If you're coming to the library to do research, then unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups, you'll probably enjoy the fact that there's not someone on the computer across from you staring at women in all sorts of unnatural positions.
Hrmm, Lets take a look at some of the popular "hate groups" these various blocking software blocks, shall we?
The problem with commercial blocking software is the lists of blocked sites are not published, and often contain OVERBLOCKS, Stonewall Inc is blocked under the "Gay Sites" area of Cyberpatrol, but it has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.
This is the reason we need to keep these "filters" out of our libraries and schools.
Dates are mostely used for accounting and finantial programs and reporting/analysis tools. The power grid doesn't much care what the date is, nor does your car or your shaver.
This is very true, and this is what I thought at very first myself. However look deeper into it, here is a scenario.
Say you have an old embedded chip, something which isn't Y2K compliant, only uses 2 bytes of data for the decade and year numbers, no century number.
Ok, you have this in, say, a microwave. Most microwaves show the date and time when not in operation, doubling as a clock.
Now midnight strikes, the chip increments the year 99 by 1, thats 100 the chip thinks, but it can't store that in the 2 digit memory space set aside for the date and this causes a fault, the chip locks up.
This is what happened to my friends microwave... Of course a simple power cycle via the plug and keep the year somewhere in the 80's and you're fine, but think what would happen if some of these chips did the same with elevators, or power plants, etc. Sure, the operation wouldn't depend on the date itself, but the chip would fault causing failures anyways.
If that's true, and I know it's true where I work, and Y2K were really as big a problem as everyone thought, then you'd expect to see some problems.. wouldn't you? I mean really, if we didn't manage to finish Y2K readiness, then shouldn't something have broken?
Just yesterday I was talking to someone who spent a full day repairing a non-Y2K compliant database that puked his dads stock/portfolio information all over everywhere. The majority of failures won't come immediately unless you look at it closely enough, however like a feedback loop it will be small errors and just keep building on that until its big enough that you do see it.
The stuff that was supposed to break at the stroke of midnight were power grids, the telephone network, sewage systems. Those things seem to have made it, but just like many, many websites were broken, so too are many databases and programs, and unlike websites where its in plain view constantly, you may not notice it until its quite a big problem.
I think your annoyance at people who ask you for help is a little bit unjustified.
It might be, but I am annoyed regardless by the sheer numbers. If I can learn about it through books and documentation then why can't they also? The least they could do would be to make a conscious effort. I'm not asking for much, just try to find information elsewhere first, then if you still have questions, THAT'S the time to ask.
I frequently help people setup their boxen, but I also ask them that they read documentation also. It's a total waste of my time to regurgitate it over and over when someone has already written it down for this same purpose.
People are quick to accuse the media of trumping this up more than needed because nothing happened.
This is false logic.
The reason nothing happened is a direct result of the media blasting this home, so that businesses and governments would start moving their asses to get this looked after. If the media DIDN'T cover it we'd all probably be without a lot of infrastructure right now.
People see nothing happening as a sign that Y2K was a waste of time, breath, and money. They think that because nothing happened that all the preparations were for nothing. They just don't seem to understand that the preparations worked, we survived. A threat to our civilization was brought to the forefront and we mobilized to stop it, we fought off the invisible invasion of time.
Yet people are angry, because nothing happened.
This is a testament to what the human race can do when motivated. You shouldn't be angry, you should be PROUD nothing happened.
All this while some other people are angry that they were stuck at work during the celebrations of the turn of the millennium.
To this I say "You're in luck, thats not until next year."
When I got my first PC after years of owning a C64 (1200 baud modems ruled!) I had no idea what to do first.... What did I do? First I read the PC-DOS (yep, version 5 no less) manual, then the users manual, and pretty soon I was cd'ing all over the place and dir'ing like no tomorrow.
Now I use Linux as my main OS, have been for a couple years, everyone asks me for help, and it's really annoying.
Why, you ask?
Because I read the manuals, documentation, I learned how it worked, I spent the time to figure it out, and I feel these people are just getting a "free ride" by asking me instead of going and doing it on their own like I did. I didn't know anyone locally with a PC, I had no one to ask until some months later.
Sure, now and then there is no sufficient documentation and I'm forced to ask, but I make concious efforts to learn on my own, these people don't, they don't care, they want it working and they want it working now. Reading documentation is like severing a limb. "Why should I read it when I can just ask you?" is a question often posed to me.
Welcome to the society of instant gratification.
Now if you ask me, this is a Bad Thing(tm), and poking fun at them may be a subtle way to get them to see that its not all that "cool" to just ask people instead of going to even make an effort of SOME kind to find it themselves, especially about something like computers which touches everyones lives now.
Not to mention, I find UF funny usually, and this political correctness rant buddy posts is just crap as the strip isn't usually about tech support calls at all! Only a small minority of them are.
I'm glad Jake Lloyd will be playing Ender. I was afraid that his being in Phantom Menace would ruin the careeer of someone who obviously has some talent.
I really didn't like him in Phantom Menace...
I suppose no one could live up to the type of hype and scrutiny that he had to go through but I just don't think he's a very good actor. He came off as whiney, he messed up some lines, etc.
Turn on cookies and go to www.citifi.com and you'll get the lame "We dont support anything but windows or macos, go away" message. Then click on "About Citifi" at the bottom, suddenly you get access to the navigation bar at the left, and the one at the top right, which offers you to check out their entire website, INCLUDING:
A Home link which takes you to their main page
A Products and Services page
A Signup to be come a new member page
And to even "sign in" to your account
(Direct Links not included because their site runs on https with cookies and it seems without seeing the "disclamer" that your OS isn't supported, it does not work.)
And more, it looks like you can navagate the ENTIRE page REGARDLESS that it says you're unsupported.
So the 64 thousand dollar question is.....
Why have the disclamer that non-Windows and non-MacOS users are unsupported if they can, even with the disclamer page, navigate the entire site?
IF eToys argument is "hey, do what you like, but can you keep the stuff that's age-inappropriate off the public pages", then I don't see the problem. Anyone capable of setting up a web page is more than capable of setting up an.htaccess file, and anyone capable of thought is capable of deciding if something is "age-inappropriate".
Well simply put, thats not eToys stance AT ALL and even if it were, eToys is NOT the content police of the net.
My we have very short memories don't we? eToys sued eToy on the basis of TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT. eToys has NO AUTHORITY to sue ANYONE for displaying nudity, profanity, or any other content on the net, unless its libelous or slanderous, which this was obviously NOT the case.
Now you think eToys is being SENSIBLE for asking for consessions on issues which have NO RELEVANCE to the court case at ALL and using the law suit as an enforcer to scare eToy into submission? This is sensible to you?
The mere thought of what you find not sensible scares me.
There is NOTHING illegal or immoral for eToys to go over to another company and say "hey, we can be mature about this, how about we work something out here." I'd call that bloody sensible, if you ask me! It's about time someone asked, rather than demanded at gunpoint or lawsuit-point.
Hello?! McFly?!?! Have you been following the same story I have?
eToys SUED eToy on the basis of TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT, got their domain (eToy's domain was older then eToys'!) SUSPENDED by NSI, and now you think eToys is being SENSIBLE because you think they're asking for consessions on issues which have NO RELEVANCE to the court case at ALL?!?!
eToys has no legal or moral right to sue eToy for anything, let alone to be the content police of the net. I think you need a whack from the reality stick personally.
People should be forced to read the QW-Protocol specification before they contribute to this forum! The situation is: the server DOES actually all the damage/movement calculations! All the client does is input and rendering (in QW it with prediction).
Uhm, We're talking about Quake 3 here...
And if this is so in Quake 3, how are hacked clients able to increase damage?
And, as for K7 + Via, I swore myself away from Via several years ago. I firmly believe that they make the poorest motherboard chipsets that have ever been put on the market.
I have an old Socket 7 VIA board and yes, they are quite bad, slow, etc. I agree with you then, however, things do change in the computer industry very rapidly. Case in point AMD K5's were crappy CPU's not too long ago. I've seen the newer VIA chipsets in action and they're quite nice. They did suck, they were very bad, but now I think they're right up there.
Also the fact that the only part of the chipset VIA changed would be the north bridge to access PC133 SDRAM, it's still mostly the same.
1 - Dump Intel. Not only do the AMD K7 Athlons run faster then Intel CPU's, they also run on a nice EV6 Alpha modified 200mhz FSB motherboard, and I do belive VIA has a chipset for Athlons which allows PC133mhz SDRAM.
2 - Dump the RAMBUS RAM. Get 1 GIG of PC133 SDRAM
3 - The SB 128 might not work well, I'd actually try to find an old SB16 ISA card seeing as you're not doing sound processing, and it'll more then suffice for any other audio requirements you may have.
4 - I hate to bring up the Disto Holy War(tm), but is Red Hat really a good choice? I find it bloated, slow and insecure. Perhaps Slackware or Debian/Corel?
5 - Someone mentioned the 3c905 drivers not being real mature and suggested dumping that for an Intel card, I have to disagree. I've used 3Com NICs, including the 905, in Linux for years and they work perfectly, I wouldn't change that choice.
6 - DVD Drives aren't really supported, you might want to opt out of that for a nice high speed CD-ROM and possibly add a DVD drive later when there is better (any?) support.
7 - That TNT Ultra card I'm not to sure of, I think there is support for it in Mesa, but don't hold me to that, it really depends on what you're going to be using it for, if you're going to be doing lots of 3D graphics I would, unfortunately, opt for the more supported Voodoo 3, if not the TNT Ultra will be fine but you can cut a corner or two on it and get a Matrox G200 which will do just as well.
8 - USB isnt really supported until 2.4.x, although you kindof get USB ports thrown in free on every motherboard these days.
There is more to news production that you have yet grasped.
You mean just sitting around watching the AP, UPI and Reuters wires and reprinting anything you feel like it? That kind of reporting? Because that's the kind of reporting we get these days.
Thanks for the link, one part I found humerous was:
32. Without the motion picture companies? copyrighted content for DVD video, there would be no viable market for computer DVD drives and DVD players, as well as the related computer chips and software necessary to run these devices and, thus, there would be no DVD video industry.
So I guess without CSS we'd just pop DVD's in our existing CD-ROM drives and they'd work huh? I suppose you'd pop a DVD in your laserdisc player or VHS player and it'd work?
The storage capacity of DVD drives ALONE would MORE then make them a sought after product by computer owners, not to mention that you kindof need a DVD player to play DVD's on a TV....
Is it just me or are the IQ's of lawyers a direct inverse proportion to their price tag?
Guess what would happen if the windows source code suddenly became open? All kinds of cracks would appear. We've just proven it.
This might start to sound like flamebair but I don't particularly think this is a Bad Thing(tm).
There is no shortage of Windows cracks/hacks/"security" subversions/DoS attack programs, etc as it is now, a few million more wouldn't hurt so bad, MS would just sell everyone a service pack for $59.95.
More people might wake up to how crappy MS software is and demand better instead of just putting up with it as they seem to be.
Not to mention it might force MS to write better code in the future, but I doubt it. I mean think about it for a second, if MS coded the best OS in the world now, free of bugs, rock solid stable, secure as the US Federal Reserves in NYC, what would they sell next? Its part of the corporate business model to make sure they still have a product later, something Open Source doesn't suffer from.
It'd be a huge wake up call, thats for sure. Something MS desperately needs if you ask me.
I still think this would work in real life because of latency issues. Remember, clients like Quakeworld do all sorts of predicting. To make the game seem smoother, they automatically respond to your actions on your screen before syncing with the server. Imagine if you had to wait to see your shotgun fire until a round trip was made from your Ctrl keypress to the server and back so it could determine if that was a valid thing to do.
No, No, thats why I said "maybe not on the clients machine, but to everyone else, the cheater never fired".
The client would see himself firing, HOWEVER, once that command got to the server, the server would check it to make sure he had enough ammo, if not, drop the packet and no one else sees him fire, if he has enough ammo, broadcast it to everyone else, deal out damage if necessary, etc.
Also, as you mention, if the user is in control of the client, and the client "knows" everything about the game, there is absolutely nothing stopping somebody from hacking a client to help themselves without touching the protocol at all. Making enemies glow red, automatically dodging rockets...client bots are designed around this very thing...they are allowed to "know everything". There is going to be no stopping that even if things are offloaded to the server.
Yes, this is a problem, but all this can already be done in mods without having to hack the client, in Quake anyways. The trick is just letting the client know enough so it can play the game, and no more. I didn't exclaim to know all the answers, just a partial solution which, IMHO, should have been done ANYWAYS.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're coming to the library to do research, then unless you just happen to be researching porn or hate groups, you'll probably enjoy the fact that there's not someone on the computer across from you staring at women in all sorts of unnatural positions.
Hrmm, Lets take a look at some of the popular "hate groups" these various blocking software blocks, shall we?
National Organization for Women
Covenant of the Goddess and The Witches Voice, Wicca is a nationaly recognized religion in the US
Yahoo Search Engine
MIT Project on Mathematics and Computation
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratories
The University of Arizona
Stonewall Inc., gourmet coffees, teas, food and gifts.
...and of course...
Peacefire, A site telling people how to disable this blocking software
The problem with commercial blocking software is the lists of blocked sites are not published, and often contain OVERBLOCKS, Stonewall Inc is blocked under the "Gay Sites" area of Cyberpatrol, but it has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.
This is the reason we need to keep these "filters" out of our libraries and schools.
-- iCEBaLM
Dates are mostely used for accounting and finantial programs and reporting/analysis tools. The power grid doesn't much care what the date is, nor does your car or your shaver.
This is very true, and this is what I thought at very first myself. However look deeper into it, here is a scenario.
Say you have an old embedded chip, something which isn't Y2K compliant, only uses 2 bytes of data for the decade and year numbers, no century number.
Ok, you have this in, say, a microwave. Most microwaves show the date and time when not in operation, doubling as a clock.
Now midnight strikes, the chip increments the year 99 by 1, thats 100 the chip thinks, but it can't store that in the 2 digit memory space set aside for the date and this causes a fault, the chip locks up.
This is what happened to my friends microwave...
Of course a simple power cycle via the plug and keep the year somewhere in the 80's and you're fine, but think what would happen if some of these chips did the same with elevators, or power plants, etc. Sure, the operation wouldn't depend on the date itself, but the chip would fault causing failures anyways.
-- iCEBaLM
If that's true, and I know it's true where I work, and Y2K were really as big a problem as everyone thought, then you'd expect to see some problems.. wouldn't you? I mean really, if we didn't manage to finish Y2K readiness, then shouldn't something have broken?
Just yesterday I was talking to someone who spent a full day repairing a non-Y2K compliant database that puked his dads stock/portfolio information all over everywhere. The majority of failures won't come immediately unless you look at it closely enough, however like a feedback loop it will be small errors and just keep building on that until its big enough that you do see it.
The stuff that was supposed to break at the stroke of midnight were power grids, the telephone network, sewage systems. Those things seem to have made it, but just like many, many websites were broken, so too are many databases and programs, and unlike websites where its in plain view constantly, you may not notice it until its quite a big problem.
-- iCEBaLM
I think your annoyance at people who ask you for help is a little bit unjustified.
It might be, but I am annoyed regardless by the sheer numbers. If I can learn about it through books and documentation then why can't they also? The least they could do would be to make a conscious effort. I'm not asking for much, just try to find information elsewhere first, then if you still have questions, THAT'S the time to ask.
I frequently help people setup their boxen, but I also ask them that they read documentation also. It's a total waste of my time to regurgitate it over and over when someone has already written it down for this same purpose.
-- iCEBaLM
People are quick to accuse the media of trumping this up more than needed because nothing happened.
This is false logic.
The reason nothing happened is a direct result of the media blasting this home, so that businesses and governments would start moving their asses to get this looked after. If the media DIDN'T cover it we'd all probably be without a lot of infrastructure right now.
People see nothing happening as a sign that Y2K was a waste of time, breath, and money. They think that because nothing happened that all the preparations were for nothing. They just don't seem to understand that the preparations worked, we survived. A threat to our civilization was brought to the forefront and we mobilized to stop it, we fought off the invisible invasion of time.
Yet people are angry, because nothing happened.
This is a testament to what the human race can do when motivated. You shouldn't be angry, you should be PROUD nothing happened.
All this while some other people are angry that they were stuck at work during the celebrations of the turn of the millennium.
To this I say "You're in luck, thats not until next year."
-- iCEBaLM
When I got my first PC after years of owning a C64 (1200 baud modems ruled!) I had no idea what to do first.... What did I do? First I read the PC-DOS (yep, version 5 no less) manual, then the users manual, and pretty soon I was cd'ing all over the place and dir'ing like no tomorrow.
Now I use Linux as my main OS, have been for a couple years, everyone asks me for help, and it's really annoying.
Why, you ask?
Because I read the manuals, documentation, I learned how it worked, I spent the time to figure it out, and I feel these people are just getting a "free ride" by asking me instead of going and doing it on their own like I did. I didn't know anyone locally with a PC, I had no one to ask until some months later.
Sure, now and then there is no sufficient documentation and I'm forced to ask, but I make concious efforts to learn on my own, these people don't, they don't care, they want it working and they want it working now. Reading documentation is like severing a limb. "Why should I read it when I can just ask you?" is a question often posed to me.
Welcome to the society of instant gratification.
Now if you ask me, this is a Bad Thing(tm), and poking fun at them may be a subtle way to get them to see that its not all that "cool" to just ask people instead of going to even make an effort of SOME kind to find it themselves, especially about something like computers which touches everyones lives now.
Not to mention, I find UF funny usually, and this political correctness rant buddy posts is just crap as the strip isn't usually about tech support calls at all! Only a small minority of them are.
-- iCEBaLM
I'm glad Jake Lloyd will be playing Ender. I was afraid that his being in Phantom Menace would ruin the careeer of someone who obviously has some talent.
I really didn't like him in Phantom Menace...
I suppose no one could live up to the type of hype and scrutiny that he had to go through but I just don't think he's a very good actor. He came off as whiney, he messed up some lines, etc.
-- iCEBaLM
You're lame.
.16 snapshot didn't have this problem. I really like how they didn't even compile the code ONCE before releasing it.
Just make an Imakefile with nothing in it.
... And you'd still get the same "no rule to make clean [error 1]" on its initial make clean pass.
I'm lame? Maybe you should check it out first before posting?
Interestingly enough, the
-- iCEBaLM
I really love how they forgot to include an Imakefile in the doc directory causing compile to halt. I just downloaded 35 megs of crap for nothing.
WAY TO GO XF86 DEVELOPERS!
-- iCEBaLM
Actually i am aware that KDE runs on top of X i gust prefer using KDE and find that KDE's feature are better that X
How can the features be better or worse? They're two totally different things.
X is a display server, it manages video card and input devices.
KDE is a window manager, is manages the look/feel of windows, their movement, etc.
How can you say what you're saying? Window Managers cannot be better or worse then X, as they are not equal.
Don't compare apples to oranges.
-- iCEBaLM
... is 800x600 unfortunately until I get a new monitor. :(
-- iCEBaLM
http://www.swissinfo.net/cgi/worldtime/clock.pl?Au ckland,New=Zealand
Current time in Auckland, New Zealand is: Saturday, January 1, 19100 - 00:34:31
I dont think many people anticipated the 19100 problem, heheh.
-- iCEBaLM
The disclaimer may have been required ... ... by their supplier. The producer or WinNT ....
They're running Netscape Enterprise Server on Solaris, I just checked Netcraft...
-- iCEBaLM
And it looks like their server isnt supported by them..
www.citifi.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/3.6 SP2 on Solaris
Interesting...
-- iCEBaLM
Turn on cookies and go to www.citifi.com and you'll get the lame "We dont support anything but windows or macos, go away" message. Then click on "About Citifi" at the bottom, suddenly you get access to the navigation bar at the left, and the one at the top right, which offers you to check out their entire website, INCLUDING:
A Home link which takes you to their main page
A Products and Services page
A Signup to be come a new member page
And to even "sign in" to your account
(Direct Links not included because their site runs on https with cookies and it seems without seeing the "disclamer" that your OS isn't supported, it does not work.)
And more, it looks like you can navagate the ENTIRE page REGARDLESS that it says you're unsupported.
So the 64 thousand dollar question is.....
Why have the disclamer that non-Windows and non-MacOS users are unsupported if they can, even with the disclamer page, navigate the entire site?
-- iCEBaLM
IF eToys argument is "hey, do what you like, but can you keep the stuff that's age-inappropriate off the public pages", then I don't see the problem. Anyone capable of setting up a web page is more than capable of setting up an .htaccess file, and anyone capable of thought is capable of deciding if something is "age-inappropriate".
Well simply put, thats not eToys stance AT ALL and even if it were, eToys is NOT the content police of the net.
My we have very short memories don't we? eToys sued eToy on the basis of TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT. eToys has NO AUTHORITY to sue ANYONE for displaying nudity, profanity, or any other content on the net, unless its libelous or slanderous, which this was obviously NOT the case.
Now you think eToys is being SENSIBLE for asking for consessions on issues which have NO RELEVANCE to the court case at ALL and using the law suit as an enforcer to scare eToy into submission? This is sensible to you?
The mere thought of what you find not sensible scares me.
-- iCEBaLM
There is NOTHING illegal or immoral for eToys to go over to another company and say "hey, we can be mature about this, how about we work something out here." I'd call that bloody sensible, if you ask me! It's about time someone asked, rather than demanded at gunpoint or lawsuit-point.
Hello?! McFly?!?! Have you been following the same story I have?
eToys SUED eToy on the basis of TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT, got their domain (eToy's domain was older then eToys'!) SUSPENDED by NSI, and now you think eToys is being SENSIBLE because you think they're asking for consessions on issues which have NO RELEVANCE to the court case at ALL?!?!
eToys has no legal or moral right to sue eToy for anything, let alone to be the content police of the net. I think you need a whack from the reality stick personally.
-- iCEBaLM
Ugh, brain fart, this is a day or two after the discussion and I forgot what it was about, indeed, this is Quake.
Now, if that's already done, how is the client able to increase the damage?
-- iCEBaLM
People should be forced to read the QW-Protocol specification before they contribute to this forum! The situation is: the server DOES actually all the damage/movement calculations! All the client does is input and rendering (in QW it with prediction).
Uhm, We're talking about Quake 3 here...
And if this is so in Quake 3, how are hacked clients able to increase damage?
-- iCEBaLM
And, as for K7 + Via, I swore myself away from Via several years ago. I firmly believe that they make the poorest motherboard chipsets that have ever been put on the market.
I have an old Socket 7 VIA board and yes, they are quite bad, slow, etc. I agree with you then, however, things do change in the computer industry very rapidly. Case in point AMD K5's were crappy CPU's not too long ago. I've seen the newer VIA chipsets in action and they're quite nice. They did suck, they were very bad, but now I think they're right up there.
Also the fact that the only part of the chipset VIA changed would be the north bridge to access PC133 SDRAM, it's still mostly the same.
-- iCEBaLM
1 - Dump Intel. Not only do the AMD K7 Athlons run faster then Intel CPU's, they also run on a nice EV6 Alpha modified 200mhz FSB motherboard, and I do belive VIA has a chipset for Athlons which allows PC133mhz SDRAM.
:)
2 - Dump the RAMBUS RAM. Get 1 GIG of PC133 SDRAM
3 - The SB 128 might not work well, I'd actually try to find an old SB16 ISA card seeing as you're not doing sound processing, and it'll more then suffice for any other audio requirements you may have.
4 - I hate to bring up the Disto Holy War(tm), but is Red Hat really a good choice? I find it bloated, slow and insecure. Perhaps Slackware or Debian/Corel?
5 - Someone mentioned the 3c905 drivers not being real mature and suggested dumping that for an Intel card, I have to disagree. I've used 3Com NICs, including the 905, in Linux for years and they work perfectly, I wouldn't change that choice.
6 - DVD Drives aren't really supported, you might want to opt out of that for a nice high speed CD-ROM and possibly add a DVD drive later when there is better (any?) support.
7 - That TNT Ultra card I'm not to sure of, I think there is support for it in Mesa, but don't hold me to that, it really depends on what you're going to be using it for, if you're going to be doing lots of 3D graphics I would, unfortunately, opt for the more supported Voodoo 3, if not the TNT Ultra will be fine but you can cut a corner or two on it and get a Matrox G200 which will do just as well.
8 - USB isnt really supported until 2.4.x, although you kindof get USB ports thrown in free on every motherboard these days.
My 50 cents, sorry I don't have any pennies
-- iCEBaLM
There is more to news production that you have yet grasped.
You mean just sitting around watching the AP, UPI and Reuters wires and reprinting anything you feel like it? That kind of reporting? Because that's the kind of reporting we get these days.
-- iCEBaLM
Thanks for the link, one part I found humerous was:
32. Without the motion picture companies? copyrighted content for DVD video, there would be no viable market for computer DVD drives and DVD players, as well as the related computer chips and software necessary to run these devices and, thus, there would be no DVD video industry.
So I guess without CSS we'd just pop DVD's in our existing CD-ROM drives and they'd work huh? I suppose you'd pop a DVD in your laserdisc player or VHS player and it'd work?
The storage capacity of DVD drives ALONE would MORE then make them a sought after product by computer owners, not to mention that you kindof need a DVD player to play DVD's on a TV....
Is it just me or are the IQ's of lawyers a direct inverse proportion to their price tag?
-- iCEBaLM
Guess what would happen if the windows source code suddenly became open? All kinds of cracks would appear. We've just proven it.
This might start to sound like flamebair but I don't particularly think this is a Bad Thing(tm).
There is no shortage of Windows cracks/hacks/"security" subversions/DoS attack programs, etc as it is now, a few million more wouldn't hurt so bad, MS would just sell everyone a service pack for $59.95.
More people might wake up to how crappy MS software is and demand better instead of just putting up with it as they seem to be.
Not to mention it might force MS to write better code in the future, but I doubt it. I mean think about it for a second, if MS coded the best OS in the world now, free of bugs, rock solid stable, secure as the US Federal Reserves in NYC, what would they sell next? Its part of the corporate business model to make sure they still have a product later, something Open Source doesn't suffer from.
It'd be a huge wake up call, thats for sure. Something MS desperately needs if you ask me.
-- iCEBaLM
I still think this would work in real life because of latency issues. Remember, clients like Quakeworld do all sorts of predicting. To make the game seem smoother, they automatically respond to your actions on your screen before syncing with the server. Imagine if you had to wait to see your shotgun fire until a round trip was made from your Ctrl keypress to the server and back so it could determine if that was a valid thing to do.
No, No, thats why I said "maybe not on the clients machine, but to everyone else, the cheater never fired".
The client would see himself firing, HOWEVER, once that command got to the server, the server would check it to make sure he had enough ammo, if not, drop the packet and no one else sees him fire, if he has enough ammo, broadcast it to everyone else, deal out damage if necessary, etc.
Also, as you mention, if the user is in control of the client, and the client "knows" everything about the game, there is absolutely nothing stopping somebody from hacking a client to help themselves without touching the protocol at all. Making enemies glow red, automatically dodging rockets...client bots are designed around this very thing...they are allowed to "know everything". There is going to be no stopping that even if things are offloaded to the server.
Yes, this is a problem, but all this can already be done in mods without having to hack the client, in Quake anyways. The trick is just letting the client know enough so it can play the game, and no more. I didn't exclaim to know all the answers, just a partial solution which, IMHO, should have been done ANYWAYS.
-- iCEBaLM