1) Because it works "good enough" for most people.
2) Because jumping ship means doing something different, and therefore, scary.
3) Software and other vital functionality may not be avialable for other computers... It's like buying a new car that isn't compatible with current gas stations.
People are beginning to switch... We just need to keep our numbers growing enough to hit critical mass, where it won't be as scary (or as limiting, software-wise) to switch platforms.
It's hard to hide data in the LSBs if you do a lossy compression afterward... You'd basically have to write a custom JPG routine to keep your LSBs in tact.
I've done some of my own research in this area... Basically put, the LSB isn't nearly as random as people would like to think it is... If you hide a compressed/encrypted file in the LSB of an image, you'll still be able to look at a b&w LSB map, and tell that there's data hidden there. For example: A picture with a black cat should leave ~most~ of that cat with the same LSB. If you extract JUST the LSBs, and the cat shows up totally random, you know something is wrong.
Also, if you're doing LSB hiding, you can't use lossless compresion like jpgs
And once the very creative criminals crack your super-powerful one-thing-does-everything ID, they'll have total unmitigated access to everything you have and your identity.
I don't see how a suspicion engine would be effective against many forms of intrusion... Take a high-level exec in a company... Works late frequently, and accesses sensitive material, prints it off to take home, etc.
Janitor comes in late, exec isn't there. Opens the sensitive information, prints it off to sell to a competitor... Behaviorally, very similar.
A password is good protection against this kind of thing, but a suspicion engine would probably let it happen.
To find the holy grail of protection, you need to be sure that the users are who they say they are, and the actions they're taking are appropriate (which usually involves context). Have fun!
Sometimes you're trying to ensure that the person on the computer is who that person says they are.
Sometimes you're trying to make sure that the person on the computer isn't doing anything they shouldn't be doing.
Sometimes you're doing both. Passwords are pretty decent with the first case, but bad with the second. Suspicion engines don't really care about the first, and deal only with the second.
So, do passwords suck? Depends on what you're trying to ensure.
I've been thinking about opening the source to PirateTrader and PirateTrader OCR (http://dracosoftware.com/piratetrader/), because I'm too busy to do it all by myself.
They're assitants for Puzzle Pirates that are Terms-of-use friendly with the game.
Interestingly enough, in my highschool, we had an underground newspaper, because the newspaper teacher kept vetoing all the stories that the sudents cared about... Politics, sex, etc. The newspaper teacher hated it, but administration refused to do anything about it...
Unfortunately, the underground paper went too far and published the home addresses/phone numbers for all the teachers. The principal had to shut it down.
This certainly sounds like ATI fanboy FUD to me. nVidia has shown that they're capable of producing a quality product (hence their growing market share). I don't see why they'd suddenly veer from a path that's proven effective.
It really doesn't matter one way or the other. The video card market is fast paced and volatile. If nVidia does produce garbage, the market will react accordingly, and drop them like a hot rock.
Yes, I believe the individuals that are involved with FOSS are, in general, more generous than Bill Gates is.
However, that should not undermine the fact that Bill Gates is being generous, and any act of generosity he makes should be accepted with grattitude. Could he be more generous? Yes, he could be... we all could be. He could also be a lot LESS generous. I'm sure thousands of families will thank him for his contribution.
Sure, simulations are especially good at teaching skills, but there's no reason they couldn't teach other things as well. W
ouldn't it be cool to see a reconstruction of Rome that you could walk through? What about witness the power of Napoleon's army in battle? Tour Auschwitz to get a scale of the holocaust... That kind of thing can provide a lot more information than numbers of people dead printed on a page.
This isn't a terribly huge surprise... After all, simulators have been around for a long time teaching people. Games these days are pretty much simulators.
Simulations interact with more areas of the brain, and engages the participant more actively. The more engaged your attention and focus is, the more you'll learn. That's why a lot of people prefer to learn by doing. Doing virtually is probably the next best thing people have come up with.
While I agree with the majority of your post, I think some of the expectations you place on ordinary software are a bit unrealistic. That is, in part, why daily use software is written differently than critical-systems software.
It's always a balance between the probability of a given failure, the concequences of a given failure, and the cost of adapting to that error. Different types of projects have different ways of looking at this balance.
What are the chances of a HDD being removed (or totally failing) while Photoshop is being used? Let's say... 1 in 10 million. What is the concequence? Worst case, 8 hours of work. What is the cost of anticipating such a failure, and dealing with it gracefully? Significant (You'd have a better idea of the man-hours involved than I would).
Now, compare that with how it handles a corrupt data file. What are the chances that a file you open isn't properly formatted? Uncommon, but it does happen... 1 in 1000, give or take an order. What is the concequence? Person can't do their job. What are the costs involved for dealing with a bad file? Significant, but not huge. Apparently it was worth it, because PhotoShop can read some non-standard formats, and fails gracefully with all others.
In the case if critical embedded systems, things are quite different. The chances of something going wrong are still fairly small... 1 in 100,000 say. But the concequence is the loss of life, which is very, very important. It becomes easy to justify the extra expense of writing systems that can handle these situations.
Adding fault tolerance for events that occur outside the software can dramatically increase the scope of requirements, and thus increase development time and cost. In most day to day situations, you have to balance your cost and your feature set. In day to day software, the return on investment for this kind of development has a near zero return on investment, and would be a bad business/project management decision.
I'm surprised that they haven't done this sooner. Microsoft has basically shown Intel that they have no loyalties to the chipmaker anymore... I don't see why Intel would restrict their potential market by limiting which OSs their chips are allowed to run. A one-sided loyalty is baaaad business.
Do you bastards want me to write you a spell checker? Oh, I'll do it alright. A little bit of longest common substring magic, and you won't look like a herd of idiots.
Just give me the green light, and I'll make it happen. You know where to find me.
This is honestly like almost any other phenomenon... If we do something enough, we start thinking of the world in those terms. If you do art, you begin to see things as an artist does... Colors, relationships of spaces, etc.
By no means is this limited to gaming, and it's also what makes interactivity such a powerful tool for learning. Most people I know prefer to learn by doing. Doing in a properly engineered virtual world is a great way to prepare people for doing in the real world. That's what simulations are all about... And most games are simulations.
"I've been using the computer for so long, and command-Z works for undo in all the software programs," Hoffman said. "So whenever I find something in my life that I want to undo, I reach for the command-Z keys and I find it weird that it doesn't work."
Ok, so if the Earth is rotating faster, and it's mass stays the same, then the Earth-ward force should be reduced. The faster the planet spins, the more intertia I have. The more inertia I have pulling me away from the planet, the less the effects of gravity (acting as a centripital force) would be felt.
Am I missing anything, or do I weigh a fraction of a fraction of a pound less?
On the other hand, by not believing in something which must be true (cogito ergo sum), you are completely wrong, so everyone with a differing view, is closer to the truth than you.
You see... While you may know your beliefs are false, I am also aware that your beliefs are false. This means that I have taken your truth, and expanded on it, bringing me closer to true enlightenment. You cannot do the inverse, however, because your beliefs deny it.
Besides, if you truly believed in nothing, then you could have no way to measure your beliefs or conjecture, as they do not exist, and could neither be true nor false (as true and false do not exist).
I believe by reducing sexuality to a "choice vs. fate" argument, people reduce a personal preference to an impersonal level, where they're able to attack it.
As a heterosexual male, I liken it to the preference for crispy bacon. That is... I prefer crispy bacon, whereas (in this analogy) you would opt for the limp/soggy bacon. A bisexual, then, would be willing to enjoy bacon in any form.
It seems doubtful to me that my preference for crispy bacon would be genetic. At the same time, I didn't wake up one day and say "today will be the day that I will enjoy only crispy bacon!". So, while it is a preference, and I am aware of my preference, it's not like I made a choice (concious effort) to prefer crispy bacon. It would also stand that if you enjoy limp bacon, that it is unlikely that you would really be able to force yourself to truly enjoy crispy bacon, no matter how much the status quo would prefer that you did.
From what I can tell, these kinds of preferences are influenced our whole lives by personal experiences (had crispy bacon, and it was a horrible experience), social norms (those who are used to limp bacon more open to the concept of liking limp bacon), and other various confounding factors.
Of course, these are simply my musings. Since I'm also of the mindset where I think sexual preference is about as important as bacon preference, I haven't done any analysis outside of talking with friends.
1) If you're talking about accuracy in absolutes (ie, perfect representation of the truth), your answer is just as likely as anyone elses.
2) If you're talking about proximity to truth, then you should realize that there are, then, an infinite number of possible religions which are infinately closer to the truth than your answer of 0. An answer of null (I don't know) would be, then, equally close and distant to all of them.
I dunno where you drive, but around here, large-scale traffic light failures (power outages and such) usually results in widespread vehicular damage and the loss of life. A world-ending catastrophe? No. A real problem that needs to be taken seriously? Yes.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Because it works "good enough" for most people.
2) Because jumping ship means doing something different, and therefore, scary.
3) Software and other vital functionality may not be avialable for other computers... It's like buying a new car that isn't compatible with current gas stations.
People are beginning to switch... We just need to keep our numbers growing enough to hit critical mass, where it won't be as scary (or as limiting, software-wise) to switch platforms.
~D
Bah, that's what I meant... Damn fingers.
It's hard to hide data in the LSBs if you do a lossy compression afterward... You'd basically have to write a custom JPG routine to keep your LSBs in tact.
~D
I've done some of my own research in this area... Basically put, the LSB isn't nearly as random as people would like to think it is... If you hide a compressed/encrypted file in the LSB of an image, you'll still be able to look at a b&w LSB map, and tell that there's data hidden there. For example: A picture with a black cat should leave ~most~ of that cat with the same LSB. If you extract JUST the LSBs, and the cat shows up totally random, you know something is wrong.
Also, if you're doing LSB hiding, you can't use lossless compresion like jpgs
~D
And once the very creative criminals crack your super-powerful one-thing-does-everything ID, they'll have total unmitigated access to everything you have and your identity.
Pass.
~D
I don't see how a suspicion engine would be effective against many forms of intrusion... Take a high-level exec in a company... Works late frequently, and accesses sensitive material, prints it off to take home, etc.
Janitor comes in late, exec isn't there. Opens the sensitive information, prints it off to sell to a competitor... Behaviorally, very similar.
A password is good protection against this kind of thing, but a suspicion engine would probably let it happen.
To find the holy grail of protection, you need to be sure that the users are who they say they are, and the actions they're taking are appropriate (which usually involves context). Have fun!
~D
Well, there's always a question of intent...
Sometimes you're trying to ensure that the person on the computer is who that person says they are.
Sometimes you're trying to make sure that the person on the computer isn't doing anything they shouldn't be doing.
Sometimes you're doing both. Passwords are pretty decent with the first case, but bad with the second. Suspicion engines don't really care about the first, and deal only with the second.
So, do passwords suck? Depends on what you're trying to ensure.
~S
I've been thinking about opening the source to PirateTrader and PirateTrader OCR (http://dracosoftware.com/piratetrader/), because I'm too busy to do it all by myself.
They're assitants for Puzzle Pirates that are Terms-of-use friendly with the game.
Anyone want to help?
~D
Interestingly enough, in my highschool, we had an underground newspaper, because the newspaper teacher kept vetoing all the stories that the sudents cared about... Politics, sex, etc. The newspaper teacher hated it, but administration refused to do anything about it...
Unfortunately, the underground paper went too far and published the home addresses/phone numbers for all the teachers. The principal had to shut it down.
~D
This certainly sounds like ATI fanboy FUD to me. nVidia has shown that they're capable of producing a quality product (hence their growing market share). I don't see why they'd suddenly veer from a path that's proven effective.
It really doesn't matter one way or the other. The video card market is fast paced and volatile. If nVidia does produce garbage, the market will react accordingly, and drop them like a hot rock.
~D
Yes, I believe the individuals that are involved with FOSS are, in general, more generous than Bill Gates is.
However, that should not undermine the fact that Bill Gates is being generous, and any act of generosity he makes should be accepted with grattitude. Could he be more generous? Yes, he could be... we all could be. He could also be a lot LESS generous. I'm sure thousands of families will thank him for his contribution.
~D
Sure, simulations are especially good at teaching skills, but there's no reason they couldn't teach other things as well. W
ouldn't it be cool to see a reconstruction of Rome that you could walk through? What about witness the power of Napoleon's army in battle? Tour Auschwitz to get a scale of the holocaust... That kind of thing can provide a lot more information than numbers of people dead printed on a page.
~D
This isn't a terribly huge surprise... After all, simulators have been around for a long time teaching people. Games these days are pretty much simulators.
Simulations interact with more areas of the brain, and engages the participant more actively. The more engaged your attention and focus is, the more you'll learn. That's why a lot of people prefer to learn by doing. Doing virtually is probably the next best thing people have come up with.
~D
While I agree with the majority of your post, I think some of the expectations you place on ordinary software are a bit unrealistic. That is, in part, why daily use software is written differently than critical-systems software.
It's always a balance between the probability of a given failure, the concequences of a given failure, and the cost of adapting to that error. Different types of projects have different ways of looking at this balance.
What are the chances of a HDD being removed (or totally failing) while Photoshop is being used? Let's say... 1 in 10 million. What is the concequence? Worst case, 8 hours of work. What is the cost of anticipating such a failure, and dealing with it gracefully? Significant (You'd have a better idea of the man-hours involved than I would).
Now, compare that with how it handles a corrupt data file. What are the chances that a file you open isn't properly formatted? Uncommon, but it does happen... 1 in 1000, give or take an order. What is the concequence? Person can't do their job. What are the costs involved for dealing with a bad file? Significant, but not huge. Apparently it was worth it, because PhotoShop can read some non-standard formats, and fails gracefully with all others.
In the case if critical embedded systems, things are quite different. The chances of something going wrong are still fairly small... 1 in 100,000 say. But the concequence is the loss of life, which is very, very important. It becomes easy to justify the extra expense of writing systems that can handle these situations.
Adding fault tolerance for events that occur outside the software can dramatically increase the scope of requirements, and thus increase development time and cost. In most day to day situations, you have to balance your cost and your feature set. In day to day software, the return on investment for this kind of development has a near zero return on investment, and would be a bad business/project management decision.
~D
I'm surprised that they haven't done this sooner. Microsoft has basically shown Intel that they have no loyalties to the chipmaker anymore... I don't see why Intel would restrict their potential market by limiting which OSs their chips are allowed to run. A one-sided loyalty is baaaad business.
~D
Reality check time: The unscrupulous underbelly of the Internet takes pride in NOT using proper English.
~D
\/1ct3m, at the very least.
Victem? VictEm?
Do you bastards want me to write you a spell checker? Oh, I'll do it alright. A little bit of longest common substring magic, and you won't look like a herd of idiots.
Just give me the green light, and I'll make it happen. You know where to find me.
~D
This is honestly like almost any other phenomenon... If we do something enough, we start thinking of the world in those terms. If you do art, you begin to see things as an artist does... Colors, relationships of spaces, etc.
By no means is this limited to gaming, and it's also what makes interactivity such a powerful tool for learning. Most people I know prefer to learn by doing. Doing in a properly engineered virtual world is a great way to prepare people for doing in the real world. That's what simulations are all about... And most games are simulations.
~D
"I've been using the computer for so long, and command-Z works for undo in all the software programs," Hoffman said. "So whenever I find something in my life that I want to undo, I reach for the command-Z keys and I find it weird that it doesn't work."
You need a fucking vacation. NOW.
~D
Ok, so if the Earth is rotating faster, and it's mass stays the same, then the Earth-ward force should be reduced. The faster the planet spins, the more intertia I have. The more inertia I have pulling me away from the planet, the less the effects of gravity (acting as a centripital force) would be felt.
Am I missing anything, or do I weigh a fraction of a fraction of a pound less?
~D
On the other hand, by not believing in something which must be true (cogito ergo sum), you are completely wrong, so everyone with a differing view, is closer to the truth than you.
You see... While you may know your beliefs are false, I am also aware that your beliefs are false. This means that I have taken your truth, and expanded on it, bringing me closer to true enlightenment. You cannot do the inverse, however, because your beliefs deny it.
Besides, if you truly believed in nothing, then you could have no way to measure your beliefs or conjecture, as they do not exist, and could neither be true nor false (as true and false do not exist).
~D P.S. The McDonald's Index is awesome.I believe by reducing sexuality to a "choice vs. fate" argument, people reduce a personal preference to an impersonal level, where they're able to attack it.
As a heterosexual male, I liken it to the preference for crispy bacon. That is... I prefer crispy bacon, whereas (in this analogy) you would opt for the limp/soggy bacon. A bisexual, then, would be willing to enjoy bacon in any form.
It seems doubtful to me that my preference for crispy bacon would be genetic. At the same time, I didn't wake up one day and say "today will be the day that I will enjoy only crispy bacon!". So, while it is a preference, and I am aware of my preference, it's not like I made a choice (concious effort) to prefer crispy bacon. It would also stand that if you enjoy limp bacon, that it is unlikely that you would really be able to force yourself to truly enjoy crispy bacon, no matter how much the status quo would prefer that you did.
From what I can tell, these kinds of preferences are influenced our whole lives by personal experiences (had crispy bacon, and it was a horrible experience), social norms (those who are used to limp bacon more open to the concept of liking limp bacon), and other various confounding factors.
Of course, these are simply my musings. Since I'm also of the mindset where I think sexual preference is about as important as bacon preference, I haven't done any analysis outside of talking with friends.
~D
I didn't say cataclysmic, just some (which is bad enough). Here in DC, people still drive like assholes when the lights are flashing/out/etc.
~D
Your logic doesn't flow...
1) If you're talking about accuracy in absolutes (ie, perfect representation of the truth), your answer is just as likely as anyone elses.
2) If you're talking about proximity to truth, then you should realize that there are, then, an infinite number of possible religions which are infinately closer to the truth than your answer of 0. An answer of null (I don't know) would be, then, equally close and distant to all of them.
~D
I dunno where you drive, but around here, large-scale traffic light failures (power outages and such) usually results in widespread vehicular damage and the loss of life. A world-ending catastrophe? No. A real problem that needs to be taken seriously? Yes.
~D