There's plenty of places where running around with an external harddive would seem very suspicious (or an outright violation), but a music player is, well, just a music player, right?
Wrong. I've worked for large corporations, and all of them subjected me to bag checks at the door (entering and leaving), and all of them strictly prohibited any type of electronic or magnetic storage devices. I had a pocket organizer that had no data ports of any kind, and I couldn't take it in the building, even though it was essentially as functional as a pad of paper.
There was one instance when a manager jumped my case when I had a floppy disk that was given to me by HR when I needed to transfer some files when I moved from one workstation to another.
If there's a big network and an even partially competent IT or building supervisor, storage devices like that are right out.
I do service calls for PC and network tech support in my home city, and just last week I was at ground-zero when a fist-fight broke out between two secretaries. I tried to get the hell out of there, but still had to stick around as the police gathered statements. It was worth it, though, as I did get the joy of seeing the one that started it all get cuffed and dragged off to jail.
They've been promising us new processors with new and radical technology for a while now. First it was crystals, then organic structures, and now nanotubes.
Until the HAL 9000 is telling me with regret that he "can't do that," I won't be convinced.
"...these nanotech swarms will 'alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.'"
I can believe all the people complaining that this is a waste of time. Don't you know how much FUN viruses can be?
Take Magistr: I'd spend HOURS chasing my icons all over the desktop. Or what about the one that would crash my system every time I shot a rocket into a wall in Quake 2 (I'm not joking, I really had one that did this)?
Quoted from the article:
"It is also likely that they will contain convergence technologies to make the machines more of an entertainment hub."
I already have a DVD/MP3/CD player, web browser, and one of whatever else they're going to cram into these things. I can understand WHY they're doing it, but it's slightly annoying to think that the retail cost of new gaming systems is being driven up because the devs have to add every shiny feature that current technology will allow.
I can just imagine the R&D labs at M-Soft:
"Does it have a WMA player yet? Make sure it has a WMA player. Hell why not two. Oh, and can I check my stocks on it? What about balancing my checkbook?"
Unfortunately, reports indicate that Express Cards cannot be used to replace video cards, whether due to heat, archtecture limitations or power consumption, I'm not sure.
It certainly would be nice to be able to upgrade laptop video, even if all you could get would be the Mobile and Go series of GPUs. It would easily increase the life of a laptop gaming system by a few years.
Some techs and/or IT people might think that giving users the options to pick what applications can insinuate themselves into their systems might keep virus/spyware/malware infections down.
I can say with great certainty that if you give the user the power to allow or deny changes that software makes to their operating system, they will deny their printer drivers from installing, but let malware like Sasser, Look2Me, or WebRebates right on in.
Here's another little Flash-gem: Bonus Stage. Two guys started with the animated series High Score, which only put out something like seven episodes. They then changed the artwork around and shortened the average length of the films, and called the new product Bonus Stage. http://www.bonusstages.com/
Like most other web-humor, it's pretty tongue-in-cheek and full of odd videogame references and "shark jumping." I find it to be pretty funny, and worth the time it took to watch through the archicve of 48 eps (and growing weekly.)
Any moderately current HP printer or multifunction device has the same kind of monitoring software. There was a number of executables and services that would install right after the printer finished Plug-n-Playing, one of which is called HPScout, or something like that. That application monitors ink useage and printer stats just like the Lexmark app. I can't tell you what information was sent: I wasn't privy to that. I can, however, tell you that I had to disable that app along with a few others that get installed automatically to keep the amount of system resources that the printer was using down to a reasonable level. Also, I worked for the Windows side of support, so I can't tell you what it looks like on the Mac side.
...But when I worked for Hewlett Packard phone support (tier one and two) through a third-party outsourcer, employee compensation was terrible. At first it was pretty much non-existant; our Christmas bonus 2 years in a row was $5 in coupons for the vending machines in the break room. And it only got worse when the outsourcers management underwent a change and they added the Pay-For-Performance system. Basically, if you completed all of your calls within a certain time metric, you would get a bonus on your paycheck. Unfortunately for the customers, the metric that was laid down made it entirely impossible to solve the most common issues in time to meet the goal.
So in the end, the support reps that don't give a damn about the customers would just find an excuse to end the call prematurely if it looked like it was going to take a while and get a nice fat bonus every paycheck. On the other hand the honest reps, like me, stuck it out for the nasty calls that would take up to 3 hours to complete and get absolutely zero bonus pay.
98.9% first-call-resolution to my credit, and no recognition. I didn't even get my yearly raise my last year there due to vast upper-rank incompetance. I'm SO glad I quit.
Their Cruzer Minis, Micros and Titaniums are great. Really durable, up to 512MB of storage, optional encryption, write protect, and they're small. Plus, the Cruzer Mini has an optional MP3 addon part, which turns any Cruzer Mini drive of any capacity into an MP3 player.
Maybe if the RIAA stopped trying to squeeze every last penny that they can out of both the musicians and the consumers, there wouldn't be such a piracy problem. Let's face it: the reason that nobody buys music is for two blatant reasons:
1) CDs are too expensive. I mean, come the hell on! It costs less than $1 to actually stamp the CD! We all know that! There are additional costs (recording studios, licensing, etc) but if you drop the price on CDs, I'm sure that there would be more purchses, resulting in the same amount, if not a greater amount, of profit. I refuse to buy any CD that costs more than $11 before shipping, flat out.
2) Convinience. I live in not quite the most backwater city in what is probably the most remote state (Montata) at least as far as local vedors goes. It's not worth my time to go check out the CD shops around town, simply because I rarely buy mainstream music and I can't rely on anyone locally to have what I'm looking for. I'm sure that I'm not the only persone to have this problem.
The solution: start selling MP3s and licenses for said MP3s online. If you sold at the rate of something like 30 cents a song, I'm sure that at least 70% of P2P swappers would start buying songs online, and there's massive profits to be made that way!
Once it's made common for online music vendors to sell licenses for MP3s online, I'll start paying for music 100%. In fact, I'll even go a step farther. So long as the price is reasonable I'll go back and purchase every song that I've got on my HDD that didn't come from a retail CD. You hear that, RIAA? I will go through my music collection and either delete or register every song that I have. I've got at least a few hundred songs, so the RIAA stands to gain a couple hundred bucks that, otherwise, they would never see! And I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would jump on the bandwagon.
I can't see the logic in NOT doing it that way.
Come on, you capitalistic bastards. Make the first gesture of goodwill, and I'll follow suit.
"Hey, lets put anybody who's name sounds like the name of a known terrorist on a black-list and fsck with them until they eventually just go home in disgust. That will keep our country safe from those nasty terrorists."
In the interest of not spreading any more F, U and D, here's how it SHOULD work:
You build a database with a list of known terrorists and terrorist suspects using a search algorithm that is NOT as outdated as the poodle skirt
Instead of grounding every person that matches that list, make a system of cumulative flags
So, if a person's name matches the list, they get a flag
If their face also closely matches the image associated with that profile, they get another flag or two
Add more info to this database, and give the passenger more flags for all of the other matches that they get with the files
If a person gets more than one or two flags, alert on-flight security and tell them to keep an eye on that person
If the passenger gets an extreme number of flags, alert on-flight security, take extra precautions on the flight, and alert the police in all of the cities that the flight makes stops in
It's really not that difficult, people.
Of course, neither would be putting locks on the doors to the cockpit...
Man, because of the title of this article, "The Neverending Sex.com Story," I was expecting some kind of eternaly-updating fictional erotica on Sex.com.
Instead, I just get some boring old dissertation on who owns the domain.
I have not been able to go near standing water since I met those wonderful creatures known as the Icthyosaurs (I think.) Just that odd growling / groaning sound was enough to cause me to pause the game and turn on every light in the house.
I recall at one point in the game, where you have to descend a ladder into some murky depths (where you KNOW that at least one of these fanged nasties is waiting) to proceed. I got about 1/2 a foot away from the water when I heard the call of an Icthyosaur. I spent the next 10 minutes tossing grenades and sachel bombs, and then firing every weapon I had into the water, randomly, until I finally saw the bastard float to the surface.
Since then, standing water, especially the murky variety of unknown depth, scares the bejeezus out of me in every game that I have played, not to mention in real life.
As long as the accuracy for weed detection / differentiation is high, this should cut down on the amount of herbacides that are needlessly introduced into our environment.
The next generation of farm-bot after this one: the Bug-Killer. It locates specific insects, based on visual, aural, maybe even olfactry observation, isolates the area that the bug(s) were detected in (say, with mosqito netting), applies small amounts of pestecide until the insect is no longer detected (or a specific amount, or whatever), whereupon the quarrantined area is then washed clean with water jets to insure pestecide being contained as effectively as the offending insects.
Build a large net of incredibly durable monofilament strands. Something like fiber-opt, but stronger and more resilient to adverse tempuratures. Use this giant net to do one or more of a few things:
Use the monofilament to slice debris into pieces. Superheat the strands to melt debris. Magnetize the net to attract debris for collection.
I figure, if there's material available to the public that is small and sharp enough to be able to cause a brain anneurism just through exposure of the shards to the skin, NASA must be able to come up with something like it that could slice space debris down to the point where the pieces would be no danger.
Slashdot Mirror
There's plenty of places where running around with an external harddive would seem very suspicious (or an outright violation), but a music player is, well, just a music player, right?
Wrong. I've worked for large corporations, and all of them subjected me to bag checks at the door (entering and leaving), and all of them strictly prohibited any type of electronic or magnetic storage devices. I had a pocket organizer that had no data ports of any kind, and I couldn't take it in the building, even though it was essentially as functional as a pad of paper.
There was one instance when a manager jumped my case when I had a floppy disk that was given to me by HR when I needed to transfer some files when I moved from one workstation to another.
If there's a big network and an even partially competent IT or building supervisor, storage devices like that are right out.
...they've gotten MORE obnoxious since that.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/03/ 0026241&from=rss
I do service calls for PC and network tech support in my home city, and just last week I was at ground-zero when a fist-fight broke out between two secretaries. I tried to get the hell out of there, but still had to stick around as the police gathered statements. It was worth it, though, as I did get the joy of seeing the one that started it all get cuffed and dragged off to jail.
They've been promising us new processors with new and radical technology for a while now. First it was crystals, then organic structures, and now nanotubes.
Until the HAL 9000 is telling me with regret that he "can't do that," I won't be convinced.
"During the few millionths of a second that it operated,"
Soooo..we now have a tazer capable of taking down a small moon?
"...these nanotech swarms will 'alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.'"
Why am I suddely reminded of Lemmings?
quoted from the article:
The teddy bear sitting in the corner of the child's room might look normal, until his head starts following the kid around...
I had a teddy bear that did that when I was a kid. Only, he wouldn't do it when my parents were around...
I can believe all the people complaining that this is a waste of time. Don't you know how much FUN viruses can be?
Take Magistr: I'd spend HOURS chasing my icons all over the desktop. Or what about the one that would crash my system every time I shot a rocket into a wall in Quake 2 (I'm not joking, I really had one that did this)?
Come on, this is quality entertainment!
Quoted from the article:
"It is also likely that they will contain convergence technologies to make the machines more of an entertainment hub."
I already have a DVD/MP3/CD player, web browser, and one of whatever else they're going to cram into these things. I can understand WHY they're doing it, but it's slightly annoying to think that the retail cost of new gaming systems is being driven up because the devs have to add every shiny feature that current technology will allow.
I can just imagine the R&D labs at M-Soft:
"Does it have a WMA player yet? Make sure it has a WMA player. Hell why not two. Oh, and can I check my stocks on it? What about balancing my checkbook?"
Unfortunately, reports indicate that Express Cards cannot be used to replace video cards, whether due to heat, archtecture limitations or power consumption, I'm not sure.
It certainly would be nice to be able to upgrade laptop video, even if all you could get would be the Mobile and Go series of GPUs. It would easily increase the life of a laptop gaming system by a few years.
Some techs and/or IT people might think that giving users the options to pick what applications can insinuate themselves into their systems might keep virus/spyware/malware infections down.
I can say with great certainty that if you give the user the power to allow or deny changes that software makes to their operating system, they will deny their printer drivers from installing, but let malware like Sasser, Look2Me, or WebRebates right on in.
-
Here's another little Flash-gem: Bonus Stage. Two guys started with the animated series High Score, which only put out something like seven episodes. They then changed the artwork around and shortened the average length of the films, and called the new product Bonus Stage. http://www.bonusstages.com/
Like most other web-humor, it's pretty tongue-in-cheek and full of odd videogame references and "shark jumping." I find it to be pretty funny, and worth the time it took to watch through the archicve of 48 eps (and growing weekly.)
Any moderately current HP printer or multifunction device has the same kind of monitoring software. There was a number of executables and services that would install right after the printer finished Plug-n-Playing, one of which is called HPScout, or something like that. That application monitors ink useage and printer stats just like the Lexmark app. I can't tell you what information was sent: I wasn't privy to that. I can, however, tell you that I had to disable that app along with a few others that get installed automatically to keep the amount of system resources that the printer was using down to a reasonable level. Also, I worked for the Windows side of support, so I can't tell you what it looks like on the Mac side.
...But when I worked for Hewlett Packard phone support (tier one and two) through a third-party outsourcer, employee compensation was terrible. At first it was pretty much non-existant; our Christmas bonus 2 years in a row was $5 in coupons for the vending machines in the break room. And it only got worse when the outsourcers management underwent a change and they added the Pay-For-Performance system. Basically, if you completed all of your calls within a certain time metric, you would get a bonus on your paycheck. Unfortunately for the customers, the metric that was laid down made it entirely impossible to solve the most common issues in time to meet the goal.
So in the end, the support reps that don't give a damn about the customers would just find an excuse to end the call prematurely if it looked like it was going to take a while and get a nice fat bonus every paycheck. On the other hand the honest reps, like me, stuck it out for the nasty calls that would take up to 3 hours to complete and get absolutely zero bonus pay.
98.9% first-call-resolution to my credit, and no recognition. I didn't even get my yearly raise my last year there due to vast upper-rank incompetance. I'm SO glad I quit.
-
Their Cruzer Minis, Micros and Titaniums are great. Really durable, up to 512MB of storage, optional encryption, write protect, and they're small. Plus, the Cruzer Mini has an optional MP3 addon part, which turns any Cruzer Mini drive of any capacity into an MP3 player.
Maybe if the RIAA stopped trying to squeeze every last penny that they can out of both the musicians and the consumers, there wouldn't be such a piracy problem. Let's face it: the reason that nobody buys music is for two blatant reasons:
1) CDs are too expensive. I mean, come the hell on! It costs less than $1 to actually stamp the CD! We all know that! There are additional costs (recording studios, licensing, etc) but if you drop the price on CDs, I'm sure that there would be more purchses, resulting in the same amount, if not a greater amount, of profit. I refuse to buy any CD that costs more than $11 before shipping, flat out.
2) Convinience. I live in not quite the most backwater city in what is probably the most remote state (Montata) at least as far as local vedors goes. It's not worth my time to go check out the CD shops around town, simply because I rarely buy mainstream music and I can't rely on anyone locally to have what I'm looking for. I'm sure that I'm not the only persone to have this problem.
The solution: start selling MP3s and licenses for said MP3s online. If you sold at the rate of something like 30 cents a song, I'm sure that at least 70% of P2P swappers would start buying songs online, and there's massive profits to be made that way!
Once it's made common for online music vendors to sell licenses for MP3s online, I'll start paying for music 100%. In fact, I'll even go a step farther. So long as the price is reasonable I'll go back and purchase every song that I've got on my HDD that didn't come from a retail CD. You hear that, RIAA? I will go through my music collection and either delete or register every song that I have. I've got at least a few hundred songs, so the RIAA stands to gain a couple hundred bucks that, otherwise, they would never see! And I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would jump on the bandwagon.
I can't see the logic in NOT doing it that way.
Come on, you capitalistic bastards. Make the first gesture of goodwill, and I'll follow suit.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Hey, lets put anybody who's name sounds like the name of a known terrorist on a black-list and fsck with them until they eventually just go home in disgust. That will keep our country safe from those nasty terrorists."
In the interest of not spreading any more F, U and D, here's how it SHOULD work:
- You build a database with a list of known terrorists and terrorist suspects using a search algorithm that is NOT as outdated as the poodle skirt
- Instead of grounding every person that matches that list, make a system of cumulative flags
- So, if a person's name matches the list, they get a flag
- If their face also closely matches the image associated with that profile, they get another flag or two
- Add more info to this database, and give the passenger more flags for all of the other matches that they get with the files
- If a person gets more than one or two flags, alert on-flight security and tell them to keep an eye on that person
- If the passenger gets an extreme number of flags, alert on-flight security, take extra precautions on the flight, and alert the police in all of the cities that the flight makes stops in
It's really not that difficult, people.Of course, neither would be putting locks on the doors to the cockpit...
...will be a plug-in for the urinals in Duke Nukem3D.
Instead of just pressing the 'use' button to activate them, you'll be able to really urinate!
Now THAT would be useful for those all-night gaming sessions when you're 2 litres of soda to the wind and in need of a pitstop.
...than a ploy to get the Sony Memory Stick back into the mainstream as a standard digital media type.
Man, because of the title of this article, "The Neverending Sex.com Story," I was expecting some kind of eternaly-updating fictional erotica on Sex.com.
Instead, I just get some boring old dissertation on who owns the domain.
Oh well, back to work I go.
...Half-Life.
I have not been able to go near standing water since I met those wonderful creatures known as the Icthyosaurs (I think.) Just that odd growling / groaning sound was enough to cause me to pause the game and turn on every light in the house.
I recall at one point in the game, where you have to descend a ladder into some murky depths (where you KNOW that at least one of these fanged nasties is waiting) to proceed. I got about 1/2 a foot away from the water when I heard the call of an Icthyosaur. I spent the next 10 minutes tossing grenades and sachel bombs, and then firing every weapon I had into the water, randomly, until I finally saw the bastard float to the surface.
Since then, standing water, especially the murky variety of unknown depth, scares the bejeezus out of me in every game that I have played, not to mention in real life.
As long as the accuracy for weed detection / differentiation is high, this should cut down on the amount of herbacides that are needlessly introduced into our environment. The next generation of farm-bot after this one: the Bug-Killer. It locates specific insects, based on visual, aural, maybe even olfactry observation, isolates the area that the bug(s) were detected in (say, with mosqito netting), applies small amounts of pestecide until the insect is no longer detected (or a specific amount, or whatever), whereupon the quarrantined area is then washed clean with water jets to insure pestecide being contained as effectively as the offending insects.
Here I am, reading the cached article on Google, when my CD-RW drive kicks open.
After I had already leaped across the room and made a barricade out of my mattress, I remembered that I was burning an ISO of RH 7.3.
Oh yeah, I'm cool. =]
Build a large net of incredibly durable monofilament strands. Something like fiber-opt, but stronger and more resilient to adverse tempuratures. Use this giant net to do one or more of a few things:
Use the monofilament to slice debris into pieces.
Superheat the strands to melt debris.
Magnetize the net to attract debris for collection.
I figure, if there's material available to the public that is small and sharp enough to be able to cause a brain anneurism just through exposure of the shards to the skin, NASA must be able to come up with something like it that could slice space debris down to the point where the pieces would be no danger.