Just for reference, we had an article only a few weeks ago about how a DDoS attack shut down a hospital's computer network. Luckily, no one was hurt as a result and the hospital was ready to fall back on less technological methods, but the potential for harm is there.
Since this will presumably be an Ethernet card, the only thing I could think of would be if they had their card designed to backoff in a non-standard way (for instance, never picking a backoff timer over half of the standard maximum). On networks with light or medium load, that could reduce lag a little bit for the gaming machine, at the expense of other machines on the network, and it wouldn't be the first time people violated a standard to improve performance.
Of course, if you had two or more of these cards on the same network, or the network was heavily loaded, this could actually increase lag. But that would just mean you need to buy more cards!
I took a look at SiteAdvisor and I actually think it'll be useful for me, as an experienced user, as well, surprisingly. I don't think I'll have much use for the red X junk, I know not to install random crap on my computer, but their analysis of downloads could be quite useful. You can pull up the list of all the modifications a program makes to your system, even for green files. If you ever wanted to know exactly what registry keys Google Desktop adds, for instance, you can just look it up.
Just try to live without Visa or MC. Can't rent a car, can't get a hotel room.
That's actually just what a lot of places would like you to believe, since credit cards make things a whole lot easier for them. Most of them do have a cash-only alternative (usually involving an extra deposit) that you can use if you can convince them that (a) that's the only way they're going to get your business, and (b) you're not trying to rip them off.
"The spirit of discovery is one of our national strengths," Bush said before handing out the 2004 National Medals of Science and Technology in the White House's East Room.
If I buy 1 PC, 2 PCs or 10 PCs, I may never use them to watch BBC content and as such I'm paying for fresh air in effect.
That argument apparently hasn't affected them for TVs, since even if you never watch the BBC you need to pay for a TV license, so I can't imagine it'll have much effect if they decide to require PC licenses.
Are the requirements for Microsoft repairing computer-disabling software bugs the same as, say, General Motor's obligations for repairing automobile-disabling engineering mistakes (e.g. recalls)?
No, they're not. Between current software liability law (or rather, the lack thereof) and EULAs, Microsoft doesn't have any legal obligation to fix anything, let alone let you know that a fix might be available.
It appears there is a conflict at Redmond. In one case they are fixing a bug which has yet to be discovered, in another they are fixing a bug which has existed for around nine months.
It's about time they came up with a proper strategy other than randomly fixing the bugs they want to fix.
It looks unusual from the outside, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have a proper strategy. Some bugs are easy to fix, some are difficult. Some are more important, some are less important. Some are likely to cause software to stop working, some aren't. Since there's no way to know just what was involved in each bug at this point (and we'll probably never know what the source looks like as it relates to the bugs), just because it looks funny doesn't mean they're not prioritizing properly.
Why should any company be forced to reveal their trade secrets?
What next? Game developers will be forced to make their source code available to I can get a character editor to work 100% properly? Is Blizzard going to be forced to reveal their source code so that we can write a better version of Gear?
An application is a bit different than an operating system. Operating systems perform a privileged and vital role on a computer, far beyond any application program. While a lack of compatibility with an application is completely reasonable, being unable to interact with one's operating system as one wishes is a whole other matter.
If a private convention center wants to regulate clothing, they can. A government-run convention center (subsidized by taxpayers usually) should stick with the law that controls their powers.
It's not the convention center that's regulating the clothing, it's the (private) company that puts together E3. They're saying that if you want to be a part of their convention, you need to follow a set of rules, of which this is one, so it seems entirely appropriate that they have that power. The fact that they may be using a publicly-owned shouldn't infringe on their ability to choose the rules by which exhibitors participate.
You can buy thumb drives that have encryption software on them. They have two partitions, one that's unencrypted (and contains the driver that does the encryption/decryption, so you can install it anywhere) and one that's encrypted. Of course, usually they only provide a driver for Windows, and I don't honestly know how good the encryption is, but there are options out there.
On the legality side, I am beginning to think we are going to see someone eventually go to court and beat one of the game companies. Even if that doesn't happen for a long time these companies have already proven they cannot win versus the resourcefulness of the sellers using the internet. All they can do is hit the dumb ones and make a few big hits but I would susepct 99% of the trading goes unimpeded.
For my personal view, I believe the eventual resolution will be that paying for an account is like paying for a concert ticket. A concert-goer does not own the music at the concert, but he owns the right to "use" it. Absent any laws to the contrary, he can also sell that concert ticket to another person for however much money he wants. If a concert is canceled, the people putting on the concert aren't liable for the market value of the tickets, they're just liable for the original ticket price.
If that was the same design put in place for MMOs, what we'd have is the company would own all of the IP involved in the game, but the user would have the ability to sell his access rights (which would include virtual goods/currency or accounts). Any changes or removals of items would only make the company liable for the "purchase price" of those items (which is nothing).
That's exactly what I was thinking. Actually, if you go a bit further, you can wonder how many satellites you need to destroy before the debris end up destroying even more satellites create a chain reaction. I'm sure I've seen people research that, but I don't know the result. With the number of satellites up there, I would expect just a few would be enough.
You probably couldn't do it. Remember, space is big. You could almost fit another three earths in between us and a geostationary satellite. Putting enough debris in orbit to set up a chain reaction would be almost impossible, especially since collision with debris will disable a satellite, but it won't break it into a bunch of little pieces like an explosive would.
What the US is really worried about is an increase in debris that would cause the loss of at least one satellite. Currently, there's some crap up there, but not a whole lot of it. We've never lost a satellite to it to my knowledge. If you were to increase it, the vast majority of our satellites would still be safe, but every once in a while we'd start losing them. At tens of millions of dollars and a couple years per satellite, losing one from debris is one too many, especially if that loss comes at an inopportune moment.
Mentally separating high-tech weapons from the systems used to guide them seems like a stretch. If a weapon is guided by a satellite, and cannot fnction with reasonable accuracy without that data, then it seems to me that the satellite is part of the weapon.
Just to point out, spy satellites don't function as guidance systems, GPS satellites do. And I feel fairly confidant people aren't going to call for the classification of GPS as a weapon.
How many nations put satellites in space in geosynchronous orbit perfectly above their land? That's a serious question that I don't know the answer to, I'm hoping someone else does.
Nobody that I know of. Satellites are only geostationary on the equator, geosynchronous satellites elsewhere "move" north-south, and I don't believe Brazil or Indonesia are operating any such satellites (but I could be wrong).
And at what point do you think it's fair to say airspace ends?
By treaty, outer space is currently not allowed to be owned by any nation, and the international boundary of space is generally recognized as 100 km.
I wonder if there's some reason that books aren't as easily obtainable. Perhaps shipping things into the area is very expensive, and a textbook (or, more likely, a set of several textbooks on different subjects) would weigh a lot more and be a lot bigger than a single PDA, and thus cost a lot more to ship. It's also possible that books have to be replaced often there for some reason (they get used for kindling, insects eat them, it's hard to keep them safe from the rain, whatever), so a PDA might have a longer lifetime if properly taken care of.
From what I've heard, Linux and other open-source software is also preferred because of its ability to respond to deadlines. If you're two months from release and an obscure bug in your OS interferes with your rendering, you can't rely on the OS provider to get you a fix in a timely manner, especially if it's a bug nobody else encounters. If it's an open-source system, though, you can fix it yourself.
They're only comparing the years 2000 and 2004, it's not like they're comparing 1980 and 2004. I entered college in 2000, and I've had a home computer for most of my life. Comparing my experience with my incoming class to that of the freshmen when I was graduating, I don't think there's a perceivable difference between how good they think they are. There are always the self-proclaimed hotshots and the underachievers.
What I have seen, though, is noticably fewer people who seem to be entering Computer Science with the reasoning of "everyone says that I should get a degree in Computer Science", which I think is a good thing in the long run, as in my experience those people tend to make the poor programmers.
In the tech world, there isn't much that Microsoft *doesn't* compete with. So what does one do...flip burgers for a year?
Typically, the courts look at what you actually did, rather than what the company does as a whole. If you worked on MS Office and were hired to work on Google Earth, the court may well say that the noncompete clause doesn't apply, but might enforce the same clause if you moved from Microsoft's Internet search division to Google's desktop search division.
Since when can a company control whether or not you get to get another job? Could this mean that companies could FORBID you from ever getting another job? Or at least prevent you from getting another job for a longer period of time? I'm asking because some companies might use this as "incentive" to keep people from quitting, particularly game programmers who are overworked and frankly, underpaid.
I'm of course not a lawyer, but it's been common practice for companies to require noncompetition agreements for employees for quite a while. Basically, it's saying "we agree to hire you if, in turn, you agree not to use the job solely to learn the industry and then take a job from a competitor once you've done so", and as such, the courts have ruled that a properly defined noncompete agreement is legal. However, a lot of them are struck down when they get to court for being too broad (exactly for the reason you mentioned, as its legal if used as a legitimate protection method, but illegal if it's used as a weapon to keep people from quitting, from my understanding).
Slashdot Mirror
Babic killed people. Hackers kill shareholder values.
Just for reference, we had an article only a few weeks ago about how a DDoS attack shut down a hospital's computer network. Luckily, no one was hurt as a result and the hospital was ready to fall back on less technological methods, but the potential for harm is there.
Since this will presumably be an Ethernet card, the only thing I could think of would be if they had their card designed to backoff in a non-standard way (for instance, never picking a backoff timer over half of the standard maximum). On networks with light or medium load, that could reduce lag a little bit for the gaming machine, at the expense of other machines on the network, and it wouldn't be the first time people violated a standard to improve performance.
Of course, if you had two or more of these cards on the same network, or the network was heavily loaded, this could actually increase lag. But that would just mean you need to buy more cards!
I took a look at SiteAdvisor and I actually think it'll be useful for me, as an experienced user, as well, surprisingly. I don't think I'll have much use for the red X junk, I know not to install random crap on my computer, but their analysis of downloads could be quite useful. You can pull up the list of all the modifications a program makes to your system, even for green files. If you ever wanted to know exactly what registry keys Google Desktop adds, for instance, you can just look it up.
You can buy thumb drives that have encryption software on them. They have two partitions, one that's unencrypted (and contains the driver that does the encryption/decryption, so you can install it anywhere) and one that's encrypted. Of course, usually they only provide a driver for Windows, and I don't honestly know how good the encryption is, but there are options out there.
On the legality side, I am beginning to think we are going to see someone eventually go to court and beat one of the game companies. Even if that doesn't happen for a long time these companies have already proven they cannot win versus the resourcefulness of the sellers using the internet. All they can do is hit the dumb ones and make a few big hits but I would susepct 99% of the trading goes unimpeded.
For my personal view, I believe the eventual resolution will be that paying for an account is like paying for a concert ticket. A concert-goer does not own the music at the concert, but he owns the right to "use" it. Absent any laws to the contrary, he can also sell that concert ticket to another person for however much money he wants. If a concert is canceled, the people putting on the concert aren't liable for the market value of the tickets, they're just liable for the original ticket price.
If that was the same design put in place for MMOs, what we'd have is the company would own all of the IP involved in the game, but the user would have the ability to sell his access rights (which would include virtual goods/currency or accounts). Any changes or removals of items would only make the company liable for the "purchase price" of those items (which is nothing).
Maybe somebody can publish a cookbook with foods that appeal to geeks and call it "Food hacking".
If you need help, my mom has some 1337 f00d 5k1llZ.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Actually, if you go a bit further, you can wonder how many satellites you need to destroy before the debris end up destroying even more satellites create a chain reaction. I'm sure I've seen people research that, but I don't know the result. With the number of satellites up there, I would expect just a few would be enough.
You probably couldn't do it. Remember, space is big. You could almost fit another three earths in between us and a geostationary satellite. Putting enough debris in orbit to set up a chain reaction would be almost impossible, especially since collision with debris will disable a satellite, but it won't break it into a bunch of little pieces like an explosive would.
What the US is really worried about is an increase in debris that would cause the loss of at least one satellite. Currently, there's some crap up there, but not a whole lot of it. We've never lost a satellite to it to my knowledge. If you were to increase it, the vast majority of our satellites would still be safe, but every once in a while we'd start losing them. At tens of millions of dollars and a couple years per satellite, losing one from debris is one too many, especially if that loss comes at an inopportune moment.
Mentally separating high-tech weapons from the systems used to guide them seems like a stretch. If a weapon is guided by a satellite, and cannot fnction with reasonable accuracy without that data, then it seems to me that the satellite is part of the weapon.
Just to point out, spy satellites don't function as guidance systems, GPS satellites do. And I feel fairly confidant people aren't going to call for the classification of GPS as a weapon.
How many nations put satellites in space in geosynchronous orbit perfectly above their land? That's a serious question that I don't know the answer to, I'm hoping someone else does.
Nobody that I know of. Satellites are only geostationary on the equator, geosynchronous satellites elsewhere "move" north-south, and I don't believe Brazil or Indonesia are operating any such satellites (but I could be wrong).
And at what point do you think it's fair to say airspace ends?
By treaty, outer space is currently not allowed to be owned by any nation, and the international boundary of space is generally recognized as 100 km.
I wonder if there's some reason that books aren't as easily obtainable. Perhaps shipping things into the area is very expensive, and a textbook (or, more likely, a set of several textbooks on different subjects) would weigh a lot more and be a lot bigger than a single PDA, and thus cost a lot more to ship. It's also possible that books have to be replaced often there for some reason (they get used for kindling, insects eat them, it's hard to keep them safe from the rain, whatever), so a PDA might have a longer lifetime if properly taken care of.
From what I've heard, Linux and other open-source software is also preferred because of its ability to respond to deadlines. If you're two months from release and an obscure bug in your OS interferes with your rendering, you can't rely on the OS provider to get you a fix in a timely manner, especially if it's a bug nobody else encounters. If it's an open-source system, though, you can fix it yourself.
And to think that it would be most known for selling used crap on auctions and tons of porn...
They say the Lord works in mysterious ways...
They're only comparing the years 2000 and 2004, it's not like they're comparing 1980 and 2004. I entered college in 2000, and I've had a home computer for most of my life. Comparing my experience with my incoming class to that of the freshmen when I was graduating, I don't think there's a perceivable difference between how good they think they are. There are always the self-proclaimed hotshots and the underachievers.
What I have seen, though, is noticably fewer people who seem to be entering Computer Science with the reasoning of "everyone says that I should get a degree in Computer Science", which I think is a good thing in the long run, as in my experience those people tend to make the poor programmers.
In the tech world, there isn't much that Microsoft *doesn't* compete with. So what does one do...flip burgers for a year?
Typically, the courts look at what you actually did, rather than what the company does as a whole. If you worked on MS Office and were hired to work on Google Earth, the court may well say that the noncompete clause doesn't apply, but might enforce the same clause if you moved from Microsoft's Internet search division to Google's desktop search division.
Since when can a company control whether or not you get to get another job? Could this mean that companies could FORBID you from ever getting another job? Or at least prevent you from getting another job for a longer period of time? I'm asking because some companies might use this as "incentive" to keep people from quitting, particularly game programmers who are overworked and frankly, underpaid.
I'm of course not a lawyer, but it's been common practice for companies to require noncompetition agreements for employees for quite a while. Basically, it's saying "we agree to hire you if, in turn, you agree not to use the job solely to learn the industry and then take a job from a competitor once you've done so", and as such, the courts have ruled that a properly defined noncompete agreement is legal. However, a lot of them are struck down when they get to court for being too broad (exactly for the reason you mentioned, as its legal if used as a legitimate protection method, but illegal if it's used as a weapon to keep people from quitting, from my understanding).