As you point out, the casual robber will be dissuaded. The armed robber, however, still has the advantage of surprise that will prevent you from using your gun. Armed robberies/muggings/home invasions will increase, and more people will probably be killed/injured as a result
Sorry, but no. You see, criminals, by their very nature, are not people who like to work hard to get what they want. Given a choice between a home full of unarmed victims, and a home full of armed resisters, the criminal will take the weak, easy prey every time. Element of surprise be damned, if the criminal faces the chance that he may have to stare down the barrel of a loaded weapon, 999 times out of 1000 he will simply move on to the next house. It just isn't worth the risk.
It isn't the certainty that you *will* get to your firearm and engage the criminal, it's the possibility that you *might* that deters the wouldbe invader. If you are unarmed and an armed robber invades your home, you have little choice but to cooperate, give the criminal what he wants, and hope he doesn't harm you or your family. If you are armed, you now have the option (and some would say the moral obligation) to resist. And if you feel your family is in mortal peril, you will have all the more motivation to resist. Criminals know this! Most will flee outright at the first sign of armed resistance.
Your scenarios of shotguns being pressed to skulls, while cinematic, have very little foundation in reality. Home invaders don't creep in with cunning stealth and sneak up on your unsuspecting family. They brute force their way in, usually creating as much of a shock effect as possible in order to frighten and stun the victims into submission. In most cases, the family has a few moments to react as the invaders break in. The unarmed family has no choice but to flee, hide, and in the end, submit. The armed family has the option to take up arms and defend their home. If they do so, it usually takes little more than a few gunshots to send the assailants running. Gunshots carry, and neighbors call the police. The last thing a home invader wants is to stay and shoot it out while the police are on their way. There are much easier targets out there. This is why criminals seek out unarmed victims.
This also brings up the question, where do you keep the guns in your home? Under the pillow, locked and loaded? Bad idea. In a gun safe? Great idea, especially with kids around, but almost worthless in case of a home invasion ("Could you hold on just a sec? I need to get my gun out of the safe.").
Nonsense. There are small gunsafes specifically designed to be opened in the dark, with one hand, in under three seconds. They mount under a bedframe or behind the headboard. There are keyless trigger locks. There are lots of options for gun-owning homes with children that do not compromise the ability to use the weapon in defense.
If we (the US) required people to undergo gun safety training (AFAIK, Hunter Safety training is required for people born after Jan. 1, 1973) and a background check,
Newsflash: WE DO. You cannot buy a firearm legally in the United States without submitting to a background check, and most states that issue concealed carry permits require training for applicants in the laws pertaining to the use of deadly force as well as the safe handling of firearms, and most require a live-fire proficiency test before a permit is issued.
There should be a gun in the home of every law-abiding citizen of the United States. If there were, you would see a sharp decline in robberies, home invasions, and sexual assaults. If even one out of every ten persons on the street was trained, licensed, and carrying a firearm, our country would be a dangerous place for the wouldbe criminal, and a safe place for the lawful. Don't believe me? Pull up statistics on the areas of the country with the worst crime rates, then overlay that with a map of the areas with the strictest gun laws. They are uniform. When you remove the right to keep and bear arms from the law-abiding, you breed a fertile environment for criminals and victimizers.
Carry a gun, then you won't be afriad of anything.
Eh.. okay? See, I *DO* carry a gun. In fact, I'm licensed to carry a concealed handgun in half the U.S. (AL, AK, AR, CO, GA, ID, IN, KY, LA, MI, MS, MT, NC, ND, OK, PA, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WY and, of course, VT - where anybody can carry). I carry everywhere I go, everyday.
But personally, carrying a gun does not instill me with a sense of invulnerability, nor does carrying a firearm provide me with some magical shield against harm. It simply provides me an additional tool with which to defend my own life - a supplement to my senses, my reflexes, and my wits.
So while I genuinely support the 2nd Amendment right of every law-abiding U.S. citizen to keep and bear arms, I'd have to say that your "I'm Superman with my 9mm" attitude is likely to do more to put you in harm's way than to protect your life or the lives of those around you. Carrying a weapon does not make you terrorism-proof. It just makes you a little better off than the average unarmed victim.
Oh, and FYI: in most states, carrying a concealed firearm without a valid permit is a good way to get yourself a free, 36 month stay in six foot by eight foot grey-green room with a large, muscular man named Tyrone who likes having his salad tossed three times a day, and will rent out your asshole to his friends for two packs of smokes. This has been a public service announcement by the Stay the Fuck Out of Prison Foundation.
Matrix reloaded. When Trinity typed:
ssh 10.0.0.2
I realised that IPv6 is doomed.
What's more, she did ssh -l root 10.0.0.2 and used *password* authentication. "The Architect" doesn't know shit about security. Allowing root access and not using public key authentication?? It's no wonder the Matrix keeps getting hacked. Forget about Agents, let's install a Kerberos realm and implement IPSec before "The Boss" fires "The Architect", "The Oracle" (btw, is she the DBA?), and the rest of the IT staff ("The Helpdesk")...
Most of what I want to watch is anime, usually encoded at 640x480. Sounds reasonable. But as of yet, the highest resolution video stream supported is 512x384.
Just FYI, video looks fine at 512x288 (512x384 with the letterboxing cropped) on the QCast. I have QCast, and I also have got a ton of anime, including the entire Neon Genesis Evangelion series that I've ripped from DVD. It is encoded at 352x256 and it looks great! Most of my anime features like Akira and Ninja Scroll are encoded at 512x288 and look excellent.
Don't obsess over the resolution issue. The quality of the movie is not determined by resolution alone. A higher bitrate (1000Kbps-1200Kbps) encoding even at a smaller resolution will look just fine when you play it on the QCast. Trust me!
The server-side app phones home and gets the updates for both server and client over the Internet. The client-side app is booted from the PS2 CD, with updates stored on a small portion of a standard memory card. Whenever the client-side boots, it checks the server for updates and downloads them to the memory card if necessary.
b) What the quality of the video and audio is? Any sync problems? Does it only handle up to a certain bitrate/resolution?
Overall, the playback quality is excellent, generally as good as you would get on a PC. Currently, the QCast developers are working on an update to be released soon that will add some much needed features (like FF/RW) and some performance enhancements.
I personally have ripped my entire DVD collection to DivX, and use QCast to play them all of the time. Out of 100+ movies, I have only noticed one that had any audio sync issues, and I've been considering re-ripping it to see if it may just be something peculiar to that file.
As to the bitrate/resolution issue, yes there are limits to the processing power of a PS2. Generally speaking, DivX ripped at or below 1200kbps will play fine. 16x9 movies need to be resized and cropped to around 640x272, 4x3 movies to around 512x288 (basically, the vert res needs to be under 300 for reliable playback). QCast supports both AC3 (which QCast demuxes to stereo) and MP3 soundtracks for movies. I usually rip the soundtrack to 128Kbps MP3.
All of my music files are also 128Kbps MP3, and they sound great as well.
I've used QCast for about 6 months now, and I've enjoyed it so much it has precipitated the purchase of a second PS2 for the bedroom exclusively for video-on-demand, and an upgrade of my network storage to a 400GB array to house more media.
I have also been happy with BroadQ as a company. They are generally responsive to problems and are eager for users to be happy with the product. They have also been generous with their install base, offering free online updates to registered users. There have been some problems with the current PS2 boot CD. I have two PS2's, one is from the first run to ship in the US, the other was purchased two months ago. The old one boots the CD without problem, the new requires multiple resets to boot. BroadQ has acknowledged the problem and will be sending out an updated CD to all registered users, free of charge. THAT is good customer service!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the topic about how over-expensive dual proc systems are?
Yes, and that point still stands. Go to Dell's website and price the lowest end dual-proc 2GHz and the lowest end uni-proc 2GHz with identical features. The DP box will cost you $1397 and the UP box will cost you $608. More than doubling the total cost of the machine for simply adding a second processor is "over-expensive" in my book, especially when a 2GHz P4 processor retails for less than $200.
You see, the problem here isn't in the computer, it's in the processor: P4's are uni-proc only, crippled by design. If you want to do SMP, you need Xeon procs, which come at over twice the price. The SMP price hike is due purely to artificial inflation. By the way, Intel isn't the only company guilty of this price fixing. AMD does the same thing with their XP vs MP line, just to a lesser degree at 1.5x the price.
You priced out a really high end system; is there any wonder that yourss costs more? You may not have a compeling need to to upgrade to a 2X2 GHz system, but if you were running 2x400MHz as your main system, it might be more attractive to you.
Go back and look at the post to which you replied. I stated clearly that I had a DP 1GHz and that I would like to go to a DP 3GHz. Your suggested system didn't meet my specs, so I priced the one that did. I could get a dual-proc PI-200MHz for $100. That doesn't mean that SMP is cheap. Compare apples to apples and SMP is way overpriced. The other comparisons I made were simply to demonstrate that for smart shoppers, Dell is not the bargain they claim to be.
You've got to be real careful with those Dell prices, as they are very misleading. The front page price is after rebates and minus OS license (despite the fact that they won't sell you a computer without a Microsoft (P)OS on it). Also, there are usually components and applications bundled in that you don't need or want, but can't choose to exlude from the order. Just go into the customize wizard, and you'll see the pricetag start to inflate to reality.
I don't know which system in particular you were looking at (because you didn't provide a link), but I just went to Dell, and the cheapest DP system in the cheapest config (2x 2GHz, 256MB mem, etc) is US$1397 (after rebates). Step up to a DP 3GHz, and you're looking at US$3097 (once again, after rebates). Now, today I was curious, so I went and priced out 2 3GHz Xeons, a high-end Tyan m/b, and 256MB of memory. It rang up to around US$2250 (cash, no rebates). So the Dell is not that well-priced when you consider that they are then charging $847 for a mid-tower case, a 20GB hard drive, a CD-ROM, a floppy, a keyboard, a cheap mouse, and a low-grade video card (about US$225 in components). And you aren't getting a motherboard anywhere near as nice as the Tyan. Just to be fair, I also priced out the same config at 2GHz (the min), and it turns out they don't screw you quite as bad, only charging you about $497 for the rest of the bundle, but that still isn't a bargain at over double the off-the-shelf price.
It gets really pricey when you consider that I already own a case, a floppy, a much nicer keyboard and mouse, a nice DVD/CR-RW, and a hell of a lot nicer video card. So I'm paying US$497-847 for inferior crap that I don't need. Also, given the fact that I am currently running a dual-proc 1GHz machine with 1GB of mem for my primary workstation, upgrading to anything less than the 3GHz solution with 1-2GB of mem doesn't make much sense. And to build a system comparable to what I have now, and upgraded with DP 3GHz + 2GB of mem, using all Dell parts (so I don't have warranty issues later when I call for service) will run about US$4950. That's about double what it would cost to upgrade my existing system and recycle 80% of the parts I already own.
So why again would I want to buy this? Oh, right. Because it's easy as Dell. Just like my Inspiron 7500 that cost me US$4500 and that's averaged a major service every 6 months since I bought it.
there's really no going back once you've gone duallie.
I concur. Right now I have four main boxes in operation (not counting laptops), three of them are dual proc (the fourth is a firewall). Since around 1998, my primary workstation has always been dual proc.
The lack of a reasonably priced DP option has been my primary impediment in upgrading to P4 (two of my boxes are PIII-1GHz, one is PII-350MHz, my uni-proc firewall is Cel-500MHz). I'd love to have a DP P4-3GHz for my primary station, I just don't want to spend $3000 on a motherboard and two processors.
the odds of guessing the last 4 digits for anyone's SSN is only 9999:1 (0000 is not a valid number). That's about 34 times easier than guessing someone's first 6 without any other information (344500:1).
Just FYI: the first 3 digits are assigned by the geographical code for the region where the number was assigned (technically, the zip code of the mailing address on the SSN application). Depending on the locale, that might be one number or a range of numbers (i.e. Massachusetts is 010-034, New York is 050-134). The second 2 digits are the group number, and are assigned in sequence of odd 01-09, then even 10-98, then even 02-08, then odd 11-99. The last 4 digits are assigned in sequence.
So, guessing someone's first 6 is not as simple as just knowing their place of birth. SSN's are not assigned at birth, they are assigned whenever a parent registers the child. A perfect example of why this could make a prefix hard to guess is the fact that I was born in one state, but assigned an SSN in a different state 1000 miles away, then moved again to another state 1500 miles away before reaching school age.
Let's say the state I registered in had 10 possible location codes. There are about 50 possible group codes (because most states have assigned less than half of their available group numbers). And there are 10 possible digits for the sixth place. That's 5000 possible combinations, PROVIDED that you know the state where I registered for an SSN.
Currently, all US states and territories fall into the range of 001-689. If you don't know where the number was issued, that's 344,500 combinations to guess the first 6 digits of an SSN. And as more group numbers are assigned, the difficulty of guessing gets harder.
You'll get the shits after you go blind and die. Yeah.
Phenopthalein doesn't instantly give you the shits. If you are a stupid alcoholic drinking rubbing alcohol, you'll likely go blind and probably die before you get the shits. After which, It's more of a insult that you shit yourself than a preventative measure.
1. Phenopthalein isn't poisonous. Until a few years ago, a lot of laxatives were phenopthalein-based, including Ex-Lax. The only reason it was dropped as an ingredient in laxatives was because there were some links to colon cancer. One drop of phenopthalein was about the amount used in a single Ex-Lax tablet. Denatured ethanol is approximately 5% phenopthalein. You can do the Ex-Lax math...
2. You've got your alcohols mixed up. Ethanol is the drinkable stuff found in alcoholic beverages. Methanol (wood alcohol) and isopropyl alcohol are the toxic varieties (methanol far moreso than isopropyl). Even a small amount (1/4 ounce or more) of methanol can cause blindness and death if ingested or inhaled. Because of that, methanol is generally only used for fuel, solvents, anti-freeze, or as a denaturant for ethanol in industrial applications.
Rubbing alcohol comes in two varieties: isopropyl alcohol and non-toxic, denatured ethanol. If you drink phenopthalein-denatured ethanol, you will simply get the shits (and possibly become dangerously dehydrated). If you drink isopropyl alcohol, then yes, you could die or experience severe secondary symptoms similar to acetone poisoning (acetone is a break-down product of isopropyl alcohol).
The article was referring to the use of ethanol for fuel cell purposes. As required by federal law, any non-licensed ethanol must be denatured to prevent ingestion. A standard denaturant for consumer-use ethanol is phenopthalein. However, should the fuel cell manufacturers use ethanol denatured with 5% methanol, then yes, drinking the batteries would cause death and blindness, but not the shits. But given the fact that methanol can be toxic from even inhalation and skin contact, I doubt they would use it as a denaturant in fuel cells intended for personal devices like laptops, PDAs, and cell phones (too much risk of contact from accidental leaking).
All non-regulated (as in BATF) ethanol is required by law to be denatured. There are two types of denaturing: complete and specical. Complete adds 5% methanol, rendering the mixture toxic for human consumption. Special denaturing adds a non-toxic additive to render the alcohol undrinkable. This is often done by adding phenopthalein, which (aside from being a pH indicator) is a powerful laxative. Drinking it will cause "severe gastrointestinal distress". Most consumer applications (like rubbing alcohol) use special denaturing (so they don't kill stupid alcoholics).
Just FYI for anyone thinking about using your laptop as a wetbar.
perhaps this move by Adobe will prompt Apple to create imaging software to compete with Adobe based on open source like GIMP?
Nothing against GIMP, but it would be a bad move on Apple's part if they did. Apple should be doing their damnedest to get application vendors to provide ported software to the Apple platform, not trying to reinvent every piece of software as an Apple product.
When Adobe has the same application that will run on both PC and Mac with 100% file compatibility, it creates an environment where you can choose the best platform for a given user, without having to sacrifice application interoperability with other users. If Apple were to say, "screw Adobe, here's iSomething" it will force graphics shops to have to choose between PC+Adobe and Mac+iSomething. All this will do is take marketshare away from Apple.
I think that Safari and Keynote (and the iOffice/iWork/iWhatever suite that is likely to follow) are simply a response to the dead-end relationship that Apple is in with one vendor - Microsoft. I don't see the practice of duplicating every major application as a trend for Apple in the long term. At least I hope it's not.
Hang on... in some state you have to be 21+ to drink?? But some let you buy ammunition (and presumably guns) when your 18???
As far as I know, the drinking age is a federal law and applies in all 50 states (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). Likewise, it is a federal law that states that you must be at least 18 years old to buy a longgun (rifle or shotgun) and 21 years old to buy a handgun. There is a similar federal restriction on the purchase of ammunition (18 for longgun ammo, 21 for handgun ammo). The funny part is, there are a lot of calibers that are used in both longguns and handguns. So if an 18 year old goes to buy 9mm Para (for example), the clerk has to ask if it is for a handgun or longgun. If the kid says longgun, he can buy. If he says handgun, he can't. How do you think most people answer?
From what I have heard, there are a few states which have tightened the restrictions, stating that any ammunition that CAN be used in a handgun must be sold as handgun ammo, whether or not it WILL be used in a handgun. Most don't though, which is why I said that most states require you to be at least 18.
But in my mind you should flip the question around:
"Hang on... you mean that when you are 18 you are legally considered an adult, can join the Army and be sent off to die defending your country, but you're not responsible enough to buy a beer or a handgun???"
I read the part about the Defense Department, and yes, militarization of the technology is inevitable. But, I was referring more to the possibility of a high school kid taking a "harmless" commercial model, and re-engineering it with a few parts from Radio Shack in order to up the output to dangerous levels.
Just vandalize a talking Coke machine to get the emitter, add an amp and a battery pack, and with a basic knowlege of electronics, you've got yourself a crude "sound gun".
Of course, one could argue that with some basic knowledge of firearms, you could also make a homemade projectile weapon. But unlike a crude, homemade firearm, the HSS weapon is discreet and silent (to all but the victim). Not to mention that while there is a restriction on who can purchase ammunition (18 or older in most states), there is no such restriction on electronic components.
the most abused technology in history. I have visions of teenage drive-by "screamers" hitting pedestrians with targeted high-decibel music as a prank.
What about sonic weapons? Is there any reason why a rigged emitter couldn't be built that would emit a signal loud enough to rupture the eardrums of a specific target? Or at the very least, cause excruciating pain?
I think the inevitable barrage of targeted advertising will be the least of our worries with this new technology.
there is no desire or justification to destroy non-strategic parts of the city.
Oh, of course. Why kill people that you don't have to, or bomb buildings that have no importance? Jet fuel and bombs cost money, and bombing civilians is immoral and unnecessary (not to mention, politically suicidal). But regardless of one's definition of "pummeling," I'd say Bagdad (or the military presence therein) is getting a swift kick in the ass right now. I'd say this is significantly more than just "a threat to encourage the Iraqi military to come to it's senses".
It wasn't until I setup a spam filtering mail relay for my home network using a FreeBSD server running Postfix and SpamAssassin, that it really hit home just how much spam I was getting on a daily basis. Postfix is using RBLs and header filtering criteria, and that kills a lot of the spam outright. That which passes Postfix is analyzed by SpamAssassin and flagged as spam in the subject line. My MUA filters my mail and moves flagged messages to a designated SPAM folder for review before I delete it (because I will never trust an automated process like this 100%). Now that my legitimate mail is nicely sorted from my junk mail, the percentage is staggeringly obvious. I get 4 to 5 times the amount of junk mail as legitimate mail, and that is with Postfix kicking a large portion of the inbound mail before it ever hits SpamAssassin! I don't have precise figures on how many Postfix kicks, but my mail log is flooded with Postfix reject messages. And you can add to that the fact that I firewall access to my mailserver from all of Latin America and Asia because of the high volume of spam and network attacks sourced from those regions.
Based on my guesstimation, I'd say that 90-95% of my inbound email is spam. And given the fact that bandwidth and CPU power keep getting faster, cheaper, and more available, I can only see the spam problem getting worse.
The user can decide for himself whether or not to use AOL at all.
Agreed.
By choosing to use AOL he chooses to accept AOL's filters.
Agreed.
There's no censorship here.
I disagree. AOL *is* censoring the information that reaches their members' inboxes by filtering that material based on AOL's criteria, and not necessarily the criteria of their individual members. As I said before, I would have no problem with AOL taking measures against spam if those measures were largely passive in nature (ie, flagging incoming messages that meet certain criteria as "Possible Spam" and giving each individual member choices as to how they want to handle those messages). My problem with AOL's approach is that they are preventing those messages that AOL considers spam from ever reaching their customers' inboxes.
Granted, one man's "censorship" is another man's "filtering service." I just think that AOL would be better served by giving their users the power to filter their own mail, rather than taking a "my way or the highway" approach to it. At the very least, the users should be given the option to choose whether they trust AOL's spam filter and want to just let their mail be deleted, or whether they want it routed to a designated "spam" folder of their inbox where they can verify it themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
As you point out, the casual robber will be dissuaded. The armed robber, however, still has the advantage of surprise that will prevent you from using your gun. Armed robberies/muggings/home invasions will increase, and more people will probably be killed/injured as a result
Sorry, but no. You see, criminals, by their very nature, are not people who like to work hard to get what they want. Given a choice between a home full of unarmed victims, and a home full of armed resisters, the criminal will take the weak, easy prey every time. Element of surprise be damned, if the criminal faces the chance that he may have to stare down the barrel of a loaded weapon, 999 times out of 1000 he will simply move on to the next house. It just isn't worth the risk.
It isn't the certainty that you *will* get to your firearm and engage the criminal, it's the possibility that you *might* that deters the wouldbe invader. If you are unarmed and an armed robber invades your home, you have little choice but to cooperate, give the criminal what he wants, and hope he doesn't harm you or your family. If you are armed, you now have the option (and some would say the moral obligation) to resist. And if you feel your family is in mortal peril, you will have all the more motivation to resist. Criminals know this! Most will flee outright at the first sign of armed resistance.
Your scenarios of shotguns being pressed to skulls, while cinematic, have very little foundation in reality. Home invaders don't creep in with cunning stealth and sneak up on your unsuspecting family. They brute force their way in, usually creating as much of a shock effect as possible in order to frighten and stun the victims into submission. In most cases, the family has a few moments to react as the invaders break in. The unarmed family has no choice but to flee, hide, and in the end, submit. The armed family has the option to take up arms and defend their home. If they do so, it usually takes little more than a few gunshots to send the assailants running. Gunshots carry, and neighbors call the police. The last thing a home invader wants is to stay and shoot it out while the police are on their way. There are much easier targets out there. This is why criminals seek out unarmed victims.
This also brings up the question, where do you keep the guns in your home? Under the pillow, locked and loaded? Bad idea. In a gun safe? Great idea, especially with kids around, but almost worthless in case of a home invasion ("Could you hold on just a sec? I need to get my gun out of the safe.").
Nonsense. There are small gunsafes specifically designed to be opened in the dark, with one hand, in under three seconds. They mount under a bedframe or behind the headboard. There are keyless trigger locks. There are lots of options for gun-owning homes with children that do not compromise the ability to use the weapon in defense.
If we (the US) required people to undergo gun safety training (AFAIK, Hunter Safety training is required for people born after Jan. 1, 1973) and a background check,
Newsflash: WE DO. You cannot buy a firearm legally in the United States without submitting to a background check, and most states that issue concealed carry permits require training for applicants in the laws pertaining to the use of deadly force as well as the safe handling of firearms, and most require a live-fire proficiency test before a permit is issued.
There should be a gun in the home of every law-abiding citizen of the United States. If there were, you would see a sharp decline in robberies, home invasions, and sexual assaults. If even one out of every ten persons on the street was trained, licensed, and carrying a firearm, our country would be a dangerous place for the wouldbe criminal, and a safe place for the lawful. Don't believe me? Pull up statistics on the areas of the country with the worst crime rates, then overlay that with a map of the areas with the strictest gun laws. They are uniform. When you remove the right to keep and bear arms from the law-abiding, you breed a fertile environment for criminals and victimizers.
Carry a gun, then you won't be afriad of anything.
Eh.. okay? See, I *DO* carry a gun. In fact, I'm licensed to carry a concealed handgun in half the U.S. (AL, AK, AR, CO, GA, ID, IN, KY, LA, MI, MS, MT, NC, ND, OK, PA, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WY and, of course, VT - where anybody can carry). I carry everywhere I go, everyday.
But personally, carrying a gun does not instill me with a sense of invulnerability, nor does carrying a firearm provide me with some magical shield against harm. It simply provides me an additional tool with which to defend my own life - a supplement to my senses, my reflexes, and my wits.
So while I genuinely support the 2nd Amendment right of every law-abiding U.S. citizen to keep and bear arms, I'd have to say that your "I'm Superman with my 9mm" attitude is likely to do more to put you in harm's way than to protect your life or the lives of those around you. Carrying a weapon does not make you terrorism-proof. It just makes you a little better off than the average unarmed victim.
Oh, and FYI: in most states, carrying a concealed firearm without a valid permit is a good way to get yourself a free, 36 month stay in six foot by eight foot grey-green room with a large, muscular man named Tyrone who likes having his salad tossed three times a day, and will rent out your asshole to his friends for two packs of smokes. This has been a public service announcement by the Stay the Fuck Out of Prison Foundation.
We have a 2nd amendment for a reason. Try using it and stop living in fear.
I can't figure out if you've gotten your amendments confused or if you're advocating armed revolt..?
1st Amendment: Freedom of speech.
2nd Amendment: Right to keep and bear arms.
Matrix reloaded. When Trinity typed:
ssh 10.0.0.2
I realised that IPv6 is doomed.
What's more, she did ssh -l root 10.0.0.2 and used *password* authentication. "The Architect" doesn't know shit about security. Allowing root access and not using public key authentication?? It's no wonder the Matrix keeps getting hacked. Forget about Agents, let's install a Kerberos realm and implement IPSec before "The Boss" fires "The Architect", "The Oracle" (btw, is she the DBA?), and the rest of the IT staff ("The Helpdesk")...
I just finished downloading my copy, seconds before this story posted.
Most of what I want to watch is anime, usually encoded at 640x480. Sounds reasonable. But as of yet, the highest resolution video stream supported is 512x384.
Just FYI, video looks fine at 512x288 (512x384 with the letterboxing cropped) on the QCast. I have QCast, and I also have got a ton of anime, including the entire Neon Genesis Evangelion series that I've ripped from DVD. It is encoded at 352x256 and it looks great! Most of my anime features like Akira and Ninja Scroll are encoded at 512x288 and look excellent.
Don't obsess over the resolution issue. The quality of the movie is not determined by resolution alone. A higher bitrate (1000Kbps-1200Kbps) encoding even at a smaller resolution will look just fine when you play it on the QCast. Trust me!
a) How the 'updates' get applied?
The server-side app phones home and gets the updates for both server and client over the Internet. The client-side app is booted from the PS2 CD, with updates stored on a small portion of a standard memory card. Whenever the client-side boots, it checks the server for updates and downloads them to the memory card if necessary.
b) What the quality of the video and audio is? Any sync problems? Does it only handle up to a certain bitrate/resolution?
Overall, the playback quality is excellent, generally as good as you would get on a PC. Currently, the QCast developers are working on an update to be released soon that will add some much needed features (like FF/RW) and some performance enhancements.
I personally have ripped my entire DVD collection to DivX, and use QCast to play them all of the time. Out of 100+ movies, I have only noticed one that had any audio sync issues, and I've been considering re-ripping it to see if it may just be something peculiar to that file.
As to the bitrate/resolution issue, yes there are limits to the processing power of a PS2. Generally speaking, DivX ripped at or below 1200kbps will play fine. 16x9 movies need to be resized and cropped to around 640x272, 4x3 movies to around 512x288 (basically, the vert res needs to be under 300 for reliable playback). QCast supports both AC3 (which QCast demuxes to stereo) and MP3 soundtracks for movies. I usually rip the soundtrack to 128Kbps MP3.
All of my music files are also 128Kbps MP3, and they sound great as well.
I've used QCast for about 6 months now, and I've enjoyed it so much it has precipitated the purchase of a second PS2 for the bedroom exclusively for video-on-demand, and an upgrade of my network storage to a 400GB array to house more media.
I have also been happy with BroadQ as a company. They are generally responsive to problems and are eager for users to be happy with the product. They have also been generous with their install base, offering free online updates to registered users. There have been some problems with the current PS2 boot CD. I have two PS2's, one is from the first run to ship in the US, the other was purchased two months ago. The old one boots the CD without problem, the new requires multiple resets to boot. BroadQ has acknowledged the problem and will be sending out an updated CD to all registered users, free of charge. THAT is good customer service!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the topic about how over-expensive dual proc systems are?
Yes, and that point still stands. Go to Dell's website and price the lowest end dual-proc 2GHz and the lowest end uni-proc 2GHz with identical features. The DP box will cost you $1397 and the UP box will cost you $608. More than doubling the total cost of the machine for simply adding a second processor is "over-expensive" in my book, especially when a 2GHz P4 processor retails for less than $200.
You see, the problem here isn't in the computer, it's in the processor: P4's are uni-proc only, crippled by design. If you want to do SMP, you need Xeon procs, which come at over twice the price. The SMP price hike is due purely to artificial inflation. By the way, Intel isn't the only company guilty of this price fixing. AMD does the same thing with their XP vs MP line, just to a lesser degree at 1.5x the price.
You priced out a really high end system; is there any wonder that yourss costs more? You may not have a compeling need to to upgrade to a 2X2 GHz system, but if you were running 2x400MHz as your main system, it might be more attractive to you.
Go back and look at the post to which you replied. I stated clearly that I had a DP 1GHz and that I would like to go to a DP 3GHz. Your suggested system didn't meet my specs, so I priced the one that did. I could get a dual-proc PI-200MHz for $100. That doesn't mean that SMP is cheap. Compare apples to apples and SMP is way overpriced. The other comparisons I made were simply to demonstrate that for smart shoppers, Dell is not the bargain they claim to be.
You've got to be real careful with those Dell prices, as they are very misleading. The front page price is after rebates and minus OS license (despite the fact that they won't sell you a computer without a Microsoft (P)OS on it). Also, there are usually components and applications bundled in that you don't need or want, but can't choose to exlude from the order. Just go into the customize wizard, and you'll see the pricetag start to inflate to reality.
I don't know which system in particular you were looking at (because you didn't provide a link), but I just went to Dell, and the cheapest DP system in the cheapest config (2x 2GHz, 256MB mem, etc) is US$1397 (after rebates). Step up to a DP 3GHz, and you're looking at US$3097 (once again, after rebates). Now, today I was curious, so I went and priced out 2 3GHz Xeons, a high-end Tyan m/b, and 256MB of memory. It rang up to around US$2250 (cash, no rebates). So the Dell is not that well-priced when you consider that they are then charging $847 for a mid-tower case, a 20GB hard drive, a CD-ROM, a floppy, a keyboard, a cheap mouse, and a low-grade video card (about US$225 in components). And you aren't getting a motherboard anywhere near as nice as the Tyan. Just to be fair, I also priced out the same config at 2GHz (the min), and it turns out they don't screw you quite as bad, only charging you about $497 for the rest of the bundle, but that still isn't a bargain at over double the off-the-shelf price.
It gets really pricey when you consider that I already own a case, a floppy, a much nicer keyboard and mouse, a nice DVD/CR-RW, and a hell of a lot nicer video card. So I'm paying US$497-847 for inferior crap that I don't need. Also, given the fact that I am currently running a dual-proc 1GHz machine with 1GB of mem for my primary workstation, upgrading to anything less than the 3GHz solution with 1-2GB of mem doesn't make much sense. And to build a system comparable to what I have now, and upgraded with DP 3GHz + 2GB of mem, using all Dell parts (so I don't have warranty issues later when I call for service) will run about US$4950. That's about double what it would cost to upgrade my existing system and recycle 80% of the parts I already own.
So why again would I want to buy this? Oh, right. Because it's easy as Dell. Just like my Inspiron 7500 that cost me US$4500 and that's averaged a major service every 6 months since I bought it.
Sorry. I've been down that road before.
there's really no going back once you've gone duallie.
I concur. Right now I have four main boxes in operation (not counting laptops), three of them are dual proc (the fourth is a firewall). Since around 1998, my primary workstation has always been dual proc.
The lack of a reasonably priced DP option has been my primary impediment in upgrading to P4 (two of my boxes are PIII-1GHz, one is PII-350MHz, my uni-proc firewall is Cel-500MHz). I'd love to have a DP P4-3GHz for my primary station, I just don't want to spend $3000 on a motherboard and two processors.
the odds of guessing the last 4 digits for anyone's SSN is only 9999:1 (0000 is not a valid number). That's about 34 times easier than guessing someone's first 6 without any other information (344500:1).
Just FYI: the first 3 digits are assigned by the geographical code for the region where the number was assigned (technically, the zip code of the mailing address on the SSN application). Depending on the locale, that might be one number or a range of numbers (i.e. Massachusetts is 010-034, New York is 050-134). The second 2 digits are the group number, and are assigned in sequence of odd 01-09, then even 10-98, then even 02-08, then odd 11-99. The last 4 digits are assigned in sequence.
So, guessing someone's first 6 is not as simple as just knowing their place of birth. SSN's are not assigned at birth, they are assigned whenever a parent registers the child. A perfect example of why this could make a prefix hard to guess is the fact that I was born in one state, but assigned an SSN in a different state 1000 miles away, then moved again to another state 1500 miles away before reaching school age.
Let's say the state I registered in had 10 possible location codes. There are about 50 possible group codes (because most states have assigned less than half of their available group numbers). And there are 10 possible digits for the sixth place. That's 5000 possible combinations, PROVIDED that you know the state where I registered for an SSN.
Currently, all US states and territories fall into the range of 001-689. If you don't know where the number was issued, that's 344,500 combinations to guess the first 6 digits of an SSN. And as more group numbers are assigned, the difficulty of guessing gets harder.
You'll get the shits after you go blind and die. Yeah.
Phenopthalein doesn't instantly give you the shits. If you are a stupid alcoholic drinking rubbing alcohol, you'll likely go blind and probably die before you get the shits. After which, It's more of a insult that you shit yourself than a preventative measure.
1. Phenopthalein isn't poisonous. Until a few years ago, a lot of laxatives were phenopthalein-based, including Ex-Lax. The only reason it was dropped as an ingredient in laxatives was because there were some links to colon cancer. One drop of phenopthalein was about the amount used in a single Ex-Lax tablet. Denatured ethanol is approximately 5% phenopthalein. You can do the Ex-Lax math...
2. You've got your alcohols mixed up. Ethanol is the drinkable stuff found in alcoholic beverages. Methanol (wood alcohol) and isopropyl alcohol are the toxic varieties (methanol far moreso than isopropyl). Even a small amount (1/4 ounce or more) of methanol can cause blindness and death if ingested or inhaled. Because of that, methanol is generally only used for fuel, solvents, anti-freeze, or as a denaturant for ethanol in industrial applications.
Rubbing alcohol comes in two varieties: isopropyl alcohol and non-toxic, denatured ethanol. If you drink phenopthalein-denatured ethanol, you will simply get the shits (and possibly become dangerously dehydrated). If you drink isopropyl alcohol, then yes, you could die or experience severe secondary symptoms similar to acetone poisoning (acetone is a break-down product of isopropyl alcohol).
The article was referring to the use of ethanol for fuel cell purposes. As required by federal law, any non-licensed ethanol must be denatured to prevent ingestion. A standard denaturant for consumer-use ethanol is phenopthalein. However, should the fuel cell manufacturers use ethanol denatured with 5% methanol, then yes, drinking the batteries would cause death and blindness, but not the shits. But given the fact that methanol can be toxic from even inhalation and skin contact, I doubt they would use it as a denaturant in fuel cells intended for personal devices like laptops, PDAs, and cell phones (too much risk of contact from accidental leaking).
All non-regulated (as in BATF) ethanol is required by law to be denatured. There are two types of denaturing: complete and specical. Complete adds 5% methanol, rendering the mixture toxic for human consumption. Special denaturing adds a non-toxic additive to render the alcohol undrinkable. This is often done by adding phenopthalein, which (aside from being a pH indicator) is a powerful laxative. Drinking it will cause "severe gastrointestinal distress". Most consumer applications (like rubbing alcohol) use special denaturing (so they don't kill stupid alcoholics).
Just FYI for anyone thinking about using your laptop as a wetbar.
perhaps this move by Adobe will prompt Apple to create imaging software to compete with Adobe based on open source like GIMP?
Nothing against GIMP, but it would be a bad move on Apple's part if they did. Apple should be doing their damnedest to get application vendors to provide ported software to the Apple platform, not trying to reinvent every piece of software as an Apple product.
When Adobe has the same application that will run on both PC and Mac with 100% file compatibility, it creates an environment where you can choose the best platform for a given user, without having to sacrifice application interoperability with other users. If Apple were to say, "screw Adobe, here's iSomething" it will force graphics shops to have to choose between PC+Adobe and Mac+iSomething. All this will do is take marketshare away from Apple.
I think that Safari and Keynote (and the iOffice/iWork/iWhatever suite that is likely to follow) are simply a response to the dead-end relationship that Apple is in with one vendor - Microsoft. I don't see the practice of duplicating every major application as a trend for Apple in the long term. At least I hope it's not.
Hang on... in some state you have to be 21+ to drink?? But some let you buy ammunition (and presumably guns) when your 18???
As far as I know, the drinking age is a federal law and applies in all 50 states (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). Likewise, it is a federal law that states that you must be at least 18 years old to buy a longgun (rifle or shotgun) and 21 years old to buy a handgun. There is a similar federal restriction on the purchase of ammunition (18 for longgun ammo, 21 for handgun ammo). The funny part is, there are a lot of calibers that are used in both longguns and handguns. So if an 18 year old goes to buy 9mm Para (for example), the clerk has to ask if it is for a handgun or longgun. If the kid says longgun, he can buy. If he says handgun, he can't. How do you think most people answer?
From what I have heard, there are a few states which have tightened the restrictions, stating that any ammunition that CAN be used in a handgun must be sold as handgun ammo, whether or not it WILL be used in a handgun. Most don't though, which is why I said that most states require you to be at least 18.
But in my mind you should flip the question around:
"Hang on... you mean that when you are 18 you are legally considered an adult, can join the Army and be sent off to die defending your country, but you're not responsible enough to buy a beer or a handgun???"
I read the part about the Defense Department, and yes, militarization of the technology is inevitable. But, I was referring more to the possibility of a high school kid taking a "harmless" commercial model, and re-engineering it with a few parts from Radio Shack in order to up the output to dangerous levels.
Just vandalize a talking Coke machine to get the emitter, add an amp and a battery pack, and with a basic knowlege of electronics, you've got yourself a crude "sound gun".
Of course, one could argue that with some basic knowledge of firearms, you could also make a homemade projectile weapon. But unlike a crude, homemade firearm, the HSS weapon is discreet and silent (to all but the victim). Not to mention that while there is a restriction on who can purchase ammunition (18 or older in most states), there is no such restriction on electronic components.
the most abused technology in history. I have visions of teenage drive-by "screamers" hitting pedestrians with targeted high-decibel music as a prank.
What about sonic weapons? Is there any reason why a rigged emitter couldn't be built that would emit a signal loud enough to rupture the eardrums of a specific target? Or at the very least, cause excruciating pain?
I think the inevitable barrage of targeted advertising will be the least of our worries with this new technology.
Think like breaking someones pinky with repeated blows from a sledgehammer.
:^)
Looks more like repeatedly stomping on the balls to me.
there is no desire or justification to destroy non-strategic parts of the city.
Oh, of course. Why kill people that you don't have to, or bomb buildings that have no importance? Jet fuel and bombs cost money, and bombing civilians is immoral and unnecessary (not to mention, politically suicidal). But regardless of one's definition of "pummeling," I'd say Bagdad (or the military presence therein) is getting a swift kick in the ass right now. I'd say this is significantly more than just "a threat to encourage the Iraqi military to come to it's senses".
I think the US dosn't actually want to pummel Bagdad.
Unless the US military hired one hell of a special effects crew, I'd say they are currently pummeling the crap out of Bagdad.
"sure, we'll give you 1,000,000 units at $0.00 - but that will be $20M for shipping and handling."
Now, if they offered the product at $0.00 with "Free Super Saver Shipping", the joke would be on them...
Timeline vs. Microsoft Final Judgement.
It wasn't until I setup a spam filtering mail relay for my home network using a FreeBSD server running Postfix and SpamAssassin, that it really hit home just how much spam I was getting on a daily basis. Postfix is using RBLs and header filtering criteria, and that kills a lot of the spam outright. That which passes Postfix is analyzed by SpamAssassin and flagged as spam in the subject line. My MUA filters my mail and moves flagged messages to a designated SPAM folder for review before I delete it (because I will never trust an automated process like this 100%). Now that my legitimate mail is nicely sorted from my junk mail, the percentage is staggeringly obvious. I get 4 to 5 times the amount of junk mail as legitimate mail, and that is with Postfix kicking a large portion of the inbound mail before it ever hits SpamAssassin! I don't have precise figures on how many Postfix kicks, but my mail log is flooded with Postfix reject messages. And you can add to that the fact that I firewall access to my mailserver from all of Latin America and Asia because of the high volume of spam and network attacks sourced from those regions.
Based on my guesstimation, I'd say that 90-95% of my inbound email is spam. And given the fact that bandwidth and CPU power keep getting faster, cheaper, and more available, I can only see the spam problem getting worse.
The user can decide for himself whether or not to use AOL at all.
Agreed.
By choosing to use AOL he chooses to accept AOL's filters.
Agreed.
There's no censorship here.
I disagree. AOL *is* censoring the information that reaches their members' inboxes by filtering that material based on AOL's criteria, and not necessarily the criteria of their individual members. As I said before, I would have no problem with AOL taking measures against spam if those measures were largely passive in nature (ie, flagging incoming messages that meet certain criteria as "Possible Spam" and giving each individual member choices as to how they want to handle those messages). My problem with AOL's approach is that they are preventing those messages that AOL considers spam from ever reaching their customers' inboxes.
Granted, one man's "censorship" is another man's "filtering service." I just think that AOL would be better served by giving their users the power to filter their own mail, rather than taking a "my way or the highway" approach to it. At the very least, the users should be given the option to choose whether they trust AOL's spam filter and want to just let their mail be deleted, or whether they want it routed to a designated "spam" folder of their inbox where they can verify it themselves.