Didn't read the article, but I can almost bet that it mentions protecting children, or at least comes close (maybe even hints at it).
The government could announce 8PM curfews under threat of death as long as they said it was in the name of children.
We both know that the licence plate tracking will never be used to find stolen cars or capture terrorists. Instead, its going to be used by gas stations to prosecute drive-offs, or by stores to profile you, or by your insurance company for taking your vehicle 250+ miles away from home without getting their express written consent.
We're getting closer and closer to the gargoyles talked about in Snow Crash. People who's sole job is to sell information. Right now, they're grabbing at everything they can get. Hell, if they could scan your drivers licence remotely without your knowledge, you bet they would. It would be sold to all bidders, since there's no scarcity of information.
Not sure about you guys but I really don't like the thought of having my fucking licence plate information stored in systems other than those used by the government. "Hello Mr. Renraku, you're wanted for a felony hit-and-run in California. Come to prison and we'll take several weeks to get this all sorted out. If we're wrong we'll let you go without an apology, after all, it was your fault your licence plate was hanging out in California."
90% of the time, contracts made for consumers-at-large are heavy handed and unfair.
Tried to get a gym membership lately? Oh wait..this is Slashdot..anyway..They try to lock you into these multi-year contracts at a very high price. Imagine having to pay $50 a month for three years. Can you honestly say that three years from now you'll live in the same area and still be making the most out of their services?
What about a cell phone? Most of them have massive early-termination fees.
Credit cards? Surprise clauses that very few people read. You're just making ends meet and then SURPRISE! You've spent 50% of your limit. Interest rates triple!
Car loans? You're a day late on a payment for any reason (even if they refused to post the check) and the car becomes theirs, your payments nulled (they keep the money) and its resold to another sucker.
I could go on and on, but the point is, contracts are mostly one-sided. Why? Because we want their service. Its not about service anymore, its about locking you into monthly fees, termination fees, fee fees, payment fees, early payment fees, etc. What if you bought a rake with your credit card and somewhere in it, it has a hidden transmitter to charge your card for more money whenever certain conditions are met. Its fair, right? You agreed to it, its right there on the back of the warranty you threw away because a $3 rake is easier to buy than send back and wait for a replacement.
The Scarlet Crusade was turned against the Alliance just to make the game more balanced. I mean how would the Horde like it if ZG were green to them instead of killable?
A Horde Paladin? Paladins are against everything evil, bad, unholy, etc. Half the horde is considered evil bad and/or unholy. What's next? Undead paladins? Gnome shamans?
You know that the chinese can make 90% accurate ripoffs of expensive-but-cheap items like Oakleys, rolexes, etc..you know how? Espionage. Most of the time those near-perfecto replicas come from a Chinese factory that got ahold of the plans and/or schematics for a device.
The Chinese could manufacture a PS2 controller for like $5 if they wanted. Perfect replica of the official Sony one, down to the markings and logos.
People don't understand the importance of a secure facility. All it takes is one dedicated person to cost a company a LOT of money. Unfortunately, its hard to explain to higher-ups and accounting why the facility needs better security than a swipe-card or RFID card for some doors.
Picture this. A woman is standing outside of the front or side doors of your office struggling with a briefcase and a pocketbook, trying to get a good grip on them. Naturally you'd want to hold the door open for her to make it easier. She in turn holds the door open for her boyfriend, the shady guy your IT department warned you about. He gets in, and Schrodinger's cat leaves the bag at a high rate of speed.
How will you know what damage he caused until it happens?
On the other hand, most companies do NOT want to impliment one or two entrances with turnstiles and a manned guard booth keeping watch to make sure no one jumps them. Makes things seem a little too secure.
A good secure facility would use a security system that's practically transparent. You swipe your RFID card in front of the door, the door makes the card calculate a number, and then approves or denies based on the response. The security guard is alerted if more than one person enters on one swipe. They can take action based on that. There are no sticky notes with passwords. This is stictly enforced. Just like workstations that auto-lock after the user leaves their cube or is inactive for a set time. That would solve most problems right there.
Just imagine. Sitting in your house playing World of Warcraft, and the police kick your door in. In a heartbeat, you're pinned to the ground with an assault rifle pointed at your face and your house is being ransacked by authorities. Not only do they refuse to pay for the broken possessions, clean up time, etc, but they throw you in jail and take your computer.
Why? Because your snotty neighbor that saw you awake at 2am thought you might be up to no good. They called the police on you, and the police responded. Good luck getting it back from the government, too, the UK has a terrible record of getting possessions back to people. Expect to pay to get out of jail, get your computer back, and for the cab home.
Why would you want to live there? If this country ever became like that, I would fight back. First with the soapbox, and then the ammo box. They might nail me once and punish me for not committing the crime, but the second time would be a massacre/stand-off. The UK is like that because the people are letting it.
Company puts out software with Steam-like authentication. Promptly goes bankrupt after a few months with little warning. Servers are up, but their bandwidth is reduced to.05k/sec thanks to greedy ISPs not getting $100,000k per year for the privilige of access to their old customers.
The phrase "best meet its customers' needs" is business-ese for "generate more revenue by squeezing more of it out of customers, while offering the same service or less".
When McDonalds looks to best meet my needs, it isn't looking to serve me better. Its looking to discontinue items that don't generate enough revenue to appease the higher ups, or raise the price on current products.
When BestBuy wants to meet my needs, they tell me that I need to take my TV I just bought that doesn't work 200 miles to the nearest service center and wait for 6 weeks before I can go get it back. They also promise me they'll take care of the bill, but rebates are promised as well.
You could put a bunch of thermocouples, or rig up lengths of heatpipe to pipe several servers worth of heat into a single location. Do you realize the cost of this?
Keep in mind that low-level heat (anything under a few hundred degrees) isn't enough to generate enough useful energy to make this worthwhile. Perhaps if we can find some other way of power generation..however..
We could use the heat to maybe put some heat back into the HVAC system of a building in the wintertime..might save on a little power..
When John Q. Public buys his computer and installs new updates..there's a small chance this will say that his copy of Windows is illegal. So what does he do? Buys a real copy, and raises hell with his computer vendor.
Now companies will realize that NOTHING can stop them from doing whatever is profitable. Insurance companies will raise prices 5x, gas prices will go up, hell, everything will go up.
Why should the government restrict companies from doing things like this? Its a win-win situation. More taxes and bribes for the government, more revenue and less expenses for the companies.
I hope you guys and girls like double penetration, because its about to happen. With no lube. When is going to be the time to step up and show them where the REAL power lies?
You better believe that if the various movie and recording associations could make it to where you have to pay for 15 copies of the album or movie just to listen to it online rather than buy the physical media that they would.
Two birds. Ensures that they can say, "But we tried that. The pirates just won't stop! Even when given a reasonable alternative" and they can fuel their outdated business model a while longer.
Using the free Stepmania and what..completely original songs?
The songs included with any of the games are all 'protected'. Schools would rather pay $500 per piece of software than have something that might not be completely legal.
The maximum efficiency you can regularly get out of people is around 80% unless its crunch time or there are other factors.
80% is sustainable, in most cases. Any more and people will start getting tired, then stressed, then sick, then out. Eventually they'll quit.
Most people, however, do not realize this and figure that every moment the person is at work they must be bombarded with stuff to do or demands, or goals to meet, etc.
When I first got here the philosophy was 'always be working on something' which is basically 'always be half-assed working on something'. Instead, I turned it into work hard for a while and then chat for a bit and be social, then work hard for a while more. Wayyyy more is getting done now than it used to. People are happier, and less stressed.
One poster said that it was all in their childhood, but where do you draw the line? If I force my (not having any, but still) kids to work 10 hours a day every day of their lives until they move away, then putting in 8 hours of work will be nothing to them. In fact, they'll probably end up putting in 10 hours a day thinking that its the coolest thing in the world that they're getting paid for it. What if I forced them to work for most of the day? Good workers, sure, but good people?
We're not made to be 'good workers'. We're people. We don't live to work, we work to live.
50% of the reason Microsoft is doing this is because XP has been compromised and is now freely pirated.
If they can get away with making DX10 ONLY for Vista, then they can have XP Round 2 with people and try to make it harder to pirate. And besides, all those legitimate users will have to buy it, too.
Oh and the hardware required to support it.
Fun times for everyone but the consumer! As usual!
Everyone does hate UMDs. Someone at work bragged about buying two movies on UMD for cheap, but realized that the DVD version is the same and that the quality blows on UMD.
Just give the PSP a gig of flash memory so you could rip a DVD and put it in memory anyway...
There's plenty of PvP in Southshore already. You just have to be level 60 to have a chance, unless you're a stealther.
Southshore PvP = Killing lower level players until the Horde amasses enough level 60s on that continent to pose a threat, and then killing them in town while a Paladin kites the guards.
A Shadowrun MMORPG would do really well. Imagine The Matrix Online without the suck and emphasis on h2h combat.
They could impliment a bunch of rules directly from the books. I'm envisioning a stop-action type of game. For example, imagine a combat situation. Like, turn based for each player but they don't have long to take their turn or decide what to do. You move half of your limit (displayed on the ground where your move limits are) and turn to shoot. The action goes pretty fast once the turns are decided. Complete with sports-like camera angles showing the action.
So our hero, half-crouching in a walk pops up for a surprise shot at a nearby gang member who is shooting at his friends. The member turns around just in time to see him, and the camera focuses on the look of surprise. It shows the dice roll in the window as he fires his shot, and it shows the dice roll for damage against him. Then the reaction of the target.
Instead of the watered-down shit they have for D&D Online.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't read the article, but I can almost bet that it mentions protecting children, or at least comes close (maybe even hints at it).
The government could announce 8PM curfews under threat of death as long as they said it was in the name of children.
We both know that the licence plate tracking will never be used to find stolen cars or capture terrorists. Instead, its going to be used by gas stations to prosecute drive-offs, or by stores to profile you, or by your insurance company for taking your vehicle 250+ miles away from home without getting their express written consent.
We're getting closer and closer to the gargoyles talked about in Snow Crash. People who's sole job is to sell information. Right now, they're grabbing at everything they can get. Hell, if they could scan your drivers licence remotely without your knowledge, you bet they would. It would be sold to all bidders, since there's no scarcity of information.
Not sure about you guys but I really don't like the thought of having my fucking licence plate information stored in systems other than those used by the government. "Hello Mr. Renraku, you're wanted for a felony hit-and-run in California. Come to prison and we'll take several weeks to get this all sorted out. If we're wrong we'll let you go without an apology, after all, it was your fault your licence plate was hanging out in California."
90% of the time, contracts made for consumers-at-large are heavy handed and unfair.
Tried to get a gym membership lately? Oh wait..this is Slashdot..anyway..They try to lock you into these multi-year contracts at a very high price. Imagine having to pay $50 a month for three years. Can you honestly say that three years from now you'll live in the same area and still be making the most out of their services?
What about a cell phone? Most of them have massive early-termination fees.
Credit cards? Surprise clauses that very few people read. You're just making ends meet and then SURPRISE! You've spent 50% of your limit. Interest rates triple!
Car loans? You're a day late on a payment for any reason (even if they refused to post the check) and the car becomes theirs, your payments nulled (they keep the money) and its resold to another sucker.
I could go on and on, but the point is, contracts are mostly one-sided. Why? Because we want their service. Its not about service anymore, its about locking you into monthly fees, termination fees, fee fees, payment fees, early payment fees, etc. What if you bought a rake with your credit card and somewhere in it, it has a hidden transmitter to charge your card for more money whenever certain conditions are met. Its fair, right? You agreed to it, its right there on the back of the warranty you threw away because a $3 rake is easier to buy than send back and wait for a replacement.
The Scarlet Crusade was turned against the Alliance just to make the game more balanced. I mean how would the Horde like it if ZG were green to them instead of killable?
A Horde Paladin? Paladins are against everything evil, bad, unholy, etc. Half the horde is considered evil bad and/or unholy. What's next? Undead paladins? Gnome shamans?
You know that the chinese can make 90% accurate ripoffs of expensive-but-cheap items like Oakleys, rolexes, etc..you know how? Espionage. Most of the time those near-perfecto replicas come from a Chinese factory that got ahold of the plans and/or schematics for a device.
The Chinese could manufacture a PS2 controller for like $5 if they wanted. Perfect replica of the official Sony one, down to the markings and logos.
People don't understand the importance of a secure facility. All it takes is one dedicated person to cost a company a LOT of money. Unfortunately, its hard to explain to higher-ups and accounting why the facility needs better security than a swipe-card or RFID card for some doors.
Picture this. A woman is standing outside of the front or side doors of your office struggling with a briefcase and a pocketbook, trying to get a good grip on them. Naturally you'd want to hold the door open for her to make it easier. She in turn holds the door open for her boyfriend, the shady guy your IT department warned you about. He gets in, and Schrodinger's cat leaves the bag at a high rate of speed.
How will you know what damage he caused until it happens?
On the other hand, most companies do NOT want to impliment one or two entrances with turnstiles and a manned guard booth keeping watch to make sure no one jumps them. Makes things seem a little too secure.
A good secure facility would use a security system that's practically transparent. You swipe your RFID card in front of the door, the door makes the card calculate a number, and then approves or denies based on the response. The security guard is alerted if more than one person enters on one swipe. They can take action based on that. There are no sticky notes with passwords. This is stictly enforced. Just like workstations that auto-lock after the user leaves their cube or is inactive for a set time. That would solve most problems right there.
Just imagine. Sitting in your house playing World of Warcraft, and the police kick your door in. In a heartbeat, you're pinned to the ground with an assault rifle pointed at your face and your house is being ransacked by authorities. Not only do they refuse to pay for the broken possessions, clean up time, etc, but they throw you in jail and take your computer.
Why? Because your snotty neighbor that saw you awake at 2am thought you might be up to no good. They called the police on you, and the police responded. Good luck getting it back from the government, too, the UK has a terrible record of getting possessions back to people. Expect to pay to get out of jail, get your computer back, and for the cab home.
Why would you want to live there? If this country ever became like that, I would fight back. First with the soapbox, and then the ammo box. They might nail me once and punish me for not committing the crime, but the second time would be a massacre/stand-off. The UK is like that because the people are letting it.
Company puts out software with Steam-like authentication. Promptly goes bankrupt after a few months with little warning. Servers are up, but their bandwidth is reduced to .05k/sec thanks to greedy ISPs not getting $100,000k per year for the privilige of access to their old customers.
The phrase "best meet its customers' needs" is business-ese for "generate more revenue by squeezing more of it out of customers, while offering the same service or less".
When McDonalds looks to best meet my needs, it isn't looking to serve me better. Its looking to discontinue items that don't generate enough revenue to appease the higher ups, or raise the price on current products.
When BestBuy wants to meet my needs, they tell me that I need to take my TV I just bought that doesn't work 200 miles to the nearest service center and wait for 6 weeks before I can go get it back. They also promise me they'll take care of the bill, but rebates are promised as well.
etc
Micr0soft Server: You're pirated. Sorry. Please format all connected physical drives.
Corporate Internal Computer Not Locked Down Like It Should Be with WGA: k. but I didn't really ask you if I were valid..
Micr0soft Server: Would I lie? Oh, and send me some bank accounts.
Corporate Internal Computer Not Locked Down Like It Should Be with WGA: Guess not. Here goes nothing!
Pimply Faced Hacker: And another one bites the dust.
Secret ingredients.
Its all about expense.
You could put a bunch of thermocouples, or rig up lengths of heatpipe to pipe several servers worth of heat into a single location. Do you realize the cost of this?
Keep in mind that low-level heat (anything under a few hundred degrees) isn't enough to generate enough useful energy to make this worthwhile. Perhaps if we can find some other way of power generation..however..
We could use the heat to maybe put some heat back into the HVAC system of a building in the wintertime..might save on a little power..
Its an obvious trick.
When John Q. Public buys his computer and installs new updates..there's a small chance this will say that his copy of Windows is illegal. So what does he do? Buys a real copy, and raises hell with his computer vendor.
Who profits? Microsoft.
I thought of that a while back..be easy to infect people. Just hand it to them and ask them what's on it. Windows is happy to run it.
If this goes through it will mean a lot.
Now companies will realize that NOTHING can stop them from doing whatever is profitable. Insurance companies will raise prices 5x, gas prices will go up, hell, everything will go up.
Why should the government restrict companies from doing things like this? Its a win-win situation. More taxes and bribes for the government, more revenue and less expenses for the companies.
I hope you guys and girls like double penetration, because its about to happen. With no lube. When is going to be the time to step up and show them where the REAL power lies?
You better believe that if the various movie and recording associations could make it to where you have to pay for 15 copies of the album or movie just to listen to it online rather than buy the physical media that they would.
Two birds. Ensures that they can say, "But we tried that. The pirates just won't stop! Even when given a reasonable alternative" and they can fuel their outdated business model a while longer.
Using the free Stepmania and what..completely original songs?
The songs included with any of the games are all 'protected'. Schools would rather pay $500 per piece of software than have something that might not be completely legal.
The maximum efficiency you can regularly get out of people is around 80% unless its crunch time or there are other factors.
80% is sustainable, in most cases. Any more and people will start getting tired, then stressed, then sick, then out. Eventually they'll quit.
Most people, however, do not realize this and figure that every moment the person is at work they must be bombarded with stuff to do or demands, or goals to meet, etc.
When I first got here the philosophy was 'always be working on something' which is basically 'always be half-assed working on something'. Instead, I turned it into work hard for a while and then chat for a bit and be social, then work hard for a while more. Wayyyy more is getting done now than it used to. People are happier, and less stressed.
One poster said that it was all in their childhood, but where do you draw the line? If I force my (not having any, but still) kids to work 10 hours a day every day of their lives until they move away, then putting in 8 hours of work will be nothing to them. In fact, they'll probably end up putting in 10 hours a day thinking that its the coolest thing in the world that they're getting paid for it. What if I forced them to work for most of the day? Good workers, sure, but good people?
We're not made to be 'good workers'. We're people. We don't live to work, we work to live.
50% of the reason Microsoft is doing this is because XP has been compromised and is now freely pirated.
If they can get away with making DX10 ONLY for Vista, then they can have XP Round 2 with people and try to make it harder to pirate. And besides, all those legitimate users will have to buy it, too.
Oh and the hardware required to support it.
Fun times for everyone but the consumer! As usual!
Everyone does hate UMDs. Someone at work bragged about buying two movies on UMD for cheap, but realized that the DVD version is the same and that the quality blows on UMD.
Just give the PSP a gig of flash memory so you could rip a DVD and put it in memory anyway...
There's plenty of PvP in Southshore already. You just have to be level 60 to have a chance, unless you're a stealther.
Southshore PvP = Killing lower level players until the Horde amasses enough level 60s on that continent to pose a threat, and then killing them in town while a Paladin kites the guards.
I play Horde. I know!
Someone told me that if humans were meant to live forever, then God would have made us immune to cancer.
How does God know about cancer? He doesn't even smoke or play in asbestos!
A Shadowrun MMORPG would do really well. Imagine The Matrix Online without the suck and emphasis on h2h combat.
They could impliment a bunch of rules directly from the books. I'm envisioning a stop-action type of game. For example, imagine a combat situation. Like, turn based for each player but they don't have long to take their turn or decide what to do. You move half of your limit (displayed on the ground where your move limits are) and turn to shoot. The action goes pretty fast once the turns are decided. Complete with sports-like camera angles showing the action.
So our hero, half-crouching in a walk pops up for a surprise shot at a nearby gang member who is shooting at his friends. The member turns around just in time to see him, and the camera focuses on the look of surprise. It shows the dice roll in the window as he fires his shot, and it shows the dice roll for damage against him. Then the reaction of the target.
Instead of the watered-down shit they have for D&D Online.
Could be an awesome game, but no..
Even you can help the next generation of scammers find an ISP to call home!
The government is entitled to take whatever they please as long as they can write it into law and enforce it.
Do not confuse 'right and wrong' or 'justice' with 'law'.