I hate save points. I'm disliking it more that they're showing up in computer titles, though mainly just the ones that are also on consoles.
I think one of the reasons for this is that on a computer you can generally circumvent the limitation, anyway. I've been playing the old Risk II for Windows recently, and you have no ability to have multiple saves/go back during the (16-round!) tournament. You can leave and come back to the same turn, but no 'save games'. And if you lose you start the fuck over. So I wrote a batch file that backs up the save game files, and all was lovely.
I'm in Canada, and it's definitely the 3 song track verison. Although the album title can only be inferred by the "Welcome to Sky Valley" sign on the front...unless there's different cover art I don't see how to distinguish between the two titles (the spine says only Kyuss). That's probably just a convenience for amazon to avoid collisions.
By the way, I don't like your analogy to books, plays, and symphonies, because those forms of art are all sequential. A CD is random access, so tracks take on a new meaning. (Okay, technically you could read a book in a random order, but I challenge you to find someone that does. In contrast, even my first CD player had a "shuffle mode".) In the days of vinyl or cassette, your analogy would be much more applicable.
Have you ever noticed that both Random and A-B Repeat are standard on all DVD remotes?? When the hell do most people watch a movie on random? Just because the technology provides it doesn't mean all discs are meant to be listened to/seen that way. There are exceptions (David Bowie and The Flaming Lips come to mind as people who have put out CDs meant to be listend to on random). And the reason I included symphonies is specifically because they're available on CD, and the movements are separated into tracks. Even though they're not mean to be listened to on random, you may want to listen to a certain passage and the tracks are a convenience.
As an aside, remember the early days of CDs when the cover art would have the tracks listed for Side A and Side B? Tom Petty even had an intermission on "Full Moon Fever" to be fair to the tape and LP listeners. What a kick.
Remember The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails (1999). The CD version has 23 tracks on two discs, the cassette 24 tracks on two tapes (four sides) and the vinyl 25 tracks on three albums (six sides). Trent's justification being that he had to have proper flow and beginning and end tracks on each 'side' of each format, that wouldn't necessarily make sense if put in sequentially on one big format.
The point is the artist can make recommendations on listening (in order, random, side by side, etc), but of course the listener is free to disregard this. But just because a feature exists doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it on a certain album/book/movie/whatever.
As for live shows, the fans expect material from different albums, and the set list is chosen to be artistically coherent, as well as 'building' the audience, and allowing the band chances to rest in slower bits. It's certainly at least somewhat an art, because you can never scientifically say how a crowd will react.
Oh, and a vinyl record IS random access, even moreso that a cd. You can skip to ANY position within a track. But yes, you don't have shuffle.
Why does a book have chapters? Why does a play have acts? Why does a symphony have movements, for that matter?
For an interesting counter-example, one of Kyuss's albums has 4 tracks, with 3 tracks per song. Although a couple of them were later separated out on the 'best of' cd.
I've read examples of employees at different companies who would flirt with each other over e-mail (i.e. both parties were fine with it), but then one side's boss would decide it was harassment and sue the other party without consulting the parties involved (or ignoring them). A lot of companies are overzealous in the CYA departmetn, and this may be one of the reasons.
Your mixing your concepts up pretty badly here (granted you admitted you aren't an expert). Yes, there is an information theoretical limit on how much data you can send across a channel with a certain signal-to-noise ratio. But you're not moving 'bits' through the air...what does a physical bit look like? You're moving EM/light waves, that must undergo digital/analog conversion. So you can't change this magical airborne bit to a quantum bit and get free gain.
What you're talking about is putting the signal on, say, an electron, in the form of a quantum state. Now you're REALLY going to be limited by SNR quite badly because just try picking up that one electron and reading its state. Your signal is tiny.
You might be able to store information more densely with 'spintronics', but signal to noise is still a ratio, you've just changed what the signal and the noise are. The Shannon limit is not broken.
post 1: I wanted to bring the story to the Slashdot community's attention, and I'm no professional writer or journalist, so I copied the story summary off a news site.
post 2: there's no reference because it wasn't a verbatum copy. I was paraphrasing somewhat.
Even better - in my University Professional Practice class (mandatory for all engineers) you have to take handwritten notes on every lecture in a logbook, and then write a SUMMARY of them. Aren't pointform notes already summarized?
The thing is, this is worth ZERO marks. But its collected at random twice during the year, and if you haven't kept it up, you fail the course. Quickest way to make all the practical minded type engineers determine the course is utter bullshit, right there.
Our prof also claimed he once failed somebody for doodling on their book, because it was unprofessional.
I think his point is that they're published only once the final approval happens. Pending patents are not available. So its sometimes desirable to keep them pending for a long, long time.
You must scare easily! Do truely experience overwhelming dread every night when the banks close?
No...but if I couldn't access their website or ATMs for 4 or 5 hours, I'd be pretty fraked out if I had bills due.
But as you argued above, every single financial crime- theft, fraud, vandalism- is terrorism. After all, each of them stops someone from accessing his money!
No...I argued above that SOME financial crimes (i.e. large scale denial of service to finances) is terrorism. Don't make false logical leaps.
Oops, I guess I was trolled.
I'm often accused of trolling in real life.:) But in this case I believe it. I'm just all full of wine and watching hockey.
Under NewSpeak, yes. By any rational definition, no. Blowing up financial institutions counts as terrorism. DOSing them would count as "annoyism", if such a concept existed. It just annoys a very visible and powerful target, thus the swift response to such acts.
If I can't access my money, I consider that terrorism. If a bank can't contact its servers, it may as well have been blown up, in this day and age.
More importantly, while the collective US (and several international) intelligence agencies had an immediate and urgent need to track down those responsible for 9/11, the FBI instead decided to play "screw the hooker twice".
Did you miss the fact that those responsible for 9/11 are DEAD. D-E-A-D???? How do you catch them now? The answer is, of course, that there's powerful financial interests behind them. But they tend to be current US allies, so the FBI can't really go after them, now, can they? Keep in mind the FBI is supposed to be strictly a domestic agency, as well.
but in a list of the "worst" crimes of the past year, you can bet "a bunch of kids spreading cracked software" should fall so far from the top as to not even show up in an executive summary.
This doesn't save lives. It doesn't make the world safer. It merely goes after some people who have cost a few bucks to organizations that donate heavily to political causes.
Umm....don't these same orgnaziations PAY people to BUY FOOD?? What else endangers people's livelihoods more?? What else costs people more than grade 11 students passing around $4000 copies of 3D Studio in hallways over and over again, let alone on the internet? The fact is that this is serious, hardcore, organized crime. Give me your list of bigger crimes with more financial impact, if you have any. You can list the mafia (which they are going after), the bikers (which they are going after), the triads (which they are going after), but not much more than that.
Tell me what the worse crimes are, please. Because I don't recall any terrorism in the US last year, other than unreasonable search and seizure brought on by the Bush administration.
Ashcroft is an ass. Terrorism wasn't a priority before 9/11 and it still isn't important enough to preclude this errand-boy stuff?
Look - even after 9/11 the FBI ran an investigation into prositution in New Orleans. Guess what! They found some!
(...)
On the other hand, stringing up a packeting kidiot by his thumbs might actually make the net an easier place to for the rest of us to do our thing.
Doesn't a packeting kiddie DOSing, say, financial websites count as terrorism?
And I really don't understand what you're saying about the prostitution thing...are you for or against??
Are you saying the FBI should just abandon any sort of domestic crime investigation chasing phantom terrorists? If so, then wouldn't 'the terrorists have already won', as organized crime thrived in the US??
It's generally true that a lot of violent crime (i.e. murdering your wife's lover) is committed in the heat of the moment, and the person won't necessarily reoffend and incarcerating them doesn't necessarily stop anything. Spousal abuse continues often because the spouse is afraid/coerced to report it, and law enforcement needs to be invited into the home. Other things like armed robbery are often committed by people who have no other means. So they're going to reoffend anyway.
White collar crime, on the other hand, is premeditated, and only done because its low risk and easy compared to the rewards. If its made more difficult (or the penalties made higher) it can actually be STOPPED. Unlike murders and robberies, people aren't (generally) downloading Daikatana 4 in a split-second rage or because they need it to live, they're downloading it because its there, they know they won't be punished and they kinda sorta want it and don't want to pay $40 for it.
Most violent crimes can't be proactively prevented, whereas piracy often can. Yes, they shouldn't be depriving local police of the ability to RESPOND to reports of these crimes, but I really doubt that's the day jobs of the coppers in this case.
I found it very interesting when it was discussed in my film class how the "evil scientist" character in literature/film didn't really appear (frakenstein excepted) until after WWI and the whole chemical weapons debacle. This was further enhanced by nuclear weapons.
I think people DO see technology as demonic. Just look at the curses people level at their computers. Unless it's a cute little mac...who could that hurt, right?
Do you think busy hospitals in the states are any less common? You cite a bunch of isolated cases, and I'm sure you could find similar examples in the states. And they're paying through the nose for it.
Did you ever see the "Health Care Olympics" episode of Michael Moore's TV Nation?? The results were: 1. Canada 2. Cuba 3. United States
Considering they have 4 people in it it's probably a pretty big one bedroom, I'd hope. So for LA that doesn't surprise.
You'd probably pay $1000 CDN in Toronto for a one bedroom, it WAS around $700 in Ottawa, but it's falling a bit. I'm currently paying $350 for four person student housing, will soon be paying $400 for 3 people in a 2 bedroom (the total's $950). And it's a pretty crappy looking building, although the insides are nice.
But I do agree that cities around 1 million are where its at. The Ottawa megacity is around 1 million, the city proper more like 500 000. It's big enough to find relatively obscure stuff, but it's not terribly crowded.
...especially because of the proliferation of fair employment bills and the like. Canada actually tried to implement a Universal Classification System across ALL government position in the entire frickin' country.
Of course, after $1 billion or so, it failed. But in the meantime they did standardize a hell of a lot of salaries. You can negotiate what level you start at based on your experience, and occasionly get a double increment if you have a good year, but otherwise the increments are standardized.
What I've heard is the general advice to people who get keys to secure government areas when they ask how they should secure the key is this - secure it like you do your own house/car/etc (i.e., keep it on your keyring). You obviously have quite a vested interest in not getting your keys stolen, and it doesn't happen very often at all, so that's generally a good solution. Especially if it's unlabeled and combined with say, site access control.
So I see the password thing as similar. Keep them in your wallet. I for one always have my wallet on my person, or right next to my bed. Because I really, really badly don't want it stolen. So it should be safe for passwords.
Personally I use mnemonic aids to remember apparently random passwords, though. If you can touch type you can always just shift your fingers one space to the left/right/up/down and type a recognizable phrase, combined with use of the shift key, and have a secure password.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate save points. I'm disliking it more that they're showing up in computer titles, though mainly just the ones that are also on consoles.
I think one of the reasons for this is that on a computer you can generally circumvent the limitation, anyway. I've been playing the old Risk II for Windows recently, and you have no ability to have multiple saves/go back during the (16-round!) tournament. You can leave and come back to the same turn, but no 'save games'. And if you lose you start the fuck over. So I wrote a batch file that backs up the save game files, and all was lovely.
I'm in Canada, and it's definitely the 3 song track verison. Although the album title can only be inferred by the "Welcome to Sky Valley" sign on the front...unless there's different cover art I don't see how to distinguish between the two titles (the spine says only Kyuss). That's probably just a convenience for amazon to avoid collisions.
By the way, I don't like your analogy to books, plays, and symphonies, because those forms of art are all sequential. A CD is random access, so tracks take on a new meaning. (Okay, technically you could read a book in a random order, but I challenge you to find someone that does. In contrast, even my first CD player had a "shuffle mode".) In the days of vinyl or cassette, your analogy would be much more applicable.
Have you ever noticed that both Random and A-B Repeat are standard on all DVD remotes?? When the hell do most people watch a movie on random? Just because the technology provides it doesn't mean all discs are meant to be listened to/seen that way. There are exceptions (David Bowie and The Flaming Lips come to mind as people who have put out CDs meant to be listend to on random). And the reason I included symphonies is specifically because they're available on CD, and the movements are separated into tracks. Even though they're not mean to be listened to on random, you may want to listen to a certain passage and the tracks are a convenience.
As an aside, remember the early days of CDs when the cover art would have the tracks listed for Side A and Side B? Tom Petty even had an intermission on "Full Moon Fever" to be fair to the tape and LP listeners. What a kick.
Remember The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails (1999). The CD version has 23 tracks on two discs, the cassette 24 tracks on two tapes (four sides) and the vinyl 25 tracks on three albums (six sides). Trent's justification being that he had to have proper flow and beginning and end tracks on each 'side' of each format, that wouldn't necessarily make sense if put in sequentially on one big format.
The point is the artist can make recommendations on listening (in order, random, side by side, etc), but of course the listener is free to disregard this. But just because a feature exists doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it on a certain album/book/movie/whatever.
As for live shows, the fans expect material from different albums, and the set list is chosen to be artistically coherent, as well as 'building' the audience, and allowing the band chances to rest in slower bits. It's certainly at least somewhat an art, because you can never scientifically say how a crowd will react.
Oh, and a vinyl record IS random access, even moreso that a cd. You can skip to ANY position within a track. But yes, you don't have shuffle.
Hasn't Radiohead said they're probably going to go ALL singles, because that's where the industry's going?
And when you think about it, where it started. Albums are a temporary anonomly created by the length of an LP, methinks.
Why does a book have chapters? Why does a play have acts? Why does a symphony have movements, for that matter?
For an interesting counter-example, one of Kyuss's albums has 4 tracks, with 3 tracks per song. Although a couple of them were later separated out on the 'best of' cd.
I've read examples of employees at different companies who would flirt with each other over e-mail (i.e. both parties were fine with it), but then one side's boss would decide it was harassment and sue the other party without consulting the parties involved (or ignoring them). A lot of companies are overzealous in the CYA departmetn, and this may be one of the reasons.
Your mixing your concepts up pretty badly here (granted you admitted you aren't an expert). Yes, there is an information theoretical limit on how much data you can send across a channel with a certain signal-to-noise ratio. But you're not moving 'bits' through the air...what does a physical bit look like? You're moving EM/light waves, that must undergo digital/analog conversion. So you can't change this magical airborne bit to a quantum bit and get free gain.
What you're talking about is putting the signal on, say, an electron, in the form of a quantum state. Now you're REALLY going to be limited by SNR quite badly because just try picking up that one electron and reading its state. Your signal is tiny.
You might be able to store information more densely with 'spintronics', but signal to noise is still a ratio, you've just changed what the signal and the noise are. The Shannon limit is not broken.
Are you using KDE?? Is it running aRTsd?? That caused a fair amount of latency for me in Mandrake.
post 1:
I wanted to bring the story to the Slashdot community's attention, and I'm no professional writer or journalist, so I copied the story summary off a news site.
post 2:
there's no reference because it wasn't a verbatum copy. I was paraphrasing somewhat.
Even better - in my University Professional Practice class (mandatory for all engineers) you have to take handwritten notes on every lecture in a logbook, and then write a SUMMARY of them. Aren't pointform notes already summarized?
The thing is, this is worth ZERO marks. But its collected at random twice during the year, and if you haven't kept it up, you fail the course. Quickest way to make all the practical minded type engineers determine the course is utter bullshit, right there.
Our prof also claimed he once failed somebody for doodling on their book, because it was unprofessional.
I think his point is that they're published only once the final approval happens. Pending patents are not available. So its sometimes desirable to keep them pending for a long, long time.
Which mistake are you referring to? Copying someone's material without referencing? Posting a link to a story you didn't read? Doing it logged in?
You must scare easily! Do truely experience overwhelming dread every night when the banks close?
:) But in this case I believe it. I'm just all full of wine and watching hockey.
No...but if I couldn't access their website or ATMs for 4 or 5 hours, I'd be pretty fraked out if I had bills due.
But as you argued above, every single financial crime- theft, fraud, vandalism- is terrorism. After all, each of them stops someone from accessing his money!
No...I argued above that SOME financial crimes (i.e. large scale denial of service to finances) is terrorism. Don't make false logical leaps.
Oops, I guess I was trolled.
I'm often accused of trolling in real life.
Under NewSpeak, yes. By any rational definition, no. Blowing up financial institutions counts as terrorism. DOSing them would count as "annoyism", if such a concept existed. It just annoys a very visible and powerful target, thus the swift response to such acts.
If I can't access my money, I consider that terrorism. If a bank can't contact its servers, it may as well have been blown up, in this day and age.
More importantly, while the collective US (and several international) intelligence agencies had an immediate and urgent need to track down those responsible for 9/11, the FBI instead decided to play "screw the hooker twice".
Did you miss the fact that those responsible for 9/11 are DEAD. D-E-A-D???? How do you catch them now? The answer is, of course, that there's powerful financial interests behind them. But they tend to be current US allies, so the FBI can't really go after them, now, can they? Keep in mind the FBI is supposed to be strictly a domestic agency, as well.
but in a list of the "worst" crimes of the past year, you can bet "a bunch of kids spreading cracked software" should fall so far from the top as to not even show up in an executive summary.
This doesn't save lives. It doesn't make the world safer. It merely goes after some people who have cost a few bucks to organizations that donate heavily to political causes.
Umm....don't these same orgnaziations PAY people to BUY FOOD?? What else endangers people's livelihoods more?? What else costs people more than grade 11 students passing around $4000 copies of 3D Studio in hallways over and over again, let alone on the internet? The fact is that this is serious, hardcore, organized crime. Give me your list of bigger crimes with more financial impact, if you have any. You can list the mafia (which they are going after), the bikers (which they are going after), the triads (which they are going after), but not much more than that.
Tell me what the worse crimes are, please. Because I don't recall any terrorism in the US last year, other than unreasonable search and seizure brought on by the Bush administration.
Ashcroft is an ass. Terrorism wasn't a priority before 9/11 and it still isn't important enough to preclude this errand-boy stuff?
Look - even after 9/11 the FBI ran an investigation into prositution in New Orleans. Guess what! They found some!
(...)
On the other hand, stringing up a packeting kidiot by his thumbs might actually make the net an easier place to for the rest of us to do our thing.
Doesn't a packeting kiddie DOSing, say, financial websites count as terrorism?
And I really don't understand what you're saying about the prostitution thing...are you for or against??
Are you saying the FBI should just abandon any sort of domestic crime investigation chasing phantom terrorists? If so, then wouldn't 'the terrorists have already won', as organized crime thrived in the US??
It's generally true that a lot of violent crime (i.e. murdering your wife's lover) is committed in the heat of the moment, and the person won't necessarily reoffend and incarcerating them doesn't necessarily stop anything. Spousal abuse continues often because the spouse is afraid/coerced to report it, and law enforcement needs to be invited into the home. Other things like armed robbery are often committed by people who have no other means. So they're going to reoffend anyway.
White collar crime, on the other hand, is premeditated, and only done because its low risk and easy compared to the rewards. If its made more difficult (or the penalties made higher) it can actually be STOPPED. Unlike murders and robberies, people aren't (generally) downloading Daikatana 4 in a split-second rage or because they need it to live, they're downloading it because its there, they know they won't be punished and they kinda sorta want it and don't want to pay $40 for it.
Most violent crimes can't be proactively prevented, whereas piracy often can. Yes, they shouldn't be depriving local police of the ability to RESPOND to reports of these crimes, but I really doubt that's the day jobs of the coppers in this case.
I found it very interesting when it was discussed in my film class how the "evil scientist" character in literature/film didn't really appear (frakenstein excepted) until after WWI and the whole chemical weapons debacle. This was further enhanced by nuclear weapons.
I think people DO see technology as demonic. Just look at the curses people level at their computers. Unless it's a cute little mac...who could that hurt, right?
Enigmail is not actually developed by Mozilla, but by a third party. And it further relies on external gpg/pgp binaries.
You really must be more careful starting posts with "In Soviet Russia"...I spent 10 seconds looking for the punch line.
Do you think busy hospitals in the states are any less common? You cite a bunch of isolated cases, and I'm sure you could find similar examples in the states. And they're paying through the nose for it.
Did you ever see the "Health Care Olympics" episode of Michael Moore's TV Nation?? The results were:
1. Canada
2. Cuba
3. United States
Considering they have 4 people in it it's probably a pretty big one bedroom, I'd hope. So for LA that doesn't surprise.
You'd probably pay $1000 CDN in Toronto for a one bedroom, it WAS around $700 in Ottawa, but it's falling a bit. I'm currently paying $350 for four person student housing, will soon be paying $400 for 3 people in a 2 bedroom (the total's $950). And it's a pretty crappy looking building, although the insides are nice.
But I do agree that cities around 1 million are where its at. The Ottawa megacity is around 1 million, the city proper more like 500 000. It's big enough to find relatively obscure stuff, but it's not terribly crowded.
...especially because of the proliferation of fair employment bills and the like. Canada actually tried to implement a Universal Classification System across ALL government position in the entire frickin' country.
Of course, after $1 billion or so, it failed. But in the meantime they did standardize a hell of a lot of salaries. You can negotiate what level you start at based on your experience, and occasionly get a double increment if you have a good year, but otherwise the increments are standardized.
What variant of Java, though? There's plenty of stripped down embedded/real-time JVMs available.
As aptly demonstrate recently, a plane is not 'free society.' They can deny travel for any number of reasons, and kick you off if you misbehave.
If too many of their customers are annoyed they'll lose business. So it's in the airlines interest to not have people annoyed on their flight.
Just like if I'm sitting in McDonald's and someone's being a drunken jackass, I'd like for them to be kicked out and not ruin my 'classy date'.
What I've heard is the general advice to people who get keys to secure government areas when they ask how they should secure the key is this - secure it like you do your own house/car/etc (i.e., keep it on your keyring). You obviously have quite a vested interest in not getting your keys stolen, and it doesn't happen very often at all, so that's generally a good solution. Especially if it's unlabeled and combined with say, site access control.
So I see the password thing as similar. Keep them in your wallet. I for one always have my wallet on my person, or right next to my bed. Because I really, really badly don't want it stolen. So it should be safe for passwords.
Personally I use mnemonic aids to remember apparently random passwords, though. If you can touch type you can always just shift your fingers one space to the left/right/up/down and type a recognizable phrase, combined with use of the shift key, and have a secure password.