When it comes to "viral marketing" (or herpes ads as I prefer to call them), I'll take a dodgy website over a spray-painted streaker anyday.
I couldn't give a *insert expletives here* over someone getting their kit off, but to stuff up my favourite sport for the sake of some pathetic companies only opportunity to pull a scam^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H promote their worthwhile products and services is unforgivable.
If this is viral advertising I want the vaccine...
For those who have read Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age" will find this concept quite familiar (think 'ractives).
There is a long tradition of movies being made from books, games, etc. However, this is not merely a blending of different mediums - I believe it will bring about a major shift in the powers that control our allowed entertainment.
Think of a great movie that you have seen - now imagine that you could choose to download (free/licensed/whatever) the scenery (level) and any assosciated mods/custom scripts etc.
You and your friends are able to recreate the "movie", either exactly or to your own interpretation, and allow others to watch live or captured recording of your performance.
I can see the Hollywood Machine quacking in it's boots over this one (despite the fact that if they play their cards carefully they stand to gain much more than they will lose). Although the Casting Association of America is guaranteed to do all within it's power to restrict the casting to union members...
I for one would love to be able to recreate the marine charge in Aliens.
It is conceivable that groups of performers will become so popular amongst the audiences that they will be able to become commercial entities (if they so choose) themselves. Kind of analogous to the local community acting groups.
The largest stumbling block at the moment is the difficulty in portaying emotive content. I can see "Rambo" making an easy conversion to machinama, but "Driving Miss Daisy" may be left lacking...
What we really need is a system that (through consumer grade USB cameras) can capture the expressions on a face, convert them to relative muscular movement descriptors, and then send this information as modifiers for the model of the character is currently playing. For instance, this should allow characters without a typical humanoid appearance to still represent the facial movements in a mostly understandable way (ie. a smiling dog).
I believe similar systems are currently being developed for "quasi" video conferencing, so a meshing of the two technologies would greatly benefit both goals.
There are a large number of issues, which although not immediately obvious, bear some consideration before we rush in. Censorship (never a favourite concept of mine admittedly), copyright and a whole host of others.
My overwhelming thought? Maybe we will actually get some decent entertainment if we take the power from the hands of the yellow-livered, "let's just do another sequel", mentally challenged, emotionally crippled individuals we currently call Hollywood executives...
Sorry to go autobiographical - but I am struggling to illustrate my point without personal experiences to relate it to.
I am an avid computer usr/programmer/gamer now, but in my youth I grew up in the bush.
My formative years were not spent playing violent computer games, but instead wandering through miles of thick bush, practising survival skills, and highly intellectual pursuits like trying to catch live Goannas (6 foot long lizards with huge claws/teeth) armed only with a hessian sack (yes, I still have the scars).
I made napalm, black-powder, and nitro-peln bombs with gay abandon (spare time and sheds full of farm chemicals are a dangerous combination). Then I turned my attention to projectiles and hand weapons (my favourite was the 8 foot, 12 kilo pike that I made, although the old style scythe was pretty cool too) both offensively and defensively (which meant getting two neighbours to repeatedly fire stone headed arrows at me from a variety of ranges).
I lived on a farm and was expected to be able to hold my own when it came time to kill a chook or a snake or whatever. The realities of death were neither glossed over, nor glamourised. You understood what it meant, how you could do it, what it looked like, what it felt like, why you would do it, and why not.
A few years later and I was being consistently bullied at school. Not because I was small or slow or whatever, but because I chose not to follow the "cool kids" and their self-supporting persecution of others to appease their own insecurities. I also made no attempt to hide my opinion of them - unforgivable from their perspective. (And I was smart - nothing pisses of a dumb jock more than that).
Although I had spent a lot of time "playing" with various deadly weapons (and school did nothing but provide me with a plethora of additional ideas and resources) I did not choose to target these individuals.
(At least not willingly: Once I found a friend being held down and beaten by a number of the "in crowd", I tackled the main offender off my mate and dared the rest of them to take me on as well - they didn't. After that incident I was cornered by an even larger group of them, out for some "retribution" for being made to look like weak fools - I still think I would have taken a pretty severe beating if I hadn't had a large knife in my pocket to convert the situation to a stand-off (I had been teaching myself knife juggling at the time)).
Unlike much of the student body I was always certain on two things:
1. Knowledge is a hell of a lot more deadly and fear inspiring than strength. (Someone overpowering you? Stomp on the bridge of the foot and sweep your palm sideways across their nose. I don't care how strong they are, their bones aren't.)
2. School will end, I will leave, and the next time I meet one of the bullies they will be smiling and saying: "Would you like fries with that, sir?"
So tell your children, tell your friends, tell your neices and nephews: THERE IS LIFE AFTER SCHOOL.
We need to do something about the horrendous situation the current youth is facing: depression, suicide, hoimicide - they are all different faces of the one die (or dice for the uneducated). It is not the fault of computer games except in as much as they continue the bizarre abstracted existence we are taught to call life.
Thanks for reading, spread the word to those who need most to hear it.
An issue that is rarely highlighted in these discussions is the psychological and emotional development of the game user.
As a well balance, happy, and stable adult (honest), I think most people would agree that there is very little danger that my psyche will be irreperably damaged by playing violent and immersive games.
However, years ago in the days of the original Doom my little brother (around 6 at the time) would sneak into my room and play Doom if I had left it running. With the unique perspective of a self-absorbed teenager, I assumed it would have as little effect on him as it would on myself.
Imagine my surprise when he was sent home from school for threatening another child that he would "...chainsaw him in half...".
A realistic threat? Perhaps not. But it was certainly a potent reminder that the power of all media; be it TV, print or computer based; lies not in the medium, but in the minds of the consumers.
I strenuously object to anyone who dares suggest that I am so impressionable that I should allow someone else to vet my viewing for me (and kudos to those Australians like Margaret Pomeranz of SBS Television who risked arrest in Sydney this week: fighting censorship of the film Ken Park).
And so the conclusion. Games do not a killer make.
Please, let us all use a modicum of common sense and avoid the usual media hyperbole.
P.S. And help support Ken Park - even if it is not a movie that you want to watch, defend your right to choose!
Three standard frequency bands (approx. 13MHz appears to be the longest range band) and a physically accessible antenna.
This sounds like a perfect opportunity for any engineers out there to create a tri-band transceiver with a "snort" function to cycle through the used bands, detect the feedback/absorbtion from the RFID antenna and then give it a very localised, high powered pulse or thousand at the appropriate frequency.
If you don't manage to fry the tiny componentry in a tag, it ain't turned on.
Any and all defensive mechanisms (micro-faraday cages, zener diodes, gas chambers, etc.) should either prohibitively raise the price per RFID or be easily overcome with a minor modification (slow ramp up times, gaussian (white noise) frequency distributions).
A far more interesting concept is surely the use of "throw-away" RF interference devices that could interfere with the use of RFID tags to such an extent that it is not viable for it's users (Walmart, I'm looking at you).
Perhaps you could even use their electrical wiring as your antenna (c.f. electronic vermin repellers).
Solar wind is generally accepted to be composed not only of photons, but also masses of particles.
Many of the particles are high-energy/high velocity ionised particles (c.f. the earths magnetic field and resultant aurora).
Now I assume that Gold has not managed to "disprove" the use of standard particle force transmission in collisions (if he has he should inform all thos misguided sailors).
This article is some of the poorest science I have seen in a long time.
One definition of the term "solar wind", a quick digression into the material properties of the sail, and any scientist/engineer/sentient being should have been able to make a qualatative judgement that it will provide a measure of motive force.
That is not to say that the gravitational attraction at a given point will be outweighed by solar wind propulsion, but that and other much more interseting issues have not even been considered in this issue.
The steps taken by the BBC consultants exemplifies a much understated aspect of anti-spamming: Killing the open relays and hacked servers.
It is a fairly trivial matter for most regular/. readers to back trace a spam mail to the source server. In nearly all cases the server is an open relay or has been owned - either way the plug should be pulled.
I would like to see a semi-automated tools to assist in this. It would allow people to respond to the majority of spam they receive with little effort.
The tools would require a minimum of:
* Extract IP from header.
* Reverse DNS lookup of host computer (to get domain).
* Extract primary contact from DNS registration or email the postmaster advising them of situation.
* And finally a temporary blacklist site could be an option as well (We don't want to permanently blacklist British Airways do we?).
Does anyone else have any thoughts on desirable functionality or incorrect assumptions I have made?
As a self confessed post-neo-geek I feel the major driving force in my life (including well before indoctrination into the cult of the computer) has been a desire to be able to stand on my own feet.
To this effect I (mis)spent many years of my youth in the pursuit of the knowledge our societies are built upon but rarely acknowleged.
From trapping/skinning/curing to ceramics to metal refining/smithing and beyond.
The driving force behind this is a long held belief that the current system is unstable and heading for a crisis. Only those who are truly able to survive and prosper without requiring outside skills, tools, or assistance will be able to weather the coming storm.
Don't dismiss this as the confused ranting of a right-wing paramilitary with medieval leanings - change is as inevitable as the tides, and about as powerful.
Q.
Has anyone here read the book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character" by Richard Feynman?
The chapters on the Presidential Inquiry into the Challenger disaster delineate at length the culture of blame, mismanagement, and corruption that is rife within NASA. Not to denigrate the engineers who repeatedly tried to ensure that the expertise they were hired for was listened to.
So was his contribution to the investigation welcomed by those who had requested it? Hell no - instead he was vilified, censored and even threatened.
Does anyone expect the current inquiry to result in anything more productive than a scape-goat or two? I certainly don't.
Don't get me wrong here - I have the greatest respect for those men and women who make it all happen. I also appreciate the difficulty and danger of using controlled detonations to tear your self from the earths gravity well. But I believe that there needs to be culpability for those who put there own commercial interests in front of the safety of their crew (and the surrounding population).
I reiterate: NASA has some of the finest aerospace engineers in the world, unfortunately they also have an entrenched powerbase with a multitude of self-serving managers with undisclosed conflicts of interest. Does this sound like a good idea to you?
The power is in your hands - please don't let history repeat itself.
The obvious conclusion is that it is a good idea to turn-off you 802.11 system if radar seeking missiles (HARM) are being used in your neighbourhood (your microwave should be fine unless it has been modified to work with the door open (a la Kosovo) or has a damaged case/screen mesh).
802.11 emissions are many orders of magnitude lower than the emissions from radar/microwave ovens so the odds are that you would not be targetted anyway...
I haven't seen any posts regarding the failure to design intelligible user interfaces and train the people who will actually be operating the system - or the idiocy of the companies receiving the software and their "integration" into the company operation.
The UK automated ambulance dispatch system has to be my "favourite" in this regard. See here.
Not only was the software incomplete, inadequately tested and un-tuned to the required performance, but the users were never actually shown how to scroll back up the list of incidents (fifo queue, so oldest were scrolling off the top of the screen). This is rarely mentioned.
Add a good dollop of stupidity in not deciding to phase in a new complex system alongside your existing (pen and paper) system...
They all got off VERY lightly in this case - due to the medical emergency nature of the system it was very difficult to prove the culpability of any one party.
The reported 30+ deaths are now considered mostly media hysteria, however at least one asthmatic died before reaching hospital. Many people had to wait hours for assistance, while others had 5-6 ambulances arrive.
Software criminal negligence is not restricted to the project managers, testers and developers...
A rarely mentioned subject, but one that should be considered in this situation, is the effect of cosmic rays on computer hardware and the resultant software failures.
These highly energetic rays can penetrate meters of solid concrete and are constantly slamming into the earth (most absorbed by the atmosphere, but more than enough left to cause trouble).
Ever had a bizarre but completely UN-reproducible crash on your pc? Could be it was a cosmic ray, not just the "Ghost of Bill".
After years as a support engineer (thank god I got out of that) I can say with some surety that it is a much under-estimated cause of errors.
Unusual, but not impossible.
So, to cut a long story short - can computers (excluding specifically and expensively hardened army/nasa chips) ever be relied upon in these mission-critical situations?
It's interesting to note that/. introduced a similar html pruning system (removing line breaks, white space etc.) and later removed it after being flooded by complaints from users.
I guess it is a trade-off between providing a service (even if the service inadvertantly includes html authoring tuition through example) and the costs of the service provision.
As google is the most widely used search engine in the world, and it has little or no html layout of any quality worth emulating, I can't blame them for pruning where possible. It certainly speeds up all of our searches.
Actually tech support seems to have no problem with me connecting to big pond advance (the cable service) with my linux firewall/gateway using the bpalogin program.
There is a page with instructions hosted on telstra http://users.bigpond.net.au/LinuxRouter/bpalogin.h tml
And the bpalogin homepage is http://bpalogin.sourceforge.net/
Funny way to ban linux if you ask me:)
Sure I wouldnt be expecting any real tech support, but my linux box never crashes or disconnects (excepting telstra problems) and if you are running linux I would assume you have a modicum technical expertise.
Q.
I agree.
Do not establish a precedent in this case.
They were incompetent if not malicious, and capitulating now sends an unwanted message to the community and corporations.
So StarBucks is so incompetent that they couldn't even turn on a wireless card and see what levels on interference they had on the channels??
No. It is a blatantly (wishfully) monopolistic attempt to establish their network as ALWAYS channel 1 (and hence the first that users will find).
Let's just hope enough grassroots action will stop them from simply buying the result they are after...
The long and the short of it is: in unlicensed spectrum, these sort of problems will only become more common. A bit of co-operation will save everyone involved a lot of headaches.
Slashdot Mirror
That exploit is regarding ways to run linux (and possibly copied games) on an unmodded XBox.
A rather different issue to running DS on linux (XBox linux or otherwise).
Karma: +5 Pedant.
Q.
I couldn't give a *insert expletives here* over someone getting their kit off, but to stuff up my favourite sport for the sake of some pathetic companies only opportunity to pull a scam^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H promote their worthwhile products and services is unforgivable.
If this is viral advertising I want the vaccine...
Q.
There is a long tradition of movies being made from books, games, etc. However, this is not merely a blending of different mediums - I believe it will bring about a major shift in the powers that control our allowed entertainment.
Think of a great movie that you have seen - now imagine that you could choose to download (free/licensed/whatever) the scenery (level) and any assosciated mods/custom scripts etc.
You and your friends are able to recreate the "movie", either exactly or to your own interpretation, and allow others to watch live or captured recording of your performance.
I can see the Hollywood Machine quacking in it's boots over this one (despite the fact that if they play their cards carefully they stand to gain much more than they will lose). Although the Casting Association of America is guaranteed to do all within it's power to restrict the casting to union members...
I for one would love to be able to recreate the marine charge in Aliens.
It is conceivable that groups of performers will become so popular amongst the audiences that they will be able to become commercial entities (if they so choose) themselves. Kind of analogous to the local community acting groups.
The largest stumbling block at the moment is the difficulty in portaying emotive content. I can see "Rambo" making an easy conversion to machinama, but "Driving Miss Daisy" may be left lacking...
What we really need is a system that (through consumer grade USB cameras) can capture the expressions on a face, convert them to relative muscular movement descriptors, and then send this information as modifiers for the model of the character is currently playing. For instance, this should allow characters without a typical humanoid appearance to still represent the facial movements in a mostly understandable way (ie. a smiling dog).
I believe similar systems are currently being developed for "quasi" video conferencing, so a meshing of the two technologies would greatly benefit both goals.
There are a large number of issues, which although not immediately obvious, bear some consideration before we rush in. Censorship (never a favourite concept of mine admittedly), copyright and a whole host of others.
My overwhelming thought? Maybe we will actually get some decent entertainment if we take the power from the hands of the yellow-livered, "let's just do another sequel", mentally challenged, emotionally crippled individuals we currently call Hollywood executives...
Q.
I am an avid computer usr/programmer/gamer now, but in my youth I grew up in the bush.
My formative years were not spent playing violent computer games, but instead wandering through miles of thick bush, practising survival skills, and highly intellectual pursuits like trying to catch live Goannas (6 foot long lizards with huge claws/teeth) armed only with a hessian sack (yes, I still have the scars).
I made napalm, black-powder, and nitro-peln bombs with gay abandon (spare time and sheds full of farm chemicals are a dangerous combination). Then I turned my attention to projectiles and hand weapons (my favourite was the 8 foot, 12 kilo pike that I made, although the old style scythe was pretty cool too) both offensively and defensively (which meant getting two neighbours to repeatedly fire stone headed arrows at me from a variety of ranges).
I lived on a farm and was expected to be able to hold my own when it came time to kill a chook or a snake or whatever. The realities of death were neither glossed over, nor glamourised. You understood what it meant, how you could do it, what it looked like, what it felt like, why you would do it, and why not.
A few years later and I was being consistently bullied at school. Not because I was small or slow or whatever, but because I chose not to follow the "cool kids" and their self-supporting persecution of others to appease their own insecurities. I also made no attempt to hide my opinion of them - unforgivable from their perspective. (And I was smart - nothing pisses of a dumb jock more than that).
Although I had spent a lot of time "playing" with various deadly weapons (and school did nothing but provide me with a plethora of additional ideas and resources) I did not choose to target these individuals.
(At least not willingly: Once I found a friend being held down and beaten by a number of the "in crowd", I tackled the main offender off my mate and dared the rest of them to take me on as well - they didn't. After that incident I was cornered by an even larger group of them, out for some "retribution" for being made to look like weak fools - I still think I would have taken a pretty severe beating if I hadn't had a large knife in my pocket to convert the situation to a stand-off (I had been teaching myself knife juggling at the time)).
Unlike much of the student body I was always certain on two things:
1. Knowledge is a hell of a lot more deadly and fear inspiring than strength. (Someone overpowering you? Stomp on the bridge of the foot and sweep your palm sideways across their nose. I don't care how strong they are, their bones aren't.)
2. School will end, I will leave, and the next time I meet one of the bullies they will be smiling and saying: "Would you like fries with that, sir?"
So tell your children, tell your friends, tell your neices and nephews: THERE IS LIFE AFTER SCHOOL.
We need to do something about the horrendous situation the current youth is facing: depression, suicide, hoimicide - they are all different faces of the one die (or dice for the uneducated). It is not the fault of computer games except in as much as they continue the bizarre abstracted existence we are taught to call life.
Thanks for reading, spread the word to those who need most to hear it.
Q.
An issue that is rarely highlighted in these discussions is the psychological and emotional development of the game user.
As a well balance, happy, and stable adult (honest), I think most people would agree that there is very little danger that my psyche will be irreperably damaged by playing violent and immersive games.
However, years ago in the days of the original Doom my little brother (around 6 at the time) would sneak into my room and play Doom if I had left it running. With the unique perspective of a self-absorbed teenager, I assumed it would have as little effect on him as it would on myself.
Imagine my surprise when he was sent home from school for threatening another child that he would "...chainsaw him in half...".
A realistic threat? Perhaps not. But it was certainly a potent reminder that the power of all media; be it TV, print or computer based; lies not in the medium, but in the minds of the consumers.
I strenuously object to anyone who dares suggest that I am so impressionable that I should allow someone else to vet my viewing for me (and kudos to those Australians like Margaret Pomeranz of SBS Television who risked arrest in Sydney this week: fighting censorship of the film Ken Park).
And so the conclusion. Games do not a killer make.
Please, let us all use a modicum of common sense and avoid the usual media hyperbole.
P.S. And help support Ken Park - even if it is not a movie that you want to watch, defend your right to choose!
Q.
Do we have any engineers in the house??
Three standard frequency bands (approx. 13MHz appears to be the longest range band) and a physically accessible antenna.
This sounds like a perfect opportunity for any engineers out there to create a tri-band transceiver with a "snort" function to cycle through the used bands, detect the feedback/absorbtion from the RFID antenna and then give it a very localised, high powered pulse or thousand at the appropriate frequency.
If you don't manage to fry the tiny componentry in a tag, it ain't turned on.
Any and all defensive mechanisms (micro-faraday cages, zener diodes, gas chambers, etc.) should either prohibitively raise the price per RFID or be easily overcome with a minor modification (slow ramp up times, gaussian (white noise) frequency distributions).
A far more interesting concept is surely the use of "throw-away" RF interference devices that could interfere with the use of RFID tags to such an extent that it is not viable for it's users (Walmart, I'm looking at you).
Perhaps you could even use their electrical wiring as your antenna (c.f. electronic vermin repellers).
Time to break out the soldering iron.
Quinkin.
Solar wind is generally accepted to be composed not only of photons, but also masses of particles.
Many of the particles are high-energy/high velocity ionised particles (c.f. the earths magnetic field and resultant aurora).
Now I assume that Gold has not managed to "disprove" the use of standard particle force transmission in collisions (if he has he should inform all thos misguided sailors).
This article is some of the poorest science I have seen in a long time.
One definition of the term "solar wind", a quick digression into the material properties of the sail, and any scientist/engineer/sentient being should have been able to make a qualatative judgement that it will provide a measure of motive force.
That is not to say that the gravitational attraction at a given point will be outweighed by solar wind propulsion, but that and other much more interseting issues have not even been considered in this issue.
Quinkin.
It is a fairly trivial matter for most regular /. readers to back trace a spam mail to the source server. In nearly all cases the server is an open relay or has been owned - either way the plug should be pulled.
I would like to see a semi-automated tools to assist in this. It would allow people to respond to the majority of spam they receive with little effort.
The tools would require a minimum of:
* Extract IP from header.
* Reverse DNS lookup of host computer (to get domain).
* Extract primary contact from DNS registration or email the postmaster advising them of situation.
* And finally a temporary blacklist site could be an option as well (We don't want to permanently blacklist British Airways do we?).
Does anyone else have any thoughts on desirable functionality or incorrect assumptions I have made?
Q.
In the past employers have asked me to choose between ludicrous overtime and my family/life.
I wonder what those companies are up to now...
Presumably still spiralling down the financial abyss that forced such desperate measure to begin with.
Q.
As a self confessed post-neo-geek I feel the major driving force in my life (including well before indoctrination into the cult of the computer) has been a desire to be able to stand on my own feet.
To this effect I (mis)spent many years of my youth in the pursuit of the knowledge our societies are built upon but rarely acknowleged.
From trapping/skinning/curing to ceramics to metal refining/smithing and beyond.
The driving force behind this is a long held belief that the current system is unstable and heading for a crisis. Only those who are truly able to survive and prosper without requiring outside skills, tools, or assistance will be able to weather the coming storm.
Don't dismiss this as the confused ranting of a right-wing paramilitary with medieval leanings - change is as inevitable as the tides, and about as powerful.
Q.
Perhaps the class should consider the ethical and moral implications of censorship and control of the new media.
For instance:
Compare these to the existing checks and controls on the traditional communication channels, especially with regards to telephones.
Q.
Q.
Q.
Has anyone here read the book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character" by Richard Feynman?
The chapters on the Presidential Inquiry into the Challenger disaster delineate at length the culture of blame, mismanagement, and corruption that is rife within NASA. Not to denigrate the engineers who repeatedly tried to ensure that the expertise they were hired for was listened to.
So was his contribution to the investigation welcomed by those who had requested it? Hell no - instead he was vilified, censored and even threatened.
Does anyone expect the current inquiry to result in anything more productive than a scape-goat or two? I certainly don't.
Don't get me wrong here - I have the greatest respect for those men and women who make it all happen. I also appreciate the difficulty and danger of using controlled detonations to tear your self from the earths gravity well. But I believe that there needs to be culpability for those who put there own commercial interests in front of the safety of their crew (and the surrounding population).
I reiterate: NASA has some of the finest aerospace engineers in the world, unfortunately they also have an entrenched powerbase with a multitude of self-serving managers with undisclosed conflicts of interest. Does this sound like a good idea to you?
The power is in your hands - please don't let history repeat itself.
Q.
The obvious conclusion is that it is a good idea to turn-off you 802.11 system if radar seeking missiles (HARM) are being used in your neighbourhood (your microwave should be fine unless it has been modified to work with the door open (a la Kosovo) or has a damaged case/screen mesh).
802.11 emissions are many orders of magnitude lower than the emissions from radar/microwave ovens so the odds are that you would not be targetted anyway...
Bags not testing it.
Q.
The UK automated ambulance dispatch system has to be my "favourite" in this regard. See here.
Not only was the software incomplete, inadequately tested and un-tuned to the required performance, but the users were never actually shown how to scroll back up the list of incidents (fifo queue, so oldest were scrolling off the top of the screen). This is rarely mentioned.
Add a good dollop of stupidity in not deciding to phase in a new complex system alongside your existing (pen and paper) system...
They all got off VERY lightly in this case - due to the medical emergency nature of the system it was very difficult to prove the culpability of any one party.
The reported 30+ deaths are now considered mostly media hysteria, however at least one asthmatic died before reaching hospital. Many people had to wait hours for assistance, while others had 5-6 ambulances arrive.
Software criminal negligence is not restricted to the project managers, testers and developers...
Q.
These highly energetic rays can penetrate meters of solid concrete and are constantly slamming into the earth (most absorbed by the atmosphere, but more than enough left to cause trouble).
A brief overview is available from Nature.
Ever had a bizarre but completely UN-reproducible crash on your pc? Could be it was a cosmic ray, not just the "Ghost of Bill".
After years as a support engineer (thank god I got out of that) I can say with some surety that it is a much under-estimated cause of errors.
Unusual, but not impossible.
So, to cut a long story short - can computers (excluding specifically and expensively hardened army/nasa chips) ever be relied upon in these mission-critical situations?
Um, no. But it has never stopped us before.
Q.
It's interesting to note that /. introduced a similar html pruning system (removing line breaks, white space etc.) and later removed it after being flooded by complaints from users.
I guess it is a trade-off between providing a service (even if the service inadvertantly includes html authoring tuition through example) and the costs of the service provision.
As google is the most widely used search engine in the world, and it has little or no html layout of any quality worth emulating, I can't blame them for pruning where possible. It certainly speeds up all of our searches.
I had better contact my ISP and webhost to let them know...
US$20 million won't go far in running a high-load server farm.
Quinkin
If only I read your signature before I got my IT degree...
Or my girlfriend pregnant...
Quinkin.
I'm sorry, but I don't see Samba based NetBIOS OS's on the list of nuke targets (not that there aren't ways to kill a variety of Samba versions).
I think it is fairly obvious that the very clearly designed protocol on which windows netBIOS is (loosely) based is not at fault.
The blame lies squarely with the implementors - Microsoft.
That said, it should be easy to fix. Expect a 20kB security vulnerability patch in the next few weeks.
Quinkin.
Actually tech support seems to have no problem with me connecting to big pond advance (the cable service) with my linux firewall/gateway using the bpalogin program.h tml :)
There is a page with instructions hosted on telstra http://users.bigpond.net.au/LinuxRouter/bpalogin.
And the bpalogin homepage is http://bpalogin.sourceforge.net/
Funny way to ban linux if you ask me
Sure I wouldnt be expecting any real tech support, but my linux box never crashes or disconnects (excepting telstra problems) and if you are running linux I would assume you have a modicum technical expertise.
Q.
I agree. Do not establish a precedent in this case. They were incompetent if not malicious, and capitulating now sends an unwanted message to the community and corporations.
So StarBucks is so incompetent that they couldn't even turn on a wireless card and see what levels on interference they had on the channels?? No. It is a blatantly (wishfully) monopolistic attempt to establish their network as ALWAYS channel 1 (and hence the first that users will find). Let's just hope enough grassroots action will stop them from simply buying the result they are after... The long and the short of it is: in unlicensed spectrum, these sort of problems will only become more common. A bit of co-operation will save everyone involved a lot of headaches.