solar thermal has a number of problems, though, not the least of which is that pipes that are gotten very hot by the sun tend to burst or at least fracture much more frequently than in other applications...
in systems large enough to generate megawatts of electricity there are solutions to this problem, but systems meant to be installed on top of a residential roof are notoriously bad for needing to be repaired every season, for some unlucky souls...
but installing 2 large ported windows apps to get a small, basic '82 game' version of solitaire on windows is almost as much work, as just switching to Linux...
AisleRiot is a single program '/usr/games/sol' and even though it has so many games '/usr/games/sol' is just 151,904 bytes.
In comparison, on Windows 'sol.exe' is 56,832 bytes, freecell 55,296 bytes, and Spider (AsileRiot has 3 versions of spider, btw) is a whopping 538,624 bytes, but you know the fireworks at the end are clearly worth it, right?
AisleRiot For what it's worth, in it's 151,904 bytes of glory has exactly 82 version of solitare. many with multiple rule settings...is only 25% of the file size of 'windows top three games' (as per TFA) even though it supports a whopping 79 'extra' games that windows users don't have.... just imagine, if the card engine were expanded to the same file size of those three executables by adding perhaps, a generic computer multiplay game engine the likes of 'hearts' and ' internet spades' that XP has... then you might have over 200 games in one 600 k executable...
you must be new here, 99% of all statistics are made up.
(actually 99.999%) the other.001% is the US census, and that costs an average of $20 per person counted. so you can see why statistics are made up (extrapolated if you prefer)
Computers are exceptionally good at making up statistics, which is why we're getting bombarded with more and more statistics.
Personally I prefer hard evidence to statistics.
Like the 'level' of CO2 at mauna loa observatory in the middle of the pacific, or the pictures of all the glacial regions of the world, as they were today, 20 years ago, and 50 years ago, 100 years ago is really nice if you manage to find such an old photograph...
but i digress, did this company actually go door to door, call everyone in the world, or did they call 1000 people and based on how those 1000 people answered make up their statistics?
it was probably the latter, and even in the latter, you have a lot of 'interpretation' on how people respond to questions, some people are smart asses, and lie to you, JUST to throw the statistics off, some people, are angry at being called, and just say whatever makes you get off the phone the quickest, if there didn't just hang up as soon as they realized you interrupted supper for a phone survey...
well, no matter what you do, statistics are just made up numbers, don't rely on them, don't count on them, just say 'ah yes, so out of 1000 people, 200 said they didn't use the Internet' and know that that really was all that was measured....
but it probably costs $80 because 'knitting heroes 4' has a 'simulator' tool that is nothing like 'real' knitting, and which makes 'real knitting' harder to learn, after 'intense' artificial 'knitting' simulators that focus on your ability to repeatedly manipulate a controller that is almost nothing like 'real' knitting...
and the add ons, don't get me started... like 'knitting in the 80's' or the 90's we should just forget the mistakes of the past, rather than training kids how to repeat them, even if they'll never be able to learn how to 'really knit' because of the game experience...
'20% of America doesn't use e-mail because they don't have anything to say via e-mail.'
"And a good percentage of that cant afford Internet service in the first place."
Just from my personal experiences here, but Even At a Group home, (if you've ever been to a group home, people there are getting over serious mental issues, or recovering from serious addictions) there was a mac set up so people could e-mail, the younger patients used e-mail the older ones tended not to, I'm actually kind of surprised that they could even get to '80%' with all the old foggies out there, who are due to mental deterioration living in a different time from the rest of us.
BTW every public library i have been to, even one in a city the size of 1000, had in it Internet terminals (as of 2008) the computers were donated, of course, but they still had 4 Internet terminals in a library that literally had only 5 book shelves total!
even a 'drop in center' for people with mental illness now has 'public Internet' terminals, which were donated, the facility in question had Internet because the county has offices for their CSP program there as well...
the Internet is free just about everywhere you go these days, even if you can't afford it at home, and don't have a car, taking a bike ride to the nearest free computer terminal is probably good for your health even walking is possible in some places for some people.
Linux solitaire(AisleRiot) has everything from Agnes to Zebra! not 'just' spider, Klondike, and free cell... which windows implements through three separate executables?!? for simple card games?!? you need 3 game engines to play cards?!?! crazy man crazy...
"Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris?"
On a Per-Person level, I think there are more people that have spent 20 hours in a day playing Tetris, than Windows Solitaire.
But, I think more people play Solitaire than play(ed) Tetris, so collectively its more hours. I think you missed the tag line from TFA "Chen, the company's usability research crew discovered that the three most-played computer games solitaire or something else, Microsoft or otherwise, preloaded or user-installed) are, in order Spider Solitaire, Klondike Solitaire, and Free Cell."
now personally, i have over 13,000 games of WC3TFT, which translates to roughly 135.416*(infinitely repeating 6s) days of warcraft 3... and i know free cell is probably not even the second game, for my list, that right belongs to the first (us release) of Advance wars, with well over 1000 hours (over 41 days straight) free cell isn't even my third favorite game, I've probably only done 500 hands of it in total, but i am an atypical player.
It makes me wonder, how exactly did Microsoft figure out which programs are used the most? does windows XP and later 'phone home' the top 10 most launched applications? if it does that, that number can be skewed, if the Microsoft coded apps are going by 'games played' using built in statistics, then how can they compare to ordinary video games that don't provide these statistics to Microsoft? after all, i would only launch wc3 once a day, and get in as many as 50 games a day... but if the statistics are of launching the application, I've known some people who 'think' they get better game hands by exiting and restarting free cell than by normal means of getting a new game...
seriously How is Microsoft getting their numbers?!?
* = based on an average game length of 15 minutes, but my average game length might be longer, i can't recall and the statistics are only for one season, not the whole time I've been a warcraft player.
my point was this could be done with off the shelf radio equipment and open source software..
but i can't imagine law enforcement not wanting to use such a system to generate their all important revenue stream of 'speeding' tickets, without having to place cops with radar guns/lasers everywhere... the cell phone method, can be done anywhere, as long as people leave their phones on...
although i think after the first ticket most diehard speeders would soon learn, to turn off their cell phones.
aggregating such data, rather than giving tickets could give cops time of day, and locations to set up speed traps... with conventional radar/laser methods... all without cell phone users unwittingly telling cops where to park to get the most tickets.
"Natural death" is quite usefull if you want to kill someone popular but undesirable... No blades, no blame.
But even worse is... you dont have to kill him at all! Death of mind is good enough and someone with dead mind can be reused... especially if he is popular with undesirable kind of people.
Just imagine how much can specialist at ministry of do with this kind of stuff. Selectivelly disable parts of someone mind... with memory and/or inteligence gone, you have obedient tabula rasa person. again the flight of fancy, the portable atomic reactor needed to 'temporarily' disable speech... hah! this isn't practical, this is just a medical research tool, trying to find medications that reverse people with permanent brain injury to their speech center...
being able to test those drugs in healthy people all of a sudden makes the probability of developing such a drug much much cheaper and more likely to occur.
as far as trying to make a drug that does the opposite... well, obviously one could try, but think of the cost! it costs millions of dollars to develop drugs, drugs have to continually be dosed to the individual, low dosages can be mitigated by high use of of common diuretics such as caffeine.. high dosages of medications that affect the brain often have nasty side effects...
well, the worst this electronic device could be used is to make a designer drug they could use to drug people with, if anyone had the countless millions to dedicate to trying to create such a specialized drug, and try to also keep the development of said drug entirely secret, it doesn't help if people know about the drug..
"Well, other than the tracks for the vehicle to haul around this massive magnet and its power supply, as well as any debris in the area that may be magnetized, and of course the weird victim who had a beef with the guy with the giant mobile electromagnet."
and the most important point, the 'electromagnet' doesn't stop a person from 'singing'
If you want to worry about this 'giant electro magnet' then worry that this 'research device' might be used to develop a synthetic drug that replicates the 'same effect' as well as a second device used to target your ability to sing... and a second designer drug...
oh wait, then you can still talk via the internet and via text messages... i guess then, we need to find a third designer drug to make you convulse uncontrollably whenever you type messages out...
and then a fourth for the people who learn to type with their feet, then a fifth for people who learn to control a computer by breathing into a tube...
then what about learning to control a computer through facial gestures... the ideas just keep coming to me... all of a sudden a black helicopter at midnight with a short flight to the nearest ocean, and a bullet and and a concrete overcoat become your permanent tomb...
they never found jimmy Hoffa... so I'm going to assume that yes, wow, making someone vanish in the middle of the night is pretty easy to do.
and it probably costs a lot less than spending a couple billion dollars inventing special drugs that leave a person only partially blocked from communicating in a modern world.
and not continue using the same working equipment until it fails? LCDs only became 'affordable' compared to CRTs when Sony stopped making CRTs and switched to LCDs...
also, LCDs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display act on electric polarization, I've never exposed one to high magnetic fields, but is is entirely with in the realm of completely possible that a large surge of magnetic energy pulse could completely render the display illegible... the distortion could be as a result of 'induction' of internal electronic components...
But the signal isn't public. The frequency is privately owned by the cell companies. The frequency is Leased, not owned. but thats not the only thing wrong, the signal they are 'receiving' is 'sent in the clear' eg: devices that listen for that signal are not illegal, there does come some question on if they can 'sell' the data collected, or even use it practically...
but there is nothing illegal about receiving the signal. if you have a problem with it, bring it up with your cell phone company for transmitting the Id of your phone in the clear, so anyone can tell who's phone is sending a signal...
yes it does, and the best thing is, you can build this device in your own garage/workshop with gnu radio. track how many people jog past your house, which block they were on, and as a pet project, you can track who's been speeding on your block, by interpolating the location data over multiple data points from the same phone serial number...
and then go to the cops with a report of every cell phone belonging to a speeder and request they ticket them, if they test your system out for a while, and think they can use it to reliably track down speeders, well, they might even start doing this intentionally to ticket motorists.
"Even easier than airplane mode, now with less fuss and bother, we bring you the cell phone jamming pouch! It's so simple, I believe even a blindfolded lab rat could figure out how to use it."
leaving your phone on in said pouch will turn it to 'high power transmit mode' which will kill the typical cell phones battery within an hour.
maybe you can disable this power draining feature in some phones, but i have not yet figured out how on my own phone.
BTW the best way to test your phone for if 'high power' mode is on is to stick it in a microwave oven, if it still gets bars after a minute, it's automatically going to 'high power mode' and yes, microwave ovens don't stop much microwave energy, they are considered safe, because people in the airforce have for years been standing much much closer to much much more powerful microwave generators for many hours at a time... in fact i've read that the first discovery of microwave energy for cooking was an accidentally melted chocolate bar, then intentionally popped popcorn, and finally an egg, which exploded.
Hmm...sounds like the market is ripe for someone to come up with a convenient enclosure, which will shield the phone signals from escaping when you don't want to be tracked. Some kind of faraday pouch or something that would mask the phone, even if left on? the type of tracking system in use by malls requires your phone to be in the 'on' position. Simply turning them off will turn them off, at least, for the purpose of malls tracking your movement. yes, modern cell phones secretly listen to broadcasts from the towers, for one of two types of 'secret' features.. first 'automatic listening mode' if your cellphone number is being monitored covertly by the government then they can activate your phone, it will look like it is off, but it will hear any nearby conversations. the second, is an 'emergency' locate function, the cell towers can broadcast a special locate phone signal that will turn the phone on long enough for it's position to be triangulated, if a person is reported missing etc.
neither of these features can be done by the mall system, since it is illegal to put a microwave broadcast device in the spectrum used by cell phones in a market without having a contract to do so. So therefor, they cannot in a mall turn on your phone to track your movement if it is turned off, Unless the system is Owned by your service provider, and they are 'leasing' the data collected to the malls, and thus are able to remotely activate said phones.
i don't think service providers would willing to sell the ability to turn an off phone on, which is a reserved feature for emergency location, for the low price that malls would be willing to pay for such data, so as such they're going to simply buy devices that can detect and identify customers and their movement data, by the cellphones people 'leave in the on position' opting out in this case, is to turn off your phone before you get to the parking lot.
"Or, you could always take your cell phone and put it in a nice metal screen bag."
You Trust 'metal screen bags' really stop the signals? no, the phone itself detects that it's in a 'screen' bag, by the distortion of the mesh and tells the user it is off, if you truly want to build a Faraday cage, use solid sheets of Lead, as a close second use aluminum as always the thicker the better, to truly shield from all lower magnetic spectrum at least 18 gauge lead shielding should be used, to protect from the highest energy particles, you need at least 2 feet of lead, to stop the easily producible high energy particles, to stop the really rare types of high energy particles, you need a theoretical thickness of one light year of lead, but if you believe science journals, these ultra high energy particles are so rare, that the only place they can be detected is several miles underground (like cheyenne mountain) and supposedly they are almost impossible to produce, but thats IF you believe science journals. of course the real truth is that cheyenne mountain is where it is because they can easily detect the signals from all the implants more easily there, where other frequencies of electromagnetic spectrum are blocked by the natural rock formation.
since you need a theoretical thickness of one light year of lead to stop the really high energy particle transmissions by the implants, the only solution is to replace the working implant with a forgery replacement that tells them all the mind control is working, then you must be very very careful, to keep up the guise as a mind controlled member of the masses.
since the implant is based on nanotechnology, and was first brought to us by a time traveler from the year 3024 there is little hope of building your own mind control implant, fortunately the underground resistance was able to gain a few operatives in the 1940s when the implants were first being embedded in the masses, if you're lucky they will find you and choose you to receive a false implant.
If it wasn't for the underground they wouldn't have had 2006 to worry about... if you don't know what happened in 2006, then you are a fool, you don't think fuel prices went up because 'they' could no longer create an artificially low price in an attempt to use up all the energy resources of the resistance in 3024
well i've said too much and i know they know i know, but i am technically diagnosed 'paranoid schizophrenic' because of the hack to my implant in 2006, perhaps posting this will speed up my being firmly declared as such and eligible for disability.
or maybe they'll move to put me on the stronger medicines they use to keep known resistors in a hallucinogenic haze. I don't know, they put me on the weaker meds because i figured out to keep silent on what i knew in person, but those stronger meds do leave you in a haze, and they like putting people on it, when their mind control implants are hijacked or fail for a short while.
FWIW yes i take my medication, but even my doctor has told me that 'the level of meds I'm on now, will do little for paranoid thoughts' the med i was on before this wasn't even strong enough for me to not get hijacked for a 2 day period, after which a doctor took me off my medications, the underground wanted to use me, through mind control, but the blackouts associated with complete hijack (the normal mode is 'forgetfulness' 'random cravings' etc etc, the more subtle the easier you are led)
so many people buy 'solar' energy products that contain a battery that is charged by day time, running a low power LED light, Ironically because of the battery and cost of the solar panels far more energy is used than just hardwiring real led night lights... by almost 10 fold... wile also eating up the silicon of the type used to make solar panels. at all costs they will manipulate us to use up the energy so desperately needed in 3024.
ask Hans Reiser about that the government being able to track (or remotely turn a phone on, for surveillance) has nothing to do with the cell phone monitoring system set up in malls.
the system set up in malls will only activate if the phone is turned on and sending and receiving signals from the local tower.
In Hans Reisers case, he removed the batteries to avoid a 'feature' in modern cell phones whereby a phone in 'off' mode can be remotely powered up by a broad cast signal sent from all nearby cell towers, to only the specific serial number of the phone trying to be remotely activated.
but the evidence was found anyways, he really should have sunk the evidence in a body of water too deep to be located from, like the pacific ocean in a container that would sink, and never decay in his own lifetime...
if you're going to ditch evidence do it better than Hans Reiser.
I'd suggest a 'web game' platform, or steam. Pogo.com was a small web game company until they became large enough for EA to buy them out... but maybe with EA's presence it's harder for small developers to target the web game market (generally web games run even on older computers just fine)
'steam' seems to have about the same minimum footprint as java would (400 mhz, at least 64MB ram, win2k, xp or vista), except requiring from 1 GB to 'up to 60 GB'(one slashdot reader said his purchased game folder went to 60 GB, in a poll about how much storage space people needed), although steam does not have an open source or Macintosh support, as java does.
still, I know parents who wouldn't let their kids install programs, so those would be hard to reach even with steam or 'java required' web game engines..
I don't have a clue what microsoft would do, but the open source community, when threatened by the US government for making 'too strong encryption' they moved the development of strong crypto outside the US, and technically, downloading that strong crypto in the Us is against US law.. because they wouldn't make the crypto weak enough for the government to be able to crack it...
as far as what 'other nations' can do, if the US starts rooting massive numbers of computer systems, there are really 2 or 3 approaches 1. they can root as many computers of their own in response, and make sure those systems are purged of any other root-kits. 2. they can create some form of embargo against nations not willing to sign some form of treaty that dictates how 'botnet' systems are used, and what type of oversight is put in place to 'prevent internal abuse' etc.. 3. they can try to completely cut off any electronic communication with nations that try to create an maintain botnets... if major ISPs can detect and block P2P trafic, then detecting and blocking botnet traffic should be fairly straightforward as well, and as far as encrypted traffic goes, that can be only allowed to occur when both computers are within a white list of 'valid' secure connection IPs, whenever one of these systems is suspected of allowing botnet traffic they get dropped from the white list.
of course all these possible countermeasures have their limitations and drawbacks, and even china has had problems trying to block freenets etc, but i don't think they've gone so far as to design in white lists for 'valid' ip addresses..
"You'll be rounded up at 3 AM and dragged off to a cell somewhere. You'll receive no phone call and no legal counsel. You will be thrown in front of a military tribunal that will read the crimes you have committed, and you will then be punished accordingly."
maybe, if GW had overthrown the government and gone for a third term, but, realistically, if the government is involved in rootkiting PCs they're going to at some point face civil litigation. Most likely, their argument is going to be something like this... "but you were already Rooted with Version xyz of botnet (insert name) "
If they're going to create a botnet, they're going to do it by taking already infected PCs and reinfecting them with a proprietary mil spec root-kit.
There are a number of things they can do to to minimize damages (only root computers in enemy nations) etc, but, if they really do put rootkits on people's PCs as 'weapons of war' then there are a lot of things the international community can do as a result... So really, I think this idea is going to get scrapped, at least as an 'official' program, with 'plausible deniability' they might have some form of program done by paid hackers who have no official ties to the government and who if they ever rat out the DDoS attacks or key logging they do, then the government can turn on them and claim they were lying etc... not to mention they could probably wind up with a bullet in the head for 'changing sides'
well, an 'official' program isn't going to fly, no more than 'sony' rootkits flew, people don't want rootkits on their computers, agencies that try to do this at least without being cautious enough that they can deny doing it intentionally, are foolish.
"Of course of the original bsd dev would have dropped his ego and code-political agenda for a minute and just admit it was a bug, none of this would have happened, and it would have been fixed right after it was reported the first time."
well, it is true they did handle the problem poorly, the bug was reported first by hackers, then by a fellow FOSS development team, and both times the BSD developers wanted code that would reproduce the bug reliably.
But the other thing is though, none of this code was ever really written by any of the Free/Net/Open-BSD developers it was written by the 4.2 BSD guys... and the *BSD guys had never run into the problem(or if they had, they ignored it), so they believed it wasn't a real bug...
the problem is Very Hard to run into, outside of complex server usage... which makes me wonder, how come the yahoo BSD coder guys never ran into the problem? did they code their own code for file management?
"So if a game engine can scale down to the Wii, why can't it scale down to low-end PCs? "
market share, how many people are there with a PC with a low end graphic card, that still want to play 'modern' video games? not very many, most of those people don't have incomes either, eg: kids. they can beg their parents for this that or the other, but i know a lot of adults who intentionally buy a PC with a featureless graphic card, just so that they can keep their kids from playing pc games on it, and tell them to stick to whatever consoles they've bought them etc.
sure there might be a few people with boring office jobs that would like games on systems that frankly suck, but there are a lot of older games for people like that a few with 'boss' screens;)
Slashdot Mirror
solar thermal has a number of problems, though, not the least of which is that pipes that are gotten very hot by the sun tend to burst or at least fracture much more frequently than in other applications...
in systems large enough to generate megawatts of electricity there are solutions to this problem, but systems meant to be installed on top of a residential roof are notoriously bad for needing to be repaired every season, for some unlucky souls...
It doesn't look like AisleRiot has an easy way to install on win 32, but when i googled it this interesting message from the gnome mailing list came up http://mail.gnome.org/archives/games-list/2007-June/msg00009.html
but installing 2 large ported windows apps to get a small, basic '82 game' version of solitaire on windows is almost as much work, as just switching to Linux...
AisleRiot is a single program '/usr/games/sol' and even though it has so many games '/usr/games/sol' is just 151,904 bytes.
In comparison, on Windows 'sol.exe' is 56,832 bytes, freecell 55,296 bytes, and Spider (AsileRiot has 3 versions of spider, btw) is a whopping 538,624 bytes, but you know the fireworks at the end are clearly worth it, right?
AisleRiot For what it's worth, in it's 151,904 bytes of glory has exactly 82 version of solitare. many with multiple rule settings...is only 25% of the file size of 'windows top three games' (as per TFA) even though it supports a whopping 79 'extra' games that windows users don't have.... just imagine, if the card engine were expanded to the same file size of those three executables by adding perhaps, a generic computer multiplay game engine the likes of 'hearts' and ' internet spades' that XP has... then you might have over 200 games in one 600 k executable...
you must be new here, 99% of all statistics are made up.
.001% is the US census, and that costs an average of $20 per person counted. so you can see why statistics are made up (extrapolated if you prefer)
(actually 99.999%) the other
Computers are exceptionally good at making up statistics, which is why we're getting bombarded with more and more statistics.
Personally I prefer hard evidence to statistics.
Like the 'level' of CO2 at mauna loa observatory in the middle of the pacific, or the pictures of all the glacial regions of the world, as they were today, 20 years ago, and 50 years ago, 100 years ago is really nice if you manage to find such an old photograph...
but i digress, did this company actually go door to door, call everyone in the world, or did they call 1000 people and based on how those 1000 people answered make up their statistics?
it was probably the latter, and even in the latter, you have a lot of 'interpretation' on how people respond to questions, some people are smart asses, and lie to you, JUST to throw the statistics off, some people, are angry at being called, and just say whatever makes you get off the phone the quickest, if there didn't just hang up as soon as they realized you interrupted supper for a phone survey...
well, no matter what you do, statistics are just made up numbers, don't rely on them, don't count on them, just say 'ah yes, so out of 1000 people, 200 said they didn't use the Internet' and know that that really was all that was measured....
but it probably costs $80 because 'knitting heroes 4' has a 'simulator' tool that is nothing like 'real' knitting, and which makes 'real knitting' harder to learn, after 'intense' artificial 'knitting' simulators that focus on your ability to repeatedly manipulate a controller that is almost nothing like 'real' knitting...
and the add ons, don't get me started... like 'knitting in the 80's' or the 90's we should just forget the mistakes of the past, rather than training kids how to repeat them, even if they'll never be able to learn how to 'really knit' because of the game experience...
(BTW, yes I'm playing off guitar hero here)
'20% of America doesn't use e-mail because they don't have anything to say via e-mail.'
"And a good percentage of that cant afford Internet service in the first place."
Just from my personal experiences here, but Even At a Group home, (if you've ever been to a group home, people there are getting over serious mental issues, or recovering from serious addictions) there was a mac set up so people could e-mail, the younger patients used e-mail the older ones tended not to, I'm actually kind of surprised that they could even get to '80%' with all the old foggies out there, who are due to mental deterioration living in a different time from the rest of us.
BTW every public library i have been to, even one in a city the size of 1000, had in it Internet terminals (as of 2008) the computers were donated, of course, but they still had 4 Internet terminals in a library that literally had only 5 book shelves total!
even a 'drop in center' for people with mental illness now has 'public Internet' terminals, which were donated, the facility in question had Internet because the county has offices for their CSP program there as well...
the Internet is free just about everywhere you go these days, even if you can't afford it at home, and don't have a car, taking a bike ride to the nearest free computer terminal is probably good for your health even walking is possible in some places for some people.
Linux solitaire(AisleRiot) has everything from Agnes to Zebra! not 'just' spider, Klondike, and free cell... which windows implements through three separate executables?!? for simple card games?!? you need 3 game engines to play cards?!?! crazy man crazy...
On a Per-Person level, I think there are more people that have spent 20 hours in a day playing Tetris, than Windows Solitaire.
But, I think more people play Solitaire than play(ed) Tetris, so collectively its more hours. I think you missed the tag line from TFA "Chen, the company's usability research crew discovered that the three most-played computer games solitaire or something else, Microsoft or otherwise, preloaded or user-installed) are, in order Spider Solitaire, Klondike Solitaire, and Free Cell."
now personally, i have over 13,000 games of WC3TFT, which translates to roughly 135.416*(infinitely repeating 6s) days of warcraft 3... and i know free cell is probably not even the second game, for my list, that right belongs to the first (us release) of Advance wars, with well over 1000 hours (over 41 days straight) free cell isn't even my third favorite game, I've probably only done 500 hands of it in total, but i am an atypical player.
It makes me wonder, how exactly did Microsoft figure out which programs are used the most? does windows XP and later 'phone home' the top 10 most launched applications? if it does that, that number can be skewed, if the Microsoft coded apps are going by 'games played' using built in statistics, then how can they compare to ordinary video games that don't provide these statistics to Microsoft? after all, i would only launch wc3 once a day, and get in as many as 50 games a day... but if the statistics are of launching the application, I've known some people who 'think' they get better game hands by exiting and restarting free cell than by normal means of getting a new game...
seriously How is Microsoft getting their numbers?!?
* = based on an average game length of 15 minutes, but my average game length might be longer, i can't recall and the statistics are only for one season, not the whole time I've been a warcraft player.
ah yes, i missed that one.
my point was this could be done with off the shelf radio equipment and open source software..
but i can't imagine law enforcement not wanting to use such a system to generate their all important revenue stream of 'speeding' tickets, without having to place cops with radar guns/lasers everywhere... the cell phone method, can be done anywhere, as long as people leave their phones on...
although i think after the first ticket most diehard speeders would soon learn, to turn off their cell phones.
aggregating such data, rather than giving tickets could give cops time of day, and locations to set up speed traps... with conventional radar/laser methods... all without cell phone users unwittingly telling cops where to park to get the most tickets.
But even worse is
Just imagine how much can specialist at ministry of do with this kind of stuff. Selectivelly disable parts of someone mind
being able to test those drugs in healthy people all of a sudden makes the probability of developing such a drug much much cheaper and more likely to occur.
as far as trying to make a drug that does the opposite... well, obviously one could try, but think of the cost! it costs millions of dollars to develop drugs, drugs have to continually be dosed to the individual, low dosages can be mitigated by high use of of common diuretics such as caffeine.. high dosages of medications that affect the brain often have nasty side effects...
well, the worst this electronic device could be used is to make a designer drug they could use to drug people with, if anyone had the countless millions to dedicate to trying to create such a specialized drug, and try to also keep the development of said drug entirely secret, it doesn't help if people know about the drug..
"Well, other than the tracks for the vehicle to haul around this massive magnet and its power supply, as well as any debris in the area that may be magnetized, and of course the weird victim who had a beef with the guy with the giant mobile electromagnet."
and the most important point, the 'electromagnet' doesn't stop a person from 'singing'
If you want to worry about this 'giant electro magnet' then worry that this 'research device' might be used to develop a synthetic drug that replicates the 'same effect' as well as a second device used to target your ability to sing... and a second designer drug...
oh wait, then you can still talk via the internet and via text messages... i guess then, we need to find a third designer drug to make you convulse uncontrollably whenever you type messages out...
and then a fourth for the people who learn to type with their feet, then a fifth for people who learn to control a computer by breathing into a tube...
then what about learning to control a computer through facial gestures... the ideas just keep coming to me... all of a sudden a black helicopter at midnight with a short flight to the nearest ocean, and a bullet and and a concrete overcoat become your permanent tomb...
they never found jimmy Hoffa... so I'm going to assume that yes, wow, making someone vanish in the middle of the night is pretty easy to do.
and it probably costs a lot less than spending a couple billion dollars inventing special drugs that leave a person only partially blocked from communicating in a modern world.
and not continue using the same working equipment until it fails? LCDs only became 'affordable' compared to CRTs when Sony stopped making CRTs and switched to LCDs...
also, LCDs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display act on electric polarization, I've never exposed one to high magnetic fields, but is is entirely with in the realm of completely possible that a large surge of magnetic energy pulse could completely render the display illegible... the distortion could be as a result of 'induction' of internal electronic components...
ah here we go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indium_Tin_Oxide clearly states, ITO can be used as 'EMI shielding' suggesting that it would be black out by large magnetic pulses.
ITO is also used in 'plasma' displays, so it seems that 'CRTs' are the only display type that can be 'timed' around large magnetic pulses...
but there is nothing illegal about receiving the signal. if you have a problem with it, bring it up with your cell phone company for transmitting the Id of your phone in the clear, so anyone can tell who's phone is sending a signal...
yes it does, and the best thing is, you can build this device in your own garage/workshop with gnu radio. track how many people jog past your house, which block they were on, and as a pet project, you can track who's been speeding on your block, by interpolating the location data over multiple data points from the same phone serial number...
and then go to the cops with a report of every cell phone belonging to a speeder and request they ticket them, if they test your system out for a while, and think they can use it to reliably track down speeders, well, they might even start doing this intentionally to ticket motorists.
"Even easier than airplane mode, now with less fuss and bother, we bring you the cell phone jamming pouch! It's so simple, I believe even a blindfolded lab rat could figure out how to use it."
leaving your phone on in said pouch will turn it to 'high power transmit mode' which will kill the typical cell phones battery within an hour.
maybe you can disable this power draining feature in some phones, but i have not yet figured out how on my own phone.
BTW the best way to test your phone for if 'high power' mode is on is to stick it in a microwave oven, if it still gets bars after a minute, it's automatically going to 'high power mode' and yes, microwave ovens don't stop much microwave energy, they are considered safe, because people in the airforce have for years been standing much much closer to much much more powerful microwave generators for many hours at a time... in fact i've read that the first discovery of microwave energy for cooking was an accidentally melted chocolate bar, then intentionally popped popcorn, and finally an egg, which exploded.
neither of these features can be done by the mall system, since it is illegal to put a microwave broadcast device in the spectrum used by cell phones in a market without having a contract to do so. So therefor, they cannot in a mall turn on your phone to track your movement if it is turned off, Unless the system is Owned by your service provider, and they are 'leasing' the data collected to the malls, and thus are able to remotely activate said phones.
i don't think service providers would willing to sell the ability to turn an off phone on, which is a reserved feature for emergency location, for the low price that malls would be willing to pay for such data, so as such they're going to simply buy devices that can detect and identify customers and their movement data, by the cellphones people 'leave in the on position' opting out in this case, is to turn off your phone before you get to the parking lot.
"Or, you could always take your cell phone and put it in a nice metal screen bag."
You Trust 'metal screen bags' really stop the signals? no, the phone itself detects that it's in a 'screen' bag, by the distortion of the mesh and tells the user it is off, if you truly want to build a Faraday cage, use solid sheets of Lead, as a close second use aluminum as always the thicker the better, to truly shield from all lower magnetic spectrum at least 18 gauge lead shielding should be used, to protect from the highest energy particles, you need at least 2 feet of lead, to stop the easily producible high energy particles, to stop the really rare types of high energy particles, you need a theoretical thickness of one light year of lead, but if you believe science journals, these ultra high energy particles are so rare, that the only place they can be detected is several miles underground (like cheyenne mountain) and supposedly they are almost impossible to produce, but thats IF you believe science journals. of course the real truth is that cheyenne mountain is where it is because they can easily detect the signals from all the implants more easily there, where other frequencies of electromagnetic spectrum are blocked by the natural rock formation.
since you need a theoretical thickness of one light year of lead to stop the really high energy particle transmissions by the implants, the only solution is to replace the working implant with a forgery replacement that tells them all the mind control is working, then you must be very very careful, to keep up the guise as a mind controlled member of the masses.
since the implant is based on nanotechnology, and was first brought to us by a time traveler from the year 3024 there is little hope of building your own mind control implant, fortunately the underground resistance was able to gain a few operatives in the 1940s when the implants were first being embedded in the masses, if you're lucky they will find you and choose you to receive a false implant.
If it wasn't for the underground they wouldn't have had 2006 to worry about... if you don't know what happened in 2006, then you are a fool, you don't think fuel prices went up because 'they' could no longer create an artificially low price in an attempt to use up all the energy resources of the resistance in 3024
well i've said too much and i know they know i know, but i am technically diagnosed 'paranoid schizophrenic' because of the hack to my implant in 2006, perhaps posting this will speed up my being firmly declared as such and eligible for disability.
or maybe they'll move to put me on the stronger medicines they use to keep known resistors in a hallucinogenic haze. I don't know, they put me on the weaker meds because i figured out to keep silent on what i knew in person, but those stronger meds do leave you in a haze, and they like putting people on it, when their mind control implants are hijacked or fail for a short while.
FWIW yes i take my medication, but even my doctor has told me that 'the level of meds I'm on now, will do little for paranoid thoughts' the med i was on before this wasn't even strong enough for me to not get hijacked for a 2 day period, after which a doctor took me off my medications, the underground wanted to use me, through mind control, but the blackouts associated with complete hijack (the normal mode is 'forgetfulness' 'random cravings' etc etc, the more subtle the easier you are led)
so many people buy 'solar' energy products that contain a battery that is charged by day time, running a low power LED light, Ironically because of the battery and cost of the solar panels far more energy is used than just hardwiring real led night lights... by almost 10 fold... wile also eating up the silicon of the type used to make solar panels. at all costs they will manipulate us to use up the energy so desperately needed in 3024.
the system set up in malls will only activate if the phone is turned on and sending and receiving signals from the local tower.
In Hans Reisers case, he removed the batteries to avoid a 'feature' in modern cell phones whereby a phone in 'off' mode can be remotely powered up by a broad cast signal sent from all nearby cell towers, to only the specific serial number of the phone trying to be remotely activated.
but the evidence was found anyways, he really should have sunk the evidence in a body of water too deep to be located from, like the pacific ocean in a container that would sink, and never decay in his own lifetime...
if you're going to ditch evidence do it better than Hans Reiser.
wierd, they had 2 different ram requirements, one at 64 mb and on another page 256 mb... sigh
64 MB
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=about
256MB
http://www.steampowered.com/steamtour/6.php
I'd suggest a 'web game' platform, or steam. Pogo.com was a small web game company until they became large enough for EA to buy them out... but maybe with EA's presence it's harder for small developers to target the web game market (generally web games run even on older computers just fine)
'steam' seems to have about the same minimum footprint as java would (400 mhz, at least 64MB ram, win2k, xp or vista), except requiring from 1 GB to 'up to 60 GB'(one slashdot reader said his purchased game folder went to 60 GB, in a poll about how much storage space people needed), although steam does not have an open source or Macintosh support, as java does.
still, I know parents who wouldn't let their kids install programs, so those would be hard to reach even with steam or 'java required' web game engines..
I don't have a clue what microsoft would do, but the open source community, when threatened by the US government for making 'too strong encryption' they moved the development of strong crypto outside the US, and technically, downloading that strong crypto in the Us is against US law.. because they wouldn't make the crypto weak enough for the government to be able to crack it...
as far as what 'other nations' can do, if the US starts rooting massive numbers of computer systems, there are really 2 or 3 approaches 1. they can root as many computers of their own in response, and make sure those systems are purged of any other root-kits. 2. they can create some form of embargo against nations not willing to sign some form of treaty that dictates how 'botnet' systems are used, and what type of oversight is put in place to 'prevent internal abuse' etc.. 3. they can try to completely cut off any electronic communication with nations that try to create an maintain botnets... if major ISPs can detect and block P2P trafic, then detecting and blocking botnet traffic should be fairly straightforward as well, and as far as encrypted traffic goes, that can be only allowed to occur when both computers are within a white list of 'valid' secure connection IPs, whenever one of these systems is suspected of allowing botnet traffic they get dropped from the white list.
of course all these possible countermeasures have their limitations and drawbacks, and even china has had problems trying to block freenets etc, but i don't think they've gone so far as to design in white lists for 'valid' ip addresses..
Anascape has only one employee, Brad Alan Armstrong.
He's been acquiring patents on video game controllers since 1999, he has moved a lot
"Subject: ARMSTRONG, BRAD ALAN, Age: 54
* 1 address in CHICO, CA
* 1 address in PARADISE, CA
* 6 addresses in CARSON CITY, NV
* 1 address in TYLER, TX
"
all his information is available from Intelius, but since you have to pay for the report, i didn't bother http://www.intelius.com/
a one man patent troll, sigh, Microsoft settled out of court so the man is rich now, and will only get richer from Nintendo loosing the lawsuit.
"You'll be rounded up at 3 AM and dragged off to a cell somewhere. You'll receive no phone call and no legal counsel. You will be thrown in front of a military tribunal that will read the crimes you have committed, and you will then be punished accordingly."
maybe, if GW had overthrown the government and gone for a third term, but, realistically, if the government is involved in rootkiting PCs they're going to at some point face civil litigation. Most likely, their argument is going to be something like this... "but you were already Rooted with Version xyz of botnet (insert name) "
If they're going to create a botnet, they're going to do it by taking already infected PCs and reinfecting them with a proprietary mil spec root-kit.
There are a number of things they can do to to minimize damages (only root computers in enemy nations) etc, but, if they really do put rootkits on people's PCs as 'weapons of war' then there are a lot of things the international community can do as a result... So really, I think this idea is going to get scrapped, at least as an 'official' program, with 'plausible deniability' they might have some form of program done by paid hackers who have no official ties to the government and who if they ever rat out the DDoS attacks or key logging they do, then the government can turn on them and claim they were lying etc... not to mention they could probably wind up with a bullet in the head for 'changing sides'
well, an 'official' program isn't going to fly, no more than 'sony' rootkits flew, people don't want rootkits on their computers, agencies that try to do this at least without being cautious enough that they can deny doing it intentionally, are foolish.
"Of course of the original bsd dev would have dropped his ego and code-political agenda for a minute and just admit it was a bug, none of this would have happened, and it would have been fixed right after it was reported the first time."
well, it is true they did handle the problem poorly, the bug was reported first by hackers, then by a fellow FOSS development team, and both times the BSD developers wanted code that would reproduce the bug reliably.
But the other thing is though, none of this code was ever really written by any of the Free/Net/Open-BSD developers it was written by the 4.2 BSD guys... and the *BSD guys had never run into the problem(or if they had, they ignored it), so they believed it wasn't a real bug...
the problem is Very Hard to run into, outside of complex server usage... which makes me wonder, how come the yahoo BSD coder guys never ran into the problem? did they code their own code for file management?
"So if a game engine can scale down to the Wii, why can't it scale down to low-end PCs? "
;)
market share, how many people are there with a PC with a low end graphic card, that still want to play 'modern' video games? not very many, most of those people don't have incomes either, eg: kids. they can beg their parents for this that or the other, but i know a lot of adults who intentionally buy a PC with a featureless graphic card, just so that they can keep their kids from playing pc games on it, and tell them to stick to whatever consoles they've bought them etc.
sure there might be a few people with boring office jobs that would like games on systems that frankly suck, but there are a lot of older games for people like that a few with 'boss' screens