Yes, free commuting if you don't count the $220K price tag, plus the doubtlessly high insurance on a $220K sports car;)
But, considering the energy crisis, is the government really going to let people charge up their cars for free? It would make the utilities happy, since more demand=higher price, so maybe...
And, as somebody else pointed out, that is an OLD picture; they have since improved the range and acceleration to the levels stated in the summary...and the article
Next generation reactors actually DO produce much less dangerous waste. Years ago they had a working prototype that doesn't produce any plutonium waste, and less of the other dangerous elements. This results in less waste, that is less radioactive, and has a much shorter half-life. It generated a net gain of power (Good for a prototype) but they were working on how generate more power...it was efficient, but couldn't go very fast. While this doesn't sound like the SAME technology, it does show that a nuclear reactor CAN be clean, or at least cleanER. Unless it is WAY more advanced, calling it pollutionless is probably a lie...but that depends on what your definition of "is" is;)
Another potential is nucleic power. Asimov used that for his power source in the Foundation series. It is NOT nuclear fission or fusion. It is a phenominon where, when some elements are bombarded with x-rays, they emit MORE radiation than they absorbed. I belive it has something to do with forcing electrons to change orbits, and give off their lost potential energy as EM radiation: This is NOT perpetual motion, since you can't do it to an atom twice. It works sort of like glow in the dark plastics (The ones you charge by putting in the sun, not the old radium painted ones). The US DOD is working on hafnium gamma charges. The idea being that you have a gram or so of hafnium, and you hit it with an x-ray pulse, causing it to explode with 200 megajoules of gamma radiation. Perfect for destroying a city block with a hand-grenade sized weapon, or creating some sort of green superhuman with pants that magically don't tear above the knees. Respectable scientists insist the Pentagon is wasting its money on pseudo-scientific charlitans spining fancifal tales of clean super-weapons with no poltical fallout, without any sort of scientific evidence that it is even possible...but respectible scientists have been wrong before;)
The defnition is: Somebody who Ashcroft wants to lock up without due process. I'm not sure if knowing that will help you;) Perhaps if you send him a nice basket of fine jams and cheeses?
Just so you know, Afghanistan is still under the same dictators. The Taliban kept the warlords in line. A bunch of warlords, called the Northern Alliance, didn't like them, and never did. The US backed them up and toppled the Taliban. The warlords got what they wanted: absolute rule back again, like they had before the Taliban. Before, a woman couldn't go to school, and couldn't go out in public without a burka or she would be arrested. The stories told pre-war about being killed were true...but for Northern Alliance territories, not Taliban. The Taliban were very harsh to rapists and woman beaters (Unless he was her husband). Now, she is legally allowed to go to school. and work...but she will be beaten to death. And if she doesn't wear a burka...she will be beaten to death and/or raped. The Taliban may have repressed women, but they protected them, and killed rapists. Things are worse for everybody in Afghanistan. Not that they were very good under the Taliban, but they were STILL better off. The Coalition keeps things in order...but they can barely even control Kabul; the rest of the country is left entierly at the mercy of the same warlords who have always ruled. And the Coalition is hiring most of the Taliban back to work the "new" government anyways. The opium trade, which the religious Taliban condemned, is back in full tilt, flooding the streets of Britain with Afghani heroin again, and the CIA coffers with drug money. Food is a problem, because farmers fields are full of American mines.
Were things bad for Afghanis, especially women? Yes, most definatly. But they are worse now than they once were.
Now, Iraq: Americans have killed more innocents than Hussein is said to have. Also, the "rape rooms?" Bush made them up on the spot. The story about gassing the Kurds? Untrue, at least as far as the CIA is concerned. In the Iraq-Iran war, the two sides were fighting for control of a city, for its hydro-electric dam and water resevoir. Both sides used chemical weapons on each other (Both kindly provided by the CIA for just such a purpose, by the way) and the Kurdish civilians were killed in the crossfire. However, they were killed by some sort of blood-agent. The Iraqis used mustard gas, which is not a blood-agent. The Iranians used some form of cyanide, which IS a blood-agent. The CIA report on this event concluded that the Kurds were killed accidentally, and were not the intended targed (But, of course, what do you expect using toxic gas weapons in a city?) and also, that it was highly likely that they were killed by Iranian chemical weapons.
Gas was cheap (a few cents US per gallon), health care was free, there was food and water (Most of the water and sewage infrastructure had FINALLY been rebuilt after Gulf War I) Political disenters were thrown in jail, or possibly killed. Just like in Saudi Arabia and Kuait, two "good guys". Saddam didn't like the Shi'ites, but he didn't persecute them. Iraq was the only non-secular government in the middle east.
Now, gas costs as much as it does in the US (Since most of the oil is now being shipped to the US and Israel), health care is in shambles (Even wounded US soldiers have to wait in squalid conditions) power, water, and sanitation is out everywhere. The streets are radioactive, measuring 1700x normal background radiation at some parts. The US says it will learn from Israel how to repress a conqured people, and it does: US soldiers beat farmers and buldoze their crops. Collective punishment for the attacks on US soldiers. Collective punishment is a war crime...not that the US cares, they have not signed any treaties, and Bush said he will attack any country that charges a US soldier with war crimes. Women now live in fear, more than they ever have. The Shi'ites are outraged by the murder of a leader. Were they actually allowed to vote for who they want, the next government would by just like Iran's. But it won't, since the US choses who can run.
Apple's innovative and patent-pending online "Allowance" feature which allows parents to automatically deposit funds into their kids' iTunes Music Store account every month;
Yet another worthless, obvious patent. Sigh.
I don't see why this is flamebait. It IS obvious. It's not worthless, though. It would be REALLY useful if banks let you do stuff like that...like, automatically transfer money into another account every month. Or automatically pay bills every month! And just think, employers could directly deposit money AUTOMATICALLY! No more cheques!
Oh wait...my bank has had that feature on their website for years! This is not different. It's a website. It keeps track of money. It can automatically transfer said money every month. Ok, there is a difference...the banks of more flexable in terms of the frequency and timing of the transfers...
No, they are not talking about specially made ad pages that show up as search results. They are talking about the PAID ads. In other words, if you type in "Pentium 11" and right up at the top is a PAID AD by AMD for THEIR new chip INSTEAD. In other words, AMD paying Google to send any people seaching for information on Intel chips to AMD instead of Intel.
If it was for pages in general, it WOULD be insanity. That would make it impossibe to review products, or complain, or even praise. Well, you could DO it, but nobody could find it. Fortunatly, it is only about the paid ads.
I don't think he's talking about a receipt. The lotto receipt was just an example of how data can go into a database AND be printed out. He's just talking about a little print out that records each vote, so a person can go and read it and make sure it is the same number that the database has.
Owning the voting machine is pointless. Just hack the NT box that is tabulating, and change the entries in its Access database.
Insert into Candidates values(666,"fussmann",...);
select count(votes) from Votes_Table;
Updates Votes_Table set votes = 0;
Updates Votes_Table set votes =:X where Candidate_ID = 666;
Finally, so nobody is the wiser, go into the audit table, and delete the records of your tampering. Also, use a file utility to change the date/time stamp on the database file back to what it was before. Bam, there is no record of what happened, and NO way to prove than you didn;t win 100% of the vote. Well, obviously people would notice if you got 100%, so what you do is take 51% of peoples votes evenly, and add THOSE to your own. This way you win, but it is close. And any individual audit won't show anything, because while this ONE machine didn't have any write ins for you, its overall percengate for the others matches the final results, and maybe the other machines have a bunch of write-ins. It would be VERY expensive to audit all of the machines, and often times, the memory cards get "misplaced" after they have been submited, so no audit is possible at all. And all you have to do is hack an NT 4.0 box sitting on the Internet. Or you can just get physical access to it. Say, if you are an election official.
All of the above is based on software and internal memos leaked by Diebold (Well, except that I made up the Table and Column names). They are true because Diebold threatened the DMCA on websites hosting the files, claming copyright on both the software and the memos.
Yes, that has been well established in the courts. But genetic patents do not apply to any natural biological process. So you can patent ANY gene, but you cannot sue somebody who used it in a naturally occuring way. So you can't "discover" a gene in corn, and then prevent people from selling corn. But you CAN prevent people from adding said gene to another species.
Similarly, you could out and patent somebody's DNA, but this would not prevent them from, say, having kids, or living, or anything drastic like that. But if it was discovered that they have some gene which makes them immune to some disease, only YOU could use that to treat said disease.
Hehe, I once encountered a filter that wouldn't let me say "assistance." It was really annoying. It also wouldn't let you say "button," but it DID allow "butt." Nobody knew why...
If you assume an interest rate of 6% (Made up number), then $400 of 2001 money is the same as $535 of 2006 money. So given the choice of $400 now, or $500 in 2006, the $400 looks WAY better in a fiscal projection. The ONLY reason you would want the 2006 money was if it was $600 or $700 or something.
You'd rather have less money now, and spend more money later.
I believe the space shuttle has 6 computers that vote. I read somewhere that if they have one failure, they are fine. But they have to abort if they have two, because another failure would being them down two three, the minimum required for a proper voting scheme.
They were told to be quiet, yes. But no fine. They got fined because it turned out they missed some stuff on their German site when getting rid of the allegations. If it hadn't be accidental, the fines would have been much heavier.
First, as another poster already said, this is what the back of a VISA says (Mine, anyways)
"NOTICE: Use of this VISA card is subject to the terms of the Cardholder Agreement of which Cardholder acknowledges receipt by such use."
It then says "Authorized Signature" and leaves a nice big space to sign. To use it, you have to sign it, and signing it acknowledges that statement. In my case, after getting it in the mail, I had to call the bank to confirm that I got the right card, and that the limit they gave me was the one I was expecting. But I imagine that varies from bank to bank.
Second, paying with it is fraud.
If you try and say "It was invalid! I don't have to pay" then you commit fraud by presenting it as a valid form of payment.
This is nonsense anyways, since you signed it and agreed to the cardholder agreement by doing so.
If you didn'g sign the back AND the merchant didn't check (Or couldn't - online / telephone transactions, for example) then this is fraud AGAIN because it needs the signature to be valid, and you just presented it as valid.
Of course, you could say that you thought it was a complementary card in compensation for giving away your information. And you didn't read the back of the card. And you didn't know that it wasn't valid without a signature. And the merchants didn't check for the signature. THEN you might be able to get out of it. If the judge buys it when you go to court. I would accept that maybe you didn't know it needed to be signed to be valid (Although the package they send with it says so about 9 times). But I wouldn't accept that you thought it was a free card, because everything that the packages says in it makes it clear that it is NOT. Of course, I am not a judge
Either way, it's not a particularly good idea. No matter what happens, you will get bad credit.
If that happened, there would be fierce competition as each label tries to make THEIR BS album better that the other labels. Fancier cover, more inserts, bonus tracks. And there would probably be a price war, as well.
In conclusion, it will NEVER happen for the the reasons above. It may benifit the consumers, and quite possible the artist (More sales) but NOT the label who currently has the exclusive contract. Their contract, their choice on whether or not to anull it. They have no reason to, and many reasons not to.
I think he was saying that they have to halt everything for 4+ months because if somebody has seen the source, they can cheat. But with a game, that is somewhat understandable. Somebody can change their executable to, say, aim automatically, or draw all of the walls 75% transparent, or something. It's not like a ftp daemon, where just because they see the source doesn't mean they can hack a server.
There is NO way to prevent that. How would you do it? Checksum on the executable they are running? They could send you whatever value they want. Have a seperate app that checksums both files? That is how current anti-cheat systems work. They are pretty good, but not 100%. The only way to get the people with the source at about the same cheating-ability-level would be to change the protocols so they would have to do some work to actually get it to connect. And change the file formats so it won't be able to load the game maps without some work, either. And they can't be minor changes, because the less work the changes were, the less work the hackers have to do to make the same changes.
The piracy thing isn't as much of an issue. Sure, a pirated version will run single player, which is a good game in of itself (Judging by the first one.) But it won't play online. With a few changes, this could be extended to the single player game as well. When you install, it tells Valve your CD key and registers you. Whenever you play single player, it tells Valve that you are playing. Sure, you could play single player if you disconnect your internet (Because it would SUCK if you MADE them so they had to connect for single player) but how many people would be willing to do that? And as for being able to change the binary so that it doesn't check for the cd....Half-Life doesn't check for the CD.
On the other hand, STEAM shouldn't be compromized because somebody saw the source! It isn't like a game, it's like FTP. Seeing code for the client shouldn't let you download whatever you want. If they do ANY authorization at the client, its their own damn fault. NEVER TRUST THE CLIENT.
Oops, I didn't say "Security though obscurity" once:O
It isn't funny, it's insightful! They are talking about P5 and P6! With a 4Ghz front side bus! And it only needs a little heatsink! And at the bottom, under related links, they have stuff about the Pentium 8! And it's the Inquirer!
Besides, everybody knows that the new AMD will run at 10Thz, with a 1Thz FSB! And its new 3dTomorrow SIMD extentions actually see through time and execute on data that is yet to be! It will be prerendering Doom 5 scenes before you are even decide which game to play! Which can be a little disappointing if you arn't that good. By the time you start playing, you already know that you lost.
Where as the law enforcement need to go through a heap load of paper work to PROVE they have the right person, and that they need access to this information. Doesn't that seem wrong to you?!
You're damn right it's wrong! Look how well these new powers are working out for the RIAA! They are catching pirates left right and center! But here our own FBI is left wading through paperwork and red tape while terrorists run free! That is why we NEED laws like the PATRIOT act, to protect your freedom! The constitution meant well, but it is outdated, and seriously hampering our investagatory powers.
This isn't about first amendment rights of the telemarketers, it is about the fact that, in the judge's opinion, the FTC does not have the mandate to impose this sort of thing.
Odds are, as a judge, his home number would be unlisted. There are many professions where you will come into contact with people who you DON'T want to know your phone number and home address. Police officers, school teachers, psychiatrists, and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, free commuting if you don't count the $220K price tag, plus the doubtlessly high insurance on a $220K sports car ;)
But, considering the energy crisis, is the government really going to let people charge up their cars for free? It would make the utilities happy, since more demand=higher price, so maybe...
And, as somebody else pointed out, that is an OLD picture; they have since improved the range and acceleration to the levels stated in the summary...and the article
Next generation reactors actually DO produce much less dangerous waste. Years ago they had a working prototype that doesn't produce any plutonium waste, and less of the other dangerous elements. This results in less waste, that is less radioactive, and has a much shorter half-life. It generated a net gain of power (Good for a prototype) but they were working on how generate more power...it was efficient, but couldn't go very fast. While this doesn't sound like the SAME technology, it does show that a nuclear reactor CAN be clean, or at least cleanER. Unless it is WAY more advanced, calling it pollutionless is probably a lie...but that depends on what your definition of "is" is ;)
Another potential is nucleic power. Asimov used that for his power source in the Foundation series. It is NOT nuclear fission or fusion. It is a phenominon where, when some elements are bombarded with x-rays, they emit MORE radiation than they absorbed. I belive it has something to do with forcing electrons to change orbits, and give off their lost potential energy as EM radiation: This is NOT perpetual motion, since you can't do it to an atom twice. It works sort of like glow in the dark plastics (The ones you charge by putting in the sun, not the old radium painted ones). The US DOD is working on hafnium gamma charges. The idea being that you have a gram or so of hafnium, and you hit it with an x-ray pulse, causing it to explode with 200 megajoules of gamma radiation. Perfect for destroying a city block with a hand-grenade sized weapon, or creating some sort of green superhuman with pants that magically don't tear above the knees. Respectable scientists insist the Pentagon is wasting its money on pseudo-scientific charlitans spining fancifal tales of clean super-weapons with no poltical fallout, without any sort of scientific evidence that it is even possible...but respectible scientists have been wrong before ;)
The defnition is: Somebody who Ashcroft wants to lock up without due process. I'm not sure if knowing that will help you ;) Perhaps if you send him a nice basket of fine jams and cheeses?
Just so you know, Afghanistan is still under the same dictators. The Taliban kept the warlords in line. A bunch of warlords, called the Northern Alliance, didn't like them, and never did. The US backed them up and toppled the Taliban. The warlords got what they wanted: absolute rule back again, like they had before the Taliban. Before, a woman couldn't go to school, and couldn't go out in public without a burka or she would be arrested. The stories told pre-war about being killed were true...but for Northern Alliance territories, not Taliban. The Taliban were very harsh to rapists and woman beaters (Unless he was her husband). Now, she is legally allowed to go to school. and work...but she will be beaten to death. And if she doesn't wear a burka...she will be beaten to death and/or raped. The Taliban may have repressed women, but they protected them, and killed rapists. Things are worse for everybody in Afghanistan. Not that they were very good under the Taliban, but they were STILL better off. The Coalition keeps things in order...but they can barely even control Kabul; the rest of the country is left entierly at the mercy of the same warlords who have always ruled. And the Coalition is hiring most of the Taliban back to work the "new" government anyways. The opium trade, which the religious Taliban condemned, is back in full tilt, flooding the streets of Britain with Afghani heroin again, and the CIA coffers with drug money. Food is a problem, because farmers fields are full of American mines.
Were things bad for Afghanis, especially women? Yes, most definatly. But they are worse now than they once were.
Now, Iraq: Americans have killed more innocents than Hussein is said to have. Also, the "rape rooms?" Bush made them up on the spot. The story about gassing the Kurds? Untrue, at least as far as the CIA is concerned. In the Iraq-Iran war, the two sides were fighting for control of a city, for its hydro-electric dam and water resevoir. Both sides used chemical weapons on each other (Both kindly provided by the CIA for just such a purpose, by the way) and the Kurdish civilians were killed in the crossfire. However, they were killed by some sort of blood-agent. The Iraqis used mustard gas, which is not a blood-agent. The Iranians used some form of cyanide, which IS a blood-agent. The CIA report on this event concluded that the Kurds were killed accidentally, and were not the intended targed (But, of course, what do you expect using toxic gas weapons in a city?) and also, that it was highly likely that they were killed by Iranian chemical weapons.
Gas was cheap (a few cents US per gallon), health care was free, there was food and water (Most of the water and sewage infrastructure had FINALLY been rebuilt after Gulf War I) Political disenters were thrown in jail, or possibly killed. Just like in Saudi Arabia and Kuait, two "good guys". Saddam didn't like the Shi'ites, but he didn't persecute them. Iraq was the only non-secular government in the middle east.
Now, gas costs as much as it does in the US (Since most of the oil is now being shipped to the US and Israel), health care is in shambles (Even wounded US soldiers have to wait in squalid conditions) power, water, and sanitation is out everywhere. The streets are radioactive, measuring 1700x normal background radiation at some parts. The US says it will learn from Israel how to repress a conqured people, and it does: US soldiers beat farmers and buldoze their crops. Collective punishment for the attacks on US soldiers. Collective punishment is a war crime...not that the US cares, they have not signed any treaties, and Bush said he will attack any country that charges a US soldier with war crimes. Women now live in fear, more than they ever have. The Shi'ites are outraged by the murder of a leader. Were they actually allowed to vote for who they want, the next government would by just like Iran's. But it won't, since the US choses who can run.
Ask a random Iraqi, or a random Afgh
I don't see why this is flamebait. It IS obvious. It's not worthless, though. It would be REALLY useful if banks let you do stuff like that...like, automatically transfer money into another account every month. Or automatically pay bills every month! And just think, employers could directly deposit money AUTOMATICALLY! No more cheques!
Oh wait...my bank has had that feature on their website for years! This is not different. It's a website. It keeps track of money. It can automatically transfer said money every month. Ok, there is a difference...the banks of more flexable in terms of the frequency and timing of the transfers...
So you can't travel backwards...but you CAN exploit an integer overflow and simulate the effects ;)
No, they are not talking about specially made ad pages that show up as search results. They are talking about the PAID ads. In other words, if you type in "Pentium 11" and right up at the top is a PAID AD by AMD for THEIR new chip INSTEAD. In other words, AMD paying Google to send any people seaching for information on Intel chips to AMD instead of Intel.
If it was for pages in general, it WOULD be insanity. That would make it impossibe to review products, or complain, or even praise. Well, you could DO it, but nobody could find it. Fortunatly, it is only about the paid ads.
I don't think he's talking about a receipt. The lotto receipt was just an example of how data can go into a database AND be printed out. He's just talking about a little print out that records each vote, so a person can go and read it and make sure it is the same number that the database has.
Owning the voting machine is pointless. Just hack the NT box that is tabulating, and change the entries in its Access database.
:X where Candidate_ID = 666;
Finally, so nobody is the wiser, go into the audit table, and delete the records of your tampering. Also, use a file utility to change the date/time stamp on the database file back to what it was before. Bam, there is no record of what happened, and NO way to prove than you didn;t win 100% of the vote. Well, obviously people would notice if you got 100%, so what you do is take 51% of peoples votes evenly, and add THOSE to your own. This way you win, but it is close. And any individual audit won't show anything, because while this ONE machine didn't have any write ins for you, its overall percengate for the others matches the final results, and maybe the other machines have a bunch of write-ins. It would be VERY expensive to audit all of the machines, and often times, the memory cards get "misplaced" after they have been submited, so no audit is possible at all. And all you have to do is hack an NT 4.0 box sitting on the Internet. Or you can just get physical access to it. Say, if you are an election official.
Insert into Candidates values(666,"fussmann",...);
select count(votes) from Votes_Table; Updates Votes_Table set votes = 0;
Updates Votes_Table set votes =
All of the above is based on software and internal memos leaked by Diebold (Well, except that I made up the Table and Column names). They are true because Diebold threatened the DMCA on websites hosting the files, claming copyright on both the software and the memos.
Especially since Israel just announced an end to its policy of not assassinating people on American soil ;)
Yes, that has been well established in the courts. But genetic patents do not apply to any natural biological process. So you can patent ANY gene, but you cannot sue somebody who used it in a naturally occuring way. So you can't "discover" a gene in corn, and then prevent people from selling corn. But you CAN prevent people from adding said gene to another species.
Similarly, you could out and patent somebody's DNA, but this would not prevent them from, say, having kids, or living, or anything drastic like that. But if it was discovered that they have some gene which makes them immune to some disease, only YOU could use that to treat said disease.
Hehe, I once encountered a filter that wouldn't let me say "assistance." It was really annoying. It also wouldn't let you say "button," but it DID allow "butt." Nobody knew why...
If you assume an interest rate of 6% (Made up number), then $400 of 2001 money is the same as $535 of 2006 money. So given the choice of $400 now, or $500 in 2006, the $400 looks WAY better in a fiscal projection. The ONLY reason you would want the 2006 money was if it was $600 or $700 or something.
You'd rather have less money now, and spend more money later.
I believe the space shuttle has 6 computers that vote. I read somewhere that if they have one failure, they are fine. But they have to abort if they have two, because another failure would being them down two three, the minimum required for a proper voting scheme.
They were told to be quiet, yes. But no fine. They got fined because it turned out they missed some stuff on their German site when getting rid of the allegations. If it hadn't be accidental, the fines would have been much heavier.
First, as another poster already said, this is what the back of a VISA says (Mine, anyways)
"NOTICE: Use of this VISA card is subject to the terms of the Cardholder Agreement of which Cardholder acknowledges receipt by such use."
It then says "Authorized Signature" and leaves a nice big space to sign. To use it, you have to sign it, and signing it acknowledges that statement. In my case, after getting it in the mail, I had to call the bank to confirm that I got the right card, and that the limit they gave me was the one I was expecting. But I imagine that varies from bank to bank.
Second, paying with it is fraud.
If you try and say "It was invalid! I don't have to pay" then you commit fraud by presenting it as a valid form of payment.
This is nonsense anyways, since you signed it and agreed to the cardholder agreement by doing so.
If you didn'g sign the back AND the merchant didn't check (Or couldn't - online / telephone transactions, for example) then this is fraud AGAIN because it needs the signature to be valid, and you just presented it as valid.
Of course, you could say that you thought it was a complementary card in compensation for giving away your information. And you didn't read the back of the card. And you didn't know that it wasn't valid without a signature. And the merchants didn't check for the signature. THEN you might be able to get out of it. If the judge buys it when you go to court. I would accept that maybe you didn't know it needed to be signed to be valid (Although the package they send with it says so about 9 times). But I wouldn't accept that you thought it was a free card, because everything that the packages says in it makes it clear that it is NOT. Of course, I am not a judge
Either way, it's not a particularly good idea. No matter what happens, you will get bad credit.
If that happened, there would be fierce competition as each label tries to make THEIR BS album better that the other labels. Fancier cover, more inserts, bonus tracks. And there would probably be a price war, as well.
In conclusion, it will NEVER happen for the the reasons above. It may benifit the consumers, and quite possible the artist (More sales) but NOT the label who currently has the exclusive contract. Their contract, their choice on whether or not to anull it. They have no reason to, and many reasons not to.
who = a prophet
did what = see any good prophets around
I think he was saying that they have to halt everything for 4+ months because if somebody has seen the source, they can cheat. But with a game, that is somewhat understandable. Somebody can change their executable to, say, aim automatically, or draw all of the walls 75% transparent, or something. It's not like a ftp daemon, where just because they see the source doesn't mean they can hack a server.
There is NO way to prevent that. How would you do it? Checksum on the executable they are running? They could send you whatever value they want. Have a seperate app that checksums both files? That is how current anti-cheat systems work. They are pretty good, but not 100%. The only way to get the people with the source at about the same cheating-ability-level would be to change the protocols so they would have to do some work to actually get it to connect. And change the file formats so it won't be able to load the game maps without some work, either. And they can't be minor changes, because the less work the changes were, the less work the hackers have to do to make the same changes.
The piracy thing isn't as much of an issue. Sure, a pirated version will run single player, which is a good game in of itself (Judging by the first one.) But it won't play online. With a few changes, this could be extended to the single player game as well. When you install, it tells Valve your CD key and registers you. Whenever you play single player, it tells Valve that you are playing. Sure, you could play single player if you disconnect your internet (Because it would SUCK if you MADE them so they had to connect for single player) but how many people would be willing to do that? And as for being able to change the binary so that it doesn't check for the cd....Half-Life doesn't check for the CD.
On the other hand, STEAM shouldn't be compromized because somebody saw the source! It isn't like a game, it's like FTP. Seeing code for the client shouldn't let you download whatever you want. If they do ANY authorization at the client, its their own damn fault. NEVER TRUST THE CLIENT.
Oops, I didn't say "Security though obscurity" once :O
It isn't funny, it's insightful! They are talking about P5 and P6! With a 4Ghz front side bus! And it only needs a little heatsink! And at the bottom, under related links, they have stuff about the Pentium 8! And it's the Inquirer!
Besides, everybody knows that the new AMD will run at 10Thz, with a 1Thz FSB! And its new 3dTomorrow SIMD extentions actually see through time and execute on data that is yet to be! It will be prerendering Doom 5 scenes before you are even decide which game to play! Which can be a little disappointing if you arn't that good. By the time you start playing, you already know that you lost.
Hehe, and since SCO has claimed that the GPL is invalid, they are outright admiting that they are violating IBM's copyright :D
If they DON'T take kindly, they are infringing our right to free speech!
You're damn right it's wrong! Look how well these new powers are working out for the RIAA! They are catching pirates left right and center! But here our own FBI is left wading through paperwork and red tape while terrorists run free! That is why we NEED laws like the PATRIOT act, to protect your freedom! The constitution meant well, but it is outdated, and seriously hampering our investagatory powers.
-John Ashcroft
This isn't about first amendment rights of the telemarketers, it is about the fact that, in the judge's opinion, the FTC does not have the mandate to impose this sort of thing.
Odds are, as a judge, his home number would be unlisted. There are many professions where you will come into contact with people who you DON'T want to know your phone number and home address. Police officers, school teachers, psychiatrists, and so on.