Right. And I thought maybe they were normalized to fit in the 0-1 range, so that the formula would give 0.0 for the worst game, and 1.0 for the best game. But this does not work, because the sum of all coeficients is 0.928, not 1:
Watch out for that -0.1 in the equation when trying to calculate the highest value. If you assign a 1.0 to the "g" factor, you bring the total down rather than up. In actual fact, the maximum sum of coefficients is 1.028, which implies that some games can be better than perfect without being perfect in each aspect. (This, of couse assumes that the individual coefficients are multiplied by a value between 0 and 1.)
But it doesn't matter anyway - there's arguments on how that formula was obtained, and on the weighting of the factors leading up to the "pfg result".
I was wondering...is there any argument FOR e-voting, from a pro-technology, pro-democracy standpoint?
There is: It's called a proper implementation. The various arguments condemning E-voting that appear all around are simplistic "four legs good, too legs baa-aa-aa-ad" style of arguments that ignore successful implementations.
For example, the city of Ottawa recently held elections using E-Voting, without any of the problems that get mentioned with E-voting: You are given a scanatron card where you fill in bubbles with your scanner. After making your choice, you place the ballot in a privacy sleeve and put it into the scanatron. The vote gets tallied and a paper trail remains in case an audit is needed.
The only "irregularity" is that the three terrible candidates (sorry, no names) on the list got over 1000 votes. I could understand one reaching this value as being a fluke, but all three indicates something is wrong - It indicates that 2% of the voting population is either anti-bilingual, wacked with strange delusions, or a white supremesist (and yes, this inference is based in publically available information about those candidates.)
Combine it perhaps with a bar code scanner so that every individual can have a street bar code. Add a few simple checks like no more bar codes are counted for a paricular street than were issued.
Remember folks: Vote early, Vote often. Get as many street bar codes as possible. Prevent the opposing party from doing the same.
And also, collect the names of the dissentors for the democratic country of <insert generic dictatorship here>
As for the open source/free software issue. Perhaps the solution is that the requirements for the system should be published so that anyone can right something to conform.
That's not required for an optical scanner system. Besides, why would you want to audit the source code when you can get an accurrate count by reading each individual ballot?
(3)... A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.
As eBay has many Atari 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, etc. systems listed, is anything really *not available*?
The fact of whether or not these computers are not available is a moot point. If you read the passage closely, you would notice the word "or", meaning that it allows at least one of the two options (no longer in production, or no longer available.)
Similarly, is a program that was introduced on 5 1/4" floppies, and then taken off the market, considered a "format no longer manufactured"?
Here's a question for you: Are 5 1/4" floppies being manufactured? If not, then why are you worried about such a format still being produced?
If people use the official MSN messenger client, their is advertising in it that makes them money to offset the cost of running the servers.
What advertising?
I'n running MSN 4.7.2009 right now, Copyright 1997-2002 Microsoft Corporation - I see no ads whatsoever. Not only that, but there isn't any ad placeholders.
(Hmmm... this looks like something to add to my "Stuff" CD-RW - a lightweight official MSN client that doesn't display ads. )
The bandwidth cost is negligible. The real cost is time and effort wasted wading through spam trying to find your real mail.
Wrong. The real cost to the user is having messages bounced from your primary e-mail/webmail account because your mailbox is filled spam, including the various 140KB worms.
The real cost is also the fact that CyberSitter blocks access to your entire mailbox, just because it contains the word "<censored>". (Why wouldn't it? It's from the same company that blocks random sites such as http://www.peacefire.org/)
And that's not including the real cost assigned to ISPs...
Really security through obscurity is so obsolete it ain't even a good joke anymore.
Why must this sort of stuff be classified under "Security through obscurity"? As the name implies, it is *ONLY* a method of keeping a product secure by not allowing the users to see any exploits in the software.
Security through not releasing the source is a different story. It works by drastically increasing the difficulty of how users can make changes to the client of a product.
While security through not releasing the source doesn't always work (even Punkbuster can be circumvented), it works a hell of a lot better then giving the full client source code to every user on the planet. As an example, look at how easy to write an Aimbot for Quake 1/2 - determine what the server sends the client, calculate the most likely path to hit the target, and fire a rocket.
As of right now, there is no effective anti-cheat system that can detect this sort of stuff without nailing any legitimate players. While there is anti-cheat software, the aimbot can be written to fit just within the thresholds of the software just to avoid detection.
any (non-browser) program that opens a URL thorugh the OS, be it the start menu, should OPEN UP A NEW FRICKIN' BROWSER WINDOW rather than highjacking an existing one.
Actually, it's the browser that makes that decision. If you find that these third party applications hose whatever background content you were holding regardless of the available, you might want to switch browsers.
I can tell you how to fix that in IE: Goto Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced. Look for an item called "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts". Uncheck it.
Sorry, binary packages DO NOT tell you what a software program is doing with your personal information or property.
And neither do source code packages.
As you can see from the link below, it is quite possible to write a program that produces its own soruce code as output. From here, you can leapfrog into a program that produces a small piece of code that adds a backdoor into Login when it detects it being compiled, as well as compile the backdoor into the compiler when the compiler is being compiled.
30 fps is just *not enough* to have good action and feel on most pc first person shooters.
I've played Project IGI (the first one), which had a smooth gameplay compared to some of the more modern FPS. It wasn't perfectly smooth, but it's was hard to detect any significant jumps between frames.
I was suprised that it ran at 30FPS - constantly. There wasn't even a loading delay between indoor and outdoor areas. It was even smoother than D1X running at 30FPS.
11. The user shall have the right to view the source code on demand.
While that option is helpful (especially for software from vendors that can't program properly), I would prefer that it should not be a "right".
Take the large array of online video games, for example. The good thing about keeping the source code closed is that it helps prevent cheaters. Naturally, cheats still appear, but they are either easy to detect or have problems of their own (e.g. a batch of Aim-bots for UT2003 had trojan horses included with them.)
As soon as the source code appears, you see a boom of cheaters playing around. They will die off eventually, but they last long enough to kill the game for most players.
If you want to know what a program is doing, there are utilities that can help you out. In any case, a binary package is good enough for most users that want to know what is going on.
Nice thought but no one would ever adhere to these 'rights'. Its not profitable for commercial software vendors and open source vendors usually dont care or are too lazy to invest time and resources into making sure that these 'rights' are followed.
Are you sure?
Following rule 1 is mandatory if you are including non-standard terms. GPL doesn't apply, as it is an optional component.
Following rule 2 is mandatory to a limited extent. While everyone should be aware of a defect, information on how to exploit it doesn't need to be revealed. Take a look at how Microsoft handles it right now - they have a dedicated Knowledge Base containing almost every "issue" with their produces.
Following rule 3 is mandatory. Failing to obey it is equal to false advertising - also known as lawsuit bait. Take "The Sims Online" as an example: nobody has filed a lawsuit, but it is considered a high risk for the publisher...
Following rule 4 is also mandatory, but is excusable in some cases. For example, Half-Life sends the CD-key to a central server which prevents piracy, but that's it.
Following rule 7 is mandatory, period. In most countries, judges would consider this term appearing in a boilerplate contract to be increadibly ludacrous and unenforcable (unless the publisher gives the customer money or something else in exchange...)
Out of the l0 rules posted in the link, the manufaturer is bound to honor five of them anyway. Of these five rules, the cost of following them is either neglegable, or lower than the cost of breaking them (loss through litigation, loss of opportunity sales, or loss from returned products.)
The remaining five rules are optional as they can vary from country to country. But just like the mandatory rules shown above, it would cost more for the publisher to break these rules than to obey them.
Once you put a CD drive on a Windows computer, it no longer is red book class C2 certified. The obvious reason is that you can boot from a CD.
Which is a moot point - the counter is to configure the Bios to prevent booting from the CD, in the same way to prevent booting from a floppy. Combined with a Bios password (which is required to prevent the attacker from getting full control over your computer. )
There's always the danger that a disgruntled employee could plant a cracked version of the software on a company computer.
That is where logging systems come into play.
When you install any form of logging software, the date and time of the installation is recorded. Get the information of the person logged in at the time, and you instantly identify the disgruntled employee.
From here, state that the employee was not acting with legitimate authority of the company, and is solely responsible for the pirated software. If the BSA desides to continue to sue your company, ask your lawyer to either dismiss the case, or redirect it to the employee.
A properly prepared company should have no problem defending against accusations of piracy, especially if the employee is a disgruntled saboteur.
*** 'By clicking on this agreement, the user enters a legal obligation to pay us whatever amount that we chose to charge for whatever reason that we can think of.' ***
That line wasn't in the English section of the EUL? Tough Titty! You clicked - You agreed - You entered a legal agreement -- You now owe!
Do you mean misrepresenting terms of a contract? It's considered very unlawful in the more civilized countries.
Not only that, but it is false advertising. The hidden cost of extra payments was not clearly stated - rather it was simply placed on the shelf as a $19.99 product.
Any competent lawyer can counter that statement. Besides, an "illegible" contract isn't much help for a company, especially of the user doesn't understand the language.
This doesn't even cover buffer overruns > 64K -- man, that's weak.
Last time I checked, Basic always implemented a form of bounds checking - including the Microsoft QBasic that was distributed with MS-DOS.
Depending on the type of overflow, the error message is either "String too Long" or "Subscript out of range". The only way a buffer overflow can occurr is if the program uses pokes into memory to store a buffer - which this "web server" does not do.
well, the license(ip-rights license sco is selling) basically says they're just fu***d if something like that happens, they don't get money back but the sco can still audit them at will & etc.
If the "Fortune 500" company smartened up and replaced its lawyers, they can suddenly declare the alleged "license" to be null and void as the promised IP was never delivered in the first place (i.e. SCO was claiming to own unknown code falsly).
This strongly depends on the exact laws governing the company, as well as other laws in the state.
I strongly doubt it will happen, since a company buckling into that sort of extorsion is probably too dumb to research basic laws.
Like advanced server 2k3: Try to shut down the machine, windows prompts you for a reason why you are shutting down the machine: reason: F**k you! I dont need to give a reason! Should the machine shut down 'improperly', Windows prompts you to enter a reason for why it crashed after it reboots! Like I have a clue why it crashed! And you can't shut down or log in until a reason is entered! I guess this stuff is logged somewhere, but shit, make it freaking optional.
By default, that feature is enabled because a computer restart is not a normal day-to-day operation for a high-end server. A true professional would want to keep track of such shutdowns in a log, as a large quantity of restarts indicates instability within the computer.
Naturally, the solution to the problem is found in the first search result of Google. Run "gpedit.msc", open "Administrative Templates", and select the appropriate policy from the "System" folder.
(BGI was a pain in the ass; everybody wrote their own graphics lib instead.)
Aside from the fact that you needed a seperate BGI driver for each video card mode (VESA wasn't included and had to be found seperatly), what was wrong with BGI? I admit that it was a bit difficult at first, but I never encountered any problems caused by a lack of understanding nor found it excessivly hard to use.
I only written my own personal graphics library because the programming book that I was using preferred the Microsoft C compiter and created a graphics library of its own. (I might also add that there were flaws in the book as well - used processor cycle delays instead of real-time delays. This caused some demos to render at 1 Frame Per Minute.)
Besides, the complexity of BGI is neglegable compared to programming a Windows application in C. Trust me on this one - I've used both.
The tracer will report you to your ISP. It's serious if you are on a certain knee-jerk ISP, but some others simply ignore those reports. In very rare instances, a tracer may retaliate with an attack of his own.
Note that certain attacks are much more resistant to these attacks. (e.g. SYN flooding with spoofed IPs)
4) In the C&C plotline, GDI "played" along with NOD's propoganda campaign to lull them into a false sense of security. Shepard was busy performing that task.
9) Red Alert (which is actually a prequel) has Kane as an advisor to Stalin. This plotline was dropped entirly due to a later decision to make Red Alert 2 (where Kane doesn't exist at all anymore.)
1) Playing a single game in short increments over a long period of time grows old fast. Any sort of plot continuity is lost in one's head. The game feels tired.
Although I agree with your statement, there is a minor problem with your reasoning.
Personally, I either remember plot continuity over a long period of time or forget it within 5 minutes. For example, I can play one mission/day and not lose track of the plotline. This is accomplished through saving at the beginning of the mission and reviewing the prologue/briefing/situation upon a reload. However, in the case of Warcraft III, I forgot what "Frostborne" was between two missions played within a short period of time. (Probably would have forgotten it anyway...)
There are a few games (such as the Civilization series) that are effectivly stripped of any plotline, are infinitly replayable as demonstrated by webpages (which may be defunct by now) containing lists of challenges to do when you are bored. Of course, I can't really believe some of these challenges: getting a 350% civilization rating, or building a spaceship while the time is still in 10 year increments, world conquest using the weakest units possible, etc.
Red Alert was ATROCIOUS for this. It was 100% tank rush. With 30 tanks, no base in the world is defendable.
Actually, there is a defence for the Allied forces - AT Mine Layers. One AT mine layer can place 5 Anti-Tank mines that will destroy (or severly damage) any tank that drives over it. These mines can be reloaded at a service depot. It needs micromanagement, but it is effective enough when combined with other units to force my tank rush to withdrawl.
There is no counter to this except to micromanage your tank rush to shoot at every single square on the suspected mine field (or using infantry, which easily get killed anyway). This can be quite cumbersome for any player.
If you want to practice using the AT mine layer, try a skirmish against any Soviet forces (which have much more powerful tanks per credit.) You might not get a cataclysmic victory, but at least the enemies will be cut down to a reasonable size.
Oh that's easy then; this company just rates everyone else negative from its IP range. It might not work over the long term, but it could mess things up in the short term.
This is a non-issue for systems that are created correctly.
There are numerous meta-moderation tactics that can detect abuse in this fashion. While they are not all infalliable, they make it much easier to detect the nodes that are producing noise in both content and moderation. The most basic of these methods is to check the ratings that the client given along with the ratings the client received, and adjusting the weight of the ratings based on this information.
Alternativly, use customizable client-side filters. Those have no problem with any form of abuse.
Slashdot Mirror
What gives you that false impression?
Take a look at this page describing the actual causes of WWII before the US officially became involved.
Watch out for that -0.1 in the equation when trying to calculate the highest value. If you assign a 1.0 to the "g" factor, you bring the total down rather than up. In actual fact, the maximum sum of coefficients is 1.028, which implies that some games can be better than perfect without being perfect in each aspect. (This, of couse assumes that the individual coefficients are multiplied by a value between 0 and 1.)
But it doesn't matter anyway - there's arguments on how that formula was obtained, and on the weighting of the factors leading up to the "pfg result".
For example, the city of Ottawa recently held elections using E-Voting, without any of the problems that get mentioned with E-voting: You are given a scanatron card where you fill in bubbles with your scanner. After making your choice, you place the ballot in a privacy sleeve and put it into the scanatron. The vote gets tallied and a paper trail remains in case an audit is needed.
The only "irregularity" is that the three terrible candidates (sorry, no names) on the list got over 1000 votes. I could understand one reaching this value as being a fluke, but all three indicates something is wrong - It indicates that 2% of the voting population is either anti-bilingual, wacked with strange delusions, or a white supremesist (and yes, this inference is based in publically available information about those candidates.)
And also, collect the names of the dissentors for the democratic country of <insert generic dictatorship here>
That's not required for an optical scanner system. Besides, why would you want to audit the source code when you can get an accurrate count by reading each individual ballot?
What advertising?
I'n running MSN 4.7.2009 right now, Copyright 1997-2002 Microsoft Corporation - I see no ads whatsoever. Not only that, but there isn't any ad placeholders.
(Hmmm... this looks like something to add to my "Stuff" CD-RW - a lightweight official MSN client that doesn't display ads. )
The real cost is also the fact that CyberSitter blocks access to your entire mailbox, just because it contains the word "<censored>". (Why wouldn't it? It's from the same company that blocks random sites such as http://www.peacefire.org/)
And that's not including the real cost assigned to ISPs...
Why must this sort of stuff be classified under "Security through obscurity"? As the name implies, it is *ONLY* a method of keeping a product secure by not allowing the users to see any exploits in the software.
Security through not releasing the source is a different story. It works by drastically increasing the difficulty of how users can make changes to the client of a product.
While security through not releasing the source doesn't always work (even Punkbuster can be circumvented), it works a hell of a lot better then giving the full client source code to every user on the planet. As an example, look at how easy to write an Aimbot for Quake 1/2 - determine what the server sends the client, calculate the most likely path to hit the target, and fire a rocket.
As of right now, there is no effective anti-cheat system that can detect this sort of stuff without nailing any legitimate players. While there is anti-cheat software, the aimbot can be written to fit just within the thresholds of the software just to avoid detection.
I can tell you how to fix that in IE: Goto Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced. Look for an item called "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts". Uncheck it.
As you can see from the link below, it is quite possible to write a program that produces its own soruce code as output. From here, you can leapfrog into a program that produces a small piece of code that adds a backdoor into Login when it detects it being compiled, as well as compile the backdoor into the compiler when the compiler is being compiled.
Reflections on Trusting Trust
I've played Project IGI (the first one), which had a smooth gameplay compared to some of the more modern FPS. It wasn't perfectly smooth, but it's was hard to detect any significant jumps between frames.
I was suprised that it ran at 30FPS - constantly. There wasn't even a loading delay between indoor and outdoor areas. It was even smoother than D1X running at 30FPS.
Take the large array of online video games, for example. The good thing about keeping the source code closed is that it helps prevent cheaters. Naturally, cheats still appear, but they are either easy to detect or have problems of their own (e.g. a batch of Aim-bots for UT2003 had trojan horses included with them.)
As soon as the source code appears, you see a boom of cheaters playing around. They will die off eventually, but they last long enough to kill the game for most players.
If you want to know what a program is doing, there are utilities that can help you out. In any case, a binary package is good enough for most users that want to know what is going on.
Following rule 1 is mandatory if you are including non-standard terms. GPL doesn't apply, as it is an optional component.
Following rule 2 is mandatory to a limited extent. While everyone should be aware of a defect, information on how to exploit it doesn't need to be revealed. Take a look at how Microsoft handles it right now - they have a dedicated Knowledge Base containing almost every "issue" with their produces.
Following rule 3 is mandatory. Failing to obey it is equal to false advertising - also known as lawsuit bait. Take "The Sims Online" as an example: nobody has filed a lawsuit, but it is considered a high risk for the publisher...
Following rule 4 is also mandatory, but is excusable in some cases. For example, Half-Life sends the CD-key to a central server which prevents piracy, but that's it.
Following rule 7 is mandatory, period. In most countries, judges would consider this term appearing in a boilerplate contract to be increadibly ludacrous and unenforcable (unless the publisher gives the customer money or something else in exchange...)
Out of the l0 rules posted in the link, the manufaturer is bound to honor five of them anyway. Of these five rules, the cost of following them is either neglegable, or lower than the cost of breaking them (loss through litigation, loss of opportunity sales, or loss from returned products.)
The remaining five rules are optional as they can vary from country to country. But just like the mandatory rules shown above, it would cost more for the publisher to break these rules than to obey them.
Which is a moot point - the counter is to configure the Bios to prevent booting from the CD, in the same way to prevent booting from a floppy. Combined with a Bios password (which is required to prevent the attacker from getting full control over your computer. )
That is where logging systems come into play.
When you install any form of logging software, the date and time of the installation is recorded. Get the information of the person logged in at the time, and you instantly identify the disgruntled employee.
From here, state that the employee was not acting with legitimate authority of the company, and is solely responsible for the pirated software. If the BSA desides to continue to sue your company, ask your lawyer to either dismiss the case, or redirect it to the employee.
A properly prepared company should have no problem defending against accusations of piracy, especially if the employee is a disgruntled saboteur.
Do you mean misrepresenting terms of a contract? It's considered very unlawful in the more civilized countries.
Not only that, but it is false advertising. The hidden cost of extra payments was not clearly stated - rather it was simply placed on the shelf as a $19.99 product.
Any competent lawyer can counter that statement. Besides, an "illegible" contract isn't much help for a company, especially of the user doesn't understand the language.
Last time I checked, Basic always implemented a form of bounds checking - including the Microsoft QBasic that was distributed with MS-DOS.
Depending on the type of overflow, the error message is either "String too Long" or "Subscript out of range". The only way a buffer overflow can occurr is if the program uses pokes into memory to store a buffer - which this "web server" does not do.
If the "Fortune 500" company smartened up and replaced its lawyers, they can suddenly declare the alleged "license" to be null and void as the promised IP was never delivered in the first place (i.e. SCO was claiming to own unknown code falsly).
This strongly depends on the exact laws governing the company, as well as other laws in the state.
I strongly doubt it will happen, since a company buckling into that sort of extorsion is probably too dumb to research basic laws.
By default, that feature is enabled because a computer restart is not a normal day-to-day operation for a high-end server. A true professional would want to keep track of such shutdowns in a log, as a large quantity of restarts indicates instability within the computer.
Naturally, the solution to the problem is found in the first search result of Google. Run "gpedit.msc", open "Administrative Templates", and select the appropriate policy from the "System" folder.
Aside from the fact that you needed a seperate BGI driver for each video card mode (VESA wasn't included and had to be found seperatly), what was wrong with BGI? I admit that it was a bit difficult at first, but I never encountered any problems caused by a lack of understanding nor found it excessivly hard to use.
I only written my own personal graphics library because the programming book that I was using preferred the Microsoft C compiter and created a graphics library of its own. (I might also add that there were flaws in the book as well - used processor cycle delays instead of real-time delays. This caused some demos to render at 1 Frame Per Minute.)
Besides, the complexity of BGI is neglegable compared to programming a Windows application in C. Trust me on this one - I've used both.
Note that certain attacks are much more resistant to these attacks. (e.g. SYN flooding with spoofed IPs)
A few things:
4) In the C&C plotline, GDI "played" along with NOD's propoganda campaign to lull them into a false sense of security. Shepard was busy performing that task.
9) Red Alert (which is actually a prequel) has Kane as an advisor to Stalin. This plotline was dropped entirly due to a later decision to make Red Alert 2 (where Kane doesn't exist at all anymore.)
Personally, I either remember plot continuity over a long period of time or forget it within 5 minutes. For example, I can play one mission/day and not lose track of the plotline. This is accomplished through saving at the beginning of the mission and reviewing the prologue/briefing/situation upon a reload. However, in the case of Warcraft III, I forgot what "Frostborne" was between two missions played within a short period of time. (Probably would have forgotten it anyway...)
There are a few games (such as the Civilization series) that are effectivly stripped of any plotline, are infinitly replayable as demonstrated by webpages (which may be defunct by now) containing lists of challenges to do when you are bored. Of course, I can't really believe some of these challenges: getting a 350% civilization rating, or building a spaceship while the time is still in 10 year increments, world conquest using the weakest units possible, etc.
There is no counter to this except to micromanage your tank rush to shoot at every single square on the suspected mine field (or using infantry, which easily get killed anyway). This can be quite cumbersome for any player.
If you want to practice using the AT mine layer, try a skirmish against any Soviet forces (which have much more powerful tanks per credit.) You might not get a cataclysmic victory, but at least the enemies will be cut down to a reasonable size.
There are numerous meta-moderation tactics that can detect abuse in this fashion. While they are not all infalliable, they make it much easier to detect the nodes that are producing noise in both content and moderation. The most basic of these methods is to check the ratings that the client given along with the ratings the client received, and adjusting the weight of the ratings based on this information.
Alternativly, use customizable client-side filters. Those have no problem with any form of abuse.