Well, unfortunately I can't find the original thread on arstechnica (their archive search is broken). However, here's basically what happened:
Back in September, THG posted this article with the title "Hot Contraband: P4 With 3.6 GHz" and the description "For this exclusive report, THG tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations."
In my mind, at least, this text implies that they managed to snag some unreleased P4 chips from Intel by one way or another and benchmarked them.
However, people on several websites noticed that the shots of the BIOS screen and the photo of the chip in question looked suspicious. They were actually from much slower chips, but with the numbers arranged so that they appeared to be from 3GHz+ CPUs. The shot of the CPU on the first page, for example, that has "PC3.3G0K" in the serial number was analyzed to show that the 3s were identical, and therefore at least one of them was copied over the original number in Photoshop.
Also, suspiciously, there was no testing of the hyperthreading that will be present in released P4s that are that fast.
Eventually, THG posted an acknowledgment of the issue, but it seems kind of hollow. For one thing, the shots they show of their super-unlocked P4 are not the same chip as on the first page. For another, they admit they're using current P4 technology. So basically what the article is about is not "Here is what the 3.6GHz P4s will be like," but "Here is what *today's* P4s are like if they are overclocked to 3.6GHz." None of the benchmarks apply to the real world unless you are going to use a liquid nitrogen (or however they managed such high clockspeeds) cooling system on a current P4 instead of waiting for the real 3.6GHz models with hyperthreading.
They *could* have been honest about it and called the article "THG overclocks a P4 to 3.6GHz!" like they've done in the past, but apparently that wasn't sensationalistic enough for them. If that weren't bad enough, they waited until a ton of people called them on their deception to admit what they'd done.
Ironically, this happened only a few weeks after Tom himself wrote an editorial about some unethical former writers for his site.
if you like pseudotechnical hogwash, incestuous relationships between advertisers and content providers, and meaningless benchmark data.
While I wouldn't flame them quite so hard, I have to agree with the spirit. THG lost all of my respect with their handling of that "hot contraband" P4 article. If I can't trust a website to tell me when they're Photoshopping their BIOS screens and shots of CPUs, how can I believe their benchmarks are genuine, or their reviews unbiased?
Disks using lower quality chemistries are very unlikely to last 200 years.
That's okay, since I doubt anyone other than technological archaeologists will own a CDROM drive in 200 years.
Anyone who has data they want to preserve will likely move it to another medium long before then. I know I'll consolidate my collection of archived material onto progressively higher-capacity formats as they become available.
The registered version of Eudora trips Ad-Aware because it creates a folder to store the ad cache (or something along those lines). If you look at the logs, that's all it's finding - no DLLs or other actual code.
Actually, I didn't. I bought it at a store that sells discontinued merchandise, customer returns, and so forth. The box was sealed (although of course I found out much later that it was *re*sealed), and all discs, documentation, even the registration card were included. When I registered it on Blizzard's website, the key didn't come up as previously used.
In any case, I stand by my logic. It's the license, not the physical media that matters. I purchased the game legitimately, therefore I own the license, and therefore I have the right to a backup copy of my software. Since part of the physical media (it's a three-disc set, only one was keyed) my software came on was damaged, I used a bit-for-bit identical original to make mine.
I would say that your example is flawed. If you sold a friend an old copy of Photoshop that was on a damaged disc, they would have the right to do exactly what I did - copy the disc for that version from someone else to obtain a working copy. If I were following the example you give, I would be claiming the right to pirate Diablo III, IV, etc., based on my experience, which I am certainly not.
Re:"Your system date is set to year 8192.
on
Gnarly Error Messages
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· Score: 4, Informative
Dang, I just tried to replicate this error for a funny screenshot, and apparently XP "does not work after year 2099" either, since it rolls back to 1980 instead of 2100. Maybe if I set it in the BIOS...
If the disk was damaged or faulty, you'd return it under warranty.
I don't chip my consoles, but I can cite a personal experience where I did something similar on my PC.
Around the time Diablo II came out, I snagged a copy relatively cheaply at a blowout store in my area. Because I was pretty busy with work, I put it on a bookshelf and forgot about it for about a year and a half.
When I finally got around to playing it, I found out that someone had opened the box and keyed one of the discs. I was able to play the original game just fine, but when I bought and installed the expansion, it couldn't verify that the disc was valid.
Under Blizzard's support policy, I would have to mail them the disc and $10 for a replacement, because of the length of time since I actually bought it, not having the receipt anymore, etc.
I'm not willing to pay again for a product I own, so I used CloneCD to dupe a friend's disc.
Granted, the vast majority of the people who chip their consoles do so to pirate games. However, there are a lot of legitimate reasons to do so also - playing imports, situations like mine, running unlicenses/homebrew software, and so forth.
When can I buy a model kit of this plane? I need something cool-looking to add to my stack of kits I'm never going to build because I can't glue the parts together elegantly or paint it worth crap.
I believe what the original poster is referring to is not publicly released cool information (which the F-22 is), but the projects that are still secret.
This plane was never intended to go into production. I imagine if a combat model is built along the same lines, it will house the bombs and/or missiles in the fuselage or somesuch.
Star Trek III's Bird of Prey was original written as having been commandeered from the Romulans by Kruge. Obviously this didn't make it into the final version of the film, so now the Klingons have Birds of Prey and the Romulans have Warbirds.
Space time expanded like a rubber sheet, with every point moving away from every other point.
It's actually still doing this. My astronomy professor back in the day described the universe as a loaf of raisin bread, with matter being the raisins, all moving away from each other as it baked.
I am sure that boning's are the same way, with a higher degree of profit. One PC without a macro program did all this in about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I am sure you could stream line the process down to 6 minutes, and if you had a macro program, well, 1 minute. 1 minute, 2 pp. I am adding a few gold in there because his faction with the merchants of shadow haven was apprehensive, even though his charisma was 137.
I'm sorry, but this is the dorkiest thing I've ever read, including the old startrek.tech newsgroup on USENET.
No, it won't. This technology works by changing the way the picture is displayed onscreen. Like the article says, if you've ever tried videotaping a computer monitor, you've probably seen something similar.
Unless the police plan on lugging projection TVs around to stick in front of camcorders they want to "jam," this particular trick will never work outside of movie theaters.
Personally I am very doubtful that there is *any* way to selectively jam (in the true sense, unlike this article) video cameras without having the same effect on other electronics in the area.
Crap, I just invited a ton of secret electromagnetic pulse gun conspiracy theory followups.
...is excellent for finding obscure not-really-collectible but interesting things. I've picked up a few pieces of old musical equipment there for cheap that I'd never seen for sale locally simply because there aren't many of them left and they aren't popular. I've never had problems with this kind of merchandise, or the occassional cheap DVD/videotape/game. However, I am constantly amazed by how willing they are to turn a blind eye to piracy of any kind. If you want a laugh, try finding an auction for a bootleg CDR full of ROM images for videogames, and notifying their investigations department. 99 times out of 100, you will receive a response that eBay has no way to know for sure if the seller doesn't really own the copyrights to all 5000 of those games. The last time I checked, they had a rule against selling anything on CDR media, but as long as the seller calls it a CD (even if they have a photo with an obviously CD-Stomper-applied label), eBay doesn't care. It's the same for VHS bootlegs. About a month ago I went looking for a British DVD that isn't available in the US. Along with the legit listings, I saw the same thing on NTSC VHS. I checked the auction, and it was obviously a basement pirate copy ("does not include cover art," "unlabelled tape," etc.). In addition, there were about thirty negative/neutral feedback comments along the lines of "crappy bootleg copy." I sent an email to their investigations department, and there was no action taken. I can understand students and so forth copying things because they literally do not have the money to purchase them (it's not a *good* thing to do, but I understand the motivation behind it), but people *making money* off of it (particularly selling bootleg material to unsuspecting buyers) really grates on my nerves, especially since eBay could put a stop to it (and appear more legitimate in the end) if they would tell their investigations team to use a bit of common sense when they get a complaint.
...but I'm having trouble figuring out why you'd want a 2D display you can penetrate. A 3D one would be cool, since you could walk around in a CAD projection, for example, but this one seems more like a gimmick than anything else.
I'd estimate that at least 2/3 of the trailers for films with any kind of action in them use either that bit from the Aliens score (Which I assume is "Bishop's Countdown," it's been awhile since I dusted off my copy of that disc) or "O Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" by Orff.
I am unable to find a single reference to chromed missiles online, other than this post. Anybody want to help me out? My personal feeling is that it's unlikely, given that the ABL isn't even done yet.
Yes. If you look in the lower-right corner of the screen, you will see the text "Windows Whistler P[review?] 1" and "For testing purposes only." Judging from the build number, I would guess it's from about six months before the official release.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, unfortunately I can't find the original thread on arstechnica (their archive search is broken). However, here's basically what happened:
Back in September, THG posted this article with the title "Hot Contraband: P4 With 3.6 GHz" and the description "For this exclusive report, THG tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations."
In my mind, at least, this text implies that they managed to snag some unreleased P4 chips from Intel by one way or another and benchmarked them.
However, people on several websites noticed that the shots of the BIOS screen and the photo of the chip in question looked suspicious. They were actually from much slower chips, but with the numbers arranged so that they appeared to be from 3GHz+ CPUs. The shot of the CPU on the first page, for example, that has "PC3.3G0K" in the serial number was analyzed to show that the 3s were identical, and therefore at least one of them was copied over the original number in Photoshop.
Also, suspiciously, there was no testing of the hyperthreading that will be present in released P4s that are that fast.
Eventually, THG posted an acknowledgment of the issue, but it seems kind of hollow. For one thing, the shots they show of their super-unlocked P4 are not the same chip as on the first page. For another, they admit they're using current P4 technology. So basically what the article is about is not "Here is what the 3.6GHz P4s will be like," but "Here is what *today's* P4s are like if they are overclocked to 3.6GHz." None of the benchmarks apply to the real world unless you are going to use a liquid nitrogen (or however they managed such high clockspeeds) cooling system on a current P4 instead of waiting for the real 3.6GHz models with hyperthreading.
They *could* have been honest about it and called the article "THG overclocks a P4 to 3.6GHz!" like they've done in the past, but apparently that wasn't sensationalistic enough for them. If that weren't bad enough, they waited until a ton of people called them on their deception to admit what they'd done.
Ironically, this happened only a few weeks after Tom himself wrote an editorial about some unethical former writers for his site.
if you like pseudotechnical hogwash, incestuous relationships between advertisers and content providers, and meaningless benchmark data.
While I wouldn't flame them quite so hard, I have to agree with the spirit. THG lost all of my respect with their handling of that "hot contraband" P4 article. If I can't trust a website to tell me when they're Photoshopping their BIOS screens and shots of CPUs, how can I believe their benchmarks are genuine, or their reviews unbiased?
At least they didn't fake their pictures this time, unless that burning PSU on the front page was some clever Photoshoppery.
Of course everyone reading this probably uses them
I find them useful for troubleshooting audio CD playback issues. It doesn't happen very often, but I'm glad they're there when it does.
Also, my old work PC didn't have a soundcard, and it was nice to be able to listen to music anyway with the front-panel jack.
Disks using lower quality chemistries are very unlikely to last 200 years.
That's okay, since I doubt anyone other than technological archaeologists will own a CDROM drive in 200 years.
Anyone who has data they want to preserve will likely move it to another medium long before then. I know I'll consolidate my collection of archived material onto progressively higher-capacity formats as they become available.
The registered version of Eudora trips Ad-Aware because it creates a folder to store the ad cache (or something along those lines). If you look at the logs, that's all it's finding - no DLLs or other actual code.
You bought the game used
Actually, I didn't. I bought it at a store that sells discontinued merchandise, customer returns, and so forth. The box was sealed (although of course I found out much later that it was *re*sealed), and all discs, documentation, even the registration card were included. When I registered it on Blizzard's website, the key didn't come up as previously used.
In any case, I stand by my logic. It's the license, not the physical media that matters. I purchased the game legitimately, therefore I own the license, and therefore I have the right to a backup copy of my software. Since part of the physical media (it's a three-disc set, only one was keyed) my software came on was damaged, I used a bit-for-bit identical original to make mine.
I would say that your example is flawed. If you sold a friend an old copy of Photoshop that was on a damaged disc, they would have the right to do exactly what I did - copy the disc for that version from someone else to obtain a working copy. If I were following the example you give, I would be claiming the right to pirate Diablo III, IV, etc., based on my experience, which I am certainly not.
Dang, I just tried to replicate this error for a funny screenshot, and apparently XP "does not work after year 2099" either, since it rolls back to 1980 instead of 2100. Maybe if I set it in the BIOS...
If the disk was damaged or faulty, you'd return it under warranty.
I don't chip my consoles, but I can cite a personal experience where I did something similar on my PC.
Around the time Diablo II came out, I snagged a copy relatively cheaply at a blowout store in my area. Because I was pretty busy with work, I put it on a bookshelf and forgot about it for about a year and a half.
When I finally got around to playing it, I found out that someone had opened the box and keyed one of the discs. I was able to play the original game just fine, but when I bought and installed the expansion, it couldn't verify that the disc was valid.
Under Blizzard's support policy, I would have to mail them the disc and $10 for a replacement, because of the length of time since I actually bought it, not having the receipt anymore, etc.
I'm not willing to pay again for a product I own, so I used CloneCD to dupe a friend's disc.
Granted, the vast majority of the people who chip their consoles do so to pirate games. However, there are a lot of legitimate reasons to do so also - playing imports, situations like mine, running unlicenses/homebrew software, and so forth.
For the curious, here is the drawing from the patent.
It's not like PopSci pulled the design from their article out of their ass, they just got the Switchblade project confused with the Bird of Prey.
When can I buy a model kit of this plane? I need something cool-looking to add to my stack of kits I'm never going to build because I can't glue the parts together elegantly or paint it worth crap.
Those forward-swept swing-wing patents are still out there, though. Hopefully someday we'll see something come of those as well.
It's obvious that this thing is just a proof of concept for some of the ideas in the F-22.
Actually, this is not the case. The F-22 was in development for even longer than this one.
I believe what the original poster is referring to is not publicly released cool information (which the F-22 is), but the projects that are still secret.
This plane was never intended to go into production. I imagine if a combat model is built along the same lines, it will house the bombs and/or missiles in the fuselage or somesuch.
Star Trek III's Bird of Prey was original written as having been commandeered from the Romulans by Kruge. Obviously this didn't make it into the final version of the film, so now the Klingons have Birds of Prey and the Romulans have Warbirds.
...that THG didn't just scan the old warranty and Photoshop a 1 over the 3 that used to be there, then write a misleading article on the subject?
Space time expanded like a rubber sheet, with every point moving away from every other point.
It's actually still doing this. My astronomy professor back in the day described the universe as a loaf of raisin bread, with matter being the raisins, all moving away from each other as it baked.
I am sure that boning's are the same way, with a higher degree of profit. One PC without a macro program did all this in about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I am sure you could stream line the process down to 6 minutes, and if you had a macro program, well, 1 minute. 1 minute, 2 pp. I am adding a few gold in there because his faction with the merchants of shadow haven was apprehensive, even though his charisma was 137.
I'm sorry, but this is the dorkiest thing I've ever read, including the old startrek.tech newsgroup on USENET.
It will become portable, at some point.
No, it won't. This technology works by changing the way the picture is displayed onscreen. Like the article says, if you've ever tried videotaping a computer monitor, you've probably seen something similar.
Unless the police plan on lugging projection TVs around to stick in front of camcorders they want to "jam," this particular trick will never work outside of movie theaters.
Personally I am very doubtful that there is *any* way to selectively jam (in the true sense, unlike this article) video cameras without having the same effect on other electronics in the area.
Crap, I just invited a ton of secret electromagnetic pulse gun conspiracy theory followups.
...is excellent for finding obscure not-really-collectible but interesting things. I've picked up a few pieces of old musical equipment there for cheap that I'd never seen for sale locally simply because there aren't many of them left and they aren't popular.
I've never had problems with this kind of merchandise, or the occassional cheap DVD/videotape/game.
However, I am constantly amazed by how willing they are to turn a blind eye to piracy of any kind. If you want a laugh, try finding an auction for a bootleg CDR full of ROM images for videogames, and notifying their investigations department. 99 times out of 100, you will receive a response that eBay has no way to know for sure if the seller doesn't really own the copyrights to all 5000 of those games.
The last time I checked, they had a rule against selling anything on CDR media, but as long as the seller calls it a CD (even if they have a photo with an obviously CD-Stomper-applied label), eBay doesn't care.
It's the same for VHS bootlegs. About a month ago I went looking for a British DVD that isn't available in the US. Along with the legit listings, I saw the same thing on NTSC VHS. I checked the auction, and it was obviously a basement pirate copy ("does not include cover art," "unlabelled tape," etc.). In addition, there were about thirty negative/neutral feedback comments along the lines of "crappy bootleg copy." I sent an email to their investigations department, and there was no action taken.
I can understand students and so forth copying things because they literally do not have the money to purchase them (it's not a *good* thing to do, but I understand the motivation behind it), but people *making money* off of it (particularly selling bootleg material to unsuspecting buyers) really grates on my nerves, especially since eBay could put a stop to it (and appear more legitimate in the end) if they would tell their investigations team to use a bit of common sense when they get a complaint.
...but I'm having trouble figuring out why you'd want a 2D display you can penetrate. A 3D one would be cool, since you could walk around in a CAD projection, for example, but this one seems more like a gimmick than anything else.
I have an all-lucite case parked a foot from my CRT and experience no interference on the display or instability in the PC.
I'd estimate that at least 2/3 of the trailers for films with any kind of action in them use either that bit from the Aliens score (Which I assume is "Bishop's Countdown," it's been awhile since I dusted off my copy of that disc) or "O Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" by Orff.
I am unable to find a single reference to chromed missiles online, other than this post.
Anybody want to help me out? My personal feeling is that it's unlikely, given that the ABL isn't even done yet.
Yes. If you look in the lower-right corner of the screen, you will see the text "Windows Whistler P[review?] 1" and "For testing purposes only." Judging from the build number, I would guess it's from about six months before the official release.