That said, I think Sim-Terrorist actually sounds like both a good idea and a good game. Honestly, Counterstrike is based on an counter-terrorism scenario. Why couldn't you build a game where you're Tom Ridge, and it's your job to stop the fanatical flavor of the month.
Speaking of "fanatical flavor of the month", Who's it going to be next? Think I'm being too cynical? Think Quadaffi, Khomeni, etc etc etc. In America we NEED someone to hate, otherwise we won't feel like we're better than everyone else.
When the economy gets slow, we bomb stuff. Sometimes it's stuff we've never bombed before, but most often, it's the usual suspects...
In 1 AD, there were about 150 million humans worldwide (Source), and according to Columbia University there were ~6B people in 1995 (a growth factor or 40).
As best as I can figure, that means we are 40 times more likely NOW that someone on the planet will develop a significant new gene mutation than we were at the birth of Christ (give or take 15 years, but that's another story entirely). I wonder what the factor is if we had an idea of the population in 198,000 B.C. I couldn't find a source.
At any rate, I guess my point, or question, is this; Given that it's 40 times more likely that someone will have experienced a significant gene mutation today than in 1 A.D., and the factor probably goes up a tremendous amount given the population difference between 198,000 B.C. and the birth of Christ, isn't it possible (maybe even likely) that just ONE of the people in this world who claim Extra Sensory Abilities might actually be telling the truth?
Now OTOH (On The Other Hand), it's also JUST as likely that some mutation will come along which will wipe out these beneficial mutations, but those mutations won't spread like beneficial ones.
This also leads me to a question: How did the first person with the ability to speak spread the gene? It's not like they had anyone to TALK to. I'm guessing the first person to speak was a man. Here's why:
Man Speaks First: Man: "Hey baby, you want to come back to my cave and check out my wall paintings?" Woman: "Grunt" (Man and Woman go back to cave, presumably check out wall paintings, have children...)
Woman Speaks First: Man: "Grunt" Woman: "Buzz off, loser. You don't have a fast enough rock." (Man goes off and kills deer)
Just my humble opinion.
Re:Old idea with problems.. but promising..
on
Going Up?
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Take a look at follow ups.
Re:Old idea with problems.. but promising..
on
Going Up?
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My point exactly. Sending rubbish off is just plain stupid. As for the energy requirement, the beanstalk generates it's own energy, once it's hooked up. As far as losing the natural resources, we don't seem to have a problem doing that all of the time (practically). Most of the plastic that is buried will never see the light of day again as ANYTHING in any of our lifetimes.
Surprisingly, I for once agree with an AC.
Re:You're wrong, do the math.
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Going Up?
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"sending waste water off planet is just silly, for the same power you can boil off the water..."
Unless it's radioactive. Then you have radioactive steam.
I don't think that it's a real problem (to be honest, in the time frames we're talking about, humans will be worm food, IMO). I just don't want to see people using it as a tool for putting our problems "out of sight - out of mind".
Shipping the WTC wreckage out to space alone would add 1.2 million tons to the total. We ought to be able to do SOMETHING with trash other than ship it away to someplace that isn't personally offensive.
Re:Old idea with problems.. but promising..
on
Going Up?
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Also, addendum. Yes, I did the math. I left "trillion" in there by accident. I started to say "59.8 trillion" tons, but added the zeros in the editing process, and forgot to remove "trillion".
So, actually, divide your numbers by 1,000,000,000. That's the real number of years you're trying to figure. You've done the math on your part, do it on mine, and you'll see the mistake.
That's the problem not having a peer review board when posting to/....:) Thanks for pointing out the error.
Re:You're wrong, do the math.
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Going Up?
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Are you saying that there are only 1000 cities on the earth producting 26,000 tons of waste a day in total? Let's add commercial waste. Let's add waste water. etc etc etc. Ad infinitum.
Also, addendum. Yes, I did the math. I left "trillion" in there by accident. I started to say "59.8 trillion" tons, but added the zeros in the editing process, and forgot to remove "trillion".
So, actually, divide your numbers by 1,000,000,000. That's the real number of years you're trying to figure. You've done the math on your part, do it on mine, and you'll see the mistake.
That's the problem not having a peer review board when posting to/....:)
Re:Old idea with problems.. but promising..
on
Going Up?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"When you throw that bag of garbage straight up, directly away from the center of the earth, it's going to exert a force on you in return directly toward the center of the earth. This won't affect Earth's rotation at all (no torque)."
As long as you throw it, not lift it, which is the principle behind the space elevator. That also true as long as you don't let go (which is why a figure skater goes faster when she/he brings her arms back in). To make the space elevator concept work, you'd have to bring down an = amount of trash/rock/whatever to make the lift work economically. Nobody is going to trade trash for rock. With trash, we'd be letting go. Goodbye rotational energy.
The 12 quintillion figure is for NY's trash alone. Like I said, let's add everyone elses trash, plus payloads, etc and it adds up quickly. And again, you're talking about stopping the earth entirely, not slowing it down for the.09 seconds I was talking about.
Did you actually think that people were concerned about global warming before they started chucking billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere, some 50 years ago?
Old idea with problems.. but promising..
on
Going Up?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is a great idea, but it has one big problem. It isn't energy - The idea of generating energy by dangling something into the atmosphere from space has been explored and proven that it will work.
The problem is this: With every gram of matter you chuck into space (or even lift from the surface), the rotation of the Earth slows in direct proportion to the cargo's mass relative to the mass of the Earth. In other words, every time we throw something in to space,the Earth will slow down just a bit, no matter how small the load. Proving yet again that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Fine, you say. It'll take a TREMENDOUS amount of mass to be lifted into space to stop the rotation of the Earth. I completely agree. However, if the Earth slows.000001%, (about 9 hundredths of a second, enough to win/lose a car race) then the days will get measurably longer unless we bring an equal amount of mass down.
Just to sate your curiosity, the earth weighs about 5.98 X 10^24 kilograms (or, 5,980,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, metric, roughly speaking. Source.). That said, it would just take us lifting 59,800,000,000,000 trillion tons into space to affect the aforementioned change. Again, a tremendous amount, right?
Consider this: New York city alone produces 13,000 tons of residential waste a DAY, and they've run out of places to put it (Again, Source). That's 4.7 Million tons a year. And they're currently paying PA to dump is for them. There are other cities with the same problem. Exactly how long do you think it will take for someone to decide to move the waste even farther away? Like Space? And that's just residential.
That's only one example. Let's add Yucca Mountain's 77,000 Metric tons of waste and 100,000,000 gallons of high level radioactive waste water (Call Claire at the Yucca Mountain Project (dept. of civilian radioactive waste mgmt. for more info -Link or 1-(800) 225-6972). Okay, lets add the "extra" garbage of all of the other states, countries, provinces etc who have run out of places to put their waste. It adds up REALLY quickly.
And that's not including the actual mass of the elevator itself, including it's anchor.
Mind you, I still think we should build it, I just don't think we should use it as a tool to get rid of our problems that's we're too stupid to fix, but smart enough to move out of sight.
I understand the concept of harvesting braking to push a flywheel to greater speeds, therefore storing the energy, but I have a couple of questions:
Aren't flywheels tremendously heavy? Wouldn't the additional weight cause longer stopping distances, especially under emergency braking?
I do understand that the braking would be assisted by the flywheel itself (spinning it up), but you never get anything for free (See The First Law of Thermodynamics.). When spinning up the wheels, you'd have heat loss, and loss again when they are spun down. Secondly, again, because of the 1st Law, wouldn't the heat generated by all of those flywheels spinning up and down exactly equal the heat savings? Moreover, thinking of emergency braking - What is the top speed of the flywheels? How strong do the gears need to be to spin up the flywheel to top speed very quickly? And at what tremendous gear ratio?
Don't think that I'm against it, cause I'm not. I think the electricity savings alone make it worth the effort and expense, but I'm not convinced that the trains would be as safe as the existing ones, and that there would be any heat savings. That said, CA needs to convert the BART next....
Re:Something I've been saying all along..
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Digital Dark Ages?
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But when you factor in costs, the tape backup or RAID-5 is just as expensive/cheap, and that's even faster and readily available - do you have friends with EXACTLY the same machine as you? I don't know about you, but we're talking ~$10,000 in software licenses alone...
Something I've been saying all along..
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Digital Dark Ages?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
With our rapidly increasing HD sizes, backup methods and media aren't keeping up. I've already lost 2 large HD's in the last 2 years, and with my shiny new 80 Gig drives, I've got a Raid-1 setup, but still if they both fail within a short amount of time from each other, I'm outta luck.
Moreover, the advancement of HD tech makes it almost certain that when one fails in a year, I won't be able to get an exact replacement to reload it from the RAID.
Does anyone know of a PRACTICAL way to back up 80 Gig's of info? AHSay.com offers online backups, but the initial backup would take weeks through my ADSL modem, and then incrementals would be pretty much useless. I suppose I could use DVD-RW, but at 4.7 Gig a disk, we're talking 20ish disks, at several hours a piece. And doing incremental backups that way is a nightmare. It seems that my only real option is to use something like a MonsterTape backup storage device, but systems with 80Gig capacities and up START at $4000 a piece, and the tapes are 80 bucks a piece. With 80 gig drives available for $129 bucks (Pricewatch), it doesn't seem like a good option.
I use Trillian - it integrates AOL, MSN, Yahoo!IM, ICQ and IRC all in one app. It's got a lot of great features you don't find on the native apps, but it's missing some functionality, like file transfer and webcam integration that you can get in some apps.
Amen to that. I similarly wonder how many viruses are out that that nobody except the authors know about? Hundreds? Thousands?
Speaking of which, if there is a virus that exploits a backdoor (a la CodeRed) in a server, why can't you author a counter-virus? One that exploits the same back door, goes in, removes the virus and closes the backdoor? Then it waits, listening for other CodeRed viruses to attempt a breach, go to that compromised server and kill the virus there ad infinitum until there are no more requests for X cycles? Has anyone thought of this?
Is this truly suprising? With the proliferation of "secret" functionality in everything from DVD's to Palm applications, it seems that a lot of developers take great delight in doing something "on the sly" that will get them noticed.
While the vast majority of these "easter eggs" are completely harmless, it's only logical to assume that they present an opportunity for malicous activities. I mean, who among us doesn't have SOME "H4X0R" history? Doesn't it follow that some of that will come out when the opportunity to put in a "gift" presents itself?
Also, this seems to me to be one of the down sides of the Open Source fight. Most of the accomplished hackers that I know are strong advocates of Open Source. It leads me to believe that most of the proponents of Open Source are or were at some time at least a script kiddie with delusions of grandeur.
Nobody I know has the time to actually check every line of code in a 200 Meg build for one or two lines of backdoor code, especially when the application is DESIGNED to make and break connections.
Can you imagine? What next? Cars? "You've got gas!"
Do we honestly need ANOTHER revenue (pardon the pun) stream for AOL/Time Warner? IF this is going to keep happening, why don't we just cut to the chase and impose an AOL/Time Warner tax on everything we do? Then they can just sit down and shut up...
In the mean time, I really think someone ought to take AOL's attempt at cornering the VOIP sector and squash it like a bug by producing one Killer Router/Switch. Sounds like a job for Cisco.. (not to be confused with Sisquo)
Remember - Supporting free speech means that you get the right to say that you don't like what someone else has to say. The proviso is that they have to SAY it first.
I hate people who claim to be American, but obviously can't stand Americans. As Voltaire's Social Secretary said (roughly),
"I may not agree with what you say sir, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Now THAT is a true American, who never was in America (he died 1778)
There's another great quote worth repeating here: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
1) I have two phones - one personal, the other for work. Would I have to get two implants? Then, how would I answer one, but not the other? OTOH - If I did this, a conference call would be a cinch.
2) What happens when I need to change from Sprint to AT&T? Do I have to go back to the dentist? Can I sell my old Sprint implant?
3) So how would I surf the wireless web? (Very big lately)
4) What about programming my phone book?
5) Wouldn't getting screwed by your telco now REALLY leave a bad taste in your mouth?
6) If I set the phone to ring "silently", it might just kick loose a filling or to.
7) I don't think anyone I want to talk to would appreciate me snacking down on a hoagie while I'm talking to them, which is almost the only time I get lunch.
8) I'd have to change toothpaste. I'm sure my Colgate Total isn't supposed to be used on electronics.
9) I don't think anyone would buy it, because then they wouldn't be able to say "I wasn't by the phone." Also, can you imagine some of the phone calls? Phone calls in the bathroom, in the shower, while -um- massaging yourself?
and finally...
10) I wouldn't be able to tell between the lunatics talking to God and a Fortune 500 CEO in a conference call. Particularly with the number of well dressed wackos in the world.
I read an article a long while ago in one of the trade mags that talked about this.
According to the article, software is so bad because it takes legions of software designers/coders to put out the latest version of SoftwareX. The reason it takes legions is that software has become so complex. You used to be able to install Word with a couple of floppy diskettes. Now you need a CD.
Where did the extra 600 Meg come from? Spell Check, grammar checking, clip-art, spread sheet functionality, clip-art creation software, fonts, thesaurus, templates, auto-correct (like spell-check isn't enough?), macros etc, ad infinitum.
Developers spend their time writing new functionality, instead of fixing the broken "slightly-less-than-new-functionality." So, why are they doing this? Simple, because their managers are looking at their artificial time table, and saying "We promised this version would be done by (insert artificially generated date here). We need to get it done yesterday." (Side note here: Apparently, to stay competitive, companies need to release SOMETHING new every 6 months. If they don't, they die. Notice the emphasis on SOMETHING.)
When the development team finishes their newest widget, it heads off to a completely separate team of QA specialists who don't actually understand the interoperability of the new widgets. They miss things. Managers know this but they think, "Well, we can always release a patch later." In really large software companies, this patch is created by an entirely separate team, who had nothing to do with the product's creation in the first place.
Most of the time, the patch team has to consult with the original development team to create the patch. Unfortunately, the original development team isn't available to talk, because they are creating the next great widget for the patch team to fix in 6 mths.
Never mind "Help" files.
It's a complete wonder that we actually get anything that works at all.
So, why do companies do this? Why does Word have clip art creation capabilites? Why does it come packaged with a Thesaurus and a Dictionary, when they are both online, and Webster's Dictionary is the third best selling book of all time (third to the Bible and Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung, which was compulsory reading for all Chinese from 1966 to 1971, Source)?
Simple - you asked for it. Companies have spent hundreds of thousands (dare I say millions?, okay. Millions.) of your dollars on determining what you want. You WANT spell checking. You WANT clip-art creation. You WANT better, faster functionality, and you want it NOW!!!!
That's right, the crappy software is YOUR fault. The &$%@&^'ing OFFICE ASSISTANT is YOUR fault!!
You have nobody to blame but yourselves. Don't you feel ashamed?
BTW: If you don't believe me on this - Our company had over 300 phone calls to our internal IT help desk within a week after moving to Win 2000, because we didn't load Solitare on the computers.
Slashdot Mirror
I want one. This would be perfect for Half-Life..
That said, I think Sim-Terrorist actually sounds like both a good idea and a good game. Honestly, Counterstrike is based on an counter-terrorism scenario. Why couldn't you build a game where you're Tom Ridge, and it's your job to stop the fanatical flavor of the month.
Speaking of "fanatical flavor of the month", Who's it going to be next? Think I'm being too cynical? Think Quadaffi, Khomeni, etc etc etc. In America we NEED someone to hate, otherwise we won't feel like we're better than everyone else.
When the economy gets slow, we bomb stuff. Sometimes it's stuff we've never bombed before, but most often, it's the usual suspects...
Perhaps the reason that nobody has reported it is that very few people read it in the first place, and as such, very few people care.
This may also be the reason that they aren't going to be continuing with the journal in the first place, don't you think?
I doubt few people lamented the end of the Ultrix journal....
So you're like, what, 15?
Someone PLEASE mod this guy down!
Actually, fittest to reproduce includes your ability to attract a mate.
Guess what? Beating off invaders is a positive survival trait. You're kids are most likely to survive.
So, lifting 50 pounds may not increase your chance of having the MOST offspring, but it increases your chances of having the most SURVIVING offspring.
You need to have mega-sperm AND a kick ass physique.
In 1 AD, there were about 150 million humans worldwide (Source), and according to Columbia University there were ~6B people in 1995 (a growth factor or 40).
As best as I can figure, that means we are 40 times more likely NOW that someone on the planet will develop a significant new gene mutation than we were at the birth of Christ (give or take 15 years, but that's another story entirely). I wonder what the factor is if we had an idea of the population in 198,000 B.C. I couldn't find a source.
At any rate, I guess my point, or question, is this; Given that it's 40 times more likely that someone will have experienced a significant gene mutation today than in 1 A.D., and the factor probably goes up a tremendous amount given the population difference between 198,000 B.C. and the birth of Christ, isn't it possible (maybe even likely) that just ONE of the people in this world who claim Extra Sensory Abilities might actually be telling the truth?
Now OTOH (On The Other Hand), it's also JUST as likely that some mutation will come along which will wipe out these beneficial mutations, but those mutations won't spread like beneficial ones.
This also leads me to a question: How did the first person with the ability to speak spread the gene? It's not like they had anyone to TALK to. I'm guessing the first person to speak was a man. Here's why:
Man Speaks First:
Man: "Hey baby, you want to come back to my cave and check out my wall paintings?"
Woman: "Grunt"
(Man and Woman go back to cave, presumably check out wall paintings, have children...)
Woman Speaks First:
Man: "Grunt"
Woman: "Buzz off, loser. You don't have a fast enough rock." (Man goes off and kills deer)
Just my humble opinion.
Take a look at follow ups.
My point exactly. Sending rubbish off is just plain stupid. As for the energy requirement, the beanstalk generates it's own energy, once it's hooked up. As far as losing the natural resources, we don't seem to have a problem doing that all of the time (practically). Most of the plastic that is buried will never see the light of day again as ANYTHING in any of our lifetimes.
Surprisingly, I for once agree with an AC.
"sending waste water off planet is just silly, for the same power you can boil off the water..."
Unless it's radioactive. Then you have radioactive steam.
I don't think that it's a real problem (to be honest, in the time frames we're talking about, humans will be worm food, IMO). I just don't want to see people using it as a tool for putting our problems "out of sight - out of mind".
Shipping the WTC wreckage out to space alone would add 1.2 million tons to the total. We ought to be able to do SOMETHING with trash other than ship it away to someplace that isn't personally offensive.
Also, addendum. Yes, I did the math. I left "trillion" in there by accident. I started to say "59.8 trillion" tons, but added the zeros in the editing process, and forgot to remove "trillion".
/.... :) Thanks for pointing out the error.
So, actually, divide your numbers by 1,000,000,000. That's the real number of years you're trying to figure. You've done the math on your part, do it on mine, and you'll see the mistake.
That's the problem not having a peer review board when posting to
Are you saying that there are only 1000 cities on the earth producting 26,000 tons of waste a day in total? Let's add commercial waste. Let's add waste water. etc etc etc. Ad infinitum.
/.... :)
Also, addendum. Yes, I did the math. I left "trillion" in there by accident. I started to say "59.8 trillion" tons, but added the zeros in the editing process, and forgot to remove "trillion".
So, actually, divide your numbers by 1,000,000,000. That's the real number of years you're trying to figure. You've done the math on your part, do it on mine, and you'll see the mistake.
That's the problem not having a peer review board when posting to
"When you throw that bag of garbage straight up, directly away from the center of the earth, it's going to exert a force on you in return directly toward the center of the earth. This won't affect Earth's rotation at all (no torque)."
.09 seconds I was talking about.
As long as you throw it, not lift it, which is the principle behind the space elevator. That also true as long as you don't let go (which is why a figure skater goes faster when she/he brings her arms back in). To make the space elevator concept work, you'd have to bring down an = amount of trash/rock/whatever to make the lift work economically. Nobody is going to trade trash for rock. With trash, we'd be letting go. Goodbye rotational energy.
The 12 quintillion figure is for NY's trash alone. Like I said, let's add everyone elses trash, plus payloads, etc and it adds up quickly. And again, you're talking about stopping the earth entirely, not slowing it down for the
Did you actually think that people were concerned about global warming before they started chucking billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere, some 50 years ago?
The space elevator has been featured in a lot of books, most recently David Gerrold's "Jumping off the Planet".
.000001%, (about 9 hundredths of a second, enough to win/lose a car race) then the days will get measurably longer unless we bring an equal amount of mass down.
This is a great idea, but it has one big problem. It isn't energy - The idea of generating energy by dangling something into the atmosphere from space has been explored and proven that it will work.
The problem is this: With every gram of matter you chuck into space (or even lift from the surface), the rotation of the Earth slows in direct proportion to the cargo's mass relative to the mass of the Earth. In other words, every time we throw something in to space,the Earth will slow down just a bit, no matter how small the load. Proving yet again that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Fine, you say. It'll take a TREMENDOUS amount of mass to be lifted into space to stop the rotation of the Earth. I completely agree. However, if the Earth slows
Just to sate your curiosity, the earth weighs about 5.98 X 10^24 kilograms (or, 5,980,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, metric, roughly speaking. Source.). That said, it would just take us lifting 59,800,000,000,000 trillion tons into space to affect the aforementioned change. Again, a tremendous amount, right?
Consider this: New York city alone produces 13,000 tons of residential waste a DAY, and they've run out of places to put it (Again, Source). That's 4.7 Million tons a year. And they're currently paying PA to dump is for them. There are other cities with the same problem. Exactly how long do you think it will take for someone to decide to move the waste even farther away? Like Space? And that's just residential.
That's only one example. Let's add Yucca Mountain's 77,000 Metric tons of waste and 100,000,000 gallons of high level radioactive waste water (Call Claire at the Yucca Mountain Project (dept. of civilian radioactive waste mgmt. for more info -Link or 1-(800) 225-6972). Okay, lets add the "extra" garbage of all of the other states, countries, provinces etc who have run out of places to put their waste. It adds up REALLY quickly.
And that's not including the actual mass of the elevator itself, including it's anchor.
Mind you, I still think we should build it, I just don't think we should use it as a tool to get rid of our problems that's we're too stupid to fix, but smart enough to move out of sight.
My point precisely. Like I said, I'm in favor of it.
I understand the concept of harvesting braking to push a flywheel to greater speeds, therefore storing the energy, but I have a couple of questions:
Aren't flywheels tremendously heavy? Wouldn't the additional weight cause longer stopping distances, especially under emergency braking?
I do understand that the braking would be assisted by the flywheel itself (spinning it up), but you never get anything for free (See The First Law of Thermodynamics.). When spinning up the wheels, you'd have heat loss, and loss again when they are spun down. Secondly, again, because of the 1st Law, wouldn't the heat generated by all of those flywheels spinning up and down exactly equal the heat savings? Moreover, thinking of emergency braking - What is the top speed of the flywheels? How strong do the gears need to be to spin up the flywheel to top speed very quickly? And at what tremendous gear ratio?
Don't think that I'm against it, cause I'm not. I think the electricity savings alone make it worth the effort and expense, but I'm not convinced that the trains would be as safe as the existing ones, and that there would be any heat savings. That said, CA needs to convert the BART next....
But when you factor in costs, the tape backup or RAID-5 is just as expensive/cheap, and that's even faster and readily available - do you have friends with EXACTLY the same machine as you? I don't know about you, but we're talking ~$10,000 in software licenses alone...
With our rapidly increasing HD sizes, backup methods and media aren't keeping up. I've already lost 2 large HD's in the last 2 years, and with my shiny new 80 Gig drives, I've got a Raid-1 setup, but still if they both fail within a short amount of time from each other, I'm outta luck.
Moreover, the advancement of HD tech makes it almost certain that when one fails in a year, I won't be able to get an exact replacement to reload it from the RAID.
Does anyone know of a PRACTICAL way to back up 80 Gig's of info? AHSay.com offers online backups, but the initial backup would take weeks through my ADSL modem, and then incrementals would be pretty much useless. I suppose I could use DVD-RW, but at 4.7 Gig a disk, we're talking 20ish disks, at several hours a piece. And doing incremental backups that way is a nightmare. It seems that my only real option is to use something like a MonsterTape backup storage device, but systems with 80Gig capacities and up START at $4000 a piece, and the tapes are 80 bucks a piece. With 80 gig drives available for $129 bucks (Pricewatch), it doesn't seem like a good option.
I use Trillian - it integrates AOL, MSN, Yahoo!IM, ICQ and IRC all in one app. It's got a lot of great features you don't find on the native apps, but it's missing some functionality, like file transfer and webcam integration that you can get in some apps.
I bow before the almighty AC. Your logic, and facts to back it up, are staggering.
SELECT * FROM lusers WHERE clue > 0;
go
0 rows returned
Amen to that. I similarly wonder how many viruses are out that that nobody except the authors know about? Hundreds? Thousands?
Speaking of which, if there is a virus that exploits a backdoor (a la CodeRed) in a server, why can't you author a counter-virus? One that exploits the same back door, goes in, removes the virus and closes the backdoor? Then it waits, listening for other CodeRed viruses to attempt a breach, go to that compromised server and kill the virus there ad infinitum until there are no more requests for X cycles? Has anyone thought of this?
MBTF stands for "Mean Estimated Time Between Failures", not Manufacturer's Estimated Time Before Failure.
Just FYI.
Is this truly suprising? With the proliferation of "secret" functionality in everything from DVD's to Palm applications, it seems that a lot of developers take great delight in doing something "on the sly" that will get them noticed.
While the vast majority of these "easter eggs" are completely harmless, it's only logical to assume that they present an opportunity for malicous activities. I mean, who among us doesn't have SOME "H4X0R" history? Doesn't it follow that some of that will come out when the opportunity to put in a "gift" presents itself?
Also, this seems to me to be one of the down sides of the Open Source fight. Most of the accomplished hackers that I know are strong advocates of Open Source. It leads me to believe that most of the proponents of Open Source are or were at some time at least a script kiddie with delusions of grandeur.
Nobody I know has the time to actually check every line of code in a 200 Meg build for one or two lines of backdoor code, especially when the application is DESIGNED to make and break connections.
Can you imagine? What next? Cars? "You've got gas!"
Do we honestly need ANOTHER revenue (pardon the pun) stream for AOL/Time Warner? IF this is going to keep happening, why don't we just cut to the chase and impose an AOL/Time Warner tax on everything we do? Then they can just sit down and shut up...
In the mean time, I really think someone ought to take AOL's attempt at cornering the VOIP sector and squash it like a bug by producing one Killer Router/Switch. Sounds like a job for Cisco.. (not to be confused with Sisquo)
Remember - Supporting free speech means that you get the right to say that you don't like what someone else has to say. The proviso is that they have to SAY it first.
I hate people who claim to be American, but obviously can't stand Americans. As Voltaire's Social Secretary said (roughly),
"I may not agree with what you say sir, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Now THAT is a true American, who never was in America (he died 1778)
There's another great quote worth repeating here:
"Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."
I see a large number of problems here:
1) I have two phones - one personal, the other for work. Would I have to get two implants? Then, how would I answer one, but not the other? OTOH - If I did this, a conference call would be a cinch.
2) What happens when I need to change from Sprint to AT&T? Do I have to go back to the dentist? Can I sell my old Sprint implant?
3) So how would I surf the wireless web? (Very big lately)
4) What about programming my phone book?
5) Wouldn't getting screwed by your telco now REALLY leave a bad taste in your mouth?
6) If I set the phone to ring "silently", it might just kick loose a filling or to.
7) I don't think anyone I want to talk to would appreciate me snacking down on a hoagie while I'm talking to them, which is almost the only time I get lunch.
8) I'd have to change toothpaste. I'm sure my Colgate Total isn't supposed to be used on electronics.
9) I don't think anyone would buy it, because then they wouldn't be able to say "I wasn't by the phone." Also, can you imagine some of the phone calls? Phone calls in the bathroom, in the shower, while -um- massaging yourself?
and finally...
10) I wouldn't be able to tell between the lunatics talking to God and a Fortune 500 CEO in a conference call. Particularly with the number of well dressed wackos in the world.
This is by far the worst idea I've heard yet.
I read an article a long while ago in one of the trade mags that talked about this.
According to the article, software is so bad because it takes legions of software designers/coders to put out the latest version of SoftwareX. The reason it takes legions is that software has become so complex. You used to be able to install Word with a couple of floppy diskettes. Now you need a CD.
Where did the extra 600 Meg come from? Spell Check, grammar checking, clip-art, spread sheet functionality, clip-art creation software, fonts, thesaurus, templates, auto-correct (like spell-check isn't enough?), macros etc, ad infinitum.
Developers spend their time writing new functionality, instead of fixing the broken "slightly-less-than-new-functionality." So, why are they doing this? Simple, because their managers are looking at their artificial time table, and saying "We promised this version would be done by (insert artificially generated date here). We need to get it done yesterday." (Side note here: Apparently, to stay competitive, companies need to release SOMETHING new every 6 months. If they don't, they die. Notice the emphasis on SOMETHING.)
When the development team finishes their newest widget, it heads off to a completely separate team of QA specialists who don't actually understand the interoperability of the new widgets. They miss things. Managers know this but they think, "Well, we can always release a patch later." In really large software companies, this patch is created by an entirely separate team, who had nothing to do with the product's creation in the first place.
Most of the time, the patch team has to consult with the original development team to create the patch. Unfortunately, the original development team isn't available to talk, because they are creating the next great widget for the patch team to fix in 6 mths.
Never mind "Help" files.
It's a complete wonder that we actually get anything that works at all.
So, why do companies do this? Why does Word have clip art creation capabilites? Why does it come packaged with a Thesaurus and a Dictionary, when they are both online, and Webster's Dictionary is the third best selling book of all time (third to the Bible and Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung, which was compulsory reading for all Chinese from 1966 to 1971, Source)?
Simple - you asked for it. Companies have spent hundreds of thousands (dare I say millions?, okay. Millions.) of your dollars on determining what you want. You WANT spell checking. You WANT clip-art creation. You WANT better, faster functionality, and you want it NOW!!!!
That's right, the crappy software is YOUR fault. The &$%@&^'ing OFFICE ASSISTANT is YOUR fault!!
You have nobody to blame but yourselves. Don't you feel ashamed?
BTW: If you don't believe me on this - Our company had over 300 phone calls to our internal IT help desk within a week after moving to Win 2000, because we didn't load Solitare on the computers.