nah, they'll probably use the supercomputer to DOS sco.com again as the kicker for their gaming competition.
Other Practical Uses are Bound to Surface...
on
Flash Mob Supercomputer?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This doesn't sound like such a bad idea. seems like a lot of things could be done this way much faster and more efficiently. if this works we should look into other applications for the Flash Mob, like a rocket-building day for the X-Prize, or a random code-swap where a bunch of us get together and hand eachother a blank disc with the source code to something nifty on it to play with.
People on the internet need to come together and declare the internet a new country! Then, we can make it illegal for any tracking like this to occur and take the US to the International Court for violating our nation's laws. In the Internet's constitution privacy and anonomity should be very important. if we get enough people to shout about it long enough, it might become official somehow. But things are only going to get worse if the internet and it's citizens do not take any action to uphold the safety of their nation.
"...the essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern. The tacit contract between a governement and the people governed is that the government will trust the people and the people will trust the government. But once the government begins to mistrust the people it is governing, it loses its mandate to rule because it is no longer acting as a spokesman for the people, but is acting as an agent of persecution." - Philip K. Dick
Look around you. How safe do you feel? Now ask yourself why and don't simply snap back the practiced response. Consider the source of these feelings. Does this make you happy?
My guess is this is someone trying to prove how idiotic the USPTO is.
well of course! after that they could sue the patent office for all the patents! then, using those patents they could sue all the patent-holders in the US! and when they add together all the two cents contributed by people via message boards and places like/. they will have amassed a great deal of text.
Will it allow old people to get their meds cheaper?
I don't like old people. we shouldn't live as long as some of them do, and if we happen to make it that far, it's too bad. both for those who get way out there, and those that they leech off of. leave the old people out on the ice. if you want to start a prozac donation bakesale so the old people die "happy" then go right on ahead. nobody's stopping you.
ways that benefit the body, the Family of Man?
you're making an incredible generalization. both incredibly huge, and incredibly dangerous. not only are you including every human being in this, but you're also saying that none of them benefit in any but a completely useless way from this. A lot of people benefit from this. not all of them. not everyone will benefit from feeding ethiopians, either. not everyone benefits from drugging old people. not everyone benefits from oil. you can't benefit EVERYONE in one fell swoop, because not everyone can be grouped into one category like that. even if you were to ration out all the food in the world so everyone got an equal portion of everything, how many people would be benefitted? quite a few, yes, but then again, quite a few would also starve to death, and quite a few would start up an incredibly loud complaint. be more specific: who do you want benefitted, and why doesn't this benefit them?
Isn't there better ways to spend billions of dollars that benefit mankind in a more substantial way?
No.
The International Space Station has so much more promise to benefit our everyday life
but does it go to mars? can you control it when it's on mars? I didn't think so...
We should be concentrating on ideas that benefit mankind in tangible ways.
okay, sure, you've pointed out a problem. good going. how about a solution? what would be better? If you can't come up with a better, "more tangible" benefit, then why are you complaining?
Movie theatres don't seem capable of keeping children out of R-rated movies
ah, good point. Maybe we should back down and let the FTAA in on this one as well. that way not only would they be in charge of throwing 12 year-old girls into unmarked vans for the RIAA, but also for throwing tear gas into theatres in order to thwart potential pirates.
seriously, though, you're probably right. it seems to me, that there isn't a good way to handle this other than releasing quality films so that people will think, "hey, they deserve to be paid for this. that was an awesome movie." rather than, "WTF?? that does it! I am now going to devote my entire life to stealing from the movie industry! buwaaahahahhaahaaaaaaa!!" Otherwise we either end up with ineffective theatre personnel, or laws that don't have any visible effect... take your pick.
good luck with the repeal. I support you on this, as well. the only problem, is it probably says somewhere in the law, "X politition(s) will be granted Y percentage of all sales for services provided to the MPAA."
there's probably a section as well that allows for that to be carried over to the next person who takes office. it probably states very clearly that it is NOT a bribe, and is NOT illegal, no matter what it may look like...
since movie theatres are private, they could already punish people who had cameras. they could throw them out, pay off a burly guard to punch them in the arm, and make them trip on the way. they couldn't send someone to jail, no. but, then again, someone in jail has the same effect on that theatre as someone banned from the theatre. and since most theatres seem to be owned by a couple of chains, it wouldn't be that hard to fax a memo to each theatre in the area with a picture of the pirate. They could do it like the coffee shop here does. when someone does something bad, their picture and a little text describing what a bad bad person they are goes up on a bulletin board behind the counter. Instant shame!
this has been discussed by/. before, and the consensus then seemed to be, "what does this law do?" Since most of the pirated copies are allegedly from overseas (oh, but that could be faked, says a MPAA representative) and DVD screeners, how does this really make a difference when the copies originating from Ohio movie theatres seem to be harder to find than a rare pokemon. (okay, bad example; those things are everywhere, but you know what I mean)
If they really want to make a difference, how about firewalling the US in a similar fashion to what China did? Or maybe producing a law that goes after the people who commit the largest percentage of these crimes, not the easiest to molest.
I was thinking of that, but I figured that less people would want to go through that than running a program that does it for them. maybe I'll make up the list like that, and then later replace it with the program if it gets done.
CGI Proxy[jmarshall.com] could be run on their computers.
I didn't think you were volunteering. I doubt I could really pull it off, either. then again, the person distributing the program could concievably be charged with something, too. but it's an interesting idea, and I'll definitely pass it on.
definitely right about the automation. I suppose the first issue is what language to write it in. It definitely needs to be cross-platform, so something written as a.php script or similar might work. It would also have to be independant of any webserver, too, or everyone clicking the 'send' button will overload the bandwidth...
and it should probably utilize some sort of a proxy just for the sake of paranoia. anything I missed?
how much have you read in the little boxes you click "I agree" to? most of them are pretty harmless, saying you're not allowed to use them for things like hacking or anything but the intended purpose, please install Gator, don't copy this software, etc. But if you own it, shouldn't you be allowed to do these things, as it is yours now? If they still own it, and are only licensing the use of it to you, then they are allowed to set rules on it, like installing gator and not copying it. I haven't actually read through the "agreement" for windows XP, but that's where the "contract signing" would be in this case. They make it so in order to use the software that you bought, and now own, you have to abide by their rules. for the most part the rules that are set are pretty decent rules, like don't delete the documentation and then sell it to someone else as your work. they could come after you in court without the license agreement for selling it. but when the rules include what you can and can't change, and where you can use it and how, how much of the software do you really own?
the way it _should_ work is that anything you pay for; buy; or obtain ownership of, is that it is then yours to do with what you will. But many corporations *cough*microsoft*cough* seem to think otherwise. they grant you a _license_ rather than giving you the rights to the thing you just bought. the license only allows you to use it the way they want you to. no changes, unless they are changes the corporation wanted. I think that very soon we'll be seeing more than software and music handled in this way. within the next five (okay, I'm guessing here) years you probably won't be able to upgrade a computer without reading the licensing terms first to make sure that installing a new video card doesn't break the law somehow. The whole process is just shitty, and everything seems to be moving over in this direction. At this point corporations have more rights, and more freedoms than the "free" people who live in america.
we can't fix this overnight, or even in 24.3 hours, but we need to fix it, before we're only given a _license_ to our children when they're born. how would you like to sign a contract with some corporation that dictates the methods and ways in which you can rais your own children. what you can say to them, where you can live with them, what you can and can't buy them. that kind of control is a long way off, but the corporations can't stop from expanding. that's all they really do anymore. and after they've taken control over every material product we can produce and buy, what else do you think is left? and do you think that will stop them from expanding even further?
be interesting to keep an eye on it as the years roll by as the disk rotates and our optical powers keep growing.
Oh, okay. I'll just go grab my telescope, and a bottle of root beer. oh wait... better make that an ocean of root beer...this could take a few thousand years.
Right, so this is a very suspense-inducing story. I can tell. I just have to wonder, though, as this sort of thing doesn't really inspire suspense in me (plugging in a new cable does, though), why is this story on Slashdot? I mean, really. I'd rather hear about someone (or even several towns) digging up his (or anyone's for that matter) remains and rigging them with wireless technology that allows people to control their movements. Now that would be cool...
but this? bah...
this sounds like a rerun of the RIAA ripping the rights away from musicians. needless to say it's not very nice and we should burn the author's guild after we've taken care of the RIAA. well, the MPAA too.
well, I don't think anyone will have any trouble activating it before HL2 comes out. I mean, its not like we're actually going to see the completed game until 2005.
is that pretty all of them seem to use the same engine. the "Keep paying us after you bought the game" engine. I've beta tested Earth & Beyond, which was pretty cool until the beta ran up and they asked me to pay them for the rest of my life. I played Anarchy Online for a while until they asked me to pay for the game until the end of the world(s). I'd probably actually go out and play a MMORPG or two if I could just buy the game once.
the other problem I have with MMORPGs is that they are so dependant on working with other people. There are even quests that you can't go on without having a certain number of people in your party. There is no soloing. none at all. well, unless you want to be that level five guy who always gets PKed.
and the worlds are hardly versatile at all. If it's a game like Anarchy Online where there're two warring factions that supposedly hate eachother etc etc etc, well, you see people from either side partying up and going off adventuring all the time. and while the news posts say that one side destroyed some facility or other of the other side, well, nobody actually does. It's all made up by the guys writing the news posts.
so...yeah, if somebody could just fix the games so they were more like an actual RPG (preferably with a real-time combat system so you don't have click on an enemy, go get breakfast, come back, heal, click on another enemy...) and less like monopoly (where everything's already bought up so you keep paying them as long as you play) then they might be good games.
60 FPS is plenty to play doom 3. after tinkering with the alpha for more than six months and making my own deathmatch maps, I can assure everybody that even 40-50 FPS would be fine. the game runs beautifully between 25 and 30, but after 55 there isn't much of a difference. Above 65 is absolutely useless; almost no change whatsoever between 60 and 70 FPS, so don't worry!!
and we should also put warnings on keyboards that if the keys are removed they could present a choking hazard. and put warnings on food, that it could be a choking hazard. things that come in cans, of course, would also have to have a warning about dropping them on your toes. and lets not forget, we need to put warnings on all of our blankets too, just in case people thought they couldn't strangle themselves in their sleep.
maybe we should have a window pop up every time you click on a hyperlink that not only tells you that you've just done something, which may or may not change something on your computer, but it also could be logged, and perhaps you might even go to some other website than the one you were just at!! and mice should have warning labels on them, too. You never know when somebody might get a little too enthusiastic with that ol' double-click and go and break a nail or something...
we should put warning labels on our teeth, too. and on trees. every tree needs a warning label that informs people of all the possible damages done by a falling tree. and fences need warning labels, just in case someone thought of riding a motorized scooter into one. and we should label all electronic devices capable of internet access as "terrorist." That would definitely improve the situation....
Slashdot Mirror
nah, they'll probably use the supercomputer to DOS sco.com again as the kicker for their gaming competition.
This doesn't sound like such a bad idea. seems like a lot of things could be done this way much faster and more efficiently. if this works we should look into other applications for the Flash Mob, like a rocket-building day for the X-Prize, or a random code-swap where a bunch of us get together and hand eachother a blank disc with the source code to something nifty on it to play with.
People on the internet need to come together and declare the internet a new country! Then, we can make it illegal for any tracking like this to occur and take the US to the International Court for violating our nation's laws. In the Internet's constitution privacy and anonomity should be very important. if we get enough people to shout about it long enough, it might become official somehow. But things are only going to get worse if the internet and it's citizens do not take any action to uphold the safety of their nation.
"...the essence of the evil government is that it anticipates bad conduct on the part of its citizens. Any government which assumes that the population is going to do something evil has already lost its franchise to govern. The tacit contract between a governement and the people governed is that the government will trust the people and the people will trust the government. But once the government begins to mistrust the people it is governing, it loses its mandate to rule because it is no longer acting as a spokesman for the people, but is acting as an agent of persecution." - Philip K. Dick
Look around you. How safe do you feel? Now ask yourself why and don't simply snap back the practiced response. Consider the source of these feelings. Does this make you happy?
My guess is this is someone trying to prove how idiotic the USPTO is. /. they will have amassed a great deal of text.
well of course! after that they could sue the patent office for all the patents! then, using those patents they could sue all the patent-holders in the US! and when they add together all the two cents contributed by people via message boards and places like
I don't like old people. we shouldn't live as long as some of them do, and if we happen to make it that far, it's too bad. both for those who get way out there, and those that they leech off of. leave the old people out on the ice. if you want to start a prozac donation bakesale so the old people die "happy" then go right on ahead. nobody's stopping you.
ways that benefit the body, the Family of Man?
you're making an incredible generalization. both incredibly huge, and incredibly dangerous. not only are you including every human being in this, but you're also saying that none of them benefit in any but a completely useless way from this. A lot of people benefit from this. not all of them. not everyone will benefit from feeding ethiopians, either. not everyone benefits from drugging old people. not everyone benefits from oil. you can't benefit EVERYONE in one fell swoop, because not everyone can be grouped into one category like that. even if you were to ration out all the food in the world so everyone got an equal portion of everything, how many people would be benefitted? quite a few, yes, but then again, quite a few would also starve to death, and quite a few would start up an incredibly loud complaint. be more specific: who do you want benefitted, and why doesn't this benefit them?
Isn't there better ways to spend billions of dollars that benefit mankind in a more substantial way?
No.
The International Space Station has so much more promise to benefit our everyday life
but does it go to mars? can you control it when it's on mars? I didn't think so...
We should be concentrating on ideas that benefit mankind in tangible ways.
okay, sure, you've pointed out a problem. good going. how about a solution? what would be better? If you can't come up with a better, "more tangible" benefit, then why are you complaining?
ah, good point. Maybe we should back down and let the FTAA in on this one as well. that way not only would they be in charge of throwing 12 year-old girls into unmarked vans for the RIAA, but also for throwing tear gas into theatres in order to thwart potential pirates.
seriously, though, you're probably right. it seems to me, that there isn't a good way to handle this other than releasing quality films so that people will think, "hey, they deserve to be paid for this. that was an awesome movie." rather than, "WTF?? that does it! I am now going to devote my entire life to stealing from the movie industry! buwaaahahahhaahaaaaaaa!!" Otherwise we either end up with ineffective theatre personnel, or laws that don't have any visible effect... take your pick.
good luck with the repeal. I support you on this, as well. the only problem, is it probably says somewhere in the law, "X politition(s) will be granted Y percentage of all sales for services provided to the MPAA."
there's probably a section as well that allows for that to be carried over to the next person who takes office. it probably states very clearly that it is NOT a bribe, and is NOT illegal, no matter what it may look like...
since movie theatres are private, they could already punish people who had cameras. they could throw them out, pay off a burly guard to punch them in the arm, and make them trip on the way. they couldn't send someone to jail, no. but, then again, someone in jail has the same effect on that theatre as someone banned from the theatre. and since most theatres seem to be owned by a couple of chains, it wouldn't be that hard to fax a memo to each theatre in the area with a picture of the pirate. They could do it like the coffee shop here does. when someone does something bad, their picture and a little text describing what a bad bad person they are goes up on a bulletin board behind the counter. Instant shame!
/. before, and the consensus then seemed to be, "what does this law do?" Since most of the pirated copies are allegedly from overseas (oh, but that could be faked, says a MPAA representative) and DVD screeners, how does this really make a difference when the copies originating from Ohio movie theatres seem to be harder to find than a rare pokemon. (okay, bad example; those things are everywhere, but you know what I mean)
this has been discussed by
If they really want to make a difference, how about firewalling the US in a similar fashion to what China did? Or maybe producing a law that goes after the people who commit the largest percentage of these crimes, not the easiest to molest.
so does this mean that we're actually going to be seeing more than one or two GOOD movies every year?
I was thinking of that, but I figured that less people would want to go through that than running a program that does it for them. maybe I'll make up the list like that, and then later replace it with the program if it gets done.
I didn't think you were volunteering. I doubt I could really pull it off, either. then again, the person distributing the program could concievably be charged with something, too. but it's an interesting idea, and I'll definitely pass it on.
definitely right about the automation. I suppose the first issue is what language to write it in. It definitely needs to be cross-platform, so something written as a .php script or similar might work. It would also have to be independant of any webserver, too, or everyone clicking the 'send' button will overload the bandwidth...
and it should probably utilize some sort of a proxy just for the sake of paranoia. anything I missed?
whether it works or not it'd still be fun to do. I'm sure it isn't all that hard. should the spamming begin before, or after the bill passes, though?
how much have you read in the little boxes you click "I agree" to? most of them are pretty harmless, saying you're not allowed to use them for things like hacking or anything but the intended purpose, please install Gator, don't copy this software, etc. But if you own it, shouldn't you be allowed to do these things, as it is yours now? If they still own it, and are only licensing the use of it to you, then they are allowed to set rules on it, like installing gator and not copying it. I haven't actually read through the "agreement" for windows XP, but that's where the "contract signing" would be in this case. They make it so in order to use the software that you bought, and now own, you have to abide by their rules. for the most part the rules that are set are pretty decent rules, like don't delete the documentation and then sell it to someone else as your work. they could come after you in court without the license agreement for selling it. but when the rules include what you can and can't change, and where you can use it and how, how much of the software do you really own?
the way it _should_ work is that anything you pay for; buy; or obtain ownership of, is that it is then yours to do with what you will. But many corporations *cough*microsoft*cough* seem to think otherwise. they grant you a _license_ rather than giving you the rights to the thing you just bought. the license only allows you to use it the way they want you to. no changes, unless they are changes the corporation wanted. I think that very soon we'll be seeing more than software and music handled in this way. within the next five (okay, I'm guessing here) years you probably won't be able to upgrade a computer without reading the licensing terms first to make sure that installing a new video card doesn't break the law somehow. The whole process is just shitty, and everything seems to be moving over in this direction. At this point corporations have more rights, and more freedoms than the "free" people who live in america.
we can't fix this overnight, or even in 24.3 hours, but we need to fix it, before we're only given a _license_ to our children when they're born. how would you like to sign a contract with some corporation that dictates the methods and ways in which you can rais your own children. what you can say to them, where you can live with them, what you can and can't buy them. that kind of control is a long way off, but the corporations can't stop from expanding. that's all they really do anymore. and after they've taken control over every material product we can produce and buy, what else do you think is left? and do you think that will stop them from expanding even further?
be interesting to keep an eye on it as the years roll by as the disk rotates and our optical powers keep growing. Oh, okay. I'll just go grab my telescope, and a bottle of root beer. oh wait... better make that an ocean of root beer...this could take a few thousand years.
Right, so this is a very suspense-inducing story. I can tell. I just have to wonder, though, as this sort of thing doesn't really inspire suspense in me (plugging in a new cable does, though), why is this story on Slashdot? I mean, really. I'd rather hear about someone (or even several towns) digging up his (or anyone's for that matter) remains and rigging them with wireless technology that allows people to control their movements. Now that would be cool...
but this? bah...
this sounds like a rerun of the RIAA ripping the rights away from musicians. needless to say it's not very nice and we should burn the author's guild after we've taken care of the RIAA. well, the MPAA too.
well, I don't think anyone will have any trouble activating it before HL2 comes out. I mean, its not like we're actually going to see the completed game until 2005.
is that pretty all of them seem to use the same engine. the "Keep paying us after you bought the game" engine. I've beta tested Earth & Beyond, which was pretty cool until the beta ran up and they asked me to pay them for the rest of my life. I played Anarchy Online for a while until they asked me to pay for the game until the end of the world(s). I'd probably actually go out and play a MMORPG or two if I could just buy the game once.
the other problem I have with MMORPGs is that they are so dependant on working with other people. There are even quests that you can't go on without having a certain number of people in your party. There is no soloing. none at all. well, unless you want to be that level five guy who always gets PKed.
and the worlds are hardly versatile at all. If it's a game like Anarchy Online where there're two warring factions that supposedly hate eachother etc etc etc, well, you see people from either side partying up and going off adventuring all the time. and while the news posts say that one side destroyed some facility or other of the other side, well, nobody actually does. It's all made up by the guys writing the news posts.
so...yeah, if somebody could just fix the games so they were more like an actual RPG (preferably with a real-time combat system so you don't have click on an enemy, go get breakfast, come back, heal, click on another enemy...) and less like monopoly (where everything's already bought up so you keep paying them as long as you play) then they might be good games.
I already have enough reasons not to use AOL.
60 FPS is plenty to play doom 3. after tinkering with the alpha for more than six months and making my own deathmatch maps, I can assure everybody that even 40-50 FPS would be fine. the game runs beautifully between 25 and 30, but after 55 there isn't much of a difference. Above 65 is absolutely useless; almost no change whatsoever between 60 and 70 FPS, so don't worry!!
and we should also put warnings on keyboards that if the keys are removed they could present a choking hazard. and put warnings on food, that it could be a choking hazard. things that come in cans, of course, would also have to have a warning about dropping them on your toes. and lets not forget, we need to put warnings on all of our blankets too, just in case people thought they couldn't strangle themselves in their sleep.
maybe we should have a window pop up every time you click on a hyperlink that not only tells you that you've just done something, which may or may not change something on your computer, but it also could be logged, and perhaps you might even go to some other website than the one you were just at!! and mice should have warning labels on them, too. You never know when somebody might get a little too enthusiastic with that ol' double-click and go and break a nail or something...
we should put warning labels on our teeth, too. and on trees. every tree needs a warning label that informs people of all the possible damages done by a falling tree. and fences need warning labels, just in case someone thought of riding a motorized scooter into one. and we should label all electronic devices capable of internet access as "terrorist." That would definitely improve the situation....
What do you consider to be an acceptable turn around time for a vulnerability patch
Faster than it takes someone to attack you.