After all, most of the phones already have some kind of voice recording software that controls the mic, too.
I bet any comparatively modern cellphone would be susceptible to this. You might need to get access to the phone for a minute or two with some device (eg laptop with USB-phone cable), to modify the software, sure, if you can't do it remotely. But that's about it.
As far as I remember, just after the collapse of the USSR, there were published some information about how KGB was able to activate the mics of "normal" old phones by activating the line from substation; so that the phone didn't ring, but the mic was getting enough current flowing through it to work.
Assuming for a moment that all patents (even software) are valid, there is still a basic problem with the patent system.
The ultimate goal of a patent system is to benefit the society by encouraging invention. It does this by stimulating creative individuals. It seems that the individuals can now reap rewards, which are not proportionate to their inventions.
Let the potential reward for a patent should be, for example, at the maximum ten times the investment costs for the invention; after the inventor gets this amount of money, his patent becomes public domain.
So both for companies which invest in R&D, equipment, scientist salaries, etc, and the guy who thought of his knife+fork arrangement in his basement, their time and money are repaid tenfold - not a bad ROI, now?
> I'm not sure how I would feel if some kind of revolutionary breakthrough in some field or another made a patened safety device that was legislated into a building requirement nationally, thus patenting other companies out of business in that particular product segment. After all, you're only requiring a certain minimum level of safety. It just so happens that a certain company holds the patent on that safety.
Well, I've had Type 1 diabetes since age of 3, that is for 28 years (I am now 31).
Back then it was needles and syringes much bigger and thicker than nowadays, and they had to be boiled before every use. If I needed a blood glucose check, I had to go to the hospital.
It was no picnic of course, and I had to be taken to hospital several times in the first years. Yes, the stress is great, and (especially with kids) I imagine it was a huge strain on my parents - I was too small to notice back then, of course. However, it was manageable then. It is easier now. More is known, better test tools are available, people on the streets sometimes have a an idea of what it is all about, if some problems arise (back then, NOBODY would know what to do on street, if something happened).
> If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means?
Well, what are the options if it WEREN'T an evil plot? Highly radioactive substance administered by accident?? How did it get into him? Is there really nobody else hurt/dead?
As regards highly exotic means - perhaps whoever planned this, had reasonable grounds to believe the stuff would not be found? I mean - how often do medics test for radioactivity in urine in hospital?
Only the other way round - I love it when physicists, computer guys and basically anybody with a bit of spare time, think that because they are recognized specialists in their field, they can authoritatively speak about philosophy, arts, literature, etc.
.. after reading most of the comments, it seems that the only thing these guns would be effective at, is killing off those North Koreans who do try to escape to South.
well, considering it "works" up to 2km distance daytime, it'd still be rather hard to tip it over without some technology aid, which the gun is not meant to be deployed against anyway.
Microsoft: runs our users' mail, Active Directory, several of our internal apps and a number of external clients' apps. Total servers: 100+. Initial costs per server: licences Yearly bill: 5 internal support guys + MS support agreements
Linux: runs about anything else we or our Unix-preferring clients do - Oracle, BEA, Tivoli, etc. Total servers: 300+. Initial costs per server: nil Yearly bill: 7 internal support guys (who also support commercial Unixes I don't mention here as they are a fraction of the total server amount).
Being a kinda service-providing shop support matters to us and this forks out for around (don't have exact figures on hand, but estimating), ~ $1mln / year to MS. Significant part of the apps we run on Linux are not officially supported by the maker either. Yet they run for years without a prob, the only thing required is having decent support guys.
I can only sympathize with you being locked into a MS shop, but I am not that sure this move towards "MS certified" will make life better. What has been a trend for some time, is that "mission-critical" software is being recognized as compatible with Linux O/S. Eg. Oracle certifying Red Hat Linux for its databases, etc. What could happen now, is the trend going the other way - developers waiting for Linux being "made compatible".
I am not condemning the technology, I have fluorescent bulbs in most of my apartment sockets.
However, to make my point, which - I agree - I didn't do very well, "few examples" relates to practically all Soviet-time fluorescent bulbs I've seen installed in my country - fiendish hue of light (usually white mixed with corpse bluish or sickly purple), bad performance (flash on/off). So some of the older generation in this side of hemisphere are reluctant to put in anything that's called "fluorescent", but good enough, that's changing.
Some fluorescent bulbs tend to be heavy on the eyes, mind you, the light is more to the blue side and it is rather unpleasant to be in a room lit by such.
I guess I didn't do a good job at explaining why I think WoW differs slightly, but significantly, from the rest of MMORPGs.
But first, to point out (hopefully more precisely now) what I think sets out a MMORPG from most of the other examples you restated, is that as far as my understanding goes - please, correct me if I am wrong - only MMORPGs require actual handling of large number of simultaenous connections, which last for hours. For the apps you mentioned - there may be a lot of connections and a lot of data/processing, but do they need to be served constantly for hours? If not, then the actual number of connections at any given time would be significantly less, since each connection is served in a matter of seconds or maybe minutes, then closed and that resource is available again. That would be a typical situation with webserving, and I am wondering how much would this hold true for the apps you mentioned.
Secondly, about WoW and other services. I have had a distinct impression that WoW is outnumbering the others by a degree or two at least, in terms of subscribers and actual players.
What I am speculating is that it may happen that the potential connection congestion as well as other issues arising from the high numbers may require nontrivial solutions.
After all, unless you've read about the Google's underlying structure, you may well consider it a simple website, nothing that can't be slapped together at home, then duplicated and loadbalanced, when the volume grows, right?
P.S. As regards myself, I've played UO (was in UO Beta) and some AC before WoW. I might well endure WoW's technical problems, as I like the game, however, happily enough I have next to none on my server, last unscheduled downtime was sometime last summer.
Just to point out. Bashing MS for IIS is by now old.
I work for (my tiny country's) largest datacenter company, we have MS & Unix solutions group.
The guys in the MS group, being skilled and diligent admins, are keeping their IIS servers just as safe and sound as we do our Apaches. We haven't had security breaches for years and their server and application uptimes are just as big as ours.
P.S. Their licensing costs could pay some 10 more admins' wages tho.
WoW! They have to pass along information to other players? And they have to do it constantly for hours? That just crazy. I never realized that. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Now that you are enlightened, give me a couple examples of systems that do that, smug guy.
To reiterate:
- track data constantly (whenever user moves in game, whenever he attempts to do anything, only interface and macro windows can be processed locally) - process it and send results back real-time - analyze who of the 100+ other poor buggers are in "vicinity" and should "see" the action too, and send them an update too, also real-time, please - multiply it by 10'000 simultaneous connections and try to avoid any cascade effects
Hint: the people who designed the architecture of the NT line were behind VMS, they really don't need people like you to explain them basics of OS design, nor do they need help from Unix people. --
Or look to credit card systems for huge data sets and processing(transactions). Visa alone probably handles a magitude more traffic and processing per day than WoW. --
Not neccessarily. Yes, the volume of subscribers/sources is much bigger. Howevever, each transaction contains only a small dataset. In WoW you would not only need to pass along more information, but you would need to pass part of that information to other players who are affected, too. Constantly. For hours.
The only thing you could compare this with, was if _everybody at the same_ time pulled out their VISA, went to nearest ATM and took out some 2000$ by taking $1 at a time.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't sound improbable to me at all.
After all, most of the phones already have some kind of voice recording software that controls the mic, too.
I bet any comparatively modern cellphone would be susceptible to this. You might need to get access to the phone for a minute or two with some device (eg laptop with USB-phone cable), to modify the software, sure, if you can't do it remotely. But that's about it.
In fact, it did.
As far as I remember, just after the collapse of the USSR, there were published some information about how KGB was able to activate the mics of "normal" old phones by activating the line from substation; so that the phone didn't ring, but the mic was getting enough current flowing through it to work.
Assuming for a moment that all patents (even software) are valid, there is still a basic problem with the patent system.
The ultimate goal of a patent system is to benefit the society by encouraging invention. It does this by stimulating creative individuals. It seems that the individuals can now reap rewards, which are not proportionate to their inventions.
Let the potential reward for a patent should be, for example, at the maximum ten times the investment costs for the invention; after the inventor gets this amount of money, his patent becomes public domain.
So both for companies which invest in R&D, equipment, scientist salaries, etc, and the guy who thought of his knife+fork arrangement in his basement, their time and money are repaid tenfold - not a bad ROI, now?
> I'm not sure how I would feel if some kind of revolutionary breakthrough in some field or another made a patened safety device that was legislated into a building requirement nationally, thus patenting other companies out of business in that particular product segment. After all, you're only requiring a certain minimum level of safety. It just so happens that a certain company holds the patent on that safety.
How about lightning rods?
Well, I've had Type 1 diabetes since age of 3, that is for 28 years (I am now 31).
Back then it was needles and syringes much bigger and thicker than nowadays, and they had to be boiled before every use. If I needed a blood glucose check, I had to go to the hospital.
It was no picnic of course, and I had to be taken to hospital several times in the first years. Yes, the stress is great, and (especially with kids) I imagine it was a huge strain on my parents - I was too small to notice back then, of course. However, it was manageable then. It is easier now. More is known, better test tools are available, people on the streets sometimes have a an idea of what it is all about, if some problems arise (back then, NOBODY would know what to do on street, if something happened).
> If it was really an evil plot, why did they use highly exotic means?
Well, what are the options if it WEREN'T an evil plot? Highly radioactive substance administered by accident?? How did it get into him? Is there really nobody else hurt/dead?
As regards highly exotic means - perhaps whoever planned this, had reasonable grounds to believe the stuff would not be found? I mean - how often do medics test for radioactivity in urine in hospital?
How are they different from science snobs then? :)
Oh yes, I know the feeling :)
Only the other way round - I love it when physicists, computer guys and basically anybody with a bit of spare time, think that because they are recognized specialists in their field, they can authoritatively speak about philosophy, arts, literature, etc.
Oh I got it. It just seemed to me that you didn't get the range of the Samsung guns :)
Well, #3 is out since dolphins aren't fish (but they might be phish instead?).
Still 3 options to go!
.. after reading most of the comments, it seems that the only thing these guns would be effective at, is killing off those North Koreans who do try to escape to South.
well, considering it "works" up to 2km distance daytime, it'd still be rather hard to tip it over without some technology aid, which the gun is not meant to be deployed against anyway.
Well, it can go either way.
Microsoft: runs our users' mail, Active Directory, several of our internal apps and a number of external clients' apps.
Total servers: 100+.
Initial costs per server: licences
Yearly bill: 5 internal support guys + MS support agreements
Linux: runs about anything else we or our Unix-preferring clients do - Oracle, BEA, Tivoli, etc.
Total servers: 300+.
Initial costs per server: nil
Yearly bill: 7 internal support guys (who also support commercial Unixes I don't mention here as they are a fraction of the total server amount).
Being a kinda service-providing shop support matters to us and this forks out for around (don't have exact figures on hand, but estimating), ~ $1mln / year to MS. Significant part of the apps we run on Linux are not officially supported by the maker either. Yet they run for years without a prob, the only thing required is having decent support guys.
I can only sympathize with you being locked into a MS shop, but I am not that sure this move towards "MS certified" will make life better. What has been a trend for some time, is that "mission-critical" software is being recognized as compatible with Linux O/S. Eg. Oracle certifying Red Hat Linux for its databases, etc. What could happen now, is the trend going the other way - developers waiting for Linux being "made compatible".
I am not condemning the technology, I have fluorescent bulbs in most of my apartment sockets.
However, to make my point, which - I agree - I didn't do very well, "few examples" relates to practically all Soviet-time fluorescent bulbs I've seen installed in my country - fiendish hue of light (usually white mixed with corpse bluish or sickly purple), bad performance (flash on/off). So some of the older generation in this side of hemisphere are reluctant to put in anything that's called "fluorescent", but good enough, that's changing.
Some fluorescent bulbs tend to be heavy on the eyes, mind you, the light is more to the blue side and it is rather unpleasant to be in a room lit by such.
Gmail is surely doomed now.
Because that's the way browsers have been working so far?
If anything, you are uploading (and downloading) less, by not having to re-download the whole GUI (webpage) all the time.
I guess I didn't do a good job at explaining why I think WoW differs slightly, but significantly, from the rest of MMORPGs.
But first, to point out (hopefully more precisely now) what I think sets out a MMORPG from most of the other examples you restated, is that as far as my understanding goes - please, correct me if I am wrong - only MMORPGs require actual handling of large number of simultaenous connections, which last for hours.
For the apps you mentioned - there may be a lot of connections and a lot of data/processing, but do they need to be served constantly for hours? If not, then the actual number of connections at any given time would be significantly less, since each connection is served in a matter of seconds or maybe minutes, then closed and that resource is available again.
That would be a typical situation with webserving, and I am wondering how much would this hold true for the apps you mentioned.
Secondly, about WoW and other services. I have had a distinct impression that WoW is outnumbering the others by a degree or two at least, in terms of subscribers and actual players.
What I am speculating is that it may happen that the potential connection congestion as well as other issues arising from the high numbers may require nontrivial solutions.
After all, unless you've read about the Google's underlying structure, you may well consider it a simple website, nothing that can't be slapped together at home, then duplicated and loadbalanced, when the volume grows, right?
P.S. As regards myself, I've played UO (was in UO Beta) and some AC before WoW. I might well endure WoW's technical problems, as I like the game, however, happily enough I have next to none on my server, last unscheduled downtime was sometime last summer.
Just to point out. Bashing MS for IIS is by now old.
I work for (my tiny country's) largest datacenter company, we have MS & Unix solutions group.
The guys in the MS group, being skilled and diligent admins, are keeping their IIS servers just as safe and sound as we do our Apaches. We haven't had security breaches for years and their server and application uptimes are just as big as ours.
P.S. Their licensing costs could pay some 10 more admins' wages tho.
WoW! They have to pass along information to other players? And they have to do it constantly for hours? That just crazy. I never realized that. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Now that you are enlightened, give me a couple examples of systems that do that, smug guy.
To reiterate:
- track data constantly (whenever user moves in game, whenever he attempts to do anything, only interface and macro windows can be processed locally)
- process it and send results back real-time
- analyze who of the 100+ other poor buggers are in "vicinity" and should "see" the action too, and send them an update too, also real-time, please
- multiply it by 10'000 simultaneous connections and try to avoid any cascade effects
Hint: the people who designed the architecture of the NT line were behind VMS, they really don't need people like you to explain them basics of OS design, nor do they need help from Unix people.
--
Does the word "monolithic" figure anywhere?
I can but sympathize.
Luckily, I haven't had any such problems with WoW for more than half a year already.
huh? what about the diff between the continents? Not to speak of instances, which get their own servers?
"The instance servers and world servers are all tied to that database,"
Sounds pretty crappy. I doubt very much that'd be the case.
Or look to credit card systems for huge data sets and processing(transactions). Visa alone probably handles a magitude more traffic and processing per day than WoW.
--
Not neccessarily. Yes, the volume of subscribers/sources is much bigger.
Howevever, each transaction contains only a small dataset.
In WoW you would not only need to pass along more information, but you would need to pass part of that information to other players who are affected, too. Constantly. For hours.
The only thing you could compare this with, was if _everybody at the same_ time pulled out their VISA, went to nearest ATM and took out some 2000$ by taking $1 at a time.