I haven't played the game, but your description along with the description on the website reminds me quite a bit of the Metaverse in Snow Crash. Sounds like what people really need is to set aside some virtual space and build a few safe havens that everyone can enjoy in serenity, like public parks in the real world. That, and a Black Sun.
1) Don't put DSL to each unit - pull CAT-5 and run Ethernet. Your residents will have a much easier time getting hardware than with DSL, and your costs will be less.
It's pretty hard to qualify yourself as a DSL provider if you don't actually provide DSL connections. I imagine that's why the original poster planned to run DSL lines in the first place.
Yes, it does, or at least poor depth perception compared to you two-eyed freaks. I am also blind in one eye. I have depth perception thanks to stuff like shadows, the size of objects, etc. but still run into trouble sometimes in dark settings (where I can't judge shadows), or sometimes trying to catch a high-flying ball where the only background is the sky.
Actually a couple of weeks ago I decided to try out the managed directx 9 stuff, so I sat down and wrote a Tetris clone in C#.NET.
The first thing I noticed is that unlike previous versions of DirectX, the managed DirectX API is very different depending upon which language you are using. For example, in C# I used a lot of DirectDraw functions to draw all of my screen elements. When I had my game up and running, I looked into what it would take to port to C++. Well, there is no "DirectDraw" object in the C++ API. According to MS, all of those functions have been folded under the Direct3D object in C++. The names are mostly different, and some of the methods and properties in DirectDraw didn't seem to have directly equivilent methods in the C++ Direct3D API. My question is if they decided to put those functions under Direct3D, that's fine, but why did they make it completely different in C#? Why not just use the same API for all the languages? It's not like C# can't support it.
That, and the documentation was spartan at best. There were several pages of documentation which just had function headers with cryptic parameter type names as the arguments. It sorta reminded me of reading documentation for some of the OSS projects I've developed stuff with. Sure, you can figure it out through educated guesses trial-and-error, but as a developer that's not how I like to spend my time.
"Based on.NET technologies" is a far cry from being actual.NET code. Does AC2 require the installation of the.NET platform to run? If not, I kinda doubt it's actually using.NET anything under the hood.
It's wrong to walk into an open house and take things when you know the owners didn't want you in there. Whether or not the door was open, and whether or not there was a welcome mat on the porch, you damned well know you shouldn't walk into a stranger's house and take their things.
I am so sick of this house analogy being applied to wireless networks. It doesn't apply because a wireless network by its very nature is ephemeral. You can't broadcast a house.
It is more akin to having a conversation with someone. If you don't want others to hear what you're saying, then find a private place to do so (in other words, secure the network).
There are people (journalists, for example) who hang out in public places and listen to other people's conversations. It is your tough luck if you decide to disclose things in a public setting, and someone overhears, regardless of their intentions. You made the mistake of saying it in public, they just took advantage of it.
I agree wholeheartedly. There are wireless networks set up all over the place. My laptop has integrated 802.11b, and windows has the habit of automatically connecting to open networks. So, whenever I'm sitting in a coffee shop or wherever and open my laptop to work on something, I don't want the be held liable because some guy didn't configure his network properly. In most cases I don't even know who set up the WAP, let alone whether they intended for others to use it.
I played the "Cube Dude" game (a rip-off of pacman) w/Business Ethics. The game was absolutely awful. When you got to a blue box (e.g. power pill) you had to answer a question.
First off, the game was slow as hell whenever you had to switch between game/question screens, even though it loaded all the questions in advance. Then, after answering a question, you are returned to the game, but the arrow keys no longer respond! So, you have to sit around waiting for one of the pathetic "bosses" to come get you, where it restarts you in the center, and the arrow keys work again.
Second, the game's design and execution was mediocre at best, and that's being generous. I've seen better games on the back of cereal boxes, and no I'm not exaggerating.
The sad part is that there are plenty of games that make learning fun. Take a look at "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" for example. Even a Trivial Pursuit-style game can be fun, if it's implemented correctly. The stuff I saw on that website was definitely not fun, however.
I don't really believe that would be as big an issue as you imply. Spammers' Achilllies Heel is that they (or those who use them) *must* provide some tracable contact information in order to get your money. Sure, the email address might be spoofed, but since most people (especially law enforcement) already know this, it will probably be disregarded unless it happens to correlate with all the other evidence.
The same thing happens with snail mail, e.g. when someone sends a threatening letter. I'm sure they check out the return address on the envelope, interview the folks, etc., but they probably don't throw whoever's address in on there in jail unless there's plenty of other supporting evidence.
The ruling and article imply that the decision only applies to distributed p2p networks, leaving the folks who manage hubs on hub-based networks still responsible for every little thing that goes through their server, usually searches, user lists and chat content.
It's akin to saying Google is somehow responsible for any illegal content found using their search engine.
The Exertris Interactive Bike combines the fun and addictive quality of computer games with the health benefits of exercise. Using a concept called pedal-to-play, the player/biker is required to use their pedaling energy to power elements inside the game; all games are based on this premise. The bike's interactive gaming system is built on Microsoft Windows XP Embedded -- an operating system that delivers the power of Windows in componentized form and a toolset enabling rapid development of reliable devices.
You know, I've been wishing for something like this for a long time. I get bored out of my mind on traditional aerobic exercise equipment, and especially on days with crappy weather, I have no choice for getting a good aerobic workout indoors (except the obvious, uh...alternative, which is difficult when my fiance is several thousand miles away). For the same reason I enjoy playing DDR and Konami's excellent Mocap Boxing game. I play DDR at home as a workout alternative to treadmills, but Mocap Boxing is too expensive to do every day, but I still go play 5-6 games every once in a while. That game makes my arms really tired, but it's a great workout and really fun.
Actually most all-you-can-eat deals like that actively encourage you to fill up on the cheap stuff (e.g. potatoes, bread, etc.) before you get too many ribs/steaks/lobsters/crabs.
They always bring out the breads, followed by a salad, followed by possibly some other "appetizer". And, they wait long enough to ensure that you will eat all the stuff in front of you (as hungry people do, when they don't have a choice). And, let's not forget those drinks. You'll probably get several free refills on your beverage of choice (unless it's alchoholic, or a fresh squeezed fruit juice) before you ever see your meal. Liquids don't break down in your stomach like breads & veggies, so they're even better at taking up space.
By the time the main course is out, most people can only eat one or two servings, which ends up being quite profitable. If you really want to "stick it to the man" (I don't really see how a restaurant is taking advantage of you) then don't eat and drink all that "free" stuff they put on your table before the main course arrives.
they will be able to countersue and get access to spammer's internal documents
What exactly could they counter-sue for now, that they couldn't have sued for beforehand? Wrongful prosecution doesn't fit, since this is not a criminal case. I honestly can't think of anything that they couldn't have already sued for, which indicates that either the anti-spammers don't really have a case for a counter-suit, or they never bothered to take it to legal action in the past.
I did some further analysis on the author's data, and found that he made a couple of assumptions which I don't think are true.
I made a graph of the average availability score vs. the $/rental for each period, and got a nice,clean inversely proportional graph. That is, the higher you pay per rental (e.g. his mom was paying $10/movie during one period), the better your availability score. Where some of the data didn't *quite* fit (but was pretty close) was where the author (A) had rented fewer movies on his account during the first period due to signing up his wife, and his availability score got better. Well, it did get better, but not in line with a month-to-month average. If you extrapolate that he was probably renting at a similar high rate in the previous periods (a valid assumption, as he says as much in the article), and instead use a rolling average 2-3 previous rental periods, you get a perfect fit for all the data.
So, here are my conclusions:
#1, the availability is not ENTIRELY dependent upon how many movies you rented the previous rental period. It is actually a "rolling average" number of rentals over 2-3 previous rental periods.
#2, the author assumed it was based entirely on the number of rentals/period, but this is not true. Subjects who had upgraded accounts had noticably higher availability, but perhaps it was hard for the author to see this since he used the wrong figure of merit. The real figure of merit for Netflix is $/rental. After all, this is how they determine if they are losing money buy renting movies out to you.
The test subjects that were paying less than $2/movie were sucking it up with super bad availability scores, whereas the folks that had very low rentals and thus paid $10/rental, got much better availability. The actual curve fits an inverse proportional graph quite nicely, with the "sweet spot" being around $4-$5/movie. Even 6 rentals/period (with a standard $20 membership) still had very reasonable availability, but was on the high end of the asymptote.
You are mistaking copyright protection mechanisms with trade secrets, which are not the same thing.
The only thing that protects trade secrets (other than what I've outlined above) is the fact that you don't tell anyone. A famous example of a trade secret is the formula for Coke. If you can reverse-engineer the formula for coke, you are free to make and sell your own copycat product, assuming you can prove to a court of law that you didn't steal the formula. A lot of companies have done this, in fact, and the main thing that keeps Coke on top is brand recognition.
Copyright is a different story. Thanks to the DMCA, copyright is further protected in that if you have in place a protection mechanism (e.g. encryption) on your copyrighted material, it is illegal to reverse-engineer the protection mechanism, with a few exceptions.
You can't sue somebody for giving away trade secrets if those secrets were deduced using reverse engineering. There is no IP protection for trade secrets unless the secret is stolen, or given out in violation of a NDA (which is equivalent to stealing it).
Besides the fact that despite the analysis he could still be WRONG. It is only conjecture based on the set of evidence that's been compiled.
It is already possibly for anyone to remotely eavesdrop on regular phone lines using a technology built-in by the phone company. And, it's really fscking easy to use. You just dial the number, enter a short code (usually 5 digits), and enter the number you want to listen to (usually limited to a given prefix).
The "phreak" term for it is RemObS (short for Remote Observation System). These things really exist, contrary to many folks' opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Something stolen from UnixWare in the Linux kernel.
That's funny. Porno is something I thought was cool when I was 13, but now think of as immature. Of course to each their own.
This is exactly why I watch the show. I like to think of it as Enterprise, starring Jolene Blalock's Ass.
I haven't played the game, but your description along with the description on the website reminds me quite a bit of the Metaverse in Snow Crash. Sounds like what people really need is to set aside some virtual space and build a few safe havens that everyone can enjoy in serenity, like public parks in the real world. That, and a Black Sun.
It's pretty hard to qualify yourself as a DSL provider if you don't actually provide DSL connections. I imagine that's why the original poster planned to run DSL lines in the first place.
Yes, it does, or at least poor depth perception compared to you two-eyed freaks. I am also blind in one eye. I have depth perception thanks to stuff like shadows, the size of objects, etc. but still run into trouble sometimes in dark settings (where I can't judge shadows), or sometimes trying to catch a high-flying ball where the only background is the sky.
Actually the way they do that is hire really thin people as actors. Didn't you recognize Kate Moss as the shaman?
Yes there is.
Actually a couple of weeks ago I decided to try out the managed directx 9 stuff, so I sat down and wrote a Tetris clone in C# .NET.
The first thing I noticed is that unlike previous versions of DirectX, the managed DirectX API is very different depending upon which language you are using. For example, in C# I used a lot of DirectDraw functions to draw all of my screen elements. When I had my game up and running, I looked into what it would take to port to C++. Well, there is no "DirectDraw" object in the C++ API. According to MS, all of those functions have been folded under the Direct3D object in C++. The names are mostly different, and some of the methods and properties in DirectDraw didn't seem to have directly equivilent methods in the C++ Direct3D API. My question is if they decided to put those functions under Direct3D, that's fine, but why did they make it completely different in C#? Why not just use the same API for all the languages? It's not like C# can't support it.
That, and the documentation was spartan at best. There were several pages of documentation which just had function headers with cryptic parameter type names as the arguments. It sorta reminded me of reading documentation for some of the OSS projects I've developed stuff with. Sure, you can figure it out through educated guesses trial-and-error, but as a developer that's not how I like to spend my time.
"Based on .NET technologies" is a far cry from being actual .NET code. Does AC2 require the installation of the .NET platform to run? If not, I kinda doubt it's actually using .NET anything under the hood.
Right here.
I am so sick of this house analogy being applied to wireless networks. It doesn't apply because a wireless network by its very nature is ephemeral. You can't broadcast a house.
It is more akin to having a conversation with someone. If you don't want others to hear what you're saying, then find a private place to do so (in other words, secure the network).
There are people (journalists, for example) who hang out in public places and listen to other people's conversations. It is your tough luck if you decide to disclose things in a public setting, and someone overhears, regardless of their intentions. You made the mistake of saying it in public, they just took advantage of it.
I agree wholeheartedly. There are wireless networks set up all over the place. My laptop has integrated 802.11b, and windows has the habit of automatically connecting to open networks. So, whenever I'm sitting in a coffee shop or wherever and open my laptop to work on something, I don't want the be held liable because some guy didn't configure his network properly. In most cases I don't even know who set up the WAP, let alone whether they intended for others to use it.
I played the "Cube Dude" game (a rip-off of pacman) w/Business Ethics. The game was absolutely awful. When you got to a blue box (e.g. power pill) you had to answer a question.
First off, the game was slow as hell whenever you had to switch between game/question screens, even though it loaded all the questions in advance. Then, after answering a question, you are returned to the game, but the arrow keys no longer respond! So, you have to sit around waiting for one of the pathetic "bosses" to come get you, where it restarts you in the center, and the arrow keys work again.
Second, the game's design and execution was mediocre at best, and that's being generous. I've seen better games on the back of cereal boxes, and no I'm not exaggerating.
The sad part is that there are plenty of games that make learning fun. Take a look at "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" for example. Even a Trivial Pursuit-style game can be fun, if it's implemented correctly. The stuff I saw on that website was definitely not fun, however.
I don't really believe that would be as big an issue as you imply. Spammers' Achilllies Heel is that they (or those who use them) *must* provide some tracable contact information in order to get your money. Sure, the email address might be spoofed, but since most people (especially law enforcement) already know this, it will probably be disregarded unless it happens to correlate with all the other evidence.
The same thing happens with snail mail, e.g. when someone sends a threatening letter. I'm sure they check out the return address on the envelope, interview the folks, etc., but they probably don't throw whoever's address in on there in jail unless there's plenty of other supporting evidence.
The ruling and article imply that the decision only applies to distributed p2p networks, leaving the folks who manage hubs on hub-based networks still responsible for every little thing that goes through their server, usually searches, user lists and chat content.
It's akin to saying Google is somehow responsible for any illegal content found using their search engine.
You know, such gloves do exist. Maybe they're just big hockey fans.
You know, I've been wishing for something like this for a long time. I get bored out of my mind on traditional aerobic exercise equipment, and especially on days with crappy weather, I have no choice for getting a good aerobic workout indoors (except the obvious, uh...alternative, which is difficult when my fiance is several thousand miles away). For the same reason I enjoy playing DDR and Konami's excellent Mocap Boxing game. I play DDR at home as a workout alternative to treadmills, but Mocap Boxing is too expensive to do every day, but I still go play 5-6 games every once in a while. That game makes my arms really tired, but it's a great workout and really fun.
Actually most all-you-can-eat deals like that actively encourage you to fill up on the cheap stuff (e.g. potatoes, bread, etc.) before you get too many ribs/steaks/lobsters/crabs.
They always bring out the breads, followed by a salad, followed by possibly some other "appetizer". And, they wait long enough to ensure that you will eat all the stuff in front of you (as hungry people do, when they don't have a choice). And, let's not forget those drinks. You'll probably get several free refills on your beverage of choice (unless it's alchoholic, or a fresh squeezed fruit juice) before you ever see your meal. Liquids don't break down in your stomach like breads & veggies, so they're even better at taking up space.
By the time the main course is out, most people can only eat one or two servings, which ends up being quite profitable. If you really want to "stick it to the man" (I don't really see how a restaurant is taking advantage of you) then don't eat and drink all that "free" stuff they put on your table before the main course arrives.
What exactly could they counter-sue for now, that they couldn't have sued for beforehand? Wrongful prosecution doesn't fit, since this is not a criminal case. I honestly can't think of anything that they couldn't have already sued for, which indicates that either the anti-spammers don't really have a case for a counter-suit, or they never bothered to take it to legal action in the past.
I did some further analysis on the author's data, and found that he made a couple of assumptions which I don't think are true.
I made a graph of the average availability score vs. the $/rental for each period, and got a nice,clean inversely proportional graph. That is, the higher you pay per rental (e.g. his mom was paying $10/movie during one period), the better your availability score. Where some of the data didn't *quite* fit (but was pretty close) was where the author (A) had rented fewer movies on his account during the first period due to signing up his wife, and his availability score got better. Well, it did get better, but not in line with a month-to-month average. If you extrapolate that he was probably renting at a similar high rate in the previous periods (a valid assumption, as he says as much in the article), and instead use a rolling average 2-3 previous rental periods, you get a perfect fit for all the data.
So, here are my conclusions:
#1, the availability is not ENTIRELY dependent upon how many movies you rented the previous rental period. It is actually a "rolling average" number of rentals over 2-3 previous rental periods.
#2, the author assumed it was based entirely on the number of rentals/period, but this is not true. Subjects who had upgraded accounts had noticably higher availability, but perhaps it was hard for the author to see this since he used the wrong figure of merit. The real figure of merit for Netflix is $/rental. After all, this is how they determine if they are losing money buy renting movies out to you.
The test subjects that were paying less than $2/movie were sucking it up with super bad availability scores, whereas the folks that had very low rentals and thus paid $10/rental, got much better availability. The actual curve fits an inverse proportional graph quite nicely, with the "sweet spot" being around $4-$5/movie. Even 6 rentals/period (with a standard $20 membership) still had very reasonable availability, but was on the high end of the asymptote.
You are mistaking copyright protection mechanisms with trade secrets, which are not the same thing.
The only thing that protects trade secrets (other than what I've outlined above) is the fact that you don't tell anyone. A famous example of a trade secret is the formula for Coke. If you can reverse-engineer the formula for coke, you are free to make and sell your own copycat product, assuming you can prove to a court of law that you didn't steal the formula. A lot of companies have done this, in fact, and the main thing that keeps Coke on top is brand recognition.
Copyright is a different story. Thanks to the DMCA, copyright is further protected in that if you have in place a protection mechanism (e.g. encryption) on your copyrighted material, it is illegal to reverse-engineer the protection mechanism, with a few exceptions.
You can't sue somebody for giving away trade secrets if those secrets were deduced using reverse engineering. There is no IP protection for trade secrets unless the secret is stolen, or given out in violation of a NDA (which is equivalent to stealing it).
Besides the fact that despite the analysis he could still be WRONG. It is only conjecture based on the set of evidence that's been compiled.
Mmmm...I'll bet the exhaust smells delicious!
It is already possibly for anyone to remotely eavesdrop on regular phone lines using a technology built-in by the phone company. And, it's really fscking easy to use. You just dial the number, enter a short code (usually 5 digits), and enter the number you want to listen to (usually limited to a given prefix).
The "phreak" term for it is RemObS (short for Remote Observation System). These things really exist, contrary to many folks' opinion.