A person manages to evade the initial arrest for first-degree murder for 35 years and 30 seconds The murder was performed using sandpaper, but was the only crime committed. After the long period of time, the police finally manage to catch up with the murder (e.g. manage to finally connect an alias) Since it is a one-off, should we free the murder based on the time spent being productive to society? If so, are you willing to say the same if we take off one day? Will you hold your opinion as long as we keep shaving off days, even when it approaches evading arrest for just the 30 seconds?
Also, if the prison system is crowded, why not introduce capital punishment for murder (or "lesser" crimes if murder is already a capital offence)? Killing off criminals is a great way to make vacancies in the prisons, as well as providing an additional supply of food.
MMORPGs are becoming the downfall of PC gaming. Originally PC games - even the most expansive and open-ended titles - would last for 100-150 hours worth of gameplay. Citation? (Not that I don't believe you, but some of those expansive titles may last 100 hours for the wrong reason. Telengard, for example, had extra-long transition time between movements as it rendered the dungeon - and you couldn't short-circuit it properly with an emulator since it has a "auto-pass" timer. )
While I do feel that the older games may have that amount of playability, it can be distored by nostalgia - back then, you spent more time on a specific game since it was unlikely you had a large collection (unless you pirated), and you probably focused on a few specific ones. Now, you have a wider selection and could rapidly jump from one game to another, especially if it's a flash game.
Even so, there will always be PC games - it's a highly available platform for independant developers.
What's sad where I work is it's the helpdesk and desktop administrators that are the worst. We have Websense to block the inappropriate web sites. Speaking of blocked sites, instructions to perform a repair installation of Windows XP was blocked as "Computers/Internet". This page was used as a reference at least once for the helpdesk position that I work for.
The same filter at one time blocked troubleshooting resources on the Dell website - the filter reason was "Dell Allowed Sites". (At least this was fixed.)
While filters are required to prevent excessive bandwidth and distractions during work time, it should not prevent users from accessing resources essential for troubleshooting.
Over time, the list of 'modifiers' ('this game is a fighting game', 'this is an RPG', 'too short', 'too long', etc.) for a game's score would become standardized, as would the scores each reviewer assigns to each modifier. People reading those reviews could decide what value they wanted to assign to each modifier and so would be able to translate the scores from the reviewer's scale to their own. After being disappointed with games that were rated rather high, this was exactly what I contemplated - I identified specific flaws in games that were already released and see if other games reproduce these flaws. Here's a few examples based on various genres:
First Person Shooters (Doom-style): Hard to find flaws, but the most common one is slow weapon switching based on interface (e.g. in SiN, if you cycle into the Sniper Rifle by the wheel, you are disabled for ~2 seconds.) Various ways to fix this, best is to abort the current weapon transition as soon as it's obvious the player wasn't choosing that weapon.
Realtime Tactical Simulations: On completion of an order (e.g. some unit dies), units stop still in their tracks. (Correct behaviour is shown in Tiberian Sun - units keep move to the general location where the target died.)
Computer Run Adventure Programs (also known as CRPGs):You need massive amounts of grinding just to advance past one obstacle. Correct behaviour requires a smoother flow by not emulating the first edition of Dragon Warrior - although Moria/Angband family of roguelikes seems to be an exception.
Fighting games: "Unresponsive" controls. Usually this affects PC games where certain keypress patterns don't get recognized by the keyboard (e.g Ctrl+Left+Up registers as Left+Ctrl) but can also mean the game not recognizing actions when they should be valid (e.g. pressing jump one frame early prevents it from registering).
Puzzle games:No ability to track progress. Giving out passwords is minimally acceptable (especially in the console era), but modern games are expected to show which ones are completed (and how well they're completed as well.
This list doesn't cover the generics, where you don't make Easy this difficult.
The benefit of assuming perfect and stripping away points for known flaw patterns is that you can properly assess how well games stand up to others. It can also allow ratings to be "depreciated" in the same way that other assets do as new flaws get discovered. The disadvantage is that you need to have a lot of experience reviewing and playing games to know and recognize flaw patterns.
100% CPU for days on end will eventually warrant a call to the help desk stating that their computer is "too slow." Boinc System manager (used for Seti@Home type projects) sets the priority of it's 100% CPU tasks to "idle". Most applications won't react adversly to this, as any CPU resorces they need will preempt the background task. Some operating systems may also auto-adjust the priority of apps as well (or you can install custom software that does it for the OS.)
Password cracking software is the same - unless you need to squeeze CPU cycles, they run at a lower priority. While experienced users may still notice symptoms of a 100% CPU, such as a loud fan, it's not something that would easily be detected by unsuspecting users.
It also doesn't explain why you should believe in X. And not in Y, Z, or FSM. It doesn't have to. Just simply choose a form of agnostic theism - a god can exist, but you don't have to worry whether it's a Flying Spagetti Monster or a small microscopic teapot. Choosing this option also means you won't have to spend time kneecapping those that have a slightly different perception of their deity or supernatural world.
If I made a shooter MMOG, I'd constantly boot everyone with a ping time over 200 ms from the game, and that's being generous. If you constantly kick anyone with a ping of 200ms, might as well make it automated. The direct result is your server will auto-kick players whenever there's a higher-than-normal load. Don't say this won't happen - players were known to protest on MMOGs by going in large numbers to a specific place, which causes that area to experience significant latency. A spike of users playing at once may also cause this kind of problem.
Then everyone can download their porn in the background later and turn off their p2p programs and remove all their spyware and we can all live happily ever after. Configure your server to send out IP packets that Minimize delay, Maximize Reliability or Maximize Throughput. Problem solved, as any complient router/client would take those packets over whatever is downloading in the background (as Minimize Monetary cost). See the Tyoe of Service field for more information concerning this 1-byte field.
If a person has spyware, his system wouldn't be usable enough to connect to your server - and even if he was, it's to a degree where the server isn't going to rewind 2 seconds in order to handle a late instruction.
The first roguelike that I played to a significant degree was Angband. In particular, I liked the simplicity and interface as weel as it's speed - it was much faster than Moria (although to be fair, Amiga Moria was loaded from floppies instead of an HD) and seemed to be much cleaner and distinct. While a few features such as coloured messages disappeared, the dropped features had no impact on how long I played the game. I also made personal patches in order to improve playability (e.g. pseudo-squelch store items too expensive to purchase). Overall, Angband's playtime outlasted Moria's playtime.
When compared to story-based RPGs such as Final Fantasy, roguelikes tend to forget about the plot and go directly into the action. While this is a common trait of older RPGs on old systems, it works quite well for those who want to kill monsters at random.
While I did play Nethack and other roguelikes, it was Angband that got me hooked for a while.
Most 2D games are being produced by "independent" developers. You can find most of these games by going to various flash portal websites rather than looking in the local stores.
As an alternative to flash portals, you can subscribe to sites that specialize in looking for these style of games. I have indygamer.blogspot.com in a list of rotation sites I have - you can probably find others from that site as well.
Even though it's not technically 2D, IFComp07 just released a batch of short adventures. If Interactive Fiction has that level of activity, 2D games have it as well.
I had the same problem. Every time I wanted to rename something on the desktop I had to jump through hoops. Works for me. Perhaps the item on the desktop is in the "All Users" folder? Anything there requires Admin privilages to modify.
Every time I wanted to run some perfectly safe piece of software I had to give Vista special permission to run it. Only apps that require this would be:
Installers
Broken legacy applications that have no concept of proper storage locations (e.g. The Desolate Room - in this case, it tried writing a file to c:\)
Debuggers (e.g. MS Visual Studio)
System configuration utilities.
Vista also has a virtualization feature that allows some legacy applications to write files to their own directory (when it's really redirected elsewhere.) Those applications will have no idea that there's anything wrong and behave as normal.
If you need admin privilages for what should be simple, you may have a malformed security description table on your hard drive or user profile. You can correct them in Vista Business or Ultimate (perhaps Home Premium), but if you have Vista Basic, you are SOL unless you download a third-party utility to adjust these descriptors.
Well, if everyone has an aimbot, that simply changes the tactics one has to employ while playing, possibly producing whole new game styles... It probably would be boring for regular deathmatch. For each kill you make, you are expected to get killed yourself - almost rare where you get a narrow escape, as each player would have a powerful insta-kill attack. (With Quake though, client 1 would have the advantage, but that's another story.)
To make something like this work, it probably wouldn't resemble something like most first person shooters. There's only one way to find out if people will play it.
Further, the "expert witness" has been known to break into people's computers to look for evidence, once that happens how can you expect to be able to call anything they "find" on a computer to be valid? There is a difference between what is true, and what can be verified. Even if they have a special device that can remotely break into any computer (even if it is running MS-DOS), they can still claim that they found the information by connecting to the Kazaa client configured to share music and files by default.
Claims of hacking get thrown about frequently - for example, one scammer threatened to hack into someone's bank account because he was sent some dirty pictures: http://pen.iscentral.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=44 (SFW, although you don't want to follow the links in the chat transcript.) Because of these kinds of claims, you generally need some evidence to be taken seriously (e.g. identify how your computer was vulnerable, etc.)
The incident was in the XP-SP2 era, where computers by default have a minimalistic firewall that prevents worms from hopping from computer to computer. The only way to infect most client machines is through an obvious trojan horse, and if that was the case, your defense would be "I got hacked" rather than "the plaintiffs are hacking me!!!1!" (plus you'd have the file or trojan name to boot.)
The interviewed juror seemed to think spoofing was an unbelieveable claim just because he didn't know how ("we aren't stupid") The classic method of IP Address spoofing means that any attempt to contact the IP Address to obtain the list of files will go unanswered - at best, you merely find other servers that claim that a given IP Address has some content (which is advertising rather than making available). With TCP/IP, connections aren't possible to begin with - they won't go past SYN/ACK part of the message negotiation.
You don't need a technical education to know this - consider IP Address spoofing equivalent to mailing address spoofing. Communication goes one way, and the return messages fail to reach the source address.
If the protocols have magically changed overnight, I'm all ears on the newest procedure(s). Until then, don't be surprised if such hacking claims are unbelievable.
Unbundling won't happen - when sheeple buy a computer, they expect to have a fully functional thing that can surf the "Interweb" and "process a word", and "sheet a spread".
Case in point: I encountered an irate phone caller because the version of Microsoft Office with her mac was only a trial version. She didn't like this, and ended up filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in spite of the fact that the computer in question clearly stated that it came with a trial version.
Unbundling on that scale will not and cannot happen.
The problem here is that it's impossible to show that you didn't mail yourself an empty envelope only to fill it days, weeks, months, or years later with content. The "federal datestamp" only shows when the envelope was mailed; not when it was filled. Send the envelope under "registered mail", since registered mail requires the envelope to be securely sealed at the time it was mailed. If it isn't sealed properly (i.e. can reopen the envelope without damaging it), it isn't registered.
This looks like an anti-virus advert (or a close variation thereof.)
In my history of major computer usage, I had three "infections" that I had experience with. Of these three, I do admit I was a little foolish with one of them, but they have all been purged entirely. The anti-virus or anti-spyware only served as a reactive approach, and weren't effective in preventing the software from entering in the first place (in spite of the AV software displaying a warning that a program was infected.)
The only way to prevent virus infection - don't blindingly auto-execute whatever enters your system, and don't blindingly allow changes to the startup configuration.
At what point were you convinced otherwise? The flower with anime-scale knockers, the implied bee/flower sex with same, or was it the great mighty poo? The initial bar scene with the drunk squirrel looked okay, as did the rest of the introduction level. After that, there was a long string of bleeped profanity.
What he wants is MS and Best Buy to not sell it to anyone under 18. As a parent, I can respect that. Halo is rated 'M' for Mature - this age group, if you interpret it as a strict guideline, allows children aged 17-years to play the game. If you instead follow the fulltext of the Esrb rating guide which says "Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older", it still allows 17-year-old children to play the game (and possibly younger children since the ESRB guideline doesn't say that children udner 17 should not play the game.)
As a parent, you shouldn't respect such an enforcement, as it overrides the rating accepted by society and the industry. If there is a dispute over the accurracy of the rating, there is a venue for that - you can ask Rockstar for more information on their involvement with these disputes.
I'll bite and go one step further... Ratings systems are for lazy parents. Conker's Bad Fur Day "looks" like a standard "furry-style" cartoon similar to other games from Rareware. If the ESRB rating (or similar informal rating) is not present, the parents will have no idea that the game will contain scatological humour, strings of profanity, and other questionable content unless you see enough of the game being played. (A quick glance of the game won't do it - you risk missing the scenes in question, or may be instead impressed by the surfboard race.)
That game does display the message "For mature audiences only" when it starts up, but I thought they were kidding.
I stopped editing wikipedia due to some extremely biased, shrill, and bludgeon-you-with-the-rules (claim you were violating the rules when you weren't) editors. Recently, there was an anonymous editor on the Mousepad article that was accusing regular editors under similar reasoning - in particular, making claims of pushing conjecture and plagiarism. When that editor was asked to provide a citation behind those claims, he merely made a list of pages he disagreed with rather than providing the information requested (even after being given a clarification.) As of this moment, both the article and talk page are semi-protected to prevent disruption.
The rules were followed closely in this case, as these were very serious accusations - if you received credit for an invention, you don't want others bringing up unfounded accusations against you, hence the rationale for the [[WP:BLP]] policy.
I can't comment specifically on your situation, but if you need to go against the status quo or make a claim that everyone disagrees with, you need to be prepared to provide strong and legitimate arguments in favour of your content. This depends on what is being added, but mainstream articles are usually a good thing to use.
Now, as for your change in lifestyle comment... I dont know about you, but if I was getting bad grades, and playing video games, I can guarantee you my parents would insist on a change in my lifestyle... (1) no games, That will not resolve the issue at hand. If a student "learns" an incorrect way to do math (e.g. thinks 7 + 3 = 73, or comes up with a bizarre and incorrect method to calculate the dot product), you want a tutor or some other method of learning. Not providing this is no different than asking Sisyphus to roll a boulder up a steep hill.
My marks suffered because I cannot write poetry (aside from cheating by writing prose, shaping the paragraph, and claiming it as a "modern poem".) To this date, no tactic I tried work - either I lack the innate ability to do so, or I was never taught any techniques in constructing poems. As a result, increasing the number of hours spent in attempting to write a real poem is increasing the number of hours that would otherwise be better spent working at McDonalds, or at least keeping up with what's going on in the world.
Would you rather that, or a kid that wasnt motivated to do well in school who then complains the rest of his life that all he can be is a janitor? In the North American education system, students are mostly taught by age groups rather than by experience or skill. This results in students that have already mastered course content being required to study what they already know - creating a dilemma between learning and get a bad mark, and drudging and getting a good mark. The smarter students get punished because their bad mark does not resemble their ability in a subject.
In most RPG games, you don't get level 99 characters by stomping on rats (or if you do, it will take an extra long time). Likewise, you don't progress in school if you constantly study things below your level.
For this guy to take such a stand, takes guts Of course it takes guts. You don't need them on the Internet, since you don't have to worry about your real-life reputation being tarnished. In this case, the guy completely ignores reality and assumes that games are only for people who get a high number on a piece of paper.
The thing about that is that you usually have more than one person/entity looking at said code and might just point it out to the rest of the world. And that is exactly why the described backdoor will never be detected. The source code will look perfectly fine, and because of that, nobody will suspect that the binaries are tainting the other binaries as they are compiling.
The only way to detect the backdoor is to manually disassemble the binary and look at the assembly instructions. For added fun, you can't "use" gdb, as the concept virus also includes a section of code that hides the infected functions from the user. Of course, nobody would look at the binary file if the source looks clean unless they suspect there is an issue (by then, it's too late.)
The Windows Update software is at least as much a part of Windows as Internet Explorer. Correct. If Windows Update gets waxed, it has the same effect on your operating system if Interent Explorer gets waxed. You can still play around with the computer that's relatively "stable", in the same way you can browse the internet using Firefox.
If windows update gets damaged, you can run system restore to try and recover it. Alternativly, use the Windows Vista CD and run a repair installation to restore damaged files (although you'll need to redownload some updates.)
...and why didn't it just tell you that it needed an update ? It doesn't do that if it is turned off, since it isn't running. Likewise, printers don't say they need paper if they are turned off.
So basically what I do know now is that Microsoft is unable to develop a backward compatible update service ?...and I'm suppose to trust a company like that ? The Windows Update website, as you know, is a frequently accessed server - to a degree where a byte saved per connection causes significant savings in both access time and bandwidth usage.
When the client is updated, it gains the ability to more intelligently handle communication with Microsoft. This can be something as simple as not requesting information about updated being downloaded, or adding multicast support for the downloads (which saved a lot of bandwidth). In either case, you don't want legacy clients slowing down the rest of the people updating.
Likewise, if the Bittorrent protocol implements multicast support, you don't want the non-multicast clients slowing down the network by only sending one packet to one client at a time.
Does anyone doubt that MS has engineered Vista with non-removable backdoors at least for their own use? Anyone want a tinfoil hat?
As you know, it's easy to compile a backdoor into the open-source "login" app for Linux. It's also easy to have compile GCC so that it automatically compiles in the backdoor, while still being possible to compile the backdoor generator into GCC - and you won't be able to avoid such backdoors unless you use an entirely purified work envrionment (i.e. don't use external binaries.)
A properly designed counter-worm would not actively seek out targets. Instead, it would patch the system and wait for an infected system to contact it, where it would then spread to that infected system. This design of counter-worm is ineffective against worms that also patch the system against the vulnerability in question. While I don't know any names, such a design isn't far fetched.
The only way to counter such a worm is to perform active scanning, even if it floods the networks. Of course, a gray hat designer would prefer a flooded network over a botnet - per minimal collateral damage guidelines.
As of right now, the link points to the Metroid Prime 3 comic rather than the lair comic. This took me a while to figure out what was going on.
I eventually found a review site at http://ps3.ign.com/articles/817/817117p3.html - it states clearly why the reviewer doesn't like the game. While the user reviews are slightly higher, it doesn't change the fact that the game wasn't that well received (with the people who voted.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'll play devil's advocate here...
A person manages to evade the initial arrest for first-degree murder for 35 years and 30 seconds The murder was performed using sandpaper, but was the only crime committed. After the long period of time, the police finally manage to catch up with the murder (e.g. manage to finally connect an alias) Since it is a one-off, should we free the murder based on the time spent being productive to society? If so, are you willing to say the same if we take off one day? Will you hold your opinion as long as we keep shaving off days, even when it approaches evading arrest for just the 30 seconds?
Also, if the prison system is crowded, why not introduce capital punishment for murder (or "lesser" crimes if murder is already a capital offence)? Killing off criminals is a great way to make vacancies in the prisons, as well as providing an additional supply of food.
While I do feel that the older games may have that amount of playability, it can be distored by nostalgia - back then, you spent more time on a specific game since it was unlikely you had a large collection (unless you pirated), and you probably focused on a few specific ones. Now, you have a wider selection and could rapidly jump from one game to another, especially if it's a flash game.
Even so, there will always be PC games - it's a highly available platform for independant developers.
The same filter at one time blocked troubleshooting resources on the Dell website - the filter reason was "Dell Allowed Sites". (At least this was fixed.)
While filters are required to prevent excessive bandwidth and distractions during work time, it should not prevent users from accessing resources essential for troubleshooting.
This list doesn't cover the generics, where you don't make Easy this difficult.
The benefit of assuming perfect and stripping away points for known flaw patterns is that you can properly assess how well games stand up to others. It can also allow ratings to be "depreciated" in the same way that other assets do as new flaws get discovered. The disadvantage is that you need to have a lot of experience reviewing and playing games to know and recognize flaw patterns.
Password cracking software is the same - unless you need to squeeze CPU cycles, they run at a lower priority. While experienced users may still notice symptoms of a 100% CPU, such as a loud fan, it's not something that would easily be detected by unsuspecting users.
If a person has spyware, his system wouldn't be usable enough to connect to your server - and even if he was, it's to a degree where the server isn't going to rewind 2 seconds in order to handle a late instruction.
The first roguelike that I played to a significant degree was Angband. In particular, I liked the simplicity and interface as weel as it's speed - it was much faster than Moria (although to be fair, Amiga Moria was loaded from floppies instead of an HD) and seemed to be much cleaner and distinct. While a few features such as coloured messages disappeared, the dropped features had no impact on how long I played the game. I also made personal patches in order to improve playability (e.g. pseudo-squelch store items too expensive to purchase). Overall, Angband's playtime outlasted Moria's playtime.
When compared to story-based RPGs such as Final Fantasy, roguelikes tend to forget about the plot and go directly into the action. While this is a common trait of older RPGs on old systems, it works quite well for those who want to kill monsters at random.
While I did play Nethack and other roguelikes, it was Angband that got me hooked for a while.
Most 2D games are being produced by "independent" developers. You can find most of these games by going to various flash portal websites rather than looking in the local stores.
As an alternative to flash portals, you can subscribe to sites that specialize in looking for these style of games. I have indygamer.blogspot.com in a list of rotation sites I have - you can probably find others from that site as well.
Even though it's not technically 2D, IFComp07 just released a batch of short adventures. If Interactive Fiction has that level of activity, 2D games have it as well.
Vista also has a virtualization feature that allows some legacy applications to write files to their own directory (when it's really redirected elsewhere.) Those applications will have no idea that there's anything wrong and behave as normal.
If you need admin privilages for what should be simple, you may have a malformed security description table on your hard drive or user profile. You can correct them in Vista Business or Ultimate (perhaps Home Premium), but if you have Vista Basic, you are SOL unless you download a third-party utility to adjust these descriptors.
To make something like this work, it probably wouldn't resemble something like most first person shooters. There's only one way to find out if people will play it.
Claims of hacking get thrown about frequently - for example, one scammer threatened to hack into someone's bank account because he was sent some dirty pictures: http://pen.iscentral.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=44 (SFW, although you don't want to follow the links in the chat transcript.) Because of these kinds of claims, you generally need some evidence to be taken seriously (e.g. identify how your computer was vulnerable, etc.)
The incident was in the XP-SP2 era, where computers by default have a minimalistic firewall that prevents worms from hopping from computer to computer. The only way to infect most client machines is through an obvious trojan horse, and if that was the case, your defense would be "I got hacked" rather than "the plaintiffs are hacking me!!!1!" (plus you'd have the file or trojan name to boot.) The interviewed juror seemed to think spoofing was an unbelieveable claim just because he didn't know how ("we aren't stupid") The classic method of IP Address spoofing means that any attempt to contact the IP Address to obtain the list of files will go unanswered - at best, you merely find other servers that claim that a given IP Address has some content (which is advertising rather than making available). With TCP/IP, connections aren't possible to begin with - they won't go past SYN/ACK part of the message negotiation.
You don't need a technical education to know this - consider IP Address spoofing equivalent to mailing address spoofing. Communication goes one way, and the return messages fail to reach the source address.
If the protocols have magically changed overnight, I'm all ears on the newest procedure(s). Until then, don't be surprised if such hacking claims are unbelievable.
Unbundling won't happen - when sheeple buy a computer, they expect to have a fully functional thing that can surf the "Interweb" and "process a word", and "sheet a spread".
Case in point: I encountered an irate phone caller because the version of Microsoft Office with her mac was only a trial version. She didn't like this, and ended up filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau in spite of the fact that the computer in question clearly stated that it came with a trial version.
Unbundling on that scale will not and cannot happen.
See http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm300/503.htm#2_4_6
This looks like an anti-virus advert (or a close variation thereof.)
In my history of major computer usage, I had three "infections" that I had experience with. Of these three, I do admit I was a little foolish with one of them, but they have all been purged entirely. The anti-virus or anti-spyware only served as a reactive approach, and weren't effective in preventing the software from entering in the first place (in spite of the AV software displaying a warning that a program was infected.)
The only way to prevent virus infection - don't blindingly auto-execute whatever enters your system, and don't blindingly allow changes to the startup configuration.
As a parent, you shouldn't respect such an enforcement, as it overrides the rating accepted by society and the industry. If there is a dispute over the accurracy of the rating, there is a venue for that - you can ask Rockstar for more information on their involvement with these disputes.
Ratings systems are for lazy parents. Conker's Bad Fur Day "looks" like a standard "furry-style" cartoon similar to other games from Rareware. If the ESRB rating (or similar informal rating) is not present, the parents will have no idea that the game will contain scatological humour, strings of profanity, and other questionable content unless you see enough of the game being played. (A quick glance of the game won't do it - you risk missing the scenes in question, or may be instead impressed by the surfboard race.)
That game does display the message "For mature audiences only" when it starts up, but I thought they were kidding.
The rules were followed closely in this case, as these were very serious accusations - if you received credit for an invention, you don't want others bringing up unfounded accusations against you, hence the rationale for the [[WP:BLP]] policy.
I can't comment specifically on your situation, but if you need to go against the status quo or make a claim that everyone disagrees with, you need to be prepared to provide strong and legitimate arguments in favour of your content. This depends on what is being added, but mainstream articles are usually a good thing to use.
My marks suffered because I cannot write poetry (aside from cheating by writing prose, shaping the paragraph, and claiming it as a "modern poem".) To this date, no tactic I tried work - either I lack the innate ability to do so, or I was never taught any techniques in constructing poems. As a result, increasing the number of hours spent in attempting to write a real poem is increasing the number of hours that would otherwise be better spent working at McDonalds, or at least keeping up with what's going on in the world. Would you rather that, or a kid that wasnt motivated to do well in school who then complains the rest of his life that all he can be is a janitor? In the North American education system, students are mostly taught by age groups rather than by experience or skill. This results in students that have already mastered course content being required to study what they already know - creating a dilemma between learning and get a bad mark, and drudging and getting a good mark. The smarter students get punished because their bad mark does not resemble their ability in a subject.
In most RPG games, you don't get level 99 characters by stomping on rats (or if you do, it will take an extra long time). Likewise, you don't progress in school if you constantly study things below your level. For this guy to take such a stand, takes guts Of course it takes guts. You don't need them on the Internet, since you don't have to worry about your real-life reputation being tarnished. In this case, the guy completely ignores reality and assumes that games are only for people who get a high number on a piece of paper.
The only way to detect the backdoor is to manually disassemble the binary and look at the assembly instructions. For added fun, you can't "use" gdb, as the concept virus also includes a section of code that hides the infected functions from the user. Of course, nobody would look at the binary file if the source looks clean unless they suspect there is an issue (by then, it's too late.)
If windows update gets damaged, you can run system restore to try and recover it. Alternativly, use the Windows Vista CD and run a repair installation to restore damaged files (although you'll need to redownload some updates.)
...and why didn't it just tell you that it needed an update ? It doesn't do that if it is turned off, since it isn't running. Likewise, printers don't say they need paper if they are turned off. So basically what I do know now is that Microsoft is unable to develop a backward compatible update service ?When the client is updated, it gains the ability to more intelligently handle communication with Microsoft. This can be something as simple as not requesting information about updated being downloaded, or adding multicast support for the downloads (which saved a lot of bandwidth). In either case, you don't want legacy clients slowing down the rest of the people updating.
Likewise, if the Bittorrent protocol implements multicast support, you don't want the non-multicast clients slowing down the network by only sending one packet to one client at a time.
As you know, it's easy to compile a backdoor into the open-source "login" app for Linux. It's also easy to have compile GCC so that it automatically compiles in the backdoor, while still being possible to compile the backdoor generator into GCC - and you won't be able to avoid such backdoors unless you use an entirely purified work envrionment (i.e. don't use external binaries.)
The only way to counter such a worm is to perform active scanning, even if it floods the networks. Of course, a gray hat designer would prefer a flooded network over a botnet - per minimal collateral damage guidelines.
As of right now, the link points to the Metroid Prime 3 comic rather than the lair comic. This took me a while to figure out what was going on.
I eventually found a review site at http://ps3.ign.com/articles/817/817117p3.html - it states clearly why the reviewer doesn't like the game. While the user reviews are slightly higher, it doesn't change the fact that the game wasn't that well received (with the people who voted.)