For a very good reason: deterrent. If everyone under 18 who breaks into a system is given a slap on the wrist, then there is nothing to deter would be teen hackers. Not only is their chances of getting caught slim, but if they are caught they aren't punished? That doesn't sound like a very good deterrent to me. The best case scenario in this case is that Ubisoft will have to spend extra time and resources to repair the damage done. That alone would probably come up to a pretty large sum of money. But what if some people are so annoyed by their experience that they quit the game. That is MORE money lost. Or, worst case, what if Ubisoft is not able to repair the damage? Then you would expect a lot MORE people to quit the game, as they probably don't feel like starting from scratch. Regardless of the kind of business that was hurt, it WAS a business and that is what matters.
You also can't put this off as, "Well they should of had tighter security". Do you blame someone whose house was broken into because they didn't have a state of the art security system? No, and neither should a company be blamed if a small subset of computer users who posses special skills are able to break into their systems.
It doesn't need to be against the law. Their motive for doing this in the first place was the expectation that their card would gain a better reputation by doing well in that benchmark by cheating. Instead, it has backfired and seriously hurt their reputation. Having a community that can uncover these unsavory practices is deterrent enough.
I go to Ga Tech and am a Computer Science major. Let me tell you, there are a few people there who obviously went into the field simply because it was hip and there was money in it. No one gets into tech if they are a complete moron, but there are certainly people in there who just don't think the right way and whom CS comes very hard to. Yet they persist in dragging themselves through it just because they are hoping for a nice desk job that pays well. The worst part about it is group classes. God I had a guy like this in a 2 man group project and it was hilarious. 1 day before the project is due he lets slip that he hasn't been able to get any of his stuff working, even though I gave him the easiest part. The sad thing is I know he really did TRY at it... it was just that hard for him. So anyways, I hope now less people will put themselves and others through that just for the money.
WRONG. There will always be a place for mediums in which the creator has total control over the way you experience it.
So uhh... what are we making fun of again?
on
Shuttle Politics
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· Score: 1
I couldn't find statistics on shuttle flights, but assuming there have been 125, and 2 crashes, then what is wrong with his grasp of statistics? Perhaps over 20 years that error rate is acceptable, but I would hope that we can make space flight cheap enough where we'll have a lot more than 125 space flights every 20 years. To do that we need something that is cheaper and more reliable, and the shuttle doesn't look like it fits that description. Grounding it until we come up with a substitute might seem silly, but is anyone really arguing that we want to keep this dinasuar of a launch vehicle around? Perhaps if we did ground them there would be a lot more pressure to come up with a shuttle that was cheaper and more reliable...
It amazes me how people can miss the obvious when they are faced with a recession. Sure, everything looks gloomy in a recession, but that doesn't mean whole industries are "dying". Software has a LOT of room to grow. The dream of having computers integrated into every aspect of our lives is not going to happen without software. Right now computers mostly live in one room by themselves, and only talk to themselves. But one day we will have refrigerators ordering milk for us when we run out, portable devices will expand to be as common as a wrist watch, every car will have its own computer with GPS, computers will be used to make supply and demand much more effective, and of course, then there is the whole dream of robotics. Computers have a HUGE area into which they can expand. All these devices will need software, and all those devices, including the current ones, will continue to need to have their software refined and added to. This hardly sounds like death to me.
If avoinics equitment is so sensitive that my CD player can screw them up, how hard would it be for a terrorist to design a device that would do it much more effectively? If this is REALLY an issue then, considering recent events, why the hell isn't anyone doing anything about it?
I think as most people who are intelligent see more and more movies it becomes increasingly difficult for them to find movies that are unique, well done, and that don't insult their intelligence. However, some people become so overly critical that they go into a movie EXPECTING not to like it, and so usually dislike movies they would ordinarily have enjoyed had their disposition been different going in. There are some movies, and comic book movies certainly fall into this, that are enjoyable only if you go in willing to experience the movie in the context in which it was made, and not the overwhelmingly logical real-life world you live in.
Take Daredevil. Obviously the cheese factor on that movie was pretty high, and it really turned some people off. But come on, this is a movie made in the spirit of COMIC BOOKS. If you read a comic book and find that someone named "bullseye" who actually has a bullseye branded onto his forehead cheesy, then maybe you just don't like the classic comic book atmosphere. It doesn't mean the movie was bad... it just means you don't like cheesy comic books. I much prefer the dark atmosphere of say, the batman cartoon, to the cheesy comic book style. Still, I was able to get myself into a cheesy enough state to enjoy Daredevil. If you want to enjoy any significant portion of the movies you see, you have to learn to take yourself out of that cynical, purely logical state that you drag yourself through most of your life, and try living in a different state the short time in which it takes to enjoy the movie for what it is.
I am not sure we are understanding each other. The original statement which I disagreed with was this:
"The reason you cannot usually tell the direction that Bass comes from (and why the location of your subwoofer is not important) is that the sound wave is bigger than your head and hits both ears more or less at the same time."
The way I understood what he was saying was that he was saying the way people hear is by comparing the time the wave hits both ears. What he was saying was that the wave is so big that it can not hit one ear before the other. I thought this was wrong and still do.
Having heard what everyone has said then perhaps it happens like this: When a sound is created the "wave" goes out in all directions just like a ripple. It is all part of the same "wave" only in the sense that at that point all the vibrating particles in that ring (well spherical shell.. however you want to think of it) are at the same point in their oscillation cycle. When it reaches your ear your ear compares the point in which each sound reaching the ear is in its cycle. (Instead of comparing the time at which it gets there, since we tell direction from continuous sound and not just hearing it come and go) Now, what I think some people are saying is that since low frequencies are so "long" then the difference between their oscillation points is much smaller and harder to detect.
However, this doesn't explain why high frequencies are so hard to hear the direction of as well. Even a high pitched cell phone can be hard to locate, while it takes a VERY low bass sound for it to be hard to locate. Also, if there were frequencies whose wavelength was say, 5cm, then if your head was turned so that the sound reached both ears 5cm apart... it would sound like the sound was straight ahead. I've never had this sensation or heard of it. And this makes me wonder if the whole explaination I just proposed for directional hearing is wrong:/ Anyway, one last thing... There are animals that hear frequencies above and below our hearing range directionally just fine.
So far no one here has given an answer that satisifies all of these questions. If I had to guess, I would say that none of the explainations thus far are the true answer. It probably is that any sound at the extremes of our hearing (in the case of the high range, not so much so) are not easy to tell the direction of simply because our inner ear's mechinisms are not as accurate at the extremes. That was what I was hinting at originally. The part I pasted says that a different part of the ear is vibrating depending on the frequency of the sound, perhaps that part is just poor at detecting the exact oscillation point of the sound or whatever it is the ear uses to tell direction. Like I said, I think this is a human limitation caused by our own mechanics, not a physical impossibility. Nature obviously deals with it just fine.
OK, I can understand how wavelength could be 5 meters. However, there is NO WAY the amplitude of the wave is big enough to render it incapable of fitting in your ear, or incapable of reaching your ear independently. First of all, if that were true you could stand in a very narrow hallway and not be able to hear it... because it wouldn't fit through the hallway (rofl). Second of all, if the sound was not going through your ear for you to hear it you would be able to put in ear plugs and still be able to hear the sound just fine. While you do "feel" VERY low frequency sounds (so low they are at the extreme of your hearing range) there is a significant range of sounds that are difficult to tell the direction of but are most certainly sounds you "hear" and not "feel".
Also, unless I am way off, amplitude (which is the measure of the distance from the wave's "rest" position to it's peak) is also a measurement of how LOUD the sound is. Therefore, what you guys are talking about in respect to how "big" the wave is only affects the LOUDNESS of the sound and not the PITCH. As we all know, loud sounds (those with a higher amplitude) are easier to tell the direction of than soft sounds. Therefore, I dismiss the arguement that the difficutly to hear a sound has to do with the amplitude of the wave being too big to reach our ears indipendently. Not to mention, there are plenty of animals that can hear sounds well beyond our hearing range and hear them directionally.
"Your point about sensitivity at extreme frequencies (high and low) is a valid one. Location information is, however, also gained from the delay in the sound reaching the left and right ears."
Uhhh... what did you think I was talking about? Location information can ONLY be gained by binocular hearing. If you had only one ear it would be physically impossible for you to tell the direction of the sound. The same would be true if you lost an eye... no more depth perception.
No way bass waves are bigger than your head ROFL! How the hell would they fit in your ear if they were? Besides, it is also well known that it is hard to tell which direction a high pitched sound is comming from. Please, PLEASE do not answer someone's question when you don't know the answer. I found this bit of information about how the inner ear works with respect to sound frequency:
The basilar membrane is flexible enough to move with the pressure of the sound source. It is very narrow at the beginning of the cochlea and becomes three to four times wider at the apex or helicotrema . A wave form with a high frequency will only affect the initial part of the basilar membrane, which is stiffer than the final segment that responds to low frequencies.
The displacement of the basilar membrane induced by a sound source creates an envelope within the membrane which associates the frequency of the sound with the shape of the membrane.
At a mechanical level, measurements of the basilar membrane can be made similar to a wave frequency spectrum.
Place theory holds that high frequency sounds cause movement of the basilar membrane near the base or beginning of the cochlea, while sound sources lower in frequency create displacements of the basilar membrane closer to its apex.
So... I'm just GUESSING here (something you should of said) but MAYBE those sections that detect the high and low frequencies are not as responsive and so aren't as good for directional sound. I would be interesting in having someone who REALLY KNOWS answer this question though, because it is interesting.
I was born in 1981 and I both played the original pacman and watched the cartoon. Along with digger, space invaders, and breakout it was one of my favorite games... at least until the NES came out. I was about 4 at the time and so these games were a bit old, but they were still fun =P
I watched the first episode... well almost, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. If you watched the last episode of Evangelion and hated it then this type of thing is not for you.
I'm a huge sci fi/anime nut like yourself, and while I give credit where it is due I don't think it is WRONG for movies to borrow from other films to make themselves better. I only get tired of it when movies borrow the same thing FIFTY other movies have borrowed. Then it starts getting old. Do you think the ghost in the shell was the first movie to think up the idea of a "ghost"? Of course not! Ever since computers have come about we have dreamed of what would happen if computers became self aware. It just gave it a cool name and threw in some of that great Japanese mysticism. It borrowed ideas from other people, but it IMPROVED on them and offered a unique mix with some of its own new ideas. That is what innovation is about. If you don't find that the Matrix has done that for you, then that's your opinion. But I am TIRED of hearing people state that they don't like X movie because Y movie or Y book or Y anime happened to do it first. I personally am of the opinion the Matrix has been wonderfully innovative, at the very least in the cinimatography department. I think they came up with a fresh, new look and a storyline that doesn't bore me.
Are you saying that you would not be screaming if Microsoft did something like this? If not, how many universities would Microsoft have to buy before you considered it "an abusive and predatory monopoly" and did start screaming? To be considered an abusive and predatory monopoly should not depend on the number of people you use your monopolistic power to control, but simply the principle of using that power unfairly. Yes, using it to control more people is *worse*, but using it at all is still wrong. Of course, everything I've said is pure ethics. We all know the real world works differently. However, that shouldn't lead us to dismiss a "small wrong" as not being wrong at all.
This is exactly why a CS major is the difference between being a programmer and a Computer Scientist. A programmer knows language syntax, a Computer Scientist knows much more about algorithms, program design, programming methodologies, computer hardware, etc. As the field has matured, being able to just program has quickly lost its value. Offshore coders are a perfect example of this. If you are just a programmer there is no reason your job can't be shipped off to another country to be done at half the price. If you are a Computer Scientist who is designing the system you need to be on site so you can get "face time" and design a system that is right for the customer. Not only that, but the design is the most important part of the project and so companies will be wary of placing that responsibility on a cheap offshore group. I agree that another way to make a programmer indispensable is to have other areas of expertise that will allow you to program in areas someone without that extra knowledge would be unable to do. However, these areas are specialized and not as numerous. Having a Computer Science degree is most certainly not a waste of time.
This is a bit off topic but I don't watch Buffy so I can't really comment. I did watch quite a bit of the Sopranos though, and what I really began to loath about that show was that no one ever changed. A lot of the characters seemed to want to be a better person, or grow or change in some way. Yet they always fall back into their old ways, just when it looks like they are going to succeed. After a while there was really no one on the show that I found to be likeable.
Blank faced pessimism? Excuse me, but this thing was the most overhyped POS ever released. They promised something that would revolutionalize the world and give us a scooter. What do you expect our reaction to be? As for the traffic problem, it obviously isn't too bad if, "We cannot give them up, not now, not ever... in fact, we want bigger ones!". The reason traffic is bad is because there are a LOT of people in cities. That's it. If everyone was walking you would still have a "giant cluster-fuck". Maybe less deaths, and less polution, but people use cars because it gets them where they want to go faster, more comfortably than any other way available, and they are willing the except the risks involved. If you are so down on traffic try not using ANY form of motorized transportation for a week and tell me how fun it is. Traffic will always be a problem, but we'll get the pollution part figured out in not too long. There is simply no need for overpriced scooters.
If she can't drive a car... what makes you think she could drive this? At least a car offers you a good level of protection, but if your grandmother got in an accident with this there is no way she would survive.
The segway may stink... but the hype is impressive
on
Buy a Segway... Please
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd be interested in learning how the Segway has achieved the ENORMOUS amount of hype that it has. It's crazy I tell you. I've talked to people who think it uses some new alternate energy source that will revolutionalize the world. I mean, they have acted like this thing is going to bring us world peace or something. The wierd thing is, I have NEVER seen any journalist say, "Segway... so what?" All you ever hear is them drooling over the thing and begging the company to let them try one. I've never heard ANYTHING negative from the media. I don't ever remember seeing this level of hype, and lack of criticism, about any product before. Anyone have any clues as to how they achieved it?
Slashdot Mirror
You also can't put this off as, "Well they should of had tighter security". Do you blame someone whose house was broken into because they didn't have a state of the art security system? No, and neither should a company be blamed if a small subset of computer users who posses special skills are able to break into their systems.
It doesn't need to be against the law. Their motive for doing this in the first place was the expectation that their card would gain a better reputation by doing well in that benchmark by cheating. Instead, it has backfired and seriously hurt their reputation. Having a community that can uncover these unsavory practices is deterrent enough.
I go to Ga Tech and am a Computer Science major. Let me tell you, there are a few people there who obviously went into the field simply because it was hip and there was money in it. No one gets into tech if they are a complete moron, but there are certainly people in there who just don't think the right way and whom CS comes very hard to. Yet they persist in dragging themselves through it just because they are hoping for a nice desk job that pays well. The worst part about it is group classes. God I had a guy like this in a 2 man group project and it was hilarious. 1 day before the project is due he lets slip that he hasn't been able to get any of his stuff working, even though I gave him the easiest part. The sad thing is I know he really did TRY at it... it was just that hard for him. So anyways, I hope now less people will put themselves and others through that just for the money.
So for that reason you are going back to win2k? I don't suppose you could just ignore windows update...
WRONG. There will always be a place for mediums in which the creator has total control over the way you experience it.
I couldn't find statistics on shuttle flights, but assuming there have been 125, and 2 crashes, then what is wrong with his grasp of statistics? Perhaps over 20 years that error rate is acceptable, but I would hope that we can make space flight cheap enough where we'll have a lot more than 125 space flights every 20 years. To do that we need something that is cheaper and more reliable, and the shuttle doesn't look like it fits that description. Grounding it until we come up with a substitute might seem silly, but is anyone really arguing that we want to keep this dinasuar of a launch vehicle around? Perhaps if we did ground them there would be a lot more pressure to come up with a shuttle that was cheaper and more reliable...
It amazes me how people can miss the obvious when they are faced with a recession. Sure, everything looks gloomy in a recession, but that doesn't mean whole industries are "dying". Software has a LOT of room to grow. The dream of having computers integrated into every aspect of our lives is not going to happen without software. Right now computers mostly live in one room by themselves, and only talk to themselves. But one day we will have refrigerators ordering milk for us when we run out, portable devices will expand to be as common as a wrist watch, every car will have its own computer with GPS, computers will be used to make supply and demand much more effective, and of course, then there is the whole dream of robotics. Computers have a HUGE area into which they can expand. All these devices will need software, and all those devices, including the current ones, will continue to need to have their software refined and added to. This hardly sounds like death to me.
for whether Halo for the PC will come out before Halo 2 =P
If avoinics equitment is so sensitive that my CD player can screw them up, how hard would it be for a terrorist to design a device that would do it much more effectively? If this is REALLY an issue then, considering recent events, why the hell isn't anyone doing anything about it?
A terrorist steps on board a plane, opens his coat, and MY GOD HE HAS 100 CELL PHONES STRAPED TO HIM!!! WE ARE ALLL GONNA DIE!!!
So uhhh... what does UML have to do with security?
We should get one of those guys being sued by RIAA to do this just to see what happens =P
Take Daredevil. Obviously the cheese factor on that movie was pretty high, and it really turned some people off. But come on, this is a movie made in the spirit of COMIC BOOKS. If you read a comic book and find that someone named "bullseye" who actually has a bullseye branded onto his forehead cheesy, then maybe you just don't like the classic comic book atmosphere. It doesn't mean the movie was bad... it just means you don't like cheesy comic books. I much prefer the dark atmosphere of say, the batman cartoon, to the cheesy comic book style. Still, I was able to get myself into a cheesy enough state to enjoy Daredevil. If you want to enjoy any significant portion of the movies you see, you have to learn to take yourself out of that cynical, purely logical state that you drag yourself through most of your life, and try living in a different state the short time in which it takes to enjoy the movie for what it is.
"The reason you cannot usually tell the direction that Bass comes from (and why the location of your subwoofer is not important) is that the sound wave is bigger than your head and hits both ears more or less at the same time."
The way I understood what he was saying was that he was saying the way people hear is by comparing the time the wave hits both ears. What he was saying was that the wave is so big that it can not hit one ear before the other. I thought this was wrong and still do.
Having heard what everyone has said then perhaps it happens like this: When a sound is created the "wave" goes out in all directions just like a ripple. It is all part of the same "wave" only in the sense that at that point all the vibrating particles in that ring (well spherical shell.. however you want to think of it) are at the same point in their oscillation cycle. When it reaches your ear your ear compares the point in which each sound reaching the ear is in its cycle. (Instead of comparing the time at which it gets there, since we tell direction from continuous sound and not just hearing it come and go) Now, what I think some people are saying is that since low frequencies are so "long" then the difference between their oscillation points is much smaller and harder to detect.
However, this doesn't explain why high frequencies are so hard to hear the direction of as well. Even a high pitched cell phone can be hard to locate, while it takes a VERY low bass sound for it to be hard to locate. Also, if there were frequencies whose wavelength was say, 5cm, then if your head was turned so that the sound reached both ears 5cm apart... it would sound like the sound was straight ahead. I've never had this sensation or heard of it. And this makes me wonder if the whole explaination I just proposed for directional hearing is wrong :/ Anyway, one last thing... There are animals that hear frequencies above and below our hearing range directionally just fine.
So far no one here has given an answer that satisifies all of these questions. If I had to guess, I would say that none of the explainations thus far are the true answer. It probably is that any sound at the extremes of our hearing (in the case of the high range, not so much so) are not easy to tell the direction of simply because our inner ear's mechinisms are not as accurate at the extremes. That was what I was hinting at originally. The part I pasted says that a different part of the ear is vibrating depending on the frequency of the sound, perhaps that part is just poor at detecting the exact oscillation point of the sound or whatever it is the ear uses to tell direction. Like I said, I think this is a human limitation caused by our own mechanics, not a physical impossibility. Nature obviously deals with it just fine.
Also, unless I am way off, amplitude (which is the measure of the distance from the wave's "rest" position to it's peak) is also a measurement of how LOUD the sound is. Therefore, what you guys are talking about in respect to how "big" the wave is only affects the LOUDNESS of the sound and not the PITCH. As we all know, loud sounds (those with a higher amplitude) are easier to tell the direction of than soft sounds. Therefore, I dismiss the arguement that the difficutly to hear a sound has to do with the amplitude of the wave being too big to reach our ears indipendently. Not to mention, there are plenty of animals that can hear sounds well beyond our hearing range and hear them directionally.
"Your point about sensitivity at extreme frequencies (high and low) is a valid one. Location information is, however, also gained from the delay in the sound reaching the left and right ears."
Uhhh... what did you think I was talking about? Location information can ONLY be gained by binocular hearing. If you had only one ear it would be physically impossible for you to tell the direction of the sound. The same would be true if you lost an eye... no more depth perception.
I was born in 1981 and I both played the original pacman and watched the cartoon. Along with digger, space invaders, and breakout it was one of my favorite games... at least until the NES came out. I was about 4 at the time and so these games were a bit old, but they were still fun =P
I watched the first episode... well almost, I couldn't bring myself to finish it. If you watched the last episode of Evangelion and hated it then this type of thing is not for you.
I'm a huge sci fi/anime nut like yourself, and while I give credit where it is due I don't think it is WRONG for movies to borrow from other films to make themselves better. I only get tired of it when movies borrow the same thing FIFTY other movies have borrowed. Then it starts getting old. Do you think the ghost in the shell was the first movie to think up the idea of a "ghost"? Of course not! Ever since computers have come about we have dreamed of what would happen if computers became self aware. It just gave it a cool name and threw in some of that great Japanese mysticism. It borrowed ideas from other people, but it IMPROVED on them and offered a unique mix with some of its own new ideas. That is what innovation is about. If you don't find that the Matrix has done that for you, then that's your opinion. But I am TIRED of hearing people state that they don't like X movie because Y movie or Y book or Y anime happened to do it first. I personally am of the opinion the Matrix has been wonderfully innovative, at the very least in the cinimatography department. I think they came up with a fresh, new look and a storyline that doesn't bore me.
Are you saying that you would not be screaming if Microsoft did something like this? If not, how many universities would Microsoft have to buy before you considered it "an abusive and predatory monopoly" and did start screaming? To be considered an abusive and predatory monopoly should not depend on the number of people you use your monopolistic power to control, but simply the principle of using that power unfairly. Yes, using it to control more people is *worse*, but using it at all is still wrong. Of course, everything I've said is pure ethics. We all know the real world works differently. However, that shouldn't lead us to dismiss a "small wrong" as not being wrong at all.
This is exactly why a CS major is the difference between being a programmer and a Computer Scientist. A programmer knows language syntax, a Computer Scientist knows much more about algorithms, program design, programming methodologies, computer hardware, etc. As the field has matured, being able to just program has quickly lost its value. Offshore coders are a perfect example of this. If you are just a programmer there is no reason your job can't be shipped off to another country to be done at half the price. If you are a Computer Scientist who is designing the system you need to be on site so you can get "face time" and design a system that is right for the customer. Not only that, but the design is the most important part of the project and so companies will be wary of placing that responsibility on a cheap offshore group. I agree that another way to make a programmer indispensable is to have other areas of expertise that will allow you to program in areas someone without that extra knowledge would be unable to do. However, these areas are specialized and not as numerous. Having a Computer Science degree is most certainly not a waste of time.
This is a bit off topic but I don't watch Buffy so I can't really comment. I did watch quite a bit of the Sopranos though, and what I really began to loath about that show was that no one ever changed. A lot of the characters seemed to want to be a better person, or grow or change in some way. Yet they always fall back into their old ways, just when it looks like they are going to succeed. After a while there was really no one on the show that I found to be likeable.
Blank faced pessimism? Excuse me, but this thing was the most overhyped POS ever released. They promised something that would revolutionalize the world and give us a scooter. What do you expect our reaction to be? As for the traffic problem, it obviously isn't too bad if, "We cannot give them up, not now, not ever... in fact, we want bigger ones!". The reason traffic is bad is because there are a LOT of people in cities. That's it. If everyone was walking you would still have a "giant cluster-fuck". Maybe less deaths, and less polution, but people use cars because it gets them where they want to go faster, more comfortably than any other way available, and they are willing the except the risks involved. If you are so down on traffic try not using ANY form of motorized transportation for a week and tell me how fun it is. Traffic will always be a problem, but we'll get the pollution part figured out in not too long. There is simply no need for overpriced scooters.
If she can't drive a car... what makes you think she could drive this? At least a car offers you a good level of protection, but if your grandmother got in an accident with this there is no way she would survive.
I'd be interested in learning how the Segway has achieved the ENORMOUS amount of hype that it has. It's crazy I tell you. I've talked to people who think it uses some new alternate energy source that will revolutionalize the world. I mean, they have acted like this thing is going to bring us world peace or something. The wierd thing is, I have NEVER seen any journalist say, "Segway... so what?" All you ever hear is them drooling over the thing and begging the company to let them try one. I've never heard ANYTHING negative from the media. I don't ever remember seeing this level of hype, and lack of criticism, about any product before. Anyone have any clues as to how they achieved it?