It took me a while to figure it out, but when you think about it, it's so obvious:
Corporations are the driving force behind this.
Why would corporations want this?
Answer: Make money by reducing their expenses.
How?
Answer: How many corporations already use RFiD tags? At 25$ a piece? They can save a lot of money on these tags (and replacements) by simply requiring that all employee have their passport.
It's not only about how the governement use this thechnology nor about how it can be pirated. It's also about how third parties can use this. ( like your employer, or your video club. )
Why is online banking allowing you to create new billing accounts online? Why can you make a transfer to a new, unlisted, account online? Answer: Banks want to save money.
Most people almost never create new billing and transfer "destinations". We could afford to go in person once or twice a year to do this. The very few who need these options are usually kwolegeable about security issues. Even if they are not, the fact that there is so few of them is a protection in itself. Remove these options from online banking and even a "phished" account will be of limited use to the phisher since the only thing he can do with it is pay your bills.
This solution was actually implemented in the beginning of online baking. The idea of pushing "new" features with no regards to their actual impact is almost like a disease in the current corporate world.
This keyboard has a range of 10 meters ( 30' ). It's neat and cool looking, the same price as those 8' range keyboards and the 7 top keys are fully programmable ( including macro commands )
With two mice and 1 keyboard... this DX1 sure sound nice. But for half the price I got almost as good were functionnality is concerned. ( not including the logitech mouse... )
When loading the 2.4.x kernel, my nVidia works just fine, but no sound. Despite being detected, my Audigy won't work.
If I load the 2.6.x kernel, sound work nice. but 3D acceleration won't load. Maybe someone can help?
I find it amazing that everything else can load properly on autoboot with no configuration at all, even windows with all its drivers can't do that.
By the way, if you give this to someone, be sure to be there the first time they go for Google.com, their reaction upon discovering its german version should quite funny.
From what i could get from the article, you first must determine what exacly is your software going to do.
Handling shedule? Monitoring medical equipment? Issuing medication list for patients?...
SUN clearly state in its documentation that J2EE is NOT for mission critical applications. And if you have hardware interfaces to program, Java is not the programming language you want. In other hand, if you are only going to work with a database, then yes, an interface that can handle any platform is best.
As for.NET well, my understanding is that the problem is Windows. Can you afford to have your application to crash? Is the possibility to "lock" the station important to you client? If no, then windows could be a good choice.
The choice of platform is only secondary in your case. First get all the specs out, especially security and safety related specs. Then choose whatever platform that does the job, don't just limit yourself to.NET or J2EE.
Ok, lets recap: they are going to sell magnetic shield with those RFID passports, right? That's briliant! I also have some prime estate on mars I could sell them at a discount. A real steal!
Note that NOT using RFID is not what they propose. It is really impressive to see how far they are willing to go in order to justify pushing corporate interest despite its lack of use. There is plenty of technological solutions that can do the job, they have to insist on the one that won't...
The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.
"Potential profits"? If it were thrue, you could sue casinos over loosing money because the "potential profit" is high but failed to materialise.
A lawyers going in court complaining about "potential profit loss" is the exact same thing as complaining for not winning at a casino. They are gaming the system. They don't want to talk about the good parts, like free publicity, nor do they want to talk about the fact that US high management tend to lie about futur "potential profits". SCO conference call is a good example of their lact of reality in financial planning. But SCO is merely doing an established business practice. I have seen worse. Pirates? One of the many scape goats available to hide their lies, as a bonus you can even sue them with partial evidence and frivolous claims. After all, if the fact that they pirated is true, the claimed loss must be also...
The sad part is that those who should be making a profit from the material ( producers, writers, staffs,... ) are NOT the ones loosing money here. It's the distributors ( studios ) and retailers. Guess who is overchaging for these products? Hint: not the ones who are making a profit. The internet makes their distribution model obsolete and their control over ideas void. Them complaining in courts about their "rights to make money" and winning only makes a joke of the US legal system.
IMHO the thing to do is avoid this argument and concentrate on the Founders' original one: That copyright is a TEMPORARY PRIVILEGE intended to INCREASE the amount of creative material FREELY available in the middle-distant future by letting authors and their publishers make money on it without competition from copiers for a SHORT TIME after its creation.
Short, accurate and complete. A real work of art. (sorry couldn't resist:) ) I fully agree with your position on this.
The perfect worker:incapable of thinking of anything but the job he's concentrating on. Expect these to be mandatory by 2015.
-Humor-
In other news, we now count 124 854 victims from serial killers wich though about death and violence right before starting work. At least 120 of these compulsive killers are still at large. We wish to remind our readers that thoughs related to aggresiveness are now a capital crime...
-/Humor-
Wow, I wonder how many HOURS the system will hold... And this is to fight terrorism? I doubt terrorists could do as much damage to a contry economy as this law thing even if they tried for a hundred years.
I agree with everything you said until here. Quite a lot of software takes years to develop. Once you pick a solution the cost of changing outweighs any likely benefits. Thus you can safely commit to buying a product for X years. There are advantages to dating and advantages to marriage.
This is thrue. There are some cases where it can be done, for example the Computer Assisted Drawing (CAD) software Cathia. Because Cathia is mendatory for safety reasons in aeronautic, there is little risks in long contracts if you want to design planes.
But in most cases, when you have to invest in the upgrade because your hardware can't keep up, you want to be able to look around. When the contract's time is too long and its reach too large it becomes like a binding promise to marry without even knowing if it's a man or a woman.
So any time anyone chooses a MS product over an opern source product, it must be because of bribery and not because of some legit reason (like lack of training)?
The issue here is not the fact that he chose MS over OSS, but rather the way he did it. His leader told him to favor OSS whenever he could:
- He never even bothered to look at OSS. He never went through the evaluation process that is usually required by any large public contracts.
- He tried to do it secretly which is against the rules of transparency required by most democratic governements.
- He was about to sign an exclusive 5 years contract with MS wich is against his leaders direct instructions of favoring OSS.
Add to that the fact that bribery is an official MS marketing strategy.
Once you look at those facts together, bribery by MS is the most likely senario to have happened. And when a public fund is spent that way, taxpayers tends to get angry.
Note that in my personal opinion, considering the speed at wich softwares evolve, anyone who sign a 5+ years exclusive contract on any software is at best showing signs of gross incompetence.
After all, suing spammers is good PR and it is a lot cheaper than rebuilding windows 2K/XP to fix them. They chose to put their money on longhorn. Personnaly, I agree with their strategy, even if I do not believe that longhorn will be functionnal in its first releases.
This is way too close to Microsoft punch line for comfort.
It retails for 576,000 yen (5,600 dollars)
600$ robot + Microsoft server? When I see the price tag, I can't help getting suspicious.
and there is no English version currently available
Folks at Microsoft will be uppset by this. I mean "We can't find an english version of windows." isn't going to look good for them.
Jokes aside, I find the new trend of putting voice activated recognition system in cars, home appliances and toys annoying at best. In cell phones, I can understand. But before running maybe they should walk? Maintaining a conversation with a human is several orders of magnitude harder than just figuring out what the said humain is babling about.
Something that was pointed out on Groklaw is that TSG has forced IBM to release a lot of unrelated private information. Emails between managers and key personnels taken out of context can be extremely damaging to IBM. While most of TSG sealing seems to be more about a FUD strategy. Keep in mind that the entire AIX source code has been sealed in this case.
Is SCO using the thinking (right or wrong) that this is their proprietary information, therefore the public has no right to it? Wouldn't it be no less proprietary if we could all see it? If they win (blech) then it doesn't matter, we still can't "use" it. If they lose, then well, we can and it doesn't matter either
In this case, wouldn't it be fairer to wait after the process before granting any disclosure?
The fact remains that in this case MO tried to cook someting with this information and got hoist by her own petar when it turned out that the information in question was sealed. I think that in this case, unsealing should not be granted. This will prevent TSG from using too many proxy in their FUD campaign.
It would seems someone in the US is very busy trying to sell the idea that RFID are more secure than printed number or codebar.
The thuth is: IT IS NOT. It can be safer if used properly, this is also true of other means.
The problem with RFID is that people who are pushing for it fail to point out the fact that the RFID's capacity to emit has to be stronger because the antennas used by the "readers" HAS to be cheap. It would be too expensive otherwise.
What a "proper reader" can get only by being within 3 or 4 feet, a good antenna can catch hundred of feet away. Like a car parked on the other side of the street...
The RFID information itself isn't the only one the listener get: He also knows WHEN and sometimes WHO is doing it.
For example: a thief park his car in front of a drugstore. At 11H35 500 RFID gives their number in a 2mm time span. Now he knows that the store just received its drug order. More, only a clerk is in there, so he knows that clerks have the safe's key. The thief doesn't even have to be in the car.
There is no real difference between the information contained in a RFID than in a codebare. The difference is when you read it: a RFID is like sreaming that information for anyone to know. Who wants to know? Stores, Governement agencies, criminals,... In short, anyone who understand that information is power. When you gives power to someone, he tends to use it.
Anyone care to comment on how stupid all of this is?
There is nothing stupid about being constructive.
A smaller, more focused MMORPG, perhaps even the "massive" part needs to be removed. Target subscription is 500-1500 subscribers, with a set upper limit of probably 1500.
To my mind, the problem here is more the number of people online at anytime than the actual number of suscribtions. A game that has "dead" periods is in bad shape to start with.
If you wanted to play, you'd submit an application, and assuming it's not all booked up, you'd be given a choice of up to 2 dozen characters to play, complete with biography summaries of those (and if they were completely unsuitable... wait another day, while we find some other choices for you).
You can not enforce characters on the players. Game masters like to try this to improve game balance, but the end result is always unhappy players that can't play the style they want and unhappy game masters that have "good characters" played "wrong" by players. This is good for tounament style of play, not MMORPG.
Inststead make a limited number of choice ( 5 or 8 instead of dozens ) and make sure they are all playable and balanced. Earth & Behond is a good example of this aspect. Allow non-linear evolution for each of them ( E&A fails in that ) and you have a good recepie.
I'd also try to weed out all the obnoxious players, too, for that matter. People who want to play in character are important, and if you chalked up more than a few infractions (talking about monday night football in game, using too much modern slang, etc) I'd probably end up canceling the subscription.
Sorry, won't work. You cannot stop your players from doing off topic chatting. A MMORPG is more than just a game, it's a community. You have to accept it.
Player death would be permanent (choose another character).
As a result, players will leave the game upon loosing everything to a simple bad luck. Eve-online is a good example of this. Not good. Do it the other way around, allow players to die as many time as they want, but with consequences. This is a game, everything happening in it should be enjoyable to players, even loosing.
The main problem of many MMORPG is that the GM staff cannot afford to micromanage the game. When a player start, the discovery of the game is good enough to make him stay. At "high level" new quest and plot are aimed at you. But in between, this is where things go wrong. Fill this void and you'll be in business.
In north america, there is this really anoying idea that cartoons are for kids. The result is that most cartoon aired are... for kids.
The way i understand it, in Japan, cartooning ( called "manga" ) is more than just popular, they actually use more paper for this than newspapers. This is reflected in TV or cinema content. US has Hollywood, Japan has anime.
It's like for every TV series that exist on TV in the US ( soap, mini-series, movies... ) there is an anime equivalent in Japan. Soap opera? Anime soap exist. Action? Anime action. Etc. The result is an extremly wide variety. Several of them are extremely well made. But like "live" TV, only a few are outstanding. Given the fact that anime have no special effect limits, and that several anime series do ends. It's like watching a 5 hours long movie.
If you really want to see what anime is all about, do the same as with any other movies or novels: Find some whose subject match your taste and try them.
Note: I would NOT recommand Evangelion, FLCL, Lain or Cowbow Beboop to someone trying out anime for the first time. It would be like watching the first DUNE movie as an example of Sci-Fi genre. ( Of course, with no prior knowledge of the Dune novels. ) Starwars would be better for a first timer.
Think about it for a second: they patent something very general on "limited resource computing devices".
This patent definition is not going to change over the years, but the definition of "limited resource computing" will. In 4 years from now, anything that can't run longhorn may fall under this category!
Now they have a couple of years to create a precedent where a similar patent is protected with success in the courtrooms. Precedent is law. So when the time is right, MS would be able to prevent older non-DRM hardware from selling. As a bonus they'll get people like the RIAA to fight this in court for them, so they won't even have to actually create the precedent themselves.
Imagine: Millions Italians decide to fight this by:
1- Making sure their computer is obsolete.
2- Download something copywrited. ( anything )
3- Go to police station and admit the "crime".
Result:
- Puplic services completly paralysed.
- Two newspapers FORCED BY LAW to publish millions of useless prints that would both bloat price and reduce relevant content.( leading to bankrupsy? )
Government stuck with tons of useless PC that they will have problem getting ride of. ( thank to friendly environmental groups already upset by wasted paper. )
...
Haaa... Dreaming is Soooo nice. But remember: IT COULD HAPPEN!
Modern FM receivers work by mixing a beat frequency with the frequency you want to receive. You wind up with (a+b) and (a-b), one of which is trivially filtered out with a high (or low) pass filter.
Sorry but this is incomplete. This discribe both Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation. The difference between the two is how the mixed frequency behaves. The carrier ( beat ) frequency is also filtered. This is done to save "space" on the bandwidth.
Now there's a nice, simple, standard design (and corresponding set of chips) for handling FM at a particular frequency. So given your target frequency (a), you can choose a beat frequency (b) such that (a-b) matches the standard chip frequency.
Close but: Only the mixed frequency is send. In order to "de-mix" it the receiver has to generate the right carrier. Whitout it the reciver cannot unscramble the mixed frequencies. The audio signal ( the result ) is a known value that is always the same regardless of the broadcasting station.( 0 to 15 KHz for example ) When you change your radio station, what you are doing is changing the value of the receiver's frequency generator so that the de demixer can extract the 0-15K range from the received signal. The key here is that you receiver is actually generating the "missing" carrier. Thus emmiting, but with no antenna to speak of nor power to go far.
For standard US FM radio, that beat (b) frequency is right in the middle of the aircraft band.
I doubt that very much. The primary objective of such regulations is to prevent this from happening.
Aircraft use AM for their comm gear.
I haven't look into it but this makes sens because the FM would be subject to the doppler effect. Note however that the AM band reserved to plane communications is not the same as the one for broadcasting commercial radio signal.
So your little FM walkman receiver can jam air-to-ground comms.
Possible in theory, because your receiver is generating a frequency. But in reality, for this to happen, you reciever would have to generate a wave of sufficient strenght to parasite AG communications. This require factors such as frequency, antenna and power level to be right. The idea behind the regulations is to insure that these factors don't match by accident. Your walkman can get the frequency right, but it lack a good antenna and would be destroyed by the power level required.
That's a RECEIVER! Once you get into transmitters, it's really easy to jam everything around for miles. Not only on your frequency, which may be quite wide, but also on all the harmonics.
Believe me, if you were jamming everything for miles, a bunch a people in suits would be knocking at your door.
Take it from someone who used to jam his little brother's radio reception. "Turn it down or I turn it OFF!"
A real courtroom is a place where the facts of the matter are compared in a careful, calculated manner...
In theory, yes. But in reality you are forgetting about the jury. By ranting in the medias for more than a full year, SCO is aiming at influencing a potential jury which may be composed of computer illiterates. In some country, this would be a case of court contempt.
We may consider this whole thing to be stupid and frivolous, but SCO deserves their day in court.
I fully agree. And they will. I can hear the sound of grinding axes from here.
US legislators (too often lawyers) have to be told to fix a system that seemingly only allows 'justice' for the (extremely) rich.
Justice? What a silly thing! The system is not about justice. It about LAWS, as in "Court Of Law". Lawyers, politicians and major shareholders have no interest in justice. The system allow them to control the law. By using precedents, they can destroy the spirit of any law. Giving them a power very similar to that of the nobles during the dark ages. Asking them to do something about it is the same as asking the car manifacturers to make eco-cars: They will do it, just don't hold your breath.
Funny, your first half of your message was the exact opposite of my problem - games have gotten _too_ non-linear.
I do not think that "linear" vs "non-linear" is a real issue with gaming. There has been some very good linear games.
No, I think the problem is that there is a finite number of styles. Shooter, RTS, Quests, Actions, Strategy,... The first games in their genre are good because of novelty. But later games can only hope to improve on secondary options. I liked DOOM, I havn't finished DOOM II and never bothered to even try DOOM III. Despite the fact that I am conviced that DOOM III is really better than DOOM.
Star Craft had the best of this IMHO - the gameplay allows players to be very creative, and the mapping tool was easy to use, polished, and powerful enough for most amateurs (hardcore modders preferred Total Annihilation, as they should).
I really like SC but it felt too much like war craft 2. TA is better made, and a lot more replayable because the computer AI doesn't have to cheat to give you a good fight. Both these games are old. When was the last good RTS release? ( WC3 is just like WC2 with a little more options. It's not better in therm of game play. )
IMHO, I want to see multiplayer online games where all you need to mod is patience, webspace to host, and imagination (and no, relying on text-editors and consoles are not acceptable options).
MMO have a lot of potential, but also stress the fact that game makers have to be a lot better. The old formula of just: "We made this and people love it..." is no good. Also, it means that they have to keep developing the game even after its release. That phase of development is critical to the game success, and it's just as difficult.
I really like space shooters ( Freelancer ). Current MMO are falling short of my expectations. But if you like a game where patience is a requisite, do try EVE, it takes months to do anything. Personnaly, I didn't like it. I do have some good ideas for a MOOG. Then again, don't we all?
Slashdot Mirror
It took me a while to figure it out, but when you think about it, it's so obvious:
Corporations are the driving force behind this.
Why would corporations want this?
Answer: Make money by reducing their expenses.
How?
Answer: How many corporations already use RFiD tags? At 25$ a piece? They can save a lot of money on these tags (and replacements) by simply requiring that all employee have their passport.
It's not only about how the governement use this thechnology nor about how it can be pirated. It's also about how third parties can use this. ( like your employer, or your video club. )
Why is online banking allowing you to create new billing accounts online? Why can you make a transfer to a new, unlisted, account online? Answer: Banks want to save money.
Most people almost never create new billing and transfer "destinations". We could afford to go in person once or twice a year to do this. The very few who need these options are usually kwolegeable about security issues. Even if they are not, the fact that there is so few of them is a protection in itself. Remove these options from online banking and even a "phished" account will be of limited use to the phisher since the only thing he can do with it is pay your bills.
This solution was actually implemented in the beginning of online baking. The idea of pushing "new" features with no regards to their actual impact is almost like a disease in the current corporate world.
I recently discovered some very interesting things about wireless keyboards:
P roductDisplay?catalogId=-840&langId=-1&partNumber= 73P4067&storeId=10000001
C ategoryDisplay?catalogId=-840&storeId=10000001&lan gId=-1&dualCurrId=1000073&categoryId=2581898
s /US/EN,CRID=2135,CONTENTID=9340
This used to be IBM's wireless keyboard version. Now Lenovo's.
http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/
Here is a small picture (sorry, finding large pictures of this keyboard is HARD. )
http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/
This keyboard has a range of 10 meters ( 30' ). It's neat and cool looking, the same price as those 8' range keyboards and the 7 top keys are fully programmable ( including macro commands )
And as an unexpected bonus, my wireless 8' logitech mouse now works at 20' with both bases plugged.
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/detail
With two mice and 1 keyboard... this DX1 sure sound nice. But for half the price I got almost as good were functionnality is concerned. ( not including the logitech mouse... )
I am no Linux guru, far from it.
When loading the 2.4.x kernel, my nVidia works just fine, but no sound. Despite being detected, my Audigy won't work.
If I load the 2.6.x kernel, sound work nice. but 3D acceleration won't load. Maybe someone can help?
I find it amazing that everything else can load properly on autoboot with no configuration at all, even windows with all its drivers can't do that.
By the way, if you give this to someone, be sure to be there the first time they go for Google.com, their reaction upon discovering its german version should quite funny.
From what i could get from the article, you first must determine what exacly is your software going to do.
...
.NET well, my understanding is that the problem is Windows. Can you afford to have your application to crash? Is the possibility to "lock" the station important to you client? If no, then windows could be a good choice.
.NET or J2EE.
Handling shedule? Monitoring medical equipment? Issuing medication list for patients?
SUN clearly state in its documentation that J2EE is NOT for mission critical applications. And if you have hardware interfaces to program, Java is not the programming language you want. In other hand, if you are only going to work with a database, then yes, an interface that can handle any platform is best.
As for
The choice of platform is only secondary in your case. First get all the specs out, especially security and safety related specs. Then choose whatever platform that does the job, don't just limit yourself to
Ok, lets recap: they are going to sell magnetic shield with those RFID passports, right? That's briliant! I also have some prime estate on mars I could sell them at a discount. A real steal!
Note that NOT using RFID is not what they propose. It is really impressive to see how far they are willing to go in order to justify pushing corporate interest despite its lack of use. There is plenty of technological solutions that can do the job, they have to insist on the one that won't...
The theft claim comes from the idea that part of the value (in the form of potential profits) is removed.
... ) are NOT the ones loosing money here. It's the distributors ( studios ) and retailers. Guess who is overchaging for these products? Hint: not the ones who are making a profit. The internet makes their distribution model obsolete and their control over ideas void. Them complaining in courts about their "rights to make money" and winning only makes a joke of the US legal system.
:) ) I fully agree with your position on this.
"Potential profits"? If it were thrue, you could sue casinos over loosing money because the "potential profit" is high but failed to materialise.
A lawyers going in court complaining about "potential profit loss" is the exact same thing as complaining for not winning at a casino. They are gaming the system. They don't want to talk about the good parts, like free publicity, nor do they want to talk about the fact that US high management tend to lie about futur "potential profits". SCO conference call is a good example of their lact of reality in financial planning. But SCO is merely doing an established business practice. I have seen worse. Pirates? One of the many scape goats available to hide their lies, as a bonus you can even sue them with partial evidence and frivolous claims. After all, if the fact that they pirated is true, the claimed loss must be also...
The sad part is that those who should be making a profit from the material ( producers, writers, staffs,
IMHO the thing to do is avoid this argument and concentrate on the Founders' original one: That copyright is a TEMPORARY PRIVILEGE intended to INCREASE the amount of creative material FREELY available in the middle-distant future by letting authors and their publishers make money on it without competition from copiers for a SHORT TIME after its creation.
Short, accurate and complete. A real work of art. (sorry couldn't resist
The perfect worker:incapable of thinking of anything but the job he's concentrating on. Expect these to be mandatory by 2015.
-Humor-
In other news, we now count 124 854 victims from serial killers wich though about death and violence right before starting work. At least 120 of these compulsive killers are still at large. We wish to remind our readers that thoughs related to aggresiveness are now a capital crime...
-/Humor-
Wow, I wonder how many HOURS the system will hold... And this is to fight terrorism? I doubt terrorists could do as much damage to a contry economy as this law thing even if they tried for a hundred years.
I agree with everything you said until here. Quite a lot of software takes years to develop. Once you pick a solution the cost of changing outweighs any likely benefits. Thus you can safely commit to buying a product for X years. There are advantages to dating and advantages to marriage.
This is thrue. There are some cases where it can be done, for example the Computer Assisted Drawing (CAD) software Cathia. Because Cathia is mendatory for safety reasons in aeronautic, there is little risks in long contracts if you want to design planes.
But in most cases, when you have to invest in the upgrade because your hardware can't keep up, you want to be able to look around. When the contract's time is too long and its reach too large it becomes like a binding promise to marry without even knowing if it's a man or a woman.
So any time anyone chooses a MS product over an opern source product, it must be because of bribery and not because of some legit reason (like lack of training)?
The issue here is not the fact that he chose MS over OSS, but rather the way he did it. His leader told him to favor OSS whenever he could:
- He never even bothered to look at OSS. He never went through the evaluation process that is usually required by any large public contracts.
- He tried to do it secretly which is against the rules of transparency required by most democratic governements.
- He was about to sign an exclusive 5 years contract with MS wich is against his leaders direct instructions of favoring OSS.
Add to that the fact that bribery is an official MS marketing strategy.
Once you look at those facts together, bribery by MS is the most likely senario to have happened. And when a public fund is spent that way, taxpayers tends to get angry.
Note that in my personal opinion, considering the speed at wich softwares evolve, anyone who sign a 5+ years exclusive contract on any software is at best showing signs of gross incompetence.
After all, suing spammers is good PR and it is a lot cheaper than rebuilding windows 2K/XP to fix them. They chose to put their money on longhorn. Personnaly, I agree with their strategy, even if I do not believe that longhorn will be functionnal in its first releases.
"Are you bored? What do you want to do?"".
This is way too close to Microsoft punch line for comfort.
It retails for 576,000 yen (5,600 dollars)
600$ robot + Microsoft server? When I see the price tag, I can't help getting suspicious.
and there is no English version currently available
Folks at Microsoft will be uppset by this. I mean "We can't find an english version of windows." isn't going to look good for them.
Jokes aside, I find the new trend of putting voice activated recognition system in cars, home appliances and toys annoying at best. In cell phones, I can understand. But before running maybe they should walk? Maintaining a conversation with a human is several orders of magnitude harder than just figuring out what the said humain is babling about.
Something that was pointed out on Groklaw is that TSG has forced IBM to release a lot of unrelated private information. Emails between managers and key personnels taken out of context can be extremely damaging to IBM. While most of TSG sealing seems to be more about a FUD strategy. Keep in mind that the entire AIX source code has been sealed in this case.
Is SCO using the thinking (right or wrong) that this is their proprietary information, therefore the public has no right to it? Wouldn't it be no less proprietary if we could all see it? If they win (blech) then it doesn't matter, we still can't "use" it. If they lose, then well, we can and it doesn't matter either
In this case, wouldn't it be fairer to wait after the process before granting any disclosure?
The fact remains that in this case MO tried to cook someting with this information and got hoist by her own petar when it turned out that the information in question was sealed. I think that in this case, unsealing should not be granted. This will prevent TSG from using too many proxy in their FUD campaign.
It would seems someone in the US is very busy trying to sell the idea that RFID are more secure than printed number or codebar.
... In short, anyone who understand that information is power. When you gives power to someone, he tends to use it.
The thuth is: IT IS NOT. It can be safer if used properly, this is also true of other means.
The problem with RFID is that people who are pushing for it fail to point out the fact that the RFID's capacity to emit has to be stronger because the antennas used by the "readers" HAS to be cheap. It would be too expensive otherwise.
What a "proper reader" can get only by being within 3 or 4 feet, a good antenna can catch hundred of feet away. Like a car parked on the other side of the street...
The RFID information itself isn't the only one the listener get: He also knows WHEN and sometimes WHO is doing it.
For example: a thief park his car in front of a drugstore. At 11H35 500 RFID gives their number in a 2mm time span. Now he knows that the store just received its drug order. More, only a clerk is in there, so he knows that clerks have the safe's key. The thief doesn't even have to be in the car.
There is no real difference between the information contained in a RFID than in a codebare. The difference is when you read it: a RFID is like sreaming that information for anyone to know. Who wants to know? Stores, Governement agencies, criminals,
How annoying.
Anyone care to comment on how stupid all of this is?
There is nothing stupid about being constructive.
A smaller, more focused MMORPG, perhaps even the "massive" part needs to be removed. Target subscription is 500-1500 subscribers, with a set upper limit of probably 1500.
To my mind, the problem here is more the number of people online at anytime than the actual number of suscribtions. A game that has "dead" periods is in bad shape to start with.
If you wanted to play, you'd submit an application, and assuming it's not all booked up, you'd be given a choice of up to 2 dozen characters to play, complete with biography summaries of those (and if they were completely unsuitable... wait another day, while we find some other choices for you).
You can not enforce characters on the players. Game masters like to try this to improve game balance, but the end result is always unhappy players that can't play the style they want and unhappy game masters that have "good characters" played "wrong" by players. This is good for tounament style of play, not MMORPG.
Inststead make a limited number of choice ( 5 or 8 instead of dozens ) and make sure they are all playable and balanced. Earth & Behond is a good example of this aspect. Allow non-linear evolution for each of them ( E&A fails in that ) and you have a good recepie.
I'd also try to weed out all the obnoxious players, too, for that matter. People who want to play in character are important, and if you chalked up more than a few infractions (talking about monday night football in game, using too much modern slang, etc) I'd probably end up canceling the subscription.
Sorry, won't work. You cannot stop your players from doing off topic chatting. A MMORPG is more than just a game, it's a community. You have to accept it.
Player death would be permanent (choose another character).
As a result, players will leave the game upon loosing everything to a simple bad luck. Eve-online is a good example of this. Not good. Do it the other way around, allow players to die as many time as they want, but with consequences. This is a game, everything happening in it should be enjoyable to players, even loosing.
The main problem of many MMORPG is that the GM staff cannot afford to micromanage the game. When a player start, the discovery of the game is good enough to make him stay. At "high level" new quest and plot are aimed at you. But in between, this is where things go wrong. Fill this void and you'll be in business.
I just don't get it -- what am I missing?
In north america, there is this really anoying idea that cartoons are for kids. The result is that most cartoon aired are... for kids.
The way i understand it, in Japan, cartooning ( called "manga" ) is more than just popular, they actually use more paper for this than newspapers.
This is reflected in TV or cinema content. US has Hollywood, Japan has anime.
It's like for every TV series that exist on TV in the US ( soap, mini-series, movies... ) there is an anime equivalent in Japan. Soap opera? Anime soap exist. Action? Anime action. Etc. The result is an extremly wide variety. Several of them are extremely well made. But like "live" TV, only a few are outstanding. Given the fact that anime have no special effect limits, and that several anime series do ends. It's like watching a 5 hours long movie.
If you really want to see what anime is all about, do the same as with any other movies or novels: Find some whose subject match your taste and try them.
Note: I would NOT recommand Evangelion, FLCL, Lain or Cowbow Beboop to someone trying out anime for the first time. It would be like watching the first DUNE movie as an example of Sci-Fi genre. ( Of course, with no prior knowledge of the Dune novels. ) Starwars would be better for a first timer.
Think about it for a second: they patent something very general on "limited resource computing devices".
This patent definition is not going to change over the years, but the definition of "limited resource computing" will. In 4 years from now, anything that can't run longhorn may fall under this category!
Now they have a couple of years to create a precedent where a similar patent is protected with success in the courtrooms. Precedent is law. So when the time is right, MS would be able to prevent older non-DRM hardware from selling. As a bonus they'll get people like the RIAA to fight this in court for them, so they won't even have to actually create the precedent themselves.
Have a look at this: Microsoft courts governments in strategy shift
I think there is a clear pattern here. However let's be honest, MS isn't the only one playing this game in recent times.
Imagine: Millions Italians decide to fight this by:
...
1- Making sure their computer is obsolete.
2- Download something copywrited. ( anything )
3- Go to police station and admit the "crime".
Result:
- Puplic services completly paralysed.
- Two newspapers FORCED BY LAW to publish millions of useless prints that would both bloat price and reduce relevant content.( leading to bankrupsy? )
Government stuck with tons of useless PC that they will have problem getting ride of. ( thank to friendly environmental groups already upset by wasted paper. )
Haaa... Dreaming is Soooo nice. But remember: IT COULD HAPPEN!
Modern FM receivers work by mixing a beat frequency with the frequency you want to receive.
You wind up with (a+b) and (a-b), one of which is trivially filtered out with a high (or low) pass filter.
Sorry but this is incomplete. This discribe both Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation. The difference between the two is how the mixed frequency behaves. The carrier ( beat ) frequency is also filtered. This is done to save "space" on the bandwidth.
Now there's a nice, simple, standard design (and corresponding set of chips) for handling FM at a particular frequency. So given your target frequency (a), you can choose a beat frequency (b) such that (a-b) matches the standard chip frequency.
Close but: Only the mixed frequency is send. In order to "de-mix" it the receiver has to generate the right carrier. Whitout it the reciver cannot unscramble the mixed frequencies. The audio signal ( the result ) is a known value that is always the same regardless of the broadcasting station.( 0 to 15 KHz for example ) When you change your radio station, what you are doing is changing the value of the receiver's frequency generator so that the de demixer can extract the 0-15K range from the received signal. The key here is that you receiver is actually generating the "missing" carrier. Thus emmiting, but with no antenna to speak of nor power to go far.
For standard US FM radio, that beat (b) frequency is right in the middle of the aircraft band.
I doubt that very much. The primary objective of such regulations is to prevent this from happening.
Aircraft use AM for their comm gear.
I haven't look into it but this makes sens because the FM would be subject to the doppler effect. Note however that the AM band reserved to plane communications is not the same as the one for broadcasting commercial radio signal.
So your little FM walkman receiver can jam air-to-ground comms.
Possible in theory, because your receiver is generating a frequency. But in reality, for this to happen, you reciever would have to generate a wave of sufficient strenght to parasite AG communications. This require factors such as frequency, antenna and power level to be right. The idea behind the regulations is to insure that these factors don't match by accident. Your walkman can get the frequency right, but it lack a good antenna and would be destroyed by the power level required.
That's a RECEIVER! Once you get into transmitters, it's really easy to jam everything around for miles. Not only on your frequency, which may be quite wide, but also on all the harmonics.
Believe me, if you were jamming everything for miles, a bunch a people in suits would be knocking at your door.
Take it from someone who used to jam his little brother's radio reception. "Turn it down or I turn it OFF!"
Oooo! That's... Why that's... EVIL! I like it.
Longhorn.
A real courtroom is a place where the facts of the matter are compared in a careful, calculated manner...
In theory, yes. But in reality you are forgetting about the jury. By ranting in the medias for more than a full year, SCO is aiming at influencing a potential jury which may be composed of computer illiterates. In some country, this would be a case of court contempt.
We may consider this whole thing to be stupid and frivolous, but SCO deserves their day in court.
I fully agree. And they will. I can hear the sound of grinding axes from here.
US legislators (too often lawyers) have to be told to fix a system that seemingly only allows 'justice' for the (extremely) rich.
Justice? What a silly thing! The system is not about justice. It about LAWS, as in "Court Of Law". Lawyers, politicians and major shareholders have no interest in justice. The system allow them to control the law. By using precedents, they can destroy the spirit of any law. Giving them a power very similar to that of the nobles during the dark ages. Asking them to do something about it is the same as asking the car manifacturers to make eco-cars: They will do it, just don't hold your breath.
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
Funny, your first half of your message was the exact opposite of my problem - games have gotten _too_ non-linear.
... The first games in their genre are good because of novelty. But later games can only hope to improve on secondary options. I liked DOOM, I havn't finished DOOM II and never bothered to even try DOOM III. Despite the fact that I am conviced that DOOM III is really better than DOOM.
I do not think that "linear" vs "non-linear" is a real issue with gaming. There has been some very good linear games.
No, I think the problem is that there is a finite number of styles. Shooter, RTS, Quests, Actions, Strategy,
Star Craft had the best of this IMHO - the gameplay allows players to be very creative, and the mapping tool was easy to use, polished, and powerful enough for most amateurs (hardcore modders preferred Total Annihilation, as they should).
I really like SC but it felt too much like war craft 2. TA is better made, and a lot more replayable because the computer AI doesn't have to cheat to give you a good fight. Both these games are old. When was the last good RTS release? ( WC3 is just like WC2 with a little more options. It's not better in therm of game play. )
IMHO, I want to see multiplayer online games where all you need to mod is patience, webspace to host, and imagination (and no, relying on text-editors and consoles are not acceptable options).
MMO have a lot of potential, but also stress the fact that game makers have to be a lot better. The old formula of just: "We made this and people love it..." is no good. Also, it means that they have to keep developing the game even after its release. That phase of development is critical to the game success, and it's just as difficult.
I really like space shooters ( Freelancer ). Current MMO are falling short of my expectations. But if you like a game where patience is a requisite, do try EVE, it takes months to do anything. Personnaly, I didn't like it. I do have some good ideas for a MOOG. Then again, don't we all?