login attempt is made (aside from anonymous FTP) then no attempt is made to gain access to something that is intended to be private.
There is no good physical metaphor, except maybe knocking. Wandering around looking for doors, knocking when you find them. Jiggling the handle or trying master keys is a whole different story.
Nah, the only person who sounds unsafe (due to gun) in your house the someone who opens the door in the middle of the night.
And you said you'd give them a second (if only one) and/or look for a gun, before shooting, so you're not the type to fire through the door because the knob jiggles.
I'd imagine, from how you know the laws in the various areas (and those are mostly correct, as I remember them) that you're also practiced in shooting, and probably have ammo specifically selected to not penetrate walls and such.
On a related note, but not to just you...
Just because you're in Texas doesn't mean you can shoot someone for jiggling your doorknob at night. You don't know why they're doing it, if they're drunk and at the wrong house that's a murder charge. You might get off, if you could prove that the person was looking to break in, but there are many cases in which they aren't guilty of criminal mischief... Just banging on door (let alone jiggling) to wake people up and run away (a common teenager prank) may violate some noise bylaws, and maybe curfews, and perhaps trespassing in some cases, but there's nothing there that legally justifies a citizens arrest, let alone shooting the person.
(If someone walks up your front walk, and doesn't open a gate (marked as to discourage them) or other barrier, it's not trespassing. It's the same way that while a parking lot is owned by a company, it's treated as a public area for the application of most laws, if it's accessible to the public more than a certain ammount of the year (and not marked as private, with no public parking...)
This is so that your neighbor can come over and knock on your door without being guilty of trespassing.
So, this all boils down to, if you shoot someone for jiggling your doorknob you will be tried for murder and likely convicted, regardless of which state you live in.
But, this isn't relevant to portscans. Portscans do the minimum they can and still detect a waiting connection. It's more analogous to shining a flashlight on a doorknob, which is just enough to let you know if it exists.
This *may* be illegal if the police link you to break and enters and can prove that this is how you look for targets, but then this is true of anything. If you open/close your venetian blinds to signal a hitman, you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, even though opening the blinds isn't a crime.
It could be noise on one of the input lines. Do you have 'cable' plugged in? If so, unplug it. Watch the movie now, see if the brightness changes.
In my old apartment the cable wasn't properly grounded and I got fairly subtle rolling light/dark bars. Subtle during TV that is, when I watched a DVD movie they stood out like an emboss filter.
Unplug the cable TV and it went back to normal...
So I bought a push-connect for my coax (it's only cable TV, the quality is a moot issue) and wrapped that around under the TV so I could unplug it when I watched something on the other inputs. It was a cheap hack, but handy.
If Iraq is doing this, they'll be massively disapointed when the find out that they can't get anywhere near the stated performance out of the PS2 without very skilled programmers, all of whom are making six figures writing game engines. They'll have a hard time recruiting anyone "For the glory of Iraq."
If they were doing this, they'd be setting up a cluster of durons, the general purpose CPU and the huge selection of optimizing compilers make the x86 the ideal choice to simulate nuclear explosions on.
A PS2 might be a bit cheaper, with the company footing some of the hardware cost, but I could build a cluster-ready duron for $500 that would massively outperform it in all but the most biased of benchmarks.
But, it's a funny joke, reminiscent of the Macintosh ads.
(We should hope the Iraqis *are* doing this, it'd mean they're no threat at all. It's be like buying C64s to use as targetting computers in SCUDs.)
As it is the job of a construction company to build the buildings their clients pay for. But if they don't agree with the politics of their client or the proposed use of the building, they're free to skip the job.
For instance, a company whose owner doesn't believe in the death penalty would probably not take a contract to build an execution chamber at a prison.
Similarly, a lawyer can decide who they want to represent (in most not criminal cases). If they represent some reprehensible slime, they lower themselves to their client's level.
I feel perfectly justified in tarring the client AND the lawyer with the same brush, if the lawyer knows full well what their client is trying to do.
In many cases, if you completely disclaim responsibility in a warranty, that warranty becomes void, and/or it is a criminal act to do so.
For instance, I can sell you a computer *as-is* with *no warranty what-so-ever* and if you get it home and find out it's made of cardboard, or that I tested it found out that it didn't work, then sold it merely *as-is* instead of *broken*, you can return it.
If I sell you something, like a lamp, and the warranty says that the lamp contains no user-servicable parts including the bulb, and that if you mess with it the warranty is void, it's fraud. The light-bulb *is* user-servicable and to say otherwise is a lie for monetary gain, which contains all the needed elements for fraud.
So if Adobe said that their software is not reverse-engineerable in any way, knowing full well that even the oppressive DMCA says otherwise, they run the risk of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of their customers, or having the whole EULA rendered completely null and void, including any restrictions they might be legally entitled to make.
So they did the smart thing and claimed only the rights they might expect they have under current law.
This is probably a joke, but just so that people know ... 1984 is available in e-text form.
1 98 4ch1.txt
http://kulichki-lat.rambler.ru/moshkow/ORWELL/r
That's where I got it, but I assume it's in other places as well.