Different classes in multiplayer. Grenades. Interactive turrets you can use. Ladders. Water effects. Walls and buildings that can explode, break, etc. The flame thrower (already being talked about as revolutionary).
Of course its still point and shoot! It's an FPS, sheesh! What exactly are you looking for? The smug feeling of knowing CW won't change our most basic perceptions of the world we live in?:) CW is quite simply one of the best single-player (according to reviews, community) FPS games in awhile. Couple this with the fact that the Lords of FPS (ID software) helped them with development and gave it their blessing, and you have a game that may not be mindshattering, but is supposedly top-rate entertainment for FPS fans.
Um, an AI where the enemies don't wander around aimlessly? The ability to jump? The ability to walk under and over corridors? The ability to play on teams? I'm sure this is flame bait, but I'm bored.
One purpose of this contest is to "track" the state of the art in factoring.
I think the point is, mathematics do not mirror the real world. The point of these types of challenges is to keep research and advances in privacy and security matters out in the open, where we can all be aware of the relative 'real world' strength of an encryption scheme. Take RAJINDEL (sp?). I recall it winning the AES contest, but then, not so long afterwards, was discovered to be breakable? distributed.net is about keeping possible encryption-killers out in the open.
> You can't prove the existance of E.T
You can't prove the existance of Santa either. Or [insert belief here]. Coupled with:
> The Seti@home project has been analyzing the microwave portion of the band because, Werthimer said, "if E.T. was sending us a picture on purpose, we figure he'd probably focus there." Since Werthimer has a charming, albeit suspicious, habit of calling people "Earthlings" in everyday speech, it's best to trust him when he says he knows which frequency E.T. would likely choose. - (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,47365,00.html, oct 6th, 2001)
If thats the reasoning behind SETI, and the fact that most alien hunters agree that the band of the spectrum SETI searches is still tiny, makes it very unlikely that SETI would hit the jackpot, even if we were being with message after message as I type this.
I mean, I think support either project is cool. I just do not believe one has more inherent importance than the other. They both serve as huge billboards for their respective causes, but they both have practical purposes, if not widely varying liklihoods of success.
You realize, of course, that it's too late for you. As soon as you begin a public crusade against authority (regardless of the piddly details of who's right and who's wrong), you've lost. Give up your argument, and either get back to posting, posting offtopic and being modded down, or stop coming back for more. Posts like this (and many others) are useless and are only going to solidify the resolve of those in charge. Personally, I don't blame them. One or two whines and bitches is understandable, but I've read over 20 posts that are more or less carbon copies of this one int he last 4 days alone! Like, whats the point? It's useless! It takes a big man to give up a fight, and an even bigger one if he still believes he's ideologically in the right.. but I'm sure you got it in you.
It's not absurd, it's business as usual for the States. They embargo'd Iraq at a time where people could not afford food. Sadam just built his own secret pipeline and went off to sell more oil while the innocents starved. It's been said a million times before, but unfortuanetly, at the end of the day, countries are out for themselves. Whether or not the US is helping it's own cause here is up for debate, but that doesn't change the enormity of US economic might and leverage. They have the power to do shit like this, so they do, plain and simple.
Cracking a la brute force teaches us what constitutes an acceptable non-brute-force-crackable encryption level. My point was more along the lines of, it/is/ for research. Whether you value aliens over encryption strength research is your opinion.. but suggesting SETI is altruistic, while distributed.net is nothing but a glorified lottery for geeks is simply a matter of perspective. You can't justify one over the other, because it simply depeneds on your values.
I think the gripe is that they couldn't sacrifice the gee wiz (javascript, frames, etc) for the greater accessibility. I mean, it would have been/cheaper/ to develop had they sacrificed these elements, as it would have simplified the development of the website considerably. All at the cost of asthetics and complying to the "what the next guy is going" conventions of other high profile sites like this. (Well, it is MSNBC too, so it could be as simple as MSNBC properties having a policy to make sure they are not cross browser compatible to any high degree.)
I mean, this isn't commercial website.. well, no, it is, but I think the point is that it shouldn't be. Who cares if it looks bad.. this is for the Olympics, an event that is supposed to bring us together, not segregate us by browser choice. Of course, yes, you'd have to be naive not to accept that it is all about business these days.. at least, decades ago, it was more about multinational competition than corperate competition.
I hope you're not at work today! You're stealing bandwidth and CPU power to post to slashdot, for the personal gain of.. well, posting to slashdot!
Honestly, what, you wanna start counting electrons.. which ones make my company how much money, and which ones lose?
distributed.net does have a goal that benifits those who believe in privacy and ecryption. it's not some sort of time-sharing scam or anything. in fact, if anything, distributed.net has a far higher likelihood of affecting our world (while we're still alive) than the seti project. like, sure, if his college didn't want it, I understand.. but to have been criminally charged instead of simply reprimanded? thats simply ludicrous. i'm liable to believe that someone in georgia does not believe in high encryption and privacy..
The number of people who want to become doctors and nurses is declining, as more and more legal precendents are set to prosecute nurses and doctors when they make a mistake or error. Everyone makes mistakes. What this man had to go through, because of, at worst, an error in judgement, is rediculous. If we are all to be held criminally liable for wasting other people's money, time, etc... shit, we'd all be in the slammer by now.
Actually, and yes, I deserve complete disbelief and skepticism (I dont really believe in stats, but I think this one kind of illustrates how technological solutions result in relaxed social responsibility), the stat was a percentage stat. Ie, people were more likely to fall off cliffs with no fences than one with a fence. I will do my best to dig up my source... check my journal in a few days.
I think the idea is that, people are scared of falling off cliffs. The fence gave them a false sense of security. They'd think, "Well, the fence is here for an idiot, and I'm not an idiot, so I can jump over the fence for a better look." The non-fence cliffs seemed to scare people once they got anywhere near the edge, thus, people were less likely to accidentally fall off the edge. You can translate this into many other examples, I think. People have a natural desire to circumvent technological means of prevention (to a reasonable degree, of course) because they percieve that the prevention is for people who are less [insert adjective here] than them. Obviously, some level of technological preventative measures is reasonable. For instance, drunk driving and breathalizers. But go too far (I started a storm by suggesting breathalizer-ignitions a while back), and the flames I got back were right in saying that if you put in place too much of a technological solution, people will break right through them.. even the responsible ones, and not even have to think about the reason that preventative measure was put there in the first place.
> Your analogy, too, is false. If someone new to computers, someone without the "respect" for the technology you mentioned, tries something dangerous that could delete all his or her files, don't you think that there should be at least one little modal dialog that pops up asking "Do you REALLY want to do that?" What you are suggesting is nothing more than classic Slashdot eliteism: "The user shouldn't touch anything they don't understand." Where's the problem in that statement? Think about how you learned to use a computer...
You're confused. I support putting this tool out in the open, available to the novice, if, and only if:
a) It's labeled clearly
b) There are descriptive, helpful confirmation dialogs that provide a means of finding additional information
c) describe the worse case scenario of the tool in case of gross misuse (which everyone goes through, I know!)
My point in not touching things you dont understand is touchy with Windows Users (of which I am one), because I feel, in my experience.. well, how do you know what you know and what you don't? In windows, I don't think you can! What does msgsrv32.exe do? Can I stop it? Wheres the docs on it? Nothing! But imagine it was named the "Explorer Runtime Checker (Do Not Stop!)".. then, if you had to stop it, presumably, you'd have checked out if it was safe to do so. So I'm not saying everyone should inherently know what they do and what they don't, but rather that peoples furor over the notion of people knowing this hinges on how well the interface describes it's various componants! If every file is named "sdfg34.dll", who knows what you know, but in Linux, we have the opportunity to actually name and label various things properly.. after all, we havn't made the promise to the world that *nix is foolproof like MS has.
If some part in my computer is labeled clearly "Event Transmographier".. guess what, I never heard of the thing. So I'm not going to screw with it until someone has told me what the worst case scnerio is. It truely is not my fault that other people do not operate this way, but I charge that they do - except when it comes to computers, because they've been taught that a good piece of software is unbreakable and can't screw the newbies. Dude, I'm not elitist. I'm advocating the opposite of what you think I'm advocating. I say, dangerous things should be the first thing you see when you march through the 'door' of another interface. Once you know what not to touch, you can mess about with other stuff, and graduate to the big red easy to pull lever with the proper signage and warning labels and confirmation step when you feel you're aware of the consequences of your actions and when you're comfortable with the level of knowledge you have regarding the clearly labeled interface. All these people are saying that making interfaces that are available, but kinda outta the way is how to best keep newbies from screwing themselves, but I say put the dangerous stuff upfront with very clear worst case scenario warnings, and then you can seperate the irresponsible people that deserve crashage (ie, those who pull the level before they are ready) from those who heed warnings, accept accountability for their actions, and actually do some reading and thinking before doing. Same with physical objects. How many times, when friends show you some new toy or something, tell you what not to do first? I think it's the natural, time honoured way, and it's frusterating to see so many people who think thats suicide in the computer interface world.
Windows does this very poorly. Nothing is written with a descriptive name, so people screw around because they can't tell if its important or not. What I'm saying is that the labels and signage should indicate this. MacOS does this well (the most important file, System, is called.. System! Would you want to delete the system? Even if you didn't know anything about MacOS or computers?). Linux does it.. fairly well (the boot dir is a good example). Windows is the worst.. look, don't take my word for it. Usability experts the world over bemoan the windows way (ie, the advanced stuff is there, but just hidden, and no real easy way to tell it from the non-advanced stuff), love the macOS way (an extention, the mac equivilent of a group of dlls, has a full, complete descriptive name (generally including the name of the application that depends on it) all in one file.. god bless the resource fork), and think *nix is definately heading in the right direction! I support all this, and thats why I support the disitrbution of this kernel configuration tool! If people are gunna screw with it, as it is a foregone conclusion in my argument, might as well label it well, provide enough warnings and confirmation steps, and put it right out in the open. Don't hide it, or only the newbies who've fallen off the trodden path and don't deserve the greif are gunna get abused by it. I'd rather see the careless uncautious users befall that kind of fate.. they deserve it the most, and will only make the mistake once or twice before learning that there isn't a single garaunteed safe action on this planet, so best to think before you do.:)
I know lots of people don't agree with me.. the frusterating thing is knowing I'm alot closer to how usability experts feel things should be than the average and/or power user.
Hehe, fair enough. Well, anyhow, I'm stickin to my story.
One thing I always found wierd about MacOS is how everyone always painted it as the OS in which you have the least control over whats going on, and that mac users were always very untechnical.
Ironically, Mac's system files were the most out-in-the-open clearly labeled system dependant files in any OS. But people who didn't know anything about computers knew, thanks to a few initial martyrs, and then word of mouth, not to do anything with the file! When it came time to upgrade, or for those looking to hack, there it was.. a little resedit and the system file, and you could be the l33test mac hacker, but given just how out in the open the screwupable things were, even the stupidest mac user knew what they knew, and knew what they didn't know.
You don't have to learn that you don't understand something. You just don't. This is what I'm saying. Vendors are suggesting that understanding things is a moot point. You know, the ease of use, the foolproofness of it. You don't have to even admit to what you know and don't know! (Listen to non computer experts. They try to talk the talk.. but would never try talking the talk about motors with mechanics, or other things they've been told its okay not to have a clue about.)
So my answer to you is.. you know what you know and don't know. If something is sufficiently labeled, you'll know if you've used it before. If it's unlabeled (via obscrure interfaces, etc), you won't know what it is in the first place, and thus have a higher likelihood of just 'trying' it!
Would you suggest that as long as you dont label poison, you just put it in the back of the cabinet, people won't try it because its unlabeled and way back there? Shit no.. you put a skull and crossbones on it, in a very prominant place and make sure it's in the public domain of knowledge that you don't screw with stuff with skull and crossbones' on it!
> If Microsoft gave people and easy way to fuck up their computers, many many people would fuck up their computers and then blame MS for letting them.
I'll make this very simple. Vendors sell the image that OSes cant screw up if they are well designed enough. Then user A falls through the cracks, finds the self-descruct mechanism (regedit in Windows, lets say this kernel thing in *nix) and pulls it. Now he's all alone in the 'public' world, because the company just says, "Well, you shouldn't have gone through that door", even thought it wasn't labeled. Also, far fewer people have shared his experience, so the likelihood of him finding people who've already gone through it and can help him are tiny. Those that are in the know, the experts, are pissed off at the Vendor for making promises that they now have to clean up after, but project their anger on user A. User A comes away thinking that the experts of the technology are assholes, when, in reality, they just want a little more catering-to-reality from the seller. We say buyer beware, but in this increasingly dumbed-down world, where interfaces are meant to surplant people's sense of responsibily, along with the value of admitting that you arn't knowledgable enough to tinker with some stuff, it's the experts, the one's whove gotten their hands dirty, that end up having to solve the woes of those who've fallen through the engineers' cracks! Well, I say, make the cracks wide open, and then the crowd will naturally just stay away from it.. and when people fall down, it's for all to see, to learn from.
> since you will always be able to reboot with the factory-kernel
.. unless you've pooched/rm'd the factory-kernel. I mean, you/can/ screw stuff up. That was my point. Knowing what NOT to touch (in this case, the factory-kernel) is a part of life. Or compiled with the wrong flags such that your machine/boots/, but munges your hardware. There are risks man.. you're just not aware of them cause the hood lever wasn't in full view,/forcing/ you to either leave it alone or think about the consequences of pulling it. You admit yourself that you havn't compiled a custom kernel, because of the lack of this tool, but more importantly, you're not even really aware of the risks! (Also, you don't even have to mess stuff up. Wondering why your soundcard stopped working after you custom compiled is part of the noise level that kernel list participants and linux experts are afraid raising... )
My whole point was to say that there is risk in EVERYTHING! (Even, in your case, if you don't feel you'll fall on the wrong side of this risk.)
But anyhow, we both agree what the kernel customization tool isn't a bad idea... you'd have a much more informed opinion, and I too (cause I'm a FreeBSD guy, not Linux), if such an action was more commonplace and available to the casual user.
Rediculous. People obviously should not mess with things they dont understand. How many motor-morons have you heard of that have screwed up their car engines, just because there is access to the hood via an extremely easy to use, easy to recognize lever?! I mean, not EVERYONE pulls the lever and starts hammering on the crankshaft once their car breaks down. People know what not to touch, because they've been allowed access to it... the responsibility in understanding the tools they are using is placed in their hands, as it should be!
When people suggest that technological means of prevention is superior to ingraining a respect for a particular technology, I get so upset! It's not my fault that MS has brainwashed you into thinking that the consumer should be unable to fuck something up! A sufficient warning and a learned respect for your belongings (in this case, the kernel) should be the top priorities. When people are told to not worry about what their doing, that they can't screw stuff up, thats when you end up with people who do screw stuff up once they find a chink in the armour of the technological solution!
Here's a sobering stat: more people fall off cliffs with fences than cliffs without fences. Why? Because when you leave people to their own devices, they have to think and respect the power of the tools they are using or the situations they are in. When you put the blinders on them, you're only making sure that shit will get fucked once you slip up and accidentally allow them access to the tools and technologies that you were so adament to lock everybody out of.
I understand that people still have access to custom kernels regardless of this auto config tool, but this is akin to providing an easily labeled handle to your hood, or an emergency exit, or whatever. Because it's so easy to get access to, people are forced to learn and know implicitly what the consequences of pulling it are! Compare this to the newb who finds the man pages on building the custom kernels, or the HOW-TO.. you won't get enough people having to face the idea of respecting the OS and computer in large enough numbers to make the fragility of the kernel and hardware a widely known thing. Sure, there might be some sacrificial lambs when you open up things like that, but hey, I'm all about the greater good rather than the few who still need to learn the lesson of accountability and respect!
whoa, did I say autoconf?!?!?!?! Sorry... I meant, this auto kernel config tool. Yikes, I think it's time to go home... or maybe for a refill on the coffee.:(
*****WARNING. USING THIS TOOL CAN SCREW UP YOUR COMPUTER, BIG TIME. IF YOU WANT TO USE IT, DONT BE MAD AT ANYONE BUT YOURSELF IF YOU FUDGE THINGS UP*****
If MS can include regedit, you cant tell me that we can't inlcude autoconf.. I mean, seriously. The only thing you could end up with is some fucked kernels (who should get along just fine with the fucked registries) and some users who will learn and be cautious, and end up having a better understanding their computers.
LOL. It doesn't disappoint me. It just ensures that when/if you end up in a situation where you dont have a car, you'll either be:
a) fucked (cause you didn't support the adoption of a possible solution)
b) very very very unhappy that you have to sit beside the smelly people
Man, I understand your point of view, but it's as selfish as the guy who claims he should be able to do heroin, because he wants to. Who cares if he wants to, he's hurting the people around him! Obviously, you can go too far with this approach, but I don't think the 5 minute walk to the station (especially when we have a cottage industry to deal with the "go-go-go" mentality and stress related to life in cities) and sitting beside a smelly guy (who's only smelly cause you're only used to smelling yourself and your friends) constitutes the kind of sacrifice that will make you an unhappy person. I ain't a treehugger, or even green, I just want a little aknowledgement that our values are skewered over here (western culture), even if it is business as usual. If I got a penny for everytime I heard someone whine about being screwed when they ended up in a situation they didn't predict, let alone/admitted/ they could have ended up in, I'd be Bill Gates, without the Evil Empire. Thats all, man. Keep the car, but don't/not/ use the alternatives once in awhile! You never know when it just might pay off...:)
More like, if all the software available on the x86 platform didn't depend on the chipset extentions rather than the raw architechture.
Don't confuse 'real life performance' with 'optimized for SSE/3DNOW/MMX' yadda yadda. Unfortuanetly, even though chips may be raw number crunching daemons (and Photoshop optimized for the G4 absolutely screams (maybe 33% better) over a faster clocked P4 in my first hand experience), and even though people may know that Mgz != speed, I think too many people still fail to remember that much of the percieved 'power' of certain chips come from compiler optmizations for that specific chip, not a lack of power in its competitors or an inability to turn FP and Int performance into 'real world' performance.
Aaaahhh...how quick you are to denounce my opinion. I have a right to it, and you have yours.
Hehee, I know you have a right to your opinion. I was stating my opinion about your opinion.:)
And from my experience, I prefer the car.
You missed the whole point. I prefer the car too. In fact, I prefer to have sex with whomever I want, but I recognize that it is for the Greater Good of my society not to attempt to cater to that preference. That's all I was pointing out.. what you prefer is moot when that preference leads to the types of problems that require the kind of solution referenced in the parent article.
> Nothing beats the freedom of hopping into my car, when I want to and not waiting for public transportation, on their schedule
Nothing beats having what I want, when I want, for how much I want it! Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution... yadda yadda. Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to isolate themselves via technology. Cars are an excellent example. Think of how many people, in your city, go from one 4 block arena to the exact same 4 block area somewhere else. Think of how efficient it would be to co-ordinate and co-operate with them! But alas, you're already spoiled... and as it stands, once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and neighbours once you get outta the car..
oo, thanks for the tip... and about the registry, good thing I'm not an MS support engineer, or I'd have pointed out that you just voided any rights to a stable OS, buddy! I'd yell, "Hey, we set that minefield up so that you couldn't plod through it, damnit! If everyone could choose to set their search engine shortcuts, this planet would be in total complete chaos right now!" Heehee.
Gameboy Advance is 99$, and kicks the ass, for gaming suitability (ie, the 'rich' experience that handheld makers will have to claim to sell their units via their gaming potential), off of most of handhelds that are more expensive. The gameboy and advance were designed for gaming; anything that had nothing to do with gaming was shucked from the design.. which is the only way that gaming platforms penatrate a market to a degree that it's notable.
If you take the average user, they probably don't play too much on their PC or whatever, because those platforms are not designed to entice casual gamers into wanting to play. For instance, on the PC, you have to learn an unintuative control set (only more-than-casual gamers, for instance, use the keyboard/mouse thing for the most part), and your PC has to be relatively 'stoked'.
Handhelds, I was only saying, are not built (currently) to make gaming accissible to the avg user. Their controls will turn away most users.. yes, they have the power to run "Tetris" and "Snake", but we wouldn't be discussing an SDK for wireless gaming if this was the extent of the ambition that those touting gaming on handhelds have. I think we're gunning more for 2d platform games, or RPG games, and such; where the engineering goals of handhelds do not take these eventual applications into consideration to such a degree that these types of games will become popular on handhelds anytime soon. This isn't to say that it won't happen (as it already has in Japan, for instance), but I was illustrating that an SDK-doth-not-adoption-make.. that the platform itself and the engineering considerations that go into it's design must take the eventual use cases of the device into account at an early stage. Most of the time...:)
I mean, people will always play "Snake" and "Tetris" on their phone, but I'd say that that's more of a "because it's there" thing than a "I'm so happy I can play games on my phone!" thing. I think the goals of the developers of SDKs are not to provide the user a moutain to climb "because its there", but rather to make people want to buy a handheld "because it's fun to climb mountains on them".
Yeah, this was essentially the idea behind the Gopher protocol. Remember... heirarchial bookmarks to resources, including links to other gopher sites? Very similar to what you described. Personally, I think that method of indexing data is far more succeptable to corperate ownership than DNS is, as links (ie, destinations) could 'disappear' at any time, and most people wouldn't know how to reach a destination directly. I think the whole DNS thing was a very important fight in the battle to keep some level of individual power and right on the web. To me, it is amazing that I could theoretically own www.sirslud.com.. just as easy to remember for my friends than www.ford.com. So, even if that fight it winding down (I feel confident enough to say that the individual has not been obliterated as in so many other mediums), it was an extremely important one to have; otherwise the idea of the URL and www.domainname.com would have always remained under the popular vote's radar, and people would be more dependant on the googles of the world to remain unbiased in their indexing services. Conversely, if google.com ever sells out, either more search engines will slide in to replace it, or people can shift back to storing and managing URLs (maybe the pervasiveness of handheld organizers that can store all your bookmarks, for instance, will herald another shift back to direct methods of reaching your destination). The beauty is, both technologies are in place and functional for the people, which I think it's extremely important.
Compare that to phone numbers, where the ease of remembering personal phone numbers depends more on how/lucky/ you were when you were assigned one.
Slashdot Mirror
Different classes in multiplayer. Grenades. Interactive turrets you can use. Ladders. Water effects. Walls and buildings that can explode, break, etc. The flame thrower (already being talked about as revolutionary).
:) CW is quite simply one of the best single-player (according to reviews, community) FPS games in awhile. Couple this with the fact that the Lords of FPS (ID software) helped them with development and gave it their blessing, and you have a game that may not be mindshattering, but is supposedly top-rate entertainment for FPS fans.
Of course its still point and shoot! It's an FPS, sheesh! What exactly are you looking for? The smug feeling of knowing CW won't change our most basic perceptions of the world we live in?
Um, an AI where the enemies don't wander around aimlessly? The ability to jump? The ability to walk under and over corridors? The ability to play on teams? I'm sure this is flame bait, but I'm bored.
From the RSA webpage:
5 ,00.html, oct 6th, 2001)
One purpose of this contest is to "track" the state of the art in factoring.
I think the point is, mathematics do not mirror the real world. The point of these types of challenges is to keep research and advances in privacy and security matters out in the open, where we can all be aware of the relative 'real world' strength of an encryption scheme. Take RAJINDEL (sp?). I recall it winning the AES contest, but then, not so long afterwards, was discovered to be breakable? distributed.net is about keeping possible encryption-killers out in the open.
> You can't prove the existance of E.T
You can't prove the existance of Santa either. Or [insert belief here]. Coupled with:
> The Seti@home project has been analyzing the microwave portion of the band because, Werthimer said, "if E.T. was sending us a picture on purpose, we figure he'd probably focus there." Since Werthimer has a charming, albeit suspicious, habit of calling people "Earthlings" in everyday speech, it's best to trust him when he says he knows which frequency E.T. would likely choose. - (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,4736
If thats the reasoning behind SETI, and the fact that most alien hunters agree that the band of the spectrum SETI searches is still tiny, makes it very unlikely that SETI would hit the jackpot, even if we were being with message after message as I type this.
I mean, I think support either project is cool. I just do not believe one has more inherent importance than the other. They both serve as huge billboards for their respective causes, but they both have practical purposes, if not widely varying liklihoods of success.
You realize, of course, that it's too late for you. As soon as you begin a public crusade against authority (regardless of the piddly details of who's right and who's wrong), you've lost. Give up your argument, and either get back to posting, posting offtopic and being modded down, or stop coming back for more. Posts like this (and many others) are useless and are only going to solidify the resolve of those in charge. Personally, I don't blame them. One or two whines and bitches is understandable, but I've read over 20 posts that are more or less carbon copies of this one int he last 4 days alone! Like, whats the point? It's useless! It takes a big man to give up a fight, and an even bigger one if he still believes he's ideologically in the right .. but I'm sure you got it in you.
.. shit, mod me OT! Who cares?
And
It's not absurd, it's business as usual for the States. They embargo'd Iraq at a time where people could not afford food. Sadam just built his own secret pipeline and went off to sell more oil while the innocents starved. It's been said a million times before, but unfortuanetly, at the end of the day, countries are out for themselves. Whether or not the US is helping it's own cause here is up for debate, but that doesn't change the enormity of US economic might and leverage. They have the power to do shit like this, so they do, plain and simple.
Cracking a la brute force teaches us what constitutes an acceptable non-brute-force-crackable encryption level. My point was more along the lines of, it /is/ for research. Whether you value aliens over encryption strength research is your opinion .. but suggesting SETI is altruistic, while distributed.net is nothing but a glorified lottery for geeks is simply a matter of perspective. You can't justify one over the other, because it simply depeneds on your values.
I think the gripe is that they couldn't sacrifice the gee wiz (javascript, frames, etc) for the greater accessibility. I mean, it would have been /cheaper/ to develop had they sacrificed these elements, as it would have simplified the development of the website considerably. All at the cost of asthetics and complying to the "what the next guy is going" conventions of other high profile sites like this. (Well, it is MSNBC too, so it could be as simple as MSNBC properties having a policy to make sure they are not cross browser compatible to any high degree.)
.. well, no, it is, but I think the point is that it shouldn't be. Who cares if it looks bad .. this is for the Olympics, an event that is supposed to bring us together, not segregate us by browser choice. Of course, yes, you'd have to be naive not to accept that it is all about business these days .. at least, decades ago, it was more about multinational competition than corperate competition.
I mean, this isn't commercial website
>he stole company resources for personal gain
.. well, posting to slashdot!
.. which ones make my company how much money, and which ones lose?
.. but to have been criminally charged instead of simply reprimanded? thats simply ludicrous. i'm liable to believe that someone in georgia does not believe in high encryption and privacy ..
I hope you're not at work today! You're stealing bandwidth and CPU power to post to slashdot, for the personal gain of
Honestly, what, you wanna start counting electrons
distributed.net does have a goal that benifits those who believe in privacy and ecryption. it's not some sort of time-sharing scam or anything. in fact, if anything, distributed.net has a far higher likelihood of affecting our world (while we're still alive) than the seti project. like, sure, if his college didn't want it, I understand
The number of people who want to become doctors and nurses is declining, as more and more legal precendents are set to prosecute nurses and doctors when they make a mistake or error. Everyone makes mistakes. What this man had to go through, because of, at worst, an error in judgement, is rediculous. If we are all to be held criminally liable for wasting other people's money, time, etc ... shit, we'd all be in the slammer by now.
Actually, and yes, I deserve complete disbelief and skepticism (I dont really believe in stats, but I think this one kind of illustrates how technological solutions result in relaxed social responsibility), the stat was a percentage stat. Ie, people were more likely to fall off cliffs with no fences than one with a fence. I will do my best to dig up my source ... check my journal in a few days.
.. even the responsible ones, and not even have to think about the reason that preventative measure was put there in the first place.
I think the idea is that, people are scared of falling off cliffs. The fence gave them a false sense of security. They'd think, "Well, the fence is here for an idiot, and I'm not an idiot, so I can jump over the fence for a better look." The non-fence cliffs seemed to scare people once they got anywhere near the edge, thus, people were less likely to accidentally fall off the edge. You can translate this into many other examples, I think. People have a natural desire to circumvent technological means of prevention (to a reasonable degree, of course) because they percieve that the prevention is for people who are less [insert adjective here] than them. Obviously, some level of technological preventative measures is reasonable. For instance, drunk driving and breathalizers. But go too far (I started a storm by suggesting breathalizer-ignitions a while back), and the flames I got back were right in saying that if you put in place too much of a technological solution, people will break right through them
> Your analogy, too, is false. If someone new to computers, someone without the "respect" for the technology you mentioned, tries something dangerous that could delete all his or her files, don't you think that there should be at least one little modal dialog that pops up asking "Do you REALLY want to do that?" What you are suggesting is nothing more than classic Slashdot eliteism: "The user shouldn't touch anything they don't understand." Where's the problem in that statement? Think about how you learned to use a computer ...
.. well, how do you know what you know and what you don't? In windows, I don't think you can! What does msgsrv32.exe do? Can I stop it? Wheres the docs on it? Nothing! But imagine it was named the "Explorer Runtime Checker (Do Not Stop!)" .. then, if you had to stop it, presumably, you'd have checked out if it was safe to do so. So I'm not saying everyone should inherently know what they do and what they don't, but rather that peoples furor over the notion of people knowing this hinges on how well the interface describes it's various componants! If every file is named "sdfg34.dll", who knows what you know, but in Linux, we have the opportunity to actually name and label various things properly .. after all, we havn't made the promise to the world that *nix is foolproof like MS has.
.. guess what, I never heard of the thing. So I'm not going to screw with it until someone has told me what the worst case scnerio is. It truely is not my fault that other people do not operate this way, but I charge that they do - except when it comes to computers, because they've been taught that a good piece of software is unbreakable and can't screw the newbies. Dude, I'm not elitist. I'm advocating the opposite of what you think I'm advocating. I say, dangerous things should be the first thing you see when you march through the 'door' of another interface. Once you know what not to touch, you can mess about with other stuff, and graduate to the big red easy to pull lever with the proper signage and warning labels and confirmation step when you feel you're aware of the consequences of your actions and when you're comfortable with the level of knowledge you have regarding the clearly labeled interface. All these people are saying that making interfaces that are available, but kinda outta the way is how to best keep newbies from screwing themselves, but I say put the dangerous stuff upfront with very clear worst case scenario warnings, and then you can seperate the irresponsible people that deserve crashage (ie, those who pull the level before they are ready) from those who heed warnings, accept accountability for their actions, and actually do some reading and thinking before doing. Same with physical objects. How many times, when friends show you some new toy or something, tell you what not to do first? I think it's the natural, time honoured way, and it's frusterating to see so many people who think thats suicide in the computer interface world.
.. System! Would you want to delete the system? Even if you didn't know anything about MacOS or computers?). Linux does it .. fairly well (the boot dir is a good example). Windows is the worst .. look, don't take my word for it. Usability experts the world over bemoan the windows way (ie, the advanced stuff is there, but just hidden, and no real easy way to tell it from the non-advanced stuff), love the macOS way (an extention, the mac equivilent of a group of dlls, has a full, complete descriptive name (generally including the name of the application that depends on it) all in one file .. god bless the resource fork), and think *nix is definately heading in the right direction! I support all this, and thats why I support the disitrbution of this kernel configuration tool! If people are gunna screw with it, as it is a foregone conclusion in my argument, might as well label it well, provide enough warnings and confirmation steps, and put it right out in the open. Don't hide it, or only the newbies who've fallen off the trodden path and don't deserve the greif are gunna get abused by it. I'd rather see the careless uncautious users befall that kind of fate .. they deserve it the most, and will only make the mistake once or twice before learning that there isn't a single garaunteed safe action on this planet, so best to think before you do. :)
.. the frusterating thing is knowing I'm alot closer to how usability experts feel things should be than the average and/or power user.
You're confused. I support putting this tool out in the open, available to the novice, if, and only if:
a) It's labeled clearly
b) There are descriptive, helpful confirmation dialogs that provide a means of finding additional information
c) describe the worse case scenario of the tool in case of gross misuse (which everyone goes through, I know!)
My point in not touching things you dont understand is touchy with Windows Users (of which I am one), because I feel, in my experience
If some part in my computer is labeled clearly "Event Transmographier"
Windows does this very poorly. Nothing is written with a descriptive name, so people screw around because they can't tell if its important or not. What I'm saying is that the labels and signage should indicate this. MacOS does this well (the most important file, System, is called
I know lots of people don't agree with me
Hehe, fair enough. Well, anyhow, I'm stickin to my story.
.. a little resedit and the system file, and you could be the l33test mac hacker, but given just how out in the open the screwupable things were, even the stupidest mac user knew what they knew, and knew what they didn't know.
One thing I always found wierd about MacOS is how everyone always painted it as the OS in which you have the least control over whats going on, and that mac users were always very untechnical.
Ironically, Mac's system files were the most out-in-the-open clearly labeled system dependant files in any OS. But people who didn't know anything about computers knew, thanks to a few initial martyrs, and then word of mouth, not to do anything with the file! When it came time to upgrade, or for those looking to hack, there it was
You don't have to learn that you don't understand something. You just don't. This is what I'm saying. Vendors are suggesting that understanding things is a moot point. You know, the ease of use, the foolproofness of it. You don't have to even admit to what you know and don't know! (Listen to non computer experts. They try to talk the talk .. but would never try talking the talk about motors with mechanics, or other things they've been told its okay not to have a clue about.)
.. you know what you know and don't know. If something is sufficiently labeled, you'll know if you've used it before. If it's unlabeled (via obscrure interfaces, etc), you won't know what it is in the first place, and thus have a higher likelihood of just 'trying' it!
.. you put a skull and crossbones on it, in a very prominant place and make sure it's in the public domain of knowledge that you don't screw with stuff with skull and crossbones' on it!
So my answer to you is
Would you suggest that as long as you dont label poison, you just put it in the back of the cabinet, people won't try it because its unlabeled and way back there? Shit no
> If Microsoft gave people and easy way to fuck up their computers, many many people would fuck up their computers and then blame MS for letting them.
.. and when people fall down, it's for all to see, to learn from.
I'll make this very simple. Vendors sell the image that OSes cant screw up if they are well designed enough. Then user A falls through the cracks, finds the self-descruct mechanism (regedit in Windows, lets say this kernel thing in *nix) and pulls it. Now he's all alone in the 'public' world, because the company just says, "Well, you shouldn't have gone through that door", even thought it wasn't labeled. Also, far fewer people have shared his experience, so the likelihood of him finding people who've already gone through it and can help him are tiny. Those that are in the know, the experts, are pissed off at the Vendor for making promises that they now have to clean up after, but project their anger on user A. User A comes away thinking that the experts of the technology are assholes, when, in reality, they just want a little more catering-to-reality from the seller. We say buyer beware, but in this increasingly dumbed-down world, where interfaces are meant to surplant people's sense of responsibily, along with the value of admitting that you arn't knowledgable enough to tinker with some stuff, it's the experts, the one's whove gotten their hands dirty, that end up having to solve the woes of those who've fallen through the engineers' cracks! Well, I say, make the cracks wide open, and then the crowd will naturally just stay away from it
> since you will always be able to reboot with the factory-kernel
.. unless you've pooched/rm'd the factory-kernel. I mean, you /can/ screw stuff up. That was my point. Knowing what NOT to touch (in this case, the factory-kernel) is a part of life. Or compiled with the wrong flags such that your machine /boots/, but munges your hardware. There are risks man .. you're just not aware of them cause the hood lever wasn't in full view, /forcing/ you to either leave it alone or think about the consequences of pulling it. You admit yourself that you havn't compiled a custom kernel, because of the lack of this tool, but more importantly, you're not even really aware of the risks! (Also, you don't even have to mess stuff up. Wondering why your soundcard stopped working after you custom compiled is part of the noise level that kernel list participants and linux experts are afraid raising ... )
... you'd have a much more informed opinion, and I too (cause I'm a FreeBSD guy, not Linux), if such an action was more commonplace and available to the casual user.
My whole point was to say that there is risk in EVERYTHING! (Even, in your case, if you don't feel you'll fall on the wrong side of this risk.)
But anyhow, we both agree what the kernel customization tool isn't a bad idea
Rediculous. People obviously should not mess with things they dont understand. How many motor-morons have you heard of that have screwed up their car engines, just because there is access to the hood via an extremely easy to use, easy to recognize lever?! I mean, not EVERYONE pulls the lever and starts hammering on the crankshaft once their car breaks down. People know what not to touch, because they've been allowed access to it ... the responsibility in understanding the tools they are using is placed in their hands, as it should be!
.. you won't get enough people having to face the idea of respecting the OS and computer in large enough numbers to make the fragility of the kernel and hardware a widely known thing. Sure, there might be some sacrificial lambs when you open up things like that, but hey, I'm all about the greater good rather than the few who still need to learn the lesson of accountability and respect!
When people suggest that technological means of prevention is superior to ingraining a respect for a particular technology, I get so upset! It's not my fault that MS has brainwashed you into thinking that the consumer should be unable to fuck something up! A sufficient warning and a learned respect for your belongings (in this case, the kernel) should be the top priorities. When people are told to not worry about what their doing, that they can't screw stuff up, thats when you end up with people who do screw stuff up once they find a chink in the armour of the technological solution!
Here's a sobering stat: more people fall off cliffs with fences than cliffs without fences. Why? Because when you leave people to their own devices, they have to think and respect the power of the tools they are using or the situations they are in. When you put the blinders on them, you're only making sure that shit will get fucked once you slip up and accidentally allow them access to the tools and technologies that you were so adament to lock everybody out of.
I understand that people still have access to custom kernels regardless of this auto config tool, but this is akin to providing an easily labeled handle to your hood, or an emergency exit, or whatever. Because it's so easy to get access to, people are forced to learn and know implicitly what the consequences of pulling it are! Compare this to the newb who finds the man pages on building the custom kernels, or the HOW-TO
whoa, did I say autoconf?!?!?!?! Sorry ... I meant, this auto kernel config tool. Yikes, I think it's time to go home ... or maybe for a refill on the coffee. :(
*****WARNING. USING THIS TOOL CAN SCREW UP YOUR COMPUTER, BIG TIME. IF YOU WANT TO USE IT, DONT BE MAD AT ANYONE BUT YOURSELF IF YOU FUDGE THINGS UP*****
.. I mean, seriously. The only thing you could end up with is some fucked kernels (who should get along just fine with the fucked registries) and some users who will learn and be cautious, and end up having a better understanding their computers.
If MS can include regedit, you cant tell me that we can't inlcude autoconf
LOL. It doesn't disappoint me. It just ensures that when/if you end up in a situation where you dont have a car, you'll either be:
/admitted/ they could have ended up in, I'd be Bill Gates, without the Evil Empire. Thats all, man. Keep the car, but don't /not/ use the alternatives once in awhile! You never know when it just might pay off ... :)
a) fucked (cause you didn't support the adoption of a possible solution)
b) very very very unhappy that you have to sit beside the smelly people
Man, I understand your point of view, but it's as selfish as the guy who claims he should be able to do heroin, because he wants to. Who cares if he wants to, he's hurting the people around him! Obviously, you can go too far with this approach, but I don't think the 5 minute walk to the station (especially when we have a cottage industry to deal with the "go-go-go" mentality and stress related to life in cities) and sitting beside a smelly guy (who's only smelly cause you're only used to smelling yourself and your friends) constitutes the kind of sacrifice that will make you an unhappy person. I ain't a treehugger, or even green, I just want a little aknowledgement that our values are skewered over here (western culture), even if it is business as usual. If I got a penny for everytime I heard someone whine about being screwed when they ended up in a situation they didn't predict, let alone
More like, if all the software available on the x86 platform didn't depend on the chipset extentions rather than the raw architechture.
Don't confuse 'real life performance' with 'optimized for SSE/3DNOW/MMX' yadda yadda. Unfortuanetly, even though chips may be raw number crunching daemons (and Photoshop optimized for the G4 absolutely screams (maybe 33% better) over a faster clocked P4 in my first hand experience), and even though people may know that Mgz != speed, I think too many people still fail to remember that much of the percieved 'power' of certain chips come from compiler optmizations for that specific chip, not a lack of power in its competitors or an inability to turn FP and Int performance into 'real world' performance.
Aaaahhh...how quick you are to denounce my opinion. I have a right to it, and you have yours.
:)
.. what you prefer is moot when that preference leads to the types of problems that require the kind of solution referenced in the parent article.
Hehee, I know you have a right to your opinion. I was stating my opinion about your opinion.
And from my experience, I prefer the car.
You missed the whole point. I prefer the car too. In fact, I prefer to have sex with whomever I want, but I recognize that it is for the Greater Good of my society not to attempt to cater to that preference. That's all I was pointing out
> Nothing beats the freedom of hopping into my car, when I want to and not waiting for public transportation, on their schedule
... yadda yadda. Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
... and as it stands, once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and neighbours once you get outta the car ..
Nothing beats having what I want, when I want, for how much I want it! Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution
With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to isolate themselves via technology. Cars are an excellent example. Think of how many people, in your city, go from one 4 block arena to the exact same 4 block area somewhere else. Think of how efficient it would be to co-ordinate and co-operate with them! But alas, you're already spoiled
oo, thanks for the tip ... and about the registry, good thing I'm not an MS support engineer, or I'd have pointed out that you just voided any rights to a stable OS, buddy! I'd yell, "Hey, we set that minefield up so that you couldn't plod through it, damnit! If everyone could choose to set their search engine shortcuts, this planet would be in total complete chaos right now!" Heehee.
You missed my point. :)
.. which is the only way that gaming platforms penatrate a market to a degree that it's notable.
.. yes, they have the power to run "Tetris" and "Snake", but we wouldn't be discussing an SDK for wireless gaming if this was the extent of the ambition that those touting gaming on handhelds have. I think we're gunning more for 2d platform games, or RPG games, and such; where the engineering goals of handhelds do not take these eventual applications into consideration to such a degree that these types of games will become popular on handhelds anytime soon. This isn't to say that it won't happen (as it already has in Japan, for instance), but I was illustrating that an SDK-doth-not-adoption-make .. that the platform itself and the engineering considerations that go into it's design must take the eventual use cases of the device into account at an early stage. Most of the time ... :)
Gameboy Advance is 99$, and kicks the ass, for gaming suitability (ie, the 'rich' experience that handheld makers will have to claim to sell their units via their gaming potential), off of most of handhelds that are more expensive. The gameboy and advance were designed for gaming; anything that had nothing to do with gaming was shucked from the design
If you take the average user, they probably don't play too much on their PC or whatever, because those platforms are not designed to entice casual gamers into wanting to play. For instance, on the PC, you have to learn an unintuative control set (only more-than-casual gamers, for instance, use the keyboard/mouse thing for the most part), and your PC has to be relatively 'stoked'.
Handhelds, I was only saying, are not built (currently) to make gaming accissible to the avg user. Their controls will turn away most users
I mean, people will always play "Snake" and "Tetris" on their phone, but I'd say that that's more of a "because it's there" thing than a "I'm so happy I can play games on my phone!" thing. I think the goals of the developers of SDKs are not to provide the user a moutain to climb "because its there", but rather to make people want to buy a handheld "because it's fun to climb mountains on them".
Yeah, this was essentially the idea behind the Gopher protocol. Remember ... heirarchial bookmarks to resources, including links to other gopher sites? Very similar to what you described. Personally, I think that method of indexing data is far more succeptable to corperate ownership than DNS is, as links (ie, destinations) could 'disappear' at any time, and most people wouldn't know how to reach a destination directly. I think the whole DNS thing was a very important fight in the battle to keep some level of individual power and right on the web. To me, it is amazing that I could theoretically own www.sirslud.com .. just as easy to remember for my friends than www.ford.com. So, even if that fight it winding down (I feel confident enough to say that the individual has not been obliterated as in so many other mediums), it was an extremely important one to have; otherwise the idea of the URL and www.domainname.com would have always remained under the popular vote's radar, and people would be more dependant on the googles of the world to remain unbiased in their indexing services. Conversely, if google.com ever sells out, either more search engines will slide in to replace it, or people can shift back to storing and managing URLs (maybe the pervasiveness of handheld organizers that can store all your bookmarks, for instance, will herald another shift back to direct methods of reaching your destination). The beauty is, both technologies are in place and functional for the people, which I think it's extremely important.
/lucky/ you were when you were assigned one.
Compare that to phone numbers, where the ease of remembering personal phone numbers depends more on how