Wireless hard drives sound cool, but what about latency and lag?
I'm on the internet wirelessly, I do get latency problems from time to time due to the extra "hop".
As far as I'm concerned the internet is like a wireless hard drive to me.:) Ok, a wireless network of networks.
Graphics at a decent FPS rate does require huge amounts of bandwidth at a decent screen resolution. Just look at how online video (eg Youtube) is buffered before it starts.
A wireless network at speeds whereby wireless hard drives and wireless displays sounds very interesting, especially in say a university library where the units people use would just need to be basically a display, keyboard and mouse if they could access the servers quickly enough wirelessly. How many computers could or would be supported with wireless hard drive access (and/or wireless displays) before the available bandwidth would be used up?
Wired networks have their downsides (especially if damaged or cut accidentally), but I've generally found them to be faster and have a lower error rate.
So what are other people's experiences of the issues?
When I was on holiday in the States in 2005, I used payphones and I bought a friend a pre-paid (pay as you go) cellphone.
However I bought it with a credit card (which does tie it to me). In 2005 I also bought a pre-paid (100 Euro credit) cellphone with cash.
The problem with cellphones is that you need an awful lot of dimes to make an international call.:)
Our European cellphones (unless they're dual band pricy models) don't work in the states and vice-versa.
Considering cellphones set off metal detectors, I'd quite happily leave a "useless in America" mobile phone behind with me and just buy one locally. If the Yankee government wants to listen in to my calls (especially if I'm calling family in the UK), so be it! I've got nothing to hide; and they have my fingerprints/photo from immigration as we Brits travel under the US VISIT/visa waiver programme.
You should never say anything over a phone line you don't want recorded (as it could be at the other end) or overheard anyway... same goes for email.
The truth of the matter is; although we're just watching a video. Personally, I'd prefer to go down to the park, river or sea and go fishing; interacting with a real person rather than a fantasy boy.
I was born at the start of the 1980s. I got my first computer (Commodore 64) for my 7th birthday. I've spend a lot of my life in front of a screen, growing up with video games as a pastime, then working in computer troubleshooting and website design.
I also play music professionally. The latter I prefer as you get a reaction from an audience, whether singing or clapping. A computer can't provide the human touch yet, but artificial intelligence has come a long way from the robot dogs, a robot violin player and Sony's robot that can walk.
Sooner or later, we'll move beyond a computer's AI capacity being like a child or baby. What will we do when artificial intelligences have a similar neural capacity to humans? Will we treat artificial life as comparable to human; or continue to see human life as more important?
More of society's decisions are being taken by machine, not by people (although people programmed the machines). Where will it all end? Will we have robots like those that Isaac Asimov described with laws drummed into them not to harm people? Will we explore space, the universe and the deep ocean with artificial intelligences in places we can't go? Will we put machines at work to come up with cures to cancer, diseases or social problems eg poverty or famine?
Or in the end would we prefer our societies to be governed by people as our political systems have for generations? What will we do when artificial intelligences get physical bodies and they can pass the Turing Test?
All these are things that may come to pass in my lifetime; alternatively we may just screw things up and make the human race extinct by complete ecosystem collapse (or at least enough that the human race is made extinct).
That's why manned colonies on the Moon and Mars are essential; as a failsafe in case Planet Earth should face a major disaster (meteroid strike, global warming, biodiversity problems, problems affecting human fertility).
Try the Human Rights Act 1998, specifically section 1 (1a):-
(1) In this Act “the Convention rights” means the rights and fundamental freedoms set out in—
(a) Articles 2 to 12 and 14 of the Convention,
Article 10 of the Convention is:-
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
There is also established caselaw on this issue such as the famous Maclibel case (Macdonalds tried to sue leafletters for libel; I think the leafletters were eventually paid compensation - but it ended up going to a European Court from what I remember)...
However section 10 (1) is balanced with 10 (2).
Obviously in this case there is a public interest in reporting the proceedings of parliament. As a journalist myself I know how to phrase the truth and report the facts to avoid a libel lawsuit.
Even scientists need pet names for things. Anyway Waldo is supposed to detect red tides. So Waldo is probably wherever there is a red tide (or somewhere one is likely to be). Look for te red tide, find Waldo!
Mind you Waldo might be out finding the red and white striped tide in order to hide better.:P
"The second is that private meetings, foreign pressures and lobbyist drafted bills is how law gets made in Canada."
Isn't politics pretty much like this everywhere though? If politicians don't actually listen to people and take actions (albeit yes they should be able to discriminate between ordinary Joe citizen and a paid lobbyist) - what exactly are they there for?
The movie industry nievely thinks that having an extra law will reduce the piracy - it won't - even with greater enforcement the pirates will find another less risky way (like pirating the free DVDs handed out to the Oscar judges etc).
Whether it was legally wrong or not doesn't matter. If people perceive it as ethically wrong or morally wrong a blaze of publicity about it in the press will hurt Yahoo's reputation (and probably stock price) - hopefully making Yahoo learn a valuable lesson.
It's usually not a majority that elected the elected representatives either. In the local government elections here only 13.3% of those who could vote voted for the winning candidate (which with a turnout of 22.4% was enough).
Here it's called tort law. Basically what that means is that even if you agree to a contract with illegal clauses (eg you waive your legal rights etc) it's not enforceable.
However it's a David vs Goliath battle when you have the little guy versus big corporate behemoth. If a corporation has a commercial interest in doing everything they can to drag a court case out (eg if they lose they'll lose more money than it costs them in legal fees) they will.
It's not society that decides it's their elected representatives. However, most - 99% of people don't know the actual texts of the laws surrounding what they're doing. If you look at the actual laws you'll find all sorts of caveats and safeguards that unfortunately when implemented by bureaucrats disappear.
A lot of laws are generally ignored and not particularly well enforced anyway - for instance speed limits here in the UK.
Reasonable attempts include turning the inbuilt firewall in Windows on or running a software firewall as well as antivirus software.
This would provide about three warnings that a compromised machine is being used to spam (and I've cleaned a few of these in my time as a freelance computer geek)...
Science fiction becomes science fact. The American armed forces already have vehicles that can drive themselves - I remember at least one story by Asimov of a world where cars drove themselves. In that - technology got to the stage where the manufacturers insisted the government legislate compulsory AI driving and accidents disappeared overnight.
The other posters fears about unaccounted for circumstances are unfounded. If there was some problem with the program it would default to safe mode (eg car would stop).
We have autopilot on planes (in fact even planes that can land and take off by themselves), we have satellite navigation, we have remote driving of cars - so why not go the whole way and allow an artificial intelligence to do it?
The problem is programs thrive on predictibility, even with built in radar, two camera so it can judge distance etc the drivers on the road are always going to act in a way the computer can't predict (foreigners trying to drive on the wrong side, drunk drivers, drivers talking on their cellphone or listening to the radio distracting them from driving). Like TECAS in planes I'm sure AI could now be used as a collision warning/automatic avoidance system in cars which would massively reduce accidents (even if only one car in a potential collision was fitted).
Computers have evolved in leaps and bounds, whereas the car with slight modifications (legal requirement on miles per a gallon, safety standards, no man with red flag and 4mph speed limit any more) has stayed the same for nearly 100 years. It's time that hardware manufacturers realised that they can increase their market share by showing they care about the safety of their consumers (drivers) beyond just airbags by concentrating on the software than runs the car as well as the contest as to top speed etc...
A lot of the more advanced features in cars are seen at the professional racing circuit though. As cars are now made by robots, you could even have an AI program design a car by evolutionary programming - I wonder what would it would turn out (obviously dependent on the parameters - eg fuel efficient or hybrid (solar/gas, LPG/petrol), seats so many people, cost of production etc). It's time there was innovation (eg electric car) in the auto market and we realised that the price of oil is only going to go up (as well as the environmental consequences to our health - noticed the rise in asthma in Britain and America anyone - think traffic pollution might be related or an exacerbating factor)?
It has stuff about mining ores (such as iron ore) to use for industrial purposes (eg steel production, making tools, swords etc). See the Ruhr Valley (or Ruhr Area) in Germany as an example of this. Also the usual stuff about cutting down trees, putting them through saw mills to make planks, using the planks to build buildings.
I'm talking about the original Settlers here on the Amiga 1200 in the mid 1990s, I'm not sure what the later incarnations are like and how educational they are.
It's more "snappy quote for journalists" speak the press release author/article writer has converted it to. 60 gigabytes is less than the size of most people's hard drives.
You should see how much memory predicting the weather takes and that's just 4 dimensions (not 248!)
Hmm with a later post about video games being used instead of books in schools and some research I watched once about pigs playing video games for food rewards, it's a pity we can't train drug sniffing dogs using a computer capable of producing smells and a VR helmet.
Then again virtual reality would really confuse a dog that still doesn't quite understand it's own reflection isn't another dog in the mirror.:P
Suits me - I run a popular website about video games. However on a more serious note, some of what I learnt while playing games such as Settlers and Civilisation were of use in say geography classes. Being 26 though now I've kind of grown out of video games somewhat as I lack the imagination I had when I was younger (yes when games required imagination in the 80s/90s and weren't so near photo realistic!)
Firstly why bother with the arrest/charge/trial stage. It's easier just to imprison people.
Oh and the false charges thing can be used to deport people who are foreign too. Alternatively you can just do what the police did on the London Underground and shoot someone innocent dead.
You see Western Democracies have moved on from the rule of law - to the rule of fear where there are plenty of innocent people imprisoned who haven't been arrested or charged, plenty of innocent people held on false charges and plenty of innocent people arrested on false charges, then found guilty despite the lack of evidence.
That's just life in a Western democracy in the early 21st Century really! (Note - poster is referring to British/Irish/American governments here).
I run a gaming website and have to declare a conflict of interest as IGN is an advertiser. However IGN.com gets about a million visitors a day, so what they write tends to be believed and get a larger circulation than most sites.
I first played Final Fantasy when it was up to version 7. Then it was a great game - although they'd already had 6 attempts at it.;) I'm sure the later incarnations were even more polished. It was good in that it was a non-linear game (although some of the puzzles were so obscure you needed to read the walkthrough).
As to Castlevania, I never had a NES so didn't get to play it - I hear it was a classic though.
this bank account pin number? Does this mean that in England they have some kind of all-powerful PIN that unlocks whole bank accounts? In France the PIN is specific to the card, the bank wouldn't know w
For internet and telephone banking there is a 6-10 digit number (at least with HSBC) chosen by the account holder for verification.
Once you have someone's DOB, bank security number you can basically do anything with the account (eg wire the money anywhere else in the world). They usually ask for three digits of the security number making it a 1 in 1000 chance somebody would guess it by mere chance. Other banks have different security methods. Some insist on you entering a PIN number (different to the cards) for internet banking.
However PIN numbers are bad because:-
They're kept the same (how many people do you know who change their PIN after every transaction)?
They can be observed by anybody behind you in an ATM or in a shop queue.
The bank does (and has) held people liable on the basis that:-
a) only the accountholder knows the pin so QED
you must have told them the PIN number or been careless so you are liable (even in say amounts of £7,500).
No bank or organisation seems terribly bothered about fraud as it seems it's not in their financial interests to investigate it fully (especially when there's an international element/proof required in a court of law side) to it. Sadly it seems it's always down to the accountholder to prove they weren't either:-
a) present during the transaction or b) the card was lost/stolen
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That's great, is it your original or copied and pasted? Any chance of a Youtube version or an mp3? :D
Wireless hard drives sound cool, but what about latency and lag?
I'm on the internet wirelessly, I do get latency problems from time to time due to the extra "hop".
As far as I'm concerned the internet is like a wireless hard drive to me. :) Ok, a wireless network of networks.
Graphics at a decent FPS rate does require huge amounts of bandwidth at a decent screen resolution. Just look at how online video (eg Youtube) is buffered before it starts.
A wireless network at speeds whereby wireless hard drives and wireless displays sounds very interesting, especially in say a university library where the units people use would just need to be basically a display, keyboard and mouse if they could access the servers quickly enough wirelessly. How many computers could or would be supported with wireless hard drive access (and/or wireless displays) before the available bandwidth would be used up?
Wired networks have their downsides (especially if damaged or cut accidentally), but I've generally found them to be faster and have a lower error rate.
So what are other people's experiences of the issues?
When I was on holiday in the States in 2005, I used payphones and I bought a friend a pre-paid (pay as you go) cellphone.
However I bought it with a credit card (which does tie it to me). In 2005 I also bought a pre-paid (100 Euro credit) cellphone with cash.
The problem with cellphones is that you need an awful lot of dimes to make an international call. :)
Our European cellphones (unless they're dual band pricy models) don't work in the states and vice-versa.
Considering cellphones set off metal detectors, I'd quite happily leave a "useless in America" mobile phone behind with me and just buy one locally. If the Yankee government wants to listen in to my calls (especially if I'm calling family in the UK), so be it! I've got nothing to hide; and they have my fingerprints/photo from immigration as we Brits travel under the US VISIT/visa waiver programme.
You should never say anything over a phone line you don't want recorded (as it could be at the other end) or overheard anyway... same goes for email.
The truth of the matter is; although we're just watching a video. Personally, I'd prefer to go down to the park, river or sea and go fishing; interacting with a real person rather than a fantasy boy.
I was born at the start of the 1980s. I got my first computer (Commodore 64) for my 7th birthday. I've spend a lot of my life in front of a screen, growing up with video games as a pastime, then working in computer troubleshooting and website design.
I also play music professionally. The latter I prefer as you get a reaction from an audience, whether singing or clapping. A computer can't provide the human touch yet, but artificial intelligence has come a long way from the robot dogs, a robot violin player and Sony's robot that can walk.
Sooner or later, we'll move beyond a computer's AI capacity being like a child or baby. What will we do when artificial intelligences have a similar neural capacity to humans? Will we treat artificial life as comparable to human; or continue to see human life as more important?
More of society's decisions are being taken by machine, not by people (although people programmed the machines). Where will it all end? Will we have robots like those that Isaac Asimov described with laws drummed into them not to harm people? Will we explore space, the universe and the deep ocean with artificial intelligences in places we can't go? Will we put machines at work to come up with cures to cancer, diseases or social problems eg poverty or famine?
Or in the end would we prefer our societies to be governed by people as our political systems have for generations? What will we do when artificial intelligences get physical bodies and they can pass the Turing Test?
All these are things that may come to pass in my lifetime; alternatively we may just screw things up and make the human race extinct by complete ecosystem collapse (or at least enough that the human race is made extinct).
That's why manned colonies on the Moon and Mars are essential; as a failsafe in case Planet Earth should face a major disaster (meteroid strike, global warming, biodiversity problems, problems affecting human fertility).
Try the Human Rights Act 1998, specifically section 1 (1a):-
(1) In this Act “the Convention rights” means the rights and fundamental freedoms set out in—
(a) Articles 2 to 12 and 14 of the Convention,
Article 10 of the Convention is:-
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
There is also established caselaw on this issue such as the famous Maclibel case (Macdonalds tried to sue leafletters for libel; I think the leafletters were eventually paid compensation - but it ended up going to a European Court from what I remember)...
However section 10 (1) is balanced with 10 (2).
Obviously in this case there is a public interest in reporting the proceedings of parliament. As a journalist myself I know how to phrase the truth and report the facts to avoid a libel lawsuit.
Even scientists need pet names for things. Anyway Waldo is supposed to detect red tides. So Waldo is probably wherever there is a red tide (or somewhere one is likely to be). Look for te red tide, find Waldo!
Mind you Waldo might be out finding the red and white striped tide in order to hide better. :P
If you read the article you'll find it's not the police, but ex-cops they've hired and dressed up to make them look like the police.
"The second is that private meetings, foreign pressures and lobbyist drafted bills is how law gets made in Canada."
Isn't politics pretty much like this everywhere though? If politicians don't actually listen to people and take actions (albeit yes they should be able to discriminate between ordinary Joe citizen and a paid lobbyist) - what exactly are they there for?
The movie industry nievely thinks that having an extra law will reduce the piracy - it won't - even with greater enforcement the pirates will find another less risky way (like pirating the free DVDs handed out to the Oscar judges etc).
Whether it was legally wrong or not doesn't matter. If people perceive it as ethically wrong or morally wrong a blaze of publicity about it in the press will hurt Yahoo's reputation (and probably stock price) - hopefully making Yahoo learn a valuable lesson.
Now I know who writes the Captchas - it can only be the writing of his noodly appendage (Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster).
Seems the Flick(e)r of free speech in China is slowly being extinguished by the authoritarian approach of the regime.
It's usually not a majority that elected the elected representatives either. In the local government elections here only 13.3% of those who could vote voted for the winning candidate (which with a turnout of 22.4% was enough).
The majority don't vote at all.
Here it's called tort law. Basically what that means is that even if you agree to a contract with illegal clauses (eg you waive your legal rights etc) it's not enforceable.
However it's a David vs Goliath battle when you have the little guy versus big corporate behemoth. If a corporation has a commercial interest in doing everything they can to drag a court case out (eg if they lose they'll lose more money than it costs them in legal fees) they will.
Well not entirely a monopoly on virtual land sales, I think there's someone who sells people title deeds to bits of the moon.
It's not society that decides it's their elected representatives. However, most - 99% of people don't know the actual texts of the laws surrounding what they're doing. If you look at the actual laws you'll find all sorts of caveats and safeguards that unfortunately when implemented by bureaucrats disappear.
A lot of laws are generally ignored and not particularly well enforced anyway - for instance speed limits here in the UK.
Reasonable attempts include turning the inbuilt firewall in Windows on or running a software firewall as well as antivirus software.
This would provide about three warnings that a compromised machine is being used to spam (and I've cleaned a few of these in my time as a freelance computer geek)...
Science fiction becomes science fact. The American armed forces already have vehicles that can drive themselves - I remember at least one story by Asimov of a world where cars drove themselves. In that - technology got to the stage where the manufacturers insisted the government legislate compulsory AI driving and accidents disappeared overnight.
The other posters fears about unaccounted for circumstances are unfounded. If there was some problem with the program it would default to safe mode (eg car would stop).
We have autopilot on planes (in fact even planes that can land and take off by themselves), we have satellite navigation, we have remote driving of cars - so why not go the whole way and allow an artificial intelligence to do it?
The problem is programs thrive on predictibility, even with built in radar, two camera so it can judge distance etc the drivers on the road are always going to act in a way the computer can't predict (foreigners trying to drive on the wrong side, drunk drivers, drivers talking on their cellphone or listening to the radio distracting them from driving). Like TECAS in planes I'm sure AI could now be used as a collision warning/automatic avoidance system in cars which would massively reduce accidents (even if only one car in a potential collision was fitted).
Computers have evolved in leaps and bounds, whereas the car with slight modifications (legal requirement on miles per a gallon, safety standards, no man with red flag and 4mph speed limit any more) has stayed the same for nearly 100 years. It's time that hardware manufacturers realised that they can increase their market share by showing they care about the safety of their consumers (drivers) beyond just airbags by concentrating on the software than runs the car as well as the contest as to top speed etc...
A lot of the more advanced features in cars are seen at the professional racing circuit though. As cars are now made by robots, you could even have an AI program design a car by evolutionary programming - I wonder what would it would turn out (obviously dependent on the parameters - eg fuel efficient or hybrid (solar/gas, LPG/petrol), seats so many people, cost of production etc). It's time there was innovation (eg electric car) in the auto market and we realised that the price of oil is only going to go up (as well as the environmental consequences to our health - noticed the rise in asthma in Britain and America anyone - think traffic pollution might be related or an exacerbating factor)?
It has stuff about mining ores (such as iron ore) to use for industrial purposes (eg steel production, making tools, swords etc). See the Ruhr Valley (or Ruhr Area) in Germany as an example of this. Also the usual stuff about cutting down trees, putting them through saw mills to make planks, using the planks to build buildings.
I'm talking about the original Settlers here on the Amiga 1200 in the mid 1990s, I'm not sure what the later incarnations are like and how educational they are.
It's more "snappy quote for journalists" speak the press release author/article writer has converted it to. 60 gigabytes is less than the size of most people's hard drives.
You should see how much memory predicting the weather takes and that's just 4 dimensions (not 248!)
Hmm with a later post about video games being used instead of books in schools and some research I watched once about pigs playing video games for food rewards, it's a pity we can't train drug sniffing dogs using a computer capable of producing smells and a VR helmet.
:P
Then again virtual reality would really confuse a dog that still doesn't quite understand it's own reflection isn't another dog in the mirror.
Suits me - I run a popular website about video games. However on a more serious note, some of what I learnt while playing games such as Settlers and Civilisation were of use in say geography classes. Being 26 though now I've kind of grown out of video games somewhat as I lack the imagination I had when I was younger (yes when games required imagination in the 80s/90s and weren't so near photo realistic!)
Firstly why bother with the arrest/charge/trial stage. It's easier just to imprison people.
Oh and the false charges thing can be used to deport people who are foreign too. Alternatively you can just do what the police did on the London Underground and shoot someone innocent dead.
You see Western Democracies have moved on from the rule of law - to the rule of fear where there are plenty of innocent people imprisoned who haven't been arrested or charged, plenty of innocent people held on false charges and plenty of innocent people arrested on false charges, then found guilty despite the lack of evidence.
That's just life in a Western democracy in the early 21st Century really! (Note - poster is referring to British/Irish/American governments here).
I run a gaming website and have to declare a conflict of interest as IGN is an advertiser. However IGN.com gets about a million visitors a day, so what they write tends to be believed and get a larger circulation than most sites.
I first played Final Fantasy when it was up to version 7. Then it was a great game - although they'd already had 6 attempts at it. ;) I'm sure the later incarnations were even more polished. It was good in that it was a non-linear game (although some of the puzzles were so obscure you needed to read the walkthrough).
As to Castlevania, I never had a NES so didn't get to play it - I hear it was a classic though.
this bank account pin number? Does this mean that in England they have some kind of all-powerful PIN that unlocks whole bank accounts? In France the PIN is specific to the card, the bank wouldn't know w
For internet and telephone banking there is a 6-10 digit number (at least with HSBC) chosen by the account holder for verification.
Once you have someone's DOB, bank security number you can basically do anything with the account (eg wire the money anywhere else in the world). They usually ask for three digits of the security number making it a 1 in 1000 chance somebody would guess it by mere chance. Other banks have different security methods. Some insist on you entering a PIN number (different to the cards) for internet banking.
However PIN numbers are bad because:-
They're kept the same (how many people do you know who change their PIN after every transaction)?
They can be observed by anybody behind you in an ATM or in a shop queue.
The bank does (and has) held people liable on the basis that:-
a) only the accountholder knows the pin so QED
you must have told them the PIN number or been careless so you are liable (even in say amounts of £7,500).
No bank or organisation seems terribly bothered about fraud as it seems it's not in their financial interests to investigate it fully (especially when there's an international element/proof required in a court of law side) to it. Sadly it seems it's always down to the accountholder to prove they weren't either:-
a) present during the transaction or
b) the card was lost/stolen