Imagine if you have a gigantic bag that has 5,000,000 marbles in it. Let's say that 1% of the marbles are black. 1% certainly sounds like a small number, but if you do the math it means that there are 50000 black marbles. That's a lot. The reason why there are a lot of black marbles is because there are so many marbles in total. If there are five billion marbles in total, then there will be 50 million black marbles in the bag.
You can apply the same concept to planets. Right now around 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered. Two puffed up, bloated planets have been discovered. 2 out of 200 is 1%. 1% of all the planets out there is A LOT if you consider the sheer number of planets in the universe.
I can understand why some things need to be changed when a game gets made into a movie. However, there's no excuse for changing the fundamental aspects of the story. Take a look at the Doom movie for example. The whole point of Doom is GOING TO HELL. The best part of all the Doom games was the part where you GO TO HELL. The whole reason why you play Doom is because you, alone, get to face off against the forces of HELL. Take away hell and replace it with an overused, canned plot about genetic mutation, and you take away the entire point of Doom. Okay, some people may argue that including hell and satan is politcally incorrect. But again, Doom is supposed to be violent, bloody, and politically incorrect. I hope that the makers of the Halo movie at least STICK TO THE POINT!
This editorial on The Register gives very good reasons as to why Linux and Mac have better security because of design, not just market share. I'm pretty sure that market share does affect security, but design does, too.
So it took an entire year to decide whether or not to attach a little piece of foam to the space shuttle? Even the development of Windows Vista is going faster than this!
I actually like the fact that Episode 1 is short. A lot of games attempt to be long and attempt to include many hours of gameplay, and all too often, the game developers stuff the game up with boring, repetitive, filler. (Do the words "Water Hazard" or "Highway 17" come to mind?) A short game with good gameplay is better than a long game that's full of filler.
That's why you have Quake
on
Just Let Me Play!
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's why you have multiplayer FPS games like Quake. In Quake, anyone can get any weapon on the map without having to make enough money to buy it and without leveling up or anything like that. There's nothing in the game that you have to "unlock" or spend a lot of work finding. You can just join your nearest server and frag away.
I'd suggest that the guy writing this article should go and purchase Quake 3 Arena/Unreal Tournament 2004/any game along those lines immediately.
Although DRM labels are probably a good thing, the industry could turn it into a bad thing.
This is what the DRM labels are intended to be like: "Warning! This media has DRM on it. It may not be able to play on all devices and is restricted so you cannot transfer the media to a portable music player"
This is what DRM labels could look like after industry lobbyists change the law: "This media is certified Copyright Safe with DRM technology. Enjoy your media with DRM!"
And this is what DRM labels could look like for kids' products: "This has Captain Copyright's Red Tape of Approval!"
Kraft, which has been perfecting its Philadelphia-brand cheese for more than 75 years, closely guards its manufacturing secrets, keeping them in a vault in Chicago. What it knows, it isn't sharing... Brighenti is part of a push to make the secrets of cream cheese available to anyone.
Kraft has dominance on the cheese market and has a proprietary formula... some people are trying to make cheese available to everyone. Sounds a lot like the software industry. One company has dominance on the industry, and that company isn't willing to give away what the "ingredients" of the product are. A group of people are trying to make the product "available to anyone".
Open-source cheese isn't a crazy idea. There's already open-source beer.
Finally... I can get rid of those unsightly black holes. Now there's a kit selling for only $9999999999999.95! And if I order now I get a free extra set for tackling those extra-large black holes at the center of the galaxy!
On second thought, maybe I won't order. Then I can say that a black hole ate my homework.
Unfortunately they will evaporate and explode so I need to by the Hawking Radiation compensating device powerd by the Tachyon condensators of course...
But remember, the scientists here probably expected to find life, which could have influenced their analysis.
Off Topic: I wonder if Nature's web site is down because of all the traffic from Slashdot...
I couldn't agree more. I could think of a reason why every argument on that website is not correct... a good website to take a look at is http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
It doesn't specifically debunk the questions on the Clauvius website, it still debunks a lot of the general misconceptions on the site. Other arguments on the site can be de-bunked by thinking about simple scientific facts such as the lighting on the moon (reflected lighting from the surface of the moon) and perspective... these conspiracy theorists just need to learn about some really simple scientific facts.
"Random Number Generator". That is a very dubious statement. You see, computers can never be truly random. Whenever a computer generates anything random, it isn't truly random but pseudorandom. When a computer generates a sequence of random numbers, it is based on a random seed, which goes through several math processes. Eventually, this sequence will repeat itself. Even the most advanced so-called random number generators repeat themselves after millions of digits. Computer randomness is never true randomness, and that's why chaotic systems and quantum randomness is so applealing to computer security: Because these things are much more "truly" random. Example: LavaRnd (http://www.lavarnd.org/what/index.html)
Considering that the article says that the machine 's chip is "no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators", I find it hard to beleive that this machine is actually random, so even if you don't consider all the other evidence for why this is a hoax, you see that there is a fundemental flaw with this whole theory in the first place.
Still, most people don't even know what the administrative accounts are because there isn't one. On a UNIX/Linux box, there's a root user, and the person who uses the computer knows what it is because when they set-up their computer, a root password box pops up and they have to make up a root password, and the installer says that the root account is for administrative purposes, and the installer DOES warn to create a complicated password and to not do work as the root user because it could mess up the computer. Now this is required in every installation, but with Windows it isn't, so the user ends up not knowing anything about limited user accounts, even though it is easy to make one. Now when the user is installing RPM's and configuring things in the Mandrake Conrtrol Center/YaST/KDE Mission Control/Some other Control Panel, the user will notice that he/she needs the root password, and he/she then knows that it's used for configuration and installation. Based on the knowledge the user learned above, if a program just asks the user for a root password for no reason at all, I think that the user probably wouldn't just type it in. Even if he/she installs it using RPM, you have to run the program to make it work, not like M$ where it automatically runs programs without user consent. And, even then, when the user runs the program, it runs without root priveledges and it doesn't pose a major risk to the computer at all.
Now some people say that Microsoft software is has more trojans, etc. because it is more popular. But - MS antispyware is a lot less popular than other spyware products, yet it is the only one that is really easily disabled by a trojan, so that makes the "Microsoft is more popular" argument invalid!
Well... this wasn't surprising considering Micrsoft's security track record.
Still, if the Hubble space telescope is still up there, we have one more very good telescope. The more telescopes, the more observations and confirmation of your observations you can take.
And, if Hubble goes down, then it'll be a while before this telescope is built.
Some people may think Firefox has a virus in it... that happened once when I installed Firefox for someone and for a while they thought it was a virus before they found out that their computer's problems were actually caused by a real virus. If Microsoft lists competing products as spyware, I think a lot of people would think... "What??? I didn't know that was spyware. Oh well, better safe then sorry, better delete it". Unfortunately, people are very easily fooled in this world.
Talking about fooled, the spyware program doesn't seem to be a very effective one. They just want to make people think that Windows is secure. E.G. Even though XP includes a firewall, it isn't all that effective, and that's why a lot of people still buy seperate firewalls.I think the same thing will happen with these so-called "anti-spyware tools".
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine if you have a gigantic bag that has 5,000,000 marbles in it. Let's say that 1% of the marbles are black. 1% certainly sounds like a small number, but if you do the math it means that there are 50000 black marbles. That's a lot. The reason why there are a lot of black marbles is because there are so many marbles in total. If there are five billion marbles in total, then there will be 50 million black marbles in the bag. You can apply the same concept to planets. Right now around 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered. Two puffed up, bloated planets have been discovered. 2 out of 200 is 1%. 1% of all the planets out there is A LOT if you consider the sheer number of planets in the universe.
Apple acknowledges the open-source projects used in its OS on this web page, in case you didn't know.
I can understand why some things need to be changed when a game gets made into a movie. However, there's no excuse for changing the fundamental aspects of the story. Take a look at the Doom movie for example. The whole point of Doom is GOING TO HELL. The best part of all the Doom games was the part where you GO TO HELL. The whole reason why you play Doom is because you, alone, get to face off against the forces of HELL. Take away hell and replace it with an overused, canned plot about genetic mutation, and you take away the entire point of Doom. Okay, some people may argue that including hell and satan is politcally incorrect. But again, Doom is supposed to be violent, bloody, and politically incorrect. I hope that the makers of the Halo movie at least STICK TO THE POINT!
This editorial on The Register gives very good reasons as to why Linux and Mac have better security because of design, not just market share. I'm pretty sure that market share does affect security, but design does, too.
So it took an entire year to decide whether or not to attach a little piece of foam to the space shuttle? Even the development of Windows Vista is going faster than this!
"God"
"Give All"
"Impluse 101"
I actually like the fact that Episode 1 is short. A lot of games attempt to be long and attempt to include many hours of gameplay, and all too often, the game developers stuff the game up with boring, repetitive, filler. (Do the words "Water Hazard" or "Highway 17" come to mind?) A short game with good gameplay is better than a long game that's full of filler.
That's why you have multiplayer FPS games like Quake. In Quake, anyone can get any weapon on the map without having to make enough money to buy it and without leveling up or anything like that. There's nothing in the game that you have to "unlock" or spend a lot of work finding. You can just join your nearest server and frag away. I'd suggest that the guy writing this article should go and purchase Quake 3 Arena/Unreal Tournament 2004/any game along those lines immediately.
This is what the DRM labels are intended to be like: "Warning! This media has DRM on it. It may not be able to play on all devices and is restricted so you cannot transfer the media to a portable music player"
This is what DRM labels could look like after industry lobbyists change the law: "This media is certified Copyright Safe with DRM technology. Enjoy your media with DRM!"
And this is what DRM labels could look like for kids' products: "This has Captain Copyright's Red Tape of Approval!"
Kraft has dominance on the cheese market and has a proprietary formula... some people are trying to make cheese available to everyone. Sounds a lot like the software industry. One company has dominance on the industry, and that company isn't willing to give away what the "ingredients" of the product are. A group of people are trying to make the product "available to anyone".
Open-source cheese isn't a crazy idea. There's already open-source beer.
Finally... I can get rid of those unsightly black holes. Now there's a kit selling for only $9999999999999.95! And if I order now I get a free extra set for tackling those extra-large black holes at the center of the galaxy! On second thought, maybe I won't order. Then I can say that a black hole ate my homework. Unfortunately they will evaporate and explode so I need to by the Hawking Radiation compensating device powerd by the Tachyon condensators of course...
But remember, the scientists here probably expected to find life, which could have influenced their analysis. Off Topic: I wonder if Nature's web site is down because of all the traffic from Slashdot...
I couldn't agree more. I could think of a reason why every argument on that website is not correct... a good website to take a look at is http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html It doesn't specifically debunk the questions on the Clauvius website, it still debunks a lot of the general misconceptions on the site. Other arguments on the site can be de-bunked by thinking about simple scientific facts such as the lighting on the moon (reflected lighting from the surface of the moon) and perspective... these conspiracy theorists just need to learn about some really simple scientific facts.
"Random Number Generator". That is a very dubious statement. You see, computers can never be truly random. Whenever a computer generates anything random, it isn't truly random but pseudorandom. When a computer generates a sequence of random numbers, it is based on a random seed, which goes through several math processes. Eventually, this sequence will repeat itself. Even the most advanced so-called random number generators repeat themselves after millions of digits. Computer randomness is never true randomness, and that's why chaotic systems and quantum randomness is so applealing to computer security: Because these things are much more "truly" random. Example: LavaRnd (http://www.lavarnd.org/what/index.html) Considering that the article says that the machine 's chip is "no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators", I find it hard to beleive that this machine is actually random, so even if you don't consider all the other evidence for why this is a hoax, you see that there is a fundemental flaw with this whole theory in the first place.
Still, most people don't even know what the administrative accounts are because there isn't one. On a UNIX/Linux box, there's a root user, and the person who uses the computer knows what it is because when they set-up their computer, a root password box pops up and they have to make up a root password, and the installer says that the root account is for administrative purposes, and the installer DOES warn to create a complicated password and to not do work as the root user because it could mess up the computer. Now this is required in every installation, but with Windows it isn't, so the user ends up not knowing anything about limited user accounts, even though it is easy to make one. Now when the user is installing RPM's and configuring things in the Mandrake Conrtrol Center/YaST/KDE Mission Control/Some other Control Panel, the user will notice that he/she needs the root password, and he/she then knows that it's used for configuration and installation. Based on the knowledge the user learned above, if a program just asks the user for a root password for no reason at all, I think that the user probably wouldn't just type it in. Even if he/she installs it using RPM, you have to run the program to make it work, not like M$ where it automatically runs programs without user consent. And, even then, when the user runs the program, it runs without root priveledges and it doesn't pose a major risk to the computer at all.
Now some people say that Microsoft software is has more trojans, etc. because it is more popular. But - MS antispyware is a lot less popular than other spyware products, yet it is the only one that is really easily disabled by a trojan, so that makes the "Microsoft is more popular" argument invalid! Well... this wasn't surprising considering Micrsoft's security track record.
Still, if the Hubble space telescope is still up there, we have one more very good telescope. The more telescopes, the more observations and confirmation of your observations you can take. And, if Hubble goes down, then it'll be a while before this telescope is built.
Some people may think Firefox has a virus in it... that happened once when I installed Firefox for someone and for a while they thought it was a virus before they found out that their computer's problems were actually caused by a real virus. If Microsoft lists competing products as spyware, I think a lot of people would think... "What??? I didn't know that was spyware. Oh well, better safe then sorry, better delete it". Unfortunately, people are very easily fooled in this world. Talking about fooled, the spyware program doesn't seem to be a very effective one. They just want to make people think that Windows is secure. E.G. Even though XP includes a firewall, it isn't all that effective, and that's why a lot of people still buy seperate firewalls.I think the same thing will happen with these so-called "anti-spyware tools".
Another loss for Microsoft, and another score for our privacy and rights on-line! Forward the revolution!