My ideal system would be an MMO with a 'Karma' system, where you could rate other players up or down, and the accumulated rating would be visable to other players, but not exactly who rated who up/down. various systems would expire or cancel ratings, with higher rated people getting more votes, along with long term account holders, or people noted by administrator for being helpful to others.
Combined with a set of G-mail like invitation only servers, to prevent bulk accounts all shilling for each other, and a large enough player base that would overwhelm any small group shilling for themselves (but, if you can get enough people to work together to rank each other up, they wouldn't need to be ranked up, they could just play with each other) you may be able to build a community of people who are nice to random strangers for the long term reputation benifit.
NPC's and the game system would be unaware of these ratings, ensuring not only that if someone wants to play alone they can (not denying service to a playing customer) but that the system could be portable across games; imagine if your good player reputation in a Fantasy MMO was visable when you're appling for a spot in an FPS clan... or if your message board Karma helped you get a group in a MMO...
Not having seen it (thx commercial skip!) I assume that noone recalls what industry the company was in? (some commercials are better than some TV shows)
Compare the volume of business at McDonalds to the volume at a fine steakhouse.
Movie theatres vs. Live performances.
most people balance quality and cost, they don't get the best, but they don't pay the most.
some people are willing to pay more for a better product; such as Steakhouses, Live Performances, Macintosh, cellular data; while some can't afford much; mac-n-cheese, broadcast TV, and library computers, landlines.
If you want better software, it'll cost money.
If you want better software for everyone, it'll end up like Healthcare in the US. Only those with money can get it.
It's my understanding that there is a mechanism to automatically get CRL's in IE, but not all CA's use the optional item in the relevant RFC. Verisign used a specific 'well known' URL to host their CRL; I've seen rants that Microsoft should have used that URL to get CRL's, however that seems like a bad idea to me for many reasons:
What if the URL is hijacked; via DNS poisoning, HOSTS, a BHO, site hacks, proxy hacks... a URL is unfortunetly, not 100% reliable.
Why should Verisign get special treatment?, because Microsoft used them as a CA? I recall recently a huge stink was made about Windows treating special URLs differently... what about the CA's used by Firefox, Opera, AOL... shouldn't those CA's get equal special treatment? (all URL's are equal, but some are more equal than others)
Isn't it a bad idea to hard-code strings into software? does that same CRL URL apply world-wide and forever? imagine if between 2000 and 2007 Verisign went bankrupt, got bought by AOL/Time/Warner, or decided to change it's name to 'SuperAwesomeSign.com'? What if the nature of internet addressing chages? Unicode, IPv6,.xxx...
The NSA has really strong document rules. Any kind of photographic film, electronic device, so much as a furbie isn't allowed in their work areas, they have multiple sets of telephones, to keep the secret and very secret stuff separate. along with lie detector tests, and background investigations of their employees (not just pulling a credit/criminal records, they send people to talk to employees 1st grade teachers...) very little could get through.
I think, generally, in a Civil case in order for the Judge to order a seizure like that you have to have proof of ability to pay counter-damages, generally in the form of a bond/escrow account.
As an example, a guy I know who was a lawyer was going to class-action sue a utility company, but the judge required a million dollar bond to proceed, so the case stalled.
Again, a case where the law favors those with money.
The problem I see with MMORPGs, is that not everyone can be the hero.
I can't be content with being Joe Soldier in a huge army, I want to be special in the game world (Although, thinking that some celebrities play MMOs anonymously, maybe they want to be 'ordinary' for a change) I wasn't satisfied with leaving Everquest until for one thing I was the first player in the game to do it.(Actually solving a challenge when there was no online walkthrough!)
The other side is that few people are willing to go through the effort of doing something difficult until someone else has shown it can be done (In Everquest, that's reasonable, because new content was usually broken and incomplete. Killing named dragons that have no loot sucks.)
Someday, with hard work, and reading walkthroughs, and buying expansions, you can be as powerful as that super-awesome guy in the shiny armor you saw as a newbie. except he's even more powerful now.
And you could do what the top players do: pee into bottles so you don't leave the computer, use exploits and cheat programs, not go to school, buy 12 accounts, not go to work, buy items outside of the game context, die of deep vein thrombosis when you finally get out of the chair....
After I finally accomplished something unique in the game, it still didn't satisfy me at all, because I knew that the accomplishment was planned, scripted, and coded to be done in exactly that way. It was in no way creative, constructive, or inventive on my part, I was simply following the script as written. Which is fine, but it consumed a large chunk of a very finite resource, that being time in my life.
I still play games, but I will not play a game with 'time sinks'. Instead I play board games with my neices (Settlers of Catan is great), skill based games (like CounterStrike (on no-AWP servers)), or strategy games (Railroad Tycoon 3, Civ 4), and even some non-MMO rpgs (Oblivion)
But anything where you have to wait to have a turn to wait for an attempt to do something with a small chance of giving you a tiny fraction of a goal, for one of the 20+ people on your team...
From the Washington State Bar Assoc. Rules for Professional Conduct...
RULE 7.3 DIRECT CONTACT WITH PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS
(a) A lawyer shall not directly or through a third person solicit professional employment from a prospective client with whom the lawyer has no family or prior professional relationship in person or by telephone, when a significant motive for the lawyer's doing so is the lawyer's pecuniary gain.
(b) A lawyer shall not send a written communication to a prospective client for the purpose of obtaining professional employment if the person has made known to the lawyer a desire not to receive communications from the lawyer.
RULE 1.2 SCOPE OF REPRESENTATION
(f) A lawyer shall not willfully purport to act as a lawyer for any person without the authority of that person.
I've been reading with interest about the new LED DLP system that Samsung will have out soon (within a month I hear), instead of a mechanical color wheel filtering a white light, it apperently has Red/Green/Blue LED's which can switch on/off very fast, will last 20,000+ hours, and will be cooler and more efficent; (less heat, no need for a fan, etc.)
So the set will be quieter, use less power, produce less heat, be brighter, much less 'rainbow' effect, last 10x longer (no bulb to burn out, no phosphors to burn in)... and only be a bit more expensive.
Judging from my 15 year old VCR that still works perfectly, has never needed cleaning, and has never eaten a tape; Samsung makes good stuff. (only thing was the memory price fixing thing, but I can forgive them that, as that's not something blatantly obviously morally wrong)
CounterStrike had a bug for a short while that could be used to crash everyone connected to a server, just by changing your name to a printf string.
another smaller (non commercial) game you could gamble for credits, 1 in 3 chance of doubling your bet amount. by betting negative numbers you would gain more than lost; by betting -1000000000000 I caused an overflow that dropped a user into a shell, from whence I could read the full password list.
The basic problem with most anti-spam systems is that they allow by default, and have a list of things to block, instead of blocking all, and a list of things to allow.
A shared whitelist system would be better, where you can share your whitelist with your contacts, or download whitelist catalogs from authenticated sources. In the p2p whitelist, each step of propegation would increment a counter so that it could only spread 'N' degrees, while the whitelist catalogs would have digital signatures for the package. and of coarse the list wouldn't contain actual e-mail addresses, but instead hashes of them.
Yes, the Whitelist would be huge, but, it would be much smaller than the Blacklist!
another way would be to start a private mail network; large corporations that send mail to each other would probably appreciate a special authentication, when an employee of Dell sends an e-mail to an employee of Microsoft, the businesses could afford a seperate e-mail 'universe' unconnected to the general internet (Which would help protect trade secrets, special deals, etc from prying eyes) entry to the system would be by posting a multi-thousand dollar bond to an escrow fund, which may be forfeit if the exclusive semi-private network is abused, but refunded if the organization leaves on good terms.
Another easy system would combine whitelists with a small challenge, such as requiring the sending computer to determine the square root or factors of a 1000 digit number, or some other task that requires a few seconds of CPU effort, to slow down spam a lot. and if the senders e-mail software can't handle it, a human readable CAPTCHA image as an auto-reply, with a correct answer allowing access.
Slashdot Mirror
...considering that I'm working for an company making a different media player, probably not for that reason =)
(arg, comment wiping slashdot code...)
again...
My ideal system would be an MMO with a 'Karma' system, where you could rate other players up or down, and the accumulated rating would be visable to other players, but not exactly who rated who up/down. various systems would expire or cancel ratings, with higher rated people getting more votes, along with long term account holders, or people noted by administrator for being helpful to others.
Combined with a set of G-mail like invitation only servers, to prevent bulk accounts all shilling for each other, and a large enough player base that would overwhelm any small group shilling for themselves (but, if you can get enough people to work together to rank each other up, they wouldn't need to be ranked up, they could just play with each other) you may be able to build a community of people who are nice to random strangers for the long term reputation benifit.
NPC's and the game system would be unaware of these ratings, ensuring not only that if someone wants to play alone they can (not denying service to a playing customer) but that the system could be portable across games; imagine if your good player reputation in a Fantasy MMO was visable when you're appling for a spot in an FPS clan... or if your message board Karma helped you get a group in a MMO...
Sounds like I'm not buying Creative products for a while. (looking for a HTPC sound card)
Not having seen it (thx commercial skip!) I assume that noone recalls what industry the company was in? (some commercials are better than some TV shows)
And being decapitated dosn't cause cancer...
I think some animal eyes (insects in particular) have faster response times than human eyes.
So, if you're making a flight simulator to study the way bees fly, you might need 1000 FPS.
Dilbert have stopped reading Slashdot, and the PHB have started?
Wally would be an 'Editor'.
Compare the volume of business at McDonalds to the volume at a fine steakhouse.
Movie theatres vs. Live performances.
most people balance quality and cost, they don't get the best, but they don't pay the most.
some people are willing to pay more for a better product; such as Steakhouses, Live Performances, Macintosh, cellular data; while some can't afford much; mac-n-cheese, broadcast TV, and library computers, landlines.
If you want better software, it'll cost money.
If you want better software for everyone, it'll end up like Healthcare in the US. Only those with money can get it.
It's my understanding that there is a mechanism to automatically get CRL's in IE, but not all CA's use the optional item in the relevant RFC. Verisign used a specific 'well known' URL to host their CRL; I've seen rants that Microsoft should have used that URL to get CRL's, however that seems like a bad idea to me for many reasons:
.xxx...
What if the URL is hijacked; via DNS poisoning, HOSTS, a BHO, site hacks, proxy hacks... a URL is unfortunetly, not 100% reliable.
Why should Verisign get special treatment?, because Microsoft used them as a CA? I recall recently a huge stink was made about Windows treating special URLs differently... what about the CA's used by Firefox, Opera, AOL... shouldn't those CA's get equal special treatment? (all URL's are equal, but some are more equal than others)
Isn't it a bad idea to hard-code strings into software? does that same CRL URL apply world-wide and forever? imagine if between 2000 and 2007 Verisign went bankrupt, got bought by AOL/Time/Warner, or decided to change it's name to 'SuperAwesomeSign.com'? What if the nature of internet addressing chages? Unicode, IPv6,
The NSA has really strong document rules. Any kind of photographic film, electronic device, so much as a furbie isn't allowed in their work areas, they have multiple sets of telephones, to keep the secret and very secret stuff separate. along with lie detector tests, and background investigations of their employees (not just pulling a credit/criminal records, they send people to talk to employees 1st grade teachers...) very little could get through.
I think, generally, in a Civil case in order for the Judge to order a seizure like that you have to have proof of ability to pay counter-damages, generally in the form of a bond/escrow account.
As an example, a guy I know who was a lawyer was going to class-action sue a utility company, but the judge required a million dollar bond to proceed, so the case stalled.
Again, a case where the law favors those with money.
The problem I see with MMORPGs, is that not everyone can be the hero.
I can't be content with being Joe Soldier in a huge army, I want to be special in the game world (Although, thinking that some celebrities play MMOs anonymously, maybe they want to be 'ordinary' for a change) I wasn't satisfied with leaving Everquest until for one thing I was the first player in the game to do it.(Actually solving a challenge when there was no online walkthrough!)
The other side is that few people are willing to go through the effort of doing something difficult until someone else has shown it can be done (In Everquest, that's reasonable, because new content was usually broken and incomplete. Killing named dragons that have no loot sucks.)
Someday, with hard work, and reading walkthroughs, and buying expansions, you can be as powerful as that super-awesome guy in the shiny armor you saw as a newbie. except he's even more powerful now.
And you could do what the top players do: pee into bottles so you don't leave the computer, use exploits and cheat programs, not go to school, buy 12 accounts, not go to work, buy items outside of the game context, die of deep vein thrombosis when you finally get out of the chair....
After I finally accomplished something unique in the game, it still didn't satisfy me at all, because I knew that the accomplishment was planned, scripted, and coded to be done in exactly that way. It was in no way creative, constructive, or inventive on my part, I was simply following the script as written. Which is fine, but it consumed a large chunk of a very finite resource, that being time in my life.
I still play games, but I will not play a game with 'time sinks'. Instead I play board games with my neices (Settlers of Catan is great), skill based games (like CounterStrike (on no-AWP servers)), or strategy games (Railroad Tycoon 3, Civ 4), and even some non-MMO rpgs (Oblivion)
But anything where you have to wait to have a turn to wait for an attempt to do something with a small chance of giving you a tiny fraction of a goal, for one of the 20+ people on your team...
From the Washington State Bar Assoc. Rules for Professional Conduct...
RULE 7.3 DIRECT CONTACT WITH PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS
(a) A lawyer shall not directly or through a third person solicit
professional employment from a prospective client with whom the lawyer has
no family or prior professional relationship in person or by telephone,
when a significant motive for the lawyer's doing so is the lawyer's
pecuniary gain.
(b) A lawyer shall not send a written communication to a prospective
client for the purpose of obtaining professional employment if the person
has made known to the lawyer a desire not to receive communications from
the lawyer.
RULE 1.2 SCOPE OF REPRESENTATION
(f) A lawyer shall not willfully purport to act as a lawyer for
any person without the authority of that person.
(CAPCHA: 'Sexual')
The Real Question is:
1,000,000 rows
or
1,048,576 rows?
I've been reading with interest about the new LED DLP system that Samsung will have out soon (within a month I hear), instead of a mechanical color wheel filtering a white light, it apperently has Red/Green/Blue LED's which can switch on/off very fast, will last 20,000+ hours, and will be cooler and more efficent; (less heat, no need for a fan, etc.)
So the set will be quieter, use less power, produce less heat, be brighter, much less 'rainbow' effect, last 10x longer (no bulb to burn out, no phosphors to burn in)... and only be a bit more expensive.
Judging from my 15 year old VCR that still works perfectly, has never needed cleaning, and has never eaten a tape; Samsung makes good stuff. (only thing was the memory price fixing thing, but I can forgive them that, as that's not something blatantly obviously morally wrong)
I've always enjoyed finding holes in games,
CounterStrike had a bug for a short while that could be used to crash everyone connected to a server, just by changing your name to a printf string.
another smaller (non commercial) game you could gamble for credits, 1 in 3 chance of doubling your bet amount. by betting negative numbers you would gain more than lost; by betting -1000000000000 I caused an overflow that dropped a user into a shell, from whence I could read the full password list.
When you order a Pizza delivered, and they say "It'll be there in 40 minutes", and it arrives in 30, the customer is pleased.
When you order a Pizza delivered, and they say "It'll be there in 20 minutes", and it arrives in 30, the customer is pissed.
Setting customer expectations.
That idea is tottally gay.
(note: that's in reference to the parent post talking about changing the usage of words, not an attack on maypole dancers.)
The basic problem with most anti-spam systems is that they allow by default, and have a list of things to block, instead of blocking all, and a list of things to allow.
A shared whitelist system would be better, where you can share your whitelist with your contacts, or download whitelist catalogs from authenticated sources. In the p2p whitelist, each step of propegation would increment a counter so that it could only spread 'N' degrees, while the whitelist catalogs would have digital signatures for the package. and of coarse the list wouldn't contain actual e-mail addresses, but instead hashes of them.
Yes, the Whitelist would be huge, but, it would be much smaller than the Blacklist!
another way would be to start a private mail network; large corporations that send mail to each other would probably appreciate a special authentication, when an employee of Dell sends an e-mail to an employee of Microsoft, the businesses could afford a seperate e-mail 'universe' unconnected to the general internet (Which would help protect trade secrets, special deals, etc from prying eyes) entry to the system would be by posting a multi-thousand dollar bond to an escrow fund, which may be forfeit if the exclusive semi-private network is abused, but refunded if the organization leaves on good terms.
Another easy system would combine whitelists with a small challenge, such as requiring the sending computer to determine the square root or factors of a 1000 digit number, or some other task that requires a few seconds of CPU effort, to slow down spam a lot. and if the senders e-mail software can't handle it, a human readable CAPTCHA image as an auto-reply, with a correct answer allowing access.
My favorite google search is "sqrt(-1)"
That's a Wii price. A small hit to the pot-o-gold.
phht, Tera Textures.
Why not just have a game that pulls data from Google Maps and/or TerraServer?
If a piece of software is not quite ready for Beta, it's generally not a good idea to install on a machine that's vital to your operations.
If people call much released software Beta quality, imagine the fun that awaits someone trying to use pre-beta software.
I would guess that a good government would be like good sewage pipes; most people don't even have to think about it.
While a bad government would spray fecal matter into the air circulation system.
That's exactly what I meant, and why I put 'moving' inside quotes.