Why, when you don't know WTF is going on, would you assume that everything is fine?
I suppose if you were the first doctor to see a case of AIDS, you would be like, Hmm, this is odd, but I can't really explain it, therefore it must not be a problem. Meanwhile, I'll cry the sky is falling, and line my pockets with grant money.
I realize there is more than a bit of levity to your post, but "using their ignorance to stir up the folks at Greenpeace?"
Let me ask you this: Do you believe it's in accord with the laws of chemistry or physics that we can keep adding more and more CO2 to the atmosphere and not see any effects? Did you learn about buffered solutions when you were in Chemistry class? They retain their pH as additives push them one way or the other, but past a point the buffer breaks down and it begins changing its pH just like a regular solution would.
The vast majority of protestors at WTO and RNC (and World Bank/IMF and Miami) were peaceful. Something like 99%.
You believe that because 1% of the protestors got out of hand, started smashing stuff, that it's okay to arrest all the protestors, en masse, only to let them out of jail a day or two later, with all charges dropped?
How about the No-Protest Zone in Seattle? Where even peaceful protest was illegal? That doesn't seem at odds with the Constitution? How about the Free Speech Zones set up about a mile from where our President is giving his campaign stump speeches? How about people being removed from the President's rallies for wearing anti-Bush or anti-War t-shirts? You really think that's appropriate behavior for a democratic society that depends on dialogue, discussion, and dissent?
It seems to me that you're letting a tiny fraction (in this case, your stereotypical black-hooded anarchist, who is in fact just an idiot) drive the dialogue, and your response is based on that 1%, not the vast majority of peaceful, non-violent, but likely civilly disobedient protestors. Or, in the case of the President, there's some vague notion of "security" that can justify any suppression of First Amendment (we'll not talk about Second Amendment) rights.
In other words, "wrong place, wrong time" is a very convenient excuse that you use to stifle legitimate (dissenting) speech and protest.
And that's wrong.
As for the two names you mentioned and their political change of heart, I can't comment because I don't know who they are.
Finally, I agree that the handling of protestors in Boston was wrong. Though it's disingenuous to lay the responsibility for that action at the Democrats doorstep -- they just held the convention, the cops came up with the security arrangements. As it was the cops who did the massive (and likely unconstitutional) arrests in NYC. Both symptoms of the same sickness, if you ask me.
If there's anything to apologize for, it's that this game is only on XBox.
It's great for Microsoft, since Fable and Halo are pretty much the only reasons for a gamer to own an XBox. I don't understand what exactly Mr. Molyneux gets out of the deal, but I bet it starts with a $.
spike1 I hear you loud and clear. Let me just clarify a few things.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is the burden of proof for criminal proceedings. The burden of proof in civil matters is far, far lower. And since the 80s, the feds have used that lower burden of proof in countless civil cases against drug suspects.
One of the most notorious abuses is the Volusia County Sherriff's Department. They received "special training" from the DEA to identify drug couriers on Florida's highways. They mostly pulled over black people. They approached the vehicle in a very non-threatening manner, asked a few perfunctory Mr. Nice Guy questions, and would end with a friendly "Do you mind if I search the car?" Now, most people, thinking they had done nothing wrong, would agree to the search. And then the cops would find, say, an envelope with a thousand dollars cash.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to carry around that much cash, especially if you are lower class, don't have credit. (To pay a bail bondsman, to buy a new car, to open a bank account, whatever.) But the cops would routinely state that based on their "expert training," they could tell from the way the money was bundled or rolled up, that it was money that was going to be used to buy drugs. Or money that had been acquired from the sale of drugs. And the police would confiscate the money.
No ticket. No receipt. Never charged with a crime. Nothing. Just a cop pulling you over, and since you gave them the right to search your car, (as any law abiding citizen might do) they take your money. This happened for years, until finally 60 Minutes or one of those shows did an expose.
There are tons of other examples. I was watching COPS one time, they raided a house and found a marijuana grow operation. In the garage of the house was a classic (well, not too classic, it was just a Stingray) Corvette. The cops took the car, because, since anything on the property is "drug-related" they are allowed to confiscate what they wish. Clearly this could suck for you, if say it's your car and has just been stolen by the drug dealer, or your roommate gets busted for something and the cops decide to come after the hose and take your goods as well.
The courts have given a lot of leeway for this sort of behavior. Mainly it's because these are all Federal actions, and the Federal courts are very right-leaning, far more to the right than our slightly right (5 to 4) Supreme Court. Of the nine federal circuits (the level just below the Supreme Court) only the Ninth Circuit might be considered Leftist. And there has been a propaganda war as well, the "War on Drugs" started under Nixon and was greatly expanded under Reagan, which is where we saw the forfeiture thing really take off.
And of course Clinton didn't lift a finger to stop it.
We also have this program called D.A.R.E., Drug Abuse Resistance Education, which has been going for about 20 years now. They start in Kindergarten, indoctrinating kids to "Just Say No" to drugs, and to rat out their parents, and so forth. The thing is, after 20 years of this program, there are more non-violent drug offenders in our prisons than ever before. But nobody dare say that D.A.R.E. isn't working.
Anyway it's a long, complicated issue but you are quite right it completely goes against what it says in the Constitution. Because it's a War, you see. And there are some real drug problems in this country (notably crack cocaine in the inner cities) which have been used to rationalize -- "desparate times call for desparate measures." And now that we've got the War on Terror, we're seeing further erosion of rights across the board.
And you don't even want to know how whacked the laws are when it comes to kiddie porn. The "threat" is so great, that the Government can sell you kiddie porn, then send you to prison for possession of the porn you just bought from the government.
Such a wild disconnect from the Constitution. If I get into a protest these days, I expect more times than not to be pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, or end up in jail.
"To Uphold And Defend The Constitution Of The United States Of America." Not only have you wandered away from the very thing that you swore to protect, you now resort to violence to suppress American citizens engaging in Constitutionally protected First Amendment (freedom of speech, freedom of assembly) activites.
Ever wonder about the creeping police state we've seen since the WTO meetings in '99? Or about all the military assault weapons and armored personnel carriers the cops have purchased as a result of post 9/11 funding? These are deep seated questions that you should be asking.
"if you're suspected of transporting cocaine on your yacht, for example, you forfeit the yacht, even if it later turns out you were innocent of everything"
Since when is the govt complete and utter THEIFS like gangs in Compton?
You seem woefully ingnorant of the federal civil forfeiture laws. I suggest you educate yourself.
The parent is absolutely correct, people have lost everything, up to and including their homes (!) because of a DEA raid, even if all charges are later dropped, and no conviction ever takes place.
Are you aware that half of federal prisoners are there for drug offenses?
Either you aren't (and google is your friend), or you're fully aware of how bad the drug war is, and you're just being sarcastic. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
That's a neat idea but it could be abused. Corporations could afford much more in tax than individuals. Or they could more easily write off the tax as a business expense.
If there was a waiver, where you didn't have to pay the tax unless you held, say, over 100 patents, that might work.
Also, 99.9% of what's patented never makes it into a product; never makes any money. So you'd be paying a tax for your patent, even if you never made any money off your patent.
Maybe the thing to do would be to assess a levy on revenue generated from products (or services) that employ patented technology.
A friend of mine who does system analyst stuff in the health care field told me:
Complex systems eventually end up worsening the very problem they were created to solve.
This is pretty obvious in (American) health care, where it's more about extracting as much money as possible, throwing some pills and forms at the problem, and generally taking a more costly reactive approach, rather than being focused on life-long patient wellness.
We've got too much money here in the USA, with all these middlemen wanting to get their cut, it's an incredibly unwieldy system. The thing is, even with the squeeze on the middle class over the past 20+ years, we're still quite rich. You won't see us rioting in the streets any time soon.
My belief is that the Patent system and Healthcare will play out the same: Both will chug along, rewarding the monied interests who have a stake in the status quo, until it collapses under it's own weight. In Health Care I think that will be brought on by a major epidemic, like 25% of the nation getting the flu and 2% dying from it. I'm not sure what's going to cause the patent system to buckle. Honestly, with patents still at 17 years (or 20 years?) this issue seems much more contained than what we see over in Copyright. Maybe it will break this way: After all high-tech manufacturing ceases in America, and we have to import all our electronics from Asia, and then the Asians just start ignoring US patent law, and we cant' hold up all the goods in customs because people here need the stuff.
Systems this big, tied to corporations whose lifeblood depends on maintaining a false economy, aren't responsive to market pressures. About the only thing that could change anything would be the legislature, but that's unlikely to happen. Partly because the legislature is in the pocket of the big corporations, but also because huge inefficiencies "create jobs" and anything that creates jobs must be good for society.
DARE must not be working. I should know, I'm a member of the DARE generation. As I come of age, I see that something like 50% of the prison population is in jail from drug convictions. If DARE was working that number should have gone down over the past twelve years, not up.
DARE teaches absinence, but it doesn't look like that's working. Obviously we need to do more. And we are doing more, such as the HEA drug provision which provides additional punishment by denying financial aid to my peers with drug convictions.
My question is: Is simply teaching abstinence enough? When it comes to drugs, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease like AIDS, what more should we be doing to protect my generation and future generations?
Why stop at financial aid? Drug convicts and rapists and murderers all can get drivers licenses, and drive on the same taxpayer-funded roads that we do. Why should they be able to enjoy the priveleges of society after what they've done?
Why don't we just keep these undesirable people locked up forever? Instead of denying a scholarship here, denying the right to vote there, why not just send them to an island, or just execute them all?
After all they're less likely to make good use of our assistance.
You make a lot of assertions about what the leftists should do... I'll assume you aren't one.
What's missing from your dialogue is what the right has already done. Wouldn't the simplest way to achieve justice be to simply end the current right-wing policy of deyning financial aid to drug convicts?
Why is your solution to further marginalize elemetns of society? Why not simply have equal rights all across the board?
If you believe that drug convicts and murder convicts shouldn't be allowed to attend college, pass a law that says so. What's to be gained by this half-assed approach which makes it harder, but still possible, for drug convicts or any other convicts to attend college?
DOOM III does not run too good on a Radeon 9800 128MB.
Now, if you think "running good" means 640x480, then yes it runs good. But try playing in 1024x768 at Ultra quality on a Radeon 9800 card. Even a Radeon 9800XT will struggle to maintain 15 frames per second. And trust me it's very noticeable -- I have a Radeon 9800XT and I've pretty much given up on playing DOOM III on that card. (I could use a faster CPU, but unless I completely retool for a 64-bit system, the effects will be minimal.)
It was true that FPS were the only games that really needed a high-end vid card. Obviously the isometric view in Diablo or C&C Generals isn't as GPU-intensive. But if Rome: Total War is the harbinger of the future, we will soon have fully immersive 3D environments dominating the RTS camp.
And the previous poster is correct: The DOOM III enginge actually has four different chunks of render code, optimized for the various GPUs that nVidia and ATI have on the market.
I hope that DOOM has over-extended themselves a bit with their engine, because having to buy a $300 or even $400 video card every two to three years really sucks.
But don't forget that consoles inherently have it much easier -- NTSC is roughly 640x480, whereas PC gamers want four times that number of pixels. Now, I believe you can output your XBox to HD, but I've never seen this happen, and I don't know if it's really HD-quality. (I mean broadcast HD quality, which is sharper than a DVD for instance.)
My strategy with video cards has been to buy last year's hot card. That's why I got the 9800XT. My strategy has let me down -- at least when it comes to playing DOOM III. You are quite correct that the "early adopters" are driving the market -- that's the way it is in the PC field in general. There are a few other specialized niches out there (like VIA's ultra-low power CPUs) but in general it's all about faster, faster, faster, more more more.
I think laws like this are crap. If you want to make something illegal, just make that activity illegal. Don't make ancillary activities part of the crime.
This is just a way for them to "tack on" all sorts of extra time to your jail sentence. If we really wanted the crime to get that sort of jail time, why not simply up the penalty for that specific crime.
Here in Washington State we have this thing where sex offenders serve their prison terms, and then are kept in "civil confinement" until they have been "rehabilitated" enough to be back in public (and living down the block from your kids.)
Now, obviously nobody wants a sex offender living next to them. But wouldn't it be a lot simpler and saner (and legaler) to simply increase the penalty for the crime? Don't rely on some after-market bolt-on to provide justice. Make the penalty for child molestation life in prison. Trust me, the public would support that!
This is just infuriating to me. If we want to increase the penalty for armed robbery, let's do it. That would be a lot simpler than passing some law which adds time to your sentence for possesion of a handgun while you commit your crime. (And you don't even have to use the handgun, or brandish it; simple possession, which is one of your Constitutional rights, will get you more time.)
No matter how many laws the legislature passes, there's still going to be crime. All this does is make more paperwork, more red tape, and more little options they have for throwing the book at you. We should eliminate these "enhancements" and simply modify the penalty to fit the crime rather than these back-door methods which can be used selectively and in discriminatory fashion.
Have you ever coded C or C++ in your life? Does Hello World count?:)
I should have put the word "intern" in huge bold letters. What I was getting at -- an intern is not a veteran coder, and maybe shouldn't even be worried about the security context of apps (instead he should be focused on just writing functional code.) And the guy doing the code review is probably not a security expert. Unless Microsoft has a shitload of people who REALLY understand security and are going to walk through millions of lines of code, this is just "security theater" (with apologies to Bruce Schneier).
during several code reviews another intern was involved with, there would be "did you check parameters here? potential buffer overflow? what if this is NULL?"
Well, what if it was a potential buffer overflow? In such a piecemeal appraoch to programming, can the intern realistically be expected to know if there's a potential buffer overflow? How should he know how a NULL is handled? Isn't there an operating system that's supposed to do that stuff?
Where's that damn garbage collector???
Disclaimer: I am so far from a security expert that I get email with my real name in my fake email accounts. But what this sounds like is a security blanket, not security.
Security is very fucking hard. That's why I do tech support. Sometimes it's a chore but you can always just break out the ghost disks and wow theim with their "new" computer.
But I have nightmares where I write Win32 apps in FoxPro.
Slashdot Mirror
My question is simple: How many of the people saying "No conclusive proof means stay the course" are Libertarians?
And how many of the people saying "No, wait a minute, perhaps human activity is the problem" are Libertarians?
I'm very curious to know if Libertarians are more apt to think that manmade CO2 emissions are a problem or aren't.
I don't understand Libertarianism at all and this is just an attempt to get a better understanding of you creatures.
Wow, how arrogant.
Why, when you don't know WTF is going on, would you assume that everything is fine?
I suppose if you were the first doctor to see a case of AIDS, you would be like, Hmm, this is odd, but I can't really explain it, therefore it must not be a problem. Meanwhile, I'll cry the sky is falling, and line my pockets with grant money.
I realize there is more than a bit of levity to your post, but "using their ignorance to stir up the folks at Greenpeace?"
Let me ask you this: Do you believe it's in accord with the laws of chemistry or physics that we can keep adding more and more CO2 to the atmosphere and not see any effects? Did you learn about buffered solutions when you were in Chemistry class? They retain their pH as additives push them one way or the other, but past a point the buffer breaks down and it begins changing its pH just like a regular solution would.
The vast majority of protestors at WTO and RNC (and World Bank/IMF and Miami) were peaceful. Something like 99%.
You believe that because 1% of the protestors got out of hand, started smashing stuff, that it's okay to arrest all the protestors, en masse, only to let them out of jail a day or two later, with all charges dropped?
How about the No-Protest Zone in Seattle? Where even peaceful protest was illegal? That doesn't seem at odds with the Constitution? How about the Free Speech Zones set up about a mile from where our President is giving his campaign stump speeches? How about people being removed from the President's rallies for wearing anti-Bush or anti-War t-shirts? You really think that's appropriate behavior for a democratic society that depends on dialogue, discussion, and dissent?
It seems to me that you're letting a tiny fraction (in this case, your stereotypical black-hooded anarchist, who is in fact just an idiot) drive the dialogue, and your response is based on that 1%, not the vast majority of peaceful, non-violent, but likely civilly disobedient protestors. Or, in the case of the President, there's some vague notion of "security" that can justify any suppression of First Amendment (we'll not talk about Second Amendment) rights.
In other words, "wrong place, wrong time" is a very convenient excuse that you use to stifle legitimate (dissenting) speech and protest.
And that's wrong.
As for the two names you mentioned and their political change of heart, I can't comment because I don't know who they are.
Finally, I agree that the handling of protestors in Boston was wrong. Though it's disingenuous to lay the responsibility for that action at the Democrats doorstep -- they just held the convention, the cops came up with the security arrangements. As it was the cops who did the massive (and likely unconstitutional) arrests in NYC. Both symptoms of the same sickness, if you ask me.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I find Pikmin has a stronger pull in the GameCube direction than any of the titles you mentioned for the XBox.
But, I'm not into sports games at all. And that seems to be the XBox's big selling point. That's fine, it's just not for me.
If there's anything to apologize for, it's that this game is only on XBox.
It's great for Microsoft, since Fable and Halo are pretty much the only reasons for a gamer to own an XBox. I don't understand what exactly Mr. Molyneux gets out of the deal, but I bet it starts with a $.
spike1 I hear you loud and clear. Let me just clarify a few things.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is the burden of proof for criminal proceedings. The burden of proof in civil matters is far, far lower. And since the 80s, the feds have used that lower burden of proof in countless civil cases against drug suspects.
One of the most notorious abuses is the Volusia County Sherriff's Department. They received "special training" from the DEA to identify drug couriers on Florida's highways. They mostly pulled over black people. They approached the vehicle in a very non-threatening manner, asked a few perfunctory Mr. Nice Guy questions, and would end with a friendly "Do you mind if I search the car?" Now, most people, thinking they had done nothing wrong, would agree to the search. And then the cops would find, say, an envelope with a thousand dollars cash.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to carry around that much cash, especially if you are lower class, don't have credit. (To pay a bail bondsman, to buy a new car, to open a bank account, whatever.) But the cops would routinely state that based on their "expert training," they could tell from the way the money was bundled or rolled up, that it was money that was going to be used to buy drugs. Or money that had been acquired from the sale of drugs. And the police would confiscate the money.
No ticket. No receipt. Never charged with a crime. Nothing. Just a cop pulling you over, and since you gave them the right to search your car, (as any law abiding citizen might do) they take your money. This happened for years, until finally 60 Minutes or one of those shows did an expose.
There are tons of other examples. I was watching COPS one time, they raided a house and found a marijuana grow operation. In the garage of the house was a classic (well, not too classic, it was just a Stingray) Corvette. The cops took the car, because, since anything on the property is "drug-related" they are allowed to confiscate what they wish. Clearly this could suck for you, if say it's your car and has just been stolen by the drug dealer, or your roommate gets busted for something and the cops decide to come after the hose and take your goods as well.
The courts have given a lot of leeway for this sort of behavior. Mainly it's because these are all Federal actions, and the Federal courts are very right-leaning, far more to the right than our slightly right (5 to 4) Supreme Court. Of the nine federal circuits (the level just below the Supreme Court) only the Ninth Circuit might be considered Leftist. And there has been a propaganda war as well, the "War on Drugs" started under Nixon and was greatly expanded under Reagan, which is where we saw the forfeiture thing really take off.
And of course Clinton didn't lift a finger to stop it.
We also have this program called D.A.R.E., Drug Abuse Resistance Education, which has been going for about 20 years now. They start in Kindergarten, indoctrinating kids to "Just Say No" to drugs, and to rat out their parents, and so forth. The thing is, after 20 years of this program, there are more non-violent drug offenders in our prisons than ever before. But nobody dare say that D.A.R.E. isn't working.
Anyway it's a long, complicated issue but you are quite right it completely goes against what it says in the Constitution. Because it's a War, you see. And there are some real drug problems in this country (notably crack cocaine in the inner cities) which have been used to rationalize -- "desparate times call for desparate measures." And now that we've got the War on Terror, we're seeing further erosion of rights across the board.
And you don't even want to know how whacked the laws are when it comes to kiddie porn. The "threat" is so great, that the Government can sell you kiddie porn, then send you to prison for possession of the porn you just bought from the government.
Such a wild disconnect from the Constitution. If I get into a protest these days, I expect more times than not to be pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, or end up in jail.
"To Uphold And Defend The Constitution Of The United States Of America." Not only have you wandered away from the very thing that you swore to protect, you now resort to violence to suppress American citizens engaging in Constitutionally protected First Amendment (freedom of speech, freedom of assembly) activites.
Ever wonder about the creeping police state we've seen since the WTO meetings in '99? Or about all the military assault weapons and armored personnel carriers the cops have purchased as a result of post 9/11 funding? These are deep seated questions that you should be asking.
"Bring 'em on!"
Principles like slavery, and only white, land-owning men get the vote?
Okay, I'll prosper under that system. Where do I sign up?
"Libertarians: Republicans who smoke pot." (Maybe too much pot in some cases. You guys are starting to believe your own press releases.)
You don't know who shot up Republican campaign offices, and you don't know who burned swastikas in the yard.
;)
Unless, of course, you were in on it
Stop being such a Cassandra.
"if you're suspected of transporting cocaine on your yacht, for example, you forfeit the yacht, even if it later turns out you were innocent of everything"
Since when is the govt complete and utter THEIFS like gangs in Compton?
You seem woefully ingnorant of the federal civil forfeiture laws. I suggest you educate yourself.
The parent is absolutely correct, people have lost everything, up to and including their homes (!) because of a DEA raid, even if all charges are later dropped, and no conviction ever takes place.
Are you aware that half of federal prisoners are there for drug offenses?
Either you aren't (and google is your friend), or you're fully aware of how bad the drug war is, and you're just being sarcastic. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
You sound like one of those diehard Mac people who makes fun of Windows because it still has DOS in it. (i.e. the console)
Noone's forcing you to update to 1.1.
Hey, at least PC games get fixes. How would you even patch a console game?
Maybe their plan for downtime reads like this:
In the event of a slashdotting, the plan is to take down the servers.
That's a neat idea but it could be abused. Corporations could afford much more in tax than individuals. Or they could more easily write off the tax as a business expense.
If there was a waiver, where you didn't have to pay the tax unless you held, say, over 100 patents, that might work.
Also, 99.9% of what's patented never makes it into a product; never makes any money. So you'd be paying a tax for your patent, even if you never made any money off your patent.
Maybe the thing to do would be to assess a levy on revenue generated from products (or services) that employ patented technology.
A friend of mine who does system analyst stuff in the health care field told me:
Complex systems eventually end up worsening the very problem they were created to solve.
This is pretty obvious in (American) health care, where it's more about extracting as much money as possible, throwing some pills and forms at the problem, and generally taking a more costly reactive approach, rather than being focused on life-long patient wellness.
We've got too much money here in the USA, with all these middlemen wanting to get their cut, it's an incredibly unwieldy system. The thing is, even with the squeeze on the middle class over the past 20+ years, we're still quite rich. You won't see us rioting in the streets any time soon.
My belief is that the Patent system and Healthcare will play out the same: Both will chug along, rewarding the monied interests who have a stake in the status quo, until it collapses under it's own weight. In Health Care I think that will be brought on by a major epidemic, like 25% of the nation getting the flu and 2% dying from it. I'm not sure what's going to cause the patent system to buckle. Honestly, with patents still at 17 years (or 20 years?) this issue seems much more contained than what we see over in Copyright. Maybe it will break this way: After all high-tech manufacturing ceases in America, and we have to import all our electronics from Asia, and then the Asians just start ignoring US patent law, and we cant' hold up all the goods in customs because people here need the stuff.
Systems this big, tied to corporations whose lifeblood depends on maintaining a false economy, aren't responsive to market pressures. About the only thing that could change anything would be the legislature, but that's unlikely to happen. Partly because the legislature is in the pocket of the big corporations, but also because huge inefficiencies "create jobs" and anything that creates jobs must be good for society.
I would go even further, along these lines:
DARE must not be working. I should know, I'm a member of the DARE generation. As I come of age, I see that something like 50% of the prison population is in jail from drug convictions. If DARE was working that number should have gone down over the past twelve years, not up.
DARE teaches absinence, but it doesn't look like that's working. Obviously we need to do more. And we are doing more, such as the HEA drug provision which provides additional punishment by denying financial aid to my peers with drug convictions.
My question is: Is simply teaching abstinence enough? When it comes to drugs, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease like AIDS, what more should we be doing to protect my generation and future generations?
Why stop at financial aid? Drug convicts and rapists and murderers all can get drivers licenses, and drive on the same taxpayer-funded roads that we do. Why should they be able to enjoy the priveleges of society after what they've done?
Why don't we just keep these undesirable people locked up forever? Instead of denying a scholarship here, denying the right to vote there, why not just send them to an island, or just execute them all?
After all they're less likely to make good use of our assistance.
You make a lot of assertions about what the leftists should do... I'll assume you aren't one.
What's missing from your dialogue is what the right has already done. Wouldn't the simplest way to achieve justice be to simply end the current right-wing policy of deyning financial aid to drug convicts?
Why is your solution to further marginalize elemetns of society? Why not simply have equal rights all across the board?
If you believe that drug convicts and murder convicts shouldn't be allowed to attend college, pass a law that says so. What's to be gained by this half-assed approach which makes it harder, but still possible, for drug convicts or any other convicts to attend college?
DOOM III does not run too good on a Radeon 9800 128MB.
Now, if you think "running good" means 640x480, then yes it runs good. But try playing in 1024x768 at Ultra quality on a Radeon 9800 card. Even a Radeon 9800XT will struggle to maintain 15 frames per second. And trust me it's very noticeable -- I have a Radeon 9800XT and I've pretty much given up on playing DOOM III on that card. (I could use a faster CPU, but unless I completely retool for a 64-bit system, the effects will be minimal.)
It was true that FPS were the only games that really needed a high-end vid card. Obviously the isometric view in Diablo or C&C Generals isn't as GPU-intensive. But if Rome: Total War is the harbinger of the future, we will soon have fully immersive 3D environments dominating the RTS camp.
And the previous poster is correct: The DOOM III enginge actually has four different chunks of render code, optimized for the various GPUs that nVidia and ATI have on the market.
I hope that DOOM has over-extended themselves a bit with their engine, because having to buy a $300 or even $400 video card every two to three years really sucks.
But don't forget that consoles inherently have it much easier -- NTSC is roughly 640x480, whereas PC gamers want four times that number of pixels. Now, I believe you can output your XBox to HD, but I've never seen this happen, and I don't know if it's really HD-quality. (I mean broadcast HD quality, which is sharper than a DVD for instance.)
My strategy with video cards has been to buy last year's hot card. That's why I got the 9800XT. My strategy has let me down -- at least when it comes to playing DOOM III. You are quite correct that the "early adopters" are driving the market -- that's the way it is in the PC field in general. There are a few other specialized niches out there (like VIA's ultra-low power CPUs) but in general it's all about faster, faster, faster, more more more.
Indeed, that is pretty much my main reason for purchasing this game.
I would also like to be able to stomp on Ewoks in my AT-ST. That would be the icing on the cake.
I think laws like this are crap. If you want to make something illegal, just make that activity illegal. Don't make ancillary activities part of the crime.
This is just a way for them to "tack on" all sorts of extra time to your jail sentence. If we really wanted the crime to get that sort of jail time, why not simply up the penalty for that specific crime.
Here in Washington State we have this thing where sex offenders serve their prison terms, and then are kept in "civil confinement" until they have been "rehabilitated" enough to be back in public (and living down the block from your kids.)
Now, obviously nobody wants a sex offender living next to them. But wouldn't it be a lot simpler and saner (and legaler) to simply increase the penalty for the crime? Don't rely on some after-market bolt-on to provide justice. Make the penalty for child molestation life in prison. Trust me, the public would support that!
This is just infuriating to me. If we want to increase the penalty for armed robbery, let's do it. That would be a lot simpler than passing some law which adds time to your sentence for possesion of a handgun while you commit your crime. (And you don't even have to use the handgun, or brandish it; simple possession, which is one of your Constitutional rights, will get you more time.)
No matter how many laws the legislature passes, there's still going to be crime. All this does is make more paperwork, more red tape, and more little options they have for throwing the book at you. We should eliminate these "enhancements" and simply modify the penalty to fit the crime rather than these back-door methods which can be used selectively and in discriminatory fashion.
Have you ever coded C or C++ in your life? :)
Does Hello World count?
I should have put the word "intern" in huge bold letters. What I was getting at -- an intern is not a veteran coder, and maybe shouldn't even be worried about the security context of apps (instead he should be focused on just writing functional code.) And the guy doing the code review is probably not a security expert. Unless Microsoft has a shitload of people who REALLY understand security and are going to walk through millions of lines of code, this is just "security theater" (with apologies to Bruce Schneier).
during several code reviews another intern was involved with, there would be "did you check parameters here? potential buffer overflow? what if this is NULL?"
Well, what if it was a potential buffer overflow? In such a piecemeal appraoch to programming, can the intern realistically be expected to know if there's a potential buffer overflow? How should he know how a NULL is handled? Isn't there an operating system that's supposed to do that stuff?
Where's that damn garbage collector???
Disclaimer: I am so far from a security expert that I get email with my real name in my fake email accounts. But what this sounds like is a security blanket, not security.
Security is very fucking hard. That's why I do tech support. Sometimes it's a chore but you can always just break out the ghost disks and wow theim with their "new" computer.
But I have nightmares where I write Win32 apps in FoxPro.
Hmm.... from the KB article
Currently, the only x86 processors that support No-Execute functionality are the AMD 32/64-bit Opteron and Athlon-64.
Since this doesn't affect Intel, this can't account for all the slow-downs people are expieriencing.
(Not that I bothered to read the article in Mobile PC.)
+5.00.2195 Obvious
You talk a lot for someone who can't be bothered to log in.