both Command and Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3 use LUA for a couple of things in the game. Its essentially undocumented by EA and (being LUA and being used for the things that its used for) would appear to the casual observer (assuming said observer even knew of its existence) to be safe.
But I can produce a mod (a single.big file and matching.skudef file) which can use this LUA to do some bad things to the filesystem of the host. I wont say how for obvious reasons but it could be dangerous if someone actually found out and used it in a shipping mod.
Thats why you put amounts in things not legally considered a bank account under the letter of the law. I am sure there are things you can invest in that are not considered a bank account but which have very little risk of loosing money.
The answer is simple. If the government (state, federal or otherwise) has evidence that someone is a danger to society and should be imprisoned beyond the end of their sentence, they should have to present that evidence to a judge and jury and convince them that this offender is dangerous.
If we trust a judge and jury to decide on the guilt/innocence and the initial punishment of the offender then we should be able to trust them to make a decision on whether the offender needs to remain locked up.
Also, as others have said, if they are considered dangerous because they are mentally unstable then they should be transferred to an appropriate locked mental ward to receive treatment for their mental illness.
Some people are in jail because they are a danger to society. Others are in jail because jail is a punishment for their crime.
The problem is that the government (and the courts) keep redefining "danger to society". Thanks to the "think of the children" crowd, someone who downloads a Japanese cartoon with 5 frames of a naked teenager in it can be considered a "sex offender" (and by extention a "danger to society").
If they really want VB, they should be allowing VB.NET and not "classic VB". "classic VB" is a long dead product, its not even SOLD by Microsoft anymore. They are no longer producing any fixes to the compiler or runtimes and Microsoft has plans to drop support for the VB6 runtimes and VB apps from future versions of the OS altogether (why they havent already done it I dont know)
Both VB.NET and Delphi have the RAD and "hide all the complex stuff away in the runtime libraries" stuff that VB6 had and should be just as easy for someone who has not programmed before as VB6 is.
Plus, with VB.NET and Delphi, you dont learn anywhere near as many of the "bad habits" that you have to later unlearn.
My guess is the reason they are keeping VB6 on the list is that a lot of schools have big investment in teaching VB6 (coursework etc) and that switching to one of the other languages (such as VB.NET or Delphi) would cost too much (new software, teacher re-training, new coursework etc).
These days many of the "top languages" such as Java, C#, VB.NET and Python have decent compilers (either JIT compilers that compile modules as they are loaded/executed or static compilers that compile the code straight to machine code).
They produced a product (the fat PS3) and included (and advertised) the OtherOS feature and its ability to run Linux.
They then removed that function.
If a car maker sold you a car with a satnav built into the in-car entertainment system and advertised that the car came with a satnav and then proceeded to remove the satnav function when you took it into the dealer for a service, you would have every right to be angry at the car maker for removing this feature.
The problem is that the "yes" camp may have the raw numbers but those who are in "no" camp are a lot more politically important to the government (I dont know the views of Family First Senator Steve Fielding on this issue but given his religious views and his views on other issues, he almost certainly falls into the "no" camp)
Also, because most of the "yes" responses came from people at the extreme "yes" end of the scale (and so few came from more moderate people) the government is likely thinking that just because a bunch of gamers want R18+ doesn't mean that regular people support it.
Its an election year here in Australia, if the government goes ahead with something like R18+ without knowing which way the vast majority of the population leans on the issue, it could hit him at the next election.
For the hardware you need: Touchscreen with graphics chip and touchscreen controler as an input device
Receipt printer (the kind that has been used in millions of cash registers, ATMs and other devices world wide for a few decades)
Flash memory chip to hold the machine OS and the config file (which candidates are running etc). This should be the kind that when its in the machine, it cannot be written to and has to be removed to write new software or configs. This would have a difficult-to-duplicate-or-remove sticker applied with the voting machines unique serial number to ensure that it hasn't been swapped for another identical chip containing rigged software.
Thumb drive or memory card to hold the counted votes. This would also have a difficult-to-duplicate-or-remove sticker applied with the voting machines unique serial number to ensure it isn't substituted with a fake one containing a different result.
CPU (ARM of some sort would seem to make sense) to control the system with usual support items (power supply, RAM etc)
Tamper-evident case containing the hardware with more difficult-to-duplicate-or-remove stickers with the voting machines serial number covering the screw holes/case edges/etc to ensure you can tell if its been opened. The receipt printer would be located outside of the tamper-resistant part so the roll can be replaced by poling station officials. Should a machine fail for other reasons (i.e. any reason that would require access to the hardware) that machine would be taken offline and not used for the rest of the election.
Software: Linux kernel with drivers for the memory card reader, touchscreen, receipt printer etc. (the kernel would be specifically built for the voting machine with everything that is not required for the device such as networking removed) Basic set of libraries (the bare minimum required to make everything work) Custom voting machine software. All software would be 100% open source.
Before the election, the machines are prepared by loading the correct OS and kernel along with the config file for the machine (containing the names and info for the candidates) onto the operating system chips. The operating system chip and vote counting memory card are loaded into the machine. Then the machines are verified and tested. Once they have been verified, they are sealed up and the tamper-evident stickers applied before they get shipped off to the poling booths.
When you go to vote, you pick your candidate on the screen by touching their name. Then you have to press "OK" once you are sure you clicked on the right name.
After your vote is complete, it is recorded in the file on the memory card. Also, a receipt is printed containing a machine readable bar-code corresponding to your vote plus a human readable record. This receipt is then inserted into a ballot box as you depart the polling booth. No part of the machine (receipt included) contains any record of who you are as a voter or any way to associate your vote back to you.
To count the votes, the memory cards are removed from the machines (after checking that the machine was not tampered with and that the memory card is genuine) and sent to the relavent counting office to be read and counted. Should there be a dispute, either the machine readable bar-code or the human readable record can be used as a way to count the ballots.
Maybe some of this is overkill (like labeling the chips with stickers to prevent tampering), I dont know. But when you are talking about something as critical to a free society as an election, its important to get it RIGHT.
My idea would work for any system no matter how many items are on the ballot or how many people are voting (a commonly cited downside of paper systems is that there are too many papers to count and/or too many things being voted on)
My idea wont prevent tampering (of the kind described in TFA) but it will be immediately obvious when someone has tampered with the hardware in the machine (if it works for telling Microsoft or Dell when someone has opened their PC or XBOX and voided the warranty, it should work for a voting machine, especially since getting close enough to one for long enough to fiddle with it is hard when inside a polling station.
This sattelite is a LOT further off the ground (and a LOT harder to hit) than the spy sat was. Also, if you blow this one up, the risk of space debris hitting important stuff is much higher (the stuff from the spy sat mostly burned up in the atmosphere)
Here in Australia I see a bunch of "Games Workshop" stores around that I assume are owned by GW themselves
Other than that, I havent seen any GW stuff around (not that there are that many places around that sell tabletop fantasy and sci-fi war gaming bits)
Games Workshop needs to realize that the whole "screw the customers, fans and resellers" crap isn't a good way to make money. (Wizards Of The Coast, another big player in gaming owning both Magic The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons seems to be doing a lot of the same crap Games Workshop is doing)
EA does have community managers, I happen to have had dealings (via email) with the community manager for the Command & Conquer series myself (because I have written lots of editing related tools for C&C series and because I run a C&C related website).
Nice guy although a lot of the things he wants to do he cant do because his bosses wont let him:(
With most Australian internet plans I have seen you pay $x and get a certain amount of GB per month (often divided up between peak time and off-peak time)
If you exceed that, some ISPs offer data blocks at a fixed per GB price. If you choose not to buy the data blocks, you simply get throttled back to slower speeds (exactly what speed depends on the plan) until the end of the billing cycle when your quota resets. There is no limit to how much you can download once you have been throttled (at least with the plans I have seen)
I bought several DVDs from the USA a few years ago. 2 of the items I bought have STILL not been made available in Australia (and one of them, Young Einstein is an Aussie cult classic and one of the funniest Aussie films of all time IMO)
I also have a large number of items in my music collection that I downloaded from various sources simply because there was/is no other way to acquire that particular content.
The number of people who pirate because the content they want is unavailable for them to legally purchase is likely a significant part of piracy, one that the copyright holders need to recognize (and reduce/eliminate by making content available to the entire world in a timely manner and by keeping content available for longer)
Just ask many Australian TV viewers with tech skills about "Channel BT" (i.e. BitTorrent downloads) and how many shows they have downloaded simply because they have given up waiting for the local network to show that particular episode.
Also I guess that if a student fails and someone (the student, the students parents or whoever else) decides to go after the university for the failure, the university can show records that the student didnt attend class and that the university is in no way responsible for the failure.
In the film business, all sorts of not-quite-mainstream films get made (and exhibited at major multiplexes alongside the big blockbusters). Many others are made and exhibited at art-house cinemas. Why can't the same be true for video games?
Getting game ideas (and even game concepts/demos) that aren't "mainstream" out there is a lot harder than getting a movie idea (or draft script or whatever) out there.
Some may argue the cost of video games vs films but there is no reason video games HAVE to cost a fortune to make (and no reason why video games NEED graphics so good you need a top of the line video card just to play the game)
The VBA macros were probably being used to actually implement the example. I have seen far too many people (including academics) who think using Access to design a full database UI is a good idea.
I went to University here in Australia and I didnt attend lectures in some cases. Neither the university or the course coordinator cared that I didnt attend lectures (or labs for that matter). But I still learned the material (downloading lecture notes, reading textbooks etc) AND I passed tests and exams.
And I have a computer science degree sitting on my wall to show for it. (its just that employers would rather hire the guy who has been working in commercial software development with.NET or J2EE or Oracle or C# or ASP or whatever technology they are using vs the guy with really good skills but no real-world experience)
Motorola (at the request of AT&T) specifically disabled all ability to load an APK file outside of the Android Marketplace (i.e. the "unknown sources" checkbox doesn't even exist on the Backflip)
Unbundling wont work because of all the parts of Windows and of Windows Apps that use the IE rendering engine.
All of the various Help technologies Microsoft has used and supported in the last decade (including HTML Help and its replacements) use IE to render. Game related programs like GameSpy and Steam use (or have used) IE to render. All kinds of custom written software (written for specific companies or markets) use IE to render HTML.
Even more apps use various parts of IE to do things like HTTP up/downloading, SSL and other things.
Anyone that comes up with a video codec that is as good as H.264 WILL get sued by MPEG-LA if they start using said codec in places where the use would require a payment to MPEG-LA if H.264 was used instead.
It doesn't matter whether the codec actually infringes on any MPEG-LA patents, anything that threatens their revenue stream will be sued by people who likely have more resources than whoever developed the codec. (and because the US patent system is so broken, even if you can prove you didnt violate a single MPEG-LA patent, the MPEG-LA will still be able to convince a judge in texas to force you to hand over big sums of cash)
Having experienced the programming the local Pay TV operator here in Australia (Foxtel) has to offer, its mostly the same wasteland as the free-to-air commercials are. (the documentary channels like History arent bad but its way too expensive to get it just to get those) Plus, its 25% owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and 50% owned by Telstra, 2 organizations I have as little as possible to do with (the only reason I ever have to deal with Telstra is because they own the local phone lines so I have to have a phone line with them to get my DSL (at least until my company finally puts their own hardware in the local exchange)
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both Command and Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3 use LUA for a couple of things in the game. Its essentially undocumented by EA and (being LUA and being used for the things that its used for) would appear to the casual observer (assuming said observer even knew of its existence) to be safe.
But I can produce a mod (a single .big file and matching .skudef file) which can use this LUA to do some bad things to the filesystem of the host. I wont say how for obvious reasons but it could be dangerous if someone actually found out and used it in a shipping mod.
You could go with the free Unreal UDK. Costs nothing and (AFAIK) does not require the purchase of expensive tools for its use.
Thats why you put amounts in things not legally considered a bank account under the letter of the law.
I am sure there are things you can invest in that are not considered a bank account but which have very little risk of loosing money.
The answer is simple. If the government (state, federal or otherwise) has evidence that someone is a danger to society and should be imprisoned beyond the end of their sentence, they should have to present that evidence to a judge and jury and convince them that this offender is dangerous.
If we trust a judge and jury to decide on the guilt/innocence and the initial punishment of the offender then we should be able to trust them to make a decision on whether the offender needs to remain locked up.
Also, as others have said, if they are considered dangerous because they are mentally unstable then they should be transferred to an appropriate locked mental ward to receive treatment for their mental illness.
Some people are in jail because they are a danger to society.
Others are in jail because jail is a punishment for their crime.
The problem is that the government (and the courts) keep redefining "danger to society".
Thanks to the "think of the children" crowd, someone who downloads a Japanese cartoon with 5 frames of a naked teenager in it can be considered a "sex offender" (and by extention a "danger to society").
If they really want VB, they should be allowing VB.NET and not "classic VB".
"classic VB" is a long dead product, its not even SOLD by Microsoft anymore. They are no longer producing any fixes to the compiler or runtimes and Microsoft has plans to drop support for the VB6 runtimes and VB apps from future versions of the OS altogether (why they havent already done it I dont know)
Both VB.NET and Delphi have the RAD and "hide all the complex stuff away in the runtime libraries" stuff that VB6 had and should be just as easy for someone who has not programmed before as VB6 is.
Plus, with VB.NET and Delphi, you dont learn anywhere near as many of the "bad habits" that you have to later unlearn.
My guess is the reason they are keeping VB6 on the list is that a lot of schools have big investment in teaching VB6 (coursework etc) and that switching to one of the other languages (such as VB.NET or Delphi) would cost too much (new software, teacher re-training, new coursework etc).
These days many of the "top languages" such as Java, C#, VB.NET and Python have decent compilers (either JIT compilers that compile modules as they are loaded/executed or static compilers that compile the code straight to machine code).
They HAVE done something evil.
They produced a product (the fat PS3) and included (and advertised) the OtherOS feature and its ability to run Linux.
They then removed that function.
If a car maker sold you a car with a satnav built into the in-car entertainment system and advertised that the car came with a satnav and then proceeded to remove the satnav function when you took it into the dealer for a service, you would have every right to be angry at the car maker for removing this feature.
The problem is that the "yes" camp may have the raw numbers but those who are in "no" camp are a lot more politically important to the government (I dont know the views of Family First Senator Steve Fielding on this issue but given his religious views and his views on other issues, he almost certainly falls into the "no" camp)
Also, because most of the "yes" responses came from people at the extreme "yes" end of the scale (and so few came from more moderate people) the government is likely thinking that just because a bunch of gamers want R18+ doesn't mean that regular people support it.
Its an election year here in Australia, if the government goes ahead with something like R18+ without knowing which way the vast majority of the population leans on the issue, it could hit him at the next election.
For the hardware you need:
Touchscreen with graphics chip and touchscreen controler as an input device
Receipt printer (the kind that has been used in millions of cash registers, ATMs and other devices world wide for a few decades)
Flash memory chip to hold the machine OS and the config file (which candidates are running etc). This should be the kind that when its in the machine, it cannot be written to and has to be removed to write new software or configs. This would have a difficult-to-duplicate-or-remove sticker applied with the voting machines unique serial number to ensure that it hasn't been swapped for another identical chip containing rigged software.
Thumb drive or memory card to hold the counted votes. This would also have a difficult-to-duplicate-or-remove sticker applied with the voting machines unique serial number to ensure it isn't substituted with a fake one containing a different result.
CPU (ARM of some sort would seem to make sense) to control the system with usual support items (power supply, RAM etc)
Tamper-evident case containing the hardware with more difficult-to-duplicate-or-remove stickers with the voting machines serial number covering the screw holes/case edges/etc to ensure you can tell if its been opened.
The receipt printer would be located outside of the tamper-resistant part so the roll can be replaced by poling station officials. Should a machine fail for other reasons (i.e. any reason that would require access to the hardware) that machine would be taken offline and not used for the rest of the election.
Software:
Linux kernel with drivers for the memory card reader, touchscreen, receipt printer etc. (the kernel would be specifically built for the voting machine with everything that is not required for the device such as networking removed)
Basic set of libraries (the bare minimum required to make everything work)
Custom voting machine software.
All software would be 100% open source.
Before the election, the machines are prepared by loading the correct OS and kernel along with the config file for the machine (containing the names and info for the candidates) onto the operating system chips. The operating system chip and vote counting memory card are loaded into the machine. Then the machines are verified and tested. Once they have been verified, they are sealed up and the tamper-evident stickers applied before they get shipped off to the poling booths.
When you go to vote, you pick your candidate on the screen by touching their name. Then you have to press "OK" once you are sure you clicked on the right name.
After your vote is complete, it is recorded in the file on the memory card. Also, a receipt is printed containing a machine readable bar-code corresponding to your vote plus a human readable record. This receipt is then inserted into a ballot box as you depart the polling booth. No part of the machine (receipt included) contains any record of who you are as a voter or any way to associate your vote back to you.
To count the votes, the memory cards are removed from the machines (after checking that the machine was not tampered with and that the memory card is genuine) and sent to the relavent counting office to be read and counted. Should there be a dispute, either the machine readable bar-code or the human readable record can be used as a way to count the ballots.
Maybe some of this is overkill (like labeling the chips with stickers to prevent tampering), I dont know. But when you are talking about something as critical to a free society as an election, its important to get it RIGHT.
My idea would work for any system no matter how many items are on the ballot or how many people are voting (a commonly cited downside of paper systems is that there are too many papers to count and/or too many things being voted on)
My idea wont prevent tampering (of the kind described in TFA) but it will be immediately obvious when someone has tampered with the hardware in the machine (if it works for telling Microsoft or Dell when someone has opened their PC or XBOX and voided the warranty, it should work for a voting machine, especially since getting close enough to one for long enough to fiddle with it is hard when inside a polling station.
This sattelite is a LOT further off the ground (and a LOT harder to hit) than the spy sat was. Also, if you blow this one up, the risk of space debris hitting important stuff is much higher (the stuff from the spy sat mostly burned up in the atmosphere)
Here in Australia I see a bunch of "Games Workshop" stores around that I assume are owned by GW themselves
Other than that, I havent seen any GW stuff around (not that there are that many places around that sell tabletop fantasy and sci-fi war gaming bits)
Games Workshop needs to realize that the whole "screw the customers, fans and resellers" crap isn't a good way to make money. (Wizards Of The Coast, another big player in gaming owning both Magic The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons seems to be doing a lot of the same crap Games Workshop is doing)
EA does have community managers, I happen to have had dealings (via email) with the community manager for the Command & Conquer series myself (because I have written lots of editing related tools for C&C series and because I run a C&C related website).
Nice guy although a lot of the things he wants to do he cant do because his bosses wont let him :(
With most Australian internet plans I have seen you pay $x and get a certain amount of GB per month (often divided up between peak time and off-peak time)
If you exceed that, some ISPs offer data blocks at a fixed per GB price. If you choose not to buy the data blocks, you simply get throttled back to slower speeds (exactly what speed depends on the plan) until the end of the billing cycle when your quota resets. There is no limit to how much you can download once you have been throttled (at least with the plans I have seen)
Anything that fixes security issues or appears under "high priority" in Windows Update is considered critical by me.
I bought several DVDs from the USA a few years ago. 2 of the items I bought have STILL not been made available in Australia (and one of them, Young Einstein is an Aussie cult classic and one of the funniest Aussie films of all time IMO)
I also have a large number of items in my music collection that I downloaded from various sources simply because there was/is no other way to acquire that particular content.
The number of people who pirate because the content they want is unavailable for them to legally purchase is likely a significant part of piracy, one that the copyright holders need to recognize (and reduce/eliminate by making content available to the entire world in a timely manner and by keeping content available for longer)
Just ask many Australian TV viewers with tech skills about "Channel BT" (i.e. BitTorrent downloads) and how many shows they have downloaded simply because they have given up waiting for the local network to show that particular episode.
Just make ISPs common carriers like the phone companies. Then the FCC can enforce the rules it wants.
Also I guess that if a student fails and someone (the student, the students parents or whoever else) decides to go after the university for the failure, the university can show records that the student didnt attend class and that the university is in no way responsible for the failure.
In the film business, all sorts of not-quite-mainstream films get made (and exhibited at major multiplexes alongside the big blockbusters). Many others are made and exhibited at art-house cinemas. Why can't the same be true for video games?
Getting game ideas (and even game concepts/demos) that aren't "mainstream" out there is a lot harder than getting a movie idea (or draft script or whatever) out there.
Some may argue the cost of video games vs films but there is no reason video games HAVE to cost a fortune to make (and no reason why video games NEED graphics so good you need a top of the line video card just to play the game)
The VBA macros were probably being used to actually implement the example. I have seen far too many people (including academics) who think using Access to design a full database UI is a good idea.
I went to University here in Australia and I didnt attend lectures in some cases. Neither the university or the course coordinator cared that I didnt attend lectures (or labs for that matter). But I still learned the material (downloading lecture notes, reading textbooks etc) AND I passed tests and exams.
And I have a computer science degree sitting on my wall to show for it. (its just that employers would rather hire the guy who has been working in commercial software development with .NET or J2EE or Oracle or C# or ASP or whatever technology they are using vs the guy with really good skills but no real-world experience)
Motorola (at the request of AT&T) specifically disabled all ability to load an APK file outside of the Android Marketplace (i.e. the "unknown sources" checkbox doesn't even exist on the Backflip)
Unbundling wont work because of all the parts of Windows and of Windows Apps that use the IE rendering engine.
All of the various Help technologies Microsoft has used and supported in the last decade (including HTML Help and its replacements) use IE to render. Game related programs like GameSpy and Steam use (or have used) IE to render. All kinds of custom written software (written for specific companies or markets) use IE to render HTML.
Even more apps use various parts of IE to do things like HTTP up/downloading, SSL and other things.
Anyone that comes up with a video codec that is as good as H.264 WILL get sued by MPEG-LA if they start using said codec in places where the use would require a payment to MPEG-LA if H.264 was used instead.
It doesn't matter whether the codec actually infringes on any MPEG-LA patents, anything that threatens their revenue stream will be sued by people who likely have more resources than whoever developed the codec. (and because the US patent system is so broken, even if you can prove you didnt violate a single MPEG-LA patent, the MPEG-LA will still be able to convince a judge in texas to force you to hand over big sums of cash)
Having experienced the programming the local Pay TV operator here in Australia (Foxtel) has to offer, its mostly the same wasteland as the free-to-air commercials are. (the documentary channels like History arent bad but its way too expensive to get it just to get those) Plus, its 25% owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and 50% owned by Telstra, 2 organizations I have as little as possible to do with (the only reason I ever have to deal with Telstra is because they own the local phone lines so I have to have a phone line with them to get my DSL (at least until my company finally puts their own hardware in the local exchange)