I got trapped into clicking the link to the article, thinking it could be something useful about jpeg compression and how it works. The story certainly implied that. How disappointed I was, and I agree with most people that this is one of the dumbest stories ever. This kind of story belongs in a site for amateur wanna-be web designers, not geeks. Anyway, since I've gotten all caught up in this, and you're here too, maybe we can have a useful discussion on How JPEG Compression Works.
I am by no means an expert, and I believe this is a gross simplification of the process, but here is what I think happens. The jpg alg breaks the image apart into 8 pixel by 8 pixel subimages. (Don't ask how it handles pictures that are not n*8 x m*8 in size). Then it treats each of those images with a process very similar to principal component analysis, where a set of representative images are given associated multipliers of how much of that image to add into the reconstructed original image the user is trying to get. These representative images are ordered from least to most detailed, and since they are known to both the compressor and the uncompressor (depressor?:), only the associated values need to be stored. I believe the first image deals with how much darker the left half is than the right half of the image, the second does the same thing horizontally, the third deals with how much darker the leftmost quarter of the image and the third quarter of the image are darker than the other two, and so on...
So how does one adjust image quality / compression? Well every possible 8 x 8 picture can be represented with 64 of these representative images. However, since the 64th deals with *really* minute details, then you can get a decent reconstruction using just 63. It all depends on the image you are trying to compress, but can probably get away with even just the first 20 of the basis images. Oh, for the record, I'm talking about grayscale here. I think you'd need to ramp things up by a factor of 3 to do rbg.
If someone wants to fill in any gaps or factual inaccuracies, certainly do so.
There are techniques for improving the running time of polynomial algorithms.... thus if an O(n^12345) algorithm were found for an NP-Complete problem, chances are it would be turned into something fairly reasonable very soon. To make my point, how many algorithms do you know of that run in O(n^2391074)? Sure, that's slow, but so is O(2^n) and yet you can probably think of an algorithm that does have a complexity of O(2^n)...
The only thing that would suffer would be algorithms based on that class of problems.
That is completely untrue. By definition, a problem is NP-Complete if ANY other NP-Complete problem can reduce to it, and thus it can be reduced to any other NP-Complete problem. So if you can solve just one NP Complete problem in polynomial time, you've solved them all in polynomial time.
As you say, he's the contact point for anybody and pretty much everybody with patches. Perhaps, as the maintainer, he's devoting more time to dealing with maintenance than answering questions from slashdot?
Sounds like comdex is doing the same thing that MS' DevDays conferences are doing with security. From an email I got:
Dear DevDays 2001 Registrant,
Microsoft DevDays 2001 is coming up and we're excited you'll be joining us!
In these unique new times, we are asking a few things of you to help ensure everyone's safety at DevDays:
- Bring at least one form of picture identification. Please be advised that you will need valid picture identification to be admitted to DevDays this year.
- Wristbands will be placed for you. Wristbands for admitted attendance will be placed on your wrists for you, instead of being provided to you to place yourself.
- Do not bring bags, backpacks, cameras or bottles to the event. Any items brought onsite will be subject to search.
-Come EARLY to register. Although we will make every effort to check attendees in as quickly as possible, because we will be checking IDs and placing wristbands, registration check-in may take quite a bit longer than usual. Registration opens at all cities promptly at 7 AM. We recommend coming early to avoid a long registration line.
We thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding in this matter. In addition to your enjoyment of the DevDays 2001 content, we want you to be aware the safety of our attendees is also top of mind.
Thank you and enjoy the event!
Sincerely,
The DevDays 2001 Event Team
I think that DevDays, as well as comdex, are showing off their egos thinking that they're a terrorist target. Comdex, okay, maybe. Devdays? I fail to see how someone putting on a wristband me rather than allowing me to do it myself will stop anyone.
Is it really the company's fault that Q3 is used as a benchmark? What if a company made a driver that accidently made Q3 work better than other games? Then it's not the company's fault for "cheating" but rather our fault, as consumers, for believing the benchmark. So when a company optimizes drivers for Q3 knowing it will be used to make a benchmark, we're the ones at fault for trusting the benchmark to be fully accurate. Besides, I'm not sure I believe that the same code with "Quake" changed to "quack" would cause the driver to slow down -- obviously they could make Quake run fast, so why would they purposefully slow down (or not speed up) the same code that's not recognized by the driver as being Q3?
I'm a lazy bastard so I don't write congressfolk too much, but when I was in DC a while back I decided to swing by my rep's office. He wasn't in so his aides hooked me up with free gifts, like a DC calendar. Then as I'm leaving he comes back, and although he has to run off to some meeting, he lets me walk him to his meeting and talk on the way. Seeing a congressfolk in person beats every other method since they actually know who you are and can (presumably) see you're not a lunatic, and you can get their feedback on issues immediately. Most importantly, when they're trying to decide how to vote on a certain issue, they'll remember your face and what you talked about. The chances of them remembering a letter are about zero -- no matter how well worded it is, don't forget your letter is competing against thousands of other letters, including some written by professional lobbyists.
Having read most of the higher-rated comments on here, it seems to be as though most folks seem to frown on your desire for a nerf gun at work. I think the people who are saying that you need to find a job you like based on discipline (ie, you like programming, so a programming job is fun) are wrong. Let's pretend that there are two jobs, A and B, that are identical except that job B allows you nerf guns (and any other toys you like), you can wear anything you like, and work the hours you want. Which job do you think is better? Of course you'll go with B. Yet a lot of folks here want to argue that even with all those toys, you won't be happy if you don't like the job itself since the toys cannot distract you. That's true, but you're reading slashdot (read: you like computers) and I'd wager that you like programming too. Toys simply allow you to take a break from whatever you're doing, which is especially useful for morale and for when you're stuck on something and need to take your mind off it for a few. I'm a college student, but I've had two summer internships that involved programming (both were salaried, not hourly). One was for a large food company where the environment was just slightly less formal than the standard corporate attire, but toys would have probably been unacceptable. You had to work from 8am to 4:45pm. Then my next internship was for a large software company where toys were accepted. You could work whatever hours you wanted. You had the freedom to come and go as you wanted. I chose to come in much later in the morning than 8am. The company had arcade games, ping pong, foosball, not to mention the toys you brought in yourself (like razor scooters for commuting down the hallway). The job with toys was much more fun, and I got about the same amount of work done at each job. The toys simply meant I spent more time at work.
Not to nitpick here, but Microsoft and the Gates Foundation aren't related other than Bill Gates founded the foundation, and that Bill Gates happened to get his money from Microsoft stock:)
How do you know bill hasn't? Just because Microsoft gave a press conference on their donations doesn't mean Bill hasn't given anything. And moreover, people complain that Microsoft gave a press conference to generate publicity out of their cash. Would you be complaining if they hadn't given a press conference? You probably wouldn't know they gave money, and so you'd probably be complaining how this rich corporation doesn't donate money, out of your own ignorance of their actions. It is this same ignorance that allows you to claim that bill gates has not donated any money, and results in your suggestion that he gives money anonymously through amazon.
I think that Lego's biggest problem is that by having so many themed sets, they have introduced many very specialized pieces that cannot be used except to build that set. Mind you I have no problem with certain specialized sets, but the pirate themes really stand out as having too many specialized pieces. I think that after the Lego Town sets, they went downhill. Town was good because it made use of normal pieces (albeit sometimes off from the regular colors) and the town blocks could be used to build other things. I guess it helps that lego blocks are rectangular, and go really well with making buildings:)
So basically what Lego needs to do is to get away from all the custom pieces like boat hulls, and make sets from pieces that can be used for other projects as well. I always liked the sets myself, often building what was on the box, and using my general bucket of pieces to make enhancements on the set, or else another town building or something of that nature.
First, I'd like to point out the most people here seem to be arguing FOR an AOL icon on desktops (or at least allowing them to do so). Even through the general hatred of MS here, you should realize that AOL isn't exactly a great ISP.
Anyways, to the point of reselling and changing McDonald's burgers -- McD's will NOT let you change a burger and sell it again under their name because if you reduce the quality of their burger, their name is tarnished. Don't make the argument that you should be able to change windows all you want and resell it. You can't and shouldn't be able to change it. It is an MS product, and if some computer manufacturer deletes random DLLs and sells consumers that version, MS will take the blame for having a crappy OS. Granted, desktop icons won't mess up the computer, but it is the same general idea.
Finally, to the point that MSN needs to be plugged as much as any other ISP on the desktop, this is not true. MSN needs one icon -- you could fill the rest of the desktop space with AOL icons.
Incidentally, I'm kinda surprised that AOL decided to go with a neural net. Generally, Bayesian-based algorithms such as the naive bayes text classifier are accepted as the best text classification algorithms. That is, they can scan a document and decide in which of X number of categories it belongs to. In this case, that would be TO-FILTER and NOT-FILTERED I guess. Sure, you need to train it first, but you need to train a neural net as well.
Re:That's not what they mean by "unique."
on
Who Owns Your Body?
·
· Score: 2
It's not as if they're patenting chemicals/cells that can only be found in *you*. Things like that would be next to useless, since the only person that could possibly use discoveries related to the "unique" thing would be yourself.
Incidentally, uniqueness is how evolution works. Every trait that any of us possess started out as a unique mutation in one individual. As we continue to evolve, nothing is preventing one of us from developing a new mutation of one of our current genes. If this is a beneficial mutation to the one person, chances are it will be beneficial to most people.
Granted, the beneficial mutation I speak of is most likely to be a point mutation (a single DNA letter switched to some other letter) leaving the mutated gene similar in sequence to what the rest of humanity has. It is unlikely that scientists would be able to take the original gene and figure out what to change to make a beneficial mutation. Therefore, the mutation does belong to the person, and the person should receive money if it is used by some biomed company. I think the day will come when scientists will just figure out beneficial mutations on their own.
Prologue: Most of the questions posted here seem to have ignored your involvement with the MentalLinux project. True, your age offers a different perspective than many readers of/., but we're a wide-ranging bunch. I'm 20 myself, so I went through high school not that long ago. I am indeed in college, and against the statements implied in a couple of the different questions here, I highly recommend you go to college. Just make sure to go to a good one. (ie, top 25 overall or something nice like that. US News has a good ranking).
The Question: How does it feel to start a linux distribution? What motivated you to take on such a project? If it was the steep learning curve of linux, then why not simply write a Linux User's Guide? Additionally, what aspects of your distribution make it easier for begining Linux folks to use? To me, grep is grep. I don't see how you could make grep easier to use.
I think the movie was marginally okay. The computer graphics were pretty cool, though all the night shops zooming up the side of the tower reminded me of the intro sequence to Unreal. I think that the most significant room for improvement of the movie lies with the following:
Thora Birch's acting sucked. The soft-spoken freedom-for-all I-will-not-let-my-people-die princess/empress echoed Queen Amidala from Star Wars I.
The black thief used an awful lot of modern day slang. He even flashed the peace sign once. I could see this happening if the movie were about a D&D game from the inside. Unfortunately, the movie should impress the general audience too. I've had better roleplayers in my own D&D games than whatever guy was roleplaying the black thief.
Character development was umm.... lacking. Non existent perhaps? The first minute of the movie was spent by the narrator giving the audience background on the setting. The first half hour of the movie was spent introducing basic D&D concepts to the audience. That left approximately one hour for the adventure with no time for character development. The two thieves were picked right off the street and immediatly get into their first adventure. When one of the thieves died, I felt no sympathy simply because I did not feel attached the the characters.
A minor point, but when going through the maze, I always thought thieves were more careful than that. Due to his carelessness, I think he should have gotten hurt.
Solutions:
A movie trilogy would be much better. The first movie could be used for background and character development. The next two movies would be an adventure. Or two.
Base the movie on one or more books. Any TSR book trilogy would do. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series would rock as a movie, though I don't know that you could make just a trilogy of the books. Maybe a 9-movie series like star wars.
Better acting.
Clothing that fits the character. The two thieves look too modern day for my tastes, and that goes a long way to making the movie worse.
The florida results are available here for anyone who wants the best up to the minute numbers since Florida is the only thing that matters now. Good luck getting through though:)
I'm not sure I am very fond of the idea of having my IP address targeted by advertisers based on my physical location, it would be interesting to see how many times the company pinged people's boxes. One ping from an IP address should be one of the least worriesome things a system administrator will encounter. If they used a hundred pings, then I can see people be suspicious and alarms going off -- this is not to mention what the heck do they need 100 pings for to build a map anyway.
If you have a box connected to the Internet, you should expect to get pinged. Heck, way back when I first discovered pings, I pinged random IP addys for kicks (Yeah, yeah, easily amused:)
How cool! Now manufacturers will be able to advertise "super-strong titanium computers! Able to withstand everything!" Except the butchering that the wrong OS will do to the hardware:)
Slashdot Mirror
I got trapped into clicking the link to the article, thinking it could be something useful about jpeg compression and how it works. The story certainly implied that. How disappointed I was, and I agree with most people that this is one of the dumbest stories ever. This kind of story belongs in a site for amateur wanna-be web designers, not geeks. Anyway, since I've gotten all caught up in this, and you're here too, maybe we can have a useful discussion on How JPEG Compression Works.
:), only the associated values need to be stored. I believe the first image deals with how much darker the left half is than the right half of the image, the second does the same thing horizontally, the third deals with how much darker the leftmost quarter of the image and the third quarter of the image are darker than the other two, and so on...
I am by no means an expert, and I believe this is a gross simplification of the process, but here is what I think happens. The jpg alg breaks the image apart into 8 pixel by 8 pixel subimages. (Don't ask how it handles pictures that are not n*8 x m*8 in size). Then it treats each of those images with a process very similar to principal component analysis, where a set of representative images are given associated multipliers of how much of that image to add into the reconstructed original image the user is trying to get. These representative images are ordered from least to most detailed, and since they are known to both the compressor and the uncompressor (depressor?
So how does one adjust image quality / compression? Well every possible 8 x 8 picture can be represented with 64 of these representative images. However, since the 64th deals with *really* minute details, then you can get a decent reconstruction using just 63. It all depends on the image you are trying to compress, but can probably get away with even just the first 20 of the basis images. Oh, for the record, I'm talking about grayscale here. I think you'd need to ramp things up by a factor of 3 to do rbg.
If someone wants to fill in any gaps or factual inaccuracies, certainly do so.
*drool*
Wired has actual articles?
That means you've already had your share of the fun. The original poster was obviously giving advice to the rest of us :)
There are techniques for improving the running time of polynomial algorithms.... thus if an O(n^12345) algorithm were found for an NP-Complete problem, chances are it would be turned into something fairly reasonable very soon. To make my point, how many algorithms do you know of that run in O(n^2391074)? Sure, that's slow, but so is O(2^n) and yet you can probably think of an algorithm that does have a complexity of O(2^n)...
The only thing that would suffer would be algorithms based on that class of problems.
That is completely untrue. By definition, a problem is NP-Complete if ANY other NP-Complete problem can reduce to it, and thus it can be reduced to any other NP-Complete problem. So if you can solve just one NP Complete problem in polynomial time, you've solved them all in polynomial time.
As you say, he's the contact point for anybody and pretty much everybody with patches. Perhaps, as the maintainer, he's devoting more time to dealing with maintenance than answering questions from slashdot?
Last time I saw Hugh Heffner was on that Comedy Central roast of his...
Sounds like comdex is doing the same thing that MS' DevDays conferences are doing with security. From an email I got:
Dear DevDays 2001 Registrant,
Microsoft DevDays 2001 is coming up and we're excited you'll be joining us!
In these unique new times, we are asking a few things of you to help ensure everyone's safety at DevDays:
- Bring at least one form of picture identification. Please be advised that you will need valid picture identification to be admitted to DevDays this year.
- Wristbands will be placed for you. Wristbands for admitted attendance will be placed on your wrists for you, instead of being provided to you to place yourself.
- Do not bring bags, backpacks, cameras or bottles to the event. Any items brought onsite will be subject to search.
-Come EARLY to register. Although we will make every effort to check attendees in as quickly as possible, because we will be checking IDs and placing wristbands, registration check-in may take quite a bit longer than usual. Registration opens at all cities promptly at 7 AM. We recommend coming early to avoid a long registration line.
We thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding in this matter. In addition to your enjoyment of the DevDays 2001 content, we want you to be aware the safety of our attendees is also top of mind.
Thank you and enjoy the event!
Sincerely,
The DevDays 2001 Event Team
I think that DevDays, as well as comdex, are showing off their egos thinking that they're a terrorist target. Comdex, okay, maybe. Devdays? I fail to see how someone putting on a wristband me rather than allowing me to do it myself will stop anyone.
Is it really the company's fault that Q3 is used as a benchmark? What if a company made a driver that accidently made Q3 work better than other games? Then it's not the company's fault for "cheating" but rather our fault, as consumers, for believing the benchmark. So when a company optimizes drivers for Q3 knowing it will be used to make a benchmark, we're the ones at fault for trusting the benchmark to be fully accurate. Besides, I'm not sure I believe that the same code with "Quake" changed to "quack" would cause the driver to slow down -- obviously they could make Quake run fast, so why would they purposefully slow down (or not speed up) the same code that's not recognized by the driver as being Q3?
I bought a plane ticket without using my social security number...
I'm a lazy bastard so I don't write congressfolk too much, but when I was in DC a while back I decided to swing by my rep's office. He wasn't in so his aides hooked me up with free gifts, like a DC calendar. Then as I'm leaving he comes back, and although he has to run off to some meeting, he lets me walk him to his meeting and talk on the way. Seeing a congressfolk in person beats every other method since they actually know who you are and can (presumably) see you're not a lunatic, and you can get their feedback on issues immediately. Most importantly, when they're trying to decide how to vote on a certain issue, they'll remember your face and what you talked about. The chances of them remembering a letter are about zero -- no matter how well worded it is, don't forget your letter is competing against thousands of other letters, including some written by professional lobbyists.
Having read most of the higher-rated comments on here, it seems to be as though most folks seem to frown on your desire for a nerf gun at work. I think the people who are saying that you need to find a job you like based on discipline (ie, you like programming, so a programming job is fun) are wrong. Let's pretend that there are two jobs, A and B, that are identical except that job B allows you nerf guns (and any other toys you like), you can wear anything you like, and work the hours you want. Which job do you think is better? Of course you'll go with B. Yet a lot of folks here want to argue that even with all those toys, you won't be happy if you don't like the job itself since the toys cannot distract you. That's true, but you're reading slashdot (read: you like computers) and I'd wager that you like programming too. Toys simply allow you to take a break from whatever you're doing, which is especially useful for morale and for when you're stuck on something and need to take your mind off it for a few. I'm a college student, but I've had two summer internships that involved programming (both were salaried, not hourly). One was for a large food company where the environment was just slightly less formal than the standard corporate attire, but toys would have probably been unacceptable. You had to work from 8am to 4:45pm. Then my next internship was for a large software company where toys were accepted. You could work whatever hours you wanted. You had the freedom to come and go as you wanted. I chose to come in much later in the morning than 8am. The company had arcade games, ping pong, foosball, not to mention the toys you brought in yourself (like razor scooters for commuting down the hallway). The job with toys was much more fun, and I got about the same amount of work done at each job. The toys simply meant I spent more time at work.
Not to nitpick here, but Microsoft and the Gates Foundation aren't related other than Bill Gates founded the foundation, and that Bill Gates happened to get his money from Microsoft stock :)
How do you know bill hasn't? Just because Microsoft gave a press conference on their donations doesn't mean Bill hasn't given anything. And moreover, people complain that Microsoft gave a press conference to generate publicity out of their cash. Would you be complaining if they hadn't given a press conference? You probably wouldn't know they gave money, and so you'd probably be complaining how this rich corporation doesn't donate money, out of your own ignorance of their actions. It is this same ignorance that allows you to claim that bill gates has not donated any money, and results in your suggestion that he gives money anonymously through amazon.
I think that Lego's biggest problem is that by having so many themed sets, they have introduced many very specialized pieces that cannot be used except to build that set. Mind you I have no problem with certain specialized sets, but the pirate themes really stand out as having too many specialized pieces. I think that after the Lego Town sets, they went downhill. Town was good because it made use of normal pieces (albeit sometimes off from the regular colors) and the town blocks could be used to build other things. I guess it helps that lego blocks are rectangular, and go really well with making buildings :)
So basically what Lego needs to do is to get away from all the custom pieces like boat hulls, and make sets from pieces that can be used for other projects as well. I always liked the sets myself, often building what was on the box, and using my general bucket of pieces to make enhancements on the set, or else another town building or something of that nature.
First, I'd like to point out the most people here seem to be arguing FOR an AOL icon on desktops (or at least allowing them to do so). Even through the general hatred of MS here, you should realize that AOL isn't exactly a great ISP.
Anyways, to the point of reselling and changing McDonald's burgers -- McD's will NOT let you change a burger and sell it again under their name because if you reduce the quality of their burger, their name is tarnished. Don't make the argument that you should be able to change windows all you want and resell it. You can't and shouldn't be able to change it. It is an MS product, and if some computer manufacturer deletes random DLLs and sells consumers that version, MS will take the blame for having a crappy OS. Granted, desktop icons won't mess up the computer, but it is the same general idea.
Finally, to the point that MSN needs to be plugged as much as any other ISP on the desktop, this is not true. MSN needs one icon -- you could fill the rest of the desktop space with AOL icons.
Incidentally, I'm kinda surprised that AOL decided to go with a neural net. Generally, Bayesian-based algorithms such as the naive bayes text classifier are accepted as the best text classification algorithms. That is, they can scan a document and decide in which of X number of categories it belongs to. In this case, that would be TO-FILTER and NOT-FILTERED I guess. Sure, you need to train it first, but you need to train a neural net as well.
It's not as if they're patenting chemicals/cells that can only be found in *you*. Things like that would be next to useless, since the only person that could possibly use discoveries related to the "unique" thing would be yourself.
Incidentally, uniqueness is how evolution works. Every trait that any of us possess started out as a unique mutation in one individual. As we continue to evolve, nothing is preventing one of us from developing a new mutation of one of our current genes. If this is a beneficial mutation to the one person, chances are it will be beneficial to most people.
Granted, the beneficial mutation I speak of is most likely to be a point mutation (a single DNA letter switched to some other letter) leaving the mutated gene similar in sequence to what the rest of humanity has. It is unlikely that scientists would be able to take the original gene and figure out what to change to make a beneficial mutation. Therefore, the mutation does belong to the person, and the person should receive money if it is used by some biomed company. I think the day will come when scientists will just figure out beneficial mutations on their own.
Barry reiterated that Napster hopes to move to a membership-based service as soon as possible
:)
Mission accomplished! Everyone on Napster has a username and password
Prologue: Most of the questions posted here seem to have ignored your involvement with the MentalLinux project. True, your age offers a different perspective than many readers of /., but we're a wide-ranging bunch. I'm 20 myself, so I went through high school not that long ago. I am indeed in college, and against the statements implied in a couple of the different questions here, I highly recommend you go to college. Just make sure to go to a good one. (ie, top 25 overall or something nice like that. US News has a good ranking).
The Question: How does it feel to start a linux distribution? What motivated you to take on such a project? If it was the steep learning curve of linux, then why not simply write a Linux User's Guide? Additionally, what aspects of your distribution make it easier for begining Linux folks to use? To me, grep is grep. I don't see how you could make grep easier to use.
I think the movie was marginally okay. The computer graphics were pretty cool, though all the night shops zooming up the side of the tower reminded me of the intro sequence to Unreal. I think that the most significant room for improvement of the movie lies with the following:
- Thora Birch's acting sucked. The soft-spoken freedom-for-all I-will-not-let-my-people-die princess/empress echoed Queen Amidala from Star Wars I.
- The black thief used an awful lot of modern day slang. He even flashed the peace sign once. I could see this happening if the movie were about a D&D game from the inside. Unfortunately, the movie should impress the general audience too. I've had better roleplayers in my own D&D games than whatever guy was roleplaying the black thief.
- Character development was umm.... lacking. Non existent perhaps? The first minute of the movie was spent by the narrator giving the audience background on the setting. The first half hour of the movie was spent introducing basic D&D concepts to the audience. That left approximately one hour for the adventure with no time for character development. The two thieves were picked right off the street and immediatly get into their first adventure. When one of the thieves died, I felt no sympathy simply because I did not feel attached the the characters.
- A minor point, but when going through the maze, I always thought thieves were more careful than that. Due to his carelessness, I think he should have gotten hurt.
Solutions:The florida results are available here for anyone who wants the best up to the minute numbers since Florida is the only thing that matters now. Good luck getting through though :)
I'm not sure I am very fond of the idea of having my IP address targeted by advertisers based on my physical location, it would be interesting to see how many times the company pinged people's boxes. One ping from an IP address should be one of the least worriesome things a system administrator will encounter. If they used a hundred pings, then I can see people be suspicious and alarms going off -- this is not to mention what the heck do they need 100 pings for to build a map anyway.
:)
If you have a box connected to the Internet, you should expect to get pinged. Heck, way back when I first discovered pings, I pinged random IP addys for kicks (Yeah, yeah, easily amused
How cool! Now manufacturers will be able to advertise "super-strong titanium computers! Able to withstand everything!" Except the butchering that the wrong OS will do to the hardware :)