In my high school, about twenty security cameras have gradually been implemented in places where it's likely a student might have something stolen -- outside lockers, in the library, in the parking lots. There are still major hallways uncovered (the kids who make out in the halls probably don't mind being taped, anyway). Tapes are 48 hours long and there isn't much of a retention policy because of storage issues.
But the issue that saves these from being destructive is that the monitor with the digital feed from the cameras is available to any interested student; it's in the office in a highly visible place. If we really didn't like the cameras being there (as, I suspect, these kids may not appreciate having cameras -everywhere-, although that seems an exaggeration), then the students would complain. Students who complain to parents who complain to school board members, or students who complain to student governments (to be honest, those aren't really effective until college) can have a significant impact on public policy.
The broad term for this kind of open access and full disclosure of monitoring is "transparency". Transparency, and the system of taxpayers who encourage accountability, will destroy this system if it is misused and will support it if it helps. Cool.
if they're going to put OGG Vorbis reading support in some of their products, I really wish they'd consider their older lines too. My RioVolt SP250 is attractive because it plays MP3 and WMA CD's, but it would be totally killer kick-arse if it also played OGG CD's. They already have the code for playing it on a hard drive-based system--how hard could it be to port that and make one last upgrade to the SP250 firmware? Until I see Rio supporting older hardware (and, in the case of my RioVolt, still among the best in terms of CD music file play-ability), I'm not sure I want to be buying any of their new hardware.
For them the company should be able to charge what they please so long as they make them available.
See, that's the impasse right there. The market makes these games unavailable...
if they don't make them available, then fuck them and pirate away
With most companies, that's the way it is now. The problems come when you have the IDSA rattling abandonware distributors' cages (two parents up for links) and when you have someone like Infocom still trying to sell its (admittedly spectacular) text adventures for what many people think is too much. That's why copyrights should expire a little more quickly, at least on games.
I think copyrights should be the 14 or whatever amount of years they were originally conceived as
Well, if we're going to go changing copyright law willy-nilly, let's at least give software copyrights an exception. Because of the time-limited nature of their existence (hello, Moore's Law.. hello, Microsoft support schedules) , computer software deserves a special exception in the copyright law; it'd be kind of like how in Patent Land, medicine can only be patented for seven years. How about seven years? Or five? At any rate, I get the strong feeling that in 75 years we'll be hard-pressed to find a machine that can run Quake 2.
No, I don't think that id Software should be able to charge $40 for Quake, in perpetuity - God help us all if that were the case. They should be innovating. Copyrights were originally short for that purpose. If Frank Herbert's only book were Dune, I would expect we wouldn't regard him quite as highly, and when his copyright expired, he'd be "encouraged" to write more.
People selling used copies of books solves that problem in one way, but there isn't exactly a huge used-software market, and it's hard to find the stuff even on eBay. Ever look for Sim Ant? Sim Farm? Sim Tower? Good luck on eBay. And how about that cool 3/4 view game in 3D where you were bouncy and you were infiltrating an office building? Good luck finding _that_ anywhere but in the abandonware communities.
I would gladly pay a reasonable, market-adjusted sum for great and classic games. $39.95 + tax is not going to cut it.
The problem, as usual, is that we "geeks" are almost ignored by politicians and lawmakers.
Sort of. The _bigger_ problem is that there exist consortiums of corporations which hate abandonware. Despite the size, organization, and good intentions of the abandonware community (check out this webring, for instance), there are stubborn corporations that will see practically no profit but want to retain their copyrights on silly-but-fun games forever. Slashdot has covered the IDSA's legal maneuverings in the past; Mobygames has an excellent feature that discusses some of the issues around the legal status of abandonware.
Nobody is going to pay absurdly inflated (probably price-fixed) shelf prices of $40 or so for old games. If the companies won't sell their copyrighted software, these games -- good games, like Civilization or Colonization or Wolfenstein 3D -- will gravitate towards an open trade on the Internet. They're often smaller than MP3's, and they're considerably more fulfilling. This kind of "copyright infringement" is usually ignored and not typically prosecuted; the situation's more or less fine as it is. But it's damned annoying trying to find a safe venue for sharing what is, in a way, cultural heritage. oh, and:
The problem, as usual, is that we "geeks" are almost ignored by politicians and lawmakers. It'd be interesting to see a future article describing why that's the case...but who really knows the answer?
He did seem to flat-out admit guilt there. Without a tape of the trial, though, it's hard to know how he admitted it; vocal inflections can be very telling. It's also interesting that five of the six others the government has charged have pleaded innocent. But again, Fox News hasn't really given us enough information to decide whether Hawash is innocent but is turning in his companions to save his hide or whether he really is guilty.
It's impossible to make blanket statements like "the federal government is always wrong in terrorism cases" or, on the other end, "the federal justice system is always fair" (cough, Kevin Mitnick, cough). Nevertheless, there is the frightening and very realistic possibility that this guy is actually guilty. And what do we do then?
We can carp about his civil rights being infringed upon all we want, but the fact of the matter is that if he's guilty, governmental intervention provided a real benefit to our safety. Given the choice between nabbing the Al Qaeda webmaster and giving him a chance to escape, I think I know which option I'd pick.
I recognize that Fox News is derided as being rather right-wing happy-go-lucky pro-war-yay. Nevertheless, the parent poster is right -- this seems to be pretty damning testimony. I miss freedom and I miss privacy but looking back, it seems like this guy really was pegged properly. I don't like the precedent it'll set and it's hard to say whom I'd rather trust between "the government" and a suspected terrorist, but sometimes there really seems to be no choice in the matter.
The big issue this situation raises for me is simple. What happens when the prosecutors, the police, whoever have the right intelligence? I don't know whether I can condone the kind of kung-fu they must've pulled in that parking lot to get this guy, and I don't think I like the incarceration-without-charges, but at the same time if Hawash is guilty, I'm glad they got him. Living in the US is starting to feel more and more like starring in the stage version of Faust these days...
I've seen the phrase "Cantenna" in use in some form or another quite a lot recently. For instance, I've come across this fellow's "cAntenna" while looking for a good antenna for war driving (suggestions are welcome, please, pretty please. directional or omni? buy what where?); a Google search for "cantenna" shows that it is being used not as a brand name but as a generic name for a Pringles-can (another "pass me a Kleenex"-type generic term) type antenna. So even if they had ever had recognition as a brand name or a trademark (and another comment suggests they didn't bother), it's all but gone now; in legal terms, they've failed to vigorously defend this name and it has slipped into common usage. Kinda like Hormel and Spam.
If you read the linked article about the lawsuit, one of the claims made in the suit (bolstered by a series of supposed chat logs between the four defendants) is that the four children named wanted to misdirect the sympathy money/iPod he was sent. Whether or not that claim holds any water will, no doubt, be determined in court.
Try http://autopr0n.com/torrents/. I doubt this experiment will work well (I haven't personally tested the link quality) and I don't know about legality, but there's a definite stab at appling BT for this purpose.
DIRECTV, Inc.
End User Development Group
Office Hours: 6:30 am to 6:00 pm, Pacific Standard time [9:30am-9pm EST] 310-964-5424
"Hello, this is [real name] from [home]. I am a DIRECTV customer. I noticed that you have filed some lawsuits against people who own smart card programmers. I own one of these because I am the CIO of [company], a fast-growth security company focused on finding alternatives to biometric identification, which we view as a horrific invasion of privacy. Are you going to sue me, and if so, should I cancel my DIRECTV service now?"
"Hello, this is [real name] from [home]. I am a DIRECTV customer. I saw on the news that you filed some lawsuits against people who own smart card readers. I also saw that these lawsuits were tossed out of court in California, and that one target has won his case so far in Michigan. I will not support a company that engages in barratry of this order; I'm switching to cable. So long, suckers."
"Hello, this is [real name] from [home]. I'm an English teacher, and I'd just like to let your lawyers know that you made a heinous grammatical error in your Draft Complaint for Compensatory, Statuatory, and Other Damages, and for Injunctive Relief which you sent out to people who bought smart card programmers. On page 4, clause 7, line 3, you write 'principle design and intent'. You of course meant to write 'princiPAL', p-a-l, rather than p-l-e -- I'll leave the dictionary work to your experienced lawyers. Also, I would appreciate it if you stopped referring to smart card programming devices as 'Pirate Access Devices', as you do on page 3, clause 4, lines 2 through 3. This euphemism has already been reserved by portholes, which go in the sides of ships. Even in the colloquial sense (from Princeton WordNet pirate, verb, to illegally copy published material), I doubt that one can illegally copy satellite signals which are already being beamed into every head in the continental United States without our consent. Have a nice day, and good luck with those nasty pirates. Arr, matey."
Psychologists who study online behavior say in-game spats and the visceral responses to them aren't surprising. With simulations becoming more lifelike, the line between real and fake is blurred.
Supposing for just a second that this game has managed to shape up and get playable in the past few months, and supposing that any Sims game were an adequate simulation of real life (which it doesn't), then Maxis seems to have involuntarily exposed its captive audience to Baudrillard's ideas from Simulacra and Simulation. Maybe being mean to people in a reality-template is as bad as the real thing--who would've thunk it? What if TSO karma carries over into real life? What if this is all the matrix anyway?!?
Or maybe it was a slow news day and the media is overthinking the situation.
Why can't we once in a while have an interesting non-tech article here without getting hundreds of comments that do nothing but expressing their boredom?
Well, typically on a site that offers "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" we expect
1) Some of column A (news) or
2) Some of column B (pertinent stuff)
Most people have gotten lazy and sloppy and only peruse/. for the cutting-edge (sorta) news, so they forget that it's important to teach geeks to use the language [English] properly. On that note, this discussion isn't exactly new--the linked article focuses heavily on post-01/11/09 misuses, but there's a couple of great writeups at e2 that address this same point quite well. If you're looking to hone verbal skills, lurk and read there for a while -- it's an educational experience.
For the price of all that hardware, it'd probably be a lot more rewarding if he'd just purchased an aircraft. (Not sure how he'd manage to snag a 747, actually)
First of all, in the United States the FAA has recently made airplanes adjust their weight estimates per passenger up. An overloaded plane was the suspected cause of a recent crash, and it's important, for safety reasons if nothing else, to know how much load your airplane is attempting to bear. If every seat had sensors like these, they wouldn't have to estimate; they could know with reasonable precision whether they could safely take off.
Second of all, the more difficult to implement idea of 'buttmetrics' to make the pilot's seat safer is amusing, but likely FUD. At the same time, now that the terrorists will be afraid to sit down ("Comrade! It is a buttmetric seat! Do not sit!") it will be easier to storm the cabin. Hooray.
If the SPA nazis aren't going to give us some slack, how can we make their applications usable?
Buy as many copies as the EULA says you have to for the number of computers you install the software on. What? The software costs too much? Well, that's because of piracy. Why do they pirate it? Because it costs too much? They're obviously only driving up prices for the rest of us, the bastards.
Oh, and that 'free software' (or basically that whole '*nix' thing)? Communism.
Potential for abuse
on
Crime Prediction
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
So, if I want to stage a robbery, now I should find out where the least likely spots are for said robbery, demographically (do they have to publicize the specific information they gather? Civil liberties advocates would probably push it)--and then commit crime where they expect it least. Such a system, if acted upon in the manner suggested, would allow an informed criminal (or gang of criminals!) to act with even less resistance than before. That's the major flaw with demographic information, of course; it only gives averages and likely outcomes. But "they" (local police forces who use this information) will have to be careful in how they use it, because an overreliance on statistics means that the outlier criminal could take away someone's life or property with little chance of being caught.
I've been seeing a _lot_ of articles and "special features" lately about The Weapon and The Soldier of The Future. I can't help but be reminded of the pro-army propaganda in Starship Troopers (the antiwar movie, not the conservative novel). The Future Soldier that CNN is featuring somehow reminds me of a wimped-down version of Heinlein's powered armor suits.
There have been many instances of media covering the weapons of the future (I submitted a story on future robots a couple of weeks ago); what I'm worried about is why that focus is there. Are we getting ready for a long series of wars, ones that we expect to last until at least 2011, when these super-wired Counterstrike uniforms will come into service? That's kind of scary.
how well independent developers and "one-man" enterprises do, especially in face of the larger game companies struggling to do the same thing. Maybe it's because there isn't as much pressure to perform economically, but in any case it's nice when someone with a personal connection to a game can make a difference for its community.
And it certainly beats the crappy technical support we get from some major developers (cough, cough, MMORPG, cough, Everquest)...
Well, the way they see it, there are "only 2 operating systems", "Unix and Windows". And "a lot of people think Linux is going to be the future of servercentric operating systems; thats a dumb idea". A "dumb idea" indeed. Yessiree, we can see why Microsoft loves you, SCO.
Is this really a problem for people who have access to DeCSS and a DVD burner?
I wouldn't say "problem"--I'd say "boon". Suppose your '48-hour DVD' is flawed and only lasts 46. Are you going to:
a) send it back with a friendly request for your remaining two hours, or
b) cheerfully use your backup copy?
And on the somewhat-more-illegal side, there's a definite advantage to a product you can 'rent' and never be expected to return--it's half as much hassle since you only have to go to the store once. (Unless you have to go back to return the discs, which might, according to the article, be reusable--but maybe that won't happen in the US, since America is so used to disposable appliances.) Good job preventing piracy, guys!
I read the article; it said "Embedded in the module is an embedded eCos embedded Linux kernel" -- but it's quite likely that author Mark Hachman doesn't understand this discrepancy. Sure fooled me. If you're concerned about the misattribution, he's probably the person to contact about it -- again, that's Mark Hachman, Mark_Hachman@ziffdavis.com.
Slashdot Mirror
In my high school, about twenty security cameras have gradually been implemented in places where it's likely a student might have something stolen -- outside lockers, in the library, in the parking lots. There are still major hallways uncovered (the kids who make out in the halls probably don't mind being taped, anyway). Tapes are 48 hours long and there isn't much of a retention policy because of storage issues.
But the issue that saves these from being destructive is that the monitor with the digital feed from the cameras is available to any interested student; it's in the office in a highly visible place. If we really didn't like the cameras being there (as, I suspect, these kids may not appreciate having cameras -everywhere-, although that seems an exaggeration), then the students would complain. Students who complain to parents who complain to school board members, or students who complain to student governments (to be honest, those aren't really effective until college) can have a significant impact on public policy.
The broad term for this kind of open access and full disclosure of monitoring is "transparency". Transparency, and the system of taxpayers who encourage accountability, will destroy this system if it is misused and will support it if it helps. Cool.
if they're going to put OGG Vorbis reading support in some of their products, I really wish they'd consider their older lines too. My RioVolt SP250 is attractive because it plays MP3 and WMA CD's, but it would be totally killer kick-arse if it also played OGG CD's. They already have the code for playing it on a hard drive-based system--how hard could it be to port that and make one last upgrade to the SP250 firmware? Until I see Rio supporting older hardware (and, in the case of my RioVolt, still among the best in terms of CD music file play-ability), I'm not sure I want to be buying any of their new hardware.
For them the company should be able to charge what they please so long as they make them available.
See, that's the impasse right there. The market makes these games unavailable...
if they don't make them available, then fuck them and pirate away
With most companies, that's the way it is now. The problems come when you have the IDSA rattling abandonware distributors' cages (two parents up for links) and when you have someone like Infocom still trying to sell its (admittedly spectacular) text adventures for what many people think is too much. That's why copyrights should expire a little more quickly, at least on games.
I think copyrights should be the 14 or whatever amount of years they were originally conceived as
Well, if we're going to go changing copyright law willy-nilly, let's at least give software copyrights an exception. Because of the time-limited nature of their existence (hello, Moore's Law .. hello, Microsoft support schedules) , computer software deserves a special exception in the copyright law; it'd be kind of like how in Patent Land, medicine can only be patented for seven years. How about seven years? Or five? At any rate, I get the strong feeling that in 75 years we'll be hard-pressed to find a machine that can run Quake 2.
No, I don't think that id Software should be able to charge $40 for Quake, in perpetuity - God help us all if that were the case. They should be innovating. Copyrights were originally short for that purpose. If Frank Herbert's only book were Dune, I would expect we wouldn't regard him quite as highly, and when his copyright expired, he'd be "encouraged" to write more.
People selling used copies of books solves that problem in one way, but there isn't exactly a huge used-software market, and it's hard to find the stuff even on eBay. Ever look for Sim Ant? Sim Farm? Sim Tower? Good luck on eBay. And how about that cool 3/4 view game in 3D where you were bouncy and you were infiltrating an office building? Good luck finding _that_ anywhere but in the abandonware communities.
I would gladly pay a reasonable, market-adjusted sum for great and classic games. $39.95 + tax is not going to cut it.
The problem, as usual, is that we "geeks" are almost ignored by politicians and lawmakers.
Sort of. The _bigger_ problem is that there exist consortiums of corporations which hate abandonware. Despite the size, organization, and good intentions of the abandonware community (check out this webring, for instance), there are stubborn corporations that will see practically no profit but want to retain their copyrights on silly-but-fun games forever. Slashdot has covered the IDSA's legal maneuverings in the past; Mobygames has an excellent feature that discusses some of the issues around the legal status of abandonware.
Nobody is going to pay absurdly inflated (probably price-fixed) shelf prices of $40 or so for old games. If the companies won't sell their copyrighted software, these games -- good games, like Civilization or Colonization or Wolfenstein 3D -- will gravitate towards an open trade on the Internet. They're often smaller than MP3's, and they're considerably more fulfilling. This kind of "copyright infringement" is usually ignored and not typically prosecuted; the situation's more or less fine as it is. But it's damned annoying trying to find a safe venue for sharing what is, in a way, cultural heritage. oh, and:
The problem, as usual, is that we "geeks" are almost ignored by politicians and lawmakers. It'd be interesting to see a future article describing why that's the case...but who really knows the answer?
IDSA=money
He did seem to flat-out admit guilt there. Without a tape of the trial, though, it's hard to know how he admitted it; vocal inflections can be very telling. It's also interesting that five of the six others the government has charged have pleaded innocent. But again, Fox News hasn't really given us enough information to decide whether Hawash is innocent but is turning in his companions to save his hide or whether he really is guilty.
It's impossible to make blanket statements like "the federal government is always wrong in terrorism cases" or, on the other end, "the federal justice system is always fair" (cough, Kevin Mitnick, cough). Nevertheless, there is the frightening and very realistic possibility that this guy is actually guilty. And what do we do then?
We can carp about his civil rights being infringed upon all we want, but the fact of the matter is that if he's guilty, governmental intervention provided a real benefit to our safety. Given the choice between nabbing the Al Qaeda webmaster and giving him a chance to escape, I think I know which option I'd pick.
I recognize that Fox News is derided as being rather right-wing happy-go-lucky pro-war-yay. Nevertheless, the parent poster is right -- this seems to be pretty damning testimony. I miss freedom and I miss privacy but looking back, it seems like this guy really was pegged properly. I don't like the precedent it'll set and it's hard to say whom I'd rather trust between "the government" and a suspected terrorist, but sometimes there really seems to be no choice in the matter.
The big issue this situation raises for me is simple. What happens when the prosecutors, the police, whoever have the right intelligence? I don't know whether I can condone the kind of kung-fu they must've pulled in that parking lot to get this guy, and I don't think I like the incarceration-without-charges, but at the same time if Hawash is guilty, I'm glad they got him. Living in the US is starting to feel more and more like starring in the stage version of Faust these days...
I've seen the phrase "Cantenna" in use in some form or another quite a lot recently. For instance, I've come across this fellow's "cAntenna" while looking for a good antenna for war driving (suggestions are welcome, please, pretty please. directional or omni? buy what where?); a Google search for "cantenna" shows that it is being used not as a brand name but as a generic name for a Pringles-can (another "pass me a Kleenex"-type generic term) type antenna. So even if they had ever had recognition as a brand name or a trademark (and another comment suggests they didn't bother), it's all but gone now; in legal terms, they've failed to vigorously defend this name and it has slipped into common usage. Kinda like Hormel and Spam.
If you read the linked article about the lawsuit, one of the claims made in the suit (bolstered by a series of supposed chat logs between the four defendants) is that the four children named wanted to misdirect the sympathy money/iPod he was sent. Whether or not that claim holds any water will, no doubt, be determined in court.
Try http://autopr0n.com/torrents/. I doubt this experiment will work well (I haven't personally tested the link quality) and I don't know about legality, but there's a definite stab at appling BT for this purpose.
End User Development Group
Office Hours: 6:30 am to 6:00 pm, Pacific Standard time [9:30am-9pm EST]
310-964-5424
"Hello, this is [real name] from [home]. I am a DIRECTV customer. I noticed that you have filed some lawsuits against people who own smart card programmers. I own one of these because I am the CIO of [company], a fast-growth security company focused on finding alternatives to biometric identification, which we view as a horrific invasion of privacy. Are you going to sue me, and if so, should I cancel my DIRECTV service now?"
"Hello, this is [real name] from [home]. I am a DIRECTV customer. I saw on the news that you filed some lawsuits against people who own smart card readers. I also saw that these lawsuits were tossed out of court in California, and that one target has won his case so far in Michigan. I will not support a company that engages in barratry of this order; I'm switching to cable. So long, suckers."
"Hello, this is [real name] from [home]. I'm an English teacher, and I'd just like to let your lawyers know that you made a heinous grammatical error in your Draft Complaint for Compensatory, Statuatory, and Other Damages, and for Injunctive Relief which you sent out to people who bought smart card programmers. On page 4, clause 7, line 3, you write 'principle design and intent'. You of course meant to write 'princiPAL', p-a-l, rather than p-l-e -- I'll leave the dictionary work to your experienced lawyers. Also, I would appreciate it if you stopped referring to smart card programming devices as 'Pirate Access Devices', as you do on page 3, clause 4, lines 2 through 3. This euphemism has already been reserved by portholes, which go in the sides of ships. Even in the colloquial sense (from Princeton WordNet pirate, verb, to illegally copy published material), I doubt that one can illegally copy satellite signals which are already being beamed into every head in the continental United States without our consent. Have a nice day, and good luck with those nasty pirates. Arr, matey."
Just suggestions, of course.Psychologists who study online behavior say in-game spats and the visceral responses to them aren't surprising. With simulations becoming more lifelike, the line between real and fake is blurred.
Supposing for just a second that this game has managed to shape up and get playable in the past few months, and supposing that any Sims game were an adequate simulation of real life (which it doesn't), then Maxis seems to have involuntarily exposed its captive audience to Baudrillard's ideas from Simulacra and Simulation . Maybe being mean to people in a reality-template is as bad as the real thing--who would've thunk it? What if TSO karma carries over into real life? What if this is all the matrix anyway?!?
Or maybe it was a slow news day and the media is overthinking the situation.
Why can't we once in a while have an interesting non-tech article here without getting hundreds of comments that do nothing but expressing their boredom?
Well, typically on a site that offers "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters" we expect
1) Some of column A (news) or2) Some of column B (pertinent stuff)
Most people have gotten lazy and sloppy and only peruse /. for the cutting-edge (sorta) news, so they forget that it's important to teach geeks to use the language [English] properly. On that note, this discussion isn't exactly new--the linked article focuses heavily on post-01/11/09 misuses, but there's a couple of great writeups at e2 that address this same point quite well. If you're looking to hone verbal skills, lurk and read there for a while -- it's an educational experience.
As this computer was to be focussed on chess, video performance was not important.
Hardcore Slashdot Games readers cringe...For the price of all that hardware, it'd probably be a lot more rewarding if he'd just purchased an aircraft. (Not sure how he'd manage to snag a 747, actually)
First of all, in the United States the FAA has recently made airplanes adjust their weight estimates per passenger up. An overloaded plane was the suspected cause of a recent crash, and it's important, for safety reasons if nothing else, to know how much load your airplane is attempting to bear. If every seat had sensors like these, they wouldn't have to estimate; they could know with reasonable precision whether they could safely take off.
Second of all, the more difficult to implement idea of 'buttmetrics' to make the pilot's seat safer is amusing, but likely FUD. At the same time, now that the terrorists will be afraid to sit down ("Comrade! It is a buttmetric seat! Do not sit!") it will be easier to storm the cabin. Hooray.
If the SPA nazis aren't going to give us some slack, how can we make their applications usable?
Buy as many copies as the EULA says you have to for the number of computers you install the software on. What? The software costs too much? Well, that's because of piracy. Why do they pirate it? Because it costs too much? They're obviously only driving up prices for the rest of us, the bastards.
Oh, and that 'free software' (or basically that whole '*nix' thing)? Communism.
So, if I want to stage a robbery, now I should find out where the least likely spots are for said robbery, demographically (do they have to publicize the specific information they gather? Civil liberties advocates would probably push it)--and then commit crime where they expect it least. Such a system, if acted upon in the manner suggested, would allow an informed criminal (or gang of criminals!) to act with even less resistance than before. That's the major flaw with demographic information, of course; it only gives averages and likely outcomes. But "they" (local police forces who use this information) will have to be careful in how they use it, because an overreliance on statistics means that the outlier criminal could take away someone's life or property with little chance of being caught.
I've been seeing a _lot_ of articles and "special features" lately about The Weapon and The Soldier of The Future. I can't help but be reminded of the pro-army propaganda in Starship Troopers (the antiwar movie, not the conservative novel). The Future Soldier that CNN is featuring somehow reminds me of a wimped-down version of Heinlein's powered armor suits.
There have been many instances of media covering the weapons of the future (I submitted a story on future robots a couple of weeks ago); what I'm worried about is why that focus is there. Are we getting ready for a long series of wars, ones that we expect to last until at least 2011, when these super-wired Counterstrike uniforms will come into service? That's kind of scary.
(sorry for the blatant US-centrism)
how well independent developers and "one-man" enterprises do, especially in face of the larger game companies struggling to do the same thing. Maybe it's because there isn't as much pressure to perform economically, but in any case it's nice when someone with a personal connection to a game can make a difference for its community.
And it certainly beats the crappy technical support we get from some major developers (cough, cough, MMORPG, cough, Everquest)...
Well, the way they see it, there are "only 2 operating systems", "Unix and Windows". And "a lot of people think Linux is going to be the future of servercentric operating systems; thats a dumb idea". A "dumb idea" indeed. Yessiree, we can see why Microsoft loves you, SCO.
Instead of /.'ing the phone lines, try the live Web stream -- it can probably withstand a few more hits:
http://biz.yahoo.com/cc/0/30510.html
Is this really a problem for people who have access to DeCSS and a DVD burner?
I wouldn't say "problem"--I'd say "boon". Suppose your '48-hour DVD' is flawed and only lasts 46. Are you going to:
a) send it back with a friendly request for your remaining two hours, or
b) cheerfully use your backup copy?
And on the somewhat-more-illegal side, there's a definite advantage to a product you can 'rent' and never be expected to return--it's half as much hassle since you only have to go to the store once. (Unless you have to go back to return the discs, which might, according to the article, be reusable--but maybe that won't happen in the US, since America is so used to disposable appliances.) Good job preventing piracy, guys!
when I saw that many "embedded"s in one sentence, I should've known he was off his rocker.
I read the article; it said "Embedded in the module is an embedded eCos embedded Linux kernel" -- but it's quite likely that author Mark Hachman doesn't understand this discrepancy. Sure fooled me. If you're concerned about the misattribution, he's probably the person to contact about it -- again, that's Mark Hachman, Mark_Hachman@ziffdavis.com.
(ack! A 'Troll' mod!) I see no one reads the bash.org quotes quite as religiously as I. Here it is fresh from the QDB:
#25464 +(1474)- [X]
"There are 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't."
That's only 2 types of people, kow.
STUPID