The problem with this is that any music store that wants to offer major label music won't be allowed to. With all the uproar over file sharing, do you really think that the labels are going to allow non-DRM protected music to be sold?
I'm not positive, but aren't most of these type of disclaimers saying something along the lines of "We do not give permission for this software to be used in environments where failure could result in loss of life. In the event of such unauthorized use, we will not warranty the product, nor be held accountable for any damages it may cause"? If this is the case, than I have no problem with this, as they are saying the software isn't good enough to use in such a situation, if you do so, you're on your own. Anything that's mission critical to a degree where lives depend on it, should be licensed with that in mind (which I imagine software for nuclear power plants, etc. is).
If the organization that's being entrusted with people's lives cheaps out and uses software in environments it's not rated for, there's no way the manufacturer should be held liable. It's not different than tires on cars. If you're ripping around at 150mph on non Z-rated tired, and one blows, it's your own damned fault, not that of the manufacturer.
Is it just me, or is this not a big deal? To me this doesn't indicate that Eminem has any problem with other artists sampling his music, but with it being used in commercials without permission. I mean, come on, just because this is Apple and we all love iTunes and the iPod doesn't make it right. Many people view artists allowing their music to be used in commercials as "selling out", and in Eminem's case, I could see this being even more of an issue than normal.
These routers have nothing to do with the up and coming trusted computing hardware, but work with existing software and hardware. From the link you supplied:
In its initial phase, Cisco's Network Admission Control technology will enable Cisco routers to enforce access privileges when an endpoint device attempts to connect to a network. So devices without up-to-date patches or AV signature definition files can be denied network access, placed in a quarantined area, or given restricted access to computing resources.
Software called Cisco Trust Agent runs on endpoint devices to determine their security state and communicates this information to the connected Cisco network where access control decisions are made and enforced. The system will initially support only devices running Microsoft Windows NT, XP and 2000.
First of all, note that access restrictions are optional. It's highly doubtful that ISPs are the target market for these devices. Instead picture a worm outbreak on a university campus, something which has occured numerous times over the last little while, and which administrators have been all but powerless to stop. By using one of these routers, a machine that is not up to date could immidiately be given resticted access to the network, and be automatically redirectly to a location where they can download the necessary patches. Once their machine is patched, they will automatically be granted access back to the network. This is a fairly common occurance, only right now it is being done manually by support staff, and is costing these institutions far more.
In addition, currently only windows systems can run the trust agent software. I can't believe that cisco would have a default setting that denies all devices that are not running the software, hell, that would mean you couldn't even attach a printer to the network. Instead, it's probably intelligent enough to identify the operating system the newly attached machine is running, and if its not windows, grant it normal network access.
Cisco devices are typically extremely flexible in their configuration. If one of these devices denys your Linux box access to the network, don't yell at Cisco for building the router, yell at the idiot who configured it.
Actually a huge number of "normal" animations are already being done by computer. One example which many people here may be familiar with is the Dilbert series. Another even more extreme example is Southpark which is done using Maya, something you'd never know from looking at it.
One good indicator that computers and 3d modeling is part of the process is how the background moves. Traditionally drawn cartoons often have static backgrounds. They may move, but very rarely does the angle at which you're viewing the background change. This is why cartoons today typically have much more dynamic environments than they did in the past. Going back to the Dilbert example, the opening credits of the show demonstrate this extremely well.
I live in Vancouver, and one thing that you need to realize is that this system is going to be implemented in night clubs, not pubs. Line ups for clubs downtown on Friday or Saturday nights are already routinely an hour as early as 9pm, and so taking the time to swipe a drivers license isn't going to add anything to the overall time frame. In any case, its already policy for these bars to check everyone's ID, and as such everyone is already trained to be prepared and to not hold things up.
In the end, I actually think that this is a really good idea. There has been a growing problem with date rape drugs as of late, and measures such as this will help at least a little bit to make the bars safer.
If you read the article very little information is actually garnered from swiping the license. The only information contained on the magnetic strip on BC drivers licenses is the same information that's physically printed out, including date of birth. Even if it does nothing for safety, this system will have help keep 16 year olds out of the bars since IDs will become that much more difficult to forge. That's not something I have a problem with.
Wow, I hadn't really thought about that, but you know what? I think you're right. According to their official announcement, a copy of the source code was made on Sept 19, only a few days before the delay was announced.
A lot of people commented on how adamant Value had been about their Sept. 30 release date, and how strange it was that only days prior to it they annouce a delay.
When these two things are considered together, it's just too much of a coincidence to think that they're unrelated.
What about Canada? We've got more land mass and far fewer people than the US, and we ranked a very respectable 3rd place, at 11.2 percent (compared to 21.3 in South Korea and 14.9 in Hong Kong). Pricing likely has something to do with it though, as from what I've heard the prices in the states are quite steep. Here in providers are offering "lite speed" packages with speeds 5-10 times faster than dial up, for as little as $25 Canadian per month .
Actually, Blizzard has already had their lemon, only unlike most gaming companies they did the right thing in dealing with it. For those who don't remember, the game in question was Warcraft Adventures, a cell shaded adventure game similar in concept to the old Sierra classics. Instead of releasing a sub-par game, knowing full well it would sell simply because of the brand name, the game was canceled:
What happened to Warcraft Adventures?
Following an intensive and very serious review of the game, Blizzard decided to stop development on Warcraft Adventures. We determined that, given the game's status and the rapidly changing technology of the industry, it would not be possible to complete development of the title within a reasonable time frame.
While this was an extremely difficult decision, we firmly believe that we cannot release a game that does not meet the exceptionally high standards that both our customers, and we, expect from the Blizzard label.
Stopping development on this game was not a decision that was taken lightly. It was a hard call to make, but each of us knows that it was the right choice. We hope that Warcraft fans will consider our track record and trust our judgment on ending the project.
The other thing that many people don't realize is that before they got into computer games, Blizzard successfully developed several popular titles on the SNES, including Lost Vikings, and one of my all time favorites, Rock and Roll Racing. Even if you do only count the craft and Diablo games as two distinct games, their library is much broader than you seem to realize.
One Thing I found Interesting
on
Linking Dangerously
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't know if anyone else picked up on this, but one thing that is mentioned by CNN is that the sentence given was actually more than the prosecution recommended. I don't want to read into it too much, but I do find it interesting.
A slightly more detailed article is available from fox news. A couple interesting things noted here that aren't in the BBC article is that this was the seventh and final test, and that in addition to the camera lens popping off, several other guages which were measuring the experiment were damaged from the impact.
Personally, I'm with the 'bulkhead without a door school of thought (The pilots have a seperate external door. That makes it impossible to physically coerce pilots, because you can't get to them. Problem solved.
The problem with this idea, besides emotional coercion as others have mentioned, is that airplane doors are actually designed to blow out so that pressure can be quickly equalized throughout the cabin and cockpit. This is the reason that the old cockpit doors were so flimsy, and is the reason why even the new security doors are equipped with blow out panels. Unless the cockpit and cabin were individually pressurized putting a solid wall in place would be a huge safely risk.
(Our server never quite recovered from beatings sustained at the hands of News.com or Slashdot, the links from whom (while very much appreciated!) acted upon our frail machine like so many jackhammers. I'm told by our server techs that we'd seen over two-hundred thousand unique ip's in under two hours - but even given the caliber of the weapons aimed against us, I feared that the site had attracted the loathsome skr1pt k1dd13, who, fixing his perverse attentions upon our devices, proceeded to fuck them into oblivion.
Did you actually let the page load past the first few pictures? If not, you missed out on the interesting ones. I don't see any massive exhausts, wings or stickers on this vehicle. If anything, it's the exact opposite of the typical rice rocket.
The $10 a month is far from confirmed. From the faq you linked to:
"Pricing plans beyond the $49.99 for 12 months hasn't been revealed yet by Microsoft."
At this point $10 is just speculation, there are absolutely no facts to back up that number. Another possibility which is being publised at least as often as the $5 or $10 a month rumors, is that the subscription would continue to cost $50 per year, the exact same price as the startup kit. Think about it, why would someone pay $120 for a year, when instead they could simply pick up another $50 kit and the year of service that's included? It doesn't make any sense.
You know, this information just HAD to be there... According to this press release the database mentioned is approximately 60 LOCs. There's just no escaping them!
"The half million Gigabytes of data in the BABAR database, printed out, would fill one billion books. That's nearly 60 times the number of books in the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world."
'Big numbers are par for the course at the Alexandria center, where analysts detect more than 15,000 discrete "security events" against Symantec's clients every day. About 4,000 are deemed real hacker attacks after further analysis, company officials said.'
Intrusion detection systems often return a fair number of false positive hits. All they're saying here is that their system returns 16,000 positive results, a little over 25% of which are actually cause for concern.
I wasn't going to get into the details of specifically why this was needed, but since a large number of the posts have been asking the question, I will explain. An AC actually indirectly hit the nail on the head, though he was accusing me of fraud in the process:
"If you are seriously interested in archiving, you should save off the files in a non-updatable format"
For legal reasons, our company is required to maintain a permanent archive of some specific documents. In this case, permanent does not mean ten or even twenty years, but one hundred. This being the case, the archiving is actually being done to an analogue medium. If you are curious, we are using a type of microfilm which is specifically designed to be readable for up to 500 years. Microfilm also has the added benefit of being relatively unalterable once developed, unlike a digital file.
The need for doc to text conversion comes from the hardware which performs the actual archiving. It only accepts text files or specially formatted TIFF images as input. The text files are not the actual format in which the documents will be archived, but they are a necessary intermediate step in the archiving process.
Is it just me, or is the Water vs JSP example highly biased? I mean I'm as interested as anybody else about a new programming language, but the use of such an example really made me question if finding out more was worth my time.
For those of you who didn't read the document, "The task is to create a new HTML tag with a single parameter, message, and use the tag from an HTML page to insert the chunk of HTML"
Essentially what they want to do is define a new html tag and have it spit out a message. Not surprisingly, this is exactly how water seems to worry. According to their findings, this task can be completed in a single 7 line file in water, while using JSP it requires 4 files, 65 lines of code and 4 languages! While I'm not experienced with JSP, from looking at the code not only do they seem to be using a hugely complex solution for a simple problem, but a lot of unnecessary code as well. This doesn't even take into account the fact that they are counting blank lines as lines of code, and are putting every single opening and closing curly bracket on iits own line!
I can't speak for the rest of you, but I would be much more interested in seeing some comparative examples which try to solve a problem in the manner best suited to each language. This nonsense of implementing a single highly specific and language biased solution to a very simple task just doesn't cut it.
Projects such of this could actually make Microsoft happy, and may even help them out in the long run!
It's been mentioned time and time again that the current Xbox is only the first step in Microsoft trying to take over the living room. Their goal seems to be having all home entertainment such as TV, movies and games run through a single system, which they control. Media player systems such as this show that there actually is interest in the Xbox being used in this way, and might actually help perpare consumers for the introduction of the Microsoft total entertainment center when it does come to market.
The cost of the CD may be less, but let's be realistic. Even if it costs Microsoft a hundred times less to manufacture a CD than it does Redhat, this savings amounts to mere cents per copy. The vast majority of costs for any software product come from development and support, not distribution.
While this is true, it's really not that big of a deal. The article states that for this attack to work from outside your internal network the remote management functionality needs to be turned on. I own a Linksys router and know for a fact that this feature is not enabled by default. Chances are that those knowledgible enough to require, and enable, remote management will be the same tiny percentage who will bother to update their firmware.
While the attack will still work from inside the local network regardless of the state of the remote management function, it's really not a danger. The worst that someone could really do is DOS themselves, and wouldn't that be a shame...
It should be noted that according to the article, the $25 million will be used as incentive for 325 key sales and service employees, not executives. So not only is this money not going to the executives, but it only works out to be approximately $75,000 per person. While that's hardly chump change, it seems more like an attempt to stop key employees from jumping ship and causing the company even more turmoil than a corporate pay-off.
The girl featured on that specific page of the Maxim site plays T'Pol on Enterprise. I believe the poster was alluding to the idea that she is the only thing which makes the show worth watching.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with this is that any music store that wants to offer major label music won't be allowed to. With all the uproar over file sharing, do you really think that the labels are going to allow non-DRM protected music to be sold?
I'm not positive, but aren't most of these type of disclaimers saying something along the lines of "We do not give permission for this software to be used in environments where failure could result in loss of life. In the event of such unauthorized use, we will not warranty the product, nor be held accountable for any damages it may cause"? If this is the case, than I have no problem with this, as they are saying the software isn't good enough to use in such a situation, if you do so, you're on your own. Anything that's mission critical to a degree where lives depend on it, should be licensed with that in mind (which I imagine software for nuclear power plants, etc. is).
If the organization that's being entrusted with people's lives cheaps out and uses software in environments it's not rated for, there's no way the manufacturer should be held liable. It's not different than tires on cars. If you're ripping around at 150mph on non Z-rated tired, and one blows, it's your own damned fault, not that of the manufacturer.
Is it just me, or is this not a big deal? To me this doesn't indicate that Eminem has any problem with other artists sampling his music, but with it being used in commercials without permission. I mean, come on, just because this is Apple and we all love iTunes and the iPod doesn't make it right. Many people view artists allowing their music to be used in commercials as "selling out", and in Eminem's case, I could see this being even more of an issue than normal.
These routers have nothing to do with the up and coming trusted computing hardware, but work with existing software and hardware. From the link you supplied:
In its initial phase, Cisco's Network Admission Control technology will enable Cisco routers to enforce access privileges when an endpoint device attempts to connect to a network. So devices without up-to-date patches or AV signature definition files can be denied network access, placed in a quarantined area, or given restricted access to computing resources.
Software called Cisco Trust Agent runs on endpoint devices to determine their security state and communicates this information to the connected Cisco network where access control decisions are made and enforced. The system will initially support only devices running Microsoft Windows NT, XP and 2000.
First of all, note that access restrictions are optional. It's highly doubtful that ISPs are the target market for these devices. Instead picture a worm outbreak on a university campus, something which has occured numerous times over the last little while, and which administrators have been all but powerless to stop. By using one of these routers, a machine that is not up to date could immidiately be given resticted access to the network, and be automatically redirectly to a location where they can download the necessary patches. Once their machine is patched, they will automatically be granted access back to the network. This is a fairly common occurance, only right now it is being done manually by support staff, and is costing these institutions far more.
In addition, currently only windows systems can run the trust agent software. I can't believe that cisco would have a default setting that denies all devices that are not running the software, hell, that would mean you couldn't even attach a printer to the network. Instead, it's probably intelligent enough to identify the operating system the newly attached machine is running, and if its not windows, grant it normal network access.
Cisco devices are typically extremely flexible in their configuration. If one of these devices denys your Linux box access to the network, don't yell at Cisco for building the router, yell at the idiot who configured it.
Actually a huge number of "normal" animations are already being done by computer. One example which many people here may be familiar with is the Dilbert series. Another even more extreme example is Southpark which is done using Maya, something you'd never know from looking at it.
One good indicator that computers and 3d modeling is part of the process is how the background moves. Traditionally drawn cartoons often have static backgrounds. They may move, but very rarely does the angle at which you're viewing the background change. This is why cartoons today typically have much more dynamic environments than they did in the past. Going back to the Dilbert example, the opening credits of the show demonstrate this extremely well.
I live in Vancouver, and one thing that you need to realize is that this system is going to be implemented in night clubs, not pubs. Line ups for clubs downtown on Friday or Saturday nights are already routinely an hour as early as 9pm, and so taking the time to swipe a drivers license isn't going to add anything to the overall time frame. In any case, its already policy for these bars to check everyone's ID, and as such everyone is already trained to be prepared and to not hold things up.
In the end, I actually think that this is a really good idea. There has been a growing problem with date rape drugs as of late, and measures such as this will help at least a little bit to make the bars safer.
If you read the article very little information is actually garnered from swiping the license. The only information contained on the magnetic strip on BC drivers licenses is the same information that's physically printed out, including date of birth. Even if it does nothing for safety, this system will have help keep 16 year olds out of the bars since IDs will become that much more difficult to forge. That's not something I have a problem with.
Wow, I hadn't really thought about that, but you know what? I think you're right. According to their official announcement, a copy of the source code was made on Sept 19, only a few days before the delay was announced.
A lot of people commented on how adamant Value had been about their Sept. 30 release date, and how strange it was that only days prior to it they annouce a delay.
When these two things are considered together, it's just too much of a coincidence to think that they're unrelated.
What about Canada? We've got more land mass and far fewer people than the US, and we ranked a very respectable 3rd place, at 11.2 percent (compared to 21.3 in South Korea and 14.9 in Hong Kong). Pricing likely has something to do with it though, as from what I've heard the prices in the states are quite steep. Here in providers are offering "lite speed" packages with speeds 5-10 times faster than dial up, for as little as $25 Canadian per month .
Actually, Blizzard has already had their lemon, only unlike most gaming companies they did the right thing in dealing with it. For those who don't remember, the game in question was Warcraft Adventures, a cell shaded adventure game similar in concept to the old Sierra classics. Instead of releasing a sub-par game, knowing full well it would sell simply because of the brand name, the game was canceled:
What happened to Warcraft Adventures?
Following an intensive and very serious review of the game, Blizzard decided to stop development on Warcraft Adventures. We determined that, given the game's status and the rapidly changing technology of the industry, it would not be possible to complete development of the title within a reasonable time frame.
While this was an extremely difficult decision, we firmly believe that we cannot release a game that does not meet the exceptionally high standards that both our customers, and we, expect from the Blizzard label.
Stopping development on this game was not a decision that was taken lightly. It was a hard call to make, but each of us knows that it was the right choice. We hope that Warcraft fans will consider our track record and trust our judgment on ending the project.
The other thing that many people don't realize is that before they got into computer games, Blizzard successfully developed several popular titles on the SNES, including Lost Vikings, and one of my all time favorites, Rock and Roll Racing. Even if you do only count the craft and Diablo games as two distinct games, their library is much broader than you seem to realize.
I don't know if anyone else picked up on this, but one thing that is mentioned by CNN is that the sentence given was actually more than the prosecution recommended. I don't want to read into it too much, but I do find it interesting.
A slightly more detailed article is available from fox news. A couple interesting things noted here that aren't in the BBC article is that this was the seventh and final test, and that in addition to the camera lens popping off, several other guages which were measuring the experiment were damaged from the impact.
Personally, I'm with the 'bulkhead without a door school of thought (The pilots have a seperate external door. That makes it impossible to physically coerce pilots, because you can't get to them. Problem solved.
The problem with this idea, besides emotional coercion as others have mentioned, is that airplane doors are actually designed to blow out so that pressure can be quickly equalized throughout the cabin and cockpit. This is the reason that the old cockpit doors were so flimsy, and is the reason why even the new security doors are equipped with blow out panels. Unless the cockpit and cabin were individually pressurized putting a solid wall in place would be a huge safely risk.
Gotta love the news post for that old comic:
(Our server never quite recovered from beatings sustained at the hands of News.com or Slashdot, the links from whom (while very much appreciated!) acted upon our frail machine like so many jackhammers. I'm told by our server techs that we'd seen over two-hundred thousand unique ip's in under two hours - but even given the caliber of the weapons aimed against us, I feared that the site had attracted the loathsome skr1pt k1dd13, who, fixing his perverse attentions upon our devices, proceeded to fuck them into oblivion.
Did you actually let the page load past the first few pictures? If not, you missed out on the interesting ones. I don't see any massive exhausts, wings or stickers on this vehicle. If anything, it's the exact opposite of the typical rice rocket.
The $10 a month is far from confirmed. From the faq you linked to:
"Pricing plans beyond the $49.99 for 12 months hasn't been revealed yet by Microsoft."
At this point $10 is just speculation, there are absolutely no facts to back up that number. Another possibility which is being publised at least as often as the $5 or $10 a month rumors, is that the subscription would continue to cost $50 per year, the exact same price as the startup kit. Think about it, why would someone pay $120 for a year, when instead they could simply pick up another $50 kit and the year of service that's included? It doesn't make any sense.
You know, this information just HAD to be there... According to this press release the database mentioned is approximately 60 LOCs. There's just no escaping them!
"The half million Gigabytes of data in the BABAR database, printed out, would fill one billion books. That's nearly 60 times the number of books in the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world."
Why not include all of what you're quoting?
'Big numbers are par for the course at the Alexandria center, where analysts detect more than 15,000 discrete "security events" against Symantec's clients every day. About 4,000 are deemed real hacker attacks after further analysis, company officials said.'
Intrusion detection systems often return a fair number of false positive hits. All they're saying here is that their system returns 16,000 positive results, a little over 25% of which are actually cause for concern.
I wasn't going to get into the details of specifically why this was needed, but since a large number of the posts have been asking the question, I will explain. An AC actually indirectly hit the nail on the head, though he was accusing me of fraud in the process: "If you are seriously interested in archiving, you should save off the files in a non-updatable format" For legal reasons, our company is required to maintain a permanent archive of some specific documents. In this case, permanent does not mean ten or even twenty years, but one hundred. This being the case, the archiving is actually being done to an analogue medium. If you are curious, we are using a type of microfilm which is specifically designed to be readable for up to 500 years. Microfilm also has the added benefit of being relatively unalterable once developed, unlike a digital file. The need for doc to text conversion comes from the hardware which performs the actual archiving. It only accepts text files or specially formatted TIFF images as input. The text files are not the actual format in which the documents will be archived, but they are a necessary intermediate step in the archiving process.
Is it just me, or is the Water vs JSP example highly biased? I mean I'm as interested as anybody else about a new programming language, but the use of such an example really made me question if finding out more was worth my time.
For those of you who didn't read the document, "The task is to create a new HTML tag with a single parameter, message, and use the tag from an HTML page to insert the chunk of HTML"
Essentially what they want to do is define a new html tag and have it spit out a message. Not surprisingly, this is exactly how water seems to worry. According to their findings, this task can be completed in a single 7 line file in water, while using JSP it requires 4 files, 65 lines of code and 4 languages! While I'm not experienced with JSP, from looking at the code not only do they seem to be using a hugely complex solution for a simple problem, but a lot of unnecessary code as well. This doesn't even take into account the fact that they are counting blank lines as lines of code, and are putting every single opening and closing curly bracket on iits own line!
I can't speak for the rest of you, but I would be much more interested in seeing some comparative examples which try to solve a problem in the manner best suited to each language. This nonsense of implementing a single highly specific and language biased solution to a very simple task just doesn't cut it.
Projects such of this could actually make Microsoft happy, and may even help them out in the long run!
It's been mentioned time and time again that the current Xbox is only the first step in Microsoft trying to take over the living room. Their goal seems to be having all home entertainment such as TV, movies and games run through a single system, which they control. Media player systems such as this show that there actually is interest in the Xbox being used in this way, and might actually help perpare consumers for the introduction of the Microsoft total entertainment center when it does come to market.
Notice the additional space inserted into the URL. Here's a link to the reply from Microsoft: http://asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&Pos tID=88049.
Please read this to get both sides of the story, it brings several items to light, including an overview of the purpose of the contact.
The cost of the CD may be less, but let's be realistic. Even if it costs Microsoft a hundred times less to manufacture a CD than it does Redhat, this savings amounts to mere cents per copy. The vast majority of costs for any software product come from development and support, not distribution.
While this is true, it's really not that big of a deal. The article states that for this attack to work from outside your internal network the remote management functionality needs to be turned on. I own a Linksys router and know for a fact that this feature is not enabled by default. Chances are that those knowledgible enough to require, and enable, remote management will be the same tiny percentage who will bother to update their firmware.
While the attack will still work from inside the local network regardless of the state of the remote management function, it's really not a danger. The worst that someone could really do is DOS themselves, and wouldn't that be a shame...
It should be noted that according to the article, the $25 million will be used as incentive for 325 key sales and service employees, not executives. So not only is this money not going to the executives, but it only works out to be approximately $75,000 per person. While that's hardly chump change, it seems more like an attempt to stop key employees from jumping ship and causing the company even more turmoil than a corporate pay-off.
The girl featured on that specific page of the Maxim site plays T'Pol on Enterprise. I believe the poster was alluding to the idea that she is the only thing which makes the show worth watching.