The article talks about the Axel having similarities to the University of Minnesota's Scout Rovers; after taking a boo on thier site, I can see the MegaScout works off a Lithium Polymar power source, and the other models of the Scout Rovers don't have the specific type of power sources listed, but I could only assume that it would be similar type of Lithium source. The other models do have their operation lengths listed, which could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 20 hours depending on the selected mode of operation.
I was taking a boo through the PC Mag. article, it dosn't mention anything about the subscription price. In their "subscribe" page, it states $0.62 per digital copy (24 issue subscription). Anyone know what the old price for the hard copy was? I curious how many new subscribers they will need to obtain inorder to maintain their overhead costs... There was also a link to get a free trial subscription if you like. I wonder how long they will keep that link up for the free trial edition. Also, they only require an email address if you want to download a copy of the trial edition, whats to stop people from creating multiple email addresses, i guess it will just come down to how long they decide to offer the free trial.
Remember the profession system in SWG? One look at this indecipherable table with no explanation whatsoever convinced me to give up after a mere twenty minutes of playing. And don't get me started on the total absence of money drops (at least in the newbie area where I was stuck...) Reply to This
Im not sure what you were doing, but the learning curve for SWG was realitevly easy, the profession system was simple enough, you got points, put points into whatevet profession you wanted until you run out. You could either completly master one profession (and half of another i belive), or become a jack of all trades. As for money drops, money was based on completing missions, or becomming a merchant (food, clothes, armor, weapons, etc...), besides, how many Bola's or Rynok's carry a purse with credits.... My only beef with SWG that made me quit, was like just about all MMO's, they ended up nerfing so much stuff that my character became usless as a master Rifleman... oh well...
the first company to interface AppleTV directly into a TV system. As nice as NetFlix is for rental, I think the first TV manufacturer to team up with AppleTV might be able to make quite the profit here. I mean, renting is nice, but for those that love their TV series, having the option to purchase a tv series and watch it whenever you like, without going through a rental tpye of device, well, that would just be neat.
You are correct ideas are not property. However, H.R. 4279 focuses on Intellectual Property. After reading through the HR4279, the only areas regarding "computer crime" seems to be giving more resources and grants to different areas of law enforcement.
SEC. 511. (b) -- Grants- The Office of Justice Programs of the Department of Justice shall make grants to eligible State or local law enforcement entities, including law enforcement agencies of municipal governments and public educational institutions, for training, prevention, enforcement, and prosecution of intellectual property theft and infringement crimes (in this subsection referred to as `IP-TIC grants')
H.R.4279 SEC. 511. (b) (1) through (4) goes on to state what type of criteria must be met in order to recieve the grant money to start up these programs with any given law enforcement angency -- up to a $25,000,000 yearly budget.
Unless i missed it in there, i don't see any thing in there that grants them more leeway to sieze a person(s) personal computer just because they think they have an idea which might be bad. SEC. 321. (a) (7) (A) talks about what type of seizures they can make, but it still comes down to wether or not you violated the Intellectual Property laws, and if you break the law, then you might have to suffer the consqeuences.
The article tosses around the word "accused" a lot, but dosn't really point out if they have any hard evidense to back it up. Of course China is a likely suspect to "accuse" any high tech cyber-attacks of, but really, wouldn't you think any country that has a strong backbone to the internet would be capable of doing these attacks? Or am I just missing something completely?
AdCritic.com it was one of the best internet sites for getting all the lastest (and funniest) commericals from around the world. I remember when they closed down their site, they just got to big too fast and couldn't support themselves anymore... too bad, it was definatly one of the best.
A claim that was made saying we would no longer need "paper" by the year 2000. Even with this guys previous track record about the sudden internet boom, computer chess champion, etc... Com'on now, adding computers to the brain? Don't get me wrong, I think i will eventually happen, just not by the year 2020. At one point in the article it says by the 2020's and in another part it says he made a $10k bet that it would happen by 2029. I know its still considered the 2020's, but still, seems a little too early for those types of advancements. It just seems to me that for any significant progress to be made in neurotechnology specifically, the area of "adding computers to the brain", espically with all the hoops you have to jump though before you can even get to the human testing phase, 2020 is way too soon. 2029 might be a better bet IMO -- oh wait, Dr. Kurzweil already made that bet. I think hes going to be off by at least another 10 to 20 years before we have any Johnny Mnemonic's running around (and yes, i know the movie takes place in the year 2021).
If they steal my unsigned card, sign it themselves, then go on making purchases, once i refute the charge, the CC company will check my most recent purchases, see that the signatures are nothing alike, and already I'm on my way to being in the clear. The only problem with this is they will start a file on your account and monitor this to see if its a re-occuring issue. This does not in any way mean that you can go out, make a HUGE purchase, sign a different name or simply sign your name differently and get away with it. That's just digging your self a hole.
Which is why its the merchants responsibility to look at the sig on the card and the reciept. I understand that its part of the card holders agreement to sign the back of the card, but i will never do that. I had problems with this once where I had charges racked up in my name with a CC that was stolen, and had to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove that wasn't me. The first words from the CC company was that the signatures matched so I had to prove that I was not the one making the purchases. By providing my signature on my DL (along with the photo on that ID already) the merchant can compare sigs if they like, plus they now have a picture of my with my full name to compare to the CC and I've never been turned down any purchases by spending this extra 30 seconds showing my DL.
I still think the best story lines were in the classics for the PC such as the Kings Quest (except for the last one, too cartoony for my taste), Space Quest, Police Quest, hell even Leisure suit Larry had a half decent story line. In all those series, the only down fall was that the story line was linear, once you past a specific point, you couldn't go back, so if you missed a key component in the game, then you might have to go back to a save point and look for the missing item; but the story lines were great, Kings Quest and Space Quest being my favorites. One game that came out a few years later had a great story line (with Live Actors -- Mark Hamil was in it!) -- thats right, it was Wing Commander. The choices you made in the game affected how the sotry line turned out. As of late, I havn't seen too many games that had sotry lines like that which still incorporate a fairly good problem solving skills. Today it seems its mostly run here, run back there, then go back to the start, then do it all over again. I will admit, Half-Life 1/2/EP1/EP2 (and hopefully EP3) will continue with their story lines, I find them to be a good FPS with a nice story line and graphics to boot.
Thats the merchant disclaimer, the CC company, whenever they get a dispute, the first thing that is checked is the orignal reciept from the merchant. The signature on the reciept in question is then compared to other recent reciepts to compare the signatures. If it is off, or looks suspisious, or simply dosen't look anything like the other reciepts on hand, then the investigation process is started. If the signatures match (or close to it), and the customer still disputes the claim, then other possible avenues of proving "that wasn't something you purchased" now need to be looked into. Depending on the amount in question, this could range from anything like the CC company simply "eating the amount in question" if enough bitching or talking to the right people is done, and not charging you for it (just starting a file on you to see if this is going to be a re-occuring issue); Or perhaps if its in the thousands of dollars range, it could go as far as obtaining any video surveillance (if available), proving your whereabouts at the time the transaction was made, etc..., and pursuing a more leagal course of action where someone might end up with criminal charges being laid.
What is truely amazing is that the merchants will not compare the signature on the back of the card to the signature of the reciept you just signed to see if they are similar. After all, that is what makes the purchase legal. If the signature on the back of the card does not match the signature on the reciept, then technically, its not a valid purchase, and whoever's bill the charge appears on can refute the charge. In Canada, i never sign my CC's, that way if I lose one or it gets stolen, then they can't forge my signature on any bills they may try to rack up on me. When merchants ask me to sign it, I simply explain this to them, show them my Driver's License (which has my signature on it -- I also keep it seperate from my CC's so I can't lose both at the same time -- unless i'm really unlucky) and they can see that my signature on my CC reciept is the same as my DL signature, after all, checking to make sure the signatures are similar match is what the merchants should be doing in the first place.
I guess i need to read up on MRI's a bit more, i always thought that they were used for imageing purposes; Such as detecting abnormalities, tumors, etc... without any of the harmful (possible outcomes) of say x-rays, or how CT scans are not as accurate ar determining differences extreamly small areas. I didn't think your brain would psyically change just because you were thinking one thing or another. Monitoring the brain wave activity would seem to be a more successful way to dtermine what people are thinking, or at least determining a basic foundation for different nouns.
I wonder how the legal rights to the on-line players having actors play them on the tv version of the game would pan out. I guess they might put in a disclaimer saying that you have no rights to the show if your character is chosen as one of the lead roles in the t.v. version, but i wonder if that type of disclaimer would hold up in court.
It's too bad the article doesn't go into any detail about what they are measuring... its possible its reading alpha waves (normally linked to waking periods of relaxtaion or possibly drowsiness), beta waves (normal waking consciousness), gamma waves (perception and consciousness), or who knows, maybe they are monitoring the chemical reactions taking place. I guess its a possiblity that they don't want to let out the key to their study just yet.
When HD did die, all the HD movies out there came down in price HUGE.... there were (maybe still are) lots of places that were clearing out their old stock of HD movies with sales of 3 for $20-$30, not to mention, Wal-Mart even started selling the HD players for the XBox 360 for $20... i picked up 2 of them just in case one broke... once I started seeing the huge clearance sales on the HD movies, I starting snatching them up, now i have a library of about 200 HD-DVD's that are decent movies for less than a quarter of what it should of cost me... too bad we won't be able to get any of the newer movies or for that matter any of the older ones that got convereted to HD-DVD.... ah well, just my two cents...
Thats one thing that i like about the Intel Pentium III and IV processors. If the CPU fan were to die on the PIII chip, the processor would simply halt all processing if the chip temp. got to high. In the Pentium IV processors, if the fan dies, the CPU will actually down clock itself until it reaches a safe temp. to keep running at. Although I dont know what you could do if the PS fan were to die; i wonder if you could rig something up similar to the fail safe in the P3 chip that would simply shut the power off if the temp. got to high. In any case, the one thing that i did that helps keep all those dust bunnies out of my case was to install washable filters on all the fan spots. That makes it a hell of a lot easier to clean, plus i dont need to clean out the inside of the case anywhere near as much anymore.
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The article talks about the Axel having similarities to the University of Minnesota's Scout Rovers; after taking a boo on thier site, I can see the MegaScout works off a Lithium Polymar power source, and the other models of the Scout Rovers don't have the specific type of power sources listed, but I could only assume that it would be similar type of Lithium source. The other models do have their operation lengths listed, which could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 20 hours depending on the selected mode of operation.
here's the link for those who want it.
http://distrob.cs.umn.edu/megascout.php
Damn, here i was thinking that we might actually get flying cars until i watched this....
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/mean_automakers_dash_nations_hope?utm_source=embedded_video/
I was taking a boo through the PC Mag. article, it dosn't mention anything about the subscription price. In their "subscribe" page, it states $0.62 per digital copy (24 issue subscription). Anyone know what the old price for the hard copy was? I curious how many new subscribers they will need to obtain inorder to maintain their overhead costs... There was also a link to get a free trial subscription if you like. I wonder how long they will keep that link up for the free trial edition. Also, they only require an email address if you want to download a copy of the trial edition, whats to stop people from creating multiple email addresses, i guess it will just come down to how long they decide to offer the free trial.
Remember the profession system in SWG? One look at this indecipherable table with no explanation whatsoever convinced me to give up after a mere twenty minutes of playing. And don't get me started on the total absence of money drops (at least in the newbie area where I was stuck...)
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Im not sure what you were doing, but the learning curve for SWG was realitevly easy, the profession system was simple enough, you got points, put points into whatevet profession you wanted until you run out. You could either completly master one profession (and half of another i belive), or become a jack of all trades. As for money drops, money was based on completing missions, or becomming a merchant (food, clothes, armor, weapons, etc...), besides, how many Bola's or Rynok's carry a purse with credits.... My only beef with SWG that made me quit, was like just about all MMO's, they ended up nerfing so much stuff that my character became usless as a master Rifleman... oh well...
the first company to interface AppleTV directly into a TV system. As nice as NetFlix is for rental, I think the first TV manufacturer to team up with AppleTV might be able to make quite the profit here. I mean, renting is nice, but for those that love their TV series, having the option to purchase a tv series and watch it whenever you like, without going through a rental tpye of device, well, that would just be neat.
Its ok, i alerady obtained the ultimate weapon, the sybian! No woman can resist the effects of it.
Also another study recently found that water is wet, and a third study found that most studies waste money
/. had one too
:-)
those old online polls that showed a percentage of people did not participate in online polls, hey look,
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=401 and 2521 people don't vote
You are correct ideas are not property. However, H.R. 4279 focuses on Intellectual Property. After reading through the HR4279, the only areas regarding "computer crime" seems to be giving more resources and grants to different areas of law enforcement.
SEC. 511. (b) -- Grants- The Office of Justice Programs of the Department of Justice shall make grants to eligible State or local law enforcement entities, including law enforcement agencies of municipal governments and public educational institutions, for training, prevention, enforcement, and prosecution of intellectual property theft and infringement crimes (in this subsection referred to as `IP-TIC grants')
H.R.4279 SEC. 511. (b) (1) through (4) goes on to state what type of criteria must be met in order to recieve the grant money to start up these programs with any given law enforcement angency -- up to a $25,000,000 yearly budget.
Unless i missed it in there, i don't see any thing in there that grants them more leeway to sieze a person(s) personal computer just because they think they have an idea which might be bad. SEC. 321. (a) (7) (A) talks about what type of seizures they can make, but it still comes down to wether or not you violated the Intellectual Property laws, and if you break the law, then you might have to suffer the consqeuences.
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they will need to enlist the help of Roger Wilco.
The article tosses around the word "accused" a lot, but dosn't really point out if they have any hard evidense to back it up. Of course China is a likely suspect to "accuse" any high tech cyber-attacks of, but really, wouldn't you think any country that has a strong backbone to the internet would be capable of doing these attacks? Or am I just missing something completely?
AdCritic.com it was one of the best internet sites for getting all the lastest (and funniest) commericals from around the world. I remember when they closed down their site, they just got to big too fast and couldn't support themselves anymore... too bad, it was definatly one of the best.
A claim that was made saying we would no longer need "paper" by the year 2000. Even with this guys previous track record about the sudden internet boom, computer chess champion, etc... Com'on now, adding computers to the brain? Don't get me wrong, I think i will eventually happen, just not by the year 2020. At one point in the article it says by the 2020's and in another part it says he made a $10k bet that it would happen by 2029. I know its still considered the 2020's, but still, seems a little too early for those types of advancements. It just seems to me that for any significant progress to be made in neurotechnology specifically, the area of "adding computers to the brain", espically with all the hoops you have to jump though before you can even get to the human testing phase, 2020 is way too soon. 2029 might be a better bet IMO -- oh wait, Dr. Kurzweil already made that bet. I think hes going to be off by at least another 10 to 20 years before we have any Johnny Mnemonic's running around (and yes, i know the movie takes place in the year 2021).
If they steal my unsigned card, sign it themselves, then go on making purchases, once i refute the charge, the CC company will check my most recent purchases, see that the signatures are nothing alike, and already I'm on my way to being in the clear. The only problem with this is they will start a file on your account and monitor this to see if its a re-occuring issue. This does not in any way mean that you can go out, make a HUGE purchase, sign a different name or simply sign your name differently and get away with it. That's just digging your self a hole.
Which is why its the merchants responsibility to look at the sig on the card and the reciept. I understand that its part of the card holders agreement to sign the back of the card, but i will never do that. I had problems with this once where I had charges racked up in my name with a CC that was stolen, and had to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove that wasn't me. The first words from the CC company was that the signatures matched so I had to prove that I was not the one making the purchases. By providing my signature on my DL (along with the photo on that ID already) the merchant can compare sigs if they like, plus they now have a picture of my with my full name to compare to the CC and I've never been turned down any purchases by spending this extra 30 seconds showing my DL.
I still think the best story lines were in the classics for the PC such as the Kings Quest (except for the last one, too cartoony for my taste), Space Quest, Police Quest, hell even Leisure suit Larry had a half decent story line. In all those series, the only down fall was that the story line was linear, once you past a specific point, you couldn't go back, so if you missed a key component in the game, then you might have to go back to a save point and look for the missing item; but the story lines were great, Kings Quest and Space Quest being my favorites. One game that came out a few years later had a great story line (with Live Actors -- Mark Hamil was in it!) -- thats right, it was Wing Commander. The choices you made in the game affected how the sotry line turned out. As of late, I havn't seen too many games that had sotry lines like that which still incorporate a fairly good problem solving skills. Today it seems its mostly run here, run back there, then go back to the start, then do it all over again. I will admit, Half-Life 1/2/EP1/EP2 (and hopefully EP3) will continue with their story lines, I find them to be a good FPS with a nice story line and graphics to boot.
Thats the merchant disclaimer, the CC company, whenever they get a dispute, the first thing that is checked is the orignal reciept from the merchant. The signature on the reciept in question is then compared to other recent reciepts to compare the signatures. If it is off, or looks suspisious, or simply dosen't look anything like the other reciepts on hand, then the investigation process is started. If the signatures match (or close to it), and the customer still disputes the claim, then other possible avenues of proving "that wasn't something you purchased" now need to be looked into. Depending on the amount in question, this could range from anything like the CC company simply "eating the amount in question" if enough bitching or talking to the right people is done, and not charging you for it (just starting a file on you to see if this is going to be a re-occuring issue); Or perhaps if its in the thousands of dollars range, it could go as far as obtaining any video surveillance (if available), proving your whereabouts at the time the transaction was made, etc..., and pursuing a more leagal course of action where someone might end up with criminal charges being laid.
What is truely amazing is that the merchants will not compare the signature on the back of the card to the signature of the reciept you just signed to see if they are similar. After all, that is what makes the purchase legal. If the signature on the back of the card does not match the signature on the reciept, then technically, its not a valid purchase, and whoever's bill the charge appears on can refute the charge. In Canada, i never sign my CC's, that way if I lose one or it gets stolen, then they can't forge my signature on any bills they may try to rack up on me. When merchants ask me to sign it, I simply explain this to them, show them my Driver's License (which has my signature on it -- I also keep it seperate from my CC's so I can't lose both at the same time -- unless i'm really unlucky) and they can see that my signature on my CC reciept is the same as my DL signature, after all, checking to make sure the signatures are similar match is what the merchants should be doing in the first place.
according to the all-knowing wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_pad_39A/ there have been 82 launches.
about 50 meters above the launch pad.
I guess i need to read up on MRI's a bit more, i always thought that they were used for imageing purposes; Such as detecting abnormalities, tumors, etc... without any of the harmful (possible outcomes) of say x-rays, or how CT scans are not as accurate ar determining differences extreamly small areas. I didn't think your brain would psyically change just because you were thinking one thing or another. Monitoring the brain wave activity would seem to be a more successful way to dtermine what people are thinking, or at least determining a basic foundation for different nouns.
I wonder how the legal rights to the on-line players having actors play them on the tv version of the game would pan out. I guess they might put in a disclaimer saying that you have no rights to the show if your character is chosen as one of the lead roles in the t.v. version, but i wonder if that type of disclaimer would hold up in court.
It's too bad the article doesn't go into any detail about what they are measuring... its possible its reading alpha waves (normally linked to waking periods of relaxtaion or possibly drowsiness), beta waves (normal waking consciousness), gamma waves (perception and consciousness), or who knows, maybe they are monitoring the chemical reactions taking place. I guess its a possiblity that they don't want to let out the key to their study just yet.
When HD did die, all the HD movies out there came down in price HUGE.... there were (maybe still are) lots of places that were clearing out their old stock of HD movies with sales of 3 for $20-$30, not to mention, Wal-Mart even started selling the HD players for the XBox 360 for $20... i picked up 2 of them just in case one broke... once I started seeing the huge clearance sales on the HD movies, I starting snatching them up, now i have a library of about 200 HD-DVD's that are decent movies for less than a quarter of what it should of cost me... too bad we won't be able to get any of the newer movies or for that matter any of the older ones that got convereted to HD-DVD.... ah well, just my two cents...
Thats one thing that i like about the Intel Pentium III and IV processors. If the CPU fan were to die on the PIII chip, the processor would simply halt all processing if the chip temp. got to high. In the Pentium IV processors, if the fan dies, the CPU will actually down clock itself until it reaches a safe temp. to keep running at. Although I dont know what you could do if the PS fan were to die; i wonder if you could rig something up similar to the fail safe in the P3 chip that would simply shut the power off if the temp. got to high. In any case, the one thing that i did that helps keep all those dust bunnies out of my case was to install washable filters on all the fan spots. That makes it a hell of a lot easier to clean, plus i dont need to clean out the inside of the case anywhere near as much anymore.
My point exactly, if you ask for a donation, then your not selling anything... just asking people to send you money...