I was thinking about this and thinking that if you really objected to it, you could just screw around with the scanner and continaully move your fingers, not put your hand in far enough, plead that your fingers have a genetic defect that prevents them from going in far enough, and generally moan, wail, and bitch while tying up the line until they just let you in because there are 100 families with screaming kids behind you getting angry.
I can see why they'd use it for season pass holders, however using it on EVERYONE, it's overkill. I mean, if you're already going INTO the park anyway... (unless they offer all-day in/out priveledges, which I doubt)... Maybe if they only required it if you want to leave/re-enter it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
GPS can be turned off by the US government, and is done so regularly in hostile countries, and all the time in countries the US is at war with.
It usually isn't turned off. There are a lot of soldiers that carry/use civilian GPS units because the military units, while capable of being run over by tanks, bombed from above, and submerged to the bottom of the ocean SUCK when it comes to user interface and ease of use. Think user interface from a VAX and you'll be in the ballpark.
And now that selective availability is off (even in war-torn areas), there's no huge benefit from using the clunky military versions.
(now, if the military found that the enemy was using GPS to deliver bombs and such, of course they'd turn it off, but that's not how the vast majority of US encounters are conducted these days - it's fighting in the streets and suicide bombings which doesn't really require any form of GPS).
Ya, for a "do it yourself article", it would have been nice if they took REAL pictures of the final output of their hack rather than faking the screen images.
Are they purposefully trying to fool people into thinking it will even come close to the quality of a real front-projection system?
What I'd like to see someone hack, is to take 3 inexpensive DLP projectors, modify them so each only outputs a single primary colour (r/g/b), then combine the light from each to form a single projection image.
Most triple-DLP projectors are in the $20k+ range, so it would be nice to see if someone could hack-up something similar with 3 projectors in the $1,500 range.
(of course, just having them manufacture them cheaper would be nice too).
Laserjets don't print on CD or DVD media, and they don't even come close to the photo quality you can get from a high-quality inket print on glossy photo paper.
So while laserjets are good for some things if you happen to be in an office environment, they're not the ideal solution for all uses.
Of course most people who do lots of inkjet printing have retrofitted their printers with a continual-flow ink system which makes it operate for next to nothing.
Ah, "billions in damages". I love it. Somehow like the "millions in lost revenue from downloading MP3s or copying software".
"Oh, a hacker took down our system. One of our clients 'could' have just tried to place a multi-billion dollar order while everything was down. Let's claim BILLIONS in damages when the bad bad hacker is prosecuted!"
Cawf cawf.
Let's be honest here - when some big corporation gets hit and has to clean out their machines, they're going to claim that it takes a team of $500/hr professionals to go to each and every machine to clean them, while the employees take the day/week/month off and sit at home being unproductive. Of course they want to maximize their "reported" damages in order to get more chance of a conviction.
What it "actually" means is that they send some $8/hr interns around with a floppy disks or USB drives and tell the staff to take a coffee break for 10 minutes while their machine is cleaned off...
It's not so much a matter of making an optimized compiler, it's a matter of a compiler specifically crippling itself if "genuineintel" isn't detected.
What they SHOULD be doing is checking the supported features of the chip and enabling the extensions dynamically as the features are available or not.
To just say "oh, it's not Intel, therefore we'll just use a standard x86 instruction set, no matter what the chip reports it's actually capable of" is the kind of BS that gets companies in hot water. If they want to prove how good their CPU is, then they should be trying to do that as fairly as possible. Playing compiler tricks will only fool people in the shortterm and will catch up with them...
It wasn't effective because they caught-on too late to do anything (the hijackers were already locked in the cockpit by the time the passengers figured out what was going on).
If hijackers tried that now (threatening a passenger with a boxcutter or something), the entire plane would jump them. Sure, the passenger would probably get their, but there's no way the terrorists would get control of the plane.
They might be able to blow it up if they managed to get explosives aboard, but they're never going to get control of a plane again by trying to threaten their way into the cockpit.
I purchased it via steam - entered my credit card number, and the game was streamed to my HD over the course of a few weeks leading-up to release without me having to do anything (except reload the steam client occasionally to trigger a download).
On release day, the game unlocked itself at 12:01am and was ready to play about 10 minutes later. No problem.
I'm quite happy with how it works. I have steam installed on my office computer now too and I can play CS/HL in my office when I get bored and have some time to kill. Fully authorized and patched just by logging-in from another location.
So for me, steam worked just fine. And now that they've started to ban asshat cheaters FOREVER from secure servers using VAC2 (no debates, no account unlocks - if a cheat is detected, you never play a source game on a secure server online again unless you pay for a completely new copy and create a new steam account), it's making things even more desireable for us honest players...
Did you buy it right when it was released, or afterwards? If you bought it right at release time, you should've been able to do a full install from the DVD with only a tiny download to unlock/authenticate it.
If you got it afterwards, you'd have got all of the updates and bugfixes as well which would definately have caused a longer update process.
The price of playing a game with the bugs pre-fixed for you (as opposed to having to manually download patches ala other game companies).
Why don't they just use a web-browser system for doing taxes? There are many companies in Canada (and presumably the US) that use a browser-based package to allow people to file their returns.
I used one myself this year and it was painless and fast. No need for software for specific clients/OSes.
Well, if the battery begins to wear-out, it will just mean that the internal combustion engine will be used more to compensate and keep things running.
The newer THS-II hybrid system that is in the 2004 and newer Prius models makes use of a redesigned battery pack that's far superior to the original (2003 and older) Prius systems. It should last for the life of the car according to Toyota.
I have absolutely no concerns about the battery pack wearing out in mine.
You have to wonder about the brain surgeon who thought this one up. When companies try to push me around, I push back and I get very vocal and aggravated about it. There's no way I'd sign up for a company that promotes this sort of strong-arm tactic.
What this means is a LOT of bad press for wired... Not such a good idea when websites such as slashdot, engadget, and others fill any voids that would result from wired folding their operations.
Ya, North American "morals" never fail to amaze me when it comes to sex and violence...
Witness professional wrestling - it's perfectly OK to beat someone with chairs and grind their face into barbed wire until they're gushing out blood, surrounded by screaming fans and such, but if you show a little sex, and the public wants you thrown in jail or worse...
So which is more harmful to kids in the longrun? Watching adults (and I use the term loosely) beat eachother's brains out on TV (something that you hope they'll never do), or watching some sex (which they're going to do anyway)?
He probably would've been pretty safe if he didn't sell them - I think they would've had a pretty tough time convicting him if it had just been some guy who chipped his own xbox at home for personal use.
(BTW: For those who havn't done it, modding an xbox is so easy that virtually anyone can do it. It actually takes longer to take the thing apart than it does to install the modchip and a bigger HD).
I'd suggest just getting some firewire/USB harddrives and storing the data on those. The trick of course being that you put your files on them, then disconnect the drive completely and put it on a shelf somewhere.
With no connection to a PC or to power, it's very unlikely (barring a nuclear strike, which would most likely give you more concerns than your video/photo collection), that anything would happen to the materials stored on them.
For even cheaper storage, just buy a USB/Firewire drive enclosure and swap the drive itself out and store that in a fireproof safe somewhere (preferably off-site).
I suggest using "Deep Freeze" instead for locking-up lab computers so they reset-on-reboot. It's pretty solid software - and fairly difficult to remove afaik.
The network version also allows locking/unlocking/monitoring over the network, and you can generate 1-time codes for workstation access so people won't be able to unfreeze even if they snag the password with a keylogger of some sort.
I've heard that it does interesting things to the boot record so that if deep freeze doesn't boot the system (ie: you try and bypass with a floppy or other bootable media), the harddrives aren't readable (unconfirmed).
-If it moves, flashes, animates or makes noise, it's gone -If they try a popup/popunder, it's gone
Static ads don't annoy me (much like the newspaper he was mentioning), and I don't block them.
Oh, and I also block additional ads on any sites I pay to access - if I'm already paying their subscription fee, I deserve an advertising-free environment.
It's not legal to sell them. Valve's license specifically prohibits people from selling anything that's developed with their tools, or interfaces with their software/engine.
But that said, if it becomes popular (aka CS), I'd imagine they'd work something out.
I'm still fairly surprised that Valve hasn't picked-up Natural Selection yet. It's far more fun than CS and actually requires real teamwork and strategy.
Hopefully when NS 3.1 (or NS-Source) comes out, they'll make it available on Steam.
If you want to try something that's a little more satisfying than the "run around and shoot stuff, round after round in CS", pop over to the Official Site and give it a try (It takes some time to learn how the game works, so reading the manual [the wikipedia entry is pretty good!] will help you look less like a newb).
Well, the US administration knows that keeping people scared is the best way to control them.
So they pile on restrictions, security checks, etc. all with the claim of "making things safer", when what they really mean is "keeping people scared". Nothing like lots of visible security to remind people that the world is a daaaaangerous place and only republicans are willing (cawf cawf) to protect the population by force.
Of course, we all know that a determined terrorist can get through ANY security with enough planning and money. So it's all a farce - and a lot of ass-covering so politicians can say "we did everything we could, so please re-elect us!".
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking about this and thinking that if you really objected to it, you could just screw around with the scanner and continaully move your fingers, not put your hand in far enough, plead that your fingers have a genetic defect that prevents them from going in far enough, and generally moan, wail, and bitch while tying up the line until they just let you in because there are 100 families with screaming kids behind you getting angry.
I can see why they'd use it for season pass holders, however using it on EVERYONE, it's overkill. I mean, if you're already going INTO the park anyway... (unless they offer all-day in/out priveledges, which I doubt)... Maybe if they only required it if you want to leave/re-enter it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
N.
GPS can be turned off by the US government, and is done so regularly in hostile countries, and all the time in countries the US is at war with.
It usually isn't turned off. There are a lot of soldiers that carry/use civilian GPS units because the military units, while capable of being run over by tanks, bombed from above, and submerged to the bottom of the ocean SUCK when it comes to user interface and ease of use. Think user interface from a VAX and you'll be in the ballpark.
And now that selective availability is off (even in war-torn areas), there's no huge benefit from using the clunky military versions.
(now, if the military found that the enemy was using GPS to deliver bombs and such, of course they'd turn it off, but that's not how the vast majority of US encounters are conducted these days - it's fighting in the streets and suicide bombings which doesn't really require any form of GPS).
N.
Ya, for a "do it yourself article", it would have been nice if they took REAL pictures of the final output of their hack rather than faking the screen images.
Are they purposefully trying to fool people into thinking it will even come close to the quality of a real front-projection system?
N.
What I'd like to see someone hack, is to take 3 inexpensive DLP projectors, modify them so each only outputs a single primary colour (r/g/b), then combine the light from each to form a single projection image.
Most triple-DLP projectors are in the $20k+ range, so it would be nice to see if someone could hack-up something similar with 3 projectors in the $1,500 range.
(of course, just having them manufacture them cheaper would be nice too).
N.
Laserjets don't print on CD or DVD media, and they don't even come close to the photo quality you can get from a high-quality inket print on glossy photo paper.
So while laserjets are good for some things if you happen to be in an office environment, they're not the ideal solution for all uses.
Of course most people who do lots of inkjet printing have retrofitted their printers with a continual-flow ink system which makes it operate for next to nothing.
N.
Ah, "billions in damages". I love it. Somehow like the "millions in lost revenue from downloading MP3s or copying software".
"Oh, a hacker took down our system. One of our clients 'could' have just tried to place a multi-billion dollar order while everything was down. Let's claim BILLIONS in damages when the bad bad hacker is prosecuted!"
Cawf cawf.
Let's be honest here - when some big corporation gets hit and has to clean out their machines, they're going to claim that it takes a team of $500/hr professionals to go to each and every machine to clean them, while the employees take the day/week/month off and sit at home being unproductive. Of course they want to maximize their "reported" damages in order to get more chance of a conviction.
What it "actually" means is that they send some $8/hr interns around with a floppy disks or USB drives and tell the staff to take a coffee break for 10 minutes while their machine is cleaned off...
N.
It's not so much a matter of making an optimized compiler, it's a matter of a compiler specifically crippling itself if "genuineintel" isn't detected.
What they SHOULD be doing is checking the supported features of the chip and enabling the extensions dynamically as the features are available or not.
To just say "oh, it's not Intel, therefore we'll just use a standard x86 instruction set, no matter what the chip reports it's actually capable of" is the kind of BS that gets companies in hot water. If they want to prove how good their CPU is, then they should be trying to do that as fairly as possible. Playing compiler tricks will only fool people in the shortterm and will catch up with them...
N.
It wasn't effective because they caught-on too late to do anything (the hijackers were already locked in the cockpit by the time the passengers figured out what was going on).
If hijackers tried that now (threatening a passenger with a boxcutter or something), the entire plane would jump them. Sure, the passenger would probably get their, but there's no way the terrorists would get control of the plane.
They might be able to blow it up if they managed to get explosives aboard, but they're never going to get control of a plane again by trying to threaten their way into the cockpit.
N.
Hmm... I had quite the opposite experience.
I purchased it via steam - entered my credit card number, and the game was streamed to my HD over the course of a few weeks leading-up to release without me having to do anything (except reload the steam client occasionally to trigger a download).
On release day, the game unlocked itself at 12:01am and was ready to play about 10 minutes later. No problem.
I'm quite happy with how it works. I have steam installed on my office computer now too and I can play CS/HL in my office when I get bored and have some time to kill. Fully authorized and patched just by logging-in from another location.
So for me, steam worked just fine. And now that they've started to ban asshat cheaters FOREVER from secure servers using VAC2 (no debates, no account unlocks - if a cheat is detected, you never play a source game on a secure server online again unless you pay for a completely new copy and create a new steam account), it's making things even more desireable for us honest players...
N.
Did you buy it right when it was released, or afterwards? If you bought it right at release time, you should've been able to do a full install from the DVD with only a tiny download to unlock/authenticate it.
If you got it afterwards, you'd have got all of the updates and bugfixes as well which would definately have caused a longer update process.
The price of playing a game with the bugs pre-fixed for you (as opposed to having to manually download patches ala other game companies).
N.
Why don't they just use a web-browser system for doing taxes? There are many companies in Canada (and presumably the US) that use a browser-based package to allow people to file their returns.
;P
I used one myself this year and it was painless and fast. No need for software for specific clients/OSes.
(didn't RTFA, apologies if I missed something)
N.
Well, if the battery begins to wear-out, it will just mean that the internal combustion engine will be used more to compensate and keep things running.
The newer THS-II hybrid system that is in the 2004 and newer Prius models makes use of a redesigned battery pack that's far superior to the original (2003 and older) Prius systems. It should last for the life of the car according to Toyota.
I have absolutely no concerns about the battery pack wearing out in mine.
N.
You have to wonder about the brain surgeon who thought this one up. When companies try to push me around, I push back and I get very vocal and aggravated about it. There's no way I'd sign up for a company that promotes this sort of strong-arm tactic.
What this means is a LOT of bad press for wired... Not such a good idea when websites such as slashdot, engadget, and others fill any voids that would result from wired folding their operations.
N.
Ya, North American "morals" never fail to amaze me when it comes to sex and violence...
Witness professional wrestling - it's perfectly OK to beat someone with chairs and grind their face into barbed wire until they're gushing out blood, surrounded by screaming fans and such, but if you show a little sex, and the public wants you thrown in jail or worse...
So which is more harmful to kids in the longrun? Watching adults (and I use the term loosely) beat eachother's brains out on TV (something that you hope they'll never do), or watching some sex (which they're going to do anyway)?
N.
He probably would've been pretty safe if he didn't sell them - I think they would've had a pretty tough time convicting him if it had just been some guy who chipped his own xbox at home for personal use.
(BTW: For those who havn't done it, modding an xbox is so easy that virtually anyone can do it. It actually takes longer to take the thing apart than it does to install the modchip and a bigger HD).
N.
When looking at Fallujah, "de_dust" was the first thing that came to mind.
Perhaps not all that far off the mark...
N.
I'd suggest just getting some firewire/USB harddrives and storing the data on those. The trick of course being that you put your files on them, then disconnect the drive completely and put it on a shelf somewhere.
With no connection to a PC or to power, it's very unlikely (barring a nuclear strike, which would most likely give you more concerns than your video/photo collection), that anything would happen to the materials stored on them.
For even cheaper storage, just buy a USB/Firewire drive enclosure and swap the drive itself out and store that in a fireproof safe somewhere (preferably off-site).
N.
I'd be somewhat more impressed if all of those drives he put in the system were in the 200-400gb range...
I know he got the drives on the cheap and all, but still... I've got nearly 1tb in my desktop machine without all the extra work.
N.
I suggest using "Deep Freeze" instead for locking-up lab computers so they reset-on-reboot. It's pretty solid software - and fairly difficult to remove afaik.
The network version also allows locking/unlocking/monitoring over the network, and you can generate 1-time codes for workstation access so people won't be able to unfreeze even if they snag the password with a keylogger of some sort.
I've heard that it does interesting things to the boot record so that if deep freeze doesn't boot the system (ie: you try and bypass with a floppy or other bootable media), the harddrives aren't readable (unconfirmed).
N.
Ah, bingo. You've hit the nail on the head.
I only block stuff that's obtrusive to me:
-If it moves, flashes, animates or makes noise, it's gone
-If they try a popup/popunder, it's gone
Static ads don't annoy me (much like the newspaper he was mentioning), and I don't block them.
Oh, and I also block additional ads on any sites I pay to access - if I'm already paying their subscription fee, I deserve an advertising-free environment.
N.
They don't sell them in north america. At least I've never seen one in regular hardware/home stores.
N.
It's not legal to sell them. Valve's license specifically prohibits people from selling anything that's developed with their tools, or interfaces with their software/engine.
But that said, if it becomes popular (aka CS), I'd imagine they'd work something out.
I'm still fairly surprised that Valve hasn't picked-up Natural Selection yet. It's far more fun than CS and actually requires real teamwork and strategy.
Hopefully when NS 3.1 (or NS-Source) comes out, they'll make it available on Steam.
If you want to try something that's a little more satisfying than the "run around and shoot stuff, round after round in CS", pop over to the Official Site and give it a try (It takes some time to learn how the game works, so reading the manual [the wikipedia entry is pretty good!] will help you look less like a newb).
N.
Ah, but you see - after a knife, hammer, pillow, or other dangerous objects are utilized, there are less people around to file lawsuits.
Which means it's OK!
N.
Well, the US administration knows that keeping people scared is the best way to control them.
So they pile on restrictions, security checks, etc. all with the claim of "making things safer", when what they really mean is "keeping people scared". Nothing like lots of visible security to remind people that the world is a daaaaangerous place and only republicans are willing (cawf cawf) to protect the population by force.
Of course, we all know that a determined terrorist can get through ANY security with enough planning and money. So it's all a farce - and a lot of ass-covering so politicians can say "we did everything we could, so please re-elect us!".
N.
Ah yes, but what about the cost of consumables for those color lasers?
Nothing like buying a $500 printer and finding out it needs $800 worth of toner carts, fuser, waste toner cart, etc.
N.