I have one of those launch-day PS2s. Yes, I had to have it repaired after about a year because the laser eye would get out of alignment and stop playing games.
But can you imagine having a video game system that HARD CRASHES THE MINUTE YOU GET IT HOME? I mean, seriously, that's a major fuck-up. If I'd been waiting all that time and paid a premium to get my hands on one of these on release day, and then took it home to have it crash 5 minutes my first game and then never boot again? I'd never buy another product from them ever, ever again. There are plenty of other choices (PS2, GC, PS3, Rev)
Man, running GIMP on my 1.25GHz G4 is terrrrrible, then again I just downloaded the pre-compiled binary instead of compiling it myself, but still, it was horrible. Photoshop 7 flies.
If the MPAA pays money to a good lawyer....It is the client who decides to go ahead and sue a grandfather for $400K, and the client who decides to lobby Washington.
Most lawyers I know think that the DMCA and its international equivalents are idiotic and outrageously biased, for example.
Who did you say is being bought and sold like a prostitute? Why the hell do you represent these people? Oh wait, piles of dirty money, that's right. I get paid good money to eat babies, it's not my fault!!
It compares the hashes to a list of hashes sent from Blizzard's servers, and sends a notification to Blizzard if a hash matches one on the list. That's the only information it sends back.
Not quite. If they send back a hash of something on your machine and it matches a hash they have on file, then that IS personally identifiable information. Is they know uberhaz0r@msn.com is a big time cheater and they get a hash of that email address from your computer, then they know you talk to him....sounds personally identifiable to me!
What if they hashed the word "kiddie pr0n" and put it on their giant list, and a hash that matched came from your machine. Game over. How about they hash every word in the english language and keep it on their server? Then it basically becomes a form of enrcyption....BAD.
Don't worry, just pretend you worked for Apple and got an iPod the minute it came out (like me) and you can be an elitest instead of a clone!
Remember how you read and worshiped LoTR long before they made it into movies and every trendy 15 year old went to see it? See, you're already an elitest! Hooray for looking down on the masses!
They're called SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), more info at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scif
Also see TEMPEST - "a U.S. government code word for a set of standards for limiting electric or electromagnetic radiation emanations from electronic equipment such as microchips, monitors, or printers. It is a counter-intelligence measure aimed at the prevention of electronic espionage. The term TEMPEST is often used more broadly for the entire field of compromising emanations or Emissions Security (EMSEC)." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST
I'm sorry, I am all for open source and think it should be promoted. But if the breathalyzer's accuracy has been tested and verified, not being open source should not be a reason to let a drunk driver off the hook, in my opinion.
Unless, of course, he wasn't really drunk. I'd rather let 9 honestly-drunk drivers go free than let the 1 in 10 who was wrongly doomed by the mystery-box have their life totally fucked up.
He mailed the cops a floppy disk with his note or letter or whatever on it (not sure what format), but there were deleted MS Word files on the disk that were fliers/post-ups or some kind for his church. I also think the copy of Word was registered to the church, and you can easily who the copy of Word that created the document is registered to by looking at the Word files with a Hex editor.
Except $40 is about what the artist's record label leaves them with in the end.
If we were more directly affecting the artist's bottom line, I think it would dissuade more people from downloading. But you know these slimy middlemen make all the money anyway, so people don't feel bad screwing them.
Have you ever heard of a public mailbox? You know, the big blue things bolted to the ground?
You're almost sure you pass at least one on your way to work/school/where ever. And if live in a dorm, I also guarantee there is a outgoing mail drop slot of some kind in the building.
I suffered through the entire Homecoming series, and I've got to say it was some of the most boring sci-fi I've ever read. It had a ton of promise at the beginning, but it REALLY went downhill quickly. By the time you get to the hyper-intelligent bats and mole rats, well, it's too late.
That being said, I did enjoy Ender's Game and all related books, but David Brin (especially the Uplift books) and Arthur C. Clarke are much better authors.
I agree, I wish there was no backstory (everything else was awesome, including camerawork)
Who's going to sit down to watch, say, Star Trek III, knowing nothing about the series, characters or any of their relationships, and expect to enjoy the movie anywhere NEAR as much as someone who is a fan of the series? Nobody.
I think Joss did a great job of balancing the two, and had to sacrifice very little of the movie's awesomeness to get enough backstory in to make it make sense, but I wish that sacrifice didn't need to be made at all.
Personally, I wish they'd cut all the backstory out (although Simon dressed up like an SS officer was kind of cool) and just leave it to people to watch the DVDs before they see the movie. Of corse, no one will do that because it would hurt the bottom line, but it would have been a better movie to those already familiar with the series.
Maybe by the time "Serenity III - The Search Badger's Nutsack" comes out, people will know enough that it can make Star Trek's casual assumtion of familarity.
Sure, the phone company subsidizes your phone hardware by locking you into a certain term length of contract... So, if you unlock your phone and use it with another provider, YOU'RE STILL STUCK WITH THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT. Therefore, what's the point of worrying about locking the customer out? A contract's a contract.
1) Sign up for cell phone service with the provider you want to stick with.
2) For your free (or super-discounted) phone, get the most expensive one they have.
3) Unlock that phone.
4) Sell it on eBay as an unlocked phone for possibly more than retail price.
5) PROFIT!!
6) Buy the unlocked phone you really want from an online retailer.
See, instead of your provider giving you some phone you don't want, they gave you its value in $$ which you applied to a phone you really wanted. That's what I did with T-mobile, and it got me $140 off a $230 phone I wanted.
I pay that much ($39.99) in Virginia (US) for Cox Communications cable modem service, which is about 2.6Mbs downstream all the time. Maybe 300Kbps upstream. Sigh.....
* Multiplexed Analogue Components (TV transmission) * MAC (cosmetics) * Media Access Control, in computer networks. See also MAC address. This meaning is occasionally rendered as "Machine Access Code". * Mammalian artificial chromosome * mandatory access control * Maximum allowable concentration of toxins, e.g. in food or as reference in environmental remediation * Mean Aerodynamic Chord * Merchant Aircraft Carrier ships * Message authentication code, in cryptography * Metropolitan Airports Commission, operator of airports in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region of Minnesota * Mid-American Conference, US collegiate sports conference * Middle Atlantic Conference, US collegiate sports conference, also its parent group, the Middle Atlantic Corporation * The Midlands Arts Centre, a venue in Birmingham, England * Military Airlift Command, the predecessor of the Air Mobility Command of the United States Air Force * Minimum alveolar concentration (Anaesthesia) * Michigan Agricultural College, usually written "M.A.C.", was the name of Michigan State University from 1909 to 1925. * Multiply-accumulate, especially in digital signal processor contexts * MAC times in a computer file system are times of last modification, access, and change of a file. * Michigan Aerospace Corporation, a company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. * Moves, Adds and Changes - System administration tasks related to a telephone system. Sometimes referred to as MACD (moves, adds, changes, and disconnects). * Mobile Advisory Council * The Archaeology Museum of Catalonia (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya) * Casamancian Autonomous Movement (Mouvement Autonome Casamançais, a now-defunct political party in Casamance, Senegal)
...in New Orleans alone (now that they're finally giving an honest estimate, they say there are floating corpses all over).
I'm not saying this is ANYWHERE near as bad as the 04 Tsunami, but it is pretty bad for America (where nothing ever goes wrong, right?), and it'll only get worse. Just wait for the intestinal diseases to start hitting these poor folks.
I've made my Red Cross donation, I recommend you all do so as well.
Is the average rating (of the big 3 systems) at time of this comment posting. If it's changed by that much just in the time since this article was posted to Slashdot, this may not be that accurate a measure.
Something similar happened when the original DualShock controllers came out for the original PlayStation. I remember picking up Ape Escape, and seeing the big warning on the back "THIS GAME REQUIRES A DUALSHOCK CONTROLLER" on the back. I figured it out, but then again I also read Slashdot.
If M$ has ONE thing different between the systems (like HD vs no HD), then maybe people will be able to tell whether a game will work or not. Add more required unknowns (Headset? Broadband?) and the whole thing will go to hell.
1194.23 Telecommunications products, paragraph j: ------------------- (j) Products that transmit or conduct information or communication, shall pass through cross-manufacturer, non-proprietary, industry-standard codes, translation protocols, formats or other information necessary to provide the information or communication in a usable format. Technologies which use encoding, signal compression, format transformation, or similar techniques shall not remove information needed for access or shall restore it upon delivery. -------------------- Sounds like IE to me!! I think this means the gov should avoid products that transmit things in an encoded format just to lock out competitors, but using a nonstandard technology might be applicable.
Slashdot Mirror
I have one of those launch-day PS2s. Yes, I had to have it repaired after about a year because the laser eye would get out of alignment and stop playing games.
But can you imagine having a video game system that HARD CRASHES THE MINUTE YOU GET IT HOME? I mean, seriously, that's a major fuck-up. If I'd been waiting all that time and paid a premium to get my hands on one of these on release day, and then took it home to have it crash 5 minutes my first game and then never boot again? I'd never buy another product from them ever, ever again. There are plenty of other choices (PS2, GC, PS3, Rev)
INVALID!
For those of us that might want to do something similar (in another state), how much are you charging?
Man, running GIMP on my 1.25GHz G4 is terrrrrible, then again I just downloaded the pre-compiled binary instead of compiling it myself, but still, it was horrible. Photoshop 7 flies.
"Where I come from, the birds sing a pretty song...."
"Meanwhile, LAURALAURALAURAULAURALARUALAURALAURUAUALARL!!!!!"
Agent Cooper: "AAAAAHHHHHH!!!"
If the MPAA pays money to a good lawyer....It is the client who decides to go ahead and sue a grandfather for $400K, and the client who decides to lobby Washington.
Most lawyers I know think that the DMCA and its international equivalents are idiotic and outrageously biased, for example.
Who did you say is being bought and sold like a prostitute? Why the hell do you represent these people? Oh wait, piles of dirty money, that's right. I get paid good money to eat babies, it's not my fault!!
It compares the hashes to a list of hashes sent from Blizzard's servers, and sends a notification to Blizzard if a hash matches one on the list. That's the only information it sends back.
Not quite. If they send back a hash of something on your machine and it matches a hash they have on file, then that IS personally identifiable information. Is they know uberhaz0r@msn.com is a big time cheater and they get a hash of that email address from your computer, then they know you talk to him....sounds personally identifiable to me!
What if they hashed the word "kiddie pr0n" and put it on their giant list, and a hash that matched came from your machine. Game over. How about they hash every word in the english language and keep it on their server? Then it basically becomes a form of enrcyption....BAD.
Don't worry, just pretend you worked for Apple and got an iPod the minute it came out (like me) and you can be an elitest instead of a clone!
Remember how you read and worshiped LoTR long before they made it into movies and every trendy 15 year old went to see it? See, you're already an elitest! Hooray for looking down on the masses!
Dude, Blaster Master has got to be the best NES game ever, hands down. Even beats Mario 3, which was amazing.
Blaster Master was the best.
Also, numbers 2-5:
2. Mario 3
3. MegaMan 3
4. Metroid
5. Zelda I (or maybe II, they were both great)
Anyone remember 3-D World Runner, with the 3d glasses? What a tripped out game that was...
They're called SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), more info at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scif
Also see TEMPEST - "a U.S. government code word for a set of standards for limiting electric or electromagnetic radiation emanations from electronic equipment such as microchips, monitors, or printers. It is a counter-intelligence measure aimed at the prevention of electronic espionage. The term TEMPEST is often used more broadly for the entire field of compromising emanations or Emissions Security (EMSEC)." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST
I'm sorry, I am all for open source and think it should be promoted. But if the breathalyzer's accuracy has been tested and verified, not being open source should not be a reason to let a drunk driver off the hook, in my opinion.
Unless, of course, he wasn't really drunk. I'd rather let 9 honestly-drunk drivers go free than let the 1 in 10 who was wrongly doomed by the mystery-box have their life totally fucked up.
Unjust justice is bad, mkay!
Nope.
He mailed the cops a floppy disk with his note or letter or whatever on it (not sure what format), but there were deleted MS Word files on the disk that were fliers/post-ups or some kind for his church. I also think the copy of Word was registered to the church, and you can easily who the copy of Word that created the document is registered to by looking at the Word files with a Hex editor.
If they figure out P=NP, say goodbye to the usefulness of modern crypto algorithms, as they'll be trivial to crack. That's a pretty big deal.
Ever hear of the knapsack problem?
Except $40 is about what the artist's record label leaves them with in the end.
If we were more directly affecting the artist's bottom line, I think it would dissuade more people from downloading. But you know these slimy middlemen make all the money anyway, so people don't feel bad screwing them.
Have you ever heard of a public mailbox?
You know, the big blue things bolted to the ground?
You're almost sure you pass at least one on your way to work/school/where ever. And if live in a dorm, I also guarantee there is a outgoing mail drop slot of some kind in the building.
I suffered through the entire Homecoming series, and I've got to say it was some of the most boring sci-fi I've ever read. It had a ton of promise at the beginning, but it REALLY went downhill quickly. By the time you get to the hyper-intelligent bats and mole rats, well, it's too late.
That being said, I did enjoy Ender's Game and all related books, but David Brin (especially the Uplift books) and Arthur C. Clarke are much better authors.
No special underpants required.
I agree, I wish there was no backstory (everything else was awesome, including camerawork)
Who's going to sit down to watch, say, Star Trek III, knowing nothing about the series, characters or any of their relationships, and expect to enjoy the movie anywhere NEAR as much as someone who is a fan of the series? Nobody.
I think Joss did a great job of balancing the two, and had to sacrifice very little of the movie's awesomeness to get enough backstory in to make it make sense, but I wish that sacrifice didn't need to be made at all.
Personally, I wish they'd cut all the backstory out (although Simon dressed up like an SS officer was kind of cool) and just leave it to people to watch the DVDs before they see the movie. Of corse, no one will do that because it would hurt the bottom line, but it would have been a better movie to those already familiar with the series.
Maybe by the time "Serenity III - The Search Badger's Nutsack" comes out, people will know enough that it can make Star Trek's casual assumtion of familarity.
Sure, the phone company subsidizes your phone hardware by locking you into a certain term length of contract... So, if you unlock your phone and use it with another provider, YOU'RE STILL STUCK WITH THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT. Therefore, what's the point of worrying about locking the customer out? A contract's a contract.
1) Sign up for cell phone service with the provider you want to stick with.
2) For your free (or super-discounted) phone, get the most expensive one they have.
3) Unlock that phone.
4) Sell it on eBay as an unlocked phone for possibly more than retail price.
5) PROFIT!!
6) Buy the unlocked phone you really want from an online retailer.
See, instead of your provider giving you some phone you don't want, they gave you its value in $$ which you applied to a phone you really wanted. That's what I did with T-mobile, and it got me $140 off a $230 phone I wanted.
Hooray!
I pay that much ($39.99) in Virginia (US) for Cox Communications cable modem service, which is about 2.6Mbs downstream all the time. Maybe 300Kbps upstream. Sigh.....
Yes, seven figures is obscene, especially when you're just taking a commission on other people's disagreements/misery/frivolous suits.
Fucking lawyers, about as useful as professional sports players, except more dangerous....
* Multiplexed Analogue Components (TV transmission)
* MAC (cosmetics)
* Media Access Control, in computer networks. See also MAC address. This meaning is occasionally rendered as "Machine Access Code".
* Mammalian artificial chromosome
* mandatory access control
* Maximum allowable concentration of toxins, e.g. in food or as reference in environmental remediation
* Mean Aerodynamic Chord
* Merchant Aircraft Carrier ships
* Message authentication code, in cryptography
* Metropolitan Airports Commission, operator of airports in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region of Minnesota
* Mid-American Conference, US collegiate sports conference
* Middle Atlantic Conference, US collegiate sports conference, also its parent group, the Middle Atlantic Corporation
* The Midlands Arts Centre, a venue in Birmingham, England
* Military Airlift Command, the predecessor of the Air Mobility Command of the United States Air Force
* Minimum alveolar concentration (Anaesthesia)
* Michigan Agricultural College, usually written "M.A.C.", was the name of Michigan State University from 1909 to 1925.
* Multiply-accumulate, especially in digital signal processor contexts
* MAC times in a computer file system are times of last modification, access, and change of a file.
* Michigan Aerospace Corporation, a company in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
* Moves, Adds and Changes - System administration tasks related to a telephone system. Sometimes referred to as MACD (moves, adds, changes, and disconnects).
* Mobile Advisory Council
* The Archaeology Museum of Catalonia (Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya)
* Casamancian Autonomous Movement (Mouvement Autonome Casamançais, a now-defunct political party in Casamance, Senegal)
...in New Orleans alone (now that they're finally giving an honest estimate, they say there are floating corpses all over).
I'm not saying this is ANYWHERE near as bad as the 04 Tsunami, but it is pretty bad for America (where nothing ever goes wrong, right?), and it'll only get worse. Just wait for the intestinal diseases to start hitting these poor folks.
I've made my Red Cross donation, I recommend you all do so as well.
Is the average rating (of the big 3 systems) at time of this comment posting. If it's changed by that much just in the time since this article was posted to Slashdot, this may not be that accurate a measure.
Still, Madden sux. =)
Something similar happened when the original DualShock controllers came out for the original PlayStation. I remember picking up Ape Escape, and seeing the big warning on the back "THIS GAME REQUIRES A DUALSHOCK CONTROLLER" on the back. I figured it out, but then again I also read Slashdot.
If M$ has ONE thing different between the systems (like HD vs no HD), then maybe people will be able to tell whether a game will work or not. Add more required unknowns (Headset? Broadband?) and the whole thing will go to hell.
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm#S ubpart_b
1194.23 Telecommunications products, paragraph j:
-------------------
(j) Products that transmit or conduct information or communication, shall pass through cross-manufacturer, non-proprietary, industry-standard codes, translation protocols, formats or other information necessary to provide the information or communication in a usable format. Technologies which use encoding, signal compression, format transformation, or similar techniques shall not remove information needed for access or shall restore it upon delivery.
--------------------
Sounds like IE to me!! I think this means the gov should avoid products that transmit things in an encoded format just to lock out competitors, but using a nonstandard technology might be applicable.
FYI, I am totally NAL.