Well, the key to "black boxes" is not solely the box.
Of course the box should be built to remain intact after e.g. falling through the athmosphere without external heatshielding, then impacting on the ocean with Mach-2. But the components inside must be built robust enough to survice an Mach-2 impact as well. And I don't think today's astronauts can really take that...
Personally I'd go back to this best buy branch and tell them that you are going to contact not only customer service, but all the local newspapers about this. "Bestbuy accuses customers of conterfeiting money and has him dragged away in handcuffs and irons"
Tell them about all the good PR they are going to get. Also tell them how you feel that they damaged your reputation. Mention Libel and Defamation.
Let's see them crawling around and kissing your ass to keep you from doing so.
Don't forget the new EU members, they will want a restart.
As for Germany - if our representative screws around again (the parliament has voted that Germany shouldn't support this directive) he'll probably have to step down.
He already has taken some severe beatings since the German economy aint doing that good, but should he choose to go against the decision of the parliament it will be a feast for the Opposition.
Actually, the Dutch have ordered their representative to support any country that wishes to restart the whole negotiations.
Since the Danes already stepped forward for that one, and the Dutch support it, they have to vote on it.
And I guess it won't get a majority with the new EU members now present (they know it would kill of their feldgeling IT economy)
Well, if it would be approved, it still would have to return to the EU parliament, due to their request to restart / renegotiate.
However, since they require a absolute majority to implement changes to it would be much harder to stop it.
Should it manage to get through, the best bet would be for the parliament to reject it in full, however, this would also require an absolute majority.
According to this article in the German IT magazine Heise.de (use the fish), the danish parliament has giving their minister for economy, Bendt Bendtsen, binding orders to request a complete restart of the whole negotiations.
The parliament of the Netherlands have giving their representative orders to support any demands for new negotiations.
Finally, the German representative would face sever pressure (he'd probably have to resign) should he ignore the German parliants demands for new negotiations.
As for many of the "new" EU members, they will probably not support a decision that might severly restrict their fledgeling IT economy - no matter how much Microsoft and the other "big players" try to lobby.
So, all in all, its as good as dead - at least for now.
I always understood the standart "if something bad happens to your PC while using our software it will always be your fault and not ours" clauses.
The companies honestly didn't care about you. Go call their support hotline, if they can help you, fine, if not, tough luck.
But Microsoft's 5$ offer kinda gives me the feeling they are mocking us.
"Sorry our tool mis-identifed your tax data as spyware and deleted it. Here are 5 bucks. Enough to drown you in 2 bottles of cheap booze till IRS arrives."
Well, I think that was what made Babylon 5 so attractive.
Not the simple self contained "Plot in a Box" in each Episode, with only minor changes to the overall Environment.
If you normally miss several Episodes it won't hurt, but the Babylon 5 Environment was alive, and with every Episode a steady change took place. Missing several Eps of Babylon 5 instantly gave you a WTF feeling when you watched again, since so many things had changed.
Michael Straczynski is among the few people that, I think, could save Star Trek and bring it back to its former glory.
Of course there are MANY people who could improve the current situation (for while I can image quite a few worse than Berman, yet most of them aren't in the TV biz) but Michael Straczynski is among the few that have the skill to revive a franchise that badly beaten.
So let's see the good part - either Michael gets to do the new series, or Berman drives another series in the ground and then - finally - is fired - even the most ignorant bosses don't like dropping ratings, and the cancellation of Enterprise shows that something is fundamentally wrong with the ratings and that the bosses noticed.
Well, we know DEATH turns up personally for wizards, and Kings have the privilege of getting the sword instead of the scythe.
Other then that... if your death is extraordinary (crushed when Aliens wanted to return "Fat Elvis" by dropping him from 100 meter above your head?), might earn you a personal visit too.
Other than that - well, you probably won't get a personal visit - its like being ruled by a king (or president); you are ruled even though he doesn't hog your coach and the TV remote and nags about your wallpaper.
I hope is that the sofware industry won't be able to lobby the Parliament (or rather the Kommsion) into simply resubmitting the directive without real changes.
Or even the worst case scenario: making it even more pro-patent than it already is.
But I guess the good side is that patents are stopped for now
(And just so can mod this Offtopic: 2005-02-02 21:31:30 EU Softwarepatents on-hold (for now) (Index,Patents) (rejected))
Watch out computer users...
That odd internet traffic while you aren't actually doing anything net related - its not a worm or a virus...
Its you PC browsing the newest Robotporn at Tom's Hardware... checking out all the naked motherboards...;)
Let's be honest - many of us didn't watch more than the first few Episodes of Enterprise before they got fed up and dropped the series.
Yes, I too was happy when a new Startreck series was announced. But then I watched the first Episode... and the second... and the third.... and after I saw the fourth I simply gave up.
I can't really define what Startreck is all about.
But I know I don't want it to be about decontamination gel (fanservice is nice once in a while, but doing it in the first or second Ep is a bad sign, especially in a way that screams "I'm just here to show you a nekkid chick") and horrible temporal wars (giving it a big introduction and then not mentioning them for a long time doesn't improve this).
After the first seasons many Startreck fans simply abandoned the Series.
Even if it improved after that, it already had lost many fans - and without real efforts to regain them, they stayed lost - and this was the death knell for the series.
I'm feeling a bit sad for the Fans - I know if you love a Series (I loved Firefly) seeing it cancelled really hurts - but I hope they will take a breather, get a producer, decent director & writer team, and make a series that makes the Startreck label proud again.
And perhaps they can even cut down on time travel a bit...
Security vs. those that wish to bypass the security for any reason.
Its an ethernal "arms race".
True, the TCG chip will rise the bar for running "unauthorized" software, but it might also bring its own downfall. Imagine the chip is implemented and works well for a year or two - i.e. the only ways to defeat the chip are very inefficient (and probably require doing stuff with the hardware that only few of us geeks would have to skills and guts to do)
And then, suddenly, somebody has a great idea how to decieve that chip on the software level - and it works.
The whole security scheme collapses. All the companies that neglected to put additional security measures into their software - why should they, they cost money and the chip is undefeatable - suddenly find their protection melting away like a snowball in summer.
They can't rush patches to protect their software - after all, they relied on the chip.
And the TCG can't really "patch" the chip, since "write access" to the chip would only make it even more vulnerable.
Of course, in time a new scheme is developed, and the circle begins anew.
Who is accountable for the security of the Linux kernel? Does Red Hat, for example, take responsibility?
Er... and who is accountable for the Security for Windows?
Microsoft?
Internet-swiss-cheese-security-Exlorer Microsoft?
And will Microsoft take responsiblity for their security holes? Will they pay for the damages caused by crashes and exploits for their buggy software?
Maybe if they get their software quality up to a reasonable level they can START asking questions, but as long as they are as bad as now, they better keep their mouths shut, or they'll have to stuff their own feet in them.
I must prostest!
It found e-mule, DC++ and ABC, but it didn't find my kazzaa lite client!
How am I supposed to keep track of which clients I still have to install, if it doesn't find all of them...
Well, if your AI is too smart for your newbie player... add difficulty levels - if its too dumb, theres nothing you can do.
And I don't mean easy = AI - 50% resources.
Imagine your AI is able to discover when the player is concentrating an army at a certain point, and then is able to launch a pre-emtive strike (with the optimum mixture of units for this task) to disarm the threat - or if the army is too big, prepeare for its attack, and prepeare an counter-attack at a poorly defended position, so the player has to retreat (at least a part of the attackers) to defend his base, or risk losing it.
Now include checks like
//is the AI really smart enough to dect the threat?
if (rnd(1.0)) smaller SMART_ENOUGH) {
REALLY_DETECT_THREAT_AND_ACT } //SMART_ENOUGH = 0.5 (easy), 0.75 (normal), 0.9 (hard), 1.0 (insane)
It depends...
If you use it in a "normal" way e.g. movies about WW 2, books about WW 2 etc. its acceptable - always provided you don't glorify the Nazi regime or try to make their inhuman acts "harmless" etc.
In games, its a big no-go. Put a single symbol in a game and you might got only land on the "Index" (the nice no advertising etc. list mentioned before) but it might even be banned & seized.
The Nazi regime is a very touchy subjet here still...
Ok, now this list is weird.
Well, I'm used to see 3D Shooters on banned... er... "do not advertise the game, do not show the game, do not mention that you have games on this list for sale, sell the game only to persons 18 Years+" list (I live in Germany *sigh*), but...
FIFA 2005? The game aint pornographic, or violent (except for fouls) and its not political either.
Sims 2? Same a FIFA 2005...
From the article: As part of the effort to protect intellectual property rights and create a good environment for Chinese youth...
If they only crack down on pirated copies, I can understand it, but the "create a good environment" part is definitly weird...
In Germany there is a huge majority in the parliament (with supporters from EVERY party) that is AGAINST software patents.
Sadly, the parliaments "delegate" to this EU meeting (Federal Minister of Agriculture) Renate Künast has gone into a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" mode, so demands that she stands up against the EU directive will probably fall on deaf ears.
Well, guess this is another victory for the terrorists then.
Everytime citicens lose a bit of their freedom, those who oppose this freedom win. 9/11 till now was a string of victories for the terrorists, even if the Government wants you to believe otherwise.
How much liberty and peronal freedom have you lost due to "laws against terror"?
A sad day for the USA.
No actually, since it hitting Rock has bad results for us, we can deduct that the asteroid is actually made out of (admittingly very dense) Paper.
Thus our best pick would be scissors. Picking paper would only cause us to repeat the even over and over again, with no clear winner.
Except the aliens that want humans kept busy, so they can continue plotting to steal our socks.
I AM ONTO YOU..... gibble....
Sure.
If I increase the Diameter to 800m and the density to 6000kg/m^3 (worst case scenario and add a bit), I'd say 200km is "safe" distance, 150km is so-so (expect some damages through air-blast) and anything close than 100km is bad (heavy airblast damage).
The crater would be 12km big.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the key to "black boxes" is not solely the box.
Of course the box should be built to remain intact after e.g. falling through the athmosphere without external heatshielding, then impacting on the ocean with Mach-2. But the components inside must be built robust enough to survice an Mach-2 impact as well. And I don't think today's astronauts can really take that...
Personally I'd go back to this best buy branch and tell them that you are going to contact not only customer service, but all the local newspapers about this.
"Bestbuy accuses customers of conterfeiting money and has him dragged away in handcuffs and irons"
Tell them about all the good PR they are going to get. Also tell them how you feel that they damaged your reputation. Mention Libel and Defamation.
Let's see them crawling around and kissing your ass to keep you from doing so.
Don't forget the new EU members, they will want a restart.
As for Germany - if our representative screws around again (the parliament has voted that Germany shouldn't support this directive) he'll probably have to step down.
He already has taken some severe beatings since the German economy aint doing that good, but should he choose to go against the decision of the parliament it will be a feast for the Opposition.
Actually, the Dutch have ordered their representative to support any country that wishes to restart the whole negotiations.
Since the Danes already stepped forward for that one, and the Dutch support it, they have to vote on it.
And I guess it won't get a majority with the new EU members now present (they know it would kill of their feldgeling IT economy)
Well, if it would be approved, it still would have to return to the EU parliament, due to their request to restart / renegotiate.
However, since they require a absolute majority to implement changes to it would be much harder to stop it.
Should it manage to get through, the best bet would be for the parliament to reject it in full, however, this would also require an absolute majority.
According to this article in the German IT magazine Heise.de (use the fish), the danish parliament has giving their minister for economy, Bendt Bendtsen, binding orders to request a complete restart of the whole negotiations.
The parliament of the Netherlands have giving their representative orders to support any demands for new negotiations.
Finally, the German representative would face sever pressure (he'd probably have to resign) should he ignore the German parliants demands for new negotiations.
As for many of the "new" EU members, they will probably not support a decision that might severly restrict their fledgeling IT economy - no matter how much Microsoft and the other "big players" try to lobby.
So, all in all, its as good as dead - at least for now.
I always understood the standart "if something bad happens to your PC while using our software it will always be your fault and not ours" clauses.
The companies honestly didn't care about you. Go call their support hotline, if they can help you, fine, if not, tough luck.
But Microsoft's 5$ offer kinda gives me the feeling they are mocking us.
"Sorry our tool mis-identifed your tax data as spyware and deleted it. Here are 5 bucks. Enough to drown you in 2 bottles of cheap booze till IRS arrives."
Well, I think that was what made Babylon 5 so attractive.
Not the simple self contained "Plot in a Box" in each Episode, with only minor changes to the overall Environment.
If you normally miss several Episodes it won't hurt, but the Babylon 5 Environment was alive, and with every Episode a steady change took place. Missing several Eps of Babylon 5 instantly gave you a WTF feeling when you watched again, since so many things had changed.
Michael Straczynski is among the few people that, I think, could save Star Trek and bring it back to its former glory.
Of course there are MANY people who could improve the current situation (for while I can image quite a few worse than Berman, yet most of them aren't in the TV biz) but Michael Straczynski is among the few that have the skill to revive a franchise that badly beaten.
So let's see the good part - either Michael gets to do the new series, or Berman drives another series in the ground and then - finally - is fired - even the most ignorant bosses don't like dropping ratings, and the cancellation of Enterprise shows that something is fundamentally wrong with the ratings and that the bosses noticed.
Well, we know DEATH turns up personally for wizards, and Kings have the privilege of getting the sword instead of the scythe.
Other then that... if your death is extraordinary (crushed when Aliens wanted to return "Fat Elvis" by dropping him from 100 meter above your head?), might earn you a personal visit too.
Other than that - well, you probably won't get a personal visit - its like being ruled by a king (or president); you are ruled even though he doesn't hog your coach and the TV remote and nags about your wallpaper.
I hope is that the sofware industry won't be able to lobby the Parliament (or rather the Kommsion) into simply resubmitting the directive without real changes.
Or even the worst case scenario: making it even more pro-patent than it already is.
But I guess the good side is that patents are stopped for now
(And just so can mod this Offtopic:
2005-02-02 21:31:30 EU Softwarepatents on-hold (for now) (Index,Patents) (rejected))
Watch out computer users... ;)
That odd internet traffic while you aren't actually doing anything net related - its not a worm or a virus...
Its you PC browsing the newest Robotporn at Tom's Hardware... checking out all the naked motherboards...
Let's be honest - many of us didn't watch more than the first few Episodes of Enterprise before they got fed up and dropped the series.
Yes, I too was happy when a new Startreck series was announced. But then I watched the first Episode... and the second... and the third.... and after I saw the fourth I simply gave up.
I can't really define what Startreck is all about.
But I know I don't want it to be about decontamination gel (fanservice is nice once in a while, but doing it in the first or second Ep is a bad sign, especially in a way that screams "I'm just here to show you a nekkid chick") and horrible temporal wars (giving it a big introduction and then not mentioning them for a long time doesn't improve this).
After the first seasons many Startreck fans simply abandoned the Series.
Even if it improved after that, it already had lost many fans - and without real efforts to regain them, they stayed lost - and this was the death knell for the series.
I'm feeling a bit sad for the Fans - I know if you love a Series (I loved Firefly) seeing it cancelled really hurts - but I hope they will take a breather, get a producer, decent director & writer team, and make a series that makes the Startreck label proud again.
And perhaps they can even cut down on time travel a bit...
Security vs. those that wish to bypass the security for any reason.
Its an ethernal "arms race".
True, the TCG chip will rise the bar for running "unauthorized" software, but it might also bring its own downfall. Imagine the chip is implemented and works well for a year or two - i.e. the only ways to defeat the chip are very inefficient (and probably require doing stuff with the hardware that only few of us geeks would have to skills and guts to do)
And then, suddenly, somebody has a great idea how to decieve that chip on the software level - and it works.
The whole security scheme collapses. All the companies that neglected to put additional security measures into their software - why should they, they cost money and the chip is undefeatable - suddenly find their protection melting away like a snowball in summer.
They can't rush patches to protect their software - after all, they relied on the chip.
And the TCG can't really "patch" the chip, since "write access" to the chip would only make it even more vulnerable.
Of course, in time a new scheme is developed, and the circle begins anew.
Who is accountable for the security of the Linux kernel? Does Red Hat, for example, take responsibility?
Er... and who is accountable for the Security for Windows?
Microsoft?
Internet-swiss-cheese-security-Exlorer Microsoft?
And will Microsoft take responsiblity for their security holes? Will they pay for the damages caused by crashes and exploits for their buggy software?
Maybe if they get their software quality up to a reasonable level they can START asking questions, but as long as they are as bad as now, they better keep their mouths shut, or they'll have to stuff their own feet in them.
I must prostest!
It found e-mule, DC++ and ABC, but it didn't find my kazzaa lite client!
How am I supposed to keep track of which clients I still have to install, if it doesn't find all of them...
Well, if your AI is too smart for your newbie player... add difficulty levels - if its too dumb, theres nothing you can do.
//is the AI really smart enough to dect the threat?
//SMART_ENOUGH = 0.5 (easy), 0.75 (normal), 0.9 (hard), 1.0 (insane)
And I don't mean easy = AI - 50% resources.
Imagine your AI is able to discover when the player is concentrating an army at a certain point, and then is able to launch a pre-emtive strike (with the optimum mixture of units for this task) to disarm the threat - or if the army is too big, prepeare for its attack, and prepeare an counter-attack at a poorly defended position, so the player has to retreat (at least a part of the attackers) to defend his base, or risk losing it.
Now include checks like
if (rnd(1.0)) smaller SMART_ENOUGH) {
REALLY_DETECT_THREAT_AND_ACT }
It depends...
If you use it in a "normal" way e.g. movies about WW 2, books about WW 2 etc. its acceptable - always provided you don't glorify the Nazi regime or try to make their inhuman acts "harmless" etc.
In games, its a big no-go. Put a single symbol in a game and you might got only land on the "Index" (the nice no advertising etc. list mentioned before) but it might even be banned & seized.
The Nazi regime is a very touchy subjet here still...
Ok, now this list is weird.
Well, I'm used to see 3D Shooters on banned... er... "do not advertise the game, do not show the game, do not mention that you have games on this list for sale, sell the game only to persons 18 Years+" list (I live in Germany *sigh*), but...
FIFA 2005? The game aint pornographic, or violent (except for fouls) and its not political either.
Sims 2? Same a FIFA 2005...
From the article: As part of the effort to protect intellectual property rights and create a good environment for Chinese youth...
If they only crack down on pirated copies, I can understand it, but the "create a good environment" part is definitly weird...
In Germany there is a huge majority in the parliament (with supporters from EVERY party) that is AGAINST software patents.
Sadly, the parliaments "delegate" to this EU meeting (Federal Minister of Agriculture) Renate Künast has gone into a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" mode, so demands that she stands up against the EU directive will probably fall on deaf ears.
Forget Penny Arcade.
A certain VGCats comic has an even deeper insight here...
Do you think Sims feel pain...?
Don't you realize?
Its a Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
Well, guess this is another victory for the terrorists then.
Everytime citicens lose a bit of their freedom, those who oppose this freedom win. 9/11 till now was a string of victories for the terrorists, even if the Government wants you to believe otherwise.
How much liberty and peronal freedom have you lost due to "laws against terror"?
A sad day for the USA.
No actually, since it hitting Rock has bad results for us, we can deduct that the asteroid is actually made out of (admittingly very dense) Paper.
Thus our best pick would be scissors. Picking paper would only cause us to repeat the even over and over again, with no clear winner.
Except the aliens that want humans kept busy, so they can continue plotting to steal our socks.
I AM ONTO YOU..... gibble....
Sure.
If I increase the Diameter to 800m and the density to 6000kg/m^3 (worst case scenario and add a bit), I'd say 200km is "safe" distance, 150km is so-so (expect some damages through air-blast) and anything close than 100km is bad (heavy airblast damage).
The crater would be 12km big.