"Women were found on average to own 6.6 technology devices while men own 6.9"
The men assured the women that it will be 7 technology devices soon, but they just need to tinker with a couple of parts in the last device and that they are certain they are supposed to come apart its just that the device is being a bit stubborn...
UkOnline does up to 22Mb (if you are close enough to an exchange) with a cap at 500GB per month for £29.99 a month. A couple of my mates are on it and haven't got anywhere near that limit ever.
Can you play hard drives on your TV or in your car?
TV out cards, or hard drive based MP3 players with either a converter or a radio tuner to play it out of the car speakers
Can you mail them to your grandma or give them to your friends?
You could always post it over the internet to them, flickr etc. Personally I never make a CD of stuff to send to friends and relatives. Why make 15 copies of something if you could just post it somewhere and tell them where to get it?
Can you distribute them at a concert to promote your band, or at a convention to promote your indie game?
I have a friend who distributes a lot of his music on myspace so that he can just make an announcement at the end of a gig instead of having to distribute the CD afterwards, its much cheaper for him too, as it is for "promotion" no sale.
Of course, we could spend all of the money investigating the probablity of all sorts of hypothetical armageddons instead...
Ah, the design of a "what if" machine, if only Professer Fansworth were around!
One could argue that persuit of true AI is one route to the persuit of a cure for AIDS/Cancer/world poverty etc. Just because AI isn't a direct route doesn't mean it won't achieve the same goal.
Your only half right, the real problem is cats. Go out the room for a couple of minutes to get a coffee and come back to find the cat sitting on the keyboard with a "Sent Email" dialouge box on the screen. Aside from that, your comment was correct.
So what would you say to Steam run using BitTorrent? With a central server registering and validating and seeding data, and peers sharing the distribution at a reduced cost for whatever you want to download? You don't even need to apply a fair upload/download ratio. Would you be prepared to giveup say 1KBps upload for a 10% discount in whatever you downloaded for the time you spend downloading it? Mock Steam all you want, it is still in my opinion a vast improvement on "You can download this only once and anything you redownload it do you have to pay for again" model.
How well will the robots be able to fake injuy? Ow! Ref! The human just kicked me in my power coupler! The pain! The pain!::convincing limp::...
While this was modded funny, it could be a major issue when humans take on robots, if the robots have no sense of pain. Slide tackles into a robot which just keeps going, slide tackles from robots that are many times heavier than their human counterparts causing serious permenant injury to the human player. etc.
The anti-malware software industry is like the insurance industry. They want to provide their paying customers with benefit, but the last thing they ever want to do is encourage consumer behavior, law, or product changes that actually eliminate the problem, thus putting themselves out of business.
So, how long before the anti-malware industry lobbys for a law to be passed stating that all computers must come installed with an anti-virus product. Like not being able to legally drive without car insurance, you would not be legally allowed to run a computer without anti-virus software.
I'd like to do a social experiment and write a virus that pops up a window asking the question: "Install Virus?". The options are "No Thanks" and "yeah sure, pwn me". Now, I'm usually an optimist, but I think the results of this study would be depressing.
Unfortunately you are being optimistic. About 5 years ago I was told a story about a tech support department and about a tactic that they once used to try and explain to people how dangerous viruses/worms could be.
They sent an email out to everyone, (managers included) saying that they would be testing whether people paid attention to security measures or not (including not downloading attachments from unknown sources). About 4 hours later they sent out a email from a hotmail address which had an attachment and said "I am a virus, please help me spread". if run, the program reported back that the user had run it and restarted the computer, backing everything up. The next time the user logged in they were given an account with nothing in it, so they had to contact tech support to get their files back. Before they gave in and rang tech support about the problem they were given no indication that things were backed up and that it was just a test.
About 60% of the department phoned tech support and when asked why they had run the program they either: A) Lied B) said they thought it was joke C) Were curious D) Didn't think "you guys" would let a virus get through to them, so didn't take it seriously. About 30% contacted tech support that they had got a suspisious email and didn't know what to do with it. The remaining 10% just deleted it.
After the results they were warned by senior management that if anyone did it again then they would be given 1 warning and then fired if it happened a third time.
About 6 weeks later they send out the same email again and only about 5% of people had to phone tech support.
They discovered that if you threaten them with something tangible (ie lost of their job) they took the threat of viruses and worms seriously.
While I have know idea if this was a true story or not (the person said they had heard of a company doing this) I could believe it.
Mostly I agree with you, the main thing I disagree with however is the requirement of actual violence. Physical harm is not the only means of coercing someone into doing something. Surely fincancial threats (RIAA/MPAA etc) is just a relevent? "We will kill you (financially)" and it has actual events to back up the threat. That seems to fit all the required criteria doesn't it?
Personally, something that I've seen as rather ironic is the strategy of "scaring the populous into needing more security measures with the fear of terrorist threats". By definition is that not terrorisim itself? "You will let us do this or the terrorists will get you". Only one level of abstraction away, the terrorists carrying out the attack not the government directly (although imprisonment without trial etc might disagree with this).
Stating that the nation is under the threat of terrorisim, is something that it always has been under, you have crime therefore you as a people may come under attack from it at some point. Being mugged/murdered/raped etc isn't new and as a society you know that it happens and take your own precaucions. It is just that as a "terrorist" it clearly defines who the enemy is. A middle eastern person with a strong religious agenda. Not joe six-pack who may live in your neighbourhood. Danger! Danger! A terrorist may be coming up the street right now to blow up your local store when you are in there! Has a lot more effect than "Danger! Danger! A guy might be about to rob your local store and he may kill you as you could be a witness". Anyway just my thoughts on the subject.
You missed the important part of the sentance: I'd prefer one that detects an oncoming truck as oncoming and tries to get out of the way.
Clearly that rules out taxis as an option, now if it had said "detects an oncoming truck and then shouted abuse at it for being in the taxis way" you might have had a point.:-)
On a serious and vaugely related note however, if you decieve a machine into thinking that something is happening when it actually isn't (either through an error in the calculations or through false sensory equipment) would that allow you to make it violate the the three laws of robotics and cause it to break them without it thinking it broke them so to speak? I'm sure I read an Issac Isamov story that did something like this, anyone know about it?
I can tell you with certainty that at any given time, AT LEAST 10% of the people working there were dead weight and could be eliminated.
Companies would get very small very quickly if that were the case, and would get very messy for the last 9 or so people. At least sales in pruning tools would skyrocket, until those manufactures started the pruning process.
When I was doing my undergrad there was some research into alternative methods for passswords including using pictures. Clicking areas on the screen was great in that it was easy to remember however anyone watching the screen to see where you click as well. Alternatives were assigning areas of the screen to numbers on the keypad of the keyboard. Another was combining it with sound, hearing a storm triggers different recollections to hearing a bird song for example. Given 9 different pictures on the screen you select one that you associate with the sound. The flaw of course was having to wear headphones to enter the system.:-)
An intersting side note was that if you are selecting pictures from a list and you know the person it is possible to guess what sort of pictures would appeal to that person and select those. Countering this, having 4 pictures that you select and 4 screens of nine pictures helps alleviate this slightly. Still facinating stuff.
I've heard a variant of this, give a man a match and he will be warm for a night, set a man on fire and he will be warm the rest of his life intellectually curious or not.;-)
Um, thats a very good point! I could very well have been wrong about the ceaser cypher bit (it was a while ago that I heard about it in a cryptography lecture - Sorry for the probable boring answer!) however I suppose changing the order of words, or whole characters once you get all the characters might add some obvuscation. whole having out words order of be might enough.
Again if I remember correctly, the point of having a fixed length of the pole was that the cloth needs to overlap with iteslf slightly as it is wrapped around the stick, kinda like a tennis racket grip, finishing exactly at the end of the stick. Looking at the fabric as a whole you only see parts of characters which is no help. Also, this was for chinese characters, so I don't think a dictionary attack would help that much (some please correct me if I got this wrong, but doesn't the context of chinese characters change their meaning?).
Considering ancient cyphers, if I remember correctly the ancient Chinese used to write messages Ceaser cypher style messages on fabric that had to be wrapped around a pole. The pole had to be the exact length and thickness or the text wouldn't align up and the decyphering process couldn't be started. If anyone was stopped, they could hand over the fabric covered in text and it would be meaningless without knowing what kind of pole was used to algin everything up.
Well, technically, if you're insane, you cannot claim you're insane. Why would anyone listen to you (telling them you're insane), if you are, in fact, insane?
You are quite right, he would be crazy to try something like that.;-)
I read the manuals while things are installing usually, although mostly it breaks down to:
1. Read the background story (not so valid these days, as it is usually covered in the intro video to a game, or on the back of the box) 2. Skimming over the controls to see if there is a new sequence of things that I haven't seen before (again, this is usually covered in a tutorial at the start of a game normally)
These days most games don't really need a manual to play the thing. "Pick up and play" is what the masses want, and on a whole that is what they get. The manual is usually replaced with tutorials that help players get a feel for the game, and cut scenes help explain the story. Who needs the manual?
Slashdot Mirror
"Women were found on average to own 6.6 technology devices while men own 6.9"
The men assured the women that it will be 7 technology devices soon, but they just need to tinker with a couple of parts in the last device and that they are certain they are supposed to come apart its just that the device is being a bit stubborn...
UkOnline does up to 22Mb (if you are close enough to an exchange) with a cap at 500GB per month for £29.99 a month. A couple of my mates are on it and haven't got anywhere near that limit ever.
Can you play hard drives on your TV or in your car?
TV out cards, or hard drive based MP3 players with either a converter or a radio tuner to play it out of the car speakers
Can you mail them to your grandma or give them to your friends?
You could always post it over the internet to them, flickr etc. Personally I never make a CD of stuff to send to friends and relatives. Why make 15 copies of something if you could just post it somewhere and tell them where to get it?
Can you distribute them at a concert to promote your band, or at a convention to promote your indie game?
I have a friend who distributes a lot of his music on myspace so that he can just make an announcement at the end of a gig instead of having to distribute the CD afterwards, its much cheaper for him too, as it is for "promotion" no sale.
Yes, and it will be just about in time for the dupe. ;-)
Of course, we could spend all of the money investigating the probablity of all sorts of hypothetical armageddons instead...
Ah, the design of a "what if" machine, if only Professer Fansworth were around!
One could argue that persuit of true AI is one route to the persuit of a cure for AIDS/Cancer/world poverty etc. Just because AI isn't a direct route doesn't mean it won't achieve the same goal.
Your only half right, the real problem is cats. Go out the room for a couple of minutes to get a coffee and come back to find the cat sitting on the keyboard with a "Sent Email" dialouge box on the screen. Aside from that, your comment was correct.
So what would you say to Steam run using BitTorrent? With a central server registering and validating and seeding data, and peers sharing the distribution at a reduced cost for whatever you want to download? You don't even need to apply a fair upload/download ratio. Would you be prepared to giveup say 1KBps upload for a 10% discount in whatever you downloaded for the time you spend downloading it? Mock Steam all you want, it is still in my opinion a vast improvement on "You can download this only once and anything you redownload it do you have to pay for again" model.
How well will the robots be able to fake injuy? ::convincing limp::...
Ow! Ref! The human just kicked me in my power coupler! The pain! The pain!
While this was modded funny, it could be a major issue when humans take on robots, if the robots have no sense of pain. Slide tackles into a robot which just keeps going, slide tackles from robots that are many times heavier than their human counterparts causing serious permenant injury to the human player. etc.
The anti-malware software industry is like the insurance industry. They want to provide their paying customers with benefit, but the last thing they ever want to do is encourage consumer behavior, law, or product changes that actually eliminate the problem, thus putting themselves out of business.
So, how long before the anti-malware industry lobbys for a law to be passed stating that all computers must come installed with an anti-virus product. Like not being able to legally drive without car insurance, you would not be legally allowed to run a computer without anti-virus software.
I'd like to do a social experiment and write a virus that pops up a window asking the question: "Install Virus?". The options are "No Thanks" and "yeah sure, pwn me". Now, I'm usually an optimist, but I think the results of this study would be depressing.
Unfortunately you are being optimistic. About 5 years ago I was told a story about a tech support department and about a tactic that they once used to try and explain to people how dangerous viruses/worms could be.
They sent an email out to everyone, (managers included) saying that they would be testing whether people paid attention to security measures or not (including not downloading attachments from unknown sources). About 4 hours later they sent out a email from a hotmail address which had an attachment and said "I am a virus, please help me spread". if run, the program reported back that the user had run it and restarted the computer, backing everything up. The next time the user logged in they were given an account with nothing in it, so they had to contact tech support to get their files back. Before they gave in and rang tech support about the problem they were given no indication that things were backed up and that it was just a test.
About 60% of the department phoned tech support and when asked why they had run the program they either: A) Lied B) said they thought it was joke C) Were curious D) Didn't think "you guys" would let a virus get through to them, so didn't take it seriously. About 30% contacted tech support that they had got a suspisious email and didn't know what to do with it. The remaining 10% just deleted it.
After the results they were warned by senior management that if anyone did it again then they would be given 1 warning and then fired if it happened a third time.
About 6 weeks later they send out the same email again and only about 5% of people had to phone tech support.
They discovered that if you threaten them with something tangible (ie lost of their job) they took the threat of viruses and worms seriously.
While I have know idea if this was a true story or not (the person said they had heard of a company doing this) I could believe it.
Mostly I agree with you, the main thing I disagree with however is the requirement of actual violence. Physical harm is not the only means of coercing someone into doing something. Surely fincancial threats (RIAA/MPAA etc) is just a relevent? "We will kill you (financially)" and it has actual events to back up the threat. That seems to fit all the required criteria doesn't it?
Personally, something that I've seen as rather ironic is the strategy of "scaring the populous into needing more security measures with the fear of terrorist threats". By definition is that not terrorisim itself? "You will let us do this or the terrorists will get you". Only one level of abstraction away, the terrorists carrying out the attack not the government directly (although imprisonment without trial etc might disagree with this).
Stating that the nation is under the threat of terrorisim, is something that it always has been under, you have crime therefore you as a people may come under attack from it at some point. Being mugged/murdered/raped etc isn't new and as a society you know that it happens and take your own precaucions. It is just that as a "terrorist" it clearly defines who the enemy is. A middle eastern person with a strong religious agenda. Not joe six-pack who may live in your neighbourhood. Danger! Danger! A terrorist may be coming up the street right now to blow up your local store when you are in there! Has a lot more effect than "Danger! Danger! A guy might be about to rob your local store and he may kill you as you could be a witness". Anyway just my thoughts on the subject.
You missed the important part of the sentance: I'd prefer one that detects an oncoming truck as oncoming and tries to get out of the way.
:-)
Clearly that rules out taxis as an option, now if it had said "detects an oncoming truck and then shouted abuse at it for being in the taxis way" you might have had a point.
On a serious and vaugely related note however, if you decieve a machine into thinking that something is happening when it actually isn't (either through an error in the calculations or through false sensory equipment) would that allow you to make it violate the the three laws of robotics and cause it to break them without it thinking it broke them so to speak? I'm sure I read an Issac Isamov story that did something like this, anyone know about it?
Assuming you are swinging the bat in the right direction of course..
Well here is a random paper generator that has managed to get generated papers published, no idea what this robot would think of it though.
I can tell you with certainty that at any given time, AT LEAST 10% of the people working there were dead weight and could be eliminated.
Companies would get very small very quickly if that were the case, and would get very messy for the last 9 or so people. At least sales in pruning tools would skyrocket, until those manufactures started the pruning process.
Tell me: When has selling Free / Open Source Software become a sin against humanity?
:-p
In early 2007 when it is classed as supporting terrorism and hurting big businesses.
When I was doing my undergrad there was some research into alternative methods for passswords including using pictures. Clicking areas on the screen was great in that it was easy to remember however anyone watching the screen to see where you click as well. Alternatives were assigning areas of the screen to numbers on the keypad of the keyboard. Another was combining it with sound, hearing a storm triggers different recollections to hearing a bird song for example. Given 9 different pictures on the screen you select one that you associate with the sound. The flaw of course was having to wear headphones to enter the system. :-)
An intersting side note was that if you are selecting pictures from a list and you know the person it is possible to guess what sort of pictures would appeal to that person and select those. Countering this, having 4 pictures that you select and 4 screens of nine pictures helps alleviate this slightly. Still facinating stuff.
I've heard a variant of this, give a man a match and he will be warm for a night, set a man on fire and he will be warm the rest of his life intellectually curious or not. ;-)
Um, thats a very good point! I could very well have been wrong about the ceaser cypher bit (it was a while ago that I heard about it in a cryptography lecture - Sorry for the probable boring answer!) however I suppose changing the order of words, or whole characters once you get all the characters might add some obvuscation. whole having out words order of be might enough.
Again if I remember correctly, the point of having a fixed length of the pole was that the cloth needs to overlap with iteslf slightly as it is wrapped around the stick, kinda like a tennis racket grip, finishing exactly at the end of the stick. Looking at the fabric as a whole you only see parts of characters which is no help. Also, this was for chinese characters, so I don't think a dictionary attack would help that much (some please correct me if I got this wrong, but doesn't the context of chinese characters change their meaning?).
Considering ancient cyphers, if I remember correctly the ancient Chinese used to write messages Ceaser cypher style messages on fabric that had to be wrapped around a pole. The pole had to be the exact length and thickness or the text wouldn't align up and the decyphering process couldn't be started. If anyone was stopped, they could hand over the fabric covered in text and it would be meaningless without knowing what kind of pole was used to algin everything up.
Well, technically, if you're insane, you cannot claim you're insane. Why would anyone listen to you (telling them you're insane), if you are, in fact, insane?
;-)
You are quite right, he would be crazy to try something like that.
Slashdot effect can be hazardous to your webserver. Nursing or pregnant women should avoid the slashdot effect at all costs.
;-)
Having thousands of geeks making requests to you every second, I would recommend all women avoid the slashdot effect at all costs
Is this a good time to be doing Western RPGs, what with Brokeback Mountain coming out on DVD? Think of all the horrible jokes!
:-)
Especially with a name like "Jim in Buffalo"
I read the manuals while things are installing usually, although mostly it breaks down to:
1. Read the background story (not so valid these days, as it is usually covered in the intro video to a game, or on the back of the box)
2. Skimming over the controls to see if there is a new sequence of things that I haven't seen before (again, this is usually covered in a tutorial at the start of a game normally)
These days most games don't really need a manual to play the thing. "Pick up and play" is what the masses want, and on a whole that is what they get. The manual is usually replaced with tutorials that help players get a feel for the game, and cut scenes help explain the story. Who needs the manual?