Email is typically a message sent via the smtp protocol over port 25. How exactly would they tax this? Honor system? Filters at every isp? Filters on the backbone? Do they even know what they're asking?
And nothing says I can't encapsulate my email message into a packet that travels on a different port until it gets past the filter, then translates back to port 25 once it gets back inside a friendly network. This would require a slight change to the sendmail configuration, but nothing your average sysadmin couldn't handle.
Oh.. but this would require the server on BOTH ends, so I couldn't send email everywhere like this. Well, lets see. I send email, on average, to less than 100 different people, so as long as they were set up to be compatible with me, I wouldn't need to worry about it. All the external spam messages, well, hey, not my problem.
Ok.. so they figure out the port, and latch on to it as well. Ok, so we use dynamic ports. One packet goes through just to set up a separate port for the mail message to go through. The port would never be constant, therefore, it could never be filtered (although that is unfeasible anyways).
I could go on, but I know this will never go anywhere, so its not really worth the effort. All I'm saying is that whatever method they plan to use to enforce this tax would be so cost prohibitive that it wouldn't make any sense to do it in the first place. And even if they do it, most people could find a way around it with just a little creative coding.
It states the obvious facts (that win 2K WILL, whether we like it or not, be used on a great many computers in the near future). However, after mentioning the positive aspects of it, it starts to display its disadvantages and even takes the occassional jab at the operating system. I like the Sysadmin quote.
And the take on Linux wasn't the usual FUD. The article pretty much sticks to the facts, that Linux is growing and is slowly becoming the only major competitor to Microsoft's server market, but that it still lacks in features by comparison. The author also doesn't make the usual claim that linux will eventually be overcome, and even presents a few good reasons why.
I also like the "Poor Microsoft" comment. If that doesn't say something about the efficiency of the company when with all their money and power, Linux is still creeping up on them and investors, whom the article seems aimed toward, should be careful to notice.
While it is true that Nasa would be unable to launch a rescue party in time to save their lives, I seriously doubt that nasa would have just cut communications and left them to die out there.
I am certain that in the event of a failure, nasa would have stayed online til the bitter end helping the astronauts try to fix the problems. Leaving them stranded goes against every philosophy that Nasa and the United States stand for. Certainly there were risks, and the astronauts were well aware of those risks, but they were also aware that if a problem developed, and it was unlikely there would be no problems at all, that Nasa would spend every last moment of those astronaut's lives trying to come up with a solution.
Certainly, Nasa would take a big hit if such a catastophic problem occurred, but I think that the citizens of the united states would be much more willing to support Nasa in the future if they saw a group of thousands that went days without sleeping in an attempt, however futile, to save those astronauts lives. It would not be possible to avoid news leaks with that many people involved who were completely aware of the issue.
I'm not saying that nobody ever considered this plan. Anytime there's a crisis, or even a potential crisis, people get paid to present potential solutions, no matter how off the wall, or how politically damaging those solutions may be. Someone might very well have presented the idea that if something went wrong, we cut communications and leave them to die. But just because that plan was presented, along with thousands of much better ones, doesn't mean that it was ever seriously considered a valid option.
And even if they DID decide to cut communications, Michael Collins (I think that's his name) was still in orbit around the moon and would have been unaffected by this problem, so he'd still have to return to Earth. He would be VERY aware of what was happening, and Nasa certainly wouldn't leave HIM to die out there, considering he was still able to return.
I'm also not positive that the two men dying on the moon would have caused the end of the space program. 3 astronauts had died already before that, and it didn't kill the space program. Perhaps all the ciitizens of the US witnessing their death would have brought endless critism, but those men would have been martyrs, and people having witnessed these men dying to advance the space program, and therefore the country they loved, would in retrospect have probably brought more support for the program.
BO2K doesn't exploit bugs in the OS so much that it exploits the gullability of the users USING that OS. Windows 95/98/NT give a user practically full control over their machine. If I want to delete any file on my hard drive, you can bet that there won't be many things to stop me. If I want to upgrade my drivers so I can play a certain game, the OS won't be complaining about it. And if a friend sends me a cool program and I try to run it, then the OS will let it run. And no matter what that program does, the OS will let it do it.
In many cases, its more technilogically difficult to install BO2K than it would be to install a backdoor under a *nix based OS. If there are any known exploits on a *nix box (and usually there is), then someone could install a backdoor from remote. They could safely sit at their own computer halfway around the world and install their backdoor. BO2K requires access to the physical computer itself, or at the very least, access to a server where programs the user might run may be located at.
This means, ultimately, that a user HAS to be duped into executing a program. You can debate until the sun goes dead about the malicious intentions of the author, until the user actually installs the program on their computer, it won't work. This is the problem with giving a user too much control over their system when they aren't experienced enough to know how to avoid doing anything stupid.
So microsoft needs to fix this problem. How exactly would they go about fixing it? They could release a version of the operating system specifically aimed toward the clueless user, which severely limits the access a user can have to their own system. This could actually be useful in corporate environments, but your average home user might not want to go through several extensive security checks so they can upgrade their mouse driver. This kinda goes against the whole PNP philosophy.
Perhaps a community written pamphlet, maybe 20 pages long that computer vendors could distribute with new computers, modems, and ISP's could send to all new customers, might be useful toward solving a lot of these problems. It could explain basic online ettiquite, how to properly conduct one-self in newsgroups, how to avoid the pedophiles online without sacrificing freedom. How to avoid spam, and basic rules about never running programs that people send you, not to forward chain letters, and maybe even touch some of those controversial subjects like how to properly monitor your children's internet activity without excessively invading their privacy at the same time. If such a booklet could be reproduced for free by the vendors for practically nothing, then perhaps a lot of these problems could be addressed without the need of virus scanners, censors, extreme security measures, or new laws that only infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
I remember reading about that a few years ago. It even went so far that parents wouldn't allow the group to sing happy birthday to a child in that environment because the "happy birthday" song, believe it or not, is under copyright and would be subject to licensing fees. There was some research, and apparently the law is on the side of the ASCAP, sucks tho it may. Its absolutely slimy, but don't think that won't stop them.
So restaurants will pony up the dough because they don't want to risk a lawsuit. Girlscout groups simply choose to ablige by not playing the music at all, as a non profit organization, the licensing fees don't fit will into their budget.
But there is a solution. A lot of music is getting released outside the territory o fthe ASCAP. Granted, the selection is still a bit sparse, as is the quality in some cases, but give it time. Restaurants cater to a great many people, and if they wouldn't have to deal with this crap, they may be tempted to seek alternative solutions.
-Restil
Quick theory on the sideous/palpatine issue.
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Episode II Rumours
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The idea that one of the two is a clone is a good theory. Its almost impossible that the two are actually the same person, because the good jedi would have felt SOMETHING while Palpatine was in their presense.
My theory is that Sideous cloned himself and his clone (with or without the knowledge of Sideous's existance) is being guided to take over the senate. At some point in the future, Sideous will kill off Palpatine and take his place.
Of course, its also possible that the two characters' similarites is just a ruse to confuse us.
First of all, yahoo does not automatically assume ownership of any geocities content, only that they have to rights to do with it as they see fit. As for most of the content on Geocities pages is personal homepages anyways, who really cares? Do I spend my nights worrying about Yahoo selling information on what I named my cats, or tips I've provided for my favorite hobby?
The fact of the matter is, this information was posted free of charge anyways, so Yahoo/Geocities has no financial advantage to attempt to sell such content. However, if they post a banner ad on your page (they do already) and make money from it, and some pissed off homepage owner decides they want a share of that money, this policy will effectively stop lawsuits.
And nobody uses Geocities for commercial purposes, and if they are, then they probably don't deserve to be doing business anyways.
This is interesting. ADSL and Cable have a lot in common, as they're both shared bandwidth, and ADSL is bottlenecked by design. And like cable, you can get get a fast download with the condition that you're overall monthly bandwidth doesn't exceed a certain amount (in this case, 1 gig).
Whats interesting is that my 64K isdn dedicated connection will get me 16 gig per month in each direction of raw speed, and I can get 1:4 compression if the data is text (like webpages and such). Since my total monthly charge for isdn is about $160 when you consider the dedicated isdn rate from my isp plus the phone company charge.
Currently, I use about 95% of my bandwidth, and I'm permitted to use all of it, so I don't have to worry about them disconnecting me because of it. But if I was only allowed to pull 1 gig per month, the service would only be worth $10 a month to me. Now, with adsl you have an advantage of being able to get what you want RIGHT NOW, instead of having to wait for it.
The difference is, while adsl could handle a slashdot effect, I would probably choke on it. But in the long run, I can easily support a steady bandwidth stream, and I'm not held by any restrictions other than the technical ones.
I've known all along that cable modem companies would have to start capping rates. Just join any major IRC server (dalnet, efnet) and look at a few of the channel topics and you'll see why. Warez junkies are going to ruin it for everyone.
And don't forget, you're getting EXACTLY what you pay for. I can't tell you how many times people have bragged to me about the high speed of their internet connection because they have a cable modem, and my attempting to tell them that its a solution that will turn around and bite them in the ass, falls on deaf ears.
Cable modem statistics and prices are based on the assumption that the average user won't use any more bandwidth than a regular modem user will. The average person "surfing the net" won't read his webpages any faster, they'll just load faster. Email won't increase by much, and sure those downloads will be faster, but your average modem user doesn't download that much. $40 a month, or whatever cable modem prices are going for, is more than enough to cover a large number of users.
Ok, so there will be a few users who use more than their share, this also isn't a problem. Every isp has the occasional dialup user who never disconnects and is literally tying up the line 24/7. However, there aren't enough of them that they cause busy signals for others, so they can safely be ignored, or at least worked into the average appropriately.
The big problem with cable modems is that the average user, to whom a 28.8 modem is more than adaquate, has no reason to switch to cable. Therefore, cable has a skewed user base. They have a lot more bandwidth hungry users who are exploiting high bandwidth at low cost, and fewer low bandwidth users to balance the load out.
This means that cable modem providers are going to spend more money on bandwidth than they will recieve from their users. Also, cable networks are optimized for downstream. Certainly, they can handle the bandwidth in both directions, but since they expect clients to be primarily in the business of downloading, they therefore provide more bandwidth on the downstream side. This is why they don't want servers, as servers, especially when something in demand is offered for download, will chew up a LOT of bandwidth very quickly.
So they cap the uploads. Complain if you want, but 128K is still pretty damn good for only $40 a month. And while they may not have capped the downstream yet, I wouldn't blink for too long, because it will come there eventually too. GTE has done it already.
So, you want a large number of IP addresses, you'll have to pay for it. If you want dedicated high bandwidth rates, go get a T1. Yes, it will cost you a lot more money, but its all yours. 1.544 mbps and NOBODY will tell you how much of it you can use, as you can use all of it. But you're going to pay for it.
Yes, I agree. QUITE priceless. I didn't even get it at first that, but it is a definite stab at Episode 2.:)
I've always loved Weird Al, ever since I got a tape of his "even worse" album when I was 15. There are many cases where I like his versions of the songs a lot better than the originals.:)
Then there's always the thrill of discovering an original of one of Weird Al's songs which I'd never heard before. Fond memories of the song "Lola" come to mind.:) and in that case, the original song was even funnier than the parody. Gotta love it.:)
All this does is compose a complaint to the spammer's ISP to have the spammer delt with. It doesn't post home addresses and phone numbers, it only automates the process of dealing with the spammer the same way you would deal with the abuse manually. This just makes it faster and easier.
However, on the other hand, while this will make life a little harder on the spammers, they're already used to the "fly by night" nature of the business they're in, and getting shut down by their ISP is nothing new to any of them. They'll react like they always do, by going to a new ISP. This is where the home addresses would come in handy, since if ISP's were to confirm the identity of their users, they could effectively blacklist a spammer from operation until they changed physical addresses. Its a LOT harder to move physically than make a 15 minute phone call to get connected to a new ISP.
However, while ISP's may have the spammer's personal information, they're probably relucatant to provide it to anyone for anything less than a legal subpenoa, BUT, if they specifically state in their contracts that any user caught spamming automatically forfeits their right to privacy and their personal information will be shared with other ISP's in an effort to stop the spam, then a prospective spammer will avoid that ISP like the plague (assuming they're forced to provide their real information in the first place).
I'm not sure of the legal implications of such an idea, but a spammer, usually by definition, violates his contract, and as long as the contract specifically states the consequences of those violations, I doubt it will come back to haunt the ISP.
DOJ and other spooks are worried that encryption will prevent them from monitoring the activity of the terrorists, child pornographers, drug dealers, and other meanaces to society. The simple fact of the matter is, encryption is rarely used in these circumstances. Encryption is used primarily where it is needed, to keep something safe from prying eyes for such a time that by the time the encryption was decoded, the information would no longer be of any value.
Credit card numbers are an important example. It has been proven that 56 bit DES can be cracked in a day, with sufficient computing power. Retrieving an encrypted credit card number off the internet and decoding it a day later would result in a good number. If it took 20 years to decrypt the same number, it would no longer be of any use to the cracker.
People need to know that if they put their credit card number out on the internet, the only entity that will be able to decode it within a significant amount of time will be whoever the credit card number was specifically destined for, in this case, the merchant.
Now we have the government's argument that the loss of a few million/billion/etc worth in credit card numbers is insignificant compared to the child pornographer that they are unable to catch any other way. However, this only goes to display their incompetance.
There is a lot of evidence relating to pornography. Photographs need to be taken, then scanned. At this point, they are in an insecure format. There is at least 2 witnesses to this act. Data at this point could be encrypted while it is being stored and transfered, and original negatives and photographs could be destroyed, leaving no permanant evidence.
However, unless the pornographer is doing this for his own amusement and has no financial interest, there will at least be someone on the other end of the line who will want to see these pictures in a decoded format, as encrypted photographs of any type are not too exciting. And while this individual may also be storing all his information in an encrypted format, he at some point in time needs to decrypt the data to view it.
The government wants to rely on automated computer systems to discover, locate, and trace this data while it is in transit. This takes the job off of them and allows them to spend more time on whatever it is they want to do. The system would now be prepared to simply monitor everything and flag anything suspicious. Obviously, this isn't what they publicly are stating their intentions are, but don't be surprised if 20 years from now, they consider this to be important.
The fact is, there are other ways to obtain evidence beyond the easy decryption of data. For some time now the technology has existed to view the monitor and "listen" to the keyboard with such clarity that you would be able to know which key was being pressed simply by the sound. This technology has existed for decades now, and if someone is suspected of trafficing in pornography, and the warrants are obtained for survaillence, this technology can easily be put to use. You wouldn't NEED easy decryption as you could simply pick up the passwords as they're typed in. Granted, this might be an expensive solution, but that's not really our problem.
Terrorists and drug dealers can be delt with in the same way. Drug dealers who take their job seriously have long since discovered the police scanner, and the police realize this. Law enforcement has long since had the ability to scramble or encrypt their transmissions, and many police departments do, but in big cities, its quite likely that any radio shack scanner will pick up those transmissions. And if the police are coordinating a raid over the scanners and drug dealers get a 5 minute warning because of it, it could easily botch the entire operation.
Which is why the police don't USE their scanners during raids. They use their MDT units in their cars to communicate so nobody gets tipped off early.
It seems to me, that if law enforcement is going to be tracking criminals, they are unlikely to discover the criminal activity through encrypted messages anyways. After all, if they're not allowed to decode them without warrants anyways, how will they even know about the criminal activity unless they get information from some other source. And once they have appropriate survaillence set up, monitoring encrypted data will be unlikely to make or break the case.
I have a website that has several computer controlled electrical appliances, and is completely homebrewed.. no X10 stuff involved. The site is at http://www.alignment.net/~restil/spy.html
From a webcam view, you can turn on and off the lamp, and move the camera via a stepper motor I have connected to the same computer. The circutry involved is simple, and I'm using the parallel port on a linux system for control. Relays vary in price, but you can easily get one for $5 that will be able to handle enough AC current to turn a lamp on and off.
2.1 gig HD's can be had for less than $100 these days. A low end pentium (90 or less) can be litterally picked up for less than $15, but even if we're talking about something that's still produced, 133's are in the $30 range. A MB can be had for less than $50 and 16 megs of ram can be picked up for about $20. A case is about $20, although I'd imagine they have a proprietary setup. A modem is as you said, about $15. Now, remember, this is what it costs me to pick up these parts at Fry's. If you're ordering parts 10,000 at a time, you can get significant discounts. Even if the final profit is only $20 per system, that's 10,000 customers that this company now has in its back pocket. !0,000 customers who aren't using Microsoft, and 10,000 customers who will no doubt wish to purchase accessories in the future, and you KNOW there will be accessories. People buy console systems because they don't want to spend the money on a big expensive computer to do the same thing. Console manufacturers may only break even on the system itself, but when you consider all the licensing revenue they get from purchased games, you greatly envy their position.
And there is a large number of people who buy webtv's. This is their market, not the people who already own top of the line computer systems. A system like this will blow a webtv out of the water any day of the week, and unlike the webtv, the system can be expanded, the software can be upgraded, and there is a wealth of effort being applied by the linux community which this company gets to take advantage of.
Its NOT a bad idea, even if they can't profit off the systems.
This is a touchy issue. While I certainly don't want to have to see visual pornography displayed on web browsers in the library, I also have to respect the fact that its a public building and any censorship is a bad thing.
Anything that is text based should not be censored AT ALL. It is, after all, a library, and banning text of any sort would tend to go against the basic philosophy of a library. However, I would probably be willing to go along with banning pornographic pictures in an environment where shoulder surfing would be prevalent.
But in any case, this should not be mandated at all by the federal government. And I somehow doubt its such a big problem that it needs to be regulated anyway.
Another point of view, however, is that the government is not outright requiring it by law, only that they will withhold internet based funding if these conditions are not met. Internet is not THAT expensive, and your average library doesn't require T3 access to the net. I don't think its in the best interest of any library to conform to this censorship for a few measly bucks.
I can't gleam enough from the article to determine what contracts may be in place, but if the poster is truely an employee of the company, and was under an NDA, then making ANY statements about internal company politics, true or otherwise, would be a breach of contract. If it turns out that this person is not an employee of the company, then there is the issue of misrepresentation.
Had an anonymous user not affiliated with the company simply stated his opinions online, then the company would have very little legal ground to stand on.
While I am extremely supportive of any corporation that decides to limit its Microsoft usage for "anything else" (tm), doing it for the sole purpose of escaping viruses is both silly and doesn't solve the real problem. The acronym PEBKAC applies here (Problem exists between keboard and chair).
I see 3 reasonable solutions to this issue:
1 - Don't use any combination of programs that can facilitate the uncontrolled spread of any program, worm, virus, word macro virus, trojan, etc without direct authorization by the user. In this case, don't use Word and outlook express together if the two can be used together for the uncontrolled replication of viruses and other nasties.
2 - Limit the damage a single user can do. If a user receives a virus, fine. That's done. However, if that user doesn't share write permission on executable directories, then the virus won't be able to spread over a network without copying files. If the user is not able to forward.exe files to other users, viruses don't spread.
And 3, the most effective, yet most difficult: EDUCATE THE USERS! Users have no business whatsoever sending executables to others which is traditionally how viruses spread. Teach them how to turn off those options which facilitate this madness. If you're going to stick an idiot in front of a computer, you had better damned well make sure that computer is idiot proof, or these problems will continue to happen.
Will switching a corporation over to all linux prevent this problem? Sure, or it will at least slow it down. But even on *nix boxes there have been worms in the past. Script kiddies enjoy easy access to well written exploit code, and while it is simple to patch this code up, most corporations are probably so mired down in procedure that these patches would take a great deal of time to get implemented, and any user that can gain root access, or any virus/worm for that matter, can do just as much damage regardless. And there will always be the users that only use the root account on their private systems, and one day will download a malicious program and wipe out their system. It happens, and it will continue to do so. Until computer users take proper care of their systems, viruses will continue to spread. Use a bit of intelligence, or in appropriate situations a raincoat, and viruses will become far less prevalant.
This would be the perfect example of a project that should be open source. Seti is a public organization, not a corporation. They shouldn't need proprietary software. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of programmers who would have been willing to develop, debug, and optimize both the servers and clients, not to mention stress testing, and the entire process could have been completed in a fraction of the time.
The algorithms in use for searching these signals shouldn't be secret, and practically everything else has been done before in one point or another, and reinventing the wheel is a pointless venture. I recall that distributed.net had been in communication with the seti@home project over a year ago for incorporating it within their client, but they never heard anything from them.
As for cheating, I was under the impression that they set up teams, so group collaboration was permitted, or so I thought. And as for the real cheaters, I presume they keep records and would be able to make corrections, or disavow those who are cheating. Who really cares about rank anyways? Its nice to know, and maybe even fun to brag about, but in the long run it makes no difference at all.
Wasted fuel? PUH LEASE. People run their computers all the time. All we've done now is replace one screen saver for another. No additional loss has taken place.
Right now, the public may think of "hackers" as the way the media presents them. However, consider this: There have been revolutionaires in the past that at the time were looked at as violent, dangerous people who had no good intentions at all (at least from the perspective of the "other side"). However, if those revolutionaires win the war they are fighting, then looking back, people tend to see the losing party as the "evil ones". That's how history works. It won't be over night, but it can be done.
So what should we do to preserve our name? I have a few sugguestions. First of all, any time a cracker makes the media cut, its important to make sure that news is reported properly. The mainstream isn't going to get it right for a while, but if a large number of supplentry articles show up with a different set of terminology, then those phrases will start to catch on, and the media will start using those instead.
It also might be a good idea to stray away from the term "cracker" and create a new term such as "computer vandal". Cracker and hacker sound too much alike and are unlikely to sway the population.
Also, any time a "white hat hacker" makes the news, it is important to use the word "hacker" in a white light. Don't go out of your way to dispell the notition that just because he's a hacker he's not automatically bad, but write it in such a way that it is automatically assumed that hackers are already good and its only the few bad seeds that give the bad names to a community.
mp3.com serves a purpose that the conventional music industry does not. Certainly, your average run of the mill artist might not be worth listening to, but at least this way they have the opportunity to attempt to disprove that notion. If they're not worthy, then they're not worthy.
But your local artist that really DOES sound good now has a chance to get recognized globally. And they can do it without selling their souls or signing over the rights to everything they've created or will create.
As for the IPO, going public does not mean that they're going to be the next microsoft/netscape/whatever. It doesn't even mean they'll be on a stock exchange you've heard of before. It simply means that their corporate stock will be available publically. If you want to make a risky investment, then feel free to buy it up. Otherwise, you may choose to avoid it. The world will be remarkably unaffected by the act of IPO'ing.
However, going public and selling stock will provide mp3.com with something important. CAPITAL. Stock sales are the best way to raise cash. Its easy and you're not obligated to ever pay it back. However, at the same time, you surrender full control over the corporation (unless the current owner maintains 51% of the stock)
Once they have this capital base, they have more opportunities for expansion. They can pursue other methods of distribution other than mailorder. Getting CD's in stores alongside the conventional artists will greatly increase the sales figures. More aggressive marketing of both the site and the artists will help too.
But remember the bottom line. Its mp3.com that's going public. Its the business of providing a portal for musicians that is going public. They'r e the ones that are making the money and they're the ones that stockholders are looking at. Whether they sell 200 cd's a month or 2,000,000, it still boils down to mp3.com's bottom line. Debating the average revenue per artist is not really the issue.
The time is right. The money for a commercial game these days is probably way undervalued, if you consider what goes into a game. And in some aspects, the money is not always spent evenly over the course of the game. Take Starcraft for instance. One person with 18 months of solid time could easily program the gameplay, graphics and AI. However, the cutscenes would take an order of magnitude more time to complete. That's where the money is getting spent. Starcraft's cutscenes are awesome to watch, but they're not the game itself, and Starcraft would be just as awesome without them.
One of the biggest problems is that from a marketing standpoint, game players want the visual stimuli. They want full motion videos integrated into their video games. If the game doesn't come on at least 4 CD's, how good could it possibly be? Games need to more and more resemble real life. It needs to be fully 3D, with extremely realistic graphics, and of course it has to be fast, but if I need to upgrade to a platform that won't be available until next year to get what I want, so be it.
The biggest issue with money is that someone who's programming a game and expects to get paid for it will see the money issue as an obstacle. You can program a game for free. Just sit down at your computer and start typeing. Just don't try to program Quake II on your first try or you'll be so overwhelmed that you'll get discouraged and quit. Start with something simple, even if its been done before. Program minesweeper and tetris. They won't make you any money, but you'll learn those valuable design skills.
Then, once you've done that, aim for something simple, yet unique, even if it copies off an old trend. Try minesweeper 3D for instance, something that will require some creative layouts and will give you some practice with more advanced graphics programming.
Once you feel ready to take a shot at AI, don't try to program the AI in starcraft. Program a checkers game. The rules are simple. When you want a more advanced challege, try chess. You might wonder how programming chess will help you when you want the computer to know when to move a marine from one corner of the map to the other. At least when you try to figure that out, you won't be struggling with the fundamentals.
And don't forget the most important thing. Game programming isn't all about the graphics and the AI. Its about captivating your audience. It doesn't matter how elaborate your game design is, if the player gets bored with it after 10 minutes, then the game was a failure.
Actually, I didn't see anywhere that the business itself had to be around since the age of the computer, nor that the business used the computer since that time. Only that it is currently in operation.
While the oldest computer running in MY business is 1989, a client of mine has a computer running that dates back to 1980. I suppose its not really a PERSONAL computer, its one of those 3B2 Unix systems running old AT&T System V.
I could seriously sympathise with Lucas if he gets pissed about this, much more so than his concern over someone smuggling a movie camera into the film.
If you start with a low quality recording, the best you're going to end up with is a low quality recording. It might be better than nothing, but probably nothing worth spending the time downloading for a few days.
However, with this reel, the theif (or whoever it is sold to) could make any quality recording they wanted, as it won't get much better.
The article is fairly vague tho, which means the reporter obviously doesn't have a great deal of information regarding the theft. Although supplement articles are likely to appear about this issue, considering it was an inside job (more than likely), the chances of catching the theif are pretty good. I DOUBT it will show up on Ebay. That's just too risky for them.
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Email is typically a message sent via the smtp
protocol over port 25. How exactly would they tax this? Honor system? Filters at every isp? Filters on the backbone? Do they even know what they're asking?
And nothing says I can't encapsulate my email message into a packet that travels on a different port until it gets past the filter, then translates back to port 25 once it gets back inside a friendly network. This would require a slight change to the sendmail configuration, but nothing your average sysadmin couldn't handle.
Oh.. but this would require the server on BOTH ends, so I couldn't send email everywhere like this. Well, lets see. I send email, on average, to less than 100 different people, so as long as they were set up to be compatible with me, I wouldn't need to worry about it. All the external spam messages, well, hey, not my problem.
Ok.. so they figure out the port, and latch on to it as well. Ok, so we use dynamic ports. One packet goes through just to set up a separate port for the mail message to go through. The port would never be constant, therefore, it could never be filtered (although that is unfeasible anyways).
I could go on, but I know this will never go anywhere, so its not really worth the effort. All I'm saying is that whatever method they plan to use to enforce this tax would be so cost prohibitive that it wouldn't make any sense to do it in the first place. And even if they do it, most people could find a way around it with just a little creative coding.
-Restil
It states the obvious facts (that win 2K WILL, whether we like it or not, be used on a great many computers in the near future). However, after mentioning the positive aspects of it, it starts to display its disadvantages and even takes the occassional jab at the operating system. I like the Sysadmin quote.
And the take on Linux wasn't the usual FUD. The article pretty much sticks to the facts, that Linux is growing and is slowly becoming the only major competitor to Microsoft's server market, but that it still lacks in features by comparison. The author also doesn't make the usual claim that linux will eventually be overcome, and even presents a few good reasons why.
I also like the "Poor Microsoft" comment. If that doesn't say something about the efficiency of the company when with all their money and power, Linux is still creeping up on them and investors, whom the article seems aimed toward, should be careful to notice.
-Restil
While it is true that Nasa would be unable to launch a rescue party in time to save their lives, I seriously doubt that nasa would have just cut communications and left them to die out there.
I am certain that in the event of a failure, nasa would have stayed online til the bitter end helping the astronauts try to fix the problems. Leaving them stranded goes against every philosophy that Nasa and the United States stand for. Certainly there were risks, and the astronauts were well aware of those risks, but they were also aware that if a problem developed, and it was unlikely there would be no problems at all, that Nasa would spend every last moment of those astronaut's lives trying to come up with a solution.
Certainly, Nasa would take a big hit if such a catastophic problem occurred, but I think that the citizens of the united states would be much more willing to support Nasa in the future if they saw a group of thousands that went days without sleeping in an attempt, however futile, to save those astronauts lives. It would not be possible to avoid news leaks with that many people involved who were completely aware of the issue.
I'm not saying that nobody ever considered this plan. Anytime there's a crisis, or even a potential crisis, people get paid to present potential solutions, no matter how off the wall, or how politically damaging those solutions may be. Someone might very well have presented the idea that if something went wrong, we cut communications and leave them to die. But just because that plan was presented, along with thousands of much better ones, doesn't mean that it was ever seriously considered a valid option.
And even if they DID decide to cut communications, Michael Collins (I think that's his name) was still in orbit around the moon and would have been unaffected by this problem, so he'd still have to return to Earth. He would be VERY aware of what was happening, and Nasa certainly wouldn't leave HIM to die out there, considering he was still able to return.
I'm also not positive that the two men dying on the moon would have caused the end of the space program. 3 astronauts had died already before that, and it didn't kill the space program. Perhaps all the ciitizens of the US witnessing their death would have brought endless critism, but those men would have been martyrs, and people having witnessed these men dying to advance the space program, and therefore the country they loved, would in retrospect have probably brought more support for the program.
-Restil
BO2K doesn't exploit bugs in the OS so much that it exploits the gullability of the users USING that OS. Windows 95/98/NT give a user practically full control over their machine. If I want to delete any file on my hard drive, you can bet that there won't be many things to stop me. If I want to upgrade my drivers so I can play a certain game, the OS won't be complaining about it. And if a friend sends me a cool program and I try to run it, then the OS will let it run. And no matter what that program does, the OS will let it do it.
In many cases, its more technilogically difficult to install BO2K than it would be to install a backdoor under a *nix based OS. If there are any known exploits on a *nix box (and usually there is), then someone could install a backdoor from remote. They could safely sit at their own computer halfway around the world and install their backdoor. BO2K requires access to the physical computer itself, or at the very least, access to a server where programs the user might run may be located at.
This means, ultimately, that a user HAS to be duped into executing a program. You can debate until the sun goes dead about the malicious intentions of the author, until the user actually installs the program on their computer, it won't work. This is the problem with giving a user too much control over their system when they aren't experienced enough to know how to avoid doing anything stupid.
So microsoft needs to fix this problem. How exactly would they go about fixing it? They could release a version of the operating system specifically aimed toward the clueless user, which severely limits the access a user can have to their own system. This could actually be useful in corporate environments, but your average home user might not want to go through several extensive security checks so they can upgrade their mouse driver. This kinda goes against the
whole PNP philosophy.
Perhaps a community written pamphlet, maybe 20 pages long that computer vendors could distribute with new computers, modems, and ISP's could send to all new customers, might be useful toward solving a lot of these problems. It could explain basic online ettiquite, how to properly conduct one-self in newsgroups, how to avoid the pedophiles online without sacrificing freedom. How to avoid spam, and basic rules about never running programs that people send you, not to forward chain letters, and maybe even touch some of those controversial subjects like how to properly monitor your children's internet activity without excessively invading their privacy at the same time. If such a booklet could be reproduced for free by the vendors for practically nothing, then perhaps a lot of these problems could be addressed without the need of virus scanners, censors, extreme security measures, or new laws that only infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
Just an idea.
-Restil
I remember reading about that a few years ago. It even went so far that parents wouldn't allow the group to sing happy birthday to a child in that environment because the "happy birthday" song, believe it or not, is under copyright and would be subject to licensing fees. There was some research, and apparently the law is on the side of the ASCAP, sucks tho it may. Its absolutely slimy, but don't think that won't stop them.
So restaurants will pony up the dough because they don't want to risk a lawsuit. Girlscout groups simply choose to ablige by not playing the music at all, as a non profit organization, the licensing fees don't fit will into their budget.
But there is a solution. A lot of music is getting released outside the territory o fthe ASCAP. Granted, the selection is still a bit sparse, as is the quality in some cases, but give it time. Restaurants cater to a great many people, and if they wouldn't have to deal with this crap, they may be tempted to seek alternative solutions.
-Restil
The idea that one of the two is a clone is a good theory. Its almost impossible that the two are actually the same person, because the good jedi would have felt SOMETHING while Palpatine was in their presense.
My theory is that Sideous cloned himself and his clone (with or without the knowledge of Sideous's existance) is being guided to take over the senate. At some point in the future, Sideous will kill off Palpatine and take his place.
Of course, its also possible that the two characters' similarites is just a ruse to confuse us.
-Restil
First of all, yahoo does not automatically assume ownership of any geocities content, only that they have to rights to do with it as they see fit. As for most of the content on Geocities pages is personal homepages anyways, who really cares? Do I spend my nights worrying about Yahoo selling information on what I named my cats, or tips I've provided for my favorite hobby?
The fact of the matter is, this information was posted free of charge anyways, so Yahoo/Geocities has no financial advantage to attempt to sell such content. However, if they post a banner ad on your page (they do already) and make money from it, and some pissed off homepage owner decides they want a share of that money, this policy will effectively stop lawsuits.
And nobody uses Geocities for commercial purposes, and if they are, then they probably don't deserve to be doing business anyways.
I don't really see a problem here.
-Restil
This is interesting. ADSL and Cable have a lot in common, as they're both shared bandwidth, and ADSL is bottlenecked by design. And like cable, you can get get a fast download with the condition that you're overall monthly bandwidth doesn't exceed a certain amount (in this case, 1 gig).
Whats interesting is that my 64K isdn dedicated
connection will get me 16 gig per month in each direction of raw speed, and I can get 1:4 compression if the data is text (like webpages and such). Since my total monthly charge for isdn is about $160 when you consider the dedicated isdn rate from my isp plus the phone company charge.
Currently, I use about 95% of my bandwidth, and I'm permitted to use all of it, so I don't have to worry about them disconnecting me because of it.
But if I was only allowed to pull 1 gig per month, the service would only be worth $10 a month to me.
Now, with adsl you have an advantage of being able to get what you want RIGHT NOW, instead of having to wait for it.
The difference is, while adsl could handle a slashdot effect, I would probably choke on it. But in the long run, I can easily support a steady bandwidth stream, and I'm not held by any restrictions other than the technical ones.
-Restil
I've known all along that cable modem companies would have to start capping rates. Just join any major IRC server (dalnet, efnet) and look at a few of the channel topics and you'll see why. Warez junkies are going to ruin it for everyone.
And don't forget, you're getting EXACTLY what you pay for. I can't tell you how many times people have bragged to me about the high speed of their internet connection because they have a cable modem, and my attempting to tell them that its a solution that will turn around and bite them in the ass, falls on deaf ears.
Cable modem statistics and prices are based on the assumption that the average user won't use any more bandwidth than a regular modem user will. The average person "surfing the net" won't read his webpages any faster, they'll just load faster. Email won't increase by much, and sure those downloads will be faster, but your average modem user doesn't download that much. $40 a month, or whatever cable modem prices are going for, is more than enough to cover a large number of users.
Ok, so there will be a few users who use more than their share, this also isn't a problem. Every isp has the occasional dialup user who never disconnects and is literally tying up the line 24/7. However, there aren't enough of them that they cause busy signals for others, so they can safely be ignored, or at least worked into the average appropriately.
The big problem with cable modems is that the average user, to whom a 28.8 modem is more than
adaquate, has no reason to switch to cable. Therefore, cable has a skewed user base. They have a lot more bandwidth hungry users who are exploiting high bandwidth at low cost, and fewer
low bandwidth users to balance the load out.
This means that cable modem providers are going to spend more money on bandwidth than they will recieve from their users. Also, cable networks are optimized for downstream. Certainly, they can handle the bandwidth in both directions, but since they expect clients to be primarily in the business of downloading, they therefore provide more bandwidth on the downstream side. This is why they don't want servers, as servers, especially when something in demand is offered for download, will chew up a LOT of bandwidth very quickly.
So they cap the uploads. Complain if you want, but 128K is still pretty damn good for only $40 a month. And while they may not have capped the downstream yet, I wouldn't blink for too long, because it will come there eventually too. GTE has done it already.
So, you want a large number of IP addresses, you'll have to pay for it. If you want dedicated high bandwidth rates, go get a T1. Yes, it will cost you a lot more money, but its all yours. 1.544 mbps and NOBODY will tell you how much of it you can use, as you can use all of it. But you're going to pay for it.
-Restil
Yes, I agree. QUITE priceless. I didn't even get it at first that, but it is a definite stab at Episode 2. :)
:)
:) and in that case, the original song was even funnier than the parody. Gotta love it. :)
I've always loved Weird Al, ever since I got a tape of his "even worse" album when I was 15.
There are many cases where I like his versions of the songs a lot better than the originals.
Then there's always the thrill of discovering an original of one of Weird Al's songs which I'd never heard before. Fond memories of the song "Lola" come to mind.
-Restil
All this does is compose a complaint to the spammer's ISP to have the spammer delt with. It doesn't post home addresses and phone numbers, it only automates the process of dealing with the spammer the same way you would deal with the abuse manually. This just makes it faster and easier.
However, on the other hand, while this will make life a little harder on the spammers, they're already used to the "fly by night" nature of the business they're in, and getting shut down by their ISP is nothing new to any of them. They'll react like they always do, by going to a new ISP.
This is where the home addresses would come in handy, since if ISP's were to confirm the identity of their users, they could effectively blacklist a spammer from operation until they changed physical addresses. Its a LOT harder to move physically than make a 15 minute phone call to get connected to a new ISP.
However, while ISP's may have the spammer's personal information, they're probably relucatant to provide it to anyone for anything less than a legal subpenoa, BUT, if they specifically state in their contracts that any user caught spamming automatically forfeits their right to privacy and their personal information will be shared with other ISP's in an effort to stop the spam, then a prospective spammer will avoid that ISP like the plague (assuming they're forced to provide their real information in the first place).
I'm not sure of the legal implications of such an idea, but a spammer, usually by definition, violates his contract, and as long as the contract specifically states the consequences of those violations, I doubt it will come back to haunt the ISP.
-Restil
DOJ and other spooks are worried that encryption will prevent them from monitoring the activity of the terrorists, child pornographers, drug dealers, and other meanaces to society. The simple fact of the matter is, encryption is rarely used in these circumstances. Encryption is used primarily where it is needed, to keep something safe from prying eyes for such a time that by the time the encryption was decoded, the information would no longer be of any value.
Credit card numbers are an important example. It has been proven that 56 bit DES can be cracked in a day, with sufficient computing power. Retrieving an encrypted credit card number off the internet and decoding it a day later would result in a good number. If it took 20 years to decrypt the same number, it would no longer be of any use to the cracker.
People need to know that if they put their credit card number out on the internet, the only entity that will be able to decode it within a significant amount of time will be whoever the credit card number was specifically destined for, in this case, the merchant.
Now we have the government's argument that the loss of a few million/billion/etc worth in credit card numbers is insignificant compared to the child pornographer that they are unable to catch any other way. However, this only goes to display their incompetance.
There is a lot of evidence relating to pornography. Photographs need to be taken, then scanned. At this point, they are in an insecure format. There is at least 2 witnesses to this act. Data at this point could be encrypted while it is being stored and transfered, and original negatives and photographs could be destroyed, leaving no permanant evidence.
However, unless the pornographer is doing this for his own amusement and has no financial interest, there will at least be someone on the other end of the line who will want to see these pictures in a decoded format, as encrypted photographs of any type are not too exciting. And while this individual may also be storing all his information in an encrypted format, he at some point in time needs to decrypt the data to view it.
The government wants to rely on automated computer systems to discover, locate, and trace this data while it is in transit. This takes the job off of them and allows them to spend more time on whatever it is they want to do. The system would now be prepared to simply monitor everything and flag anything suspicious. Obviously, this isn't what they publicly are stating their intentions are, but don't be surprised if 20 years from now, they consider this to be important.
The fact is, there are other ways to obtain evidence beyond the easy decryption of data. For some time now the technology has existed to view the monitor and "listen" to the keyboard with such clarity that you would be able to know which key was being pressed simply by the sound. This technology has existed for decades now, and if someone is suspected of trafficing in pornography, and the warrants are obtained for survaillence, this technology can easily be put to use. You wouldn't NEED easy decryption as you could simply pick up the passwords as they're typed in. Granted, this might be an expensive solution, but that's not really our problem.
Terrorists and drug dealers can be delt with in the same way. Drug dealers who take their job seriously have long since discovered the police scanner, and the police realize this. Law enforcement has long since had the ability to scramble or encrypt their transmissions, and many police departments do, but in big cities, its quite likely that any radio shack scanner will pick up those transmissions. And if the police are coordinating a raid over the scanners and drug dealers get a 5 minute warning because of it, it could easily botch the entire operation.
Which is why the police don't USE their scanners during raids. They use their MDT units in their cars to communicate so nobody gets tipped off early.
It seems to me, that if law enforcement is going to be tracking criminals, they are unlikely to discover the criminal activity through encrypted messages anyways. After all, if they're not allowed to decode them without warrants anyways, how will they even know about the criminal activity unless they get information from some other source. And once they have appropriate survaillence set up, monitoring encrypted data will be unlikely to make or break the case.
-Restil
I have a website that has several computer controlled electrical appliances, and is completely homebrewed.. no X10 stuff involved. The site is at http://www.alignment.net/~restil/spy.html
From a webcam view, you can turn on and off the lamp, and move the camera via a stepper motor I have connected to the same computer. The circutry involved is simple, and I'm using the parallel port on a linux system for control. Relays vary in price, but you can easily get one for $5 that will be able to handle enough AC current to turn a lamp on and off.
-Restil
2.1 gig HD's can be had for less than $100 these days. A low end pentium (90 or less) can be litterally picked up for less than $15, but even if we're talking about something that's still produced, 133's are in the $30 range. A MB can be had for less than $50 and 16 megs of ram can be picked up for about $20. A case is about $20, although I'd imagine they have a proprietary setup. A modem is as you said, about $15. Now, remember, this is what it costs me to pick up these parts at Fry's. If you're ordering parts 10,000 at a time, you can get significant discounts. Even if the final profit is only $20 per system, that's 10,000 customers that this company now has in its back pocket. !0,000 customers who aren't using Microsoft, and 10,000 customers who will no doubt wish to purchase accessories in the future, and you KNOW there will be accessories. People buy console systems because they don't want to spend the money on a big expensive computer to do the same thing. Console manufacturers may only break even on the system itself, but when you consider all the licensing revenue they get from purchased games, you greatly envy their position.
And there is a large number of people who buy webtv's. This is their market, not the people who already own top of the line computer systems. A system like this will blow a webtv out of the water any day of the week, and unlike the webtv, the system can be expanded, the software can be upgraded, and there is a wealth of effort being applied by the linux community which this company gets to take advantage of.
Its NOT a bad idea, even if they can't profit off the systems.
-Restil
This is a touchy issue. While I certainly don't want to have to see visual pornography displayed on web browsers in the library, I also have to respect the fact that its a public building and any censorship is a bad thing.
Anything that is text based should not be censored AT ALL. It is, after all, a library, and banning text of any sort would tend to go against the basic philosophy of a library. However, I would probably be willing to go along with banning pornographic pictures in an environment where shoulder surfing would be prevalent.
But in any case, this should not be mandated at all by the federal government. And I somehow doubt its such a big problem that it needs to be regulated anyway.
Another point of view, however, is that the government is not outright requiring it by law, only that they will withhold internet based funding if these conditions are not met. Internet is not THAT expensive, and your average library doesn't require T3 access to the net. I don't think its in the best interest of any library to conform to this censorship for a few measly bucks.
-Restil
I can't gleam enough from the article to determine what contracts may be in place, but if the poster is truely an employee of the company, and was under an NDA, then making ANY statements about internal company politics, true or otherwise, would be a breach of contract. If it turns out that this person is not an employee of the company, then there is the issue of misrepresentation.
Had an anonymous user not affiliated with the company simply stated his opinions online, then the company would have very little legal ground to stand on.
-Restil
While I am extremely supportive of any corporation that decides to limit its Microsoft usage for "anything else" (tm), doing it for the sole purpose of escaping viruses is both silly and doesn't solve the real problem. The acronym PEBKAC applies here (Problem exists between keboard and chair).
.exe files to other users, viruses don't spread.
I see 3 reasonable solutions to this issue:
1 - Don't use any combination of programs that can facilitate the uncontrolled spread of any program, worm, virus, word macro virus, trojan, etc without direct authorization by the user. In this case, don't use Word and outlook express together if the two can be used together for the uncontrolled replication of viruses and other nasties.
2 - Limit the damage a single user can do. If a user receives a virus, fine. That's done. However, if that user doesn't share write permission on executable directories, then the virus won't be able to spread over a network without copying files. If the user is not able to forward
And 3, the most effective, yet most difficult:
EDUCATE THE USERS! Users have no business whatsoever sending executables to others which is traditionally how viruses spread. Teach them how to turn off those options which facilitate this madness. If you're going to stick an idiot in front of a computer, you had better damned well make sure that computer is idiot proof, or these problems will continue to happen.
Will switching a corporation over to all linux prevent this problem? Sure, or it will at least slow it down. But even on *nix boxes there have been worms in the past. Script kiddies enjoy easy access to well written exploit code, and while it is simple to patch this code up, most corporations are probably so mired down in procedure that these patches would take a great deal of time to get implemented, and any user that can gain root access, or any virus/worm for that matter, can do just as much damage regardless. And there will always be the users that only use the root account on their private systems, and one day will download a malicious program and wipe out their system. It happens, and it will continue to do so. Until computer users take proper care of their systems, viruses will continue to spread. Use a bit of intelligence, or in appropriate situations a raincoat, and viruses will become far less prevalant.
-Restil
This would be the perfect example of a project that should be open source. Seti is a public organization, not a corporation. They shouldn't need proprietary software. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of programmers who would have been willing to develop, debug, and optimize both the servers and clients, not to mention stress testing, and the entire process could have been completed in a fraction of the time.
The algorithms in use for searching these signals shouldn't be secret, and practically everything else has been done before in one point or another, and reinventing the wheel is a pointless venture. I recall that distributed.net had been in communication with the seti@home project over a year ago for incorporating it within their client, but they never heard anything from them.
As for cheating, I was under the impression that they set up teams, so group collaboration was permitted, or so I thought. And as for the real cheaters, I presume they keep records and would be able to make corrections, or disavow those who are cheating. Who really cares about rank anyways? Its nice to know, and maybe even fun to brag about, but in the long run it makes no difference at all.
Wasted fuel? PUH LEASE. People run their computers all the time. All we've done now is replace one screen saver for another. No additional loss has taken place.
-Restil
Yes, however...
Pirated software doesn't have the same distinct smell which attracts law enforcement.
-Restil
Right now, the public may think of "hackers" as the way the media presents them. However, consider this: There have been revolutionaires in the past that at the time were looked at as violent, dangerous people who had no good intentions at all (at least from the perspective of the "other side"). However, if those revolutionaires win the war they are fighting, then looking back, people tend to see the losing party as the "evil ones". That's how history works. It won't be over night, but it can be done.
So what should we do to preserve our name? I have a few sugguestions. First of all, any time a cracker makes the media cut, its important to make sure that news is reported properly. The mainstream isn't going to get it right for a while, but if a large number of supplentry articles show up with a different set of terminology, then those phrases will start to catch on, and the media will start using those instead.
It also might be a good idea to stray away from the term "cracker" and create a new term such as "computer vandal". Cracker and hacker sound too much alike and are unlikely to sway the population.
Also, any time a "white hat hacker" makes the news, it is important to use the word "hacker" in a white light. Don't go out of your way to dispell the notition that just because he's a hacker he's not automatically bad, but write it in such a way that it is automatically assumed that hackers are already good and its only the few bad seeds that give the bad names to a community.
-Restil
mp3.com serves a purpose that the conventional music industry does not. Certainly, your average run of the mill artist might not be worth listening to, but at least this way they have the opportunity to attempt to disprove that notion. If they're not worthy, then they're not worthy.
But your local artist that really DOES sound good now has a chance to get recognized globally. And they can do it without selling their souls or signing over the rights to everything they've created or will create.
As for the IPO, going public does not mean that they're going to be the next microsoft/netscape/whatever. It doesn't even mean they'll be on a stock exchange you've heard of before. It simply means that their corporate stock will be available publically. If you want to make a risky investment, then feel free to buy it up. Otherwise, you may choose to avoid it. The world will be remarkably unaffected by the act of IPO'ing.
However, going public and selling stock will provide mp3.com with something important. CAPITAL. Stock sales are the best way to raise cash. Its easy and you're not obligated to ever pay it back. However, at the same time, you surrender full control over the corporation (unless the current owner maintains 51% of the stock)
Once they have this capital base, they have more opportunities for expansion. They can pursue other methods of distribution other than mailorder. Getting CD's in stores alongside the conventional artists will greatly increase the sales figures. More aggressive marketing of both the site and the artists will help too.
But remember the bottom line. Its mp3.com that's going public. Its the business of providing a portal for musicians that is going public. They'r e the ones that are making the money and they're the ones that stockholders are looking at. Whether they sell 200 cd's a month or 2,000,000, it still boils down to mp3.com's bottom line. Debating the average revenue per artist is not really the issue.
-Restil
restil@alignment.net
The time is right. The money for a commercial game these days is probably way undervalued, if you consider what goes into a game. And in some aspects, the money is not always spent evenly over the course of the game. Take Starcraft for instance. One person with 18 months of solid time could easily program the gameplay, graphics and AI. However, the cutscenes would take an order of magnitude more time to complete. That's where the money is getting spent. Starcraft's cutscenes are awesome to watch, but they're not the game itself, and Starcraft would be just as awesome without them.
One of the biggest problems is that from a marketing standpoint, game players want the visual stimuli. They want full motion videos integrated into their video games. If the game doesn't come on at least 4 CD's, how good could it possibly be?
Games need to more and more resemble real life. It needs to be fully 3D, with extremely realistic graphics, and of course it has to be fast, but if I need to upgrade to a platform that won't be available until next year to get what I want, so be it.
The biggest issue with money is that someone who's programming a game and expects to get paid for it will see the money issue as an obstacle. You can program a game for free. Just sit down at your computer and start typeing. Just don't try to program Quake II on your first try or you'll be so overwhelmed that you'll get discouraged and quit.
Start with something simple, even if its been done before. Program minesweeper and tetris. They won't make you any money, but you'll learn those valuable design skills.
Then, once you've done that, aim for something simple, yet unique, even if it copies off an old trend. Try minesweeper 3D for instance, something that will require some creative layouts and will give you some practice with more advanced graphics programming.
Once you feel ready to take a shot at AI, don't try to program the AI in starcraft. Program a checkers game. The rules are simple. When you want a more advanced challege, try chess. You might wonder how programming chess will help you when you want the computer to know when to move a marine from one corner of the map to the other. At least when you try to figure that out, you won't be struggling with the fundamentals.
And don't forget the most important thing. Game programming isn't all about the graphics and the AI. Its about captivating your audience. It doesn't matter how elaborate your game design is, if the player gets bored with it after 10 minutes, then the game was a failure.
Perhaps I have gotten off on a rant.
-Restil
Actually, I didn't see anywhere that the business itself had to be around since the age of the computer, nor that the business used the computer since that time. Only that it is currently in operation.
-Restil
While the oldest computer running in MY business is 1989, a client of mine has a computer running that dates back to 1980. I suppose its not really a PERSONAL computer, its one of those 3B2 Unix systems running old AT&T System V.
-Restil
I could seriously sympathise with Lucas if he gets pissed about this, much more so than his concern over someone smuggling a movie camera into the film.
If you start with a low quality recording, the best you're going to end up with is a low quality recording. It might be better than nothing, but probably nothing worth spending the time downloading for a few days.
However, with this reel, the theif (or whoever it is sold to) could make any quality recording they wanted, as it won't get much better.
The article is fairly vague tho, which means the reporter obviously doesn't have a great deal of information regarding the theft. Although supplement articles are likely to appear about this issue, considering it was an inside job (more than likely), the chances of catching the theif are pretty good. I DOUBT it will show up on Ebay. That's just too risky for them.
-Restil