Don't forget steroids[r], holoduke[h], shrink ray, and laser trip mines.
Ooo... you're right! Forgot about the laser trip mines!
Favorite trick there was to booby-trap anytime there was a bathroom ammo store; if you were quick enough, you could plant the bomb in the stall and close the door (obscuring its view). Opening the door was enough to set it off.
Of course, it wasn't enough to kill someone (as the door acted as a partial shield), so you'd leave bombs on the doors NEXT to the one with the ammo, so they'd detonate once the primary went off. 8)
And as others have commented, most of my multi-player was done via modem... direct dialing up a buddy and blasting the crap out of each other.
Hmmm... maybe it is time to bring the game back up for a little fun. And one would be hard-pressed to find hardware you CAN'T play it on these days!;)
The truth for me is that I have still not played a FPS that was more FUN than Duke3D...
I second the sentiment!
All you need to do is enjoy the all-out fun of shooting an RPG into a teleporter or, and I so wish SOMEONE would reintroduce it, leave a bunch of pipe-bombs out in multi-player to appreciate just how much fun this game really was.
Running up to try and pick up a pipe-bomb before the other guy(s) detonated... what a great concept.
Any message with a honeypot as any recipient is spam. 100% accurate.
Not true. All it takes is some "vigilante" to seed the honeypot address by signing up (ie, choosing to opt-in) for marketing messages from a legitimate, opt-in-only site; this completely destroys the line between "harvest and blast" scum and (egads, I can't believe I'm going to describe it this way) "value added, opt-in marketing" that some people want to receive. I don't mind getting the ThinkGeek marketing letter once a month or two (because I'm interested in the junk they sell)... but I wouldn't expect everyone to feel the same way, nor would I want someone else deciding it is spam, feeding it into a honeypot on purpose (by signing up for the newsletter with a honeypot address), then having it blocked for me.
Would a device like this work on someone who doesn't know how to speak english or better yet a baby that speaks no language at all
The answer is "Yes" (but not the way you intended) and "No."
It would work for a non-English speaker IFF that speaker was trying to speak his native language; what they've detected is the brain's intention to produce a SOUND; so, by extension, the interpretation is producing a phonetic representation of the sounds in the person's head.
It isn't interpreting the concept of the sound (someone isn't thinking of a cat and the word "cat" is produced). It should be possible for someone speaking any language (including a made-up one) to use this system.
For a baby (who has no word associated with the object), it wouldn't provide any use... unless your conjecture is that a baby doesn't speak because the muscles in her throat aren't strong enough to form words, but her brain knows what sounds would be made. Then... sure, it would work. 8)
Put it this way: would the effort/computing power/research dollars be better spent curing cancer or increasing human lifespan than finding intelligent life before we have the capability of contacting it back?
It is like saving all your money to buy a Stradivarius violin but not bothering to spend it on lessons learning how to play; first things first... is finding intelligent life a "first" type of activity?
I can see why you're offended. With a handle such as "necro2607," you must be one of the undead insulted by this fiction about your heredity.
Zombies are all around us. I see them all the time working at the local movie theaters taking tickets, making telemarketing calls about vitamin supplements, or even working diligently in bureaucratic jobs (such as secretaries in college financial-aid offices).
What stops you from using encryption? Encrypt all your traffic.
What stops you? All the people who say stupid things like "I don't care if the government watches what I'm doing... I'm not doing anything illegal and they'll catch more bad guys!"
You need the complicity of these people and their willingness to encrypt stuff that doesn't really need to be encrypted (say, like google searches for stock information).
But, let's say that one was able to get a bunch of Joe Sixpacks to start encrypting traffic that wasn't of some deemed dubious nature. All it would take is a threat letter from an ISP to the effect of: "We see that you're sending encrypted packets on our network consistently. We have a policy against such activity, so you must not encrypt it or you'll be banned!"
Can an ISP really ban encrypted traffic?
No.
Might Joe Sixpack believe it?
Sure.
He'd turn it off (see previous erroneous logic about giving up privacy) and leave only the "trouble-makers" who could be dropped without a loss of revenue. Heck, the ISP might even make money from the MPAA for such actions.
Hmmm... re-reading this response, I think I have a tinge too much "tin foil hat" mixed in, but I think the general gist stands: it would be nearly impossible to get average people to collude without strong motivation to do so, and I just don't see from where that motivation would stem. 8/
There is no financial reason why a provider can provide unlimited voice calls but must charge $0.15 for an SMS message.
First, I wanted to say that I agree with your post. Just playing Devil's Advocate, here...
It is possible that they charge for the SMS not because it COSTS more, but because:
a) It is accepted by the customer
b) By charging it, they can off-set the costs of the cell calls, so they can offer "free" minutes to more people.
Basically, they could be shifting the costs of running the network as a whole around to people who mind less paying the fee from people who'd jump ship if forced to absorb the cost.
why can't someone just come along after and adjust the bits and bytes again in some random manner to effectively erase the watermark? I mean, if they can't read the bits and bytes that they put on the media because they've been altered, they wouldn't be able to track it, and the watermark would pretty effectively be broken.
Because, in that case, possession of such a file could be used to prove you had either gotten it from an illegal source or, at minimum, are behaving in a suspicious manner.
I would imagine that the argument the RIAA/MPAA would make would be that having files with altered watermarks would be akin to having guns with the serial numbers filed off (hyperbole purposefully included): even if you can't detect the origins of the "merchandise," just having it may be enough to get you in trouble.
"Why do you have content that has been altered so one CAN'T trace it back to the original purchase?"
By having a ubiquitous digital format (mp3), one group of people can't be the gatekeeper of who can sell*.
In theory, I agree with you; digital distribution levels the playing field so that one doesn't need a single controlling source.
While you disparage ITunes (I am not an ITunes customer), there's a reason why it works and the theory of "no gatekeeper" fails: people, by and large, can't be bothered to do their own legwork to find stuff they want.
What does ITunes sell, really? They sell access to a library of music. They sell ease of download and use (basically... let's not nitpick how well the software really works!). They sell "get everything you need HERE, cheap and easy!"
It is because of this that, while not explicitly ruled out, the "gatekeepers" that would keep the RIAA in their profit stream exist.
Independent bands can sell their music online without the middleman. Yes! And this is a good thing! Who's looking for those bands? How does one find out about them?
Wide-spread marketing is what they lack. And, unfortunately, without more money and a "booming voice" (like what the RIAA supposedly supplies to the artists), the self-producing artist won't get onto the general public's radar the same way RIAA-fueled marketing could get them. Will there be exceptions? Yup. But, for the majority of artists, it'd be local bucks, not international mega-bucks.
As I've posted before, we're talking about average people... people without the skills or interests to find stuff for slightly less money than they can get by going to the super-mega-music store that would be RIAA-backed.
This is why the RIAA can still maintain its profit margins; this is only about how long it'll take the RIAA to understand digital distribution, and it is starting to look like "they're getting it" (ie, Napster, Rhapsody, ITunes, etc.).
You'd purchase it once in FLAC and then convert it to mp3 and next generation lossless format yourself. Why buy it again?
I wouldn't. You wouldn't.
But, I suspect we don't represent the mainstream users. Most people would need software that was dirt-simple to use to even begin considering doing these things. And even then, there'll be the "I don't want to think about it, I just want it to work" crowd that wouldn't want to hassle with converting their purchased library into XXX format.
Even among the technically inclined, there would be resistance.
For example, did you convert your CD's to mp3 when that became the "standard?" Did you reconvert to ogg? Or FLAC? Too much trouble, right?
For most people, just "rebuying it" would be the "lazy tax" they'd be willing to pay.
Sure, there will always be ways around it for those so inclined. I just don't think the majority of the people fall into that category, hence, there'd still be a market when a new format comes out.
Digital distribution is the end of the gravy train for them; no more surge of customers buying the same content every time they change the format.
That isn't necessarily true.
Assuming you would discount the Rhapsody/Napster models of "pay subscription for unlimited access" and continue to sell music centered around media/format, there is still plenty of room for these companies to resell the same content to users over and over.
For example, you might have purchased the mp3. But, what about purchasing it again as FLAC? Or, after there is the nextgen lossless that is smaller than FLAC? Or perhaps the "extra special edition" with embedded video?
There are many "value-add" features that can be found to cause a consumer to repurchase; this is wholly independent of the format (digital vs physical).
All digital does is decrease the costs of distribution. So, profit margins can still be maintained, even if the price of the product drops.
And if their point was to try to change an election, they would need a large group of people to be in on it to guarantee their desired outcome, and the larger the group, the more likely their fraud would be to be exposed.
More to your point, if you could organize that many people to swing the vote a certain way, couldn't you have just gotten those same people to vote your way at the start without any fraud?
I work for a major corporation and assist with the email policy.
For AOL, they required only two things from us, and we haven't run into problems:
1) Publish an SPF record (they were pushing it big-time). I'd recommend a loose policy that states "if it doesn't pass the SPF check, make your own decision" (which is the ?all option).
2) Establish a complaint/opt-out email box and process the messages that come from AOL.
Of course, there are vultures out there looking to make a buck by selling everyone a solution that is of questionable effectiveness.
We've resisted paying the "marketing tax" and haven't seen a drop-off in deliverability. If more businesses refuse, then this trend will die off. I hope it goes the same way as the "linux license" that a business could purchase from the SCO; let it be known to be tantamount to extortion!;)
Errr... that description makes the "solution" look strikingly like an appliance with bridged ethernet connections (so, it can't be addressed directly) running snort with a rule set that targets P2P-type traffic, no?
If it's so "basic" to the brain then why is it the exception in human society and not the rule?
Methinks you're nothing thinking of this broadly enough.
Family units tend to be altruistic; parents usually put the needs of their off-spring ahead of their own.
Just because it doesn't exist at a more intellectual macro level (why doesn't Bill Gates give all his money to poor people?) doesn't mean it isn't a core part of human interaction.
would you rather have uncapped bandwidth with a transfer cap, or capped bandwidth with no transfer cap?
That's an easy one: better to cap transfer speed than to cap amount of data (explicitly). Pose the question this way: would you rather get everything you want now, with the risk of not being able to get anything until "next month," or have a constant stream flowing (albeit more slowly) that you can turn off and re-purpose later?
If I "made the mistake" of downloading CentOS DVD's 10 times in the first week of the month (assuming that would max out my transfer), then I'd be unable to get to even static content later (because I exceeded my "max bits per month"). But, taking 30 days to download the DVD once doesn't limit me in getting to that static content. And if I can't wait 30 days? Then I have alternatives for large media files/content.
I think very few people willing to spend money on an HDTV are going to using the built-in speakers on it.
Ahhh... but you forget that they're trying to push everyone towards HDTV. So, all those people that don't have a home theater system but do have a TV are going to (eventually) have an HDTV; these are the people that will want a drop-in replacement and HDTV via the air (free stuff) or (maybe) cable/satellite.
For typing up an inter-office memo in Word, most likely.
I agree with the rest of your sentiment, but whole-heartedly disagree with your opening line. The summary implies (incorrectly) a 95% accuracy rate for speech and 93% accuracy rate for typing are comparable when they're not.
If I mistype something:
I must leeve early to visit my aunt.
It is still understandable. But, if voice-recognition gets it wrong:
I muscle eve early to visit my ant (I'm from the Midwest).
It won't be as easily understood by the person reading it.
Machines just aren't very good at getting the context of what we're saying correct. That's because it requires a deeper understanding of intention and not just inflection/tone of voice. Spell-checkers suffer from this still today... and that's when someone has typed (no inflection/accent/anything) in the content (insert your favorite heterographic homophone example here!).
In terms of identifying and correcting mistakes after the fact, voice-recognition errors are more difficult than typed ones to correct. And with the accuracy floating around 95%, it still isn't accurate enough to supplant the keyboard. 8/
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The sweet spot right now seems to be around 16 or 32 Mb. You can get an 16 Mb flash drive for about $150, but 32 Mb is more than twice the price.
;)
;)
Can't... resist...
1999 called... they want their flash pricing back.
Or, if you'd like, I'd be willing to sell you some 32Mb flash cards for, shall we say, $100 a piece?
(Sorry.)
man, I've got thousands of books I bought used and I'm planning on getting an eBook reader in 2008. I don't get your statement at all.
I think the GP's post was intimating this question: once you get an eBook reader, how many used books do you think you'll continue to purchase?
By moving to eBook, there is no resale because of DRM issues; everyone will have to buy their own "new copy."
Don't forget steroids[r], holoduke[h], shrink ray, and laser trip mines.
;)
Ooo... you're right! Forgot about the laser trip mines! Favorite trick there was to booby-trap anytime there was a bathroom ammo store; if you were quick enough, you could plant the bomb in the stall and close the door (obscuring its view). Opening the door was enough to set it off.
Of course, it wasn't enough to kill someone (as the door acted as a partial shield), so you'd leave bombs on the doors NEXT to the one with the ammo, so they'd detonate once the primary went off. 8)
And as others have commented, most of my multi-player was done via modem... direct dialing up a buddy and blasting the crap out of each other.
Hmmm... maybe it is time to bring the game back up for a little fun. And one would be hard-pressed to find hardware you CAN'T play it on these days!
The truth for me is that I have still not played a FPS that was more FUN than Duke3D...
I second the sentiment!
All you need to do is enjoy the all-out fun of shooting an RPG into a teleporter or, and I so wish SOMEONE would reintroduce it, leave a bunch of pipe-bombs out in multi-player to appreciate just how much fun this game really was.
Running up to try and pick up a pipe-bomb before the other guy(s) detonated... what a great concept.
Any message with a honeypot as any recipient is spam. 100% accurate.
Not true. All it takes is some "vigilante" to seed the honeypot address by signing up (ie, choosing to opt-in) for marketing messages from a legitimate, opt-in-only site; this completely destroys the line between "harvest and blast" scum and (egads, I can't believe I'm going to describe it this way) "value added, opt-in marketing" that some people want to receive. I don't mind getting the ThinkGeek marketing letter once a month or two (because I'm interested in the junk they sell)... but I wouldn't expect everyone to feel the same way, nor would I want someone else deciding it is spam, feeding it into a honeypot on purpose (by signing up for the newsletter with a honeypot address), then having it blocked for me.
Would a device like this work on someone who doesn't know how to speak english or better yet a baby that speaks no language at all
The answer is "Yes" (but not the way you intended) and "No."
It would work for a non-English speaker IFF that speaker was trying to speak his native language; what they've detected is the brain's intention to produce a SOUND; so, by extension, the interpretation is producing a phonetic representation of the sounds in the person's head.
It isn't interpreting the concept of the sound (someone isn't thinking of a cat and the word "cat" is produced). It should be possible for someone speaking any language (including a made-up one) to use this system.
For a baby (who has no word associated with the object), it wouldn't provide any use... unless your conjecture is that a baby doesn't speak because the muscles in her throat aren't strong enough to form words, but her brain knows what sounds would be made. Then... sure, it would work. 8)
It doesn't have to be expensive to be "wasteful."
Put it this way: would the effort/computing power/research dollars be better spent curing cancer or increasing human lifespan than finding intelligent life before we have the capability of contacting it back?
It is like saving all your money to buy a Stradivarius violin but not bothering to spend it on lessons learning how to play; first things first... is finding intelligent life a "first" type of activity?
I can see why you're offended.
With a handle such as "necro2607," you must be one of the undead insulted by this fiction about your heredity.
Zombies are all around us. I see them all the time working at the local movie theaters taking tickets, making telemarketing calls about vitamin supplements, or even working diligently in bureaucratic jobs (such as secretaries in college financial-aid offices).
Be dead! Be proud!
...and I really have trouble understanding why AV companies should be the ones to come up with 'signatures' to detect this stuff...
Because when your only tool is a hammer, EVERYTHING is a nail.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Ummm... it is DESIGNED to kill people.
What stops you from using encryption? Encrypt all your traffic.
What stops you? All the people who say stupid things like "I don't care if the government watches what I'm doing... I'm not doing anything illegal and they'll catch more bad guys!"
You need the complicity of these people and their willingness to encrypt stuff that doesn't really need to be encrypted (say, like google searches for stock information).
But, let's say that one was able to get a bunch of Joe Sixpacks to start encrypting traffic that wasn't of some deemed dubious nature. All it would take is a threat letter from an ISP to the effect of: "We see that you're sending encrypted packets on our network consistently. We have a policy against such activity, so you must not encrypt it or you'll be banned!"
Can an ISP really ban encrypted traffic?
No.
Might Joe Sixpack believe it?
Sure.
He'd turn it off (see previous erroneous logic about giving up privacy) and leave only the "trouble-makers" who could be dropped without a loss of revenue. Heck, the ISP might even make money from the MPAA for such actions.
Hmmm... re-reading this response, I think I have a tinge too much "tin foil hat" mixed in, but I think the general gist stands: it would be nearly impossible to get average people to collude without strong motivation to do so, and I just don't see from where that motivation would stem. 8/
There is no financial reason why a provider can provide unlimited voice calls but must charge $0.15 for an SMS message.
First, I wanted to say that I agree with your post. Just playing Devil's Advocate, here...
It is possible that they charge for the SMS not because it COSTS more, but because:
a) It is accepted by the customer
b) By charging it, they can off-set the costs of the cell calls, so they can offer "free" minutes to more people.
Basically, they could be shifting the costs of running the network as a whole around to people who mind less paying the fee from people who'd jump ship if forced to absorb the cost.
why can't someone just come along after and adjust the bits and bytes again in some random manner to effectively erase the watermark? I mean, if they can't read the bits and bytes that they put on the media because they've been altered, they wouldn't be able to track it, and the watermark would pretty effectively be broken.
Because, in that case, possession of such a file could be used to prove you had either gotten it from an illegal source or, at minimum, are behaving in a suspicious manner.
I would imagine that the argument the RIAA/MPAA would make would be that having files with altered watermarks would be akin to having guns with the serial numbers filed off (hyperbole purposefully included): even if you can't detect the origins of the "merchandise," just having it may be enough to get you in trouble.
"Why do you have content that has been altered so one CAN'T trace it back to the original purchase?"
We are a single piece of plankton in a very large ocean. It might take a while...
You mean... assuming we can avoid the Humpback whale and that other civilizations have done the same. 8)
By having a ubiquitous digital format (mp3), one group of people can't be the gatekeeper of who can sell*.
In theory, I agree with you; digital distribution levels the playing field so that one doesn't need a single controlling source.
While you disparage ITunes (I am not an ITunes customer), there's a reason why it works and the theory of "no gatekeeper" fails: people, by and large, can't be bothered to do their own legwork to find stuff they want.
What does ITunes sell, really? They sell access to a library of music. They sell ease of download and use (basically... let's not nitpick how well the software really works!). They sell "get everything you need HERE, cheap and easy!"
It is because of this that, while not explicitly ruled out, the "gatekeepers" that would keep the RIAA in their profit stream exist.
Independent bands can sell their music online without the middleman. Yes! And this is a good thing!
Who's looking for those bands? How does one find out about them?
Wide-spread marketing is what they lack. And, unfortunately, without more money and a "booming voice" (like what the RIAA supposedly supplies to the artists), the self-producing artist won't get onto the general public's radar the same way RIAA-fueled marketing could get them. Will there be exceptions? Yup. But, for the majority of artists, it'd be local bucks, not international mega-bucks.
As I've posted before, we're talking about average people... people without the skills or interests to find stuff for slightly less money than they can get by going to the super-mega-music store that would be RIAA-backed.
This is why the RIAA can still maintain its profit margins; this is only about how long it'll take the RIAA to understand digital distribution, and it is starting to look like "they're getting it" (ie, Napster, Rhapsody, ITunes, etc.).
You'd purchase it once in FLAC and then convert it to mp3 and next generation lossless format yourself. Why buy it again?
I wouldn't. You wouldn't.
But, I suspect we don't represent the mainstream users. Most people would need software that was dirt-simple to use to even begin considering doing these things. And even then, there'll be the "I don't want to think about it, I just want it to work" crowd that wouldn't want to hassle with converting their purchased library into XXX format.
Even among the technically inclined, there would be resistance.
For example, did you convert your CD's to mp3 when that became the "standard?" Did you reconvert to ogg? Or FLAC?
Too much trouble, right?
For most people, just "rebuying it" would be the "lazy tax" they'd be willing to pay.
Sure, there will always be ways around it for those so inclined. I just don't think the majority of the people fall into that category, hence, there'd still be a market when a new format comes out.
Digital distribution is the end of the gravy train for them; no more surge of customers buying the same content every time they change the format.
That isn't necessarily true.
Assuming you would discount the Rhapsody/Napster models of "pay subscription for unlimited access" and continue to sell music centered around media/format, there is still plenty of room for these companies to resell the same content to users over and over.
For example, you might have purchased the mp3. But, what about purchasing it again as FLAC? Or, after there is the nextgen lossless that is smaller than FLAC? Or perhaps the "extra special edition" with embedded video?
There are many "value-add" features that can be found to cause a consumer to repurchase; this is wholly independent of the format (digital vs physical).
All digital does is decrease the costs of distribution. So, profit margins can still be maintained, even if the price of the product drops.
And if their point was to try to change an election, they would need a large group of people to be in on it to guarantee their desired outcome, and the larger the group, the more likely their fraud would be to be exposed.
More to your point, if you could organize that many people to swing the vote a certain way, couldn't you have just gotten those same people to vote your way at the start without any fraud?
I work for a major corporation and assist with the email policy.
;)
For AOL, they required only two things from us, and we haven't run into problems:
1) Publish an SPF record (they were pushing it big-time). I'd recommend a loose policy that states "if it doesn't pass the SPF check, make your own decision" (which is the ?all option).
2) Establish a complaint/opt-out email box and process the messages that come from AOL.
Of course, there are vultures out there looking to make a buck by selling everyone a solution that is of questionable effectiveness.
We've resisted paying the "marketing tax" and haven't seen a drop-off in deliverability.
If more businesses refuse, then this trend will die off.
I hope it goes the same way as the "linux license" that a business could purchase from the SCO; let it be known to be tantamount to extortion!
Errr... that description makes the "solution" look strikingly like an appliance with bridged ethernet connections (so, it can't be addressed directly) running snort with a rule set that targets P2P-type traffic, no?
If it's so "basic" to the brain then why is it the exception in human society and not the rule?
Methinks you're nothing thinking of this broadly enough.
Family units tend to be altruistic; parents usually put the needs of their off-spring ahead of their own.
Just because it doesn't exist at a more intellectual macro level (why doesn't Bill Gates give all his money to poor people?) doesn't mean it isn't a core part of human interaction.
The original posting was about streaming media... so, I responded within that context (my bad for not being explicit enough).
;)
I suppose it would simply be ideal to offer consumers the choice... and offering free parkas in hell at the same time.
would you rather have uncapped bandwidth with a transfer cap, or capped bandwidth with no transfer cap?
That's an easy one: better to cap transfer speed than to cap amount of data (explicitly). Pose the question this way: would you rather get everything you want now, with the risk of not being able to get anything until "next month," or have a constant stream flowing (albeit more slowly) that you can turn off and re-purpose later?
If I "made the mistake" of downloading CentOS DVD's 10 times in the first week of the month (assuming that would max out my transfer), then I'd be unable to get to even static content later (because I exceeded my "max bits per month"). But, taking 30 days to download the DVD once doesn't limit me in getting to that static content. And if I can't wait 30 days? Then I have alternatives for large media files/content.
Easy choice.
I think very few people willing to spend money on an HDTV are going to using the built-in speakers on it.
Ahhh... but you forget that they're trying to push everyone towards HDTV. So, all those people that don't have a home theater system but do have a TV are going to (eventually) have an HDTV; these are the people that will want a drop-in replacement and HDTV via the air (free stuff) or (maybe) cable/satellite.
For typing up an inter-office memo in Word, most likely.
I agree with the rest of your sentiment, but whole-heartedly disagree with your opening line.
The summary implies (incorrectly) a 95% accuracy rate for speech and 93% accuracy rate for typing are comparable when they're not.
If I mistype something:
I must leeve early to visit my aunt.
It is still understandable. But, if voice-recognition gets it wrong:
I muscle eve early to visit my ant (I'm from the Midwest).
It won't be as easily understood by the person reading it.
Machines just aren't very good at getting the context of what we're saying correct. That's because it requires a deeper understanding of intention and not just inflection/tone of voice. Spell-checkers suffer from this still today... and that's when someone has typed (no inflection/accent/anything) in the content (insert your favorite heterographic homophone example here!).
In terms of identifying and correcting mistakes after the fact, voice-recognition errors are more difficult than typed ones to correct. And with the accuracy floating around 95%, it still isn't accurate enough to supplant the keyboard. 8/