A hacker going by the name 'Vendetta', supposedly an American living in Belgium, got fed up with the monthly data cap (at Belgacom, figured out that there's a way to find the username/password for a modem by browsing to it (much as in this article), did that to a claimed several thousand (285,000) modems, and is threatening to release them slowly over time until November 30th as long as Belgacom keeps its monthly data cap.
So far this hacker released 30 usernames/passwords, and they were found to be genuine.
Belgacom contacted authorities, is investigating the claimed method of hacking, blabla.
The modem in question with Belgacom is labeled a "B-Box2-modem".
Not all games are twitchy FPSs and racing games though; and not every element in even *those* games has to be calculated for instant feedback.
Let's say you have a flamethrower in a game. You need to be able to see where the flames are going, and where your enemies are going, 'immediately' so that you can get a good kill.
But all the indirect lighting from those flames bouncing around in the scene lagging behind by, say, 150ms would be perfectly acceptable.
e.g. offload the intensive bits and pieces to the cloud, rather than the entire thing.
Although the entire thing would be possible in due time as well - players are already playing with lag; lag induced from rendering off-site is minimal compared to the hops between you and the average game server. Bandwidth is a far bigger concern; especially when you consider more and more ISPs introducing caps.
As far as CPUs go.. oh, absolutely, they'll get ever more powerful especially after Larrabee. But the games get more demanding as well. So now you need a new CPU, but it uses a different socket, so you get a new motherboard, turns out your old cooling fan won't fit, beside.. the TDP of the new CPU is 120W, so you'll need a watercooling solution anyway, etc. etc. There's a lot of reasons why 'gaming on the cloud' ( I do hate that term. ) can be a good thing (from the technical up above, to the energy efficiency, to technical support, to non-invasive anti-cheating constructions), just as there are down sides to it (potential for lag, slurps bandwidth, no resale options, game could be abandoned at any point and you'll have no recourse, etc.).
But to state it's doomed before it's even launched... hmm. Let's have them give it a shot, first?
Both deals are understood to be non-exclusive, with rumours of similar conversations ongoing between Twitter and Google
( Ah, and yes, Facebook, too. The only 'surprising' thing is that/. didn't report on this, but does report on the Google deal, without even a reference to the Bing deal. )
NVidia's offering performs full scene raytracing/pathtracing, with effects ranging from reflections and refractions to global illumination and caustics all the way through to sub-surface scattering and participating media.
Some of these things can be done in proper realtime (say, at least, 30fps at 720p) on existing GPUs, but typically by using hacks that look 'good enough', but aren't actually correct. Which is fine for gaming (where refresh rates matter), but not fine for product visualization, architectural visualization or to go to an extreme.. materials and lighting analysis, where you don't care if it's not 30fps, but are more than happy to wait 10 seconds for something that used to take 15 minutes.
That said... if the cards keep getting faster, then eventually 30fps@720p will be possible and there's no reason, in the time inbetween, that games couldn't add the more fancy effects and have the GPGPU solutions take care of those on a 'cloud' platform.
gah.. forgot to note the odd one out in the "ceiling, conceit, conceive, deceit, deceive, *obeisance*" list./me *seizes* the preview button/nokarma while waiting for the post delay (oh noes it's been only 1 minute! slashfail to my postfail.) while reply posts point this glaring omission out.
Is that little rule - I before E except after C - still actually being taught?
Besides 'weird', here's a collection of other words that do not fit that rule: e-ism (atheism), e-ing (being), e-ish (blueish), etc. interrupted: albeit sounds like 'A': airfreight, aweigh, beige, bobsleigh, heinous (heehee, he said heinous), heir sounds like 'I': abseil, feisty silent: forfeit
Even if you take the modified form of "I Before E except after C when it sounds like 'E'"... caffeine, casein, codeine
Even if you modify it further "I before E except after C when it sounds like 'E' and isn't some chemical compound"... Ashleigh, Keith, O'Neill (two "L"s, the one with a sense of humor)
So let's make it "I before E except after C when it sounds like 'E' and isn't a name like that of a person, object, or substance.." ceiling, conceit, conceive, deceit, deceive, obeisance
I haven't even paged through my dictionary file beyond the letter 'O' yet and already I think you can tell that the "I before E" rule is an abomination. Not in the least due to all of the exceptions made above where you'd have to come up with new rules, or just teach the kids the correct spelling of the word 'as is'. I sure hope "I before E" is not still being taught.
Oh hell, I just noticed there's a Wikipedia topic for it - of course there is. *mutter* - and at least the Brits clued up; "In June 2009, the British government advised primary school teachers to stop teaching the rule." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C
we can certainly understand that users would want to make them public on their sites but not necessarily searchable directly outside of their own website. We made a change to prevent those to be crawled so only the site owner can decide to index them
Don't we, and Google, usually tell people to use robots.txt if they want to restrict crawling?
I always thought this to be rather counter-intuitive, but it strikes me time and again when I visit London...
Compared to San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. downtown London is squeaky clean. Not just the parks, but random streets, areas near train/underground stations, etc. as well. I hardly ever see any cleaning crews, so it can't be that they're busy cleaning all the time to keep things clean.
Then at one point in my first visit, I -had- a piece of trash.. an empty coke can..and after 15 minutes of walking around with the darn thing (I hate littering), it struck me: it's damn near impossible to find a trashcan in London. You can walk for miles in London and not come across any non-private trashcan. Not on the streets, not in train stations unless you happen to find one in some back corner or sneak into a fastfood place, not anywhere inside parks - you're lucky to find one or two near the entrances.
Could it be? Could removing trashcans and not having cleaning crews going around all the time have some psychological effect on people that they get the strong impression that their trash is -their trash- and should not only not be littered, but not be conveniently dumped in government-approved receptacles?
Another option is that on my three visits, I happened to take routes that magically steered me clear of a wealth of trashcans to be found in London. I'll have to keep a keen eye out next time I go.
The casinos like card counters and will even let them get bigger winnings than they need to get away with because it shows other players, quite visibly through the removal of the player, that there is a method to win.. and if those players could only learn that method, and then not be so stupid like the player that was removed, they could win big! Which, of course, by and large they won't.. the house wins. The house always wins.
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Off-topic from this sub-thread... maybe people should quit looking at gambling as a potential form of income. It's -gambling-. Maybe you'll win, maybe you'll lose. Maybe you'll win big, maybe you'll win little. But the amount you lose is always in your own control. I gamble from time to time.. used to be slot machines in local cafetaria's before they got banned; people got addicted to them, so the gov't prohibited them (only to drive those addicts to the gov't-run casino's, of course), and have always put a hard cap on my bets. E.g. the slot machines, I used to put the cap at Fl.10 (Fl = dutch guilders, this is pre-euro era). Even if I just won Fl.100 after my 8th guilder, I would only bet twice more. At worst, I'd be out Fl.10. At best, I'd hit the jackpot (happened once, but the machine only had ~Fl.400 in it.. not quite retirement winnings;) Still fun to watch around 400 guilders popping out of the dispenser slot and cascade down onto the floor, though.)
Ahh, the ways we could piss off the FAA. I know some of the regulations, and that's half of why I haven't built half the stuff I want to.
Not too sure about Australia, but here in NL we have much the same regulations.
If I were to 'do the right thing' and write to the aviation authorities here saying I intend to let loose a big ol' helium balloon capable of reaching 30,000 feet and higher, with a digital camera attached, they would smack me down citing all sorts of safety regulations (camera into jet engine = potential loss of engine power and all that.. they tend to be less squishy than birds - which do enough damage as it is).
But if I were to 'just do it', I get to have a fun project, a great experience, and possibly awesome results to share with friends and indeed the world. Last, but not least, very little chance that the authorities would come after me after-the-fact (unless the thing -did- get sucked into some jet engine or otherwise disrupted air traffic).
The same applies to ventures into abandoned factories, for example. It's not your land, not your property, you're legally trespassing and if caught the owner will probably tell you to get the hell off of his property.. but you'll already have the experience of going there, maybe photos, etc. If you were to write first, you've got odds against you.. if the owner says 'sure, go ahead', and you get into an accident at the site, they'll be liable.. odds are, thus, that you'll get a big fat "no, you may not go onto my property".
Rules may not be meant to be broken, but life tends to be more interesting when you do break them.
Just to note - most of the theaters in NL don't offer such services. You typically get a choice of the movie in its original language + subtitles, or the Dutch version (kids' movies; more recently, they don't bother with the original voices for those anymore). If you are hard of hearing, that does rather suck. If you are blind, there's also no narrative soundtrack to be played back.
That said, there's a few theaters that do offer headsets for hard of hearing and those with sensitive hearing alike, but they are all driven via RF (I *think* it's a basic low power FM transmitter below the typical range for radio stations, but for all I know they use a digital transmitter and receiver now), rather than IR.
3D movies, on the other hand... they do use an IR signal to sync the glasses to the projected image, so those could be affected. On the other hand, trying to capture that with a camera would lead to major fail anyway, so I doubt they'd suffer from in-theater captures.
Yeah, I understand that, except that I did. I like my coke / sprite when watching a movie (or a cup of coffee if it's a matinee; they serve hot chocolate in winter.. ftw, I daresay), so that's exactly what I bought and showed the guy.
Policy is policy, I know, but I still found it entirely ridiculous:)
Well they don't really need to send a blinding light at the camera.. they can just project (near-)IR light from the projection booth, make it vary randomly in intensity, and all but the most well-equipped cameras (with a *very* decent IR blocker that can at least block the frequency used by the theatre; no, the standard IR blocker does not cover this, as pointing a TV remote at your camera will show) record utter junk.
It's even a relatively cheap solution; certainly cheaper than having personnel run around with nightvision goggles trying to catch people, or checking people's bags and banning cameras, etc.
But in the end, it still only takes 1 person - a projectionist not adhering to policy, a print shop that has a mysterious 'leak', a review board member wanting some extra crash - to get a transfer to a format that distribution groups can use, and the whole world will have access in no time.
Last time a theater employee even asked if he could check my stuff, there were three things in the bag I was carrying around...
- A high quality digital still camera also capable of HD video, mounted on a tripod. - A smartphone with less-than-worthless 640x480 noise-o-vision video - 2 bottles of Aquarius 'Red Blast' ('peach' flavor sport drink).
( Quick backstory: I ended up at the theatre because it was raining out. Not so bad in general, but I was making a photo trip on the bike and the weather report said the rainshower should last 2 hours tops. I was in the area of the theatre, so I figured I'd hop in there, catch a movie, and by the time I'd get out I could continue on my shoot. )
Employee: we can't allow those inside Me: oh, I know, but I'm just on a shoot; I can leave the battery with the reception if you want Employee: no, no.. the bottles. We can't allow those inside; we don't sell those (they sell regular and whatever the hell flavor the blue-colored Aquarius is) Me:... wait, I can't take the bottles - which I'm only carrying for outside; I just got a Coke Zero at the bar, see? *holds up coe zero* - but the camera is okay? Employee: yes.. sorry, policy Me: o-kay. Employee: Could we put those in storage for you, perhaps?
I guess they already knew that the movie had been available for download for weeks, as a telesync, probably snatched up in the U.S. with a proper audio feed, and didn't much care about anybody bringing in cameras.
Fetch yourself one of those cheap cardboard polarized stereoscopic 3D glasses, and wear them all day.
I can almost guarantee you that the constant shifting in brightness in odd cloudy patterns on any surfaces that happen to polarize the light (a door at a shallow angle, a piece of fruit, the entire sky when the sun is low-ish) will get to you real quick.
Of course 10 months later some Mac website uncovers some obscure magazine interview with some..somebody at Apple already discussing 3D displays and "Glasses that would look no different than sunglasses" and use it to justify the claim that everybody was just copying Apple ever since./tongue-in-cheek
Rightly so, as that type (though not quite with the odd antennae-like things.. whatever those are), using polarization, is what is predominantly used in 3D theater shows right now (RealD, for example, though I believe the system I wore to watch The Final Destination 3D was a different brand).
But it only shows either... A. their ignorance of the current state of 3D glasses or B. their belief that -any- glasses (even if you already wear glasses daily) suck.
A is unforgivable, B at least drives companies to further invest in autostereoscopic displays, so can't really complain; maybe some day they'll be as good as the glasses.
The ING bank in NL uses three forms (mostly after fully incorporating the Postbank).
I should note that these are all for authorizing a transaction. Logging into your account still only requires a username and password. Should those be acquired by a malicious party somehow, they will be able to see your balance, your recent transactions (and if they see you always withdraw $200 from a specific ATM every tuesday at 10am, that's dangerous enough, tyvm), and change several settings including your password (but none of the transaction authorization methods).
So, transaction authorization then... A. You go to complete the transaction and are presented with the challenge.. some long-ish unique number. You whip out an annoying little calculator device that you have to stick a smart card into. You enter that number, and you get the response..another number. You enter that number into the website form and the transaction has been authorized. Problems with these things are rife, from not having the calculator on you, not having the card on you, the device being broken (be that dirty contacts or truly broken), etc. It's relatively secure, of course, as they'd have to steal your card (the calculators are the same across all clients, of course)
B. TAN-by-phone. You go to complete the transaction, and are presented with just a form where you enter a TAN. At the same time, a text message with that TAN is sent to your phone, along with the amount total. The amount total is shown so that -if- at any point some sneaky man-in-the-middle managed to add a transaction to your session, you should be able to see that, and stop the transaction, notify your bank, etc. Anyway, if all is well, you enter the response, and you're done again. Problems with this might be not having your phone on you, or dead battery, no signal, no carrier, etc. etc.
C. TAN-by-list. You go to complete the transaction and are presented with a challenge, which is basically a number from 1-100, or 101-200 if you've already made more than 100 transactions, etc. Basically 3-digit, maybe 4 if you make transactions all day long. This number can be found on a printed list that was sent to you beforehand by secure mail. Just find the number, and read the TAN code next to it, and enter that. Done. No technological problems with this one, but obviously it does have the weakness that it includes 100 TAN numbers and, if compromised (photo, scan, etc.), can be used multiple times without your direct knowledge until it's too late.
Of all the systems, I very much prefer option C. If I don't want to carry around a piece of paper, I can even move the list over to my phone if I were so inclined (and incur the issues of option B, of course). Its weakness is also easily solved by rotating the look-up relative to the TANs. I.e. shift all the TAN codes by N, say 50. You get a challenge asking you for the TAN code listed by number 80. Those who have a copy of your list go to number 80, enter the value, and the bank tells them 'nuh-uh.. try again, 2 attempts left'. Good luck to them figuring out that they -really- should have been looking at number 80+50 = 130. 130-100 = 30.
This is easily -as- secure as the calculator+smart card, if not -more- secure, a lot less prone to problems both technological and logistical.
Sadly, I think the EU will be mandating the smart card route in the nearish future. So I'll have to carry another card around in my wallet (which is already a nice theft target, but where the f else do I keep it?), drag a calculator with me all the time especially if going abroad (what, you think a Highway 9 Motel is going to stock online banking calculators for dozens of nations? Maybe a Hilton or above might, as a free service included with $500/night rooms.), worry about batteries (I dunno why they haven't made them solar-fed yet; I used to find solar calculators in laundry detergent boxes in the late 80's!), keeping contacts clean, etc. etc.
If I upload something to MySpace.. that's -me- sending data -to- them; typically after setting up an account, agreeing to a bunch of legalese, etc.
Rupert Murdoch's websites aren't submitting articles to Google News. Google News simply takes them (as part of the generic GoogleBot*), and republishes snippets. I think courts have already ruled that to be perfectly legal, so he's really not got much to whine about*, but the two scenarios are distinctly different.
* Although it is a little odd - okay, not really, google have it planned this way; as the comments here show, it's great leverage to continue to let Google put their stuff on google news automatically as the alternative is not to get indexed by Google for the main search facility at all - that there is no separate googlebot-news bot for which you can specify additional rules. googlebot-mobile and googlebot-images(?) for example follow the rules for googlebot, but you can override the behaviorby specifying rules for these specifically.
So now the router vendors will add FireFox or Chrome or whatever on their install CD, and hey presto.. problem solved.. on top of that, the user now gets introduced to a different and typically more secure browser. win/win on all sides (except Microsoft - unless they'd allow router vendors to distribute IE).
Besides, I'd imagine MS -will- still place a base IE install on their distribution CDs/DVDs, and a user can be directed to launch the installer from that well before they touch a router that has yet to be configured.
The same way the app first downloaded the XML file to show the browser choices in the first place?
The user doesn't have to 'download' anything.. they just click on the shiny 'download and install [browser name] now' link or button and off the program goes to do what needs to be done; without any IE requirement.
An full-on webpage may be more flexible, but that is only by virtue of the browser supporting the features laid out in the standards referenced by that webpage.
There's absolutely nothing stopping Microsoft from simply hosting the options as an XML file, downloading that using any ol' connection technology, parsing it, and popping up any images, descriptions, URLs, as would a browser. It doesn't need to support CSS, it doesn't need to support Javascript, etc. The results could then easily be displayed in a boring old list. That's hardly difficult - I can whip one up in mIRC script of all things.
As far as security warnings go.. they're shipping access to third party solutions.. not the OEM, but Microsoft. Not just to FireFox, Opera, Safari, Chrome but 5 smaller players as well (whoever those might be). One of them gets hacked, the user downloads some crappy-ass badware, et voila. Granted, it should certainly show this security warning when choosing IE as well (cheap +5 Funny comments regarding how IE especially would require this warning are welcomed).
However, I'm with you on "what's the point". Already the user is going to get an option screen where in the past they would not have, and OEMs can already install a different browser altogether, make it the default, and the user will -not- see such an option screen.
I understand the arguments being made by the opposing parties, but they only follow the argument that MS should offer such a choice in the first place.. which I disagree with. I wish MS would've stuck with just not including a browser in the install at all, so that OEMs would've made the choice for users. Some would stick with IE, others would take the bribe money from Google to stick Chrome on there, others get to position their machines as Apple-wannabes with Safari, etc. and/or just offer a set of radiobuttons on the machine configuration page so the user can choose for themselves upon purchase.
Ever since the product pricing in Steam adopted the traditional "USD = EUR! bend over, lol" method of currency conversion, Steam games have been bloody expensive for Europeans. No, it's not just taxes. Highest tax in Europe is some ridiculous 25% in Sweden, Denmark and Hungary (most are around the 19% mark). Now check the going rate for EUR/USD: 1.47501.
It really is very often much cheaper to just buy retail in Europe.
But even if they were - perhaps there's some validation for that. After all, as per.. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1398133&cid=29689373..it's entirely more likely that people who grow tired of the ads would just download a patch to remove the ad functionality (not counting the people who would actually -buy- Office, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if this is the same 'hack' used to attack Belgacom.
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/63200/belgacom-hacker-publiceerde-authentieke-inloggegevens-van-klanten.html
For the curious, a quick recap in English...
A hacker going by the name 'Vendetta', supposedly an American living in Belgium, got fed up with the monthly data cap (at Belgacom, figured out that there's a way to find the username/password for a modem by browsing to it (much as in this article), did that to a claimed several thousand (285,000) modems, and is threatening to release them slowly over time until November 30th as long as Belgacom keeps its monthly data cap.
So far this hacker released 30 usernames/passwords, and they were found to be genuine.
Belgacom contacted authorities, is investigating the claimed method of hacking, blabla.
The modem in question with Belgacom is labeled a "B-Box2-modem".
Not all games are twitchy FPSs and racing games though; and not every element in even *those* games has to be calculated for instant feedback.
Let's say you have a flamethrower in a game. You need to be able to see where the flames are going, and where your enemies are going, 'immediately' so that you can get a good kill.
But all the indirect lighting from those flames bouncing around in the scene lagging behind by, say, 150ms would be perfectly acceptable.
e.g. offload the intensive bits and pieces to the cloud, rather than the entire thing.
Although the entire thing would be possible in due time as well - players are already playing with lag; lag induced from rendering off-site is minimal compared to the hops between you and the average game server. Bandwidth is a far bigger concern; especially when you consider more and more ISPs introducing caps.
As far as CPUs go.. oh, absolutely, they'll get ever more powerful especially after Larrabee. But the games get more demanding as well. So now you need a new CPU, but it uses a different socket, so you get a new motherboard, turns out your old cooling fan won't fit, beside.. the TDP of the new CPU is 120W, so you'll need a watercooling solution anyway, etc. etc.
There's a lot of reasons why 'gaming on the cloud' ( I do hate that term. ) can be a good thing (from the technical up above, to the energy efficiency, to technical support, to non-invasive anti-cheating constructions), just as there are down sides to it (potential for lag, slurps bandwidth, no resale options, game could be abandoned at any point and you'll have no recourse, etc.).
But to state it's doomed before it's even launched... hmm. Let's have them give it a shot, first?
Just because the press doesn't do their jobs anymore...
Here's the Telegraph's article...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6401062/Microsofts-Bing-signs-landmark-deals-with-Twitter-and-Facebook.html
I quote (emphasis mine):
NVidia's offering performs full scene raytracing/pathtracing, with effects ranging from reflections and refractions to global illumination and caustics all the way through to sub-surface scattering and participating media.
Some of these things can be done in proper realtime (say, at least, 30fps at 720p) on existing GPUs, but typically by using hacks that look 'good enough', but aren't actually correct. Which is fine for gaming (where refresh rates matter), but not fine for product visualization, architectural visualization or to go to an extreme.. materials and lighting analysis, where you don't care if it's not 30fps, but are more than happy to wait 10 seconds for something that used to take 15 minutes.
That said... if the cards keep getting faster, then eventually 30fps@720p will be possible and there's no reason, in the time inbetween, that games couldn't add the more fancy effects and have the GPGPU solutions take care of those on a 'cloud' platform.
gah.. forgot to note the odd one out in the "ceiling, conceit, conceive, deceit, deceive, *obeisance*" list. /me *seizes* the preview button /nokarma while waiting for the post delay (oh noes it's been only 1 minute! slashfail to my postfail.) while reply posts point this glaring omission out.
Is that little rule - I before E except after C - still actually being taught?
Besides 'weird', here's a collection of other words that do not fit that rule:
e-ism (atheism), e-ing (being), e-ish (blueish), etc.
interrupted: albeit
sounds like 'A': airfreight, aweigh, beige, bobsleigh, heinous (heehee, he said heinous), heir
sounds like 'I': abseil, feisty
silent: forfeit
Even if you take the modified form of "I Before E except after C when it sounds like 'E'"...
caffeine, casein, codeine
Even if you modify it further "I before E except after C when it sounds like 'E' and isn't some chemical compound"...
Ashleigh, Keith, O'Neill (two "L"s, the one with a sense of humor)
So let's make it "I before E except after C when it sounds like 'E' and isn't a name like that of a person, object, or substance.."
ceiling, conceit, conceive, deceit, deceive, obeisance
I haven't even paged through my dictionary file beyond the letter 'O' yet and already I think you can tell that the "I before E" rule is an abomination. Not in the least due to all of the exceptions made above where you'd have to come up with new rules, or just teach the kids the correct spelling of the word 'as is'. I sure hope "I before E" is not still being taught.
Oh hell, I just noticed there's a Wikipedia topic for it - of course there is. *mutter* - and at least the Brits clued up; "In June 2009, the British government advised primary school teachers to stop teaching the rule."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C
This seems a bit odd...
Don't we, and Google, usually tell people to use robots.txt if they want to restrict crawling?
I always thought this to be rather counter-intuitive, but it strikes me time and again when I visit London...
Compared to San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. downtown London is squeaky clean. Not just the parks, but random streets, areas near train/underground stations, etc. as well.
I hardly ever see any cleaning crews, so it can't be that they're busy cleaning all the time to keep things clean.
Then at one point in my first visit, I -had- a piece of trash.. an empty coke can ..and after 15 minutes of walking around with the darn thing (I hate littering), it struck me: it's damn near impossible to find a trashcan in London.
You can walk for miles in London and not come across any non-private trashcan. Not on the streets, not in train stations unless you happen to find one in some back corner or sneak into a fastfood place, not anywhere inside parks - you're lucky to find one or two near the entrances.
Could it be? Could removing trashcans and not having cleaning crews going around all the time have some psychological effect on people that they get the strong impression that their trash is -their trash- and should not only not be littered, but not be conveniently dumped in government-approved receptacles?
Another option is that on my three visits, I happened to take routes that magically steered me clear of a wealth of trashcans to be found in London.
I'll have to keep a keen eye out next time I go.
That.
The casinos like card counters and will even let them get bigger winnings than they need to get away with because it shows other players, quite visibly through the removal of the player, that there is a method to win.. and if those players could only learn that method, and then not be so stupid like the player that was removed, they could win big!
Which, of course, by and large they won't.. the house wins. The house always wins.
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Off-topic from this sub-thread... maybe people should quit looking at gambling as a potential form of income. It's -gambling-. Maybe you'll win, maybe you'll lose. Maybe you'll win big, maybe you'll win little. But the amount you lose is always in your own control. I gamble from time to time.. used to be slot machines in local cafetaria's before they got banned; people got addicted to them, so the gov't prohibited them (only to drive those addicts to the gov't-run casino's, of course), and have always put a hard cap on my bets. E.g. the slot machines, I used to put the cap at Fl.10 (Fl = dutch guilders, this is pre-euro era). Even if I just won Fl.100 after my 8th guilder, I would only bet twice more. At worst, I'd be out Fl.10. At best, I'd hit the jackpot (happened once, but the machine only had ~Fl.400 in it.. not quite retirement winnings ;) Still fun to watch around 400 guilders popping out of the dispenser slot and cascade down onto the floor, though.)
Not too sure about Australia, but here in NL we have much the same regulations.
If I were to 'do the right thing' and write to the aviation authorities here saying I intend to let loose a big ol' helium balloon capable of reaching 30,000 feet and higher, with a digital camera attached, they would smack me down citing all sorts of safety regulations (camera into jet engine = potential loss of engine power and all that.. they tend to be less squishy than birds - which do enough damage as it is).
But if I were to 'just do it', I get to have a fun project, a great experience, and possibly awesome results to share with friends and indeed the world. Last, but not least, very little chance that the authorities would come after me after-the-fact (unless the thing -did- get sucked into some jet engine or otherwise disrupted air traffic).
The same applies to ventures into abandoned factories, for example. It's not your land, not your property, you're legally trespassing and if caught the owner will probably tell you to get the hell off of his property.. but you'll already have the experience of going there, maybe photos, etc. If you were to write first, you've got odds against you.. if the owner says 'sure, go ahead', and you get into an accident at the site, they'll be liable.. odds are, thus, that you'll get a big fat "no, you may not go onto my property".
Rules may not be meant to be broken, but life tends to be more interesting when you do break them.
Just to note - most of the theaters in NL don't offer such services. You typically get a choice of the movie in its original language + subtitles, or the Dutch version (kids' movies; more recently, they don't bother with the original voices for those anymore). If you are hard of hearing, that does rather suck. If you are blind, there's also no narrative soundtrack to be played back.
That said, there's a few theaters that do offer headsets for hard of hearing and those with sensitive hearing alike, but they are all driven via RF (I *think* it's a basic low power FM transmitter below the typical range for radio stations, but for all I know they use a digital transmitter and receiver now), rather than IR.
3D movies, on the other hand... they do use an IR signal to sync the glasses to the projected image, so those could be affected. On the other hand, trying to capture that with a camera would lead to major fail anyway, so I doubt they'd suffer from in-theater captures.
Yeah, I understand that, except that I did. I like my coke / sprite when watching a movie (or a cup of coffee if it's a matinee; they serve hot chocolate in winter.. ftw, I daresay), so that's exactly what I bought and showed the guy.
Policy is policy, I know, but I still found it entirely ridiculous :)
Well they don't really need to send a blinding light at the camera.. they can just project (near-)IR light from the projection booth, make it vary randomly in intensity, and all but the most well-equipped cameras (with a *very* decent IR blocker that can at least block the frequency used by the theatre; no, the standard IR blocker does not cover this, as pointing a TV remote at your camera will show) record utter junk.
It's even a relatively cheap solution; certainly cheaper than having personnel run around with nightvision goggles trying to catch people, or checking people's bags and banning cameras, etc.
But in the end, it still only takes 1 person - a projectionist not adhering to policy, a print shop that has a mysterious 'leak', a review board member wanting some extra crash - to get a transfer to a format that distribution groups can use, and the whole world will have access in no time.
Last time a theater employee even asked if he could check my stuff, there were three things in the bag I was carrying around...
- A high quality digital still camera also capable of HD video, mounted on a tripod.
- A smartphone with less-than-worthless 640x480 noise-o-vision video
- 2 bottles of Aquarius 'Red Blast' ('peach' flavor sport drink).
( Quick backstory: I ended up at the theatre because it was raining out. Not so bad in general, but I was making a photo trip on the bike and the weather report said the rainshower should last 2 hours tops. I was in the area of the theatre, so I figured I'd hop in there, catch a movie, and by the time I'd get out I could continue on my shoot. )
Employee: we can't allow those inside ... wait, I can't take the bottles - which I'm only carrying for outside; I just got a Coke Zero at the bar, see? *holds up coe zero* - but the camera is okay?
Me: oh, I know, but I'm just on a shoot; I can leave the battery with the reception if you want
Employee: no, no.. the bottles. We can't allow those inside; we don't sell those (they sell regular and whatever the hell flavor the blue-colored Aquarius is)
Me:
Employee: yes.. sorry, policy
Me: o-kay.
Employee: Could we put those in storage for you, perhaps?
I guess they already knew that the movie had been available for download for weeks, as a telesync, probably snatched up in the U.S. with a proper audio feed, and didn't much care about anybody bringing in cameras.
But the drinks.. oh noes, the drinks!
Fetch yourself one of those cheap cardboard polarized stereoscopic 3D glasses, and wear them all day.
I can almost guarantee you that the constant shifting in brightness in odd cloudy patterns on any surfaces that happen to polarize the light (a door at a shallow angle, a piece of fruit, the entire sky when the sun is low-ish) will get to you real quick.
That's for linear polarizers, however.
But the Apple glasses won't look dorky - they'll look like not-quite-designer sunglasses, which is perfectly acceptable.
Then 2 weeks later, somebody finds this site... ...and will claim that the Inition's glasses look *just like* the Apple ones, despite being quite different, and accuse them of just copying Apple.
http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/product.php?URL_=product_stereovis_inition_glasses&SubCatID_=3
Of course 10 months later some Mac website uncovers some obscure magazine interview with some..somebody at Apple already discussing 3D displays and "Glasses that would look no different than sunglasses" and use it to justify the claim that everybody was just copying Apple ever since. /tongue-in-cheek
Anyway... most people thinking of 3D glasses are thinking of this:
http://www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth/3D-glasses-404_675044c.jpg
Rightly so, as that type (though not quite with the odd antennae-like things.. whatever those are), using polarization, is what is predominantly used in 3D theater shows right now (RealD, for example, though I believe the system I wore to watch The Final Destination 3D was a different brand).
But it only shows either...
A. their ignorance of the current state of 3D glasses
or
B. their belief that -any- glasses (even if you already wear glasses daily) suck.
A is unforgivable, B at least drives companies to further invest in autostereoscopic displays, so can't really complain; maybe some day they'll be as good as the glasses.
The ING bank in NL uses three forms (mostly after fully incorporating the Postbank).
I should note that these are all for authorizing a transaction. Logging into your account still only requires a username and password. Should those be acquired by a malicious party somehow, they will be able to see your balance, your recent transactions (and if they see you always withdraw $200 from a specific ATM every tuesday at 10am, that's dangerous enough, tyvm), and change several settings including your password (but none of the transaction authorization methods).
So, transaction authorization then...
A. You go to complete the transaction and are presented with the challenge.. some long-ish unique number. You whip out an annoying little calculator device that you have to stick a smart card into. You enter that number, and you get the response..another number. You enter that number into the website form and the transaction has been authorized. Problems with these things are rife, from not having the calculator on you, not having the card on you, the device being broken (be that dirty contacts or truly broken), etc.
It's relatively secure, of course, as they'd have to steal your card (the calculators are the same across all clients, of course)
B. TAN-by-phone. You go to complete the transaction, and are presented with just a form where you enter a TAN. At the same time, a text message with that TAN is sent to your phone, along with the amount total. The amount total is shown so that -if- at any point some sneaky man-in-the-middle managed to add a transaction to your session, you should be able to see that, and stop the transaction, notify your bank, etc. Anyway, if all is well, you enter the response, and you're done again. Problems with this might be not having your phone on you, or dead battery, no signal, no carrier, etc. etc.
C. TAN-by-list. You go to complete the transaction and are presented with a challenge, which is basically a number from 1-100, or 101-200 if you've already made more than 100 transactions, etc. Basically 3-digit, maybe 4 if you make transactions all day long. This number can be found on a printed list that was sent to you beforehand by secure mail. Just find the number, and read the TAN code next to it, and enter that. Done. No technological problems with this one, but obviously it does have the weakness that it includes 100 TAN numbers and, if compromised (photo, scan, etc.), can be used multiple times without your direct knowledge until it's too late.
Of all the systems, I very much prefer option C. If I don't want to carry around a piece of paper, I can even move the list over to my phone if I were so inclined (and incur the issues of option B, of course). Its weakness is also easily solved by rotating the look-up relative to the TANs. I.e. shift all the TAN codes by N, say 50. You get a challenge asking you for the TAN code listed by number 80. Those who have a copy of your list go to number 80, enter the value, and the bank tells them 'nuh-uh.. try again, 2 attempts left'. Good luck to them figuring out that they -really- should have been looking at number 80+50 = 130. 130-100 = 30.
This is easily -as- secure as the calculator+smart card, if not -more- secure, a lot less prone to problems both technological and logistical.
Sadly, I think the EU will be mandating the smart card route in the nearish future. So I'll have to carry another card around in my wallet (which is already a nice theft target, but where the f else do I keep it?), drag a calculator with me all the time especially if going abroad (what, you think a Highway 9 Motel is going to stock online banking calculators for dozens of nations? Maybe a Hilton or above might, as a free service included with $500/night rooms.), worry about batteries (I dunno why they haven't made them solar-fed yet; I used to find solar calculators in laundry detergent boxes in the late 80's!), keeping contacts clean, etc. etc.
oh I agree.. one should even work under the assumption that a robots.txt file does crap all. Doesn't make the analogy any less flawed, however.
your analogy is flawed, though...
If I upload something to MySpace.. that's -me- sending data -to- them; typically after setting up an account, agreeing to a bunch of legalese, etc.
Rupert Murdoch's websites aren't submitting articles to Google News. Google News simply takes them (as part of the generic GoogleBot*), and republishes snippets.
I think courts have already ruled that to be perfectly legal, so he's really not got much to whine about*, but the two scenarios are distinctly different.
* Although it is a little odd - okay, not really, google have it planned this way; as the comments here show, it's great leverage to continue to let Google put their stuff on google news automatically as the alternative is not to get indexed by Google for the main search facility at all - that there is no separate googlebot-news bot for which you can specify additional rules. googlebot-mobile and googlebot-images(?) for example follow the rules for googlebot, but you can override the behaviorby specifying rules for these specifically.
So now the router vendors will add FireFox or Chrome or whatever on their install CD, and hey presto.. problem solved.. on top of that, the user now gets introduced to a different and typically more secure browser. win/win on all sides (except Microsoft - unless they'd allow router vendors to distribute IE).
Besides, I'd imagine MS -will- still place a base IE install on their distribution CDs/DVDs, and a user can be directed to launch the installer from that well before they touch a router that has yet to be configured.
I don't see the insurmountable issue here.
The same way the app first downloaded the XML file to show the browser choices in the first place?
The user doesn't have to 'download' anything.. they just click on the shiny 'download and install [browser name] now' link or button and off the program goes to do what needs to be done; without any IE requirement.
This... ...is why.
http://images.google.com/images?q=lynx+browser
If you feel that doesn't answer your question, then you'll have to ask yourself whether you are fit to ask it in the first place.
An full-on webpage may be more flexible, but that is only by virtue of the browser supporting the features laid out in the standards referenced by that webpage.
There's absolutely nothing stopping Microsoft from simply hosting the options as an XML file, downloading that using any ol' connection technology, parsing it, and popping up any images, descriptions, URLs, as would a browser. It doesn't need to support CSS, it doesn't need to support Javascript, etc. The results could then easily be displayed in a boring old list. That's hardly difficult - I can whip one up in mIRC script of all things.
As far as security warnings go.. they're shipping access to third party solutions.. not the OEM, but Microsoft. Not just to FireFox, Opera, Safari, Chrome but 5 smaller players as well (whoever those might be). One of them gets hacked, the user downloads some crappy-ass badware, et voila. Granted, it should certainly show this security warning when choosing IE as well (cheap +5 Funny comments regarding how IE especially would require this warning are welcomed).
However, I'm with you on "what's the point". Already the user is going to get an option screen where in the past they would not have, and OEMs can already install a different browser altogether, make it the default, and the user will -not- see such an option screen.
I understand the arguments being made by the opposing parties, but they only follow the argument that MS should offer such a choice in the first place.. which I disagree with. I wish MS would've stuck with just not including a browser in the install at all, so that OEMs would've made the choice for users. Some would stick with IE, others would take the bribe money from Google to stick Chrome on there, others get to position their machines as Apple-wannabes with Safari, etc. and/or just offer a set of radiobuttons on the machine configuration page so the user can choose for themselves upon purchase.
You must not be European, at the least, then.
Ever since the product pricing in Steam adopted the traditional "USD = EUR! bend over, lol" method of currency conversion, Steam games have been bloody expensive for Europeans.
No, it's not just taxes. Highest tax in Europe is some ridiculous 25% in Sweden, Denmark and Hungary (most are around the 19% mark). Now check the going rate for EUR/USD: 1.47501.
It really is very often much cheaper to just buy retail in Europe.
Who says they're ignoring it?
But even if they were - perhaps there's some validation for that. After all, as per.. http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1398133&cid=29689373 ..it's entirely more likely that people who grow tired of the ads would just download a patch to remove the ad functionality (not counting the people who would actually -buy- Office, of course).