One thing the phishers do that screws themselves up is that they send the same scams out over and over again. When you look in your junk folder and see 10 variations on Citibank or Ebay info requests you can pretty much assume they are junk. I just assume all such requests are junk anyway.
"These people don't understand what us email admins are up against."
I can see it now, "SMTP, Systems Investigator". Watch him in the next exciting episode where he spends 5 hours pouring over log files and hits on the one woman in his department.
I'd also be interested to know the psychological profiles of the either desperate or desperately greedy/stupid people who bought from him to the tune of $20+ million. He couldn't have done it without them.
I'm amazed at some of the games I considered cool just because they were something I'd never seen before. The ultimate example of this was the old Apple Flight Simulator that I loaded off of a cassette tape (listen for the tone!). You had to start it with a "CALL -XXXX" in the assembler mode. The best part was that the enemy planes were SINGLE PIXELS. Nothing more than dots! Plus the bomb "target" was another dot that you could bomb by landing and driving over.
"Games that kept you up at night, games that made you lose sleep over, games that swallowed away half a year of your life by simply being SO good that you cannot get away from them."
Egads, Wizardy almost cost someone an eye in my house. My brother and I would head to the basement right after school and fire up the Appple II to beat Werdna and find the blue ribbon for the elevator ("Blade Cuisinart" anyone?). We got into a big fight once over who got to play once. We only came up for bathroom breaks and food (pissing off my parents to no end). At least it kept us off the streets.
Later on it was the Ultima series for me. Since my brother wasn't as into these as I was we had far fewer fights.
"What happened to space sims? Economy sims? Adventures? Flight sims?"
They aren't console friendly. They really require a keyboard and they don't have the violence factor the game companies consider necessary to sell. I think we'll have to depend on dedicated independent developers or boutique software companies for these.
"Few games interest me for longer than a few days, even though I got far less time to play today than I did 20 years ago. Am I getting old?"
You answered your own question partly there. We don't have entire days and nights to fritter away in front of our computers. We also usually have more diverse interests (I'd rather spend my weekend day tripping and eating out or backpacking). On top of that just the fact that we have been playing games for 15+ years means that we've seen almost every basic idea and plot that people can come up with. It is like going to a movie and within 10 minutes you can't help thinking of 5 other movies you've seen that this one reminds you of. We're jaded I guess.
I know the feeling. I just finished playing Baldur's Gate 1 for the 2nd time and have started Baldur's Gate 2. Great games! I'm looking forward to playing my copy of NWN that taunts me on my shelf.
I still play Civ2 (I'll probably upgrade though), classic games on MAME and on Apple II emulators. I've even broken out my old copy of the original "Command and Conquer"
Ultima 7 "Exult" is an incredible port of the game. Not to mention the ported versions of Privateer and Elite you can get. I'm thankful for all of the fanatics with great programming skills out there doing these ports of classic games.
Same goes for music. People start to think that the (insert decade here)'s were the best for music but forget that what is played now is usually the best from that period. Do a little research and you find out that 90% of what came out was crap and has been forgotten.
If you want to find out how bad things got back in the old days of video games just look at the rom listings for MAME. Clones and copies galore.
The only request I had for a ban in the classroom (in college) was from my general relativity professor. Since her class was right after lunch she wondered if we were sleepy from having just eaten. She proposed that we bring our lunches to her class so we'd be awake and fall asleep in our next class instead.
Actually I think it was simply because the math was frying our brains.
I had to write like a maniac in my classes (physics and math) because the material on the board wasn't in the book or in any handouts. It was frequently mathematical equations and derivations that would have been a struggle for me to reproduce (assuming I could). If I didn't write it all down I'd look at equation X and equation Y later and wonder how the hell he got from one to the other. If I just watched in class I'd understand it for a hour or so but then I forget it when we went onto another subject. I had to write it down.
Well what do you expect? "Birds of a feather flock together" as the saying goes. Would you be surprised if you walked into a Catholic church and found that a wide majority supported the pope and going to mass?
I disagree. There is nothing irrational about wanting people's physical presence. It builds trust, cooperation, dependability, and makes communication much easier. The emotional aspect of business cannot be dismissed.
You'd still have to buy two cards for the SLI solution because SLI is two (or more, ugh) cards by definition. I agree a graphics card solution would be an easier sell. Maybe ageia could license their chip to ATI/NVidia and integrate onto one board so that it was only a driver update for the user.
"The physX card is considerably more cumbersome to use for the average gamer..." It would just be another driver for gamer. The onus would be on the developers to support it.
"Not to mention the fact that the cards are likely to be quite expensive." High-end graphics cards are already obcenely expensive. I doubt the physx card would push close to those prices.
Ageia said that a later version of the physics chip would include soft materials physics like cloth, etc. They'd also include thermodynamic and electromagnetic physics. I'd like to see it even do sound dynamically using materials and vibration physics.
Microsoft has also announced a new server technology that unloads all calls from Slashdot to a seperate system avoiding the dreaded "Slashdotting" effect.
I wonder why someone doesn't use these tools against the crooks. You say that isn't 100% legal? Many of the things our government (or major companies) does today aren't 100% legal either. Take one of these botnet tools and use it to knock out their websites, spy on their irc channels, flood them with bogus data, disable the spammers, use it to spread worms that fix holes and knock out malicious code on the botnet pcs. Fight fire with fire. Obviously law enforcement isn't going to come after you since they barely lift a finger against the crooks and most of these sites are overseas anyway.
"Would you be satisfied if a neighbor was sent to prison without a public trial? If you ask, the police could just say, "If you only knew what we know, you'd want him in prison too.""
Slashdot Mirror
What is his email address? I need him to confirm some accounts. ;)
"...rapid growth in homeland security and military spending..."
Isn't this what helped collapse the old USSR?
One thing the phishers do that screws themselves up is that they send the same scams out over and over again. When you look in your junk folder and see 10 variations on Citibank or Ebay info requests you can pretty much assume they are junk. I just assume all such requests are junk anyway.
I thought our intelligence groups were busy spying on Americans? I guess this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Unmanned aerial drones will complement nicely the mindless drones in Congress who approve of this stab in the back to democracy.
Finally, a hardware platform that will support Windows Vista.
Based on my personal experience with town governments he is probably a relative by blood or marriage to one of town higher-ups.
"These people don't understand what us email admins are up against."
I can see it now, "SMTP, Systems Investigator". Watch him in the next exciting episode where he spends 5 hours pouring over log files and hits on the one woman in his department.
I'd also be interested to know the psychological profiles of the either desperate or desperately greedy/stupid people who bought from him to the tune of $20+ million. He couldn't have done it without them.
My Star Wars AT-AT vs your bedwetting lvl20 Elf Archer.
I can't wait to see drug dealers, drive bys, and ho's in WoW.
"I see you are trying to use your computer, would you like me to use it as a spam server?"
Can't I just buy some frigg'n produce!? If I wanted to watch TV I'd just grab a box of Krispie Creams and sit on the couch.
And by the way, this isn't the TV aisle, can you move so I can get some onions?
"If they can come up with new revenue streams, that will create more margin for them to lower prices because of store competition"
Just like the way theater ads have lowered movie ticket prices? Oh yah, they haven't.
I'm amazed at some of the games I considered cool just because they were something I'd never seen before. The ultimate example of this was the old Apple Flight Simulator that I loaded off of a cassette tape (listen for the tone!). You had to start it with a "CALL -XXXX" in the assembler mode. The best part was that the enemy planes were SINGLE PIXELS. Nothing more than dots! Plus the bomb "target" was another dot that you could bomb by landing and driving over.
"Games that kept you up at night, games that made you lose sleep over, games that swallowed away half a year of your life by simply being SO good that you cannot get away from them."
Egads, Wizardy almost cost someone an eye in my house. My brother and I would head to the basement right after school and fire up the Appple II to beat Werdna and find the blue ribbon for the elevator ("Blade Cuisinart" anyone?). We got into a big fight once over who got to play once. We only came up for bathroom breaks and food (pissing off my parents to no end). At least it kept us off the streets.
Later on it was the Ultima series for me. Since my brother wasn't as into these as I was we had far fewer fights.
"What happened to space sims? Economy sims? Adventures? Flight sims?"
They aren't console friendly. They really require a keyboard and they don't have the violence factor the game companies consider necessary to sell. I think we'll have to depend on dedicated independent developers or boutique software companies for these.
"Few games interest me for longer than a few days, even though I got far less time to play today than I did 20 years ago. Am I getting old?"
You answered your own question partly there. We don't have entire days and nights to fritter away in front of our computers. We also usually have more diverse interests (I'd rather spend my weekend day tripping and eating out or backpacking). On top of that just the fact that we have been playing games for 15+ years means that we've seen almost every basic idea and plot that people can come up with. It is like going to a movie and within 10 minutes you can't help thinking of 5 other movies you've seen that this one reminds you of. We're jaded I guess.
I know the feeling. I just finished playing Baldur's Gate 1 for the 2nd time and have started Baldur's Gate 2. Great games! I'm looking forward to playing my copy of NWN that taunts me on my shelf.
I still play Civ2 (I'll probably upgrade though), classic games on MAME and on Apple II emulators. I've even broken out my old copy of the original "Command and Conquer"
Ultima 7 "Exult" is an incredible port of the game. Not to mention the ported versions of Privateer and Elite you can get. I'm thankful for all of the fanatics with great programming skills out there doing these ports of classic games.
Same goes for music. People start to think that the (insert decade here)'s were the best for music but forget that what is played now is usually the best from that period. Do a little research and you find out that 90% of what came out was crap and has been forgotten.
If you want to find out how bad things got back in the old days of video games just look at the rom listings for MAME. Clones and copies galore.
The only request I had for a ban in the classroom (in college) was from my general relativity professor. Since her class was right after lunch she wondered if we were sleepy from having just eaten. She proposed that we bring our lunches to her class so we'd be awake and fall asleep in our next class instead.
Actually I think it was simply because the math was frying our brains.
I had to write like a maniac in my classes (physics and math) because the material on the board wasn't in the book or in any handouts. It was frequently mathematical equations and derivations that would have been a struggle for me to reproduce (assuming I could). If I didn't write it all down I'd look at equation X and equation Y later and wonder how the hell he got from one to the other. If I just watched in class I'd understand it for a hour or so but then I forget it when we went onto another subject. I had to write it down.
"the /. groupthink has always been that bad."
Well what do you expect? "Birds of a feather flock together" as the saying goes. Would you be surprised if you walked into a Catholic church and found that a wide majority supported the pope and going to mass?
I disagree. There is nothing irrational about wanting people's physical presence. It builds trust, cooperation, dependability, and makes communication much easier. The emotional aspect of business cannot be dismissed.
You'd still have to buy two cards for the SLI solution because SLI is two (or more, ugh) cards by definition. I agree a graphics card solution would be an easier sell. Maybe ageia could license their chip to ATI/NVidia and integrate onto one board so that it was only a driver update for the user.
"The physX card is considerably more cumbersome to use for the average gamer..."
It would just be another driver for gamer. The onus would be on the developers to support it.
"Not to mention the fact that the cards are likely to be quite expensive."
High-end graphics cards are already obcenely expensive. I doubt the physx card would push close to those prices.
Ageia said that a later version of the physics chip would include soft materials physics like cloth, etc. They'd also include thermodynamic and electromagnetic physics. I'd like to see it even do sound dynamically using materials and vibration physics.
Microsoft has also announced a new server technology that unloads all calls from Slashdot to a seperate system avoiding the dreaded "Slashdotting" effect.
Oh great, now the Kansas Board of Education will have to have another meeting.
I wonder why someone doesn't use these tools against the crooks. You say that isn't 100% legal? Many of the things our government (or major companies) does today aren't 100% legal either. Take one of these botnet tools and use it to knock out their websites, spy on their irc channels, flood them with bogus data, disable the spammers, use it to spread worms that fix holes and knock out malicious code on the botnet pcs. Fight fire with fire. Obviously law enforcement isn't going to come after you since they barely lift a finger against the crooks and most of these sites are overseas anyway.
"Would you be satisfied if a neighbor was sent to prison without a public trial? If you ask, the police could just say, "If you only knew what we know, you'd want him in prison too.""
Yah, he's in Guantanamo Bay now.