There seems to be a lot of interest in He3. I do wonder if some break through in Fusion happened but HE is required for it. Wouldn't getting it HE3 from tritium decay be cheaper? I don't know but we will have to see.
I would say that under estimating Russian tech is really a big mistake. They have had free access to Western sources now for many years. They spent decades doing more with less and now have access to a lot of US high tech.
"Uh, yeah, except it is a reactor. If they want to emphasize how safe it is, that's great, but renaming products to get rid of words people don't like is just dumb. "Digital Consumer Enablement," anyone?" Welcome to the world of spin. Of course they change the name. I have gotten into this conversation time and time again with Greens. When you mention Nuclear power they say what about all the people that got cancer from 3 mile island. Except the best studies available show no raise in cancers around that area. Then they mention Chernobyl. Of course they fail to mention that Chernobyl is a totally different design than the is used in the west and it lacked a containment building. Heck look at this.
"Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello says. "Of course, factoring in enough cronyism, corruption and official ignorance and boosterism, it's possible the principals could make some money during the initial stages, before the crows come home to roost." Look at the name. Gee it looks like it must be connected with Las Alamos... Who the heck is Greg Mello? " Gregory Mello(Secretary, Executive Director), is one of the founders of the Los Alamos Study Group. Greg has worked as a transportation planner, natural foods manufacturing entrepreneur, high school teacher, hazardous waste investigator, and contaminant hydrologist." So why should anyone care more about this guys opinion than their barbers? Yes we live in a world full of spin.
My guess is that they will look for a site near a river. The water in the river well tend to always be on the cold side. The key is that there is probably a lot of cheap power from "stranded" natural gas near the site and the land is really cheap. I have heard that Siberia has a lot of tech. My guess is that Siberia was the USSRs New Mexico. A remote place full of high tech.
"The problem with that logic (as with any anecdotal evidence) is sampling bias." As is the problem with questionable analytical evidence. When you actually observe data that goes counter to what the analytical data says you should investigate why. In this case I would say the analytical data is probably flawed or biased. You are right in that we may just not be coming in contact with this vast supply of Zune owners. That is why I asked has ANYONE observed Zunes making any real head way in the market. So far all I get is some numbers supplied with out any proof or even disclosure of the methods used to gather them. What is worse is that data goes totally counter to my observations. So until I get some data about who and where these Zune buyers are I would have to say that data looks very skewed.
"anecdotes aren't worth the paper they're printed on," You see I think that statement is just wrong. We are talking about market and mind share. I trust observational data at this point more than the "analytical" data that might be slanted. Besides is anything more worthless than "Microsoft has more than 10% of the market but in ten years they will dominate it." Has anybody ever observed a group of people outside of Microsoft employees where the Zune and even a 25% market share?
It is called observational data. I must admit that my sample is very small. Maybe 10,000 or so. I should mention that not a single customer of ours has hasked for any support for the Zune. They have asked for support for the iPod. I have also never seen any friends of mine outside of work with a Zune. I have only ever seen one car company support the Zune and that is Ford which partnered with Microsoft on there new Sync voice control package... Did I mention that the Sync supports the iPod? So there is no car company that support the Zune over the iPod. I would say there are many times the accessories for the iPod than the Zune. I would say that Microsoft's 10% market share is probably just a little slanted. It is really simple. What they did is judged market share based on comperalbe models and not on product line. They simple tossed out all the flash based ipods. They didn't count Nanos and Shuffles. They really don't compete with the Zune in Microsoft's eyes. So Microsoft took 10% of the harddrive based music player market. Now they have some flash players so now they will probably not count the iPhones. You can twist the percentages if you know what your are doing. The biggest clue that the Zune just isn't doing all that well. They have popped up on Woot more than once. Microsoft may turn it around. I really hope they don't since they seem to love DRM but they might. Right now the Zune is an also ran. When your biggest competitor has more than 7 times your market share you are not doing well sport.
Well I have to say that I don't think they are selling lots of them. I work at a software development firm. We develop Windows software. How many Zunes owners do we have? None. We have many iPod users though. When normal people speak about media players they don't call them media players. They call them iPods. Heck the Zune has added support for "Podcasts". The new Sync from Ford and Microsoft supports the iPod as well as the Zune... I think it is the only car stereo that offers Zune integration but I guess that is the least Microsoft could do since they made it.
The Zune right now is an also ran even with a HUGE amount of money and marketing behind it.
I use P2P to download Linux ISOs and a bunch of other FOSS software. So unless he is willing to host every ISO and a SUPER fast server for free he can take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut. Oh and Comcast must stop advertising Internet Access. Internet Access is more than just going to websites.
"Since any attempts to legislate a ban on selling M-rated games to minors have been deemed unconstitutional, I say so what." When has this been tested in court? Oh and don't worry the OMG protect the children people will make gaming stores lives so complicated that they may stop selling M rated games all together. They will just sue the stores. Get local politions to pass laws that the stores will then have to take to court... The stores better police themselves oreelse things will be ugly.
You see frost is not a problem for me. Here in FL we don't have a lot of constant wind, and for grid storage... Well we are flat so not good places for hydro storage and even then hydro storage has the same ecological impact as hydro power. Compressed air tends to use mines for storage so that will not work in Florida. So that leaves hydrogen which is some what useful. Like I said I am for spreading it out. The good thing about solar here is that our biggest power draw is AC when it is hot the sun is shining. Like I said no one solution.
The one big problem with Wind and solar is that you not throttle them. If you need more power you and the wind isn't blowing your out of luck. Batteries just suck in general so storage is a problem. Then I am not so sure that wind power is as zero impact as eveyone thinks. I remember when Hydro was considered the ultimate in eco friendly power. What happens when you start sucking millions of gigawatts of power out of the wind systems? What about the local effects. I would guess that they will be too tiny to measure but I have no proof. I am a bigger fan of solar roofs and nuclear than Wind but then I live in South Florida so Solar seems so much more logical here than wind. Oh and nuclear? Well I do have it in my backyard. I am much happier with a nice clean and safe nuclear plant then any fossil fuel plant. As I said there isn't any one answer.
"My friend, if you don't think wind farms are the answer, you're not educated enough on renewable energy. " No wind farms are not the answer. They maybe part of the answer but not the answer. Hydro, Solar, Nuclear, and yes even hydrocarbons are the answer for now. No one technology is THE answer. If you think so you are deluding yourself.
So who which writer was the model rocket fan? I loved the reference to teh Cherokee D in Marroned. Also if you could could give the MS3K treatment to any move which movie would it be? My vote would go to the original Star Trek movie.
But VNC works with anything. I don't think it supports audio but then for remote access I don't need or want the overhead of audio. Third party software? Since when is that a problem? I mean really? It is free and in the repository so I count it as included. Amanda will do many kinds of backups and again support Mac, Windows, Linux, and many other OSs.
Take a look at the what Openfiler supports. # Powerful block storage virtualization
* Full iSCSI target support, with support for virtual iSCSI targets for optimal division of storage
* Extensive volume and physical storage management support
* Support for large block devices
* Full software RAID management support
* Support for multiple volume groups for optimal storage allocation
* Online volume size and overlying filesystem expansion
* Point-in-time snapshots support with scheduling
* Volume usage reporting
* Synchronous / asynchronous volume migration & replication (manual setup necessary currently)
* iSCSI initiator (manual setup necessary currently)
# Extensive share management features
* Support for multiple shares per volume
* Multi-level share directory tree
* Multi-group based access control on a per-share basis
* Multi-host/network based access control on a per-share basis
* Per-share service activation (NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, FTP with read/write controls)
* Support for auto-created SMB home directories
* Support for SMB/CIFS "shadow copy" feature for snapshot volumes
* Support for public/guest shares
# Accounts management
* Authentication using Pluggable Authentication Modules, configured from the web-interface
* NIS, LDAP, Hesiod, Active Directory (native and mixed modes), NT4 domain controller
* Guest/public account support
# Quota / resource allocation
* Per-volume group-quota management for space and files
* Per-volume user-quota management for space and files
* Per-volume guest-quota management for space and files
* User and group templates support for quota allocation
# Other features
* UPS management support
* Built-in SSH client Java applet
# Full industry-standard protocol suite
* CIFS/SMB support for Microsoft Windows-based clients
* NFSv3 support for all UNIX clients with support for ACL protocol extensions
* NFSv4 support (testing)
* FTP support
* WebDAV and HTTP 1.1 support
I am sure that WHS is a solid product but there are many free solutions that will provide more bang for the buck. In this case I would say it is very hard to beat free. And if this is over kill for your needs then just use FreeNAS. Or any one of the dozens of small home NAS solutions that already run Linux.
WHS seems very limited to me. But maybe it has good support for the MAC and I just don't know it.
A Mazda 3 can be had for well under 20k A Ford Fusion for around 24k. 30K is about aveage for a big car or medium to small SUV. I think the average car price is probably around $23k give or take.
Well Amanda will do will do incremental backups, Media server? Since I don't have an XBox I just use a samba share. Remote access point? Well there is always VNC. I haven't messed with microsoft home server but what are the hardware requirements for it. Over all I have to say Openfiler offers more bang for the buck than Windows Home server. And yes I know my time is worth something but I have spent many an hour installing Windows. Modern Linux installs are just as simple and sometimes more so. On big advantage is you can always download the latest version of the install for a Linux distro so drivers tend to be less of a problem than with Windows.
And it really wasn't needed. Right now I have no less then three devices that can play DVDs hooked up to my TV. AA, PS2, a DVD changer, and an HD-DVD player I just got. If the Wii could play DVDs I think I would use as much as I use my PS2 to play DVDs.
Well This was code I wrote myself about 11 years ago I needed a message base and a downloads area for updates and I needed it password protected and different levels of access. So I wrote in perl and mysql in 1996. Now as why? Well if you knew how many people can not even find the lost password link you wouldn't ask. Our site isn't Slashdot. It is for our paying customers to get updates to our software and ask questions. If they can not get on right now it is the end of the world for them. It is MUCH safer to have the passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes and today I wouldn't do any other way. Eleven years ago I didn't have the experience I have now in security. My security actually worked pretty well for the threat level it faced. Now there was this other site that had the worst security EVER. No need to hack the site. If someone emailed you a link to a message on the message base you could just follow it and have total access. They locked the door but didn't build any walls.
You can find some pretty good real PATA RAID cards on ebay for a lot less. The fake raid cards are not too bad. Just use them as SATA controllers and use the Linux software raid.
The Linux $200 Linux box plus FreeNAS or OpenFiler would work just fine. When I looked at the board it had two IDE and SATA ports You could use the IDEs for the CD and the a boot drive then use the SATA ports for a software raid. It should work just fine. You could also use a USB drive to boot from if you use FreeNAS. Openfiler will give you an enterprise grade solution. FreeNAS would work just fine and dandy for a home solution. Heck with Openfiler you could add a 1000-base-T card and a Giga-E switch and make a SAN.
If you have an old P3 or Athlon sitting around those would works just fine as well. If you have a case and Power supply you might want to take a look at this board http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001# For $500 depending on what old hardware you have laying around you could build pretty nice NAS.
I used to store user passwords in plain text on my website. Before anyone gets all bent. I assigned passwords to the users and didn't let them change them. They where AOL style passwords things like blue#guppy. Also there wasn't any personal info that mattered tied to the password. It was a small site and worked well. They couldn't use one password for this simple message base and there bank account, they couldn't use stupid passwords like their first name, and I could look them up if they forget or for testing. When I moved to a CMS we went to hashed passwords. Boy is it a pain. Nobody understands that even I can not look at their passwords. Yes a salted hash is the correct and secure way to do things... But it can be a pain in the rear.
Actually I really don't think the first study would solve the issue. The lack of controls with the after school program would the number one issue. You might prove that violent video games do not cause people without violent tendencies to become violent. I think that is almost a given. Your study would tend to give skewed results on a number of ways. One extreme acts of violence are very rare to start with. How would count the acts of violence? What would be an act of violence? Would you rank the severity of the violence or would you only rank acts that where considered crimes? My experience of being a child was that truly violent acts didn't tend to be caught. The playing around and rough housing did and got punished. Next you have the outside of the study influences. When the kids go home would they play violent video games or watch violent movies. Even with massive numbers the lack of control on this part of it would make the study suspect. Finally you have the influence of the parents. Since this would probably be a voluntary study the parents of children that started to have behavioral problems would hopefully intervene. I think the problem is way to complex for any one study to find the answer. Dropping the scientific theory for just a moment I know that I fined extremely violent images disturbing to me. They tend to be even more disturbing to my wife. My upbringing was not sheltered yet I know that images do have an effect on me. I know that driving a formula Malibu car tended to make me a more aggressive and intense driver for about half an hour after the race. Of course that is a sample of one and self observation so yes it proves nothing.
Take a look at combat solders. We know that exposure to combat often has a profound effect on people. As games get more an more immersive and are played by children could they have a similar effect?
I think and interesting study would be to look at the physiological impact of simulation. Record the vitals of pilots and tank crews In combat and then compare them to crews in simulators. Does simulation cause the same kind of effects as the real thing? If so what would the effect of several hours of simulated violence be on a young person?
Slashdot Mirror
There seems to be a lot of interest in He3. I do wonder if some break through in Fusion happened but HE is required for it.
Wouldn't getting it HE3 from tritium decay be cheaper? I don't know but we will have to see.
I would say that under estimating Russian tech is really a big mistake.
They have had free access to Western sources now for many years. They spent decades doing more with less and now have access to a lot of US high tech.
"Uh, yeah, except it is a reactor. If they want to emphasize how safe it is, that's great, but renaming products to get rid of words people don't like is just dumb. "Digital Consumer Enablement," anyone?"
Welcome to the world of spin.
Of course they change the name. I have gotten into this conversation time and time again with Greens.
When you mention Nuclear power they say what about all the people that got cancer from 3 mile island. Except the best studies available show no raise in cancers around that area.
Then they mention Chernobyl. Of course they fail to mention that Chernobyl is a totally different design than the is used in the west and it lacked a containment building.
Heck look at this.
"Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello says. "Of course, factoring in enough cronyism, corruption and official ignorance and boosterism, it's possible the principals could make some money during the initial stages, before the crows come home to roost."
Look at the name. Gee it looks like it must be connected with Las Alamos... Who the heck is Greg Mello?
" Gregory Mello(Secretary, Executive Director), is one of the founders of the Los Alamos Study Group. Greg has worked as a transportation planner, natural foods manufacturing entrepreneur, high school teacher, hazardous waste investigator, and contaminant hydrologist." So why should anyone care more about this guys opinion than their barbers?
Yes we live in a world full of spin.
My guess is that they will look for a site near a river. The water in the river well tend to always be on the cold side. The key is that there is probably a lot of cheap power from "stranded" natural gas near the site and the land is really cheap.
I have heard that Siberia has a lot of tech. My guess is that Siberia was the USSRs New Mexico. A remote place full of high tech.
"The problem with that logic (as with any anecdotal evidence) is sampling bias."
As is the problem with questionable analytical evidence. When you actually observe data that goes counter to what the analytical data says you should investigate why. In this case I would say the analytical data is probably flawed or biased.
You are right in that we may just not be coming in contact with this vast supply of Zune owners. That is why I asked has ANYONE observed Zunes making any real head way in the market. So far all I get is some numbers supplied with out any proof or even disclosure of the methods used to gather them. What is worse is that data goes totally counter to my observations. So until I get some data about who and where these Zune buyers are I would have to say that data looks very skewed.
"anecdotes aren't worth the paper they're printed on,"
You see I think that statement is just wrong. We are talking about market and mind share. I trust observational data at this point more than the "analytical" data that might be slanted. Besides is anything more worthless than "Microsoft has more than 10% of the market but in ten years they will dominate it."
Has anybody ever observed a group of people outside of Microsoft employees where the Zune and even a 25% market share?
It is called observational data. I must admit that my sample is very small. Maybe 10,000 or so. I should mention that not a single customer of ours has hasked for any support for the Zune. They have asked for support for the iPod. I have also never seen any friends of mine outside of work with a Zune. I have only ever seen one car company support the Zune and that is Ford which partnered with Microsoft on there new Sync voice control package... Did I mention that the Sync supports the iPod? So there is no car company that support the Zune over the iPod. I would say there are many times the accessories for the iPod than the Zune.
I would say that Microsoft's 10% market share is probably just a little slanted.
It is really simple. What they did is judged market share based on comperalbe models and not on product line.
They simple tossed out all the flash based ipods. They didn't count Nanos and Shuffles. They really don't compete with the Zune in Microsoft's eyes. So Microsoft took 10% of the harddrive based music player market. Now they have some flash players so now they will probably not count the iPhones.
You can twist the percentages if you know what your are doing.
The biggest clue that the Zune just isn't doing all that well. They have popped up on Woot more than once.
Microsoft may turn it around. I really hope they don't since they seem to love DRM but they might. Right now the Zune is an also ran.
When your biggest competitor has more than 7 times your market share you are not doing well sport.
Well I have to say that I don't think they are selling lots of them. I work at a software development firm. We develop Windows software. How many Zunes owners do we have? None.
We have many iPod users though. When normal people speak about media players they don't call them media players. They call them iPods.
Heck the Zune has added support for "Podcasts".
The new Sync from Ford and Microsoft supports the iPod as well as the Zune... I think it is the only car stereo that offers Zune integration but I guess that is the least Microsoft could do since they made it.
The Zune right now is an also ran even with a HUGE amount of money and marketing behind it.
I use P2P to download Linux ISOs and a bunch of other FOSS software.
So unless he is willing to host every ISO and a SUPER fast server for free he can take a flying leap at a rolling doughnut.
Oh and Comcast must stop advertising Internet Access. Internet Access is more than just going to websites.
"Since any attempts to legislate a ban on selling M-rated games to minors have been deemed unconstitutional, I say so what."
When has this been tested in court?
Oh and don't worry the OMG protect the children people will make gaming stores lives so complicated that they may stop selling M rated games all together.
They will just sue the stores. Get local politions to pass laws that the stores will then have to take to court...
The stores better police themselves oreelse things will be ugly.
You see frost is not a problem for me. Here in FL we don't have a lot of constant wind, and for grid storage... Well we are flat so not good places for hydro storage and even then hydro storage has the same ecological impact as hydro power. Compressed air tends to use mines for storage so that will not work in Florida. So that leaves hydrogen which is some what useful.
Like I said I am for spreading it out. The good thing about solar here is that our biggest power draw is AC when it is hot the sun is shining.
Like I said no one solution.
The one big problem with Wind and solar is that you not throttle them. If you need more power you and the wind isn't blowing your out of luck. Batteries just suck in general so storage is a problem. Then I am not so sure that wind power is as zero impact as eveyone thinks. I remember when Hydro was considered the ultimate in eco friendly power. What happens when you start sucking millions of gigawatts of power out of the wind systems? What about the local effects. I would guess that they will be too tiny to measure but I have no proof.
I am a bigger fan of solar roofs and nuclear than Wind but then I live in South Florida so Solar seems so much more logical here than wind. Oh and nuclear? Well I do have it in my backyard. I am much happier with a nice clean and safe nuclear plant then any fossil fuel plant.
As I said there isn't any one answer.
"My friend, if you don't think wind farms are the answer, you're not educated enough on renewable energy. "
No wind farms are not the answer.
They maybe part of the answer but not the answer. Hydro, Solar, Nuclear, and yes even hydrocarbons are the answer for now.
No one technology is THE answer. If you think so you are deluding yourself.
So who which writer was the model rocket fan? I loved the reference to teh Cherokee D in Marroned.
Also if you could could give the MS3K treatment to any move which movie would it be?
My vote would go to the original Star Trek movie.
But VNC works with anything. I don't think it supports audio but then for remote access I don't need or want the overhead of audio.
Third party software? Since when is that a problem? I mean really? It is free and in the repository so I count it as included.
Amanda will do many kinds of backups and again support Mac, Windows, Linux, and many other OSs.
Take a look at the what Openfiler supports.
# Powerful block storage virtualization
* Full iSCSI target support, with support for virtual iSCSI targets for optimal division of storage
* Extensive volume and physical storage management support
* Support for large block devices
* Full software RAID management support
* Support for multiple volume groups for optimal storage allocation
* Online volume size and overlying filesystem expansion
* Point-in-time snapshots support with scheduling
* Volume usage reporting
* Synchronous / asynchronous volume migration & replication (manual setup necessary currently)
* iSCSI initiator (manual setup necessary currently)
# Extensive share management features
* Support for multiple shares per volume
* Multi-level share directory tree
* Multi-group based access control on a per-share basis
* Multi-host/network based access control on a per-share basis
* Per-share service activation (NFS, SMB/CIFS, HTTP/WebDAV, FTP with read/write controls)
* Support for auto-created SMB home directories
* Support for SMB/CIFS "shadow copy" feature for snapshot volumes
* Support for public/guest shares
# Accounts management
* Authentication using Pluggable Authentication Modules, configured from the web-interface
* NIS, LDAP, Hesiod, Active Directory (native and mixed modes), NT4 domain controller
* Guest/public account support
# Quota / resource allocation
* Per-volume group-quota management for space and files
* Per-volume user-quota management for space and files
* Per-volume guest-quota management for space and files
* User and group templates support for quota allocation
# Other features
* UPS management support
* Built-in SSH client Java applet
# Full industry-standard protocol suite
* CIFS/SMB support for Microsoft Windows-based clients
* NFSv3 support for all UNIX clients with support for ACL protocol extensions
* NFSv4 support (testing)
* FTP support
* WebDAV and HTTP 1.1 support
I am sure that WHS is a solid product but there are many free solutions that will provide more bang for the buck.
In this case I would say it is very hard to beat free.
And if this is over kill for your needs then just use FreeNAS.
Or any one of the dozens of small home NAS solutions that already run Linux.
WHS seems very limited to me. But maybe it has good support for the MAC and I just don't know it.
A Mazda 3 can be had for well under 20k A Ford Fusion for around 24k. 30K is about aveage for a big car or medium to small SUV.
I think the average car price is probably around $23k give or take.
Well Amanda will do will do incremental backups,
Media server? Since I don't have an XBox I just use a samba share.
Remote access point? Well there is always VNC.
I haven't messed with microsoft home server but what are the hardware requirements for it.
Over all I have to say Openfiler offers more bang for the buck than Windows Home server. And yes I know my time is worth something but I have spent many an hour installing Windows. Modern Linux installs are just as simple and sometimes more so.
On big advantage is you can always download the latest version of the install for a Linux distro so drivers tend to be less of a problem than with Windows.
I would say that a wired or bluetooth headset would be the way to go even for the iPhone.
And it really wasn't needed. Right now I have no less then three devices that can play DVDs hooked up to my TV. AA, PS2, a DVD changer, and an HD-DVD player I just got. If the Wii could play DVDs I think I would use as much as I use my PS2 to play DVDs.
Well This was code I wrote myself about 11 years ago I needed a message base and a downloads area for updates and I needed it password protected and different levels of access. So I wrote in perl and mysql in 1996.
Now as why?
Well if you knew how many people can not even find the lost password link you wouldn't ask. Our site isn't Slashdot. It is for our paying customers to get updates to our software and ask questions. If they can not get on right now it is the end of the world for them.
It is MUCH safer to have the passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes and today I wouldn't do any other way. Eleven years ago I didn't have the experience I have now in security. My security actually worked pretty well for the threat level it faced.
Now there was this other site that had the worst security EVER. No need to hack the site. If someone emailed you a link to a message on the message base you could just follow it and have total access. They locked the door but didn't build any walls.
You can find some pretty good real PATA RAID cards on ebay for a lot less.
The fake raid cards are not too bad. Just use them as SATA controllers and use the Linux software raid.
The Linux $200 Linux box plus FreeNAS or OpenFiler would work just fine.
When I looked at the board it had two IDE and SATA ports You could use the IDEs for the CD and the a boot drive then use the SATA ports for a software raid.
It should work just fine. You could also use a USB drive to boot from if you use FreeNAS.
Openfiler will give you an enterprise grade solution. FreeNAS would work just fine and dandy for a home solution.
Heck with Openfiler you could add a 1000-base-T card and a Giga-E switch and make a SAN.
If you have an old P3 or Athlon sitting around those would works just fine as well. If you have a case and Power supply you might want to take a look at this board http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001#
For $500 depending on what old hardware you have laying around you could build pretty nice NAS.
So have you written or called your rep about? When voting are you going to look at their voting record on VA funding?
I used to store user passwords in plain text on my website. Before anyone gets all bent. I assigned passwords to the users and didn't let them change them. They where AOL style passwords things like blue#guppy. Also there wasn't any personal info that mattered tied to the password. It was a small site and worked well. They couldn't use one password for this simple message base and there bank account, they couldn't use stupid passwords like their first name, and I could look them up if they forget or for testing.
When I moved to a CMS we went to hashed passwords.
Boy is it a pain. Nobody understands that even I can not look at their passwords. Yes a salted hash is the correct and secure way to do things... But it can be a pain in the rear.
Actually I really don't think the first study would solve the issue. The lack of controls with the after school program would the number one issue.
You might prove that violent video games do not cause people without violent tendencies to become violent. I think that is almost a given.
Your study would tend to give skewed results on a number of ways. One extreme acts of violence are very rare to start with. How would count the acts of violence? What would be an act of violence? Would you rank the severity of the violence or would you only rank acts that where considered crimes?
My experience of being a child was that truly violent acts didn't tend to be caught. The playing around and rough housing did and got punished.
Next you have the outside of the study influences. When the kids go home would they play violent video games or watch violent movies. Even with massive numbers the lack of control on this part of it would make the study suspect.
Finally you have the influence of the parents. Since this would probably be a voluntary study the parents of children that started to have behavioral problems would hopefully intervene.
I think the problem is way to complex for any one study to find the answer.
Dropping the scientific theory for just a moment I know that I fined extremely violent images disturbing to me. They tend to be even more disturbing to my wife. My upbringing was not sheltered yet I know that images do have an effect on me. I know that driving a formula Malibu car tended to make me a more aggressive and intense driver for about half an hour after the race. Of course that is a sample of one and self observation so yes it proves nothing.
Take a look at combat solders. We know that exposure to combat often has a profound effect on people. As games get more an more immersive and are played by children could they have a similar effect?
I think and interesting study would be to look at the physiological impact of simulation. Record the vitals of pilots and tank crews In combat and then compare them to crews in simulators. Does simulation cause the same kind of effects as the real thing? If so what would the effect of several hours of simulated violence be on a young person?