...no matter how good those games are I'd never buy a game console. They're too limiting.
More limiting than not even being able to play those games at all?
Consoles may be limited compared to the latest and greatest PCs, but their beauty is that they're stable platforms for both developers and users. Developers don't have to worry about getting their games to run well on an impossibly-wide range of hardware combinations, users don't have to stuff in faster processors and extra memory and download week-old, barely-tested drivers just to be able to run the latest games. Put the disc in and It Just Works.
For example, http://server.foo/image.gif?id=ab0a98df12j3 could be unique to the spam that was sent to me. If any user-agent accesses that URL, the spammer knows that my e-mail is active and I'm reading his junk. I don't know if they actually do this in practice, but I'm wont to load HTML messages because of it.
Huh? You're inclined to load HTML messages to verify your address for spammers?
This was the original game, described by A.K. Dewdney in Scientific American back in the 80's. It involved multiple programs battling to control the memory space of a single computer, rather than nodes of a distributed system. You can read Dewdney's articles online at King of the Hill, along with a great deal of other information.
...as long as they're barred from entering the cockpit. The success of the 9/11 attacks can mainly be credited to 1970s-era hijacking guidelines directing pilots to comply with the terrorists' demands, on the assumption that they were going to fly the plane to Cuba or something similar, rather than use it as a weapon. Those guidelines made sense in their time, but clearly, they're no longer applicable.
Here's an idea -- instead of inconveniencing millions of innocent passengers, how about securing the cockpits instead? So long as the pilots remain in control of the plane, it's a flying prison for anyone who commits any criminal act back in the passenger compartment. Let the cockpit crew notify the ground of a failed terrorist attack and land the plane at the nearest airport, with the police and FBI waiting. End of story.
Don't forget the Thunderstreak either!
on
Nuke-Lobbing
·
· Score: 1
The F-84F Thunderstreak was the jet era's first fighter-bomber to carry tactical nukes, and used the same delivery method. Richard Bach's book Stranger to the Ground includes a fairly detailed description of performing the maneuver in training runs, and there's a good diagram of the procedure on the web here. Somewhat less insane than doing it in a prop-driven plane, but still, interesting times.
I'm not defending the RIAA here, but what the author of this article completely fails to recognize (or, more likely, recognizes but chooses to sweep under the carpet) is that neither webcasters nor users of file-sharing networks have the right to distribute someone else's copyrighted work. Putting Britney's latest single up on Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa, etc is not a way of "breaking into the music business" -- it's giving away something that doesn't belong to you. Period.
If you want to break into the music business, then create something of your own. Want to give that away? Go for it -- it's your right to do so if you choose, and the world will be a slightly better place for it. Share your work via P2P networks; set up your own Net radio stream so people can hear your work. That is legitimately "breaking into the music business", and do you want to know something? The RIAA can't do a thing to stop you.
Don't be so sure -- I don't know about other distributions, but in RedHat at least, just about everything is dynamically linked. So long as your system comes up far enough to start a statically linked shell, "echo *" can fill in for ls in a pinch (yes, I've had to do this), but I definitely prefer the BSD practice of statically linking the contents of/bin and/sbin.
It's a couple of years old now, which probably translates to about a decade of cultural time, but Simon Reynolds' book Generation Ecstasy is an excellent look not only at the techno and rave culture, but at the origins of the music that spawned it. Reynolds' takes on the various scenes are somewhat hit-and-miss, but when he gets it right, he goes a long way towards bridging the gap between reading about an experience and actually having one. Perhaps more importantly for this discussion, he does an excellent job of tracing the origins of electronic music from Kraftwerk and other early experimentalists right up to the sprawling range of sub-genres now called electronic music. Understanding the origins of various styles and knowing the names of the originators and innovators helped me a great deal when I was first beginning to explore the world of techno.
It still seems to be relatively easy to find old 8-bit systems at thrift stores, swap meets, electronic junk store type places, auctions, etc; chances are you could pick up a Vic-20 or Atari [48]00 or TI/99-4A, and give someone a real trip down memory lane.
Most of the old systems were pretty much self-sufficient, so it's just a matter of hooking them up to the TV, plugging them in, and turning them on...no need to load editors, compilers, etc since BASIC was in ROM and ready to go at powerup.
And regarding BASIC, I can hear the sneering already, but think of it as a challenge: what's more likely to be a fun hack, writing C++ for an embedded system (in days when that can mean a Pentium-class CPU, megs of memory, even running Linux) or making a Timex-Sinclair do something cool with only 2K memory and BASIC to work with?
If Verizon fulfilled their Geek Guard duties with all the rapidity that they, say, install DSL lines for competing DSL providers, they would have "rescheduled" their disaster response three times and we'd have an appointment for early November right now.
So what you're saying is that Verizon isn't exactly quick about installing DSL lines for competitors (makes sense to me), and that if they performed their Geek Guard duties the same way, you'd get the same slowness. However, that "if" implies that they are not performing their Geek Guard duties in such a manner, so how are they performing them, then? Quickly and promptly? That's what you're actually implying, though I'm guessing that's not what you meant to say...
SuSE wins in terms of default telnet and FTP servers, but again I suspect this is a design decision. Although not enabled by default, both are very easy to configure and I find the ability to telnet and FTP to my work PC when working from home one of the strongest selling points of Linux generally.
The reason telnetd and ftpd are disabled by default is that both services send your username and password across the network in the clear...doing this from home to your work machine is A Very Bad Idea. Look into ssh, sftp, etc...
Lawsuits are often based as much, if not more in business tactics as they are in claiming recompensation for harm done. Even a totally groundless lawsuit brought against a small company, or an individual doing business, requires them to pay a huge cost in legal expenses just to get to the point where a judge can look at the case and throw it out. Few small businesses, and fewer individuals can afford that kind of expense, so a suit brought upon them by a larger company, which can afford to pay its stable of lawyers, pretty much puts the smaller company or individual out of business, and gives the larger company a very strong bargaining position: "Look, we know you don't have the money to fight this, and our suit has rendered your operation effectively worthless, so why don't you
sign over these rights,
pay us off in your stock, which is now worthless but we REALLY REALLY want because you've been doing some hot stuff that makes our product look sick in comparison,
bend over and do whatever else we tell you to?
Once this principle is understood, the reason nobody sues Microsoft becomes obvious: Bill Gates would much rather pay his lawyers than you, and he can pay them a lot more than you can pay yours...
Slashdot Mirror
More limiting than not even being able to play those games at all?
Consoles may be limited compared to the latest and greatest PCs, but their beauty is that they're stable platforms for both developers and users. Developers don't have to worry about getting their games to run well on an impossibly-wide range of hardware combinations, users don't have to stuff in faster processors and extra memory and download week-old, barely-tested drivers just to be able to run the latest games. Put the disc in and It Just Works.
Whoa -- that would be 50 1337!
It's kind of like this...
And ironically:
Yeah, that was kind of the point.
Huh? You're inclined to load HTML messages to verify your address for spammers?
This was the original game, described by A.K. Dewdney in Scientific American back in the 80's. It involved multiple programs battling to control the memory space of a single computer, rather than nodes of a distributed system. You can read Dewdney's articles online at King of the Hill, along with a great deal of other information.
...as long as they're barred from entering the cockpit. The success of the 9/11 attacks can mainly be credited to 1970s-era hijacking guidelines directing pilots to comply with the terrorists' demands, on the assumption that they were going to fly the plane to Cuba or something similar, rather than use it as a weapon. Those guidelines made sense in their time, but clearly, they're no longer applicable.
Here's an idea -- instead of inconveniencing millions of innocent passengers, how about securing the cockpits instead? So long as the pilots remain in control of the plane, it's a flying prison for anyone who commits any criminal act back in the passenger compartment. Let the cockpit crew notify the ground of a failed terrorist attack and land the plane at the nearest airport, with the police and FBI waiting. End of story.
The F-84F Thunderstreak was the jet era's first fighter-bomber to carry tactical nukes, and used the same delivery method. Richard Bach's book Stranger to the Ground includes a fairly detailed description of performing the maneuver in training runs, and there's a good diagram of the procedure on the web here. Somewhat less insane than doing it in a prop-driven plane, but still, interesting times.
I hereby find Rambus guilty of being deceptive sleazebags and assign a penalty of no less than 50 lasches to each of the company's top executives!
If you want to break into the music business, then create something of your own. Want to give that away? Go for it -- it's your right to do so if you choose, and the world will be a slightly better place for it. Share your work via P2P networks; set up your own Net radio stream so people can hear your work. That is legitimately "breaking into the music business", and do you want to know something? The RIAA can't do a thing to stop you.
Don't be so sure -- I don't know about other distributions, but in RedHat at least, just about everything is dynamically linked. So long as your system comes up far enough to start a statically linked shell, "echo *" can fill in for ls in a pinch (yes, I've had to do this), but I definitely prefer the BSD practice of statically linking the contents of /bin and /sbin.
It's a couple of years old now, which probably translates to about a decade of cultural time, but Simon Reynolds' book Generation Ecstasy is an excellent look not only at the techno and rave culture, but at the origins of the music that spawned it. Reynolds' takes on the various scenes are somewhat hit-and-miss, but when he gets it right, he goes a long way towards bridging the gap between reading about an experience and actually having one. Perhaps more importantly for this discussion, he does an excellent job of tracing the origins of electronic music from Kraftwerk and other early experimentalists right up to the sprawling range of sub-genres now called electronic music. Understanding the origins of various styles and knowing the names of the originators and innovators helped me a great deal when I was first beginning to explore the world of techno.
Come on...I thought I was reading Slashdot, not Duh Magazine...
Most of the old systems were pretty much self-sufficient, so it's just a matter of hooking them up to the TV, plugging them in, and turning them on...no need to load editors, compilers, etc since BASIC was in ROM and ready to go at powerup.
And regarding BASIC, I can hear the sneering already, but think of it as a challenge: what's more likely to be a fun hack, writing C++ for an embedded system (in days when that can mean a Pentium-class CPU, megs of memory, even running Linux) or making a Timex-Sinclair do something cool with only 2K memory and BASIC to work with?
So what you're saying is that Verizon isn't exactly quick about installing DSL lines for competitors (makes sense to me), and that if they performed their Geek Guard duties the same way, you'd get the same slowness. However, that "if" implies that they are not performing their Geek Guard duties in such a manner, so how are they performing them, then? Quickly and promptly? That's what you're actually implying, though I'm guessing that's not what you meant to say...
The reason telnetd and ftpd are disabled by default is that both services send your username and password across the network in the clear...doing this from home to your work machine is A Very Bad Idea. Look into ssh, sftp, etc...
Nobody with the least bit of musical taste has cared what Michael Jackson has done for twenty years now...
Once this principle is understood, the reason nobody sues Microsoft becomes obvious: Bill Gates would much rather pay his lawyers than you, and he can pay them a lot more than you can pay yours...