For my guestbook (sorry, no demonstration--the site that hosted my PHP is gone... setting it up at a new place later tonight), I use two layers of protection that work really well: One is a set of blacklisted words like "viagra" and "phentermine" that are only ever used by advertisers. The other uses a simple statistical method to determine whether the entry has a distribution of letters within an 0.995% confidence interval of a typical English entry. Surprisingly many spams fall victim to this test because they're either randomized to trick filters or degenerate from "Hi nice site buythis buythis buythis", and the repeated words trigger this filter.
I figured out it was being done by real people long ago. Ever seen that flash animation that goes "You are an idiot, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"? Glaring spam gets sent to that flash (I couldn't find the one that blares, "Hey everybody! I'm looking at gay porn!"). Part of my spam problem was that pissed-off spam slaves would simply enter lots of garbage just out of spite after getting that flash. My shiny new statistical filter takes care of that too!
What a great educational tool! What got me into programming was a kid was the fact that I could make games very similar in quality to my Atari games on our old 386. I wonder if they'll offer an API simple enough for beginners to pick up.
Absolutely--and why are 90% of high-end computers purchased? To play games!
What OS has the biggest game developer support?
If Apple wants to sell more of those high-end computers, maybe they should take a look at the demographics of people buying them. Is it a coincidence that at my undergraduate university the only computer lab with more than 2 Apple computers was the Art building's lab, with about 30 of them? You can't tell me that there was that big of a concurrent demand to use Apple's image-editing software which can't possibly be that much better than Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. The only time the room was ever full was when a class was in, and as one of those who took 'digital art' as a gen-ed I can tell you with authority that virtually any image editor would have been sufficient.
So why does the art faculty demand Apple computers?
Apple is selling to the demographic that wants style and has money, which is a lot smaller than the demographic which wants computer games and has money.
Wikipedia claims that partially resistant females have been found in the wild.
It seems like the Tasmanaian Devil population may be large enough and that this cancer will provide sufficient stress on the population (unlike the relatively benign dog version) that the devils will evolve an immunity. Look at the dog version. It's been around for thousands of years precisely because it's not particularly lethal. It's no surprise that these types of cancer seem to be so rare--the most dangerous ones were relatively quickly cured in healthy populations through evolution.
More like the fighting of piracy is only making it more attractive to pirate.
My brother bought a new game the other day, and it worked once. After the first run, StarForce decided that his media was not authentic anymore. I walked him through applying a no-DVD crack to it--and it works perfectly, plus he doesn't need the DVD. The game works better and more conveniently for pirates who would download an ISO and crack it, but the game doesn't work for a legitimate customer? This is not right.
If you're going to apply anti-piracy measures, do it right like Valve did with Steam. I don't have to keep track of any CDs, I can still share my games with my friends (by sharing account), I can still install it anywhere, and most importantly... it works!
You know, the only reason DDR doesn't look like dancing for many players is because a lot of people play in such a way as to nullify both the "dancing" and the "workout" element--what we refer to as "bar rapers". Yes. If you lay on the bar and flail your feet, you're going to get a great score but not impress anyone. Where's the fun in that? There's nothing like playing a round of doubles and turning around to find that half the food court has surrounded you in a huge semicircle and is applauding.
In fact, there's a fear of playing double-mode. I blame arcade operators for this. Doubles mode looks a lot more like dancing and feels a lot more smooth than many single-pad songs but in many arcades it's twice as expensive to play, but this doesn't have to be the case. The machines have a "Joint Premium" setting that the machine owners may change where you may utilize both pads for the cost of a single credit, which allows you to either play with a friend or play doubles mode. It's quite the crowd pleaser to do "Sakura" doubles, or if you play In The Groove many of the double songs have hands moves that look rather impressive.
ITG has been far more innovative than DDR in the science of making your feet lead the rest of your body to move in such a way as to actually look like dancing (as long as you're not humping the bar or otherwise nullifying the dancing element), and I can't say I'd be interested in playing a full-body dancing game for that reason. It is unnecessary in the sense that your body follows your feet naturally, and it seems like there would be a great deal of ambiguity in "scoring" or "passing" a song. No one wants to spend a dollar to play only to fail and be forced to give up your turn with a song or two remaining, so accurate scoring is key.
If you've never played one of these games, I strongly recommend you take a friend and try it at least once. That's how I got started--walking by a machine on the way to the movies and saying, "You know, for all the times I've made fun of this game I've never tried it." You'll find yourself making an excuse to come back and play again and again.
"Hmm, I need some glue. Here we go. 'super' glue. That sounds about right." (Reading instructions while using glue) "...bonds instantly with skin..." (Enthusiasm at finding 'super' glue turns to horror upon realizing that I just glued my hands together.)
If you read the court decision, it says he had a video camera concealed in his shower to video tape people including foreign exchange students, one of which did testify at the trial, without their knowledge.
If they were underage at the time, this sounds exactly like my definition of making child pornography. While I agree that there should be different degrees of punishment for different degrees of a crime and that allowing an electronic crime to be raised to the next degree by choice of storage media is a dangerous precedent to set, this guy sounds guilty as charged to me.
I built my brother a computer about a year ago and he was deployed to Iraq 4 months ago. When one of my systems died 2 nights ago, I set up his as a replacement. The first thing I did was get the Windows updates for the last 4 months (he religiously updated his system). Before the updates finished downloading, an internet worm had already infected the system. If it's a Windows computer, you might want to download the updates separately and put them on a CD.
You know, I'm surprised the same didn't happen to me.
I worked as a software engineer once upon a time at a place where everyone hated me: they had literally the worst project manager of all time, who would do nothing but verbally abuse me and the other engineers under him and change specs every 10 minutes or so and blame the coders for not psychically detecting his changes. At one point I decided I'd had enough and pulled out his written specs from 24 hours ago, and ended up in a three-hour shouting match over, "Is this, or is this not exactly what is written in these specs?" When I went above his head to complain about him, I got much worse. Finally, I decided to forget the stock options, save my sanity and give my two weeks' notice in the form of, "after I finish this project, I quit": I expected the project to be complete enough to release a beta in about a month. Overnight, the project manager stopped making so many changes to the specs. The day I left, when I expected to be chased out the door by managers wielding pointy sticks, everyone came in to personally thank me for staying for the remainder of the project except the project manager. I absolutely didn't expect that.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that if you try to make a statement with the timing of your resignation, the message that you mean no harm is likely to come through.
"At a news conference in Washington, panel members estimated the cost of the new recommendations at $10 billion a year, a figure that may prove daunting to Congress in a time of tight budgets."
Very soon, advertising is going to change in a big way.
On TV, I'm seeing sizable commercial blocks with advertisements that say, "Advertise here!". I heard the same thing on the radio before I turned it off for good. A lot of websites are the same way: they just can't move banner ad space. Now we have far more people wanting to sell advertising than advertisers who are interested in buying it. When was the last time a commercial or banner ad influenced you to purchase something? I'd say that less than 1% of my big-ticket purchases and less than 5% of small purchases are affected by commercials or banners. When I want to know about a product, I google it and find articles or reviews--and as more people become internet-savvy, they do the same. If you don't want ads, there's nothing wrong with blocking them or not reading them. Contrary to what they want you to think, you are not "a thief" if you don't pay attention to the commercials or banners. This represents a failure on the advertiser's part to present a product you are interested in.
Advertisers are clearly getting wise to this phenomenon: as the "big brother" advertisers gain the ability to get more information about consumers, they are also targeting individual purchasers more aggressively. I keep getting coupons (not the general kind, but printed specifically for me with products that they guess I'd like) for substantial discounts from an outfit that I often purchase electronics from. They send them like clockwork and are so good at knowing what I want to buy that I've received perhaps one that I didn't actually use and the savings typically amount to $30-$50. One of my friends has a collection of books sent to him by car companies from when he was shopping for a sports car. Still another friend received a substantial amount of, strangely, KY and a display box of chewing gum in the mail. No word on whether that's affected his purchases.
The point is, they're getting smart. They have figured out that spending a dime a person to inform 50 people doesn't work as well as spending 5 dollars to inform one probable buyer. This targeted advertising is both bad and good: we get more free stuff and fewer ads that we are actually interested in at the expense of a lot of privacy. I, for one... am cautiously optimistic about our new advertising overlords.
That is sad! I used to hate driving through DC for the traffic, but look forward to it for the radio stations you had. Actually, I wondered what happened to some of my favorites last time I was down there.
First they took off Howard Stern in the morning. I had no reason to listen to the radio on the way to work because I don't like any other morning talk program (it's surprisingly hard to find a station that plays music in the morning). Next they took the three rock stations I liked (very classic rock, classic rock, and modern rock) and transitioned them all over to playing the same songs (mostly modern) but in different frequencies to justify the distinctions. Now I have no reason to listen to the radio om the way home. A friend offered to fix my radio for free when it broke. I asked, "Why? What would I listen to?"
So now you want to make DRM radio? Knock yourselves out! I don't care.
Unfortunately, the economics that seems to play out the most looks like the prisoner's dilemma: if just one person cheats, they do better than everyone else. Therefore, "rational players" will cheat.
I wish cheaters would recognize that the system works best for everyone when everyone plays fair--there's something unsatisfying about having uploaded 6 times the file's size before getting 10% of the entire file.
I was so proud of myself when I wrote a program to automate the use of my school's observatory. It not only kept the dome position in sync with the telescope, but allowed for remote operation of it.
Well, I set a computer up in there, got everything working, and wandered off for a few months. When I tried to use it next, I found that my program wasn't working. Checking the computer, I found that it wouldn't even start. After reinstalling the OS twice, I kept getting the same problem. Finally, I got a new computer from downstairs and set it up again, getting everything working.
Once again, I wandered off for a few months and tried again, finding the same issue had recurred. This time I opened up the computer... to find that the screws holding the motherboard to the case had rusted, making little rust-stalactites onto the motherboard.
You're forgetting that the Democrats have a patent on "unenforceable" or "pointless" laws. This is bipartisan legislation--it appeals to the right wing's morals and the left wing's pointlessness.
This is the worst tragedy--works disappearing entirely. It's a shame that it ever has to happen given the amout of data storage we have available and so cheaply.
Recently a friend asked if I could find a movie that was filmed in the 1970s in a town she just moved to.
Amazon tells me, "The manufacturer informs us that this is no longer in print." Ebay doesn't have it, nor does the movie rental place or TV or anywhere else (of course).
So I download it via BitTorrent, and behold! I get hits from law enforcement, MPAA, and all sorts of hostile IPs about every minute. Presumably, these people want to call me a thief for "stealing" something that isn't available at any price.
Who is the real thief? Me, who copies a movie that has all but disappeared, or those who would steal a piece of our culture?
(The movie was terrible, by the way. No wonder it wasn't available, but she did have fun pointing out all of the places she's been to.)
Slashdot Mirror
For my guestbook (sorry, no demonstration--the site that hosted my PHP is gone... setting it up at a new place later tonight), I use two layers of protection that work really well: One is a set of blacklisted words like "viagra" and "phentermine" that are only ever used by advertisers. The other uses a simple statistical method to determine whether the entry has a distribution of letters within an 0.995% confidence interval of a typical English entry. Surprisingly many spams fall victim to this test because they're either randomized to trick filters or degenerate from "Hi nice site buythis buythis buythis", and the repeated words trigger this filter.
I figured out it was being done by real people long ago. Ever seen that flash animation that goes "You are an idiot, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"? Glaring spam gets sent to that flash (I couldn't find the one that blares, "Hey everybody! I'm looking at gay porn!"). Part of my spam problem was that pissed-off spam slaves would simply enter lots of garbage just out of spite after getting that flash. My shiny new statistical filter takes care of that too!
~Ben
By the way, the discussion was about ownership in terms of copyright, not ownership in terms of posession.
~Ben
What a great educational tool! What got me into programming was a kid was the fact that I could make games very similar in quality to my Atari games on our old 386. I wonder if they'll offer an API simple enough for beginners to pick up.
~Ben
Absolutely--and why are 90% of high-end computers purchased? To play games!
What OS has the biggest game developer support?
If Apple wants to sell more of those high-end computers, maybe they should take a look at the demographics of people buying them. Is it a coincidence that at my undergraduate university the only computer lab with more than 2 Apple computers was the Art building's lab, with about 30 of them? You can't tell me that there was that big of a concurrent demand to use Apple's image-editing software which can't possibly be that much better than Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. The only time the room was ever full was when a class was in, and as one of those who took 'digital art' as a gen-ed I can tell you with authority that virtually any image editor would have been sufficient.
So why does the art faculty demand Apple computers?
Apple is selling to the demographic that wants style and has money, which is a lot smaller than the demographic which wants computer games and has money.
~Ben
Wikipedia claims that partially resistant females have been found in the wild.
It seems like the Tasmanaian Devil population may be large enough and that this cancer will provide sufficient stress on the population (unlike the relatively benign dog version) that the devils will evolve an immunity. Look at the dog version. It's been around for thousands of years precisely because it's not particularly lethal. It's no surprise that these types of cancer seem to be so rare--the most dangerous ones were relatively quickly cured in healthy populations through evolution.
~Ben
More like the fighting of piracy is only making it more attractive to pirate.
My brother bought a new game the other day, and it worked once. After the first run, StarForce decided that his media was not authentic anymore. I walked him through applying a no-DVD crack to it--and it works perfectly, plus he doesn't need the DVD. The game works better and more conveniently for pirates who would download an ISO and crack it, but the game doesn't work for a legitimate customer? This is not right.
If you're going to apply anti-piracy measures, do it right like Valve did with Steam. I don't have to keep track of any CDs, I can still share my games with my friends (by sharing account), I can still install it anywhere, and most importantly... it works!
~Ben
You know, the only reason DDR doesn't look like dancing for many players is because a lot of people play in such a way as to nullify both the "dancing" and the "workout" element--what we refer to as "bar rapers". Yes. If you lay on the bar and flail your feet, you're going to get a great score but not impress anyone. Where's the fun in that? There's nothing like playing a round of doubles and turning around to find that half the food court has surrounded you in a huge semicircle and is applauding.
In fact, there's a fear of playing double-mode. I blame arcade operators for this. Doubles mode looks a lot more like dancing and feels a lot more smooth than many single-pad songs but in many arcades it's twice as expensive to play, but this doesn't have to be the case. The machines have a "Joint Premium" setting that the machine owners may change where you may utilize both pads for the cost of a single credit, which allows you to either play with a friend or play doubles mode. It's quite the crowd pleaser to do "Sakura" doubles, or if you play In The Groove many of the double songs have hands moves that look rather impressive.
ITG has been far more innovative than DDR in the science of making your feet lead the rest of your body to move in such a way as to actually look like dancing (as long as you're not humping the bar or otherwise nullifying the dancing element), and I can't say I'd be interested in playing a full-body dancing game for that reason. It is unnecessary in the sense that your body follows your feet naturally, and it seems like there would be a great deal of ambiguity in "scoring" or "passing" a song. No one wants to spend a dollar to play only to fail and be forced to give up your turn with a song or two remaining, so accurate scoring is key.
If you've never played one of these games, I strongly recommend you take a friend and try it at least once. That's how I got started--walking by a machine on the way to the movies and saying, "You know, for all the times I've made fun of this game I've never tried it." You'll find yourself making an excuse to come back and play again and again.
~Ben
"Global warming did occur! Nuclear winter just cancelled it out."
News flash: If you don't follow safety procedures, equipment can kill you. Even if it's a robot.
~Ben
(Flashback to elementary school)
"Hmm, I need some glue. Here we go. 'super' glue. That sounds about right."
(Reading instructions while using glue)
"...bonds instantly with skin..."
(Enthusiasm at finding 'super' glue turns to horror upon realizing that I just glued my hands together.)
This product is going to be fun!
~Ben
If you read the court decision, it says he had a video camera concealed in his shower to video tape people including foreign exchange students, one of which did testify at the trial, without their knowledge.
If they were underage at the time, this sounds exactly like my definition of making child pornography. While I agree that there should be different degrees of punishment for different degrees of a crime and that allowing an electronic crime to be raised to the next degree by choice of storage media is a dangerous precedent to set, this guy sounds guilty as charged to me.
~Ben
I built my brother a computer about a year ago and he was deployed to Iraq 4 months ago. When one of my systems died 2 nights ago, I set up his as a replacement. The first thing I did was get the Windows updates for the last 4 months (he religiously updated his system). Before the updates finished downloading, an internet worm had already infected the system. If it's a Windows computer, you might want to download the updates separately and put them on a CD.
~Ben
You know, I'm surprised the same didn't happen to me.
I worked as a software engineer once upon a time at a place where everyone hated me: they had literally the worst project manager of all time, who would do nothing but verbally abuse me and the other engineers under him and change specs every 10 minutes or so and blame the coders for not psychically detecting his changes. At one point I decided I'd had enough and pulled out his written specs from 24 hours ago, and ended up in a three-hour shouting match over, "Is this, or is this not exactly what is written in these specs?" When I went above his head to complain about him, I got much worse. Finally, I decided to forget the stock options, save my sanity and give my two weeks' notice in the form of, "after I finish this project, I quit": I expected the project to be complete enough to release a beta in about a month. Overnight, the project manager stopped making so many changes to the specs. The day I left, when I expected to be chased out the door by managers wielding pointy sticks, everyone came in to personally thank me for staying for the remainder of the project except the project manager. I absolutely didn't expect that.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that if you try to make a statement with the timing of your resignation, the message that you mean no harm is likely to come through.
~Ben
If you think porn scars a kid... wait until he gets a girlfriend.
~Ben
I'm sure this has something to do with the manufacturer's tendency to use substandard spiders in the construction of n-Gages.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/11/26
~Ben
"At a news conference in Washington, panel members estimated the cost of the new recommendations at $10 billion a year, a figure that may prove daunting to Congress in a time of tight budgets."
1 3/1359253
$246 billion--largely earmarked for 'friends of Washington' projects, e.g. "Help Poor Big Oil Rebuild Their Refineries"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/
$10 billion--to keep the US competitive in science and develop our best talent? No way.
I guess you need to keep a pretty tight budget if your goal is to have as much left over to loot as possible.
~Ben
Very soon, advertising is going to change in a big way.
On TV, I'm seeing sizable commercial blocks with advertisements that say, "Advertise here!". I heard the same thing on the radio before I turned it off for good. A lot of websites are the same way: they just can't move banner ad space. Now we have far more people wanting to sell advertising than advertisers who are interested in buying it. When was the last time a commercial or banner ad influenced you to purchase something? I'd say that less than 1% of my big-ticket purchases and less than 5% of small purchases are affected by commercials or banners. When I want to know about a product, I google it and find articles or reviews--and as more people become internet-savvy, they do the same. If you don't want ads, there's nothing wrong with blocking them or not reading them. Contrary to what they want you to think, you are not "a thief" if you don't pay attention to the commercials or banners. This represents a failure on the advertiser's part to present a product you are interested in.
Advertisers are clearly getting wise to this phenomenon: as the "big brother" advertisers gain the ability to get more information about consumers, they are also targeting individual purchasers more aggressively. I keep getting coupons (not the general kind, but printed specifically for me with products that they guess I'd like) for substantial discounts from an outfit that I often purchase electronics from. They send them like clockwork and are so good at knowing what I want to buy that I've received perhaps one that I didn't actually use and the savings typically amount to $30-$50. One of my friends has a collection of books sent to him by car companies from when he was shopping for a sports car. Still another friend received a substantial amount of, strangely, KY and a display box of chewing gum in the mail. No word on whether that's affected his purchases.
The point is, they're getting smart. They have figured out that spending a dime a person to inform 50 people doesn't work as well as spending 5 dollars to inform one probable buyer. This targeted advertising is both bad and good: we get more free stuff and fewer ads that we are actually interested in at the expense of a lot of privacy. I, for one... am cautiously optimistic about our new advertising overlords.
~Ben
That is sad! I used to hate driving through DC for the traffic, but look forward to it for the radio stations you had. Actually, I wondered what happened to some of my favorites last time I was down there.
~Ben
First they took off Howard Stern in the morning. I had no reason to listen to the radio on the way to work because I don't like any other morning talk program (it's surprisingly hard to find a station that plays music in the morning). Next they took the three rock stations I liked (very classic rock, classic rock, and modern rock) and transitioned them all over to playing the same songs (mostly modern) but in different frequencies to justify the distinctions. Now I have no reason to listen to the radio om the way home. A friend offered to fix my radio for free when it broke. I asked, "Why? What would I listen to?"
So now you want to make DRM radio? Knock yourselves out! I don't care.
~Ben
Unfortunately, the economics that seems to play out the most looks like the prisoner's dilemma: if just one person cheats, they do better than everyone else. Therefore, "rational players" will cheat.
I wish cheaters would recognize that the system works best for everyone when everyone plays fair--there's something unsatisfying about having uploaded 6 times the file's size before getting 10% of the entire file.
~Ben
1) Install cat scooper on the front of the car.
2) Install cat fuel machine inside car.
3) Drive
4) Profit!!!
And to think I've been running them over for free for all these years!
~Ben
I was so proud of myself when I wrote a program to automate the use of my school's observatory. It not only kept the dome position in sync with the telescope, but allowed for remote operation of it.
Well, I set a computer up in there, got everything working, and wandered off for a few months. When I tried to use it next, I found that my program wasn't working. Checking the computer, I found that it wouldn't even start. After reinstalling the OS twice, I kept getting the same problem. Finally, I got a new computer from downstairs and set it up again, getting everything working.
Once again, I wandered off for a few months and tried again, finding the same issue had recurred. This time I opened up the computer... to find that the screws holding the motherboard to the case had rusted, making little rust-stalactites onto the motherboard.
You'd think they'd make them stainless.
~Ben
You're forgetting that the Democrats have a patent on "unenforceable" or "pointless" laws. This is bipartisan legislation--it appeals to the right wing's morals and the left wing's pointlessness.
(+1 Funny)
This is the worst tragedy--works disappearing entirely. It's a shame that it ever has to happen given the amout of data storage we have available and so cheaply.
Recently a friend asked if I could find a movie that was filmed in the 1970s in a town she just moved to.
Amazon tells me, "The manufacturer informs us that this is no longer in print." Ebay doesn't have it, nor does the movie rental place or TV or anywhere else (of course).
So I download it via BitTorrent, and behold! I get hits from law enforcement, MPAA, and all sorts of hostile IPs about every minute. Presumably, these people want to call me a thief for "stealing" something that isn't available at any price.
Who is the real thief? Me, who copies a movie that has all but disappeared, or those who would steal a piece of our culture?
(The movie was terrible, by the way. No wonder it wasn't available, but she did have fun pointing out all of the places she's been to.)
~Ben