So if they're already experiencing greater than 10e-4 computations without error, give them a little time to do more experiments. We might find that the molecular computations have an error rate of 10e-15 or greater (10e-15 = 1,000,000,000,000,000)....
Remember, this research works very slowly for now. Maybe they haven't had the time to do that many tests..
Would you want to move at -452.5 deg F? (4K = -452.5F, -269.1C)
I seriously doubt that the CRT will ever fully die. It's proven technology, simplicity to produce, and low-cost will always make it more lucritave to the military and other government organazations. The fact that an LCD screen is much less durable than it's CRT counterpart assures that the military will be using it for sometime to come (with the exception of permanant-mounts inside some equipment). The only technology that I see the LCD dominating would be touch-screens. It is much harder to retrofit a CRT with a touch-screen than it is to produce a LCD with it.
Just my $.02 worth
Copy protected CDs --> Idiotic Windows XP Authentication methods --> DRM --> Crippled hardware --> Palladium --> Microchips under your skin... what's next?
I don't know if this information was posted at the time (and please don't call me a bible-thumper for using the referances following), but a couple of years back, Lucent Technologies (which, ironically enough, Lucent is a take-off of the Latin word from Lucifer if i remember my translations correctly) was developing a microchip that would contain all of a persons information: bank accounts, criminal records, SSN, etc. Now, the best place to implant this microchip, according to Lucent scientists, would be the back of the hand, or on the forehead.
Again, please don't call me a bible-thumper, but the book of Revelations states that "The mark of the beast will appear on the back of the hand, or upon the forehead,"...anyone else find that kinda creepy?
Could this possibly be the hypothetical "pendulium" swinging back against graphics-intensive gore fests? (don't get me wrong, I love UT and I'm eagerly awaiting UT 2003) Could we be returning to a time where near photo-realism and "twitch" game mechanics will be subsumed by games that graphics quality and instant gratification (even though there's nothing like the UT announcer saying "Godlike!") take a back seat to storyline and character development?
I know that there are good games out there that have great graphics and good storylines (Arcanum comes to mind), but they are few and far between IMHO. This could be exactly what the game industry needs...a return from mindless carnage to more thought-provoking and intelligent games (the Final Fantasy series also comes to mind....)
I wouldn't call this a feature...I would call it a major security hole. They tried "targeted ads" on the Web through the use of cookies, and sites that take your information to be used by advertising companies. It didn't work. Most security-conscious users disabled the cookies, and refrained from using the "ad-collection sites".
A profiling engine running in the set-top box determines which ads are played in a particular household. The box is given an initial profile and it then gathers information based on the household's television viewing habits. Anderson emphasized that this information never leaves the set-top box.
Okay, can anyone else say "bull-s!%$"? If that profiling information never leaves the STB, how can you guarantee me that an anonymous and random cracker doesn't decide to open my STB and look at the profiling engine's settings to see what I've been watching or when? Or what about the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies? Do I really want them to be able to see what I've been watching on TV?
An example provided by Invidi is that 90 percent of Lexus ads are seen by viewers who will never buy a Lexus. With targeted ads, only those viewers likely to buy a Lexus would see Lexus ads.
This has been brought up, but how the hell is my STB supposed to know that I just bought a car? Let alone a specific make and model? Are you going to tell me that this is just "simply for advertising purposes"? It's another invasion of my privacy, plain and simple.
Downey pointed out that it impossible for viewers to make a purchasing decision based on a single 30-second spot. It might take a suite of five or six commercials to entice a viewer to purchase a product.
Isn't that what Infomercials are for? Products that you would probably never buy if they had just a 30-second TV spot? Why would I want to sit through 5 or 6 commercials for the same product (not saying I sit through any commercials anyway, thanks to cable's movie channels and DVDs)?
Invidi says there is an upside for viewers. The company says viewers will only see ads relevant to their lifestyle and will not experience repeated airing of ads for products for which they have no interest.
Again, can anyone say "bull-s!%$"? An upside for viewers my ass. More like an upside for greedy corporations.
Invidi says its system is designed to assure privacy. "The system never knows what the viewer is watching since the headend never knows specifics about what the set-top box is doing," said Anderson. "And we never associate the set-top box address with a physical home address,"
Yet again, more "bull-s!%$". If they can associate the STB address (presumably equivalent to the MAC address on your network card, or a serial number for the TV itself), then they can, and will, trace it to a home address if they feel it would help the ad campaign ("Anderson explained that the set-top box has a unique ID that is analogous to a street address."). And never knowing what I'm watching simply because the ad-inserter doesn't query the STB? I don't think so. The article says that the ads are "inserted via a channel change without the viewer realizing it.", so now, not only do you know what I'm watching, but you can change the channels at will? And if it is a channel change, how does the STB know which channel to go back to, unless its storing it somewhere for later access? And wheres the guarantee (yes, I like pieces of paper that says I can sue somebody if it's done differently) that says the company ISN'T going to look at those channel registers, and no one else is able to either?
I didn't mean to turn this into a really long rant, but I feel very strongly that these "targetted ads" do not work. They don't work when you USPS them to me, and they definitly don't work when you email them to me. Why would I want to put the annoyance of "popup ads" combined with the very large security holes of this system onto my TV so the government can know what I'm watching? I think that this is a horrible idea, and that the government gets enough information from my habits just by being able to associate my IP address with the sites I visit. And if the consumers of the world haven't got enough spam-email and popups ads for several lifetimes by now, I've got a couple good sites that should fill up your quota for advertising really quick.
Re:How is Magic On-line doing?
on
Layoffs at WotC
·
· Score: 1
I agree fully that the new expansions are nice, and kept the game lively...but there's only so far it can go, and the new abilities DO make some of the older cards useless. Anyone remember the old Circles of Protection? Or how about the old-school game-balancing powers of cards like "Wrath of God", "Armegedon"(sp?), or even (gasp!) the venerable "Chaos Orb"?
I'm still an active player of M:TG (when I can find players around me), but I haven't bought any new cards in any quantity since the Urza's Legacy set...and when I do find new players, and play an old card, they are shocked because they've never seen it before, or don't recognize its abilities....
It was just a feeble attempt at a joke. I worked at the Oklahoma Military Dept. for several years as a systems administrator/pc technician, and until recently, the only OSes certified were NT 4.0/SP6 for the workstations/main servers and Unix for the databases. They were going through a migration to 2k when I left, but in my time there, I must have reinstalled NT from scratch at least a couple thousand times. Until we got Norton Ghost certified, and began using standardized equipment in all the computers, it was a hassle to fix a crashed hard drive or other fatal Windows problem and took approx. 4-6 hours to reinstall and reconfigure the computers. Once we had that..it was better, but still not the best.
But the point is that they already have an OS. Why would they bother installing anything else? BTW, have you ever tried to install Win9x, Win2K, or WinXP from scratch?
or NT x.x?
Preview of NT installation
5 *D0 WHILE sysadmin sanity > 0*
10 *gasp*
20 *strangle*
30 *choak*
40 *system crash*
50 *system crash*
60 *BSoD*
70 *gasp*
80 *choak*
90 *hard drive full*
100 *format*
110 *bzzz...*
120 -Windows NT now Installed. Have fun trying to configure your periphials
130 *config, config, config*
140 *CRASH*
150 *System Dump*
160 *LOOP*
Where does it say that if you run rugularly and are >250 lbs. that you're a glutton? I'm a 5'8, 210lb. geek that runs approx. 10+ miles a week [damn military regulations (and yes, New Balance makes the best running shoes)]. I sometimes do free weights, and enjoy running and working out. Gives the mind some free time that it doesn't have to concentrate on new information, and can process what I've already picked up that day. Plus, it's a great relaxant. I was a diagnosed insominac for years before I joined the service, and found out that working out is about the best thing to cure insomnia. Something about your body being to tired not to sleep.....(YMMV)
Actually, the M16A2 is still the standard-issue infantry rifle. The M4A1 is slowly supposed to phase out the M16 completly, but in pratice, the M4A1 is a very rare sight in anything but a Spec-Ops unit.
Agreed, I just wasn't sure if there were laws or not:). But regardless, the point still stands. Remove the censorware, and add filters to the routers/switches that block certain IPs or URLs, not trusting some corporation (Fear the power that they now hold) to keep a good list, or even an editable list of sites to block.
I can remember back in the days of my middle-school teachings...
The Apple IIe was the newest computer out, at least, the most numerous in the schools. While using it, we learned how to do simple programming of a "turtle" which for some reason had a pen in its belly, and could raise and lower it at will. While this was simple, it was very educational in learning how the computer uses certain commands to create different things.
Now we jump ahead a few years, to High School Junior. Finally, a year were we got to choose which classes we wanted to take. BASIC Programming, hmmmm, sounds like a class that would teach you how to program in BASIC, right? Good course to take, besides it being a prerequisite for C Programming and Advanced Programming. And it was, until I started the class by doing some simple, rote procedures in QBASIC (for some reason, the program chosen) and being suspended for a week for "tampering with the school system's security." Notice what I programmed was a very simple password-generation program, using a very simple algorithm. Nothing in the program could have been used to "violate the school's security", but it scared the teacher because she didn't know what half the code meant, let alone what it did.
Jump ahead to today. Computers are becoming more and more a part of our everyday lives. Basic computer skills (word processors, use of the Internet) is almost a requirement for most jobs not involving the handling of food or small amounts of cash. In the classroom, they load down the computers with so much censorware and removal of programs that could be used "for illicit purposes" (read: installing Quake) that they can no longer even browse to many legit educational sites. I have even seen schools that have programmed their firewall to block access to any site that does not have a.edu TLD. While the abilities for teachers to adequately teach their students how to use a computer, or more importantly, how to do research on it, is stripped away by all the "required" censorware and other such nonsense. If the schools truly wanted to use computers in the classroom, they would:
Hire a true IT department
Not buy the "latest and greatest", but instead buy what is needed for their students
Disregard regulations requiring censorware and other programs designed to block access to certain sites. Have the teachers monitor their useage, not just deciding to "lock out" a wide range of sites with "unethical or immoral content"*
Actually allow the student to use the computers
If a piece of software that comes along is better than what is currently used, replace the outdated software
WOULD NOT limit the equipment and software to those vendors or companies with an "educational discount" policy.
If you're going to teach computers, then teach EVERYTHING about them (Mac, WinBlows, Unix, Linux, etc), not just what you found for a discount (read: any product by M$)
* = Note: This is NOT advocacy to allow pr0n or corrupting content into schools, but there are better, easier, and more secure ways of doing it than with censorware
Just my thoughts, I could be wrong
(Sorry about the long post, please don't mod me down for it)
MacOS, WinBlows server types, Linux, Unix...most hackers/crackers/defacers I know don't really care what OS you run. If there's a hole in the system, they'll find and use it. Just because there is no prior history of MacOS being hacked, that doesn't mean it hasn't been or couldn't be done. It just means that whatever the hacker/cracker/defacer wants to hack/crack/deface is usually on a M$ IIS or Apache (a few others as well, but those are the 2 big ones) webserver. The fact that MacOS-based servers have not been cracked is simply because no hacker/cracker/defacer has found any reason to break into the system. I'll leave the reasoning behind that to your imagination....
Not to mention the fact that IExploder is so integrated into WinBlows, that you can't remove it if you wanted to (has been since IE 4.0) it's simply easier for most users to use what's already there. Not to blame M$ for anything....nope, not blaming them for their unethical software-integration so you can't install software from a competetor......
Ok...maybe I don't understand CDs as well as I think I do, but wouldn't it be nearly impossible to put a sector on a CD that would change values when read? AFAIK, a CD can only have set values burned on it (logical 1s and 0s...or pits and peaks) as opposed to the barely magnetized area spoken of above...how would you create a logical "weak" partition on optical media?
Slashdot Mirror
10e-6 = 1,000,000
10e-9 = 1,000,000,000
10,000 = 10e-4
So if they're already experiencing greater than 10e-4 computations without error, give them a little time to do more experiments. We might find that the molecular computations have an error rate of 10e-15 or greater (10e-15 = 1,000,000,000,000,000)....
Remember, this research works very slowly for now. Maybe they haven't had the time to do that many tests..
Would you want to move at -452.5 deg F? (4K = -452.5F, -269.1C)
I seriously doubt that the CRT will ever fully die. It's proven technology, simplicity to produce, and low-cost will always make it more lucritave to the military and other government organazations. The fact that an LCD screen is much less durable than it's CRT counterpart assures that the military will be using it for sometime to come (with the exception of permanant-mounts inside some equipment). The only technology that I see the LCD dominating would be touch-screens. It is much harder to retrofit a CRT with a touch-screen than it is to produce a LCD with it. Just my $.02 worth
Copy protected CDs --> Idiotic Windows XP Authentication methods --> DRM --> Crippled hardware --> Palladium --> Microchips under your skin... what's next?
I don't know if this information was posted at the time (and please don't call me a bible-thumper for using the referances following), but a couple of years back, Lucent Technologies (which, ironically enough, Lucent is a take-off of the Latin word from Lucifer if i remember my translations correctly) was developing a microchip that would contain all of a persons information: bank accounts, criminal records, SSN, etc. Now, the best place to implant this microchip, according to Lucent scientists, would be the back of the hand, or on the forehead.
Again, please don't call me a bible-thumper, but the book of Revelations states that "The mark of the beast will appear on the back of the hand, or upon the forehead,"...anyone else find that kinda creepy?
Could this possibly be the hypothetical "pendulium" swinging back against graphics-intensive gore fests? (don't get me wrong, I love UT and I'm eagerly awaiting UT 2003) Could we be returning to a time where near photo-realism and "twitch" game mechanics will be subsumed by games that graphics quality and instant gratification (even though there's nothing like the UT announcer saying "Godlike!") take a back seat to storyline and character development?
I know that there are good games out there that have great graphics and good storylines (Arcanum comes to mind), but they are few and far between IMHO. This could be exactly what the game industry needs...a return from mindless carnage to more thought-provoking and intelligent games (the Final Fantasy series also comes to mind....)
Just my thoughts, please don't flame
You mean it's even possible to make the Windows OS more bloated than it is? Oh, wait, we're talking about Microsoft here.......
I wouldn't call this a feature...I would call it a major security hole. They tried "targeted ads" on the Web through the use of cookies, and sites that take your information to be used by advertising companies. It didn't work. Most security-conscious users disabled the cookies, and refrained from using the "ad-collection sites".
A profiling engine running in the set-top box determines which ads are played in a particular household. The box is given an initial profile and it then gathers information based on the household's television viewing habits. Anderson emphasized that this information never leaves the set-top box.
Okay, can anyone else say "bull-s!%$"? If that profiling information never leaves the STB, how can you guarantee me that an anonymous and random cracker doesn't decide to open my STB and look at the profiling engine's settings to see what I've been watching or when? Or what about the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies? Do I really want them to be able to see what I've been watching on TV?
An example provided by Invidi is that 90 percent of Lexus ads are seen by viewers who will never buy a Lexus. With targeted ads, only those viewers likely to buy a Lexus would see Lexus ads.
This has been brought up, but how the hell is my STB supposed to know that I just bought a car? Let alone a specific make and model? Are you going to tell me that this is just "simply for advertising purposes"? It's another invasion of my privacy, plain and simple.
Downey pointed out that it impossible for viewers to make a purchasing decision based on a single 30-second spot. It might take a suite of five or six commercials to entice a viewer to purchase a product.
Isn't that what Infomercials are for? Products that you would probably never buy if they had just a 30-second TV spot? Why would I want to sit through 5 or 6 commercials for the same product (not saying I sit through any commercials anyway, thanks to cable's movie channels and DVDs)?
Invidi says there is an upside for viewers. The company says viewers will only see ads relevant to their lifestyle and will not experience repeated airing of ads for products for which they have no interest.
Again, can anyone say "bull-s!%$"? An upside for viewers my ass. More like an upside for greedy corporations.
Invidi says its system is designed to assure privacy. "The system never knows what the viewer is watching since the headend never knows specifics about what the set-top box is doing," said Anderson. "And we never associate the set-top box address with a physical home address,"
Yet again, more "bull-s!%$". If they can associate the STB address (presumably equivalent to the MAC address on your network card, or a serial number for the TV itself), then they can, and will, trace it to a home address if they feel it would help the ad campaign ("Anderson explained that the set-top box has a unique ID that is analogous to a street address."). And never knowing what I'm watching simply because the ad-inserter doesn't query the STB? I don't think so. The article says that the ads are "inserted via a channel change without the viewer realizing it.", so now, not only do you know what I'm watching, but you can change the channels at will? And if it is a channel change, how does the STB know which channel to go back to, unless its storing it somewhere for later access? And wheres the guarantee (yes, I like pieces of paper that says I can sue somebody if it's done differently) that says the company ISN'T going to look at those channel registers, and no one else is able to either?I didn't mean to turn this into a really long rant, but I feel very strongly that these "targetted ads" do not work. They don't work when you USPS them to me, and they definitly don't work when you email them to me. Why would I want to put the annoyance of "popup ads" combined with the very large security holes of this system onto my TV so the government can know what I'm watching? I think that this is a horrible idea, and that the government gets enough information from my habits just by being able to associate my IP address with the sites I visit. And if the consumers of the world haven't got enough spam-email and popups ads for several lifetimes by now, I've got a couple good sites that should fill up your quota for advertising really quick.
I agree fully that the new expansions are nice, and kept the game lively...but there's only so far it can go, and the new abilities DO make some of the older cards useless. Anyone remember the old Circles of Protection? Or how about the old-school game-balancing powers of cards like "Wrath of God", "Armegedon"(sp?), or even (gasp!) the venerable "Chaos Orb"?
I'm still an active player of M:TG (when I can find players around me), but I haven't bought any new cards in any quantity since the Urza's Legacy set...and when I do find new players, and play an old card, they are shocked because they've never seen it before, or don't recognize its abilities....
It was just a feeble attempt at a joke. I worked at the Oklahoma Military Dept. for several years as a systems administrator/pc technician, and until recently, the only OSes certified were NT 4.0/SP6 for the workstations/main servers and Unix for the databases. They were going through a migration to 2k when I left, but in my time there, I must have reinstalled NT from scratch at least a couple thousand times. Until we got Norton Ghost certified, and began using standardized equipment in all the computers, it was a hassle to fix a crashed hard drive or other fatal Windows problem and took approx. 4-6 hours to reinstall and reconfigure the computers. Once we had that..it was better, but still not the best.
But the point is that they already have an OS. Why would they bother installing anything else? BTW, have you ever tried to install Win9x, Win2K, or WinXP from scratch?
or NT x.x?
Preview of NT installation
5 *D0 WHILE sysadmin sanity > 0*
10 *gasp*
20 *strangle*
30 *choak*
40 *system crash*
50 *system crash*
60 *BSoD*
70 *gasp*
80 *choak*
90 *hard drive full*
100 *format*
110 *bzzz...*
120 -Windows NT now Installed. Have fun trying to configure your periphials
130 *config, config, config*
140 *CRASH*
150 *System Dump*
160 *LOOP*
Where does it say that if you run rugularly and are >250 lbs. that you're a glutton? I'm a 5'8, 210lb. geek that runs approx. 10+ miles a week [damn military regulations (and yes, New Balance makes the best running shoes)]. I sometimes do free weights, and enjoy running and working out. Gives the mind some free time that it doesn't have to concentrate on new information, and can process what I've already picked up that day. Plus, it's a great relaxant. I was a diagnosed insominac for years before I joined the service, and found out that working out is about the best thing to cure insomnia. Something about your body being to tired not to sleep.....(YMMV)
Actually, the M16A2 is still the standard-issue infantry rifle. The M4A1 is slowly supposed to phase out the M16 completly, but in pratice, the M4A1 is a very rare sight in anything but a Spec-Ops unit.
Agreed, I just wasn't sure if there were laws or not :). But regardless, the point still stands. Remove the censorware, and add filters to the routers/switches that block certain IPs or URLs, not trusting some corporation (Fear the power that they now hold) to keep a good list, or even an editable list of sites to block.
I can remember back in the days of my middle-school teachings...
The Apple IIe was the newest computer out, at least, the most numerous in the schools. While using it, we learned how to do simple programming of a "turtle" which for some reason had a pen in its belly, and could raise and lower it at will. While this was simple, it was very educational in learning how the computer uses certain commands to create different things.
Now we jump ahead a few years, to High School Junior. Finally, a year were we got to choose which classes we wanted to take. BASIC Programming, hmmmm, sounds like a class that would teach you how to program in BASIC, right? Good course to take, besides it being a prerequisite for C Programming and Advanced Programming. And it was, until I started the class by doing some simple, rote procedures in QBASIC (for some reason, the program chosen) and being suspended for a week for "tampering with the school system's security." Notice what I programmed was a very simple password-generation program, using a very simple algorithm. Nothing in the program could have been used to "violate the school's security", but it scared the teacher because she didn't know what half the code meant, let alone what it did.
Jump ahead to today. Computers are becoming more and more a part of our everyday lives. Basic computer skills (word processors, use of the Internet) is almost a requirement for most jobs not involving the handling of food or small amounts of cash. In the classroom, they load down the computers with so much censorware and removal of programs that could be used "for illicit purposes" (read: installing Quake) that they can no longer even browse to many legit educational sites. I have even seen schools that have programmed their firewall to block access to any site that does not have a .edu TLD. While the abilities for teachers to adequately teach their students how to use a computer, or more importantly, how to do research on it, is stripped away by all the "required" censorware and other such nonsense. If the schools truly wanted to use computers in the classroom, they would:
- Hire a true IT department
- Not buy the "latest and greatest", but instead buy what is needed for their students
- Disregard regulations requiring censorware and other programs designed to block access to certain sites. Have the teachers monitor their useage, not just deciding to "lock out" a wide range of sites with "unethical or immoral content"*
- Actually allow the student to use the computers
- If a piece of software that comes along is better than what is currently used, replace the outdated software
- WOULD NOT limit the equipment and software to those vendors or companies with an "educational discount" policy.
If you're going to teach computers, then teach EVERYTHING about them (Mac, WinBlows, Unix, Linux, etc), not just what you found for a discount (read: any product by M$)* = Note: This is NOT advocacy to allow pr0n or corrupting content into schools, but there are better, easier, and more secure ways of doing it than with censorware
Just my thoughts, I could be wrong (Sorry about the long post, please don't mod me down for it)
I don't know the about the rest of you, but I've tried that program. All it did was give me a splitting headache for about 2 weeks....
Any bets on how long before NASA goes the way of the 8088 microchip?
MacOS, WinBlows server types, Linux, Unix...most hackers/crackers/defacers I know don't really care what OS you run. If there's a hole in the system, they'll find and use it. Just because there is no prior history of MacOS being hacked, that doesn't mean it hasn't been or couldn't be done. It just means that whatever the hacker/cracker/defacer wants to hack/crack/deface is usually on a M$ IIS or Apache (a few others as well, but those are the 2 big ones) webserver. The fact that MacOS-based servers have not been cracked is simply because no hacker/cracker/defacer has found any reason to break into the system. I'll leave the reasoning behind that to your imagination....
Not to mention the fact that IExploder is so integrated into WinBlows, that you can't remove it if you wanted to (has been since IE 4.0) it's simply easier for most users to use what's already there. Not to blame M$ for anything....nope, not blaming them for their unethical software-integration so you can't install software from a competetor......
That's what they said when the first megabyte and gigabyte drives came out......
"More then a gigabyte? Why would anyone need more than that? It runs Windows 98 fine!" -- Credited to Bill Gates, circa 1999
Ok...maybe I don't understand CDs as well as I think I do, but wouldn't it be nearly impossible to put a sector on a CD that would change values when read? AFAIK, a CD can only have set values burned on it (logical 1s and 0s...or pits and peaks) as opposed to the barely magnetized area spoken of above...how would you create a logical "weak" partition on optical media?