I have always wondered, if a real life person were to engage in a firefight like they do in a typical action movie, how much ammunition would that person have to carry?
As far as I know, Risk is not in the public domain. I did not notice any mention of Hasbro on this web site.
I have heard of unauthorized Risk-type games before, and they never last long. I don't expect this one to last long either, especially now that it has received so much exposure, and is using the name "Risk". Even the maps are the same.
The fact that he is using Google maps to implement it may add another wrinkle. This should be interesting.
"someone drops a HOUSE on her sister crushing her, and then this same person goes on to steal her sisters most prized possession "
Actually, in the television releases at least, this is one of the edited scenes. I believe the scene where the good witch waves her wand to remove the slippers from the dead witches' feet is no longer shown. In fact, I don't believe any scene showing the witches' legs extending from underneath the house is in the TV version anymore.
They also cut a few scenes from the first Great Wizard encounter, with the flames and everything.
I think he fails to see that, for most companies, new software products are viewed more like a new flavor of toothpaste than a new bridge. The competition is too fierce, the schedules too tight, to allow for the due diligence needed to properly develop stable software.
Of course, I am being a little facetious, but the pressure to reach the market is simply too great to allow for stable software development.
Google is a cult stock. People buying Google don't care about any valuation calculations or reason.
They simply want to buy Google because it's Google, it's cool, and its the "Next Big Thing!"
I'm reminded of Krispy Kreme, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and the optical equipment companies such as Bookham and Corning, all of which still trade well below their peak.
Not only is the topic unusual and entertaining, but this article is also a good tutorial on data massaging, pattern matching, and combining disparate unix tools to accomplish a task. This article showcases how powerful and useful unix command tools can be.
If you want a good step by step tutorial to help you understand the usage of unix command line tools to accomplish a non trivial task, then you should read this.
A windows shell, without the various limitations of the DOS shell, would be very useful in more ways than I can count. For example, DOS.bat files are still used a lot, especially in cases where you want to run an application, like a Java based program, with it's own system environment setup.
Lots of people are "bashing" this up agianst various Unix shells, but what does it matter? Windows needs something like this, period.
Is there some antidote to this, like some type of mistrust spray or cologne? I simply don't trust people to use this honestly.
It would be a useful thing to wear to such places as car dealerships, political rallies, and investment seminars, where they might secretly spray the premises with this "trust" potion, and walk away with your money or love.
1) Make tasks easier to manage. Make it easier to enter task dates and improve the ability to link tasks to email messages. The ability to have super-tasks be made up of sub-tasks would be a great feature.
2) The idea of server-based Excel spreadsheets is intriguing. Unfortunately, the article does not go into any details about this. Excel could benefit from improved multi-user editing. The granularity of locking and editing needs to be increased. When more than one user works on a spreadsheet, instead of locking the whole thing, Excel should only lock smaller pieces. Built in version control, with formalized checkout, check-in, and merging of individual spreadsheet pieces, would make multi-user editing much easier to keep under control.
According to this AP article, the total number of people affected may reach 500,000. Politicians are jumping on the bandwagon. It looks like this is turning into a major scandal
Some article excerpts:
"attorneys general from 38 states demanded that ChoicePoint warn any victims in their states as well, "
"The volume of data compromised was so huge that deputies are almost certain that a 41-year-old Nigerian man sentenced Thursday to 16 months in jail in the scam did not act alone."
"ChoicePoint had required the con artists to fax copies of business licenses, and verified through a background check that licenses were valid for nonbank financial institutions. But they didn't perform physical checks or visit the addresses, as they sometimes do, to make sure they were legitimate."
I think this last quote is the most important.
This scam was conducted without any face-to-face contact. The criminals used Kinkos to fax in applications, and outfits like Mail-Boxes-Etc to act as professional addresses. They redirected mail from stolen identities to these PO boxes.
Our disconnected world where there is no face-to-face contact and where nobody pounds the pavement to check on reality makes scams like this too easy.
I read this book, and I agree that it is an excellent book, very well written and entertaining. However, I thought that the author was too harsh on some of the principle players at LTCM, at times edging from simple criticism to excessive bludgeoning.
I doubt that a laser attack would be very effective. From the FBI bulletin, "In certain circumstances, if laser weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and co-pilot during a non-instrument approach, there is a risk of airliner crash". For both the pilot and co-pilot to be blinded while they happened to be doing a landing without instruments seems highly unlikely to me. Since a laser shines in a very fine point, it would take some mighty fine pointing to blind both pilots in a moving aircraft, through windshield, which will bend the light somewhat.
I would like to point out that the government does not simply make use of those people applying for unemployment insurance to arrive at the unemployment figures. This is a survey.
" If they where the same thing I could compete for the jobs being outsourced. Since I cant, this is not free trade."
That is a very good point. Companies never give their employees the chance to compete. Most of the time, the company secretly enters into a contract with an outsourcing company, not necessarily overseas, and the employees affected are non-the-wiser. The company does not go back to its employees and say "Listen folks, we have this outsourcing company that says it can do your jobs for $XXXX dollars. What can you do to meet that? Can you convince us your worth more? Those mean shareholders are calling us names, saying we dont have it anymore, so we need to cut costs!"
Employees never know they are in competition until they get their pink slips. Even then, employees are usually not told who they are competing with.
That may explain why so many web pages with doubleclick ads have been loading so slowly lately. It has been really annoying; in many cases the rest of the page won't display until the add is finished loading.
How about those old mechanical lever machines? They can be used by the blind, they prevent overvoting, and they make votes easy to count. They don't produce a paper trail, however.
If you want to develop software for a sensitive government project, you must go through an intense security clearance process that costs upwards of $25,000, paid by your company. With this in mind, it seems crazy for the government to turn around and place its faith in a publicly available OSS system. What does the US DOD know about the people that wrote the software? None of these developers have been through a security clearance! Does Linus Torvalds have a TS/SCI/Poly clearance with the US government? There is a good chance they may actually be subversive, especially if they develop the OSS while working for a hostile (or even non-hostile) government! This is not terroristic paranoia, but common sense.
As for the theory that OSS is more secure because thousands of eyes are constantly scanning the source for bugs, hacks, and holes, how many people in the world have actually taken the time to go through the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of lines of code? As this article points out, there are probably only a few dozen people in the world who understand the source well enough to make an informed judgment on the codes security, or to make any changes to fix discovered issues.
Unless the government hires some OSS gurus, verifies their security clearance, and puts them to work actually examining the OSS code in its entirety, the government should not place any trust in the security of OSS.
Of course, the same issues apply to closed source software (CSS), especially in this outsourced world. However, I believe (I hope) that the government makes special arrangements with CSS companies to ensure their software's security.
Personally, I think the government should develop its own OS. It certainly has the resources to do so.
I can't help but be reminded of this episode of Dexter's Laboratory, where Dexter is placed in charge of the school library.
After discovering an out of place "Green Eggs and Ham" book, he creates a fleet of flying robots to manage the library. When these robots can't find a particular book, he has to look for it himself, destroying the library in the process.
You might be interested in the following from Berkshire Hathaway's latest annual report, which Warren Buffet uses as a soap box.
I think this gives a good idea of how top-heavy the income tax system really is, especially in a society where wealth, and income, is very concentrated. This situation makes tax revenues very volatile, budgeting very difficult, and the top echelon very influential.
In regards to these quotes, Buffet is defending Berkshire, which was caught up in a little bit of Washington politics after the Washington Post published an editorial piece written by Buffet critical of Bushes tax policies.
"Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Treasury $3.3 billion for tax on its 2003 income, a sum equaling 2½% of the total income tax paid by all U.S. corporations in fiscal 2003. (In contrast, Berkshire's market valuation is about 1% of the value of all American corporations.) Our payment will almost certainly place us among our country's top ten taxpayers. Indeed, if only 540 taxpayers paid the amount Berkshire will pay, no other individual or corporation would have to pay anything to Uncle Sam. That's right: 290 million Americans and all other businesses would not have to pay a dime in income, social security, excise or estate taxes to the federal government. (Here's the math: Federal tax receipts, including social security receipts, in fiscal 2003 totaled $1.782 trillion and 540 "Berkshires," each paying $3.3 billion, would deliver the same $1.782 trillion.) Our federal tax return for 2002 (2003 is not finalized), when we paid $1.75 billion, covered a mere 8,905 pages. As is required, we dutifully filed two copies of this return, creating a pile of paper seven feet tall."
... "Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year's percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration's 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning. Today, many large corporations - run by CEOs whose fiddle-playing talents make your Chairman look like he is all thumbs - pay nothing close to the stated federal tax rate of 35%."
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I have always wondered, if a real life person were to engage in a firefight like they do in a typical action movie, how much ammunition would that person have to carry?
Some programming departments defend their slob culture quite fiercely.
I have heard of unauthorized Risk-type games before, and they never last long. I don't expect this one to last long either, especially now that it has received so much exposure, and is using the name "Risk". Even the maps are the same.
The fact that he is using Google maps to implement it may add another wrinkle. This should be interesting.
Actually, in the television releases at least, this is one of the edited scenes. I believe the scene where the good witch waves her wand to remove the slippers from the dead witches' feet is no longer shown. In fact, I don't believe any scene showing the witches' legs extending from underneath the house is in the TV version anymore.
They also cut a few scenes from the first Great Wizard encounter, with the flames and everything.
Of course, I am being a little facetious, but the pressure to reach the market is simply too great to allow for stable software development.
We are designed to focus when we are under duress, and coast when things are going good. No wonder I work so much better when the boss is mad at me.
They simply want to buy Google because it's Google, it's cool, and its the "Next Big Thing!"
I'm reminded of Krispy Kreme, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and the optical equipment companies such as Bookham and Corning, all of which still trade well below their peak.
Not only is the topic unusual and entertaining, but this article is also a good tutorial on data massaging, pattern matching, and combining disparate unix tools to accomplish a task. This article showcases how powerful and useful unix command tools can be.
If you want a good step by step tutorial to help you understand the usage of unix command line tools to accomplish a non trivial task, then you should read this.
A windows shell, without the various limitations of the DOS shell, would be very useful in more ways than I can count. For example, DOS .bat files are still used a lot, especially in cases where you want to run an application, like a Java based program, with it's own system environment setup.
Lots of people are "bashing" this up agianst various Unix shells, but what does it matter? Windows needs something like this, period.
In case you want to read the article, here it is...
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Is there some antidote to this, like some type of mistrust spray or cologne? I simply don't trust people to use this honestly.
It would be a useful thing to wear to such places as car dealerships, political rallies, and investment seminars, where they might secretly spray the premises with this "trust" potion, and walk away with your money or love.
1) Make tasks easier to manage. Make it easier to enter task dates and improve the ability to link tasks to email messages. The ability to have super-tasks be made up of sub-tasks would be a great feature.
2) The idea of server-based Excel spreadsheets is intriguing. Unfortunately, the article does not go into any details about this. Excel could benefit from improved multi-user editing. The granularity of locking and editing needs to be increased. When more than one user works on a spreadsheet, instead of locking the whole thing, Excel should only lock smaller pieces. Built in version control, with formalized checkout, check-in, and merging of individual spreadsheet pieces, would make multi-user editing much easier to keep under control.
According to this AP article, the total number of people affected may reach 500,000. Politicians are jumping on the bandwagon. It looks like this is turning into a major scandal
Some article excerpts:
"attorneys general from 38 states demanded that ChoicePoint warn any victims in their states as well, "
"The volume of data compromised was so huge that deputies are almost certain that a 41-year-old Nigerian man sentenced Thursday to 16 months in jail in the scam did not act alone."
"ChoicePoint had required the con artists to fax copies of business licenses, and verified through a background check that licenses were valid for nonbank financial institutions. But they didn't perform physical checks or visit the addresses, as they sometimes do, to make sure they were legitimate."
I think this last quote is the most important.
This scam was conducted without any face-to-face contact. The criminals used Kinkos to fax in applications, and outfits like Mail-Boxes-Etc to act as professional addresses. They redirected mail from stolen identities to these PO boxes.
Our disconnected world where there is no face-to-face contact and where nobody pounds the pavement to check on reality makes scams like this too easy.
I read this book, and I agree that it is an excellent book, very well written and entertaining. However, I thought that the author was too harsh on some of the principle players at LTCM, at times edging from simple criticism to excessive bludgeoning.
I doubt that a laser attack would be very effective. From the FBI bulletin, "In certain circumstances, if laser weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and co-pilot during a non-instrument approach, there is a risk of airliner crash". For both the pilot and co-pilot to be blinded while they happened to be doing a landing without instruments seems highly unlikely to me. Since a laser shines in a very fine point, it would take some mighty fine pointing to blind both pilots in a moving aircraft, through windshield, which will bend the light somewhat.
First, know who your best customers are, and cater to them. Next, know who your chiselers are, and try to dissuade them. That is simply good business.
Since so many people are going to mention the unemployment number, you should look at what that number actually means.
This site spells it out in detail. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
I would like to point out that the government does not simply make use of those people applying for unemployment insurance to arrive at the unemployment figures. This is a survey.
" If they where the same thing I could compete for the jobs being outsourced. Since I cant, this is not free trade."
That is a very good point. Companies never give their employees the chance to compete.
Most of the time, the company secretly enters into a contract with an outsourcing company, not necessarily overseas, and the employees affected are non-the-wiser. The company does not go back to its employees and say "Listen folks, we have this outsourcing company that says it can do your jobs for $XXXX dollars. What can you do to meet that? Can you convince us your worth more? Those mean shareholders are calling us names, saying we dont have it anymore, so we need to cut costs!"
Employees never know they are in competition until they get their pink slips. Even then, employees are usually not told who they are competing with.
That may explain why so many web pages with doubleclick ads have been loading so slowly lately. It has been really annoying; in many cases the rest of the page won't display until the add is finished loading.
How about those old mechanical lever machines? They can be used by the blind, they prevent overvoting, and they make votes easy to count.
They don't produce a paper trail, however.
Its about time somebody brought this up!
If you want to develop software for a sensitive government project, you must go through an intense security clearance process that costs upwards of $25,000, paid by your company. With this in mind, it seems crazy for the government to turn around and place its faith in a publicly available OSS system. What does the US DOD know about the people that wrote the software? None of these developers have been through a security clearance! Does Linus Torvalds have a TS/SCI/Poly clearance with the US government? There is a good chance they may actually be subversive, especially if they develop the OSS while working for a hostile (or even non-hostile) government! This is not terroristic paranoia, but common sense.
As for the theory that OSS is more secure because thousands of eyes are constantly scanning the source for bugs, hacks, and holes, how many people in the world have actually taken the time to go through the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of lines of code? As this article points out, there are probably only a few dozen people in the world who understand the source well enough to make an informed judgment on the codes security, or to make any changes to fix discovered issues.
Unless the government hires some OSS gurus, verifies their security clearance, and puts them to work actually examining the OSS code in its entirety, the government should not place any trust in the security of OSS.
Of course, the same issues apply to closed source software (CSS), especially in this outsourced world. However, I believe (I hope) that the government makes special arrangements with CSS companies to ensure their software's security.
Personally, I think the government should develop its own OS. It certainly has the resources to do so.
I can't help but be reminded of this episode of Dexter's Laboratory, where Dexter is placed in charge of the school library.
After discovering an out of place "Green Eggs and Ham" book, he creates a fleet of flying robots to manage the library. When these robots can't find a particular book, he has to look for it himself, destroying the library in the process.
If we have a space elevator, then why do we need a space station? Wouldn't the top of the space elevator also serve as a space station?
I think the worlds limited resources are best spent on the space elevator, since that effort might give us an economical way of getting to space.
I think this gives a good idea of how top-heavy the income tax system really is, especially in a society where wealth, and income, is very concentrated. This situation makes tax revenues very volatile, budgeting very difficult, and the top echelon very influential.
In regards to these quotes, Buffet is defending Berkshire, which was caught up in a little bit of Washington politics after the Washington Post published an editorial piece written by Buffet critical of Bushes tax policies.
"Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Treasury $3.3 billion for tax on its 2003 income, a sum
equaling 2½% of the total income tax paid by all U.S. corporations in fiscal 2003. (In contrast, Berkshire's
market valuation is about 1% of the value of all American corporations.) Our payment will almost certainly
place us among our country's top ten taxpayers. Indeed, if only 540 taxpayers paid the amount
Berkshire will pay, no other individual or corporation would have to pay anything to Uncle Sam. That's
right: 290 million Americans and all other businesses would not have to pay a dime in income, social
security, excise or estate taxes to the federal government. (Here's the math: Federal tax receipts, including
social security receipts, in fiscal 2003 totaled $1.782 trillion and 540 "Berkshires," each paying $3.3
billion, would deliver the same $1.782 trillion.)
Our federal tax return for 2002 (2003 is not finalized), when we paid $1.75 billion, covered a mere
8,905 pages. As is required, we dutifully filed two copies of this return, creating a pile of paper seven feet
tall."
post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year's percentage is the lowest recorded
since data was first published in 1934.
Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part
of the Administration's 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is
clearly winning. Today, many large corporations - run by CEOs whose fiddle-playing talents make your
Chairman look like he is all thumbs - pay nothing close to the stated federal tax rate of 35%."
As usual, the Simpsons has this trend wrapped up. Remember Poochie the Dog from the The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show?