I think that "core system security" for MS here has a lot more to do with Live than whether someone can play a pirated game offline. The whole point of Live is so people can play without having to worry about people cheating (auto-aim bots, show-me-invisible-parts-of-the-map cheats, things like that). If people could play "modified" titles online, I think MS would consider that a core system security failure.
I wonder if anyone has ever successfully executed un-certified code that didn't ship on a game disc yet, online or offline...
If this technology is refined, it might work to allow a person to see a different thing with each of his eyes. This is what makes a stereo screen work without goggles. Of course it would only work for 1 person with everyone else getting just one side of the picture, unless you can have bands of left vs right eye, so there were several angles at which one could position his head relative to the screen, and still see different images.
The page has samples from dozens of different genres, so if you've ever wondered about the difference between goa and psy-trance, it'll help you figure it out too.
A friend of mine who used to work at ATI made a video shader demo that shows some neat video effects you can do in just a pixel shader -- i.e. render 1 rectangle that fills the screen with the video as your texture, and do all the "fun" stuff in a pixel shader. The ATI developer page that links to the binary is here.
If you look at the requirements for that demo, it wants a radeon 9500, which means that cards have bene powerful enough to do these things for years. I wouldn't be surprized if apple's video editing tools used the video card to composite scenes off-screen. Probably the same thing for newer versions of Premiere.
I'm sure we all remember this episode where some scientists did pretty much the same thing, except they used a "soliton wave", and the ship went at warp speed.
I think this episode underscores the dangers of this sort of technology -- the receiving planet, the test space-craft, and Alexander (Worf's son) almost got demolished!
Makes it unlawful for any person who is not the owner or authorized user (user) of a protected computer (a computer exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the U.S. Government, or a computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication) to engage in deceptive acts [etc etc]
I don't know about you, but my home machine isn't used exclusively by a financial institution or the US government.
The other option is using my computer for interstate commerce (buying stuff off the web, i guess qualifies) in order for spyware to be evil?
In particular, if you divide their bandwidth to the Internet
Who says people are accessing the internet for EVERYTHING? One real convenient reason to have incredibly fast on-campus internet is so you can VNC into, or mount shares on your dorm room computer from any machine on campus, and not have to deal with slow-down.
What about people who work with large data sets? I know this won't be a big thing for many undergrads, but it sure is nice to have a big pipe connecting your dorm room to your lab computer.
Sure, most of this bandwidth will go to illegal p2p to the internet, and maybe that will slow down (unlikely -- universities tend to have pretty nice internet uplinks), but that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate internal uses for it.
I didn't RTFA either, but i'm betting that the "3D" algorithm does nothing more than tell what's in the foreground vs what's in the background using optic flow, render the foreground stuff "closer", and render the background stuff "farther", with small holes filled in.
Frankly, I'd prefer if the cable company would just store all this stuff at THEIR end, dump all the broadcast channels, and use the bandwidth to feed the cable modem system so I can watch anything I want, whenever I want, without having to make copies at my end. I'll even pay extra so I don't have to watch commercials, and I'll be happy to tell the networks which shows I watch, when I watch them, and if I thought they sucked or not.
The cable company might be able to do this from a technological perspective, but there's no way the major networks will agree to allow people to pick what they want to watch and when. A major part of their strategy for earnings is based on when shows get aired. They'll probably sandwich a bad show between 2 good ones, just to keep people tuned in waiting for the good one, and watching their ads.
They are well aware that some people's thought process goes something like this: "Well, the show i really want to watch will be on in 10 minutes, so i'll just sit here waiting for it, even if i have to watch a few commercials."
Surely, it would be more convenient for viewers if they could just pay for the shows we want to watch, but then they'd all watch less junk on tv waiting for those shows to come on.
That's not a strategy they're going to let go of lightly (or at all).
We won't see that kind of selection for a long time for a new episode of the simpsons, for example. Old movies are a different matter, but they are not the major cash-cows for ABC, so they can afford to allow people more flexibility there.
This seems like they're just using a web browser the same way X programs use a remote display. Remember in the old days when everyone had a local machine that was relatively weak, and ran all their *real* applications (you know, besides, xclock) through the lan, on a computer hidden in a server closet somewhere? This sounds very similar, except they'll be using the web as an interface, instead of X-windows.
This might look like IBM is trying to get back some sales from Dell -- the machine sitting on a user's desk can be anything, but the server in the back room will be an IBM, worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Or will the web interface simply download a java application to the person's local machine?
Now all you need to get back at a professor you don't like is hack into the building's computer, and turn off the air conditioning in whatever room he goes into.
I'm sure you've all done this at one point or another -- you stand over the shoulder of a friend or co-worker, and tell him or her to go to a website that you are familiar with, and they are not. Then you say "Ok, click on 'specs' up in the corner.... no, the other corner... yes, that button... no, don't click below it - that's somethign else..." Same deal with e.g. getting someone to change an option in a program somewhere -- you gotta walk them through a series of mouse clicks or things to look for, and it's frustrating when they don't do it right away. (maybe i'm just an impatient jerk?)
The point here is when it's hard to instruct intelligent people how to browse the web, how well can a computer do it? I have my doubts.
Slashdot Mirror
http://content5.clipmarks.com/view_clip.aspx?guid=4905F106-063A-401C-8631-392E2E49652A
Here's a writeup on a tool someone wrote for this very purpose:
r ing_your_pcs_memory_usage_.php?print=1
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1430/monito
Many people just don't have the capacity.
I think that "core system security" for MS here has a lot more to do with Live than whether someone can play a pirated game offline. The whole point of Live is so people can play without having to worry about people cheating (auto-aim bots, show-me-invisible-parts-of-the-map cheats, things like that). If people could play "modified" titles online, I think MS would consider that a core system security failure.
I wonder if anyone has ever successfully executed un-certified code that didn't ship on a game disc yet, online or offline...
If you use the hosts file provided at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/, the dilbert page won't have any ads at all. Pretty sweet.
If this technology is refined, it might work to allow a person to see a different thing with each of his eyes. This is what makes a stereo screen work without goggles. Of course it would only work for 1 person with everyone else getting just one side of the picture, unless you can have bands of left vs right eye, so there were several angles at which one could position his head relative to the screen, and still see different images.
Oh, and twice the porn. *yay*
Ishkur's guide to electronic music recently added a funny but informative little section about the history of electronic music.
The page has samples from dozens of different genres, so if you've ever wondered about the difference between goa and psy-trance, it'll help you figure it out too.
Where are the little arrows that point which way one-way streets go? That's sort of an important piece of information to leave off...
A friend of mine who used to work at ATI made a video shader demo that shows some neat video effects you can do in just a pixel shader -- i.e. render 1 rectangle that fills the screen with the video as your texture, and do all the "fun" stuff in a pixel shader. The ATI developer page that links to the binary is here.
If you look at the requirements for that demo, it wants a radeon 9500, which means that cards have bene powerful enough to do these things for years. I wouldn't be surprized if apple's video editing tools used the video card to composite scenes off-screen. Probably the same thing for newer versions of Premiere.
http://www.ockels.nl/
someone who cares already has.
I'm sure we all remember this episode where some scientists did pretty much the same thing, except they used a "soliton wave", and the ship went at warp speed.
I think this episode underscores the dangers of this sort of technology -- the receiving planet, the test space-craft, and Alexander (Worf's son) almost got demolished!
From the summary of the first bill:
Makes it unlawful for any person who is not the owner or authorized user (user) of a protected computer (a computer exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the U.S. Government, or a computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication) to engage in deceptive acts [etc etc]
I don't know about you, but my home machine isn't used exclusively by a financial institution or the US government.
The other option is using my computer for interstate commerce (buying stuff off the web, i guess qualifies) in order for spyware to be evil?
I don't like it.
The first thing that popped into my mind when i saw that backpack:
DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS
In particular, if you divide their bandwidth to the Internet
Who says people are accessing the internet for EVERYTHING? One real convenient reason to have incredibly fast on-campus internet is so you can VNC into, or mount shares on your dorm room computer from any machine on campus, and not have to deal with slow-down.
What about people who work with large data sets? I know this won't be a big thing for many undergrads, but it sure is nice to have a big pipe connecting your dorm room to your lab computer.
Sure, most of this bandwidth will go to illegal p2p to the internet, and maybe that will slow down (unlikely -- universities tend to have pretty nice internet uplinks), but that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate internal uses for it.
And all you fools said that Hackers wasn't a realistic computer movie... Shows what you know!
I didn't RTFA either, but i'm betting that the "3D" algorithm does nothing more than tell what's in the foreground vs what's in the background using optic flow, render the foreground stuff "closer", and render the background stuff "farther", with small holes filled in.
Frankly, I'd prefer if the cable company would just store all this stuff at THEIR end, dump all the broadcast channels, and use the bandwidth to feed the cable modem system so I can watch anything I want, whenever I want, without having to make copies at my end. I'll even pay extra so I don't have to watch commercials, and I'll be happy to tell the networks which shows I watch, when I watch them, and if I thought they sucked or not.
The cable company might be able to do this from a technological perspective, but there's no way the major networks will agree to allow people to pick what they want to watch and when. A major part of their strategy for earnings is based on when shows get aired. They'll probably sandwich a bad show between 2 good ones, just to keep people tuned in waiting for the good one, and watching their ads.
They are well aware that some people's thought process goes something like this: "Well, the show i really want to watch will be on in 10 minutes, so i'll just sit here waiting for it, even if i have to watch a few commercials."
Surely, it would be more convenient for viewers if they could just pay for the shows we want to watch, but then they'd all watch less junk on tv waiting for those shows to come on.
That's not a strategy they're going to let go of lightly (or at all).
We won't see that kind of selection for a long time for a new episode of the simpsons, for example. Old movies are a different matter, but they are not the major cash-cows for ABC, so they can afford to allow people more flexibility there.
This seems like they're just using a web browser the same way X programs use a remote display. Remember in the old days when everyone had a local machine that was relatively weak, and ran all their *real* applications (you know, besides, xclock) through the lan, on a computer hidden in a server closet somewhere? This sounds very similar, except they'll be using the web as an interface, instead of X-windows.
This might look like IBM is trying to get back some sales from Dell -- the machine sitting on a user's desk can be anything, but the server in the back room will be an IBM, worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Or will the web interface simply download a java application to the person's local machine?
Now all you need to get back at a professor you don't like is hack into the building's computer, and turn off the air conditioning in whatever room he goes into.
Sweet revenge!
There's another great custom hosts file at someonewhocares.org/hosts. I use it everywhere, and it's wonderful.
I guess bash is in trouble...
In order for bookmarks to truly be reflexive, all sites you have bookmarked should have you bookmarked as well. Maybe in SOVIET RUSSIA?
I'm sure you've all done this at one point or another -- you stand over the shoulder of a friend or co-worker, and tell him or her to go to a website that you are familiar with, and they are not. Then you say "Ok, click on 'specs' up in the corner.... no, the other corner... yes, that button... no, don't click below it - that's somethign else..." Same deal with e.g. getting someone to change an option in a program somewhere -- you gotta walk them through a series of mouse clicks or things to look for, and it's frustrating when they don't do it right away. (maybe i'm just an impatient jerk?)
The point here is when it's hard to instruct intelligent people how to browse the web, how well can a computer do it? I have my doubts.
I'm already filtering ads at the TCP level with the hosts file at someonewhocares.org/hosts, as I'm sure are many others. Best thing in the world!