This software would have to be extremely complicated and recognize tons of slang and be updated very frequently.
It is an awesome idea though, I would give Kudos to whichever company succesfully impliments it. I have tried BabbleFish and Free Translation, and they do an ok job for the most part, but for something as precise and advanced as war, I think it would be hard to do.
Also this transmission would be being transmitted wirelessly, and would be subject to eavesdroping, so it's encryption will have to be the strongest that is practical. Going against Iraq this probably doesn't matter, but up against more technologically advanced armies this would certainly be a concern.
I sometimes do the same thing with State of Emergency. I found the missions tedious and boring and would rather just shoot stuff for 5 minute rounds where I try to rack up as many points as I can to get on a high score list that is already filled with my name anyways. lol.
Get the spells called "mark" and "recall" from the Temple in Balmora, or from various other spots throughout the land.
In your main "home" or wherever it is that the person you are running the errand or task for is, use the mark spell. It marks that spot as your designated spot to teleport back to. And then once you go and get the item they wanted, or you finish the task, just hit "recall" and you go back to it.
I also use this feature as a safety net. If I ever was swamped with enemies and near death, I used my recall spell and went back to my house.:)
Also with the stilt riders and boats, and you can use the teleport device in any mages guild, and the mark and recal spells, you are right, the game does not really contain that much runnin/walking, unless you choose to explore, or are seeking an item or location that is off the normal path in the middle of nowhere.
This is kind of off-topic, but it still has to do with the Game Cube.
I am wondering how long until the Nintendo controller looks like that memory game SIMON, with 4 huge different color buttons. I mean seriously, could the "A" button on the Gamecube be any bigger? An could the "Z" button be any harder to use effectively?
I have had a gamecube since it came out, and I have an Xbox also. I am an online shooter addict, and can only get a thrill out of games when I know I am playing against a real opponent, so the Gamecube isn't really my cup of tea for obvious reasons. But a room full of drunk people mashing that huge A button playing Mario Party 5 at 4:30am sure is fun.
"I would paraphrase you that the rate of change of societal decay is constant."
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. The last 30 don't mean as much as we think. True, daily life in the United States has decayed, but I do not believe it is because of the media influence on us.
"Far from a serious pursuit of questions like
Why am I here?"
I think we all know that that question is essentially unanswerable, so instead f trying to waste time thinking about it, we just watch Friends and E.R. and eat Big Macs. lol.
"How can we take fundamental lies like homosexuality and masquerade them as truth?"
I don't understand that one.....
I think the OS needs to have something on it right out of the box that will play CD's, play mp3 playlists, burn cd's, etc. If media player was a better product, I would probably argue against MS, but at this point, Media Player is kind of lame, at least in my opinion.
What do you think of this....Let Windows ship with some type of "Media Player Basic." or something. And then if the user wants more features, they can click and be taken to a page where it shows links to all of the available software packages for doing so, and have them be in an order generated at random each time the page is accessed. But one of the companies would still find something to complain about I suppose.
How about when children are born, we just designate which company they belong to, and then implant a chip in their wrist that gives them a wave of pain should they attempt to use software made by a company other than the one who payed to register them as a user? HA HA HA.
I completely agree. People seem to want the government and other organizations to take care of them and take care of their children.
The world is a different place now. Television and media are different. There isn't just 4 channels on TV that everyone in the country watches, there are thousands of possible cable channels, all with different content. And when you pay extra to have cable, can you relaly complain about it's content?
In my opinion, I can understand keeping things relatively tame on regular network television (the channels that anyone can plug a TV into a wall and get for free). But on cable anything should go, and regarding internet censorship, it is ridiculous when there is so many filtering resources available to parents, and their lack of computer knowledge is seen as a threat to their children.
Things like CyberSitter and Net Nanny can restrict your child access to offensive or harmful content, and you can also limit your browser to only go to bookmarked sites. And it does not have ot be an annoyance to you, somply create a Windows profile for your child with a password that you and the child know, and when the child loggs in as themselves, have the browser and internet setting applied as desired. So simple, am I wrong?
If you like those, go to www.somethingawful.com and check out the Photoshop Phriday section, they do a cool post on Fake Games once in a while, and they are really really funny.
I think that BMX XXX was a gimmick to sell games. I never even gave it the chance and played it. I knew it would suck.
Now GTA III on the other hand was a really great game. And the other thing that people forget to mention s that a lot of the things that are considered really offensive in games, are the things that are not a part of the game itself, but something the player can "choose" to do if he/she wants to.
A lot of those games kind of put you in a free roaming world where you can do as you wish, true, some of the in game missions are kind of bad, but it is rated M for a reason, and if your kid is under 17 and playing it, it is your fault.
Good point. I think a nice car system sound good, on the inside of the car. But when it gets beyond that I just don't see the point. Why spend so much money on a speaker system for such a little area? In a car system you should just aim for quality sound, instead of how loud it will go and how much bass you can thump.
There is nothing more annoying than an old nasty car that has thousands of dollars in speaker equipment in it. Or nice rims. If you have the money for those, work on getting a new car first!
I had a friend who had a really old car and the radio and tape player didn't work in it, so he wore headphones while driving....really safe right? lol.
That is a really interesting concept too, which I would also like to see done.
But I was thinking of some type of program that the government would be allowed to use w/ out your knowledge if you were a suspected "terrorist" of some sort, which can mean almost anything nowdays, and it would take screenshots of your machine, a few a second, and screen and look through them, and report them back to the mothership. So anything that you can read, any data presented on your screen would be subject to viewing by them.
Re:Other mappable relationship environments?
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The other idea that popped into my head was this...
Like with mp3's and copy protected music cd's that you cannot burn or rip, you can get programs that simply "record" any sound that is coming out of your system, and then make it into a file type of your choice. So regardless of how protected the file or disc is, you simply play it, and then bam, you have a copy.
So what if they did the same with text communication? So that your machine picked out and reported back to some organization (MS, the Government, whoever) only the actual text on your screen? That is scary, because you could encryp it however you wanted, but when you open it up to read it, bam, the program captures and interprets all that is shown on the screen and that's that. So unless you actually know some secret type of language, or use "key text" cryptography and then write the intended message down on paper when you decrypt it off of your screen, that would be the only way to do it securely.
Does that idea make sense?
Re:Other mappable relationship environments?
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As we progress further and further into the digital age, consumers will have to resort to their own cryptography to ensure that their communication stays private.
PGP was a good start, it is basically an uncrackable form of cryptography based on public keys, that a very brave guy almost spent his life in prison for posting on a BS back ni the day. Click here for info on it.
Many Slashdot'ers probably are already familiar with this, but hey, you never know. We will all be fighting for privacy in the coming years it seems, best to know what tools are available to you.:)
PGP is available on almost every OS, Windows 95/98/NT/2000, MacOS, AIX, HPUX, Linux, Solaris, and DOS. And can be easily configured to work with most popular email programs as well.
Privacy means that only the intended recipient of a message can read it. By providing the ability to encrypt messages, PGP provides protection against anyone eavesdropping on the network. Even if the information is intercepted, it is completely unreadable to the snooper. Authentication identifies the origin of the information, certainty that it is authentic, and that it has not been altered. Authentication also provides an extremely valuable tool in network security: verification of the identity of an individual. In addition to secure messaging, PGP also provides secure data storage, enabling you to encrypt files stored on your computer. Version 6.5.8 also includes PGPnet - a powerful VPN client which enables secure peer-to-peer IP-based network connections - and Self-Decrypting Archives (SDAs) which allow you to exchange information securely even with those who do not have PGP.
That is one possibilty, but I think they will want to keep things more simple than that. I know the games that are out for Xbox are made to recognize a HD. And they will want it to be backwards compatible, so I am guessing that when all is said and done it wil have a Hard Drive.
I have read articles that speculate that the PS3's content will all be online, the games you will download, etc. So Maybe Xbox will try to do some of that as well, focus more on the downloading of material and less on the games being in stores. It only makes sense if they can pull it off, they pay no shipping, no middle man, you just download the games right from them and that would be it, the only thing the stores would stock is the actual console itself and controlers.I don't think this is practical anytime in the next few years. I would guess maybe about 2007 or so something like that wil be done.
I am guessing the next Xbox will be the same exact thing almost, just more memory, faster memory, faster and bigger video card, and some new stuff to keep people from hacking it, and that will be about it.:)
I agree. I love Linux to death for all that it is, and all that it represents. However, the reason that do not use it on my desktops at home is because I reply on a few pieces of software that just don't flow easily, or are not available for it, and correct me if I am wrong.
I love using Knoppix version 3.2 on my desktop PC's from time to time, and I have Red Hat installed on an old spare machine so I can learn on it. But I am a hardcore gamer, so Linux just is not practical for me to put on my two fastest machines. And I do web development also, and need ot use all of the Macromedia MX Suite, as well as a nice stable version of Photoshop. As soon as Linux becomes easily compatible with all Windows based games, and the above mentioned programs are readily available and easily configurable, I will make the switch completely.
I think what holds back a lot of computer users from switching to Linux is the gaming issue.
I think that double Domination is the best game mode in Unreal. I play SOF2 and Halo and MOHAA on PC, and have only played Unreal 2K3 on PC, but am really looking forward to Unreal Tournament 2K4!
I guess that my opinions about the Xbox might be slightly jaded, I am spoiled because I usually play PC games, which almost always have better graphics and more features. So when they port a game from PC to Xbox it is usually dumbed down quite a bit.
Xbox not selling much besides Project Gotham Racing II does not suprise me. I have been playing Xbox live since the morning it came out, and in my opinion, the only worthwhile game for it is Unreal Championship.
It has released a bunch of online shooters, but they are all just very bad ports of popular PC titles. Xbox got GTA 3 and Vice City way too late for it to matter because of Sony's agreement with Rockstar, and they have waited way way too long with Halo 2.
Soldier of Fortune II on Xbox was horrible, on PC it is amazing, and on Xbox it reminds me of an N64 game.
I have been gaming since the days of Atari, and I, like many other gamers, am simply sick of being burned by games with a lot of hype that fall short of the expectations. Another trend in the gaming industry is making commercials for games that include NO GAMEPLAY footage, and also boxes that include no actual gameplay screenshots. None of us care about the cinematics and cut scenes in the game, those have looked good since Playstation, show us the gameplay!
I also will not purchase Xbox titles anymore without renting them. Even Halo 2 is going to get rented or played at a friends house before I buy it. I loved Unreal Championship, bought Ghost Recon, it was horrible, sold it, bought SOF2, sold it, Rainbow 6 sucked on Xbox too, Unreal II sucks, Counter Strike sucked, etc. And the only good single player game released on it in my opinion is The Elder Scrolls II : Morrowind.
I think they just need to spend more time in the production of these games. I do not mind waiting a long time for a game to be released, as long as it is as polished as it can be.
But don't get me wrong, I think the Xbox is the best console to date (insert anti MS comments and arguments here). It really made a lot of people who weren't used to Online gaming find the fun in playing against real human opponents, and the cheap rate for their live service was really cool of them. Perfect for younger gamers who do not have their own PC to game on.
Slashdot Mirror
It is an awesome idea though, I would give Kudos to whichever company succesfully impliments it. I have tried BabbleFish and Free Translation, and they do an ok job for the most part, but for something as precise and advanced as war, I think it would be hard to do.
Also this transmission would be being transmitted wirelessly, and would be subject to eavesdroping, so it's encryption will have to be the strongest that is practical. Going against Iraq this probably doesn't matter, but up against more technologically advanced armies this would certainly be a concern.
Ur Bomb almst pwnaged us you n00bs! Watch that friendly FYRE. = translate. ha ha ha
I sometimes do the same thing with State of Emergency. I found the missions tedious and boring and would rather just shoot stuff for 5 minute rounds where I try to rack up as many points as I can to get on a high score list that is already filled with my name anyways. lol.
Get the spells called "mark" and "recall" from the Temple in Balmora, or from various other spots throughout the land.
In your main "home" or wherever it is that the person you are running the errand or task for is, use the mark spell. It marks that spot as your designated spot to teleport back to. And then once you go and get the item they wanted, or you finish the task, just hit "recall" and you go back to it.
I also use this feature as a safety net. If I ever was swamped with enemies and near death, I used my recall spell and went back to my house. :)
Also with the stilt riders and boats, and you can use the teleport device in any mages guild, and the mark and recal spells, you are right, the game does not really contain that much runnin/walking, unless you choose to explore, or are seeking an item or location that is off the normal path in the middle of nowhere.
I am wondering how long until the Nintendo controller looks like that memory game SIMON, with 4 huge different color buttons. I mean seriously, could the "A" button on the Gamecube be any bigger? An could the "Z" button be any harder to use effectively?
I have had a gamecube since it came out, and I have an Xbox also. I am an online shooter addict, and can only get a thrill out of games when I know I am playing against a real opponent, so the Gamecube isn't really my cup of tea for obvious reasons. But a room full of drunk people mashing that huge A button playing Mario Party 5 at 4:30am sure is fun.
LMAO.
"I would paraphrase you that the rate of change of societal decay is constant." Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. The last 30 don't mean as much as we think. True, daily life in the United States has decayed, but I do not believe it is because of the media influence on us. "Far from a serious pursuit of questions like Why am I here?" I think we all know that that question is essentially unanswerable, so instead f trying to waste time thinking about it, we just watch Friends and E.R. and eat Big Macs. lol. "How can we take fundamental lies like homosexuality and masquerade them as truth?" I don't understand that one.....
And some other group to help me get my 50 dollars back after I buy an All-Day pass to some CRAP CARNIVAL they call a game.
What do you think of this....Let Windows ship with some type of "Media Player Basic." or something. And then if the user wants more features, they can click and be taken to a page where it shows links to all of the available software packages for doing so, and have them be in an order generated at random each time the page is accessed. But one of the companies would still find something to complain about I suppose.
How about when children are born, we just designate which company they belong to, and then implant a chip in their wrist that gives them a wave of pain should they attempt to use software made by a company other than the one who payed to register them as a user? HA HA HA.
Driving with headphones on is illegal here in Minnesota also.
The world is a different place now. Television and media are different. There isn't just 4 channels on TV that everyone in the country watches, there are thousands of possible cable channels, all with different content. And when you pay extra to have cable, can you relaly complain about it's content?
In my opinion, I can understand keeping things relatively tame on regular network television (the channels that anyone can plug a TV into a wall and get for free). But on cable anything should go, and regarding internet censorship, it is ridiculous when there is so many filtering resources available to parents, and their lack of computer knowledge is seen as a threat to their children.
Things like CyberSitter and Net Nanny can restrict your child access to offensive or harmful content, and you can also limit your browser to only go to bookmarked sites. And it does not have ot be an annoyance to you, somply create a Windows profile for your child with a password that you and the child know, and when the child loggs in as themselves, have the browser and internet setting applied as desired. So simple, am I wrong?
If you like those, go to www.somethingawful.com and check out the Photoshop Phriday section, they do a cool post on Fake Games once in a while, and they are really really funny.
Now GTA III on the other hand was a really great game. And the other thing that people forget to mention s that a lot of the things that are considered really offensive in games, are the things that are not a part of the game itself, but something the player can "choose" to do if he/she wants to.
A lot of those games kind of put you in a free roaming world where you can do as you wish, true, some of the in game missions are kind of bad, but it is rated M for a reason, and if your kid is under 17 and playing it, it is your fault.
There is nothing more annoying than an old nasty car that has thousands of dollars in speaker equipment in it. Or nice rims. If you have the money for those, work on getting a new car first!
This survey brought to you by $tarbucks!
I had a friend who had a really old car and the radio and tape player didn't work in it, so he wore headphones while driving....really safe right? lol.
But I was thinking of some type of program that the government would be allowed to use w/ out your knowledge if you were a suspected "terrorist" of some sort, which can mean almost anything nowdays, and it would take screenshots of your machine, a few a second, and screen and look through them, and report them back to the mothership. So anything that you can read, any data presented on your screen would be subject to viewing by them.
Like with mp3's and copy protected music cd's that you cannot burn or rip, you can get programs that simply "record" any sound that is coming out of your system, and then make it into a file type of your choice. So regardless of how protected the file or disc is, you simply play it, and then bam, you have a copy.
So what if they did the same with text communication? So that your machine picked out and reported back to some organization (MS, the Government, whoever) only the actual text on your screen? That is scary, because you could encryp it however you wanted, but when you open it up to read it, bam, the program captures and interprets all that is shown on the screen and that's that. So unless you actually know some secret type of language, or use "key text" cryptography and then write the intended message down on paper when you decrypt it off of your screen, that would be the only way to do it securely.
Does that idea make sense?
PGP was a good start, it is basically an uncrackable form of cryptography based on public keys, that a very brave guy almost spent his life in prison for posting on a BS back ni the day. Click here for info on it.
Many Slashdot'ers probably are already familiar with this, but hey, you never know. We will all be fighting for privacy in the coming years it seems, best to know what tools are available to you. :)
PGP is available on almost every OS, Windows 95/98/NT/2000, MacOS, AIX, HPUX, Linux, Solaris, and DOS. And can be easily configured to work with most popular email programs as well.
Privacy means that only the intended recipient of a message can read it. By providing the ability to encrypt messages, PGP provides protection against anyone eavesdropping on the network. Even if the information is intercepted, it is completely unreadable to the snooper. Authentication identifies the origin of the information, certainty that it is authentic, and that it has not been altered. Authentication also provides an extremely valuable tool in network security: verification of the identity of an individual. In addition to secure messaging, PGP also provides secure data storage, enabling you to encrypt files stored on your computer. Version 6.5.8 also includes PGPnet - a powerful VPN client which enables secure peer-to-peer IP-based network connections - and Self-Decrypting Archives (SDAs) which allow you to exchange information securely even with those who do not have PGP.
I have read articles that speculate that the PS3's content will all be online, the games you will download, etc. So Maybe Xbox will try to do some of that as well, focus more on the downloading of material and less on the games being in stores. It only makes sense if they can pull it off, they pay no shipping, no middle man, you just download the games right from them and that would be it, the only thing the stores would stock is the actual console itself and controlers.I don't think this is practical anytime in the next few years. I would guess maybe about 2007 or so something like that wil be done.
I am guessing the next Xbox will be the same exact thing almost, just more memory, faster memory, faster and bigger video card, and some new stuff to keep people from hacking it, and that will be about it. :)
I love using Knoppix version 3.2 on my desktop PC's from time to time, and I have Red Hat installed on an old spare machine so I can learn on it. But I am a hardcore gamer, so Linux just is not practical for me to put on my two fastest machines. And I do web development also, and need ot use all of the Macromedia MX Suite, as well as a nice stable version of Photoshop. As soon as Linux becomes easily compatible with all Windows based games, and the above mentioned programs are readily available and easily configurable, I will make the switch completely.
I think what holds back a lot of computer users from switching to Linux is the gaming issue.
I think that double Domination is the best game mode in Unreal. I play SOF2 and Halo and MOHAA on PC, and have only played Unreal 2K3 on PC, but am really looking forward to Unreal Tournament 2K4!
I guess that my opinions about the Xbox might be slightly jaded, I am spoiled because I usually play PC games, which almost always have better graphics and more features. So when they port a game from PC to Xbox it is usually dumbed down quite a bit.
It has released a bunch of online shooters, but they are all just very bad ports of popular PC titles. Xbox got GTA 3 and Vice City way too late for it to matter because of Sony's agreement with Rockstar, and they have waited way way too long with Halo 2.
Soldier of Fortune II on Xbox was horrible, on PC it is amazing, and on Xbox it reminds me of an N64 game.
I have been gaming since the days of Atari, and I, like many other gamers, am simply sick of being burned by games with a lot of hype that fall short of the expectations. Another trend in the gaming industry is making commercials for games that include NO GAMEPLAY footage, and also boxes that include no actual gameplay screenshots. None of us care about the cinematics and cut scenes in the game, those have looked good since Playstation, show us the gameplay!
I also will not purchase Xbox titles anymore without renting them. Even Halo 2 is going to get rented or played at a friends house before I buy it. I loved Unreal Championship, bought Ghost Recon, it was horrible, sold it, bought SOF2, sold it, Rainbow 6 sucked on Xbox too, Unreal II sucks, Counter Strike sucked, etc. And the only good single player game released on it in my opinion is The Elder Scrolls II : Morrowind.
I think they just need to spend more time in the production of these games. I do not mind waiting a long time for a game to be released, as long as it is as polished as it can be.
But don't get me wrong, I think the Xbox is the best console to date (insert anti MS comments and arguments here). It really made a lot of people who weren't used to Online gaming find the fun in playing against real human opponents, and the cheap rate for their live service was really cool of them. Perfect for younger gamers who do not have their own PC to game on.
Ohhhhhh yeah, the Pocket Call Voicemail is priceless!