Using current analog cable technology, it would be improbably to offer many choices above basic cable. Most "basic" cable block all channels above a cutoff frequency using a filter at the street connection. To allow selection of various packages in "expanded" cable, there would need to be developed "notch" filters to remove spans of channels, which would not be perfect.
If everyone was converted to digital cable boxes, they could just turn on and off the channels you are allowed to see. Not terribly hard, they already do it for premium channels.
When an application that needs to listen on a port or ports is being installed by an administrator, it will need to ask the user if he/she wants to allow the application to open ports in the firewall. If the user consents to this, then the application should use the INetFwV4AuthorizedApplication API to add itself to the AuthorizedApplications collection as enabled. If the user does not consent, then the application should use the INetFwV4AuthorizedApplication API to add itself to the AuthorizedApplications collection as disabled.
So, our spyware now is supposed to ask politely whether it can install itself as an AuthorizedApplication? Yeah, that's gonna work. For older spyware, it won't know to install; newer spyware will just make the API call automatically.
Last I checked, the problem wasn't whether I had permission to use RPC, it was a buffer overflow in the service that caused the exploit. It didn't matter whether or not I had permission to use RPC -- the mere act of sending a (malformed) packet to the service resulted in an crashed (or compromised) operating system.
All of the patches only serve to hide the RPC port unless it is in use. In fact, it makes any remote RPC applications much harder to deploy.
Maybe they're hoping that the NX extensions will imit to vulnerability of the buffer overflow exploit -- if you're using a processor which supports NX extensions...
I'll still install it, just for the popup and ActiveX blocking capabilities. But I have no illusions it will fix any of the other problems.
the perfect Window manager has functions for tiling vertically and horizontally, for minimizing all windows (like Meta-M in Windows), and for minimizing and saving the minimization and then unminimizing (like Meta-D in Windows)
Thank you for mentioning these two keyboard shortcuts. I was always using the 'show desktop' icon, or minimizing all the windows, one at a time. Now I can get to the important icons on the desktop a little faster.
If you like classic video gaming, there's streaming MP3 from RetroGaming Radio. Sixty episodes to date.
RetroGaming Radio began in 1998 (as Retro Radio) to provide a then weekly show to supplement the news feeds that classic video game and emulator players so desperately needed. The show started off as pretty much as straight opinion program but soon grew into a complete, full-service broadcast including reviews of old, cool games (called 'Flashbacks'), modern software/hardware related to classic gaming, and the ever- popular interviews with famous and infamous figures in classic gaming history.
We can deregulate savings and loans, these guys are conservative bankers they won't do anything stupid. $50 billion later, that mess is almost straightened out.
Before Savings and Loan associations were deregulated, it was possible to save on your tax bill by means of "passive losses," such as rental property. Savings and Loans considered these safe investments, and were willing to lend $$$ for their purchase.
The tax law was changed to no longer allow "passive losses" in calculating income taxes. Now, the value of the property is no longer how much you can take in "paper losses," but the true value. S&Ls had loaned money against the tax value, not the true value. Insert your typical business weasels, and S&Ls start foreclosing, and closing themselves. All because of a regulatory change in the tax law.
Cable TV, prices are only going up at 10X the rate of inflation.
As long as people are willing to pay more $$$ per month for the 200 channels of tripe, the media delivery companies will increase their profit margins. The content providers charge more, because they can. If they don't provide the content, there currently is no other company to fill the void. The cable company tacks on their profit margin, and passes along the costs. After Congress passed the cable price regulations, I still saw an increasing cable bill, but for "regulatory cost recovery" instead of extra channels. Same difference.
I gave up on cable TV, and got a satellite subscription instead. Now the satellite prices are zooming up as well (same content provider monkey business). At some point, I'm not willing to pay for the content, and I'll cancel the television subscription and do more reading or playing video games instead. Insert efficient market, invisible hand, and other capitalist phrases here.
Airlines, talk about failed business models, they can't survive without taxpayer subsidies.
The large airlines are inefficient because of high overheads, large unions who will not concede on wages, and executives who vote themselves millions in bonuses every year even though the company is losing money.
The smaller airlines are profitable because they only schedule flights that make economic sense. However, it's not economical to fly just ten people from Podunk, USA to Swank, USA; so the goverment steps in and assists, in the interest of available air travel for many more citizens than just to and from the largest cities.
How many people ride the (cross-country) bus, or take a (cross-country) train in the USA? They're subsidised as well. Should they go away entirely? For those who can afford the time to travel, they're adequate transportation.
The Express will only support 10 users instead of 50, only wireless LAN connections (no LAN ethernet connection), and no external antenna (your mod may vary).
Last time I checked, there were not more than 10 wireless devices in my home needing Internet access, and more people are using cablemodem/DSL for Internet access, so this rocks.
Not to mention the USB port for printer sharing. That's nice.
The problem is that some of these problem items have addictive qualities. Before the modern tobacco companies, lots of people smoked and dipped (snuff boxes in the 1800s). There was no (additional) nicotine in tobacco then, therefore people did not smoke more and more. After the addition of nicotine, smoking becomes addictive, and companies profit.
People in general ate mostly fruits, vegetables, and grains before pre-packaged foods added massive quantities of fat, corn syrup, and salt into our diets. Kudos for convenience, but the health impact is easy to see, especially as families cook from raw ingredients less and less. But, fat and sweet makes it "taste good", so we eat it like its going out of style.
As far as music, I think there is some addictive substance they add to music that makes most people listen to and like pop trite. Maybe it has something to do with listening to music while eating...
It was decided when the phone industry started giving out profit number which require all cell phone users to replace their phones every two-to-three years.
The last two paragraphs of this MSNBC article hints at the profit motive. As long as we keep including nifty new features on phones, we can keep consumers extending their phone contracts indefinitely into the future in exchange for phone upgrades.
Haven't you noticed the advertising for camera cell phones recently? It's time to upgrade! Last time it was color screens. Who knows what it will be next time -- this is just testing the waters.
FWIW, most people replace their phones because they lost the previous one, and need to get back up and talking in a jiffy.
The signals from the controller make it look like the user is pressing left, then left-down, then down, then off. In fact, in a pinch you can use the joystick to simulate a driving controller (not recommended).
In the game, you keep the previous state of the left and down bits and compare with the current state. If the states are different, and table lookup gives the direction the user rotated the controller. At 60 times / second, it's fairly accurate.
A four-bit encoder would have been possible, but the manufacturing tolerance would have been more expensive to implement.
Searching Google for '2600 driving' returned this link in the top 20.
So THERE's a challenge for the modern 2600 hacker: build a game that uses an analog joystick! (for a REAL challenge, make it two-player!) Heck, I'd even be willing to build a joystick adapter for the programmer who did it! (and gave me a ROM cart of it.) (OK, that's setting myself up, I know.)
There was a console system with analog joysticks -- the Atari 5200.
However, they were quite horrible to use, keep centered, and had a fairly short usage period. Now, if you can get ahold of a Wico 5200 joystick (and the Y-adaptor cable to use the 5200 controller's keypad), the console was much nicer.
In most cases, it's possible to simulate the analog movement (slow, then faster in the same direction) using digital controls and not-terribly sophisticated timing loops.
Reading two paddle values on a 2600 means taking time out of your drawing loop to check if the capicator has dischaged through the variable resistor yet. For the games which you would like an analog joystick (flight simulation, sports movement, etc.), it would mean less cycles for setting up and displaying complex graphics.
For the game Indy 500, a special driving controller was made which used a two-bit Hamming code to sense the position and direction of the controller.
By the way, here's one game that can use an analog joystick. Control a marble in a labyrinth.
Thankfully I have a PVR, so I don't care when it airs. What annoys me is that everything that does move to Friday gets the axe. For example, the "Game Over" rendered show was interesting (good idea to expose it to Trek fans on a Wednesday), but it moved to Fridays, and then off after just a few episodes.
The original article points to a web page with a list of links to various ISO images, including x86 64 DVD and i386 DVD images.
Granted, it's not a mirror, it's a bittorrent. Using it is not painful or difficult. For large files, bittorrent is the current distribution method. Would you want to host a 4.1 GB file for download? Even for one or two users at a time?
I read that some new MMORPGS that are coming out are actually going to try to take advantage of the players' willingness to pay for an advantage. Supposedly, people will be able to buy uber items that are impossible to get in-game.
There is nothing new under the sun.
For many years, MUDs would accept donations from players to pay for server costs (and pizzas), in return for additional electronic "favors from the gods." After several players exercise their new-found powers on the virtual world, they would then play less because it was less challenging. MUD developers would then ratchet up the difficulty, followed by more donations, followed by complaints from donating players, followed by more difficult parameters, etc.
Of course, if you were not donating to the MUD, your avatar did not do so well after the upgrade, and your progress was much slower.
Usually, the non-paying players were squeezed out of the system, leaving donators and admins to play their upgrade cycle games. But, with fewer people to interact with, the MUD usually fell over in a year or two.
Fortunately, as long as there were new admins making new MUDs, the economy would continue -- new users join up, a few donate for perks, etc.
And, when I tried to order, I got the following message:
The following error(s) has occurred:
We are unable to process your order at this time. Please contact Customer Service Monday through Friday, between 8 AM and 10 PM ET, at (866-584-5341), toll-free in the United States and Canada, and cite the following code: FE.
It would be interesting for Apple to set up a "n-year upgrade program" where you get every release of your particular OS for those n years. They are already doing that for their server operating systems.
You pay $500 for Select level (OS X and OS X Server), or $3500 for Premiere level (previous plus WebObjects) access. For the price, Apple sends you a CD every month with some example programming code, and new releases of the operating system for the next 12 months. (When it was Mac OS 9, you also received the foreign language versions; it's built-in with OS X.)
Yeah, $500 is a little steep for a $129 OS upgrade every year; but being able to download beta versions and get 20% discounts on new hardware makes it worthwile to me. This plan probably would not work for enterprise-wide deployment.
In addition... yeah, they've grown teeth in rats, but in their intestines, IIRC (intentionally in the intestines, but it's still a far cry from functioning dentition in the mouth).
You know you've played too much System Shock 2 when the first image that pops into you mind after reading this is the 'Super System Shock Brothers' level inside the Many organism.
Slashdot Mirror
FCC Requests Comments on a la Carte Cable Subscriptions
At the mercy of cable monopolies
Will Disney deal affect cable rates?
Why your cable bill is soaring
Using current analog cable technology, it would be improbably to offer many choices above basic cable. Most "basic" cable block all channels above a cutoff frequency using a filter at the street connection. To allow selection of various packages in "expanded" cable, there would need to be developed "notch" filters to remove spans of channels, which would not be perfect.
If everyone was converted to digital cable boxes, they could just turn on and off the channels you are allowed to see. Not terribly hard, they already do it for premium channels.
Could we organize a Mental Olympics, with chess boards, engineering feats, and story problems? Math would be just one of many arenas of competition.
It reminds me of the Monty Python skit watching a "World Famous Writer" working on a new book.
Nobody's going to pay for the rights to broadcast math competitions. The (U.S.) National Spelling Bee is the closest thing to this suggestion.
Last I checked, the problem wasn't whether I had permission to use RPC, it was a buffer overflow in the service that caused the exploit. It didn't matter whether or not I had permission to use RPC -- the mere act of sending a (malformed) packet to the service resulted in an crashed (or compromised) operating system.
All of the patches only serve to hide the RPC port unless it is in use. In fact, it makes any remote RPC applications much harder to deploy.
Maybe they're hoping that the NX extensions will imit to vulnerability of the buffer overflow exploit -- if you're using a processor which supports NX extensions...
I'll still install it, just for the popup and ActiveX blocking capabilities. But I have no illusions it will fix any of the other problems.
Official Torrent Page
"E.T., Atari Sue Over Videogame Copying Software"
and were scratching their head over why Atari was suing themselves for the Atari 2600 E.T. game, and who was wanting to copy it?
Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft
Unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwinter Night, Dungeon Siege, Civ III
Myst, Riven, Exile
Medal of Honor and expansions, Battlefield 1942, Ghost Recon
Ghost Master
Quake III, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein
Escape Velocity Series, among others
There are plenty of other games for the Mac platform as well, check the Apple website for a larger list.
The tax law was changed to no longer allow "passive losses" in calculating income taxes. Now, the value of the property is no longer how much you can take in "paper losses," but the true value. S&Ls had loaned money against the tax value, not the true value. Insert your typical business weasels, and S&Ls start foreclosing, and closing themselves. All because of a regulatory change in the tax law.
As long as people are willing to pay more $$$ per month for the 200 channels of tripe, the media delivery companies will increase their profit margins. The content providers charge more, because they can. If they don't provide the content, there currently is no other company to fill the void. The cable company tacks on their profit margin, and passes along the costs. After Congress passed the cable price regulations, I still saw an increasing cable bill, but for "regulatory cost recovery" instead of extra channels. Same difference.I gave up on cable TV, and got a satellite subscription instead. Now the satellite prices are zooming up as well (same content provider monkey business). At some point, I'm not willing to pay for the content, and I'll cancel the television subscription and do more reading or playing video games instead. Insert efficient market, invisible hand, and other capitalist phrases here.
The large airlines are inefficient because of high overheads, large unions who will not concede on wages, and executives who vote themselves millions in bonuses every year even though the company is losing money.The smaller airlines are profitable because they only schedule flights that make economic sense. However, it's not economical to fly just ten people from Podunk, USA to Swank, USA; so the goverment steps in and assists, in the interest of available air travel for many more citizens than just to and from the largest cities.
How many people ride the (cross-country) bus, or take a (cross-country) train in the USA? They're subsidised as well. Should they go away entirely? For those who can afford the time to travel, they're adequate transportation.
The Express will only support 10 users instead of 50, only wireless LAN connections (no LAN ethernet connection), and no external antenna (your mod may vary).
Last time I checked, there were not more than 10 wireless devices in my home needing Internet access, and more people are using cablemodem/DSL for Internet access, so this rocks.
Not to mention the USB port for printer sharing. That's nice.
The problem is that some of these problem items have addictive qualities. Before the modern tobacco companies, lots of people smoked and dipped (snuff boxes in the 1800s). There was no (additional) nicotine in tobacco then, therefore people did not smoke more and more. After the addition of nicotine, smoking becomes addictive, and companies profit.
People in general ate mostly fruits, vegetables, and grains before pre-packaged foods added massive quantities of fat, corn syrup, and salt into our diets. Kudos for convenience, but the health impact is easy to see, especially as families cook from raw ingredients less and less. But, fat and sweet makes it "taste good", so we eat it like its going out of style.
As far as music, I think there is some addictive substance they add to music that makes most people listen to and like pop trite. Maybe it has something to do with listening to music while eating...
The last two paragraphs of this MSNBC article hints at the profit motive. As long as we keep including nifty new features on phones, we can keep consumers extending their phone contracts indefinitely into the future in exchange for phone upgrades.
Haven't you noticed the advertising for camera cell phones recently? It's time to upgrade! Last time it was color screens. Who knows what it will be next time -- this is just testing the waters.
FWIW, most people replace their phones because they lost the previous one, and need to get back up and talking in a jiffy.
Quadrature Encoding (complete with picture)
The signals from the controller make it look like the user is pressing left, then left-down, then down, then off. In fact, in a pinch you can use the joystick to simulate a driving controller (not recommended).
In the game, you keep the previous state of the left and down bits and compare with the current state. If the states are different, and table lookup gives the direction the user rotated the controller. At 60 times / second, it's fairly accurate.
A four-bit encoder would have been possible, but the manufacturing tolerance would have been more expensive to implement.
Searching Google for '2600 driving' returned this link in the top 20.
However, they were quite horrible to use, keep centered, and had a fairly short usage period. Now, if you can get ahold of a Wico 5200 joystick (and the Y-adaptor cable to use the 5200 controller's keypad), the console was much nicer.
In most cases, it's possible to simulate the analog movement (slow, then faster in the same direction) using digital controls and not-terribly sophisticated timing loops.
Reading two paddle values on a 2600 means taking time out of your drawing loop to check if the capicator has dischaged through the variable resistor yet. For the games which you would like an analog joystick (flight simulation, sports movement, etc.), it would mean less cycles for setting up and displaying complex graphics.
For the game Indy 500, a special driving controller was made which used a two-bit Hamming code to sense the position and direction of the controller.
By the way, here's one game that can use an analog joystick. Control a marble in a labyrinth.
1. Avoid robots
2. ...
3. Profit!
Looks like I'll be playing lots of RobotFindsKitten as a warmup exercise...
To be honest, are there any other shows on UPN other than soap-opera for nerds and soap-opera for rednecks?
The original article points to a web page with a list of links to various ISO images, including x86 64 DVD and i386 DVD images.
Granted, it's not a mirror, it's a bittorrent. Using it is not painful or difficult. For large files, bittorrent is the current distribution method. Would you want to host a 4.1 GB file for download? Even for one or two users at a time?
There is nothing new under the sun.
For many years, MUDs would accept donations from players to pay for server costs (and pizzas), in return for additional electronic "favors from the gods." After several players exercise their new-found powers on the virtual world, they would then play less because it was less challenging. MUD developers would then ratchet up the difficulty, followed by more donations, followed by complaints from donating players, followed by more difficult parameters, etc.
Of course, if you were not donating to the MUD, your avatar did not do so well after the upgrade, and your progress was much slower.
Usually, the non-paying players were squeezed out of the system, leaving donators and admins to play their upgrade cycle games. But, with fewer people to interact with, the MUD usually fell over in a year or two.
Fortunately, as long as there were new admins making new MUDs, the economy would continue -- new users join up, a few donate for perks, etc.
And, when I tried to order, I got the following message:
Is 'FE' the Microsoft code for /.ed?
Yes, it's a homebrew. Yes, it's nifty. Yes, the server may fall over.
(the codename for the Atari 2600 was Stella, and the graphics and sound chip inside was the Television Interface Adaptor.)
You pay $500 for Select level (OS X and OS X Server), or $3500 for Premiere level (previous plus WebObjects) access. For the price, Apple sends you a CD every month with some example programming code, and new releases of the operating system for the next 12 months. (When it was Mac OS 9, you also received the foreign language versions; it's built-in with OS X.)
Yeah, $500 is a little steep for a $129 OS upgrade every year; but being able to download beta versions and get 20% discounts on new hardware makes it worthwile to me. This plan probably would not work for enterprise-wide deployment.