Why don't those guys forget about trying to make things faster, and instead make things more secure. I have 802.11b but I shut it off when I don't use it because I'm hella scared that my neighbor is going to download kiddie porn off my wireless connection, but the feds will bust me because it looked like it was coming from my ip address!
Let's hunker down, get some real security, and then move to something faster!!!
If they entered university at 19, then they must be about 23, which means they were born around 1980 +- 1 year.
Pacman was long gone by the time they could reach the joystick!
I bet none of them ever played the original Pacman or even understood how big of a fad it was!!!
I remember taking my mom's silver quarters that she had been saving (remember when quarters were made out of real silver?!?), not understanding the value of them, and using them to play video games like Pacman.
"That's Incredible" would have segments on kids getting the highest scores ever, playing it the longest, etc. I got the crappy version of Pacman for the Atari 2600 (at first disappointed, but it was better than nothing, so I accepted it). I watched the terrible Pacman cartoon on ABC. I think they also had a Q-bert cartoon as well.
What if you are making a VPN connection from different states, and it travels through a backbone that physically resides in these states? Is this a crime as well???!?!?
Quick, how can I apply for Vincent College??
on
Xbox Linux Cluster
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Where the hell is this college and how can I apply? They actually provide funding for things like modding X-boxes??? Damn, I wish they had that when I was in University, I could have requested 16 MB of RAM for my 486 so that I could test how additional RAM affects the playability of EA Sport NHL, as well as test the effects of playing too many videos on grades!!!
My biggest question is where do you put them once you're finished travelling? With cars you park them, with bikes, you can lock them in bike racks, but there is zero infrastructure in place to secure your Segway.
What's the point in taking a Segway somewhere if you can't lock it down. This means you couldn't take it to go shopping, seeing a movie, go to the doctor's, go to class, etc. You might be able to take it to work and keep the Segway in your office... if you have space. That's about it... it doesn't have any other practical use.
I would prefer rollerblades to the Segway any day, since they are small and portable.
Technological Rip Van Winkle
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Essentially, you have been in limbo in terms of technology for the past 8 years, having missed the biggest revolution of computing since it's inception (ie. the Internet).
I've been a hardcore programmer for the past 10 years, and even I find it difficult to keep up with all these new technologies, terms, etc, and I spend around 3 hours a night after work just dedicated to investigating new technologies.
Where you able to keep up with technology during your incarceration and probation period by just reading books, or were you even allowed to read books? How soon do you think it will take you to re-absorb enough knowledge and, more importantly, experience to make yourself useful in today's world?
What do you do in the case of an extended power failure? I know they probably have diesel backups, but even those only last so long.
At least living in the Bay Area with all the uproar about the "Energy Crisis" a couple of years ago, this may not be the most reliable system if you had to rely totally on electricity to dock all those boats up there in Oakland....
If you are asking this question, it really means you have not worked on systems that do not have virtual memory, like DOS.
Virtual Memory means virtualizing a process's access to memory such that the memory addresses it accesses isn't necessarily the same physical memory address. It allows for complete memory separation between processes, which offers a vast amount of protection so that processes can't crash other processes.
The only alternative to Virtual Memory is to use actual physical memory addresses. This was exactly the case with DOS. In DOS you would have to manage memory and make sure your process (it's single-threaded... remember?!?) didn't overwrite memory that it didn't own. Everything in memory could be accessed from every single process.
With virtual memory, two processes could access memory location 0x1000000 and it would map to different physical memory addresses. In fact, the OS will give each process a full memory address range that is completely usuable by the process without any fear of stepping over someone else's memory. This effectively separates processes and prevents a hell of a lot of corruption because of memory bugs in programs.
This really simplifies programming because whenever we get a memory address from malloc, we don't have to do anything about making sure we don't step over someone else's memory information.
What you are in fact talking about is paging, the act of having a backing store of information on hard drive. This allows you to keep track of more memory than you physically have, by swapping memory back and forth from physical memory to a hard drive. Any unused memory would be paged to disk.
Yes, today you can have gigabytes of memory, and when running Mozilla, boy you really don't need virtual memory.
But what about 10 years from now, when Microsoft Office takes up 50 GB of hard drive space, and 16 GB of memory?
Virtual memory is a way of abstracting memory use on a per process basis, and it's inclusion in most modern operating systems is one of the reasons why things are relatively stable these days, compared to the old DOS days, anyway.
No, you are wrong. Patent holders can decide to sit back, let the whole world implement their patented designs, and then years later turn around and charge them. I think there is a statue of limitations of something like the previous 8 years, something like that. (But it doesn't mean that if you implemented something in your design 9 years ago that was patented, that you are scot free, it means that they can only sue you for the past 8 years of damages because you used their design).
What you are talking about is trademarks, not patents. Trademarks must be policed, but patents do not have to be.
Yes, they did make the chips for Cyrix, but they also licensed them. "Licensing" and "making" are two completely different things. You can make chips for a company, but that doesn't give you the right to turn around and sell them. IBM licensed the technology and was able to sell them as well.
Also, you are wrong about IBM not undercutting Cyrix. IBM clearly undercut Cyrix, which was a major part of the problem for Cyrix. Here is one of many links that describe how IBM undercut Cyrix. (I used google and searched with IBM cyrix and undercut)
Here is the important paragraph:
"For several years, the fabless Cyrix paid IBM to build its processors in the latter's Burlington, Vermont, facility. The deal also called for IBM to take 50 percent of the Cyrix chips and market them under its own label. In the beginning it was a good deal for IBM, which didn't own an X86 core and didn't have an entry-level desktop offering but it wasn't so great for Cyrix. IBM frequently undercut Cyrix' prices, which made it difficult for Cyrix to win deals with PC makers. "
I know it's not exactly the same, but remember what IBM did to Cyrix? They licensed Cyrix's chips and then undercut them in price, which I believe led to the eventual demise of their chip.
It seems as though making a deal with IBM is almost as risky as making a deal with Microsoft, although I guess dealing with Microsoft has an even worse track record (Sybase with SQL Server, IBM with OS/2, Sendo with their phone stuff).
Don't buy Turbotax 2002. They install malware/"Copy protection" called C-Dilla but don't tell you about it. I don't even care about the product activation stuff, it's this spyware/malware shit that they secretly installed without telling me that really pissed me off.
Don't make the same mistake I did and delete a directory called "C:\C_DILLA". I did, and my computer froze upon startup. Apparently C-dilla is a service that requires this directory to be there otherwise it barfs on you.
I didn't know what it was, and thought it might be related to Mozilla (Mozilla, Bugzilla, Chatzilla, etc). I deleted it, and upon reboot, my system froze during startup. After troubleshooting my frozen machine for around 1/2 an hour, the missing directory turned out to be the problem, along with these mysterious services that I didn't remember installing. I guess the service hung while looking for the directory and froze my entire system.
I went to uninstall Turbotax and it doesn't uninstall C-dilla. I asked Intuit Live Chat support how to remove C-dilla and they told me to delete the C_DILLA directory and reboot. I told them what would happen, but they said that's what to do. After I did it, and it froze again, they said there was nothing they could to and to contact my system administrator/vendor to fix the freeze. Thanks.
They have a 60-day return policy. USE IT. Tell all your friends and co-workers not to buy Turbotax. I was a loyal Turbotax purchaser since 1997 and I am now going to switch because I no longer trust them. Why did they install this shit on my computer without telling me, and fuck everything up?
They have completely lost my trust, and there is nothing they can do to get it back, that's for sure.
I don't think you quite understand the situation, my friend.
These days, unions are all about making money. To think this isn't the case is simply naive and immature.
Back in the early 20th century, unions were crucial. Factory owners were completely fucking over factory workers because they had the balance of power. If factory owners were fair and equitable, there would be no reason for unions, but as is the case most of the time, big rich people get extremely greedy and want to screw over everyone that they can, including their own workers. Horrible working conditions, no benefits, threats of firing if they didn't do exactly what they were told were all because the workers didn't have any power.
The whole point of unions was that collectively, all the workers could get some power that would balance them against the factory owners. This was a Good Thing.
But in this day and age, in the high tech industry, this is rarely required because there is equity between the companies and the workers. Most hi-tech workers are treated fairly, and if they're not, they can take their knowledge and go to another company. Yes, I know that right now we are in the middle of a downturn so this may not be as easy as it seems. But once the economy gets better, then there are options. Nothing is always perfect. I am toiling away at a job that I hate and would love to quit, but I'm staying put because there are no jobs. But unions wouldn't help me in this situation either.
Adding unions will not help balance the powers between workers and "owners". All they do is add a layer of red tape, and suffocate hard working workers who would have normally been rewarded by companies.
To the guy who was complaining that he got laid off by 4 companies, sorry, but that's what you get for joining a start-up. It's called risk vs. reward, and you chose badly. If your stock options went through the roof you would have been sitting pretty. Don't blame it on the fact that there were no unions to protect your jobs. You probably wouldn't even get stock options under a unionized environment.
Please, please, please no one ever join a tech union. Let's keep some sanity and let us be judged by our merits, and not by our seniority. High Tech is the last bastion of hope when it comes to working hard and getting recognition.
I've worked in union environments before (during college), and the only reason why unions are set up is so that the union leaders can make a shitload of money.
Think "economies of scale". If a union gets union dues from everyone as a company, even if it's a small amount of money, they will reap shitloads. This is why they go around trying to enlist as many companies as possible... because they get the union dues of thousands of workers with little additional capital because they have already set up the infrastructure. It's exactly like the business model of Amazon.com for crying out loud!
So, by loading these guys up with money, us peons get stuck in stagnating jobs where the paperwork and red tape to go up just stops us from doing anything.
If you're good at what you do, you have no reason to join a union. Please, just say "No".
If I were a professor, and if students were horsing around or sleeping or whatever, why should I care?
If some kid is checking his e-mail or not listening, that's cool. I will just massacre them on the mid-term on stuff that I would talk about only during the lectures.
If some kid is distracting other kids or being a nuisance, I would kick them out. 'Nuff said.
Is there really an issue here? There were distractions way before WiFi enabled classrooms, and this problem was encountered way before today. For example, portable TVs, radios, CD players, etc. Having a Wifi connection is just a new distraction... nothing more, nothing less.
The article is not bad, and it basically shows the problems that affect any software company: techies vs marketing.
However, I do think he went out on a limb with the following comment:
"The recently-revealed fact that Microsoft, in effect, offered states a bribe in order to drop their anti-trust suits against the Redmond giant. While I hold the states equally responsible for accepting the money in the first place, Redmond is known for displaying a remarkable level of NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) perhaps only equaled by Steve Job's unparalleled Reality Distortion Field."
I haven't heard about any of this bribe business, but if it isn't true and if he is exaggerating, I think the writer has really set himself up for a potential lawsuit. To accuse someone of committing a felony like that in this day-and-age when it hasn't been proven is kind of stupid, and I would have changed the wording around if I were him.
Re:Pacman was da bomb! Swordquest Earthworld sucke
on
Top Ten Shameful Games
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· Score: 1
Is that what it was??? I had no idea. I WISH THEY EXPLAINED THAT IN THE MANUAL 20 YEARS AGO!!!!
All I know is that when you first started the game, if you went down two rooms, you would gain a level. The rest was just stupid walking around and doing all those stupid challenges, the frogger one, the walls, the "horns of taurus" or something like that. I remember something about if you had a cloak or something you could walk through those horns, and you needed to get a light or lantern otherwise you couldn't see anything.
What a horrible, horrible game!
Pacman was da bomb! Swordquest Earthworld sucked!
on
Top Ten Shameful Games
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My dad brought me back Pac-man for the 2600 when he went on a business trip back in the 80's.
I admit I was a bit disappointed because it didn't look exactly like the arcade game, but you know what? I still liked that game a lot. I was like 10, but even then I knew that the 2600 wasn't supposed to be exactly like the arcade, and it was good enough for me. I mean, come on... I played games like Combat and Starship, and that was fun enough back then. There are plenty of other games that were much worse than that.
ET (as was mentioned) and Raiders of the Lost Ark was much much worse.
The worse game of all time: Swordquest Earthworld. From the advertisements in the comic books, it looked awesome! The graphics looked great. Only, once I got it, I had no friggin' idea of how to play the game. The original cartridge came with a comic book that was more interesting than the game.
I never figured out what the point of the game was, and it was so annoying. Being a kid, I kept trying to figure it out, burning hours and hours on that thing. Once, only once did I ever get to level 2, and I had no idea what I did to get to level 2. It sure as hell wasn't from completing all those "tasks" in those rooms.
It's been 12 years since my semiconductors course, so forgive me, but wasn't there a specific reason why Si was used? It seems like it there were specific properties of silicon that made it more inherently valuable than carbon. I think the main thing was that since carbon and silicon are in the same columns on the periodic table, they shared similar chemical properties, but I seem to remember vaguely that silicon maybe interacted differently with the doped molecules that were added to make semiconductors?
Bah. I'm going to have to open up my damn semiconductor books again when I get home. Goddamnit, I thought I was through with all that studying!!!
I just got my Linksys wireless bridge and AP over Christmas because I got sick of tripping over all the wires in my apartment.
After I bought it and plugged it in, and I sat down and read up on security, and I was simply shocked at how the Linksys equipment have completely zero security.
The most you can do to protect yourself is:
1) disable SSID broadcasts
2) filter based on MAC addresses
3) use 128 bit WEP to obfuscate your data to only the casual
Of course, WEP can be broken by any hacker worth his-or-her salt, and filtering based on MAC addresses doesn't work because you can spoof MAC addresses. There is zero security from a determined hacker.
The Linksys APs also have a severe security issue where anyone can get the ssid through a simple udp broadcast, meaning they don't even need a valid IP address. Once they get your SSID, it makes it way easier to connect to the AP.
From what I've heard, Linksys even isn't doing anything about it.
It really seems as though 802.11X is going to only find a place at home where consumers care more about getting rid of wires than about security. There is no valid reason for a business or governments, where their information is worth much much more, to be using such a security-free mechanism.
I'm okay because I needed the wireless stuff for my gf's computer, and all she does is surf the web. I put in place a FreeBSD firewall just in case, so I'm not too worried about my neighbors or wardrivers getting connected. But for those people that don't care about security, this is probably the way that untraceable hacking in the 21st is going to go through - via some idiot that left his 802.11b connection open to hackers that live across the street, or just happened to pull by in their car to try and hack into some military site, etc.
I'm dating myself, but back in the day, these were the two major copying programs that everyone used to copy IBM PC games/programs, back in the mid-80's. They would break most floppy-disk protection schemes and new versions would be coming out, it seemed every few months that would cover more and more programs and games.
I think it was thanks to the efforts of those two programs that software companies finally gave up on trying to add physical protection mechanisms on the floppies and eventually give up entirely.
Now if only the RIAA and the rest of the music industry would just learn from the mistakes of the past, they would realize that all their stupid protection mechanisms are just a complete waste of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't those guys forget about trying to make things faster, and instead make things more secure. I have 802.11b but I shut it off when I don't use it because I'm hella scared that my neighbor is going to download kiddie porn off my wireless connection, but the feds will bust me because it looked like it was coming from my ip address!
Let's hunker down, get some real security, and then move to something faster!!!
Hmmmm, let's see graduating 2003....
If they entered university at 19, then they must be about 23, which means they were born around 1980 +- 1 year.
Pacman was long gone by the time they could reach the joystick!
I bet none of them ever played the original Pacman or even understood how big of a fad it was!!!
I remember taking my mom's silver quarters that she had been saving (remember when quarters were made out of real silver?!?), not understanding the value of them, and using them to play video games like Pacman.
"That's Incredible" would have segments on kids getting the highest scores ever, playing it the longest, etc. I got the crappy version of Pacman for the Atari 2600 (at first disappointed, but it was better than nothing, so I accepted it). I watched the terrible Pacman cartoon on ABC. I think they also had a Q-bert cartoon as well.
Ahhh, the good old days.
What if you are making a VPN connection from different states, and it travels through a backbone that physically resides in these states? Is this a crime as well???!?!?
Where the hell is this college and how can I apply? They actually provide funding for things like modding X-boxes??? Damn, I wish they had that when I was in University, I could have requested 16 MB of RAM for my 486 so that I could test how additional RAM affects the playability of EA Sport NHL, as well as test the effects of playing too many videos on grades!!!
My biggest question is where do you put them once you're finished travelling? With cars you park them, with bikes, you can lock them in bike racks, but there is zero infrastructure in place to secure your Segway.
What's the point in taking a Segway somewhere if you can't lock it down. This means you couldn't take it to go shopping, seeing a movie, go to the doctor's, go to class, etc. You might be able to take it to work and keep the Segway in your office... if you have space. That's about it... it doesn't have any other practical use.
I would prefer rollerblades to the Segway any day, since they are small and portable.
Essentially, you have been in limbo in terms of technology for the past 8 years, having missed the biggest revolution of computing since it's inception (ie. the Internet).
I've been a hardcore programmer for the past 10 years, and even I find it difficult to keep up with all these new technologies, terms, etc, and I spend around 3 hours a night after work just dedicated to investigating new technologies.
Where you able to keep up with technology during your incarceration and probation period by just reading books, or were you even allowed to read books? How soon do you think it will take you to re-absorb enough knowledge and, more importantly, experience to make yourself useful in today's world?
What do you do in the case of an extended power failure? I know they probably have diesel backups, but even those only last so long.
At least living in the Bay Area with all the uproar about the "Energy Crisis" a couple of years ago, this may not be the most reliable system if you had to rely totally on electricity to dock all those boats up there in Oakland....
Trademark dilution?
You mean the "i" in front of the word?!?! I highly doubt that that is considered to be trademark dilution.
Think about e-mail, e-business, e-whatever. It's the same thing.
Considering there are other things such as iplanet that currently exist, I don't think you can consider the use of i-whatever trademark dilution.
If you are asking this question, it really means you have not worked on systems that do not have virtual memory, like DOS.
Virtual Memory means virtualizing a process's access to memory such that the memory addresses it accesses isn't necessarily the same physical memory address. It allows for complete memory separation between processes, which offers a vast amount of protection so that processes can't crash other processes.
The only alternative to Virtual Memory is to use actual physical memory addresses. This was exactly the case with DOS. In DOS you would have to manage memory and make sure your process (it's single-threaded... remember?!?) didn't overwrite memory that it didn't own. Everything in memory could be accessed from every single process.
With virtual memory, two processes could access memory location 0x1000000 and it would map to different physical memory addresses. In fact, the OS will give each process a full memory address range that is completely usuable by the process without any fear of stepping over someone else's memory. This effectively separates processes and prevents a hell of a lot of corruption because of memory bugs in programs.
This really simplifies programming because whenever we get a memory address from malloc, we don't have to do anything about making sure we don't step over someone else's memory information.
What you are in fact talking about is paging, the act of having a backing store of information on hard drive. This allows you to keep track of more memory than you physically have, by swapping memory back and forth from physical memory to a hard drive. Any unused memory would be paged to disk.
Yes, today you can have gigabytes of memory, and when running Mozilla, boy you really don't need virtual memory.
But what about 10 years from now, when Microsoft Office takes up 50 GB of hard drive space, and 16 GB of memory?
Virtual memory is a way of abstracting memory use on a per process basis, and it's inclusion in most modern operating systems is one of the reasons why things are relatively stable these days, compared to the old DOS days, anyway.
No, you are wrong. Patent holders can decide to sit back, let the whole world implement their patented designs, and then years later turn around and charge them. I think there is a statue of limitations of something like the previous 8 years, something like that. (But it doesn't mean that if you implemented something in your design 9 years ago that was patented, that you are scot free, it means that they can only sue you for the past 8 years of damages because you used their design).
What you are talking about is trademarks, not patents. Trademarks must be policed, but patents do not have to be.
Yes, they did make the chips for Cyrix, but they also licensed them. "Licensing" and "making" are two completely different things. You can make chips for a company, but that doesn't give you the right to turn around and sell them. IBM licensed the technology and was able to sell them as well.
Also, you are wrong about IBM not undercutting Cyrix. IBM clearly undercut Cyrix, which was a major part of the problem for Cyrix. Here is one of many links that describe how IBM undercut Cyrix. (I used google and searched with IBM cyrix and undercut)
Here is the important paragraph:
"For several years, the fabless Cyrix paid IBM to build its processors in the latter's Burlington, Vermont, facility. The deal also called for IBM to take 50 percent of the Cyrix chips and market them under its own label. In the beginning it was a good deal for IBM, which didn't own an X86 core and didn't have an entry-level desktop offering but it wasn't so great for Cyrix. IBM frequently undercut Cyrix' prices, which made it difficult for Cyrix to win deals with PC makers. "
I know it's not exactly the same, but remember what IBM did to Cyrix? They licensed Cyrix's chips and then undercut them in price, which I believe led to the eventual demise of their chip.
It seems as though making a deal with IBM is almost as risky as making a deal with Microsoft, although I guess dealing with Microsoft has an even worse track record (Sybase with SQL Server, IBM with OS/2, Sendo with their phone stuff).
Here is a link to a forum talking about C-dilla.
Don't make the same mistake I did and delete a directory called "C:\C_DILLA". I did, and my computer froze upon startup. Apparently C-dilla is a service that requires this directory to be there otherwise it barfs on you.
I didn't know what it was, and thought it might be related to Mozilla (Mozilla, Bugzilla, Chatzilla, etc). I deleted it, and upon reboot, my system froze during startup. After troubleshooting my frozen machine for around 1/2 an hour, the missing directory turned out to be the problem, along with these mysterious services that I didn't remember installing. I guess the service hung while looking for the directory and froze my entire system.
I went to uninstall Turbotax and it doesn't uninstall C-dilla. I asked Intuit Live Chat support how to remove C-dilla and they told me to delete the C_DILLA directory and reboot. I told them what would happen, but they said that's what to do. After I did it, and it froze again, they said there was nothing they could to and to contact my system administrator/vendor to fix the freeze. Thanks.
They have a 60-day return policy. USE IT. Tell all your friends and co-workers not to buy Turbotax. I was a loyal Turbotax purchaser since 1997 and I am now going to switch because I no longer trust them. Why did they install this shit on my computer without telling me, and fuck everything up?
They have completely lost my trust, and there is nothing they can do to get it back, that's for sure.
I don't think you quite understand the situation, my friend.
These days, unions are all about making money. To think this isn't the case is simply naive and immature.
Back in the early 20th century, unions were crucial. Factory owners were completely fucking over factory workers because they had the balance of power. If factory owners were fair and equitable, there would be no reason for unions, but as is the case most of the time, big rich people get extremely greedy and want to screw over everyone that they can, including their own workers. Horrible working conditions, no benefits, threats of firing if they didn't do exactly what they were told were all because the workers didn't have any power.
The whole point of unions was that collectively, all the workers could get some power that would balance them against the factory owners. This was a Good Thing.
But in this day and age, in the high tech industry, this is rarely required because there is equity between the companies and the workers. Most hi-tech workers are treated fairly, and if they're not, they can take their knowledge and go to another company. Yes, I know that right now we are in the middle of a downturn so this may not be as easy as it seems. But once the economy gets better, then there are options. Nothing is always perfect. I am toiling away at a job that I hate and would love to quit, but I'm staying put because there are no jobs. But unions wouldn't help me in this situation either.
Adding unions will not help balance the powers between workers and "owners". All they do is add a layer of red tape, and suffocate hard working workers who would have normally been rewarded by companies.
To the guy who was complaining that he got laid off by 4 companies, sorry, but that's what you get for joining a start-up. It's called risk vs. reward, and you chose badly. If your stock options went through the roof you would have been sitting pretty. Don't blame it on the fact that there were no unions to protect your jobs. You probably wouldn't even get stock options under a unionized environment.
Please, please, please no one ever join a tech union. Let's keep some sanity and let us be judged by our merits, and not by our seniority. High Tech is the last bastion of hope when it comes to working hard and getting recognition.
I've worked in union environments before (during college), and the only reason why unions are set up is so that the union leaders can make a shitload of money.
Think "economies of scale". If a union gets union dues from everyone as a company, even if it's a small amount of money, they will reap shitloads. This is why they go around trying to enlist as many companies as possible... because they get the union dues of thousands of workers with little additional capital because they have already set up the infrastructure. It's exactly like the business model of Amazon.com for crying out loud!
So, by loading these guys up with money, us peons get stuck in stagnating jobs where the paperwork and red tape to go up just stops us from doing anything.
If you're good at what you do, you have no reason to join a union. Please, just say "No".
If I were a professor, and if students were horsing around or sleeping or whatever, why should I care?
If some kid is checking his e-mail or not listening, that's cool. I will just massacre them on the mid-term on stuff that I would talk about only during the lectures.
If some kid is distracting other kids or being a nuisance, I would kick them out. 'Nuff said.
Is there really an issue here? There were distractions way before WiFi enabled classrooms, and this problem was encountered way before today. For example, portable TVs, radios, CD players, etc. Having a Wifi connection is just a new distraction... nothing more, nothing less.
I'm sure someone else can come up with another more efficient routine, but here's my first stab at it:
for (i=1;in-1;i++)
{
printf("%d: %s\n", i, print_step(i));
}
printf("%d: ???\n", n-1);
printf("%d: Profit!\n", n);
The article is not bad, and it basically shows the problems that affect any software company: techies vs marketing.
However, I do think he went out on a limb with the following comment:
"The recently-revealed fact that Microsoft, in effect, offered states a bribe in order to drop their anti-trust suits against the Redmond giant. While I hold the states equally responsible for accepting the money in the first place, Redmond is known for displaying a remarkable level of NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) perhaps only equaled by Steve Job's unparalleled Reality Distortion Field."
I haven't heard about any of this bribe business, but if it isn't true and if he is exaggerating, I think the writer has really set himself up for a potential lawsuit. To accuse someone of committing a felony like that in this day-and-age when it hasn't been proven is kind of stupid, and I would have changed the wording around if I were him.
Is that what it was??? I had no idea. I WISH THEY EXPLAINED THAT IN THE MANUAL 20 YEARS AGO!!!!
All I know is that when you first started the game, if you went down two rooms, you would gain a level. The rest was just stupid walking around and doing all those stupid challenges, the frogger one, the walls, the "horns of taurus" or something like that. I remember something about if you had a cloak or something you could walk through those horns, and you needed to get a light or lantern otherwise you couldn't see anything.
What a horrible, horrible game!
My dad brought me back Pac-man for the 2600 when he went on a business trip back in the 80's.
I admit I was a bit disappointed because it didn't look exactly like the arcade game, but you know what? I still liked that game a lot. I was like 10, but even then I knew that the 2600 wasn't supposed to be exactly like the arcade, and it was good enough for me. I mean, come on... I played games like Combat and Starship, and that was fun enough back then. There are plenty of other games that were much worse than that.
ET (as was mentioned) and Raiders of the Lost Ark was much much worse.
The worse game of all time: Swordquest Earthworld. From the advertisements in the comic books, it looked awesome! The graphics looked great. Only, once I got it, I had no friggin' idea of how to play the game. The original cartridge came with a comic book that was more interesting than the game.
I never figured out what the point of the game was, and it was so annoying. Being a kid, I kept trying to figure it out, burning hours and hours on that thing. Once, only once did I ever get to level 2, and I had no idea what I did to get to level 2. It sure as hell wasn't from completing all those "tasks" in those rooms.
Whoops, looks like the original Star Trek movie will have become obsolete now, since computers will also be carbon-based units as well!
It's been 12 years since my semiconductors course, so forgive me, but wasn't there a specific reason why Si was used? It seems like it there were specific properties of silicon that made it more inherently valuable than carbon. I think the main thing was that since carbon and silicon are in the same columns on the periodic table, they shared similar chemical properties, but I seem to remember vaguely that silicon maybe interacted differently with the doped molecules that were added to make semiconductors?
Bah. I'm going to have to open up my damn semiconductor books again when I get home. Goddamnit, I thought I was through with all that studying!!!
After I bought it and plugged it in, and I sat down and read up on security, and I was simply shocked at how the Linksys equipment have completely zero security.
The most you can do to protect yourself is:
1) disable SSID broadcasts
2) filter based on MAC addresses
3) use 128 bit WEP to obfuscate your data to only the casual
Of course, WEP can be broken by any hacker worth his-or-her salt, and filtering based on MAC addresses doesn't work because you can spoof MAC addresses. There is zero security from a determined hacker.
The Linksys APs also have a severe security issue where anyone can get the ssid through a simple udp broadcast, meaning they don't even need a valid IP address. Once they get your SSID, it makes it way easier to connect to the AP.
From what I've heard, Linksys even isn't doing anything about it.
It really seems as though 802.11X is going to only find a place at home where consumers care more about getting rid of wires than about security. There is no valid reason for a business or governments, where their information is worth much much more, to be using such a security-free mechanism.
I'm okay because I needed the wireless stuff for my gf's computer, and all she does is surf the web. I put in place a FreeBSD firewall just in case, so I'm not too worried about my neighbors or wardrivers getting connected. But for those people that don't care about security, this is probably the way that untraceable hacking in the 21st is going to go through - via some idiot that left his 802.11b connection open to hackers that live across the street, or just happened to pull by in their car to try and hack into some military site, etc.
Anyone remember copywrite and copyiipc?
I'm dating myself, but back in the day, these were the two major copying programs that everyone used to copy IBM PC games/programs, back in the mid-80's. They would break most floppy-disk protection schemes and new versions would be coming out, it seemed every few months that would cover more and more programs and games.
I think it was thanks to the efforts of those two programs that software companies finally gave up on trying to add physical protection mechanisms on the floppies and eventually give up entirely.
Now if only the RIAA and the rest of the music industry would just learn from the mistakes of the past, they would realize that all their stupid protection mechanisms are just a complete waste of time.
Does this mean we can download our own ringers and applications onto our Sprint PCS vision phones?