Don't let the loser bother you. Consider: a person who has nothing better to do with his time than sit on slashdot randomly telling strangers to "get a life" seriously needs to get a life himself. I can't even imagine how sad and pathetic someone's existence must be for that to be the high point of their day. Nobody who really had a life would be doing that, it doesn't make sense. I'm not claiming I have a life, but I haven't sunk that low yet:)
I don't remember claiming that Linux *is* secure. I stated that this sort of thing is a way of making Linux *more* secure than it currently is, and the same applies to ANY system, not just Linux. Generally, Linux systems are more secure than Windows systems, but I don't think as secure as, say, BSD systems or some of the commercial *nixes. Try to brush up on your reading skills.
What happens if someone is successful and unleashes a particularly nasty linux virus on us?
Then the particular exploit will be patched, people will learn from the experience, and Linux will be a better, more secure system as a result.
If we discourage people from trying to break systems, we end up with weak systems.
Making Linux more secure today may result in some costly damage today - but will result in a more secure Linux, which will (as more and more people install and rely on Linux) almost certainly prevent orders of magnitude more damage several years from now. If we allow systems to become "weak", but continue installing millions more such systems, sooner or later someone will write a truly malicous virus, and the damage will be far greater in that case. Think man.
By Microsoft standards ..
on
Mozilla 0.9.5
·
· Score: 1
.. this version should probably be Mozilla 4.0.
I've been using Mozilla 0.9.4, and its definitely far more stable than Internet Explorer 3 was (IE3 was about as unstable as Netscape 3 and 4); I would say 0.9.4 is about as stable for me as IE 4.0 was (Over the years I've used IE 3/4/5 and Netscape 3/4 all quite a lot).
So when Mozilla does reach version 1.0, they can probably just as well call it version 5.0, by Microsoft standards, as a product, it will most likely be very close to Internet Explorer 5.0.
They should consider calling it version 5 just for "marketing reasons", thats what companies do anyway.
Earlier versions of 3D Studio (i.e. 3D Studio R3, R4 etc, which was a DPMI-based app which I last used in about 1996) were actually produced by Autodesk, who also produced AutoAnimate. It is the same file format. Newer versions of 3D Studio (i.e. since it became the Win32-based "3DS MAX", during which time the product has been passed on to Kinetix and then to Discreet) produce AVI files by default, but can still produce.FLI files, and actually calls them "Autodesk Flic Image Files" (which also go by the extension.FLC). Its an old format though, crappy by todays standards,.FLI were 256-colour, I don't know if the format also supports 16 bit or 24 bit colour though.
Either way, Media Player still registers for it but can't play it.
Installation defaults of all these apps try and steal file extensinos away from programs
What annoys me more, and what I think is more noxious than file extension handlers just being "difficult to change", is applications which register themselves for filetypes they can't handle. The only company I know of which does this is Microsoft, for example Media Player for years has been registering itself as the default handler for.FLI (flipbook animation format, used to be a popular animation format used in what used to be a popular animation program called AutoAnimate:) files - but it still doesn't know what the hell to do with.FLI files if you try to open one. They do a similar thing with the actual codecs, when Media Player auto-downloads codecs, non-Microsoft video formats either simply return an error, or a broken playback codec is downloaded (e.g. the default downloaded mpeg4 codec simply cannot play mpeg4 files properly, at least not the last time I checked, which was about two months ago). I remember a similar problem when Media Player first had support for MP3 files (WinAmp was at that time the most popular way to play MP3s) - the MP3 playback in Media Player was choppy and just plain broken. The point of all these tactics is to "convince" people that they should rather use Microsoft formats, because 'they'll have fewer problems'. Remember, the vast majority of Windows users wouldn't know how to go search for and download a third-party codec if their lives depended on it.
Regarding "stealing" file extensions, some programs deliberately steal file extensions even if you tell the software not to during installation >:( This seems to be an ugly trend.
Well, they have been bombing terrorist training camps, so in a direct way it does inhibit the ability of terrorists to carry out their work.
It (should) also prevent terrorism in a more indirect way. September 11 was possible because (a) the terrorists are given safe sanctuary in a country, allowing them to establish training camps and run their operations, and (b) the terrorists are well funded and well protected. By bombing countries that *provide* safe harbour and funding to terrorists, you discourage all countries from protecting and funding terrorists. By not allowing the terrorists to have any place to run their operations, train people, create propaganda material, build bombs, amass weapons and funds etc, you firstly hinder the terrorists from carrying out their deeds, and secondly you make it a lot harder for the terrorists to find sanctuary anywhere at all, which makes for a global culture of non-tolerance to terrorism. For a biological analogy: the terrorism movement, like a virus or bacteria in an ideal environment, grows when protected and fed in countries like Afghanistan. When they cannot be protected and fed, the environment is a "hostile" one for them, preventing their movement from growing. Finally, by removing the Taliban from power (who, incidentally, are *very* closely linked to Osama bin Ladens terrorist network) and establishing a democracy which gives the Afghan *people* control, you also open the way for not only liberty but freedom of press, which means more *information* for the people from more widespread sources (as well as improved education system, i.e. a more educated populace). This severely limits the effects of terrorist propaganda; currently people are easily manipulated by being presented only one specific one-sided view of the situation. (Incidentally, Afghanistan no longer has a "real" education system - when the Taliban came to power, they destroyed existing schools and universities, and the only "educational system" that remains is fundamentalist-Islam Taliban training schools. Remember, the Taliban was not some democratically elected government, they forced themselves into power, and the main reason for the complicity of the populace is that they had it a lot worse before. But the Taliban is an oppressive regime.
That is clearly made up... no British numberplate is that format, even private ones
Of course, there is the distinct possibility that he deliberately used made-up license plates to avoid possibly implicating real people. That happens all the time in the media, fiction and non-fiction.
The ways in which this can be abused are innumerable. It is, for example, a perfect stalker tool
Not necessarily. The stalker, in this case, might be very easily found because he, too, can be watched by anyone, anytime. This makes it much harder to be a stalker.
A sufficiently open system might (and actually probably *should*) also allow anybody to know when they are being watched, and by whom. That would go even further to preventing something like stalking, as well as preventing other potential abuses (e.g. by law enforcement officials).
well I live in the UK, and when my girlfriend was hit by a car those cameras came in very useful. They are only in PUBLIC places (and only high streets for that matter)
There is no doubt that surveillance cameras can be extremely useful. Thats not the problem. The argument is not against having surveillance cameras at all, but against ABUSE of these technologies. As far as I can tell there are two major concerns:
(1) Nobody "watching the watchers". While governments move quickly forward to install as many surveillance cameras as possible, there does not appear to be any noticeable effort to establish transparency of the process and to put steps in place to ensure that the system only gets used for definite good of the public. No regulatory "watchdog" authorities, no committees, no transparency, no openness - the public has no way of knowing what is really going on behind the scenes.
(2) The "slipper slope", i.e. as surveillance becomes more ubiquitous, and authorities given more and more power in this regard, one has to ask "where will the line be drawn". The public anxiety stems from uncertainty, because no limits appear to be set in stone. How far will it be taken? There is the possibility that we may end up with cameras in our homes, for example. No current government seems to even be considering putting some limitations on surveillance in place NOW, before it gets that far. In fact, governments seem to be pushing for more and more surveillance, with no end in sight.
I'll be ready to accept surveillance technologies if the system is implemented in a responsible, open manner, and steps are put in place to ensure the technologies are used only for what they're supposed to be used (crime-ridden South Africa, where I live, can definitely benefit from good surveillance).
A third concern, which is related to (2), is of the future of image processing software; during the next twenty years or so, what is currently mostly just humans watching the cameras, will become autonomous, networked software watching the cameras. Integrated will be software such as face recognition, behaviour recognition etc. This allows not just tracking where people go, but what they are doing. Furthermore, all of it will be recorded. The result, a government database of everything you do (remember, cameras will be in virtually every single public place, including shopping centers).
The military person is almost certainly much better at hand-to-hand combat than the student
Which just makes it a bad analogy. Remember, these "small students" defeated the Soviet Union before. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Osama's army is "small" or "weak" in any sense - these people are war-hardened soldiers with lots of experience fighting, they survive in tough terrain, have lots of weapons, lots of determination, they know the terrain, have lots of places to hide etc. This is not a case of the "big strong" US beating up a "small weak country which cannot defend itself". This is a difficult opponent - overconfidence will be a dangerous liability - these people aren't just going to roll over, they are plenty capable of fighting back.
Some proposals the Taliban made:
- Hand over Osama bin Laden to a 3rd country with an Islamic judicial system (perhaps his home country of Saudi Arabia) for a fair trial by Sharia law.
- Present conclusive evidence of bin Laden's guilt to the Taliban, who would then either extradite him or try him at home in their courts. This seems like a reasonable request to me - the US would certainly never extradite its own residents without evidence being presented to them
Yeah, those solutions will REALLY stop the global terrorist network in its tracks. That will DEFINITELY prevent future (more devastating, i.e. "weapons of mass destruction") terrorist attacks against the US.
Easy to criticize the US government, but a LOT harder to come up with a realistic, practical, workable peaceful solution that will actually stop the terrorists. Funny, I don't see YOUR proposed alternative solution.
Its a lot easier to say "peace peace peace" than to actually come up with a peaceful solution to a complex, difficult problem.
To the moderators who called this "flamebait", you missed the point - rather, its a very good analogy to the situation between the US and bin Ladens army. The point is, what do you do with an enemy bent entirely on your destruction on whom reasoning doesn't work? Its simply self-defense - if someone keeps punching you over and over again, you either let him carry on until you die, or you fight back.
I'm sorry, but your viewpoint is simply naive. A trial of Osama bin Laden would not only be entirely fruitless, but would simply leave the way open for the remaining terrorists to make further (and next time, more devastating) attacks on the US (and any other country deemed by them to not be holy enough).
The perpetrators of the 1993 WTC bombing WERE brought to trial. I ask you, in light of Sep 11, how much of a deterrent was that to future terrorists?
Getting rid of Osama would only give a false peace of mind. Firstly, Osama has his own leiutenants who would take over the leadership role. Secondly, there are THOUSANDS more terrorists who are eager to continue their "cause". And beyond that, there are millions more who support them.
So explain to me, Mr Pacifist, how putting Osama bin Laden on trial would solve the problem in any way whatsoever? I'm all for a peaceful solution, but I don't see that there is any peaceful solution that would actually solve the terrorism problem too. If you have one, then out with it, I'm all ears. This is a complex problem, the terrorist network is widespread, well-funded and well-protected, and has cells all over the world. And they are not only willing, but eager to get hold AND USE weapons of mass destruction against the US. Sorry, but a trial of a small handful of individuals will do *nothing* to solve the problem.
You know, I'm so sick of hearing people argue about how terrible US military action would be because some innocent civilians might die, and arguing for a peaceful solution instead, but *never actually offering a practical peaceful solution*. I'm all for a peaceful solution, but come on, lets hear it - what non-violent solution do YOU propose that will eliminate the threat of future (and more devastating) terrorist attacks? What solution do you propose to deal with an international well-funded well-protected terrorist network who are not only willing, but eager, to kill as many innocent people as possible, and not only willing, but eager, to use weapons of mass-destruction? What solution do you propose to deal with the rabid religous fundamentalism that has millions of people supporting these terrorists? Lets hear your practical, workable solution for what is actually a very complex problem. Or would you rather just bury your head in the sand and wait until the terrorists use weapons of mass destruction in the US?
Acts are only called 'terrorism', and not military action by a foreign power by the difference in the percieved legitimacy of their perpetrators
I'm sorry, but If you can't see the difference between shooting a terrorist training camp and ANONYMOUSLY flying commercial airliners full of passengers into civilian buildings filled with thousands of random individuals from dozens of countries all around the world with the explicit aim of randomly killing as many innocent people as possible, then you're an idiot.
pthread_create etc are complex to use compared to CreateSemaphore, CreateThread
I would have to disagree with this part of your post: CreateThread and pthread_create are, from a usability perspective, identical. They are extremely similar, if you know any one of them, use of the other is obvious.
// create a pipe with 1K buffer
CreateThread(&read, &write, NULL, 1024);
I think maybe you meant "CreatePipe" here..:)
In windows, you just use WaitForObject() or WaitForMultipleObjects() on EVERY type of handle
Thats cool; too bad they stuffed up sockets somewhat. In Unix/Linux, a socket is just a file handle, so all file calls (e.g. "select") work on them "automatically". In Win32 a socket is a special type of thing of its own, and "select" is specific to socket handles only; moreover, it is useless in some cases I've needed to use it because a single call to "select" has the stupid limitation that all socket handles passed to the call must belong to the same provider. So having separate sem_wait, pthread_wait etc calls is stupid on Linux, but MS also have some stuffed up similar stupidities in their implementation of sockets. Of course, the most painful thing of sockets programming on Windows is the severely crappy documentation, which tends to either be very vague, or in many cases, outright incorrect. They also neglect to mention little braindamaged details like 'sockets calls grab the win16mutex on Win9X', resulting in horrible complete-system-lock-up bugs in Direct3D programs that literally threw a few days of mine down the toilet.
I'm afraid my own development experiences with Linux and Win32 have been pretty "mixed", e.g. all platforms seem to have their share of braindamages. Lets not even start discussing the user-interface portions of Win32 (e.g. tree controls, list controls etc).. i.e. extremely severe lack of any thought whatsoever going into the design there:/ Or the nightmare that is MFC. Of course, I could rant about Linux too:)
Huh? What crappy college did you go to? Try a decent one next time. One gets the impression that you haven't been to college and are actually just guessing that thats what they teach.
How odd, I distinctly remember having read that they specifically took advantage of the eyes poor perception of blues and low intensity colors to rearrange the color distribution
Perhaps it was a different format that you're thinking of? The JPEG format can use something like over 40 different compression types internally, so maybe it was one of those. Or maybe it was a video codec or something. Or it might also have been part of an earlier PNG proposal while the PNG format was not finalised yet?
they all do much higher than 80 frames per second minimum
Thats probably the average frame rate, but in a game like Quake3 the frame rate is not very consistent (unless you set com_maxfps to something well below what your card can handle, in which case the frame rate is limited artificially). So what will happen is that you'll be averaging well above 100 fps, but suddenly when six people come into the room and start firing rockets and plasma weapons at you simultaneously, your frame rate drops to something like 40 Hz briefly (usually, precisely when you *don't* want it to:). The Quake3 benchmarking stuff only shows you an average frame rate, it doesn't actually provide information on how low the frame rate went in places (which isn't necessarily meaningful information by itself, because other things like disk activity/swapping can cause REALLY slow frames).
My question is that beyond what threshold does it not matter to have higher and higher end graphics performance
I think most "hardcore" gamers (of which I don't claim to be one:) seem to think its at about 100 Hz. This topic came up before though on/., and someone mentioned some studies done that showed that typically people can't generally discern frame rates above 75 Hz. However, I remember someone also posted about a study (military IIRC) showing that people can detect a visual signal that is shown for only 1/200th of a second (I presume this would be at least partially due to the residual image on the retina?) Anyway, I doubt that most real-world applications or games would ever need more than 100 Hz though. For the majority of people I think the threshold is about 75 Hz, but some people can detect up to about 100 Hz (maybe not specifically visually spot the difference, but will notice a difference in their gameplay).
Of course, the other reason to keep improving graphics hardware regardless of what frame rates humans can discern, is that game developers will use the extra speed to do (for example) additional "passes" (rendering engines like Q3A are multi-pass, i.e. a specific texture effect is often the result of several rendering passes), which allows more realism and creative/artistic flexibility. Spare CPU cycles made available by faster graphics hardware can also be used to improve game physics or AI. Although you probably realised that:) Its just that some people try to argue that we don't need faster 3D hardware because the current stuff is "fast enough".
In general the difference between hi-color (16 bit) and tru color(24 bit). Is not discernible
Thats not really true, you can tell the difference. The main noticeable difference is "colour banding", areas that appear to be smooth gradients when viewed as 24-bit become discrete areas of solid colours. (The effect can become very noticeable if you work with graphics a lot, especially on textures in 3D graphics). Anyone here can confirm this by trying it themselves; take a 24-bit image with areas of smooth gradients (e.g. try www.scorpioncity.com/gradient.png, or search images.google.com for something like "sunset") and then view that image alternatively several times in 24 and 16 bit mode (e.g. by switching resolutions or using software like gimp or photoshop, or ideally save the 24-bit image as a 16-bit TGA (for example) and then compare the images side by side), you should be able to see the colour banding (which actually starts to look pretty ugle after a while). The other effect you often see in 16-bit mode is in the commonly used 565 format (5 bits for red and blue but 6 bits for green), since there only 32 possible values for R and B but 64 for green you end up with different subsampled intensity from the same source value depending on which channel you're subsampling. The result is that you will see purple-ish and green-ish bits appearing even in supposedly grayscale images (e.g. an intensity of 43/64 in the green channel can only be represented as 21/32 in the red or blue channels, which corresponds to 42/64, not 43/64). Obviously this can be solved by using 555 format, but then you have fewer bits for colour information, and hence more colour banding.
check out the PNG specifications which were designed for optimal viewing and compression
PNG was designed to be lossless (no colour information at all is lost) so I don't understand what colour discrimination has to do with PNG compression techniques. PNG has no "perceptual encoding" type techniques such as the (lossy) MP3 format. PNG is designed to be lossless, not for "optimal viewing". That is why 24-bit PNG files are often larger than a good-looking (but lossy) JPEG counterpart. Perhaps you were thinking of JPEG and not PNG?
60Hz is the lower threshold of the eye. The optimal minimum rate for a monitor is 72 Hz.
Yup.. I get annoyed by anything less than 85Hz (especially with solid white areas on screen), although 75Hz is still tolerable. 60 Hz never used to bother me, but after years of staring at computer screens I think it gets more noticeable, 60 Hz gives me a headache very quickly now. Thats refresh rate. As for frame rate, I can't really see the difference with anything above about 70 Hz, but 60 Hz can be noticeably "jerky" (although not much).
Have the moderators gotten lousy in the last month, or is this a cyclical thing? (I've been reading and posting for about 4 months now.)
I've been reading/posting more or less regularly for probably a couple of years now, and I've noticed that the quality of moderation has noticeably gone down, severely, in +/- the last two months or so. I've never seen such ridiculously crap moderating as I have in the past couple of months. I don't quite understand it.. but I wonder if it is somehow related to what also seems to be an apparent recent influx of pro-Microsoft / pro-Windows people here over the past couple of months (and what also seems to be a slightly more MS-friendly bias in topic postings). Well, my general feeling is that there is a correlation, but obviously correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.
My personal feeling on what would be an "ideal scenario" regarding drugs would be all drugs being legal, and having a populace that is both well-educated and well-informed, such that drug use would be extremely minimal simply because the people would then (presumably) be smart enough to make a mature decision, realising that taking hardcore drugs is a bad move.
Of course, thats not about to happen!:) Not on this planet anyway. Unfortunately, its occurring to me more and more lately, that many laws ARE there entirely to "protect stupid people from themselves". I won't take cocaine because I know that there is a reasonable chance that if I became addicted it will likely ruin my life. Why aren't more people intelligent enough to realise this simple fact? I even (perhaps over-optimistically) think that children are at least theoretically capable of making mature and responsible decisions if they are given the choices, treated maturely, and given all the information they need to make an informed choice. (Incidentally, for interests sake, cocaine is addictive to roughly 1 in 6 people who try it. Cigarettes are addictive to 9 out of 10 people who try them.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't let the loser bother you. Consider: a person who has nothing better to do with his time than sit on slashdot randomly telling strangers to "get a life" seriously needs to get a life himself. I can't even imagine how sad and pathetic someone's existence must be for that to be the high point of their day. Nobody who really had a life would be doing that, it doesn't make sense. I'm not claiming I have a life, but I haven't sunk that low yet :)
I don't remember claiming that Linux *is* secure. I stated that this sort of thing is a way of making Linux *more* secure than it currently is, and the same applies to ANY system, not just Linux. Generally, Linux systems are more secure than Windows systems, but I don't think as secure as, say, BSD systems or some of the commercial *nixes. Try to brush up on your reading skills.
Actually I'm 24, you moron.
What happens if someone is successful and unleashes a particularly nasty linux virus on us?
Then the particular exploit will be patched, people will learn from the experience, and Linux will be a better, more secure system as a result.
If we discourage people from trying to break systems, we end up with weak systems.
Making Linux more secure today may result in some costly damage today - but will result in a more secure Linux, which will (as more and more people install and rely on Linux) almost certainly prevent orders of magnitude more damage several years from now. If we allow systems to become "weak", but continue installing millions more such systems, sooner or later someone will write a truly malicous virus, and the damage will be far greater in that case. Think man.
.. this version should probably be Mozilla 4.0.
I've been using Mozilla 0.9.4, and its definitely far more stable than Internet Explorer 3 was (IE3 was about as unstable as Netscape 3 and 4); I would say 0.9.4 is about as stable for me as IE 4.0 was (Over the years I've used IE 3/4/5 and Netscape 3/4 all quite a lot).
So when Mozilla does reach version 1.0, they can probably just as well call it version 5.0, by Microsoft standards, as a product, it will most likely be very close to Internet Explorer 5.0.
They should consider calling it version 5 just for "marketing reasons", thats what companies do anyway.
Earlier versions of 3D Studio (i.e. 3D Studio R3, R4 etc, which was a DPMI-based app which I last used in about 1996) were actually produced by Autodesk, who also produced AutoAnimate. It is the same file format. Newer versions of 3D Studio (i.e. since it became the Win32-based "3DS MAX", during which time the product has been passed on to Kinetix and then to Discreet) produce AVI files by default, but can still produce .FLI files, and actually calls them "Autodesk Flic Image Files" (which also go by the extension .FLC). Its an old format though, crappy by todays standards, .FLI were 256-colour, I don't know if the format also supports 16 bit or 24 bit colour though.
Either way, Media Player still registers for it but can't play it.
Installation defaults of all these apps try and steal file extensinos away from programs
What annoys me more, and what I think is more noxious than file extension handlers just being "difficult to change", is applications which register themselves for filetypes they can't handle. The only company I know of which does this is Microsoft, for example Media Player for years has been registering itself as the default handler for .FLI (flipbook animation format, used to be a popular animation format used in what used to be a popular animation program called AutoAnimate :) files - but it still doesn't know what the hell to do with .FLI files if you try to open one. They do a similar thing with the actual codecs, when Media Player auto-downloads codecs, non-Microsoft video formats either simply return an error, or a broken playback codec is downloaded (e.g. the default downloaded mpeg4 codec simply cannot play mpeg4 files properly, at least not the last time I checked, which was about two months ago). I remember a similar problem when Media Player first had support for MP3 files (WinAmp was at that time the most popular way to play MP3s) - the MP3 playback in Media Player was choppy and just plain broken. The point of all these tactics is to "convince" people that they should rather use Microsoft formats, because 'they'll have fewer problems'. Remember, the vast majority of Windows users wouldn't know how to go search for and download a third-party codec if their lives depended on it.
Regarding "stealing" file extensions, some programs deliberately steal file extensions even if you tell the software not to during installation >:( This seems to be an ugly trend.
Well, they have been bombing terrorist training camps, so in a direct way it does inhibit the ability of terrorists to carry out their work.
It (should) also prevent terrorism in a more indirect way. September 11 was possible because (a) the terrorists are given safe sanctuary in a country, allowing them to establish training camps and run their operations, and (b) the terrorists are well funded and well protected. By bombing countries that *provide* safe harbour and funding to terrorists, you discourage all countries from protecting and funding terrorists. By not allowing the terrorists to have any place to run their operations, train people, create propaganda material, build bombs, amass weapons and funds etc, you firstly hinder the terrorists from carrying out their deeds, and secondly you make it a lot harder for the terrorists to find sanctuary anywhere at all, which makes for a global culture of non-tolerance to terrorism. For a biological analogy: the terrorism movement, like a virus or bacteria in an ideal environment, grows when protected and fed in countries like Afghanistan. When they cannot be protected and fed, the environment is a "hostile" one for them, preventing their movement from growing. Finally, by removing the Taliban from power (who, incidentally, are *very* closely linked to Osama bin Ladens terrorist network) and establishing a democracy which gives the Afghan *people* control, you also open the way for not only liberty but freedom of press, which means more *information* for the people from more widespread sources (as well as improved education system, i.e. a more educated populace). This severely limits the effects of terrorist propaganda; currently people are easily manipulated by being presented only one specific one-sided view of the situation. (Incidentally, Afghanistan no longer has a "real" education system - when the Taliban came to power, they destroyed existing schools and universities, and the only "educational system" that remains is fundamentalist-Islam Taliban training schools. Remember, the Taliban was not some democratically elected government, they forced themselves into power, and the main reason for the complicity of the populace is that they had it a lot worse before. But the Taliban is an oppressive regime.
That is clearly made up... no British numberplate is that format, even private ones
Of course, there is the distinct possibility that he deliberately used made-up license plates to avoid possibly implicating real people. That happens all the time in the media, fiction and non-fiction.
The ways in which this can be abused are innumerable. It is, for example, a perfect stalker tool
Not necessarily. The stalker, in this case, might be very easily found because he, too, can be watched by anyone, anytime. This makes it much harder to be a stalker.
A sufficiently open system might (and actually probably *should*) also allow anybody to know when they are being watched, and by whom. That would go even further to preventing something like stalking, as well as preventing other potential abuses (e.g. by law enforcement officials).
Still, I don't like the idea :/ I like my privacy.
well I live in the UK, and when my girlfriend was hit by a car those cameras came in very useful. They are only in PUBLIC places (and only high streets for that matter)
There is no doubt that surveillance cameras can be extremely useful. Thats not the problem. The argument is not against having surveillance cameras at all, but against ABUSE of these technologies. As far as I can tell there are two major concerns:
(1) Nobody "watching the watchers". While governments move quickly forward to install as many surveillance cameras as possible, there does not appear to be any noticeable effort to establish transparency of the process and to put steps in place to ensure that the system only gets used for definite good of the public. No regulatory "watchdog" authorities, no committees, no transparency, no openness - the public has no way of knowing what is really going on behind the scenes.
(2) The "slipper slope", i.e. as surveillance becomes more ubiquitous, and authorities given more and more power in this regard, one has to ask "where will the line be drawn". The public anxiety stems from uncertainty, because no limits appear to be set in stone. How far will it be taken? There is the possibility that we may end up with cameras in our homes, for example. No current government seems to even be considering putting some limitations on surveillance in place NOW, before it gets that far. In fact, governments seem to be pushing for more and more surveillance, with no end in sight.
I'll be ready to accept surveillance technologies if the system is implemented in a responsible, open manner, and steps are put in place to ensure the technologies are used only for what they're supposed to be used (crime-ridden South Africa, where I live, can definitely benefit from good surveillance).
A third concern, which is related to (2), is of the future of image processing software; during the next twenty years or so, what is currently mostly just humans watching the cameras, will become autonomous, networked software watching the cameras. Integrated will be software such as face recognition, behaviour recognition etc. This allows not just tracking where people go, but what they are doing. Furthermore, all of it will be recorded. The result, a government database of everything you do (remember, cameras will be in virtually every single public place, including shopping centers).
The military person is almost certainly much better at hand-to-hand combat than the student
Which just makes it a bad analogy. Remember, these "small students" defeated the Soviet Union before. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Osama's army is "small" or "weak" in any sense - these people are war-hardened soldiers with lots of experience fighting, they survive in tough terrain, have lots of weapons, lots of determination, they know the terrain, have lots of places to hide etc. This is not a case of the "big strong" US beating up a "small weak country which cannot defend itself". This is a difficult opponent - overconfidence will be a dangerous liability - these people aren't just going to roll over, they are plenty capable of fighting back.
Some proposals the Taliban made: - Hand over Osama bin Laden to a 3rd country with an Islamic judicial system (perhaps his home country of Saudi Arabia) for a fair trial by Sharia law. - Present conclusive evidence of bin Laden's guilt to the Taliban, who would then either extradite him or try him at home in their courts. This seems like a reasonable request to me - the US would certainly never extradite its own residents without evidence being presented to them
Yeah, those solutions will REALLY stop the global terrorist network in its tracks. That will DEFINITELY prevent future (more devastating, i.e. "weapons of mass destruction") terrorist attacks against the US.
(Sarcasm off).
Easy to criticize the US government, but a LOT harder to come up with a realistic, practical, workable peaceful solution that will actually stop the terrorists. Funny, I don't see YOUR proposed alternative solution.
Its a lot easier to say "peace peace peace" than to actually come up with a peaceful solution to a complex, difficult problem.
To the moderators who called this "flamebait", you missed the point - rather, its a very good analogy to the situation between the US and bin Ladens army. The point is, what do you do with an enemy bent entirely on your destruction on whom reasoning doesn't work? Its simply self-defense - if someone keeps punching you over and over again, you either let him carry on until you die, or you fight back.
I'm sorry, but your viewpoint is simply naive. A trial of Osama bin Laden would not only be entirely fruitless, but would simply leave the way open for the remaining terrorists to make further (and next time, more devastating) attacks on the US (and any other country deemed by them to not be holy enough).
The perpetrators of the 1993 WTC bombing WERE brought to trial. I ask you, in light of Sep 11, how much of a deterrent was that to future terrorists?
Getting rid of Osama would only give a false peace of mind. Firstly, Osama has his own leiutenants who would take over the leadership role. Secondly, there are THOUSANDS more terrorists who are eager to continue their "cause". And beyond that, there are millions more who support them.
So explain to me, Mr Pacifist, how putting Osama bin Laden on trial would solve the problem in any way whatsoever? I'm all for a peaceful solution, but I don't see that there is any peaceful solution that would actually solve the terrorism problem too. If you have one, then out with it, I'm all ears. This is a complex problem, the terrorist network is widespread, well-funded and well-protected, and has cells all over the world. And they are not only willing, but eager to get hold AND USE weapons of mass destruction against the US. Sorry, but a trial of a small handful of individuals will do *nothing* to solve the problem.
You know, I'm so sick of hearing people argue about how terrible US military action would be because some innocent civilians might die, and arguing for a peaceful solution instead, but *never actually offering a practical peaceful solution*. I'm all for a peaceful solution, but come on, lets hear it - what non-violent solution do YOU propose that will eliminate the threat of future (and more devastating) terrorist attacks? What solution do you propose to deal with an international well-funded well-protected terrorist network who are not only willing, but eager, to kill as many innocent people as possible, and not only willing, but eager, to use weapons of mass-destruction? What solution do you propose to deal with the rabid religous fundamentalism that has millions of people supporting these terrorists? Lets hear your practical, workable solution for what is actually a very complex problem. Or would you rather just bury your head in the sand and wait until the terrorists use weapons of mass destruction in the US?
Acts are only called 'terrorism', and not military action by a foreign power by the difference in the percieved legitimacy of their perpetrators
I'm sorry, but If you can't see the difference between shooting a terrorist training camp and ANONYMOUSLY flying commercial airliners full of passengers into civilian buildings filled with thousands of random individuals from dozens of countries all around the world with the explicit aim of randomly killing as many innocent people as possible, then you're an idiot.
pthread_create etc are complex to use compared to CreateSemaphore, CreateThread
I would have to disagree with this part of your post: CreateThread and pthread_create are, from a usability perspective, identical. They are extremely similar, if you know any one of them, use of the other is obvious.
I think maybe you meant "CreatePipe" here .. :)
In windows, you just use WaitForObject() or WaitForMultipleObjects() on EVERY type of handle
Thats cool; too bad they stuffed up sockets somewhat. In Unix/Linux, a socket is just a file handle, so all file calls (e.g. "select") work on them "automatically". In Win32 a socket is a special type of thing of its own, and "select" is specific to socket handles only; moreover, it is useless in some cases I've needed to use it because a single call to "select" has the stupid limitation that all socket handles passed to the call must belong to the same provider. So having separate sem_wait, pthread_wait etc calls is stupid on Linux, but MS also have some stuffed up similar stupidities in their implementation of sockets. Of course, the most painful thing of sockets programming on Windows is the severely crappy documentation, which tends to either be very vague, or in many cases, outright incorrect. They also neglect to mention little braindamaged details like 'sockets calls grab the win16mutex on Win9X', resulting in horrible complete-system-lock-up bugs in Direct3D programs that literally threw a few days of mine down the toilet.
I'm afraid my own development experiences with Linux and Win32 have been pretty "mixed", e.g. all platforms seem to have their share of braindamages. Lets not even start discussing the user-interface portions of Win32 (e.g. tree controls, list controls etc) .. i.e. extremely severe lack of any thought whatsoever going into the design there :/ Or the nightmare that is MFC. Of course, I could rant about Linux too :)
OOB may be provided by sockets
OOB is provided by windows sockets.
the bullshit rhetoric taught in college classes
Huh? What crappy college did you go to? Try a decent one next time. One gets the impression that you haven't been to college and are actually just guessing that thats what they teach.
How odd, I distinctly remember having read that they specifically took advantage of the eyes poor perception of blues and low intensity colors to rearrange the color distribution
Perhaps it was a different format that you're thinking of? The JPEG format can use something like over 40 different compression types internally, so maybe it was one of those. Or maybe it was a video codec or something. Or it might also have been part of an earlier PNG proposal while the PNG format was not finalised yet?
they all do much higher than 80 frames per second minimum
Thats probably the average frame rate, but in a game like Quake3 the frame rate is not very consistent (unless you set com_maxfps to something well below what your card can handle, in which case the frame rate is limited artificially). So what will happen is that you'll be averaging well above 100 fps, but suddenly when six people come into the room and start firing rockets and plasma weapons at you simultaneously, your frame rate drops to something like 40 Hz briefly (usually, precisely when you *don't* want it to :). The Quake3 benchmarking stuff only shows you an average frame rate, it doesn't actually provide information on how low the frame rate went in places (which isn't necessarily meaningful information by itself, because other things like disk activity/swapping can cause REALLY slow frames).
My question is that beyond what threshold does it not matter to have higher and higher end graphics performance
I think most "hardcore" gamers (of which I don't claim to be one :) seem to think its at about 100 Hz. This topic came up before though on /., and someone mentioned some studies done that showed that typically people can't generally discern frame rates above 75 Hz. However, I remember someone also posted about a study (military IIRC) showing that people can detect a visual signal that is shown for only 1/200th of a second (I presume this would be at least partially due to the residual image on the retina?) Anyway, I doubt that most real-world applications or games would ever need more than 100 Hz though. For the majority of people I think the threshold is about 75 Hz, but some people can detect up to about 100 Hz (maybe not specifically visually spot the difference, but will notice a difference in their gameplay).
Of course, the other reason to keep improving graphics hardware regardless of what frame rates humans can discern, is that game developers will use the extra speed to do (for example) additional "passes" (rendering engines like Q3A are multi-pass, i.e. a specific texture effect is often the result of several rendering passes), which allows more realism and creative/artistic flexibility. Spare CPU cycles made available by faster graphics hardware can also be used to improve game physics or AI. Although you probably realised that :) Its just that some people try to argue that we don't need faster 3D hardware because the current stuff is "fast enough".
In general the difference between hi-color (16 bit) and tru color(24 bit). Is not discernible
Thats not really true, you can tell the difference. The main noticeable difference is "colour banding", areas that appear to be smooth gradients when viewed as 24-bit become discrete areas of solid colours. (The effect can become very noticeable if you work with graphics a lot, especially on textures in 3D graphics). Anyone here can confirm this by trying it themselves; take a 24-bit image with areas of smooth gradients (e.g. try www.scorpioncity.com/gradient.png, or search images.google.com for something like "sunset") and then view that image alternatively several times in 24 and 16 bit mode (e.g. by switching resolutions or using software like gimp or photoshop, or ideally save the 24-bit image as a 16-bit TGA (for example) and then compare the images side by side), you should be able to see the colour banding (which actually starts to look pretty ugle after a while). The other effect you often see in 16-bit mode is in the commonly used 565 format (5 bits for red and blue but 6 bits for green), since there only 32 possible values for R and B but 64 for green you end up with different subsampled intensity from the same source value depending on which channel you're subsampling. The result is that you will see purple-ish and green-ish bits appearing even in supposedly grayscale images (e.g. an intensity of 43/64 in the green channel can only be represented as 21/32 in the red or blue channels, which corresponds to 42/64, not 43/64). Obviously this can be solved by using 555 format, but then you have fewer bits for colour information, and hence more colour banding.
check out the PNG specifications which were designed for optimal viewing and compression
PNG was designed to be lossless (no colour information at all is lost) so I don't understand what colour discrimination has to do with PNG compression techniques. PNG has no "perceptual encoding" type techniques such as the (lossy) MP3 format. PNG is designed to be lossless, not for "optimal viewing". That is why 24-bit PNG files are often larger than a good-looking (but lossy) JPEG counterpart. Perhaps you were thinking of JPEG and not PNG?
60Hz is the lower threshold of the eye. The optimal minimum rate for a monitor is 72 Hz.
Yup .. I get annoyed by anything less than 85Hz (especially with solid white areas on screen), although 75Hz is still tolerable. 60 Hz never used to bother me, but after years of staring at computer screens I think it gets more noticeable, 60 Hz gives me a headache very quickly now. Thats refresh rate. As for frame rate, I can't really see the difference with anything above about 70 Hz, but 60 Hz can be noticeably "jerky" (although not much).
Have the moderators gotten lousy in the last month, or is this a cyclical thing? (I've been reading and posting for about 4 months now.)
I've been reading/posting more or less regularly for probably a couple of years now, and I've noticed that the quality of moderation has noticeably gone down, severely, in +/- the last two months or so. I've never seen such ridiculously crap moderating as I have in the past couple of months. I don't quite understand it .. but I wonder if it is somehow related to what also seems to be an apparent recent influx of pro-Microsoft / pro-Windows people here over the past couple of months (and what also seems to be a slightly more MS-friendly bias in topic postings). Well, my general feeling is that there is a correlation, but obviously correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.
My personal feeling on what would be an "ideal scenario" regarding drugs would be all drugs being legal, and having a populace that is both well-educated and well-informed, such that drug use would be extremely minimal simply because the people would then (presumably) be smart enough to make a mature decision, realising that taking hardcore drugs is a bad move.
Of course, thats not about to happen! :) Not on this planet anyway. Unfortunately, its occurring to me more and more lately, that many laws ARE there entirely to "protect stupid people from themselves". I won't take cocaine because I know that there is a reasonable chance that if I became addicted it will likely ruin my life. Why aren't more people intelligent enough to realise this simple fact? I even (perhaps over-optimistically) think that children are at least theoretically capable of making mature and responsible decisions if they are given the choices, treated maturely, and given all the information they need to make an informed choice. (Incidentally, for interests sake, cocaine is addictive to roughly 1 in 6 people who try it. Cigarettes are addictive to 9 out of 10 people who try them.)