In the UK the Data Protection Act (well, an extension to it under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 IIRC) specifies that you have the right to request any information that may be held about you from any data controller - this includes obtaining any CCTV footage you appear in.
This is rarely used unfortunately, especially given the density of cameras here: I live in a fairly small town (Glossop, Derbyshire) and there are 8 cameras on the main street alone. I commute to work in Manchester by train and, between home and my office, I must pass about 30 cameras.
What makes me wonder is where on earth he gets his money. Don't the publishers realise what an utter liability he is? I mean the man is singlehandedly responsible for some of the worst games in computing history, who in the name of Great Cthulhu funds the loonie?
It makes me furious that people (and I use the term loosely) like Smart can run around throwing money at things when real developers, software houses that have real potential and vision, are driven to the wall by financial pressures.
Hmm.. given that Slashdot is frequented by some of the Flame Warriors of Old, from the Great Usenet Days before the dawn of the web, I really doubt even Smart could flame/. into submission.
Re:Bad music?
on
TMBG on DRM
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Economics. They don't believe that the quality of the music justifies the price the labels demand for it so they use a supply mechanism that provides the music at the price they believe the music deserves.
How many times have you or your friends waited for an averageish game to drop to bargain bin prices and then bought it because you didn't want to pay the initial retail price? Same idea.
If the music lables produced things people really, really wanted and they have high enough perceived value to justify the price then they would sell more, but in the absence of this and in the presence of cheaper supply mechanisms they aren't going to get anywhere.
(adjusted for whichever ftp server they use) on a regular basis to track downloads. Yeah, you might get duplicates, false starts and aborts but it's better than guesswork..
Then you plan for that and include it in the schedule. If it "always happens", then you'd better always include it in the schedule.
I direct you to Hofstadter's Law and the inevitable conclusion that, if you attempt to include the unforseen in your schedule, eventually you are going to be working on a project with an infinite budget requirement and no deadline.
Keeping your goals in front of you and thinking of the next step you need to accomplish makes even intimidating projects seem much easier.
Except when you end up in a situation like me: I have to organise the things I'm doing on parallel priority stacks where each entry in the stack is a task or subtask which may itself contain one or more queues representing tasks required to achieve that task. The top level stacks are arranged in groups of three - primary and secondary stacks which I can jump between when I hit a block on the other and a tertiary holding stack for anything that gets pushed off the bottom of the primary or secondary into an on-hold state. I have multiple banks of these parallel stacks - usually two or three bands of three stacks, I have had five before now - each one for a different place or project stream (so I have a couple for work, one for home). The sheer amount I have on those stacks tends to scare people, let alone what some of it actually is.
It may not surprise you to learn that I haven't had a holiday since Christmas and I won't have one until October...
Hmmm... yesterday I installed Ground Control 2, it installed okay, ran, started the tutorial and it froze dead. Apparently I need the new drivers for my card. So I go and grab the new drivers, install them, GC2 works.. So later I play Thief 2... only I don't because it won't work with the new drivers until Ichange a directive to a text file to tell it to ignore the texture memory use. And don't even get me started on the amount of messing around it takes to get Thief 3 running properly.
It's going to be a long time before it reaches that point. Here's a project for you: grab two pieces of paper and a pen, at the top of one put "Number of people who know about $FARCE", replacing the variable with some recent government or corporate goings-on that/.ers know about - say the SCO fiasco, or software patents in Europe. Now on the other put "Number of people who understand $FARCE". Go out into the busiest place you can find in town and start asking people if they know and understand the issue. You'll be lucky to get a handful of people on the first sheet and only a couple on the second (seriously, try it - you don't realise just how bad it is until you do.)
Nothing is going to happen for a significant amount of time because people just don't know or don't care - it doesn't have any direct influence on them, so why should they? We live in a society where if you're okay, sod the rest - one of the many side effects of this is that people just don't show any interest in something unless you can demonstrate clear, simple, direct proof that it will have a negative effect on their lives. Otherwise, as long a they get a wage, can see their soaps, get to drive a rediculously oversized car and have the rubbish taken away each week the vast majority couldn't care less.
And until things really start to cut into their world, or someone manages to reconfigure society, nothing is going to change. And good luck trying media campaigns to do anythign about it, guess which industry is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the status quo....
In the future we will have to realise that it can be our business if we care, but no matter how weird it is, it's all right and if we don't like it, we don't have to watch.
Four words: Not Going To Happen.
There has always been and will always be people who think that "my way is the only right way", "what I don't think is right is sinful" or "anyone who does not believe/behave/talk the same way as me is Evil and Should Be Re-educated Or Killed". Intolerance is part of how human societies operate, it isn't going anywhere.
Nah, that's just a cover story to prevent people from guarding themselves against the intense psychotronic programming they do to air travellers in planes.
(Yes, I'm being silly. They can't do it in planes. That's what check-in lounges are for.)
A-bloody-men. I've spent the last week doing a lot of cursing of IE for exactly those problems. I've got to the point where I'm wondering if it'll just be faster to make two sites and serve the one that complies to ancient standards and needs massive incantations to load alphaed PNGs just for %^&*ing IE users...
Yes. If you read the main site for the petition you'll learn that the original Thief editor - dromed - was released as a direct result of a similar petition.
Price isn't the only factor involved. For example, I could go out and by a 5.1 or better system right now but I don't, in fact I only ever use headphones.
Why? Well for a start, housemates would be less than happy about me playing half my games at ridiculous times in the morning on a surround sound system. Then there is the fact that, with thow machines in the room, the fan noise would make any low volume sounds inaudible. I'm certain I'm not the only person here in this situation. Yeah, I'd love to have a good 5.1 setup but until I get a soundproof room with watercooled machines getting one would be pointless.
Some explanation in order - the program doesn't just kill them outright: it has two threshold levels (warn and error, both can be set at runtime) if the student uses over 90% CPU time in 20 seconds it trips an error, over 50% in 20 seconds tripss a warning, for example. When either of those levels is exceeded it is logged and they get a message on their tty (if possible) telling them about it. They are also shown a log of hits when they log in. The students can exceed either level a number of times - say 10 warnings and 5 errors after which it is killed. If students genuinely have to do very intensive processes then they can ask us to add them to an ignore list while they are doing it. I'll probably add options to renice, limit memory and other things eventually, this was a quick hack. The problem wiht ulimit is that it does the limiting but doesn't give the users sensible information about it - I need to give them easy to understand error messages about what they've done wrong.
I don't know how "real world" you'd class a University, but there are two machines I have to help out with here that students have access to for their Bioinformatics DL assignments.
It already has a program running on it that I had to develop to detect processes using too much processor time and kill them (with warnings, messages printe dout when students log in and so on). I'll probably have to upgrade it to do the same with memory now that we have one genius who seems to be finding a way to consume 1.8Gb of memory.
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It's keeping them locke dup in the office all the time slaving away over 3D modelling packages. Bound to send them a bit odd after a while.
Free the Modellers!!
In the UK the Data Protection Act (well, an extension to it under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 IIRC) specifies that you have the right to request any information that may be held about you from any data controller - this includes obtaining any CCTV footage you appear in.
This is rarely used unfortunately, especially given the density of cameras here: I live in a fairly small town (Glossop, Derbyshire) and there are 8 cameras on the main street alone. I commute to work in Manchester by train and, between home and my office, I must pass about 30 cameras.
What makes me wonder is where on earth he gets his money. Don't the publishers realise what an utter liability he is? I mean the man is singlehandedly responsible for some of the worst games in computing history, who in the name of Great Cthulhu funds the loonie?
It makes me furious that people (and I use the term loosely) like Smart can run around throwing money at things when real developers, software houses that have real potential and vision, are driven to the wall by financial pressures.
Bah.
Hmm.. given that Slashdot is frequented by some of the Flame Warriors of Old, from the Great Usenet Days before the dawn of the web, I really doubt even Smart could flame /. into submission.
Economics. They don't believe that the quality of the music justifies the price the labels demand for it so they use a supply mechanism that provides the music at the price they believe the music deserves.
How many times have you or your friends waited for an averageish game to drop to bargain bin prices and then bought it because you didn't want to pay the initial retail price? Same idea.
If the music lables produced things people really, really wanted and they have high enough perceived value to justify the price then they would sell more, but in the absence of this and in the presence of cheaper supply mechanisms they aren't going to get anywhere.
Quite amusing in a way that people bring up examples of hideously badly written hacks when someone suggests something like this.
Now consider what could be done if someone who actually knew how to program properly tried it.
It's even easier than that: they have the server logs so it isn't exactly rocket science to do
/var/log/proftpd/proftpd.log
grep -c "linuxq3apoint-1.32b-3.x86.run"
(adjusted for whichever ftp server they use) on a regular basis to track downloads. Yeah, you might get duplicates, false starts and aborts but it's better than guesswork..
Then you plan for that and include it in the schedule. If it "always happens", then you'd better always include it in the schedule.
I direct you to Hofstadter's Law and the inevitable conclusion that, if you attempt to include the unforseen in your schedule, eventually you are going to be working on a project with an infinite budget requirement and no deadline.
Why would a site that uses adverts, and is owned by a company that makes money off web adverts, tell you how to avoid them?
isn't watered-down drivel with some special effects thrown in.
Yet, Solverlock. Yet.
Keeping your goals in front of you and thinking of the next step you need to accomplish makes even intimidating projects seem much easier.
Except when you end up in a situation like me: I have to organise the things I'm doing on parallel priority stacks where each entry in the stack is a task or subtask which may itself contain one or more queues representing tasks required to achieve that task. The top level stacks are arranged in groups of three - primary and secondary stacks which I can jump between when I hit a block on the other and a tertiary holding stack for anything that gets pushed off the bottom of the primary or secondary into an on-hold state. I have multiple banks of these parallel stacks - usually two or three bands of three stacks, I have had five before now - each one for a different place or project stream (so I have a couple for work, one for home). The sheer amount I have on those stacks tends to scare people, let alone what some of it actually is.
It may not surprise you to learn that I haven't had a holiday since Christmas and I won't have one until October...
With Windows, you put in the CD, and it works.
Hmmm... yesterday I installed Ground Control 2, it installed okay, ran, started the tutorial and it froze dead. Apparently I need the new drivers for my card. So I go and grab the new drivers, install them, GC2 works.. So later I play Thief 2... only I don't because it won't work with the new drivers until Ichange a directive to a text file to tell it to ignore the texture memory use. And don't even get me started on the amount of messing around it takes to get Thief 3 running properly.
That's "it works" eh?
It's going to be a long time before it reaches that point. Here's a project for you: grab two pieces of paper and a pen, at the top of one put "Number of people who know about $FARCE", replacing the variable with some recent government or corporate goings-on that /.ers know about - say the SCO fiasco, or software patents in Europe. Now on the other put "Number of people who understand $FARCE". Go out into the busiest place you can find in town and start asking people if they know and understand the issue. You'll be lucky to get a handful of people on the first sheet and only a couple on the second (seriously, try it - you don't realise just how bad it is until you do.)
Nothing is going to happen for a significant amount of time because people just don't know or don't care - it doesn't have any direct influence on them, so why should they? We live in a society where if you're okay, sod the rest - one of the many side effects of this is that people just don't show any interest in something unless you can demonstrate clear, simple, direct proof that it will have a negative effect on their lives. Otherwise, as long a they get a wage, can see their soaps, get to drive a rediculously oversized car and have the rubbish taken away each week the vast majority couldn't care less.
And until things really start to cut into their world, or someone manages to reconfigure society, nothing is going to change. And good luck trying media campaigns to do anythign about it, guess which industry is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the status quo....
Is still a satire and reflects on real life.
So close a refelection that Margaret Thatcher once called it "[a] closely observed portrayal of what goes on in the corridors of power".
I often say that Yes Minister would be even more hilarious if I didn't know it was actually the sort of thing that goes on.
In the future we will have to realise that it can be our business if we care, but no matter how weird it is, it's all right and if we don't like it, we don't have to watch.
Four words: Not Going To Happen.
There has always been and will always be people who think that "my way is the only right way", "what I don't think is right is sinful" or "anyone who does not believe/behave/talk the same way as me is Evil and Should Be Re-educated Or Killed". Intolerance is part of how human societies operate, it isn't going anywhere.
Nah, that's just a cover story to prevent people from guarding themselves against the intense psychotronic programming they do to air travellers in planes.
(Yes, I'm being silly. They can't do it in planes. That's what check-in lounges are for.)
I have no problems with spammers ending up back on the streets. As long as it's in the care of shadey guys in trenchcoats selling organs...
A-bloody-men. I've spent the last week doing a lot of cursing of IE for exactly those problems. I've got to the point where I'm wondering if it'll just be faster to make two sites and serve the one that complies to ancient standards and needs massive incantations to load alphaed PNGs just for %^&*ing IE users...
There's a lot of help out there for that - try Dromed Central and Komag's Introductory Tutorial. There's also the Editors' Guild at TTLG.
Yes. If you read the main site for the petition you'll learn that the original Thief editor - dromed - was released as a direct result of a similar petition.
DRM IS NOT the same as censorship: it is the control of intellectual property.
However, controlling "intellecutal property" is an excellent form of censorship.
Can't be Gaulish, otherwise he'd be called Bradpittix. According to the suffixes used in Asterix he'd have to be an Indian.
Price isn't the only factor involved. For example, I could go out and by a 5.1 or better system right now but I don't, in fact I only ever use headphones.
Why? Well for a start, housemates would be less than happy about me playing half my games at ridiculous times in the morning on a surround sound system. Then there is the fact that, with thow machines in the room, the fan noise would make any low volume sounds inaudible. I'm certain I'm not the only person here in this situation. Yeah, I'd love to have a good 5.1 setup but until I get a soundproof room with watercooled machines getting one would be pointless.
Until then, it's headphones.
Some explanation in order - the program doesn't just kill them outright: it has two threshold levels (warn and error, both can be set at runtime) if the student uses over 90% CPU time in 20 seconds it trips an error, over 50% in 20 seconds tripss a warning, for example. When either of those levels is exceeded it is logged and they get a message on their tty (if possible) telling them about it. They are also shown a log of hits when they log in. The students can exceed either level a number of times - say 10 warnings and 5 errors after which it is killed. If students genuinely have to do very intensive processes then they can ask us to add them to an ignore list while they are doing it. I'll probably add options to renice, limit memory and other things eventually, this was a quick hack. The problem wiht ulimit is that it does the limiting but doesn't give the users sensible information about it - I need to give them easy to understand error messages about what they've done wrong.
I don't know how "real world" you'd class a University, but there are two machines I have to help out with here that students have access to for their Bioinformatics DL assignments.
It already has a program running on it that I had to develop to detect processes using too much processor time and kill them (with warnings, messages printe dout when students log in and so on). I'll probably have to upgrade it to do the same with memory now that we have one genius who seems to be finding a way to consume 1.8Gb of memory.
Now I need to get kernels compiling, excuse me...