...I'd like to point out that my wife and I will still whip out D2, make new toons, and go off to kill Andariel... it's still a fun way to waste a couple hours, even more than a decade since its release.
...
Yeah. Blizzard makes fun games!
In 10 years, will we still be able to play SC2 or D3, or will the product lines have been EOL'd, with the activation servers offline?...
It doesn't sound like you've bought a blizzard game in the past couple of years - or used bnet. If you register your games online (like SC, D2), you can download them, free. Yeah, those decade old games.
when Blizzard gets tired of hosting 15 million players?
You're kidding, right? Blizzard will get tired of 15 million pairs of eyeballs watching and waiting for their next release? Any game company would kill for that kind of anticipation and marketing reach.
You're right, Blizzard could spontaneously decide to screw all bajillion of its customers (and face a class action suite the size of Texas). So far, their support for all their games (including the oldies) is vastly superior to... any other game company I can think of. To the point where I can play D2 on my Intel Mac running OSX - a platform and OS undreamt of at the time of release. In fact, those games were originally purchased (by me) for Windows.
So you can vote with your $s. I continue to buy games from this company that has made killer games with great support.
In short: If I were keeping anything illegal on a computer, I would simply install a dead-mans-switch system on it. Lose power without activating a failsafe and the password (and data) is all lost.
If this kind of thing becomes law, I expect any [reasonably intelligent] criminal would do the same.
In situation A, if you'd been keeping journal entries on paper, you'd have to show them to cops who had a warrant. Why should it be any different if you had typed it on your computer?
In situation B, someone could leave a locked safe on your desk instead of encrypting some files on your computer.
Yeah, they are bizarre.
Quite right on point A. On point B, they could just crack the safe to see the contents. Not so with a computer - which, in theory, lands you afoul of the law through no wrongdoing of your own.
...I don't see this a "self-incrimination" issue...
Your neighbor spits on your lawn.
This really pisses you off.
You make a detailed journal entry (which you keep encrypted) about how much you hate your neighbor and you want to shoot him.
Your neighbor gets shot.
You still want to show them your data?
B.
You arrive home and find your neighbor's wife's dog (who continually craps on your lawn) has been slaughtered and hung like a side of beef in your bathroom.
You call the cops even though you're an obvious suspect.
They ask you a few questions and want to examine some of your stuff, including your computer.
They find that your computer has been encrypted (not by you).
Will the law think it's likely that someone encrypted your computer, or will they think that you don't want to share the data?
Neither of these are even remotely likely, but that's what the law has to account for: the possible.
"Shutting Off" needs to be better defined. Isolated would be a better phrase.
They should have all WWW traffic redirected to a "You have been infected" site. Complete with instructions about how to fix your machine and an automated way to assert your machine is now clean.
Hell, it's a revenue opportunity - give them an optional page where they can buy [anti-virus software] and the ISP gets a cut.
The way I see it: If the protocol were improved a little bit, and ISPs were a little smarter, then everyone wins. If the protocol allowed preferred connection to big nearby pipes (and I know that some clients try to do that) and there was a way to really relay/cache/siren feeds (like http proxies), then ISPs *could* watch for 'hot torrents' and cache them to fee them to their customers at high speed - thus reducing their out of network costs (because they are feeding the data, themselves) and improving their customers' download speeds (by not going out of network), then 'torrent could absolutely rock.
I know that's a lot of if's and would require intelligent ISPs - so let's make an ice-skating date in hell. But it could rock and be more efficient for everyone...
At least, that is the standard in the publishing industry. Two spaces is a convention invented by typing teachers for reasons which I've never understood, and which screws up justification once the document needs to be set. One of the first things that has to be done when bringing a document into a page layout program is to search for periods followed by two spaces and replace them with periods and one space. PITA for the Quark/InDesign/Scribus operator.
1. Please leave text ragged on the right. Thanks. 2. How is it a PITA to do REPLACE Period Space Space with Period Space? Can't you just do that globally?
Since you can't treat Earth as a point mass and it's not perfectly round or uniformly dense, there probably is a "three body" problem in this case.
OK, the earth isn't a perfect sphere, and it isn't uniform in mass (the center is significantly more dense than the surface, though) - but satellites are pretty high up. I tried a quick google to see if there was any accounting for gravitational differences when calculating orbits and I couldn't find any.
Are you sure that the earth isn't [generally] treated as a point mass at that altitude? I'm thinking that the gravitational effects of the moon are significantly greater than any variation in the earth's mass distribution...
All of those projects have code in them that solves specific problems.
No, seriously.
Most of those projects have little or no code in them and died before they were ever useful to anyone. Many of them have some or even lots of code and were still never useful. And some of them have enough code that was good enough to solve a problem that was better solved by another project.
Very few of them are 'successful' in the classic sense of the term - meaning useful for an extended period of time to a reasonable number of folks.
More than a few were 'successful' in scratching an itch someone had. And while that is one measure of success, I don't think it is what the GP meant.
Really. A guy asks a question for help and all of these people keep telling him 30-40,000 lines of code isn't much.
That's a lot of code to get your arms around if you didn't write it. It's not the end of the world, but it is a sizeable task, and is the type of topic that few professional journals or books will ever be written about.
No kidding! 40KLoCs is a bunch of code - especially if it's poorly organized. I can only think of one project I've done that was that large, and if I were to do it again it'd probably shrink by 25-30%. I'd put a bunch of code into a library or 2 and reduce the number of moving parts.
But that's also how I'd tackle this kind of thing: organize it, document the hell out of it, and unit test everything you can. Which to me translates into "make it yours."
I was worried about this, too. I sniffed the connection, and it turns out that they use SASL during the authentication process - so your password is safe, though your communications are not.
At least I presume your data does not get encrypted - didn't test that...
Slashdot Mirror
...I'd like to point out that my wife and I will still whip out D2, make new toons, and go off to kill Andariel... it's still a fun way to waste a couple hours, even more than a decade since its release.
Yeah. Blizzard makes fun games!
In 10 years, will we still be able to play SC2 or D3, or will the product lines have been EOL'd, with the activation servers offline? ...
It doesn't sound like you've bought a blizzard game in the past couple of years - or used bnet. If you register your games online (like SC, D2), you can download them, free. Yeah, those decade old games.
when Blizzard gets tired of hosting 15 million players?
You're kidding, right? Blizzard will get tired of 15 million pairs of eyeballs watching and waiting for their next release? Any game company would kill for that kind of anticipation and marketing reach.
You're right, Blizzard could spontaneously decide to screw all bajillion of its customers (and face a class action suite the size of Texas). So far, their support for all their games (including the oldies) is vastly superior to ... any other game company I can think of. To the point where I can play D2 on my Intel Mac running OSX - a platform and OS undreamt of at the time of release. In fact, those games were originally purchased (by me) for Windows.
So you can vote with your $s. I continue to buy games from this company that has made killer games with great support.
I recommend you change your /. settings so you don't see apple news.
Easy enough.
Why not tell us that Intel is going to continue to make chips too?
Wait! What?
Have you heard something?
Posted anon - are you an Intel insider?
In short:
If I were keeping anything illegal on a computer, I would simply install a dead-mans-switch system on it. Lose power without activating a failsafe and the password (and data) is all lost.
If this kind of thing becomes law, I expect any [reasonably intelligent] criminal would do the same.
Then what?
Both of these examples are rather bizarre...
In situation A, if you'd been keeping journal entries on paper, you'd have to show them to cops who had a warrant. Why should it be any different if you had typed it on your computer?
In situation B, someone could leave a locked safe on your desk instead of encrypting some files on your computer.
Yeah, they are bizarre.
Quite right on point A. On point B, they could just crack the safe to see the contents. Not so with a computer - which, in theory, lands you afoul of the law through no wrongdoing of your own.
A.
...I don't see this a "self-incrimination" issue...
Your neighbor spits on your lawn.
This really pisses you off.
You make a detailed journal entry (which you keep encrypted) about how much you hate your neighbor and you want to shoot him.
Your neighbor gets shot.
You still want to show them your data?
B.
You arrive home and find your neighbor's wife's dog (who continually craps on your lawn) has been slaughtered and hung like a side of beef in your bathroom.
You call the cops even though you're an obvious suspect.
They ask you a few questions and want to examine some of your stuff, including your computer.
They find that your computer has been encrypted (not by you).
Will the law think it's likely that someone encrypted your computer, or will they think that you don't want to share the data?
Neither of these are even remotely likely, but that's what the law has to account for: the possible.
"Shutting Off" needs to be better defined. Isolated would be a better phrase.
They should have all WWW traffic redirected to a "You have been infected" site. Complete with instructions about how to fix your machine and an automated way to assert your machine is now clean.
Hell, it's a revenue opportunity - give them an optional page where they can buy [anti-virus software] and the ISP gets a cut.
Am I evil enough to be in marketing?
The way I see it:
If the protocol were improved a little bit, and ISPs were a little smarter, then everyone wins. If the protocol allowed preferred connection to big nearby pipes (and I know that some clients try to do that) and there was a way to really relay/cache/siren feeds (like http proxies), then ISPs *could* watch for 'hot torrents' and cache them to fee them to their customers at high speed - thus reducing their out of network costs (because they are feeding the data, themselves) and improving their customers' download speeds (by not going out of network), then 'torrent could absolutely rock.
I know that's a lot of if's and would require intelligent ISPs - so let's make an ice-skating date in hell. But it could rock and be more efficient for everyone...
Until then it's a tool for nerds to get their porn faster.
11+ Million World of Warcraft players can't be wrong...
OK, the porn market is bigger than that - but the porn torrent market? I wonder.
Strictly speaking, sound does not need to be in air. Any gas, solid, or liquid will transmit sound (varyingly well).
Huh. Will plasma transmit sound? I'm guessing not very well...
IANAP
Yeah, in the next few years I hope to get solar panels and an EV for local trips. Pretty rare for me to go even 30 miles in a day.
But I'll keep a gas burner for the road trips.
Thank you, editors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nextstep
Program website:
http://ankeny.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=190047&sessionid=5df71ce111dfbc72890cf7f887fa1c5c
More info:
http://ankeny.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?sessionid=5df71ce111dfbc72890cf7f887fa1c5c&pageid=64839&sessionid&sessionid=5df71ce111dfbc72890cf7f887fa1c5c
Maybe instead of quoting/directing to "Fox News", interview the person in charge (page 1, bottom). /. can do better.
If only I had mod points...
At least, that is the standard in the publishing industry. Two spaces is a convention invented by typing teachers for reasons which I've never understood, and which screws up justification once the document needs to be set.
One of the first things that has to be done when bringing a document into a page layout program is to search for periods followed by two spaces and replace them with periods and one space. PITA for the Quark/InDesign/Scribus operator.
1. Please leave text ragged on the right. Thanks.
2. How is it a PITA to do REPLACE Period Space Space with Period Space? Can't you just do that globally?
I'm not interested enough to read details, but I'm pretty sure that folks did UUCP (including email) over HAM radio decades ago.
http://www.globalspec.com/reference/29627/203279/we-used-to-copy-e-mail-across-2-400-baud-modems
Since you can't treat Earth as a point mass and it's not perfectly round or uniformly dense, there probably is a "three body" problem in this case.
OK, the earth isn't a perfect sphere, and it isn't uniform in mass (the center is significantly more dense than the surface, though) - but satellites are pretty high up. I tried a quick google to see if there was any accounting for gravitational differences when calculating orbits and I couldn't find any.
Are you sure that the earth isn't [generally] treated as a point mass at that altitude? I'm thinking that the gravitational effects of the moon are significantly greater than any variation in the earth's mass distribution...
The notion that encryption is crackable bugs the hell outta me.
See, what makes him really cool is that he was playing WoW *at the same time* - 2-boxing, as it were.
And watching TV.
So this guy was getting 6 hours (average) of amusement crammed into 2 hours/day. I'm pretty sure he spent his other free time saving baby seals.
NOW what do you have to say?
And gcc, gdb. Or maybe those fall under darwin - but I think of darwin as just the OS.
All of those projects have code in them that solves specific problems.
No, seriously.
Most of those projects have little or no code in them and died before they were ever useful to anyone. Many of them have some or even lots of code and were still never useful. And some of them have enough code that was good enough to solve a problem that was better solved by another project.
Very few of them are 'successful' in the classic sense of the term - meaning useful for an extended period of time to a reasonable number of folks.
More than a few were 'successful' in scratching an itch someone had. And while that is one measure of success, I don't think it is what the GP meant.
Wow. Thanks for the link.
Really. A guy asks a question for help and all of these people keep telling him 30-40,000 lines of code isn't much.
That's a lot of code to get your arms around if you didn't write it. It's not the end of the world, but it is a sizeable task, and is the type of topic that few professional journals or books will ever be written about.
No kidding! 40KLoCs is a bunch of code - especially if it's poorly organized. I can only think of one project I've done that was that large, and if I were to do it again it'd probably shrink by 25-30%. I'd put a bunch of code into a library or 2 and reduce the number of moving parts.
But that's also how I'd tackle this kind of thing: organize it, document the hell out of it, and unit test everything you can. Which to me translates into "make it yours."
I was worried about this, too. I sniffed the connection, and it turns out that they use SASL during the authentication process - so your password is safe, though your communications are not.
At least I presume your data does not get encrypted - didn't test that...
Exactly. Ship date is a feature. It will have lower priority than some features, and higher priority than some other features...
Wow. I've been doing this for decades, and I've never seen it put so succinctly.
Thank you.