"They should be locked up in maximum security getting their asses ripped apart by Bubba and the gang for the rest of their lives."
I found this comment interesting. According to the poster, it is perfectly acceptable behavior if the personna involved are of legal age. ( gender notwithstanding ) In fact, it is an encouraged behavior ( a wish if you will ) on the poster's part.
There are far too many instances of folks being thrown into this ' sexual predator ' category based on the testimony of a single person. Many times that person being a child. ( After all children would NEVER lie right ? )
I know this is probably news to you all too but just in case you didn't know. . . *whispers* Teenagers have sex. . . . and according to the law as it stands today, each and every one of them are ' sex offenders '.
Very similar parallels to the Salem Witch Trials. We've simply replaced the phrase " He / She bewitched me " with " He / She touched me ".
We need to take another look at the laws that define 'sex offender' and update it to 21st Century standards before we slap them with an electronic leash for the rest of their lives.
Prosecution has to prove that it was YOU driving the car at the time the ticket was issued. Tickets do not get issued to vehicles, they get issued to drivers.
If they cannot prove that YOU were driving the vehicle at the time of the infraction, there is nothing they can do. Period.
Even Red Light cameras suffer from this drawback. If it does not get an image that can be proven to be you, the ticket goes away. . . .
Minor issue is that it is PS2 only, so you'll have to fit a couple of adapters onto it to grab USB keyboard data. While it makes a very obvious LOOK AT ME piece of hardware, how often do you actually look at your cables beneath your desk? Most wouldn't know what it was even if they spotted it. Tell em it's an RF filter if they ask.:)
I can say I never used the aforementioned nefarious device on my laptop at work. I also never disabled all of my 'Remote' capabilities on my laptop forcing the IT Gestapo to come down and log in locally. The unit in question never captured the IT login name / passwords either.
Admittedly, the pricing seems out of whack a bit but they're just another business trying to re-coup the costs of hardware and whatnot. Kinda like insurance in my opinion, why is my rate so damn high? Because the insurance company is trying to recover their costs of the three hurricanes that just blew down Florida:) Or some other excuse they make up. Who knows? They're like the military, costs for simple things are stupidly high. It's the black budget money that pays the CEO's and his clique of followers bonuses every year.
I *think* ( don't hold me to this ) but I *think* the upstream bandwidth is in the T1 range. ( 1.5mbs )
I also know, however, that current plans for this wonderful new savior of a technology are only planned for NEW development areas. Ergo, new subdivisions and the like. I have heard no details on the deployment of this in older, established ( read that sh*tty copper cable ) areas. That may change, but I doubt it.:)
Realize, of course, that once this new technology gets deployed and takes off, the G-Men will step in and regulate / tax the hell out of it. Then the companies will have to pay the same fees / charges they do now in addition to the cost of laying down the new infrastructure. That'll explain your 2015 phone bill of $265.82.:)
Yeah, it's something to worry about. I also work for a major Telco ( SBC ) and VOIP is only the tip of the iceberg.
The super initiative right now is Fiber-to-the-premise. It will carry everything. Phone, data, your internet, TV, alarm, etc. etc. I forget the bandwidth specs on it at the moment, but I recall being somewhat impressed by it.
The only oddity I recall about it was the demarc installation comes with a mandatory UPS system to handle things in the event of a power failure. I believe it only powered the voip ( phone ) portion of the package during an outage.
When I say pushing hard, I would probably consider it one of their top priorities atm. The 911 issues and other bugs will get worked out. There is too much money in it not to be.
Google GLAT ( Google Labs Aptitude Test )
on
Google's Math Puzzle
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
My last two issues of Mensa Bulletin have come with the same type 'ads / puzzles'. The last issue came with a small ( 21 question ) aptitude test / basic resume type question layout complete with a return envelope.
A few sample questions from it:
#2 Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality.
#4 You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There is a dusty laptop here with a weak wireless connection. There are dull, lifeless gnomes strolling about. What dost thou do?
A) Wander aimlessly, bumping into obstacles until you are eaten by a grue.
B) Use the laptop as a digging device to tunnel to the next level.
C) Play MPoRPG until the battery dies along with your hopes.
D) Use the computer to map the nodes of the maze and discover an exit path.
E) Email your resume to Google, tell the lead gnome you quit and find yourself in a whole different world.
#9 This space left intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves upon emptiness.
#17 Consider a function which, for a given whole number n, returns the number of ones required when writing out all numbers between 0 and n. For example, f(13)=6. Notice that f(1)=1. What is the next largest n such that f(n)=n?
#20 What number comes next in the sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, ?
A) 96
B) 1 followed by 100 zeros ( a Googol )
C) Either of the above
D) None of the above
#21 In 29 words or fewer, describe what you would strive to accomplish if you worked at Google Labs.
Re:Nothing's unpickable - how big a mess do you wa
on
Steel Bolt Hacking
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· Score: 1
There are various grades of Medeco cylinders. While the one you found may have had brass tumblers, I've stumbled across some where the tumblers were made of carbide or similar metal. The face of the cylinder also had carbide inserts at strategic points to impede drilling of the lock.
Got into the lockpicking thing years ago while in the Navy. ( Had to learn SOMETHING floating on the ocean for months at a time ) After a lot of practice, I found I could rip through the majority of locks in very short order. Those that I could not ( Medeco, Abloy, and a few others ) I usually took apart to learn why.
The higher dollar locks usually have tighter tolerances, pick resistant tumblers, and exotic or very tough metals to contend with to resist cutting.
Of course, the locks like the Medeco cylinder I described above are only as useful as the structure they are attached to. You don't put high dollar cylinders on a hollow core door.:) The Medeco I was able to look at was one of the locks on a Tomahawk Cruise Missile Armored Box Launcher. Beating the door off that thing was out of the question, as was any climbing through a window theories. That was my official cover in the Navy. Tomahawk Weapons Control System Tech. In reality I was a super-geek ninja-locksmith.:)
It's a damn nice skill to learn and understand. Though you get the evil eye from the local locksmith if you walk in and start talking about mushroom pins, rake picks, and the like. It gives you an insight on why most locks simply keep the honest folk honest.:)
I use PgP. It works great. Your next challange will be to get all your email contacts to start using it too.
Problem that has already been stated is the email sent back to you from Company X that is wide open for the world to see now.
Need a login? Password? Account Verification? UPS Tracking key? How bout that nifty 75 digit key for that new high dollar software you just purchased. . . .
The incoming scene data would be extremely large in size. The model data itself being a very tiny portion of it. The image maps, texture maps, etc. etc. would be the biggest part if the incoming data.
Once the frame was rendered at 'film' resolution, the outgoing filesize would be quite large.
The software itself would be a big expense to distribute to all the render nodes. I can only speak from a Mental Ray standpoint, but each render node has to have a license to run the Mental Ray renderer. ( Read that, EACH processor ) This license is not cheap.
Then comes the security issue.
Of course the render nodes on the net would have to have an open port listening for the master server to send down a new scene file. I'll pass thanks.:)
The master node would have to keep track of what machines were rendering what frames and which ones were completed. Those that became corrupted or whatnot, would have to be reissued to another node.
And the rest of us just go out and buy jammers >:)
Could give a shit less about your business, your meetings, or anything associated with you if you are interrupting a service that I am paying for ( Read that: Movie ) or causing a hazard on the freeway because you can't drive, think, and talk at the same damn time.
Not sure how accurate this is but!
I believe my jammer worked on a very specific region of the signal. It was the part of the signal that told the cell tower a handset was within it's area of responsibility. It did NOT try to black out or override the entire signal. Just this small part. It did so with EXTREME efficiency.
This is actually quite funny.
I am one of those folks who purchased a 'cell jammer' off the net a year or so ago. It is relatively small and worked off of 4 'aaa' batteries. It had a momentary switch or a slide switch for continuous use.
To be honest, I was quite impressed it made it through US Customs since it had the phrase " CELLULAR JAMMER " emblazoned across the Customs Tag. ( It was ordered from Hong Kong btw )
It was sufficient to kill an entire movie theatre full of cell phones ( For those types who just HAVE to have their damn phones on during a movie ) or a resturant.
However, phones have advanced a bit since then and it is no longer functional vs the new generation of phones. I am on the lookout for the newer generation of jammers and plan to buy one as soon as I can find them.
It's sad that measures like this are necessary to keep the inconsiderate a$$holes of the world off their damn phones. Since they don't realize that movie theatres, hospitals, driving down the damn freeway, resturaunts, etc. are not their personal telephone booths, I turn to technology to take them off the air. If only for a little while.
FYI- Doing this to the a$$hole going 20mph in front of you is not recommended. Aforementioned a$$hole will stare harder at the phone when it hangs up on him and he will swerve across half the damn freeway before he realizes he can't make a call.:)
Can backup the statements made thus far against Shadowbane. Play on the Treachery server. The lag alone is annoying, the SB.exe problems plague everyone during sieges, the login servers are just shit, etc. etc. Specs on my system? 2ghz intel, 1gb ram, Nvidia Geforce3 TI 500 graphics card. Cable modem. More than sufficient to handle this game. Get booted from the servers nightly. Just plain sucks.
Is so bad entire guilds are up and leaving the entire game. Allow me to post an explanation letter from a guild leader:
Shadowbane: Final Impression
Combine left Shadowbane last night after 6 weeks in the game. We cancelled our accounts and will file disputes with our credit card companies to get our money back for Ubi's failure to provide the product paid for. A few will still play until their accounts expire but most won't even bother. I strongly urge you to do the same. Why is it that MMO gamers get abused like no others? Have you ever heard of a car company deciding to sell a car before the engine works? Do you start paying rent on an apartment 3-6 months before you actually move in? Why is this acceptable for an MMOG?
For the past month and a half I've been wondering the same thing every other paying customer of Shadowbane has been...what the fuck happened in beta? What was accomplished over the 12+ months of beta other than marketing? (Not counting those mysterious 2+ years of alpha no one ever got to play.) The dev cycle is slower than a snail on heroin. As most of you know, I was given a beta account at the very beginning. I wrote up a complimentary piece on SB (the crow tastes lovely, thank you). At the time I saw the potential, all the testers and fans did. Yeah it was buggy, yeah it was unfinished, yeah it was unstable, but that was beta. It's still buggy, it's still unfinished, it's still unstable, but now we're paying for it. I left beta pretty early on because patches could take 4 or more weeks. Try playing a beta like that, it's beyond frustrating. Nothing has changed. Instead of doing many small patches they're still taking forever and the patches suck. Half the patch message is usually completely trivial crap like spelling corrections and the rest is usually not implemented properly. Every day that imbalances exist, bugs abound, the problems accumulate. Someone losing a town to a sub-guild they couldn't remove from the nation isn't going to care if it's fixed 2 weeks later. I miss Mythic (I can't believe I'm saying that.) DAoC became a boring piece of shit, but one thing I'll admit, Mythic's dev team did it right. Beta was beautifully done and in final they had patches running non-stop. WP is a huge step backwards in this arena.
The graphics engine is inferior. The graphics suck, yes, but I don't care. What I do care about is that the graphics engine runs crappier than a game with superior graphics. Where's the tradeoff? The argument is supposed to be the closer you get to stick figure graphics, the better it's supposed to run. It's not happening here. Even with almost everything turned off or turned down to minimal, the framerate gets really bad and locks up in big battles. Not exactly the place you want to drop the ball when you're promoting your game as big battle guild vs. guild and nation vs. nation.
I remember the very first criticism I had of Shadowbane in beta was the point and click movement. I think it's stupid and annoying. It's primitive for 3D non-FPS gaming. Their argument was that point and click movement would allow them to reduce bandwidth and server traffic thereby increasing p..e..r..f..o..r..m..a..n..c..e. Sorry, lag hit me while I was typing. Either the servers are Commodore 64's or somehow their plan had flaws. The lag is ridiculous still. Also, thanks to the lag, point and click becomes point and click and rubberband and point and click and rubberband to someplace you didn't even start from and point and click and throw your mouse at the monitor. For those that have never played a game with rubberbanding like UO or SB, the premise
"Since when does revealing such information about a flawed product that would allow anyone to exploit that flawed product to engage in illegal activities equate to "rights"?"
When it has a profound influence over what products I choose to buy. I'll be damned if I'm buying the inferior product if I know about it.
If you wish to use lockpicks as the example, no problem, I'm game for it.
I own not one, but TWO sets of lockpicks. ( I wore my first set out ) I am quite proficient with them. I understand how locks work and why some locks are better than others because of my study and use of the lockpick. Knowing how the criminal mind works is the first step in defending yourself or your property against one.
Do you actually think that by imposing laws / limits on distributing this kind of information is going to make you and / or your valuables any safer? Do you not perhaps think that if you had the same knowledge as I about locks, that you would be more careful in your choice of locks to protect your things with? You know the locks they advertise can take a bullet and stay locked? ( Won't name any names here. . . you know why ) You're probably thinking " That's a pretty secure lock. " Couldn't be further from the truth. If someone actually bothered to use picks on it, the average lock of that type, can be bypassed in less than thirty seconds on a very bad day. ( My record is less than ten seconds ) If this information was publicly known, they probably wouldn't sell many of those type locks now would they? This is why this information needs to come out. The average person simply accepts what they see / hear as gospel and that's it.
While the knowledge of lockpicking can be used for ill purposes, the same knowledge can be used to defend against it. No one is condoning the theft of anything, but an informed user is a much tougher target than an ingorant one.
Just because I have the know how and tools to commit a crime, does not mean I will. ( Haven't as of this writing ) Yet, because of human nature, someone will surely take up the task for me.
You have a choice, you can either be a victim of ignorance, or not. Condoning the laws that keep the public ignorant, effectively puts them at the mercy of those who will use this information to further their own agenda.
Think of America as the 'politically correct' police state. While the jackbooted-gestapo isn't kicking the door down and beating you. . . (yet)
. . . they are instead getting law degrees, dressing in nice suits and suing you. It's much more profitable.
It ultimately achieves the same goal. You tend to keep your opinions / comments to yourself.
A corporation who distributes flawed merchandise or software has every right to tell me to be quiet. I also have every right to a functional secure product that they claim to be pawing off on you.
Perhaps hitting the corporation with a false advertisement lawsuit ( we sell a secure product, we swear ) in return would wake them up. ( Doubtful )
With our sorry ass congress/senate passing these bills as fast as they can, it's probably our only recourse until we boot the entire lawmaking body out of office and get someone with some sense.
Cease and decist letters get written when someone threatens anothers money making schemes.
To fix the problem costs money, to scare individual X into keeping their info to themselves is much cheaper.
And they wonder why AOL's stock continues to drop. . . .
They are missing the whole point of the TIVO system. I record what I want to watch without question. I skip any and all commercials without question. Period. Not even subject to debate.
Their box / system wouldn't even be a consideration.
About the ONLY thing that I'll consider over Tivo are the new DVD / Hard-drive recorders coming out. Phillips is about to drop one out that doesn't require VideoPlus codes. Just hit the record button and away you go. . . No price yet.
Pioneer is dropping one out ( DVR-002H ) this summer that will record to DVD-RW AND has an internal 80-gig hard drive to record to as well. ( It's replacing the DMR-HSS2 unit which has a 40 gig drive ) While a bit pricey ( $1000 US ) there is no subscription fee for it. . . .:)
Is there any hope for AOL in the future? ( Does anyone really care? >:)
"Bin Laden has done exactly what he set out to do. All he has to do is pop up from time to time and our half-witted "leaders" will do the job of destroying everything that makes America..America."
Bin Laden. . . .
The boogey man of the new era. You realize that this Bin Laden is never going to die. If he did, the US would have no reason to wage the war on Terrorism. One hundred years from now, we'll still be fighting this war on terrorism against Bin Laden the cyborg, or maybe one of his clones, Bin Laden the Virus, or whatever. BL is an excuse. Everything that goes wrong in the world these days is attributed to BL. Every generation has their boogey man. Stalin, Hitler, Quadaffi, Ayatolla, Ho Chi Min, pick one. Ours is no differnt.
Well. . .
To be honest, there are quite a few packages out there. You will be limited in choice by only two things. 1) How much money you wish to spend. and 2) Your operating system. ( In your case the Mac OS )
Usually the limiting factor for most folks is budget ( since we not all ultra wealthy ). I know Maya, Lightwave, Strata Studio Pro, and Electric Image are available for the Mac. There are probably more, but these come to mind initially.
I personally own and use Lightwave, Rhino, and Softimage XSI. However, Maya seems to be a choice for many folks due to its feature list and it's new competitive price.
It all boils down to what you plan to do with the package. Do you plan on animating? Or simply modeling / rendering stills? You may be able to get away with a MUCH cheaper solution than the animation packages ( Maya, Lightwave, etc. etc. )if you are only going to do still work.
There are some additional items to keep in mind with these packages. They are horsepower intensive. Some are picky about what graphics cards / drivers you have loaded. Most have hardware locks ( known as the dreaded dongle ) that will require either a serial connection or a USB connection. The software WILL NOT run without them. ( Unless you're running a crack of some kind ) Run the biggest and meanest system you can afford.
If you just HAVE to use NURBS ( and the NURBS vs. SUBDIVISION discussions have pages and pages of why one is better than the other ) then know that Lightwave does not support NURBS at all.
Here is the list of some of the more popular software that I am aware of off the top of my head.
Lightwave 3D
Only one package- $1500
http://www.lightwave3d.com
Maya
Entry level package - $2000
Advanced Package- $6000
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/news/home.shtml
Rhino
Only one package- $1200
http://www.rhino3d.com
Strata 3DPro
Only one package- $700
http://www.strata.com/
3D Studio Max
Only one package- $3500
http://www.discreet.com/index-nf.html
Electric Image
Only one package- $1295
http://www.electricimage.com/
If you have an unlimited budget, then you can consider some of the following: ( I don't think these support the MAC though )
Softimage XSI ( http://www.softimage.com )
Nichiman Mirai ( http://www.izware.com/mirai )
Houdini(http://www.techimage.co.uk/tc/products/hou dini.html )
I'm sure there are others out there that I forgot to list, ( such as Animation Master, Bryce, Carrera, etc. etc. ) but the ones I listed above comprise the bulk of the most popular 3D apps out there. It all boils down to money, your system capability, and what toolsets you want available to you. In the right hands all of them can produce outstanding results, they all just have slightly different methods of producing them.:)
-Nehumanuscrede
Slashdot Mirror
Check out the article here: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68306, 00.html
I found this comment interesting. According to the poster, it is perfectly acceptable behavior if the personna involved are of legal age. ( gender notwithstanding ) In fact, it is an encouraged behavior ( a wish if you will ) on the poster's part.
There are far too many instances of folks being thrown into this ' sexual predator ' category based on the testimony of a single person. Many times that person being a child. ( After all children would NEVER lie right ? )
I know this is probably news to you all too but just in case you didn't know. . . *whispers* Teenagers have sex. . . . and according to the law as it stands today, each and every one of them are ' sex offenders '.
Very similar parallels to the Salem Witch Trials. We've simply replaced the phrase " He / She bewitched me " with " He / She touched me ".
We need to take another look at the laws that define 'sex offender' and update it to 21st Century standards before we slap them with an electronic leash for the rest of their lives.
Prosecution has to prove that it was YOU driving the car at the time the ticket was issued. Tickets do not get issued to vehicles, they get issued to drivers.
If they cannot prove that YOU were driving the vehicle at the time of the infraction, there is nothing they can do. Period.
Even Red Light cameras suffer from this drawback. If it does not get an image that can be proven to be you, the ticket goes away. . . .
Minor issue is that it is PS2 only, so you'll have to fit a couple of adapters onto it to grab USB keyboard data. While it makes a very obvious LOOK AT ME piece of hardware, how often do you actually look at your cables beneath your desk? Most wouldn't know what it was even if they spotted it. Tell em it's an RF filter if they ask.
I can say I never used the aforementioned nefarious device on my laptop at work. I also never disabled all of my 'Remote' capabilities on my laptop forcing the IT Gestapo to come down and log in locally. The unit in question never captured the IT login name / passwords either.
Isn't technology wonderful?
-nehumanuscrede
I *think* ( don't hold me to this ) but I *think* the upstream bandwidth is in the T1 range. ( 1.5mbs )
I also know, however, that current plans for this wonderful new savior of a technology are only planned for NEW development areas. Ergo, new subdivisions and the like. I have heard no details on the deployment of this in older, established ( read that sh*tty copper cable ) areas. That may change, but I doubt it. :)
Realize, of course, that once this new technology gets deployed and takes off, the G-Men will step in and regulate / tax the hell out of it. Then the companies will have to pay the same fees / charges they do now in addition to the cost of laying down the new infrastructure. That'll explain your 2015 phone bill of $265.82. :)
The super initiative right now is Fiber-to-the-premise. It will carry everything. Phone, data, your internet, TV, alarm, etc. etc. I forget the bandwidth specs on it at the moment, but I recall being somewhat impressed by it.
The only oddity I recall about it was the demarc installation comes with a mandatory UPS system to handle things in the event of a power failure. I believe it only powered the voip ( phone ) portion of the package during an outage.
When I say pushing hard, I would probably consider it one of their top priorities atm. The 911 issues and other bugs will get worked out. There is too much money in it not to be.
A few sample questions from it:
#2 Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality.
#4 You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There is a dusty laptop here with a weak wireless connection. There are dull, lifeless gnomes strolling about. What dost thou do?
A) Wander aimlessly, bumping into obstacles until you are eaten by a grue.
B) Use the laptop as a digging device to tunnel to the next level.
C) Play MPoRPG until the battery dies along with your hopes.
D) Use the computer to map the nodes of the maze and discover an exit path.
E) Email your resume to Google, tell the lead gnome you quit and find yourself in a whole different world.
#9 This space left intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves upon emptiness.
#17 Consider a function which, for a given whole number n, returns the number of ones required when writing out all numbers between 0 and n. For example, f(13)=6. Notice that f(1)=1. What is the next largest n such that f(n)=n?
#20 What number comes next in the sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, ?
A) 96
B) 1 followed by 100 zeros ( a Googol )
C) Either of the above
D) None of the above
#21 In 29 words or fewer, describe what you would strive to accomplish if you worked at Google Labs.
Got into the lockpicking thing years ago while in the Navy. ( Had to learn SOMETHING floating on the ocean for months at a time ) After a lot of practice, I found I could rip through the majority of locks in very short order. Those that I could not ( Medeco, Abloy, and a few others ) I usually took apart to learn why.
The higher dollar locks usually have tighter tolerances, pick resistant tumblers, and exotic or very tough metals to contend with to resist cutting.
Of course, the locks like the Medeco cylinder I described above are only as useful as the structure they are attached to. You don't put high dollar cylinders on a hollow core door. :) The Medeco I was able to look at was one of the locks on a Tomahawk Cruise Missile Armored Box Launcher. Beating the door off that thing was out of the question, as was any climbing through a window theories. That was my official cover in the Navy. Tomahawk Weapons Control System Tech. In reality I was a super-geek ninja-locksmith. :)
It's a damn nice skill to learn and understand. Though you get the evil eye from the local locksmith if you walk in and start talking about mushroom pins, rake picks, and the like. It gives you an insight on why most locks simply keep the honest folk honest. :)
I use PgP. It works great. Your next challange will be to get all your email contacts to start using it too. Problem that has already been stated is the email sent back to you from Company X that is wide open for the world to see now. Need a login? Password? Account Verification? UPS Tracking key? How bout that nifty 75 digit key for that new high dollar software you just purchased. . . .
The incoming scene data would be extremely large in size. The model data itself being a very tiny portion of it. The image maps, texture maps, etc. etc. would be the biggest part if the incoming data.
:)
:)
Once the frame was rendered at 'film' resolution, the outgoing filesize would be quite large.
The software itself would be a big expense to distribute to all the render nodes. I can only speak from a Mental Ray standpoint, but each render node has to have a license to run the Mental Ray renderer. ( Read that, EACH processor ) This license is not cheap.
Then comes the security issue.
Of course the render nodes on the net would have to have an open port listening for the master server to send down a new scene file. I'll pass thanks.
The master node would have to keep track of what machines were rendering what frames and which ones were completed. Those that became corrupted or whatnot, would have to be reissued to another node.
In short, it would be a nightmare to implement.
And the rest of us just go out and buy jammers >:) Could give a shit less about your business, your meetings, or anything associated with you if you are interrupting a service that I am paying for ( Read that: Movie ) or causing a hazard on the freeway because you can't drive, think, and talk at the same damn time.
Not sure how accurate this is but! I believe my jammer worked on a very specific region of the signal. It was the part of the signal that told the cell tower a handset was within it's area of responsibility. It did NOT try to black out or override the entire signal. Just this small part. It did so with EXTREME efficiency.
This is actually quite funny. I am one of those folks who purchased a 'cell jammer' off the net a year or so ago. It is relatively small and worked off of 4 'aaa' batteries. It had a momentary switch or a slide switch for continuous use. To be honest, I was quite impressed it made it through US Customs since it had the phrase " CELLULAR JAMMER " emblazoned across the Customs Tag. ( It was ordered from Hong Kong btw ) It was sufficient to kill an entire movie theatre full of cell phones ( For those types who just HAVE to have their damn phones on during a movie ) or a resturant. However, phones have advanced a bit since then and it is no longer functional vs the new generation of phones. I am on the lookout for the newer generation of jammers and plan to buy one as soon as I can find them. It's sad that measures like this are necessary to keep the inconsiderate a$$holes of the world off their damn phones. Since they don't realize that movie theatres, hospitals, driving down the damn freeway, resturaunts, etc. are not their personal telephone booths, I turn to technology to take them off the air. If only for a little while. FYI- Doing this to the a$$hole going 20mph in front of you is not recommended. Aforementioned a$$hole will stare harder at the phone when it hangs up on him and he will swerve across half the damn freeway before he realizes he can't make a call. :)
Can backup the statements made thus far against Shadowbane. Play on the Treachery server. The lag alone is annoying, the SB.exe problems plague everyone during sieges, the login servers are just shit, etc. etc. Specs on my system? 2ghz intel, 1gb ram, Nvidia Geforce3 TI 500 graphics card. Cable modem. More than sufficient to handle this game. Get booted from the servers nightly. Just plain sucks.
Is so bad entire guilds are up and leaving the entire game. Allow me to post an explanation letter from a guild leader:
Shadowbane: Final Impression
Combine left Shadowbane last night after 6 weeks in the game. We cancelled our accounts and will file disputes with our credit card companies to get our money back for Ubi's failure to provide the product paid for. A few will still play until their accounts expire but most won't even bother. I strongly urge you to do the same. Why is it that MMO gamers get abused like no others? Have you ever heard of a car company deciding to sell a car before the engine works? Do you start paying rent on an apartment 3-6 months before you actually move in? Why is this acceptable for an MMOG?
For the past month and a half I've been wondering the same thing every other paying customer of Shadowbane has been...what the fuck happened in beta? What was accomplished over the 12+ months of beta other than marketing? (Not counting those mysterious 2+ years of alpha no one ever got to play.)
The dev cycle is slower than a snail on heroin. As most of you know, I was given a beta account at the very beginning. I wrote up a complimentary piece on SB (the crow tastes lovely, thank you). At the time I saw the potential, all the testers and fans did. Yeah it was buggy, yeah it was unfinished, yeah it was unstable, but that was beta. It's still buggy, it's still unfinished, it's still unstable, but now we're paying for it. I left beta pretty early on because patches could take 4 or more weeks. Try playing a beta like that, it's beyond frustrating. Nothing has changed. Instead of doing many small patches they're still taking forever and the patches suck. Half the patch message is usually completely trivial crap like spelling corrections and the rest is usually not implemented properly. Every day that imbalances exist, bugs abound, the problems accumulate. Someone losing a town to a sub-guild they couldn't remove from the nation isn't going to care if it's fixed 2 weeks later. I miss Mythic (I can't believe I'm saying that.) DAoC became a boring piece of shit, but one thing I'll admit, Mythic's dev team did it right. Beta was beautifully done and in final they had patches running non-stop. WP is a huge step backwards in this arena.
The graphics engine is inferior. The graphics suck, yes, but I don't care. What I do care about is that the graphics engine runs crappier than a game with superior graphics. Where's the tradeoff? The argument is supposed to be the closer you get to stick figure graphics, the better it's supposed to run. It's not happening here. Even with almost everything turned off or turned down to minimal, the framerate gets really bad and locks up in big battles. Not exactly the place you want to drop the ball when you're promoting your game as big battle guild vs. guild and nation vs. nation.
I remember the very first criticism I had of Shadowbane in beta was the point and click movement. I think it's stupid and annoying. It's primitive for 3D non-FPS gaming. Their argument was that point and click movement would allow them to reduce bandwidth and server traffic thereby increasing p..e..r..f..o..r..m..a..n..c..e. Sorry, lag hit me while I was typing. Either the servers are Commodore 64's or somehow their plan had flaws. The lag is ridiculous still. Also, thanks to the lag, point and click becomes point and click and rubberband and point and click and rubberband to someplace you didn't even start from and point and click and throw your mouse at the monitor. For those that have never played a game with rubberbanding like UO or SB, the premise
"Since when does revealing such information about a flawed product that would allow anyone to exploit that flawed product to engage in illegal activities equate to "rights"?" When it has a profound influence over what products I choose to buy. I'll be damned if I'm buying the inferior product if I know about it. If you wish to use lockpicks as the example, no problem, I'm game for it. I own not one, but TWO sets of lockpicks. ( I wore my first set out ) I am quite proficient with them. I understand how locks work and why some locks are better than others because of my study and use of the lockpick. Knowing how the criminal mind works is the first step in defending yourself or your property against one. Do you actually think that by imposing laws / limits on distributing this kind of information is going to make you and / or your valuables any safer? Do you not perhaps think that if you had the same knowledge as I about locks, that you would be more careful in your choice of locks to protect your things with? You know the locks they advertise can take a bullet and stay locked? ( Won't name any names here. . . you know why ) You're probably thinking " That's a pretty secure lock. " Couldn't be further from the truth. If someone actually bothered to use picks on it, the average lock of that type, can be bypassed in less than thirty seconds on a very bad day. ( My record is less than ten seconds ) If this information was publicly known, they probably wouldn't sell many of those type locks now would they? This is why this information needs to come out. The average person simply accepts what they see / hear as gospel and that's it. While the knowledge of lockpicking can be used for ill purposes, the same knowledge can be used to defend against it. No one is condoning the theft of anything, but an informed user is a much tougher target than an ingorant one. Just because I have the know how and tools to commit a crime, does not mean I will. ( Haven't as of this writing ) Yet, because of human nature, someone will surely take up the task for me. You have a choice, you can either be a victim of ignorance, or not. Condoning the laws that keep the public ignorant, effectively puts them at the mercy of those who will use this information to further their own agenda.
Think of America as the 'politically correct' police state. While the jackbooted-gestapo isn't kicking the door down and beating you. . . (yet) . . . they are instead getting law degrees, dressing in nice suits and suing you. It's much more profitable. It ultimately achieves the same goal. You tend to keep your opinions / comments to yourself.
A corporation who distributes flawed merchandise or software has every right to tell me to be quiet. I also have every right to a functional secure product that they claim to be pawing off on you. Perhaps hitting the corporation with a false advertisement lawsuit ( we sell a secure product, we swear ) in return would wake them up. ( Doubtful ) With our sorry ass congress/senate passing these bills as fast as they can, it's probably our only recourse until we boot the entire lawmaking body out of office and get someone with some sense.
Cease and decist letters get written when someone threatens anothers money making schemes. To fix the problem costs money, to scare individual X into keeping their info to themselves is much cheaper.
And they wonder why AOL's stock continues to drop. . . . They are missing the whole point of the TIVO system. I record what I want to watch without question. I skip any and all commercials without question. Period. Not even subject to debate. Their box / system wouldn't even be a consideration. About the ONLY thing that I'll consider over Tivo are the new DVD / Hard-drive recorders coming out. Phillips is about to drop one out that doesn't require VideoPlus codes. Just hit the record button and away you go. . . No price yet. Pioneer is dropping one out ( DVR-002H ) this summer that will record to DVD-RW AND has an internal 80-gig hard drive to record to as well. ( It's replacing the DMR-HSS2 unit which has a 40 gig drive ) While a bit pricey ( $1000 US ) there is no subscription fee for it. . . . :)
Is there any hope for AOL in the future? ( Does anyone really care? >:)
If Microsoft's current philosophy towards security is any indicator, this should go down pretty quickly. . . . :)
"Bin Laden has done exactly what he set out to do. All he has to do is pop up from time to time and our half-witted "leaders" will do the job of destroying everything that makes America..America." Bin Laden. . . . The boogey man of the new era. You realize that this Bin Laden is never going to die. If he did, the US would have no reason to wage the war on Terrorism. One hundred years from now, we'll still be fighting this war on terrorism against Bin Laden the cyborg, or maybe one of his clones, Bin Laden the Virus, or whatever. BL is an excuse. Everything that goes wrong in the world these days is attributed to BL. Every generation has their boogey man. Stalin, Hitler, Quadaffi, Ayatolla, Ho Chi Min, pick one. Ours is no differnt.
Well. . . To be honest, there are quite a few packages out there. You will be limited in choice by only two things. 1) How much money you wish to spend. and 2) Your operating system. ( In your case the Mac OS ) Usually the limiting factor for most folks is budget ( since we not all ultra wealthy ). I know Maya, Lightwave, Strata Studio Pro, and Electric Image are available for the Mac. There are probably more, but these come to mind initially. I personally own and use Lightwave, Rhino, and Softimage XSI. However, Maya seems to be a choice for many folks due to its feature list and it's new competitive price. It all boils down to what you plan to do with the package. Do you plan on animating? Or simply modeling / rendering stills? You may be able to get away with a MUCH cheaper solution than the animation packages ( Maya, Lightwave, etc. etc. )if you are only going to do still work. There are some additional items to keep in mind with these packages. They are horsepower intensive. Some are picky about what graphics cards / drivers you have loaded. Most have hardware locks ( known as the dreaded dongle ) that will require either a serial connection or a USB connection. The software WILL NOT run without them. ( Unless you're running a crack of some kind ) Run the biggest and meanest system you can afford. If you just HAVE to use NURBS ( and the NURBS vs. SUBDIVISION discussions have pages and pages of why one is better than the other ) then know that Lightwave does not support NURBS at all. Here is the list of some of the more popular software that I am aware of off the top of my head. Lightwave 3D Only one package- $1500 http://www.lightwave3d.com Maya Entry level package - $2000 Advanced Package- $6000 http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/news/home.shtml Rhino Only one package- $1200 http://www.rhino3d.com Strata 3DPro Only one package- $700 http://www.strata.com/ 3D Studio Max Only one package- $3500 http://www.discreet.com/index-nf.html Electric Image Only one package- $1295 http://www.electricimage.com/ If you have an unlimited budget, then you can consider some of the following: ( I don't think these support the MAC though ) Softimage XSI ( http://www.softimage.com ) Nichiman Mirai ( http://www.izware.com/mirai ) Houdini(http://www.techimage.co.uk/tc/products/hou dini.html )
I'm sure there are others out there that I forgot to list, ( such as Animation Master, Bryce, Carrera, etc. etc. ) but the ones I listed above comprise the bulk of the most popular 3D apps out there. It all boils down to money, your system capability, and what toolsets you want available to you. In the right hands all of them can produce outstanding results, they all just have slightly different methods of producing them. :)
-Nehumanuscrede