I can see one problem with any online system thats gonna be hard to solve.
Dallas (and probably a lot of other places as well) has a problem with what are called "Vote Brokers". There are people who go around neighborhoods right after the absentee ballots have arrived in the mail. They prey mainly on lonely, elderly people.. offer to "help" them with their absentee ballot. Of course, the "help" is to make sure that the candidate they represent is voted for. Failing that, they'll offer to mail the ballot, then just trash votes that aren't for their candidate. If the person insists on mailing it themselves, they'll just go by later and steal the ballot out of their mailbox.
The Dallas Observer ran a couple of stories on this about a year ago. Stories about brokers showing up at the absentee vote counting headquarters on the last day with sacks and sacks of ballots. Of course, the brokers claim they're just helping the old folks exercize their right to vote, and they don't influence anything, and you can't prove it anyway.
Internet voting is just going to make this even easier. Now the broker will show up with a shiny new laptop that most of these people won't understand and will be intimidated by. Hell, you could even run some official-looking trojan software on the laptop and just steal peoples voter information for use later.
Are there any regulations about what the definition of a "station" is? Or how long something can be cached?
I picture something like this... I've got a playlist on my computer with a few, or a few dozen, or a few hundred songs. My media player accesses this list, and also monitors a central server that recieves information from hundreds of different webcasters about their current and upcoming playlist.
Any time one of those webcasters starts to broadcast a song thats on my list, my media player switches over to that station and starts to play it. If someone else starts to play a diffent song on my list while the first one is still playing, my media player will cache the second song and start it when the first one ends. If we're having trouble finding one of my songs out there, the media player will put in a request for me at a random station.
If I've got a reasoably diverse song list, and there are enough webcasters out there, I'll hear nothing but the music I want to hear.
Yeah, I was pretty surprised to see that GTA:Vice City runs under a C64 emulator! Seems like a pretty kludgy way to get things done, but it's a great game so I guess I won't complain.
I don't think it's going to be all that bad. These systems won't be used that extensively, simply because they will slow down skilled workers who already know what they're doing. If I've been working a station for two years, I already know which screws need to be tightened down, and which order, and how tight. Wearing goggles and having a voice in my ear and everything superimposed and highlighted is just going to slow me down. Probably slow me down dramatically.
Taken strictly as a training tool, I like them. You don't have to take another skilled worker off the line to teach the new person. Thats always a big problem when you have a station or a position thats temporarily understaffed. Do you toss some untrained people in there, and watch production take an even bigger hit while your few remaining knowledgeable workers stop what they're doing and train the new people? Or do you just ride it out until your staffing is back up to full strength? Being able to put some new people in there and have them be at least semi-productive right away without needing any human training would be a good thing.
Yeah, but the $700 charge for an unsold console is for a relatively small amout of units if they don't move. They won't keep making units forever if they're not selling any of them. Whereas the $200 cost for a sold unit could be a much larger total if they sell a bunch of them.
How about a truckload of RFID strips? Then you wouldn't even need to unload them. Just drive the truck through the reader, then take the strips to a landfill and dump them there.
Well, you could have multiple loading/unloading points. A long, long loading dock with 100 or so bays, that way each truck could pull into its own bay and offload and get out without running into another truck.
I imagine a special loading/unloading system could be devised too.. maybe something like a dump truck, with specially designed titanium alloy tape cartrdiges that could withstand the shock and the bumping about.
Goes to work, gets some coffee... reads his EMail.. hops over to his bank website to check his account.. "Hey, it say I have 17.4 billion dollars.. I thought I only had 16 billion... oh, I bet that stock dividend came in. Hey, maybe I'll take the wife out to dinner tonight to celebrate."
I go the opposite route. When my old card can't keep up, I spring the big bucks for the shiniest/newest/fastest video out there. It costs a little more up front, but it usually means I'm good for a couple of years before it's upgrade time again.
I'm not sure how it works out financially... buying the "best performance" every two years, as opposed to buying the "best value" every year. I suspect it's pretty close, and being on the bleeding edge for a little while makes some of the extra cost worth it.
Re:For those unfortunate times...
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
Yeah, pretty much. Good luck flaggind down 3 or four friendly motorists and finding enough jumper cables to hook everyone together. I'd put the odds at 50:50 whether you get a jump, or some cable gets cross-connected and fries everyones electric circuits.
Back in college, I had a buddy who drove a old VW. His car had some wonky electric system.. 10V? 8V? Anyway, he couldn't jump anyone, or get a jump either. The only way we could start him up when his battery went dead was to give him a good strong push and let him pop the clutch.
Depends on what I've accomplished since my last save. I've had times when I've died at the end of a particularly bloody rampage. In that case, it's easier to go and buy new weapons then to try and redo the rampage.
Video games cause obesity, so we'll tax them? Give me a break. I can think of a few other things have a much more direct effect on a persons body weight. Like, I dunno, food for example? I think it could be proven that the more food you eat, the more likely you are to be obese. Especially fast food.. why not tax that?
But if Take Two was hyping the game because 3DR told them it was going to be a 1999 release, then whose fault is it? It's the publishers job to hype and promote a new game, and to do that properly then need a reasonably accurate forecast of when the game will be done. If TT was told that the game was going to be a Christmas 1999 release, and they cranked up the hype machine based on that date, then I don't think they're to blame the timing.
3DR has kept quiet about the whole DNF thing for the last couple of years, which is probably the right approach to take. I really don't understand why gamers are so worked-up about the game anyway. The original wes pretty good, but I'm not going to worry about the sequel. When it comes out I'll check the reviews and the demo if there is one and buy it if it's good. If it sucks... well, I won't be shedding a tear for wasted youth, or anything.
At this point, the gaming community feels so strongly about DNF that I don't think 3DR can say anything about the game without being raked over the coals. Certainly they can't make any kind of prediction about it's completion. Probably the next news we'll hear out of 3DR relating to DNF is that it has gone gold, and will be in the stores in two weeks.
Yeah, Daikatana has to be wayyyyy up there. I don't know if the PC Jr qualifies, but if it does it'll be on the list.
What else.. Dwango was a so-so idea at a bad time. The whole Battlecruiser 3000AD (or whatever it's called) debacle. The Sims online? And Sierra released a game back in the early 90's that was so buggy that nobody could get it to run. Some space exploration simulation thingy... I've undoubtedly exorcised the title from my memory.
It's not quite the same thing, though. As I understand, when the "choose high/low" option comes up, it doesn't matter what you pick. The machine has already determined if you'll win or lose, and the option you choose doesn't matter. The machine will generate the appropriate number regardless.
So you're not really choosing "high/low", you're trying to decide if the machine has another win programmed for you. That result may be predetermined, but since the player doesn't know it, it still appears to be random... doesn't it?
The only problem I see is that the "high/low" option appears on the face of it to be a 50:50 proposition. If the actual odds are something else, then I'm not sure how "fair" the game is.
I've still got my original ][ out there somewhere. Not a +, just a ][... we didn't need no fancy floating point math back in my day. Well okay, I got an Applesoft card and a 64K memory card for it. (God, I can't believe I paid more for that memory card then I did for this whole computer I've got right here)
Anyway, I fired it up a couple of years ago... it still beeps, the floppy drives still spin.. maybe I'll go bring it in the house and check it out.
Doesn't this hurt NV even more? They got caught cheating on a benchmark, and thats bad enough. Now its pretty apparent that they went and twisted some arms and got Futuremark to issue a half-harted retraction. I don't see where this gets NV anything but another black eye. Nobody who has been following this whole saga is fooled by it.
The only way I could see this move paying off is if NV manages to promote these "optimized" benchmark figures to a larger audience which isn't aware of the story behind them. Unless that happens, it just looks like they're following one mistake with another.
Just out of idle curiousity, why is underlining considered to be a superior alternative? I don't see the difference myself, but I'm assuming there's some fancy theory on the subject. Probably a Federally funded study as well.
Slashdot Mirror
It uses stored solar energy in a form called "gasoline".
Bet it would do pretty good in this race, too.
Cheat codes hell... I'd be happy with a damn rulebook.
I can see one problem with any online system thats gonna be hard to solve.
Dallas (and probably a lot of other places as well) has a problem with what are called "Vote Brokers". There are people who go around neighborhoods right after the absentee ballots have arrived in the mail. They prey mainly on lonely, elderly people.. offer to "help" them with their absentee ballot. Of course, the "help" is to make sure that the candidate they represent is voted for. Failing that, they'll offer to mail the ballot, then just trash votes that aren't for their candidate. If the person insists on mailing it themselves, they'll just go by later and steal the ballot out of their mailbox.
The Dallas Observer ran a couple of stories on this about a year ago. Stories about brokers showing up at the absentee vote counting headquarters on the last day with sacks and sacks of ballots. Of course, the brokers claim they're just helping the old folks exercize their right to vote, and they don't influence anything, and you can't prove it anyway.
Internet voting is just going to make this even easier. Now the broker will show up with a shiny new laptop that most of these people won't understand and will be intimidated by. Hell, you could even run some official-looking trojan software on the laptop and just steal peoples voter information for use later.
The Japanese and Chinese are already having a major effect in the All-Star balloting for Baseball and Baskketball.
And lets face, most Amurricans care a lot more about their sports then they do their political races.
Would be kinda funny to see a George Bush campaign ad running in Afghanistan, though.
Well then we're screwed, aren't we? Though I thought that every streaming media player did at least a little caching to ensure smooth playback.
Are there any regulations about what the definition of a "station" is? Or how long something can be cached?
I picture something like this... I've got a playlist on my computer with a few, or a few dozen, or a few hundred songs. My media player accesses this list, and also monitors a central server that recieves information from hundreds of different webcasters about their current and upcoming playlist.
Any time one of those webcasters starts to broadcast a song thats on my list, my media player switches over to that station and starts to play it. If someone else starts to play a diffent song on my list while the first one is still playing, my media player will cache the second song and start it when the first one ends. If we're having trouble finding one of my songs out there, the media player will put in a request for me at a random station.
If I've got a reasoably diverse song list, and there are enough webcasters out there, I'll hear nothing but the music I want to hear.
Yeah, I was pretty surprised to see that GTA:Vice City runs under a C64 emulator! Seems like a pretty kludgy way to get things done, but it's a great game so I guess I won't complain.
I don't think it's going to be all that bad. These systems won't be used that extensively, simply because they will slow down skilled workers who already know what they're doing. If I've been working a station for two years, I already know which screws need to be tightened down, and which order, and how tight. Wearing goggles and having a voice in my ear and everything superimposed and highlighted is just going to slow me down. Probably slow me down dramatically.
Taken strictly as a training tool, I like them. You don't have to take another skilled worker off the line to teach the new person. Thats always a big problem when you have a station or a position thats temporarily understaffed. Do you toss some untrained people in there, and watch production take an even bigger hit while your few remaining knowledgeable workers stop what they're doing and train the new people? Or do you just ride it out until your staffing is back up to full strength? Being able to put some new people in there and have them be at least semi-productive right away without needing any human training would be a good thing.
Yeah, but the $700 charge for an unsold console is for a relatively small amout of units if they don't move. They won't keep making units forever if they're not selling any of them. Whereas the $200 cost for a sold unit could be a much larger total if they sell a bunch of them.
Gives the term "data collision" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
How about a truckload of RFID strips? Then you wouldn't even need to unload them. Just drive the truck through the reader, then take the strips to a landfill and dump them there.
Well, you could have multiple loading/unloading points. A long, long loading dock with 100 or so bays, that way each truck could pull into its own bay and offload and get out without running into another truck.
I imagine a special loading/unloading system could be devised too.. maybe something like a dump truck, with specially designed titanium alloy tape cartrdiges that could withstand the shock and the bumping about.
Goes to work, gets some coffee... reads his EMail.. hops over to his bank website to check his account.. "Hey, it say I have 17.4 billion dollars.. I thought I only had 16 billion... oh, I bet that stock dividend came in. Hey, maybe I'll take the wife out to dinner tonight to celebrate."
I go the opposite route. When my old card can't keep up, I spring the big bucks for the shiniest/newest/fastest video out there. It costs a little more up front, but it usually means I'm good for a couple of years before it's upgrade time again.
I'm not sure how it works out financially... buying the "best performance" every two years, as opposed to buying the "best value" every year. I suspect it's pretty close, and being on the bleeding edge for a little while makes some of the extra cost worth it.
Yeah, pretty much. Good luck flaggind down 3 or four friendly motorists and finding enough jumper cables to hook everyone together. I'd put the odds at 50:50 whether you get a jump, or some cable gets cross-connected and fries everyones electric circuits.
Back in college, I had a buddy who drove a old VW. His car had some wonky electric system.. 10V? 8V? Anyway, he couldn't jump anyone, or get a jump either. The only way we could start him up when his battery went dead was to give him a good strong push and let him pop the clutch.
Depends on what I've accomplished since my last save. I've had times when I've died at the end of a particularly bloody rampage. In that case, it's easier to go and buy new weapons then to try and redo the rampage.
Video games cause obesity, so we'll tax them? Give me a break. I can think of a few other things have a much more direct effect on a persons body weight. Like, I dunno, food for example? I think it could be proven that the more food you eat, the more likely you are to be obese. Especially fast food.. why not tax that?
But if Take Two was hyping the game because 3DR told them it was going to be a 1999 release, then whose fault is it? It's the publishers job to hype and promote a new game, and to do that properly then need a reasonably accurate forecast of when the game will be done. If TT was told that the game was going to be a Christmas 1999 release, and they cranked up the hype machine based on that date, then I don't think they're to blame the timing.
3DR has kept quiet about the whole DNF thing for the last couple of years, which is probably the right approach to take. I really don't understand why gamers are so worked-up about the game anyway. The original wes pretty good, but I'm not going to worry about the sequel. When it comes out I'll check the reviews and the demo if there is one and buy it if it's good. If it sucks... well, I won't be shedding a tear for wasted youth, or anything.
At this point, the gaming community feels so strongly about DNF that I don't think 3DR can say anything about the game without being raked over the coals. Certainly they can't make any kind of prediction about it's completion. Probably the next news we'll hear out of 3DR relating to DNF is that it has gone gold, and will be in the stores in two weeks.
Didn't I already see this in a James Bond movie?
Okay, maybe it wasn't an XBox.
Yeah, Daikatana has to be wayyyyy up there. I don't know if the PC Jr qualifies, but if it does it'll be on the list.
What else.. Dwango was a so-so idea at a bad time. The whole Battlecruiser 3000AD (or whatever it's called) debacle. The Sims online? And Sierra released a game back in the early 90's that was so buggy that nobody could get it to run. Some space exploration simulation thingy... I've undoubtedly exorcised the title from my memory.
1) Click OPTIONS
2) Click SOLVE
Two clicks... anyone do better?
It's not quite the same thing, though. As I understand, when the "choose high/low" option comes up, it doesn't matter what you pick. The machine has already determined if you'll win or lose, and the option you choose doesn't matter. The machine will generate the appropriate number regardless.
So you're not really choosing "high/low", you're trying to decide if the machine has another win programmed for you. That result may be predetermined, but since the player doesn't know it, it still appears to be random... doesn't it?
The only problem I see is that the "high/low" option appears on the face of it to be a 50:50 proposition. If the actual odds are something else, then I'm not sure how "fair" the game is.
I've still got my original ][ out there somewhere. Not a +, just a ][... we didn't need no fancy floating point math back in my day. Well okay, I got an Applesoft card and a 64K memory card for it. (God, I can't believe I paid more for that memory card then I did for this whole computer I've got right here)
Anyway, I fired it up a couple of years ago... it still beeps, the floppy drives still spin.. maybe I'll go bring it in the house and check it out.
Doesn't this hurt NV even more? They got caught cheating on a benchmark, and thats bad enough. Now its pretty apparent that they went and twisted some arms and got Futuremark to issue a half-harted retraction. I don't see where this gets NV anything but another black eye. Nobody who has been following this whole saga is fooled by it.
The only way I could see this move paying off is if NV manages to promote these "optimized" benchmark figures to a larger audience which isn't aware of the story behind them. Unless that happens, it just looks like they're following one mistake with another.
Just out of idle curiousity, why is underlining considered to be a superior alternative? I don't see the difference myself, but I'm assuming there's some fancy theory on the subject. Probably a Federally funded study as well.