Here's how it works: You take the corporation to civil court -- for a lot more than $2.6 million. Then, you take the officers and directors to criminal court, for jail time.
While I think the fine could have been higher, this allows them to hit Diebold where it really hurts: with their shareholders.
Yes, and that's why their stock price is going up. Those poor shareholders. Investors are fairly good at judging when a threat has gone and de-fanged itself.
You know what? Once, computers were a solution looking for a problem too. Most people just can't think more than about 5 minutes ahead, it seems. Real invention, real innovation, real research and development, they're lost arts these days.
people should have to earn their rank and position.
The problem with this mindset is that it ensures that the *only* way of investing yourself in the game is by investing time. This gives a unique advantage to the kids who find the time to play the game 40 hours a week, and 18 hours a day during the summer. Which in and of itself isn't bad, except that it alienates the "older kids" among us, myself included, who have full-time jobs and many responsibilities beyond that, because we're lucky when we can fit in a few hours a week. We're willing to pay for our entertainment, or at least I am, but with no way of improving our characters beyond time -- which we don't have -- we remain eternal newbies. Which is really not that fun, no matter how you try to spin it.
The people who purchase equipment and characters and experience and gold and whatever else, are typically not doing it so they can roll into your zone and start hogging all the loot 24 hours a day and get an unfair advantage over you... some do, but they're not the majority.
Not necessarily true. Reverse-engineering XML (at least, XML that is not purposely obfuscated) is orders of magnitude easier than reverse engineering binary formats, because it is a self-descriptive format. Each piece of data has a name associated with it automatically -- the name of the tag -- as well as a rough structure (clearly this 'size' is for font size, not page size, since it's within a font tag). And just as importantly, XML tells you exactly where an 'array' of items ends because it has a/tag. With a binary format, the count for the array will typically precede the array, but does not have to... in a particularly complex format the length of the array can be implied by other parameters, and you have to use multiple samples to find out how exactly it is implied where it ends, and even when you think it's figured out it probably isn't, and the files that don't fit your assumptions will crash or produce garbage when read in.
A proprietary XML file is not at all proprietary compared to a binary file. They're easy for even a novice programmer to figure out how to read.
I still don't get the whole constellations naming thing. I don't see the pictures nor do I see the appeal.
The reason we still bother having constellations today is because they provide an easy way of mapping the sky in your head (at least once you get to know them). It's the similar to the way saying something is in Northern Canada gives you a better idea of where it is than saying something is at 61.297 N 112.883 W, even though the former is completely arbitrary.
I'm actually a Python programmer too, and I do believe that it's the best language for every job, and it could in fact be what makes the Holy Grail work.
Data does not need to be falsified, it simply needs some massaging, and some times not even that. It's simple enough to use parts of the data to support a conclusion that may not be the most obvious one.
Scientific fraud is not as widespread as he suggests, but neither is it as rare as you suggest. It doesn't have to be blatant, it can be in fact rather subtle. There's also the fact that you don't actually need a good reputation to build a study. There are plenty of well-known crackpots out there who still get parroted by companies and groups pushing an agenda, and no one questions them or their numbers.
You think wrong, actually. SpaceShipOne's top speed was Mach 2.9, or about 2,150 mph. It wasn't anywhere near orbit, either.
By contrast, the space shuttle enters low earth orbit at 16,000-17,000 mph. The fastest a human has ever travelled is 28,600 mph by the astronauts on Apollo 10 returning from the moon. The fastest man-made object is Voyager 1 travelling at a constant speed of 38,518 mph (excluding the Helios spacecraft which was in a highly elliptical orbit around the sun and reached 150,000 mph at perihelion, but that was only for brief periods and was obviously gravity-assisted)
Now birds killed per cat vs birds killed per wind mill per year is a better sat, i'm sure cats don't kill 364 birds each, each year.... apparently you don't own a cat. Two a day is about right for mine. And those are only the one she brings back to our door.
Besides, as numerous other people have said, the number one man-made killer of birds is tall buildings, especially those with mirrored glass. And we all know how there are always mountains of bird carcasses at the foot of every skyscraper... *cough* It's just really not as big of a deal as it sounds like, in the great scheme of things. Nature is big. Anyone wanna estimate how many fish are caught by commercial fishing trawlers every day?
Wind farms will not be an extinction level event for birds. It's a tired, regressive, short-sighted argument that doesn't even make any sense, but some luddite invariably trots it out everytime someone so much as mentions the words 'wind' and 'power' in the same sentence. By reducing pollution output into the environment by nearly 100% we will save many more birds in the long run, and all kinds of animals, trees, and plants, as well as ourselves.
The glare on the screen from the sun tends to make the display quite difficult to see.
I dunno about you, but I have never had a problem with my GBA SP in the passenger seat on long car rides. It actually works beautifully in sunlight, you can turn off the backlight and save battery power.
Find a real good pub in the country and you'll get some really fine food that's up there with the best in the world.
Seconded. Sunday Dinner at the pub on top of Mount Llanwanno near Pont-y-pridd in Wales was probably the best dinner I've ever had. Three courses, and it only cost around 5.50 pounds per person! (which is super cheap over there.. that's how much you pay for a Burger King combo)
Why? 8x10 cameras have existed for 100 years. Using modern film and a drum scanner will create a digital image with more than 1Gb of pixel data.
That's like saying why bother creating better compression formats when you can already compress a 4 minute sound file to (hypothetical) under a meg at 128kbps quality by encoding it to mp3 128kbps first, then to wma 128kbps. You're doing one lossy conversion, light to film, then a very different type of lossy conversion, scanning film to digital. Sure, it works pretty well in practice, but it's far from optimal.
And many photographers obsess over making things optimal. It's why they buy $3,000+ lenses. And not just one, either.
Anyway, the answer for "why" seems pretty obvious to me, at least.
Your policy may be fair (I'd argue against that, personally, but there's not much point in doing so) however your implementation of that policy varies wildly, or at least it used to, and if you don't acknowledge at least that it used to suck (because it certainly did) then you're going to come across as if you don't actually know the situation well enough to know whether it sucks now either.
Actually, parasitism is by definition a relationship that harms the host for the benefit of the parasite. A relationship which benefits the symbiont without either harming or helping the host is called commensalism, and if both benefit it is mutualism.
The units in Total Annihilation were pretty smart on their own. They weren't foolproof, but you could set their movement style to roam, put them on patrol, and they would happily cruise around the map obliterating anything they could find. They had no concept of formation or cover, unfortunately, but flying units damaged on patrol would at least seek out a repair pad to fix themselved before returning to their patrol routes.
A lot of the 'intelligence' had to do with giving them simple automatic behaviors that would've required intense micromanagement for a player to do. For example, Solar Collectors would automatically close their panels to prevent damage if an enemy started firing on them. If a defensive battery was fired upon, it could back-calculate the trajectory and return fire automatically, even if the enemy was outside of visual range (provided it was within firing range, obviously). A construction unit on patrol would focus on repairing other units, unless you were very low on metal or energy, in which case it would instead try to recover the metal or energy left over in wreckage or rocks or trees or whatever is available.
Like you suggest, the units and buildings did each have an individual script, but I don't think it's quite the same as what you're asking for, as it was only accessible by editing the data files. Besides, the process of writing one is arcane and not very well understood.
Apologies if you're actually Daniel Fryer, I assumed it was just someone trolling on Slashdot and signing your name, but the reply makes me think otherwise. If it is you, much thanks and keep up the good work.
In any case, I ran into quite a few conflicts between the networking header files and the OS X Frameworks I was trying to include. But that was at least 6 months ago, and it may have been cleaned up in that time, as there was discussion on the IRC channel about doing that. (Might've been you, for all I know)
They will take up the quality IBM has, not bring down IBMs quality.
For now... but like he said, Lenovo does very little R&D. In 5 years, will Lenovo still be building cutting edge, top-quality laptops? Not unless they ramp up their R&D, or the IBM purchase came with a box full of development secrets from the future.
Umm, there is more to PlaneShift than the CrystalSpace engine. I know this, because I tried (and failed) to port it to Mac several months ago. Particularly troublesome were several parts of the network layer, in my experience.
There was certainly more to it than simply recompiling and distributing.
Better than throwing them into the street after mortgages were signed.
I say this to the hypothetical person who is now in dire straits because he or she just signed a mortgage and then lost their job:
If you didn't know this was a risk when you signed the mortgage, then you're naive at best, and fiscally irresponsible at worst. As long as we're talking about "carrying responsibilities", how about some personal responsibility?
There are plenty of things YOU could've done to avoid finding yourself in such a dire situation. YOU could've saved up some money or not gotten such an expensive mortgage. If you're driving yourself at your financial red-line and praying nothing goes wrong, that's a pretty big risk you're taking, bucko. Regardless of how you rationalize it.
Slashdot Mirror
After all, who would they press charges against?
Here's how it works: You take the corporation to civil court -- for a lot more than $2.6 million. Then, you take the officers and directors to criminal court, for jail time.
While I think the fine could have been higher, this allows them to hit Diebold where it really hurts: with their shareholders.
Yes, and that's why their stock price is going up. Those poor shareholders. Investors are fairly good at judging when a threat has gone and de-fanged itself.
Seems like a solution looking for a problem
You know what? Once, computers were a solution looking for a problem too. Most people just can't think more than about 5 minutes ahead, it seems. Real invention, real innovation, real research and development, they're lost arts these days.
I lost my faith in video game reviews after playing that 96% averaged "best game of all time", Half-life 2. It was mediocre at best. Sorry.
I've been waiting for a CFL game to come along.
people should have to earn their rank and position.
The problem with this mindset is that it ensures that the *only* way of investing yourself in the game is by investing time. This gives a unique advantage to the kids who find the time to play the game 40 hours a week, and 18 hours a day during the summer. Which in and of itself isn't bad, except that it alienates the "older kids" among us, myself included, who have full-time jobs and many responsibilities beyond that, because we're lucky when we can fit in a few hours a week. We're willing to pay for our entertainment, or at least I am, but with no way of improving our characters beyond time -- which we don't have -- we remain eternal newbies. Which is really not that fun, no matter how you try to spin it.
The people who purchase equipment and characters and experience and gold and whatever else, are typically not doing it so they can roll into your zone and start hogging all the loot 24 hours a day and get an unfair advantage over you... some do, but they're not the majority.
Not necessarily true. Reverse-engineering XML (at least, XML that is not purposely obfuscated) is orders of magnitude easier than reverse engineering binary formats, because it is a self-descriptive format. Each piece of data has a name associated with it automatically -- the name of the tag -- as well as a rough structure (clearly this 'size' is for font size, not page size, since it's within a font tag). And just as importantly, XML tells you exactly where an 'array' of items ends because it has a /tag. With a binary format, the count for the array will typically precede the array, but does not have to... in a particularly complex format the length of the array can be implied by other parameters, and you have to use multiple samples to find out how exactly it is implied where it ends, and even when you think it's figured out it probably isn't, and the files that don't fit your assumptions will crash or produce garbage when read in.
A proprietary XML file is not at all proprietary compared to a binary file. They're easy for even a novice programmer to figure out how to read.
I still don't get the whole constellations naming thing. I don't see the pictures nor do I see the appeal.
The reason we still bother having constellations today is because they provide an easy way of mapping the sky in your head (at least once you get to know them). It's the similar to the way saying something is in Northern Canada gives you a better idea of where it is than saying something is at 61.297 N 112.883 W, even though the former is completely arbitrary.
I'm actually a Python programmer too, and I do believe that it's the best language for every job, and it could in fact be what makes the Holy Grail work.
;)
I'm not really an evangelist, though.
Data does not need to be falsified, it simply needs some massaging, and some times not even that. It's simple enough to use parts of the data to support a conclusion that may not be the most obvious one.
Scientific fraud is not as widespread as he suggests, but neither is it as rare as you suggest. It doesn't have to be blatant, it can be in fact rather subtle. There's also the fact that you don't actually need a good reputation to build a study. There are plenty of well-known crackpots out there who still get parroted by companies and groups pushing an agenda, and no one questions them or their numbers.
I think he may have derived "in Python" from the fact that Google has been hiring many Python programmers in the past couple years.
... just like the rest of this article.
However, it was completely uncalled for speculation that had no place in a Slashdot article.
I'm with you, "huh?"
You think wrong, actually. SpaceShipOne's top speed was Mach 2.9, or about 2,150 mph. It wasn't anywhere near orbit, either.
By contrast, the space shuttle enters low earth orbit at 16,000-17,000 mph. The fastest a human has ever travelled is 28,600 mph by the astronauts on Apollo 10 returning from the moon. The fastest man-made object is Voyager 1 travelling at a constant speed of 38,518 mph (excluding the Helios spacecraft which was in a highly elliptical orbit around the sun and reached 150,000 mph at perihelion, but that was only for brief periods and was obviously gravity-assisted)
What has he been doing all the time?
Probably "researching" trippy graphics.
Now birds killed per cat vs birds killed per wind mill per year is a better sat, i'm sure cats don't kill 364 birds each, each year. ... apparently you don't own a cat. Two a day is about right for mine. And those are only the one she brings back to our door.
Besides, as numerous other people have said, the number one man-made killer of birds is tall buildings, especially those with mirrored glass. And we all know how there are always mountains of bird carcasses at the foot of every skyscraper... *cough* It's just really not as big of a deal as it sounds like, in the great scheme of things. Nature is big. Anyone wanna estimate how many fish are caught by commercial fishing trawlers every day?
Wind farms will not be an extinction level event for birds. It's a tired, regressive, short-sighted argument that doesn't even make any sense, but some luddite invariably trots it out everytime someone so much as mentions the words 'wind' and 'power' in the same sentence. By reducing pollution output into the environment by nearly 100% we will save many more birds in the long run, and all kinds of animals, trees, and plants, as well as ourselves.
The glare on the screen from the sun tends to make the display quite difficult to see.
I dunno about you, but I have never had a problem with my GBA SP in the passenger seat on long car rides. It actually works beautifully in sunlight, you can turn off the backlight and save battery power.
Find a real good pub in the country and you'll get some really fine food that's up there with the best in the world.
Seconded. Sunday Dinner at the pub on top of Mount Llanwanno near Pont-y-pridd in Wales was probably the best dinner I've ever had. Three courses, and it only cost around 5.50 pounds per person! (which is super cheap over there.. that's how much you pay for a Burger King combo)
Cool, thanks Jamie.
Why? 8x10 cameras have existed for 100 years. Using modern film and a drum scanner will create a digital image with more than 1Gb of pixel data.
That's like saying why bother creating better compression formats when you can already compress a 4 minute sound file to (hypothetical) under a meg at 128kbps quality by encoding it to mp3 128kbps first, then to wma 128kbps. You're doing one lossy conversion, light to film, then a very different type of lossy conversion, scanning film to digital. Sure, it works pretty well in practice, but it's far from optimal.
And many photographers obsess over making things optimal. It's why they buy $3,000+ lenses. And not just one, either.
Anyway, the answer for "why" seems pretty obvious to me, at least.
Your policy may be fair (I'd argue against that, personally, but there's not much point in doing so) however your implementation of that policy varies wildly, or at least it used to, and if you don't acknowledge at least that it used to suck (because it certainly did) then you're going to come across as if you don't actually know the situation well enough to know whether it sucks now either.
My friend, Neil Fraser has had no end of troubles with a fairly legitimate utility he created. Which is even linked on slashdot's code page as being under "ultramode".
Actually, parasitism is by definition a relationship that harms the host for the benefit of the parasite. A relationship which benefits the symbiont without either harming or helping the host is called commensalism, and if both benefit it is mutualism.
The units in Total Annihilation were pretty smart on their own. They weren't foolproof, but you could set their movement style to roam, put them on patrol, and they would happily cruise around the map obliterating anything they could find. They had no concept of formation or cover, unfortunately, but flying units damaged on patrol would at least seek out a repair pad to fix themselved before returning to their patrol routes.
A lot of the 'intelligence' had to do with giving them simple automatic behaviors that would've required intense micromanagement for a player to do. For example, Solar Collectors would automatically close their panels to prevent damage if an enemy started firing on them. If a defensive battery was fired upon, it could back-calculate the trajectory and return fire automatically, even if the enemy was outside of visual range (provided it was within firing range, obviously). A construction unit on patrol would focus on repairing other units, unless you were very low on metal or energy, in which case it would instead try to recover the metal or energy left over in wreckage or rocks or trees or whatever is available.
Like you suggest, the units and buildings did each have an individual script, but I don't think it's quite the same as what you're asking for, as it was only accessible by editing the data files. Besides, the process of writing one is arcane and not very well understood.
But TA was still a fantastic game.
Apologies if you're actually Daniel Fryer, I assumed it was just someone trolling on Slashdot and signing your name, but the reply makes me think otherwise. If it is you, much thanks and keep up the good work.
In any case, I ran into quite a few conflicts between the networking header files and the OS X Frameworks I was trying to include. But that was at least 6 months ago, and it may have been cleaned up in that time, as there was discussion on the IRC channel about doing that. (Might've been you, for all I know)
They will take up the quality IBM has, not bring down IBMs quality.
For now... but like he said, Lenovo does very little R&D. In 5 years, will Lenovo still be building cutting edge, top-quality laptops? Not unless they ramp up their R&D, or the IBM purchase came with a box full of development secrets from the future.
Umm, there is more to PlaneShift than the CrystalSpace engine. I know this, because I tried (and failed) to port it to Mac several months ago. Particularly troublesome were several parts of the network layer, in my experience.
There was certainly more to it than simply recompiling and distributing.
Better than throwing them into the street after mortgages were signed.
I say this to the hypothetical person who is now in dire straits because he or she just signed a mortgage and then lost their job:
If you didn't know this was a risk when you signed the mortgage, then you're naive at best, and fiscally irresponsible at worst. As long as we're talking about "carrying responsibilities", how about some personal responsibility?
There are plenty of things YOU could've done to avoid finding yourself in such a dire situation. YOU could've saved up some money or not gotten such an expensive mortgage. If you're driving yourself at your financial red-line and praying nothing goes wrong, that's a pretty big risk you're taking, bucko. Regardless of how you rationalize it.
Everyone I know or have ever met likes Cherry Coke. Maybe not all the time, but it's always a nice change from regular Coke.
;)
Now, Vanilla Coke on the other hand... I'm the only person who likes that.