Not so fast. Mexico has no environmental controls of any consequence, and the effluent from their power production and manufacturing plants does affect us. Try living downwind from a Mexican power plant.
To be fair, the EPA is a pretty powerful outfit that has had a significant effect on industry and environment... whether you agree with them or not is irrelevant. They are not just a band-aid group.
I work in the petroleum industry, and I'll tell you this: companies that run pipelines and tank farms are generally far more concerned with state Environment agencies. They're a lot tougher than the Feds in many areas.
Well, I don't have any particular beef with Linksys' hardware... the things are built about as well as you'd expect. I just think they need to work on their firmware. Now, keep in mind that Linksys is now a division of Cisco, and it wouldn't surprise me that they don't particularly want their consumer-grade equipment to be too good, good enough to compete with their higher end stuff. Frankly, Tomato and some of the other alternate firmware packages offer some real nice options, like QOS, bandwidth monitoring, remote logging and more.
That said, I will give Linksys credit for re-releasing a Linux-friendly router after having switched to another RTOS.
Interesting that I got a Troll mod for restating the GP's statement from the perspective of another country, which is doing some pretty awful stuff to the United States (not to mention some other places, just ask Tibet.)
Oh, we're heading for an economic "adjustment" of Biblical proportions, all right. The problem that most people just don't seem to grasp is that we're gong to have a very hard time with it. We've thrown away a lot of very critical manufacturing infrastructure (mostly sold to China after they destroyed the domestic outfits that originally used it.) Not only are the machines themselves gone, but the people and institutional knowledge is gone with them. That's very hard to acquire, often it takes decades or longer. China was fortunate in that they could pillage our industrial economy for the knowledge they needed: I guarantee you that they will not be so generous in return.
Let's try this again, from a slightly different perspective:
..That China only tolerates a playing field tilted in its favour. It's called "globalisation" and it means "we will undercut your domestic industries by dumping cheap trade goods into your stores Japanese-style (or better yet we'll just steal it... fuck your IP, all your patent belong to us), we will spread cheap crap throughout your retail sector and decimate your domestic industries, and your declining population will helplessly buy our junk [TVs, clock radios, DVD players] like so many zombies. We'll pocket the margins to build and maintain our rapidly developing military, space endeavors, and weapon systems, and pay for the wars that our hunger for world domination will invariably trigger."
You cannot lay this all at the United States' feet. As you correctly stated, this is globalization which means we're all fucking responsible.
Grow up. See the world as it is. America may be the current 800 lb. gorilla but that situation won't last, and you'd best realize that there are far more dangerous governments on this planet, far worse scenarios that will be played out.
America has done a metric fuck-ton of good around the world, a lot more than any other country in recent history. Yes, we've also done a lot of bad stuff too, but hell of a lot less than Russia, or China, or North Korea, or any number of other countries ruled by true sociopaths. Hell, just ask some of those countries what will happen when America's economy finally collapses and all those free food shipments stop.
What can game developers do to prove that the collection techniques or the data themselves wouldn't be abused?
That's easy. Just give me a checkboxed list of all the data items from my computer that you propose to send to your server. Then provide an "UNCHECK ALL" button so I can still maintain my privacy.
The AC adapters they've bundled in recent years are smaller than a deck of cards, yet I'm supposed to believe that they can put out 3 amps of current at 5VDC indefinitely?
That's only a max of 15 watts, which isn't much, particularly because the things are switchers, not linear supplies. Besides, it's not the size, it's the fact that they use cheap-ass parts.
Yeah... there's a bunch of good firewall appliance distros that are painless to install. Smoothwall comes to mind. IPCop as well (although I believe IPCop is a fork of Smoothwall.)
I ran Smoothwall for a while... it was a nice program but I eventually went for a WRT54G with Tomato because I didn't like heating up my basement just for a firewall. You definitely take first prize for general coolness though.
I don't mind being a dick: stock firmware generally sucks. You're absolutely right about Tomato, though.
The manufacturer's firmware in the DI-624 I used to have, as well as the original WRT54G that I flashed with Tomato, weren't hard to crash at all. Between gaming (I run a Halflife server among other things), multiple VPNs I use with my customers, Bit Torrent, VoIP (AT&T CallVantage) and some other things on my server, Tomato hasn't even stuttered, not once.
Get a WRT54G and flash it with Tomato. You'll wonder how you ever got along with the stock firmware. Do you really think that Apple's stuff is substantially higher quality than Linksys, Buffalo or anyone else? It's not, it's made in the same Chinese factories. Apple's profit margins are higher, sure.
The problem is the poor quality of the stock firmware in the things: it's not well thought-out, not well-tested, and frankly isn't particularly reliable in most cases.
crappy firmware. I flashed my WRT54G V4 with Tomato and haven't looked back. Also haven't had to reboot it in the past year or so that I've been using it, other than the occasional update. Tomato's developer obviously knows what he's doing: compared to the stock Linksys firmware he's lightyears ahead. And he's just one guy, you'd think a company with the resources of Linksys could do an even better job.
But an aeronautical engineer at the University of Washington cautions that there are still some big problems to be worked out with mega-airships, including their stability in turbulent weather.
Well, duh. Don't fly them in a storm them. Geez, do these guys need to have everything explained to them?
(Ofcourse my opinion is that nobody should kill anyone, no matter what.)
No matter what? Really? What if I come at you with an aluminum baseball bat shouting "I'm gonna kill you, fuck your wife and kill her too!" Would you just accept that (because nobody should kill anyone, no matter what) or would you pull your trusty.45 caliber automatic and blow me away? I'd hope you would choose the latter option, because if you don't there's something seriously wrong with you.
Sometimes it is necessary to kill: unavoidable even. The only question is when is that the right thing to do. I personally agree, killing one's wife over infidelity is not one of them, but that's my perspective as an American. In some societies a murder in that situation would be accepted, even expected.
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Not so fast. Mexico has no environmental controls of any consequence, and the effluent from their power production and manufacturing plants does affect us. Try living downwind from a Mexican power plant.
To be fair, the EPA is a pretty powerful outfit that has had a significant effect on industry and environment ... whether you agree with them or not is irrelevant. They are not just a band-aid group.
I work in the petroleum industry, and I'll tell you this: companies that run pipelines and tank farms are generally far more concerned with state Environment agencies. They're a lot tougher than the Feds in many areas.
Actually, it stands for "Europeans Pollute Also", although they rarely want to admit it.
Well, I don't have any particular beef with Linksys' hardware ... the things are built about as well as you'd expect. I just think they need to work on their firmware. Now, keep in mind that Linksys is now a division of Cisco, and it wouldn't surprise me that they don't particularly want their consumer-grade equipment to be too good, good enough to compete with their higher end stuff. Frankly, Tomato and some of the other alternate firmware packages offer some real nice options, like QOS, bandwidth monitoring, remote logging and more.
That said, I will give Linksys credit for re-releasing a Linux-friendly router after having switched to another RTOS.
Interesting that I got a Troll mod for restating the GP's statement from the perspective of another country, which is doing some pretty awful stuff to the United States (not to mention some other places, just ask Tibet.)
Oh, we're heading for an economic "adjustment" of Biblical proportions, all right. The problem that most people just don't seem to grasp is that we're gong to have a very hard time with it. We've thrown away a lot of very critical manufacturing infrastructure (mostly sold to China after they destroyed the domestic outfits that originally used it.) Not only are the machines themselves gone, but the people and institutional knowledge is gone with them. That's very hard to acquire, often it takes decades or longer. China was fortunate in that they could pillage our industrial economy for the knowledge they needed: I guarantee you that they will not be so generous in return.
Never use a work in spoken form that you've only read and never heard.
And what work would that be?
Oh, spare me.
..That China only tolerates a playing field tilted in its favour. It's called "globalisation" and it means "we will undercut your domestic industries by dumping cheap trade goods into your stores Japanese-style (or better yet we'll just steal it ... fuck your IP, all your patent belong to us), we will spread cheap crap throughout your retail sector and decimate your domestic industries, and your declining population will helplessly buy our junk [TVs, clock radios, DVD players] like so many zombies. We'll pocket the margins to build and maintain our rapidly developing military, space endeavors, and weapon systems, and pay for the wars that our hunger for world domination will invariably trigger."
Let's try this again, from a slightly different perspective:
You cannot lay this all at the United States' feet. As you correctly stated, this is globalization which means we're all fucking responsible.
Grow up. See the world as it is. America may be the current 800 lb. gorilla but that situation won't last, and you'd best realize that there are far more dangerous governments on this planet, far worse scenarios that will be played out.
America has done a metric fuck-ton of good around the world, a lot more than any other country in recent history. Yes, we've also done a lot of bad stuff too, but hell of a lot less than Russia, or China, or North Korea, or any number of other countries ruled by true sociopaths. Hell, just ask some of those countries what will happen when America's economy finally collapses and all those free food shipments stop.
Still, that doesn't stop the executives from only seeing cheaper-by-the-hour. And really, it's that last one that's the real problem.
So it all boils down to there being no free lunch.
I think executives should be required to take a class in basic thermodynamics.
What can game developers do to prove that the collection techniques or the data themselves wouldn't be abused?
That's easy. Just give me a checkboxed list of all the data items from my computer that you propose to send to your server. Then provide an "UNCHECK ALL" button so I can still maintain my privacy.
They kind that includes a prostate cancer test.
Yeah. I hear those are computerized nowadays. They're all digital.
Unless he holds meetings with himself and forms committees of himself, I'd say hes got at least one advantage.
... can't argue with that!
Ha
I stand corrected. A little Pilsner's Urquell will do that.
The AC adapters they've bundled in recent years are smaller than a deck of cards, yet I'm supposed to believe that they can put out 3 amps of current at 5VDC indefinitely?
That's only a max of 15 watts, which isn't much, particularly because the things are switchers, not linear supplies. Besides, it's not the size, it's the fact that they use cheap-ass parts.
Yeah ... there's a bunch of good firewall appliance distros that are painless to install. Smoothwall comes to mind. IPCop as well (although I believe IPCop is a fork of Smoothwall.)
That's because Apple has an actual Quality Assurance department. I remain convinced that most other makers of consumer-level routers don't.
Try a WRT54G V1-4 or the -GL and flash it with Tomato.
I ran Smoothwall for a while ... it was a nice program but I eventually went for a WRT54G with Tomato because I didn't like heating up my basement just for a firewall. You definitely take first prize for general coolness though.
I don't mind being a dick: stock firmware generally sucks. You're absolutely right about Tomato, though.
The manufacturer's firmware in the DI-624 I used to have, as well as the original WRT54G that I flashed with Tomato, weren't hard to crash at all. Between gaming (I run a Halflife server among other things), multiple VPNs I use with my customers, Bit Torrent, VoIP (AT&T CallVantage) and some other things on my server, Tomato hasn't even stuttered, not once.
Get a WRT54G and flash it with Tomato. You'll wonder how you ever got along with the stock firmware. Do you really think that Apple's stuff is substantially higher quality than Linksys, Buffalo or anyone else? It's not, it's made in the same Chinese factories. Apple's profit margins are higher, sure.
The problem is the poor quality of the stock firmware in the things: it's not well thought-out, not well-tested, and frankly isn't particularly reliable in most cases.
crappy firmware. I flashed my WRT54G V4 with Tomato and haven't looked back. Also haven't had to reboot it in the past year or so that I've been using it, other than the occasional update. Tomato's developer obviously knows what he's doing: compared to the stock Linksys firmware he's lightyears ahead. And he's just one guy, you'd think a company with the resources of Linksys could do an even better job.
He != H
It does if He says it does.
But an aeronautical engineer at the University of Washington cautions that there are still some big problems to be worked out with mega-airships, including their stability in turbulent weather.
Well, duh. Don't fly them in a storm them. Geez, do these guys need to have everything explained to them?
(Ofcourse my opinion is that nobody should kill anyone, no matter what.)
.45 caliber automatic and blow me away? I'd hope you would choose the latter option, because if you don't there's something seriously wrong with you.
No matter what? Really? What if I come at you with an aluminum baseball bat shouting "I'm gonna kill you, fuck your wife and kill her too!" Would you just accept that (because nobody should kill anyone, no matter what) or would you pull your trusty
Sometimes it is necessary to kill: unavoidable even. The only question is when is that the right thing to do. I personally agree, killing one's wife over infidelity is not one of them, but that's my perspective as an American. In some societies a murder in that situation would be accepted, even expected.
But hey. That's life.
Ultimately, in the age of cell phones you have to have a substantial, widespread outage to find yourself without some form of voice communication.
If that happens, you've probably got bigger problems. Like finding enough food and water.
can you imagine that old coot as secretary of defense, hell, even president ?
How would that be worse than what we have now?