Who is going to spend that kind of money if the minute they get approval, some other company can sell these devices without the clinical testing costs?
This seems like a better choice of biometric than most, because unlike a finger, it can't be cut off or "cloned" using gelatin or another way of transferring the fingerprint.
Look, if they want to use the cell that bad, they could just beat phone owner until he gives the PIN number.
I think he'd unlock it at the first sign of violence and say "GEE! I have only 1400 minutes left on my plan so here you go!"
Saying that security systems fail because you cut their finger off is a moot point because if you've gone to that point you might as well just take the person hostage and force him to operate whatever you are trying to gain access to. Any peice of information or action can be extracted from anyone given enough time and forceful method if you want it that bad. Otherwise the person would have to carry around a cyanide pill for when he is captured and I don't think people are going to do that just to prevent a robbery.
Do you know how many people have been forced at gun point to withdraw money from ATMs?
Nothing significantly better exists, or the vast majority of people would have jumped ship long ago.
You mean like OS/2 warp? Or Lotus Word Pro or Word Perfect? People will buy a worse product if it is branded better than the technically better competitor.
It can make money if it wants to. A corporation's purpose is to create an artificial enity to protect its investors from legal litigation. That is the whole purpose of the corporate charter. Having a corporate charter keeps the investors safe from legal action against the company and protects them from personal loss.
As in if you sue the company and it runs out of money, you can't sue the share holders to get more out of their personal belongings.
There are plenty of non-profit corporations out there by legal definition unable to make a profit because of tax reasons.
Besides that a corporation has to answer to the investors or else it would loose face and everyone would sell their stock. Most investors want the company to make money in order to get a return on their investment. However their in no social contract or legal law that says a corporation must make money for the shareholders.
If the company leaders decide the companies goal is to not make money, but other lofty aspirations (or not... this could be just devious something like take over a political system or overthrow a small African nation) they can long as the shareholders don't mind.
Although most will if they loose large sums of money in the process...
Yeah, that whole apollo program was a complete failure wasn't it? Or the Manhattan project?
Those projects weren't monolithic or authoritarian. They had the brightest minds of their time all collaborating with free reign of direction of the project without some political body directing them specifics in their day to day work. Besides the massive security with the Manhattan project I don't think that the US government had a say in the scientists work other than to get the project done as soon as possible. And these projects weren't for money either...
If you want to give an example of monolith and authoritarian project, I would suggest looking at Germany's V2 project or the Soviet Nuclear Program headed by Beria (Stalin's lethal Security NKVD chief). Both of these projects used massive amounts of forced/slave labor.
However, those projects didn't fail. *coughs* Just their political systems. Although Apollo did have the help of Wernher von Braun from the V2 and the Soviets got a head start by stealing US atomic secrets.
instead of being destructive pricks whose only long-term result is making everyone else's life more difficult.
A technical solutions is always better than a political one.
You can't legislate away crime. We've been trying for 5,000 years since the Code of Hammurabi. You simply cannot even prevent crime with capital punishment, locking them up, or giving them money to not commit crime. (Take Enron CEO's for example *coughs*)
These steps may reduce the overall crime level, but they can't stop people from simply walking in an unlocked door and taking your things or your life.
A technical solution not only implies that the crime is wrong, but you take steps to prevent it so that the crime cannot actually be commit. Such as locks on your doors and better security like the tokens the article talks about.
The only other way to prevent crime is to change human nature and that will have to take the path of social engineering.
Doesn't matter if global warming is man made or not.
As another poster put it once:
"If you are out the sea with a group of people on a row boat and that row boat starts to leak, you aren't going to debate on what is causing it to leak or spend times debating on what you can do to stop the leak, but you start to row to shore right then and there."
I think the point of the mater is no longer if we are causing global warming, but accepting that we must do something about it. If it is natural then we must do something unnatural to stop it in the near future.
Whether this means painting the sahara/ghobi desert in reflective white paint or putting thousands of reflective satellites in orbit... Or just cutting back on CO2 emissions... I don't know what we need to do. I am not a scientist.
But if the earth is getting hotter naturally, we should not just stand by idly and let it happen if it is going to mean the destruction of western civilization.
That being said, there are a lot of inherent difficulties in producing video games targeted to the *ahem* adult market. The first of course, is that Walmart won't sell it.
The adult film industry has no problem in selling their wares without them being in Wal-Mart. Don't they make more money than the regular film industry or at least an equivalent?
I'd have to agree *coughs* not that I spend the majority of my time playing H-Games, but...
Most H-Games have really fun and enjoyable puzzles and gameplay compared to a great of non perverted games. Mostly, puzzles and things that give you an incentive to accomplish in order to see "the booty".
Sometimes I wonder if we made perverted educational software and gave it to boy teams about advanced calculus, chemistry, biology and physics would they learn more.
As in... You had to memorize the periodic table or sovle the advanced equation before you see a "booty" shot. Although I don't know if this would go over well with teachers and parents.
Because it will still cost $200 million to make a game with said photorealistic graphics. As such, only retreads of successful titles will be tolerated.
Nah. You just have to wait 5 years and John Carmark will release the source code.
Something from that article the parent listed I really agree with:
Experienced Linux users may find it odd that the Ubuntu installer does not prompt them for a root password. Instead of having a root user, Ubuntu uses the first normal user as the admin user. Instead of having root privileges all the time, however, Ubuntu uses sudo to manage system administration tasks. Mac users will recognize this behavior, since Mac OS X works essentially the same way. You can set up a root user if you need to, but this system works well for newer Linux users who may not be used to working as root.
I found this odd when I installed Ubuntu for the first time too, but it seems logical not to have a root account by default for security reasons especially for people who aren't familiar with best practices.
When you play a video game you are supposed to refer to first person unless referring to a AI controlled 3rd person.
If the kid was saying "Look! The hoodlum whacked a hooker!" and he was actually the one controlling the character kiling the prostitute, I'd give him a funny look.
Then again I'd sort of wonder where he learned the word "hooker" from.
Millions of kids (including myself) have grown up with violent video games and we have never killed, mained, raped, or even stolen from another person. The exceptions are people who were crazy to begin with. They were just as likely to kill someone because they played a video game as they were to read a quote in the bible and go kill someone. I have a friend who has a saying for people who use things as an excuse to avoid personal responsibility "Drugs don't make people do bad things. Bad people who do bad things just tend to do drugs."
Plus, music is something you can listen to while doing other things, such as walking down the street or working on your computer. Videos are not well-suited to tha, and that makes them somewhat less useful.
Unless, you are taking a bus or someone else is driving and or you've got a 15 minute break and you are just sitting a break room. I think this would be good for say downloading BBC news casts before you leave to work, but for watching Lord of the Rings while trying actually work may not be the best idea.
Sounds like it's exactly like the DRM for music, except you can't burn actual DVDs. Until someone posts the workaround next week.
If it is quicktime video all you have to do is just convert it to an *.m2v or some other MPeg2 format. You can buy a Quicktime codec to do this or use Final Cut Pro. Then you have make a DVD image through some type of program than can ecode a DVD disc. (like DVD Studio) If you actually have paid for DVD Studio Pro you can then burn it to DVD. Otherwise, you can use roxio to burn the image and I think later macs support this nativley...
However, you can most likely find third party apps to do this all for free because if you actually paid for Final Cut Pro and DVD studio like I did then you out of $2,000 right then and there and just to make DVD out of stuff you download from the net is just not worth that price tag (making your own videos/movies is, but I sometimes wonder why I didn't just buy alcohol instead seeing my creative talent was not that great)
However it would have just been nice if Apple supports burning to DVDs through iDVD, but I doubt it.
Software developers would start having this insurance,
Most incorporated software companies already have insurance for liability not inclusive to software.
In fact they most likley have a ton of other types of insurance for various legal reasons such as workers comp lawsuits, accidental injuries, and various other litigation possibilities.
For the mom 'n' pop and indie developers this would be a finacial burdern that is even more of a problem than what they have to go through right now.
Wasn't the point of the Merger to increase revenue of both companies rather than to shut one down.
Of course mergers are never a benefit to the consumer, buying companies shareholders, or the employees of both companies (one gets laid off while the other picks up the slack with no pay raise).
The only people that benefit are the shareholders of the company being bought and maybe some insiders of the buying company who gain by their purchase or CEO bonus.
Personally, I think business mergers should be outlawed... It decreases competition and actually hurts capitalism (the economy) in general. Only indviduals should only be allowed to own stock in corporations and corporations should be forbidden in owning stock in other corporations. Of course if it was put into law, corporations would just get around this buy some proxy method.
Then again, the stockmarket is a good way to ruin a good company with a good business model, but shitty investors who are out to suck the comapny dry of all its venture capital.
"Enemy Submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term Submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villians who sink our ships, while Submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs." -Winston Churchill
This is why we have terminology difference for things that are actually the same thing, but of different nationality... Politics and propaganda.
Ooorr, they could just wipe China with the "Save Taiwan " excuse. If China is "dead", then there will be no one to pay the debt to. US Military is way more powerfull than China's.
But where would Wal Mart get their goods from? If people couldn't shop at Wal Mart then civilization as we know it would collapse resulting in the US going into anarchy.
Though seriously, we could force China out of Tawain, South Korea, Afghanistan, India or where ever they invade (by no means could the US ever occupy mainland China without going through another Vietnam War, but 100x worse), but we'd most likely see our economy tank with the lack of cheap goods coming from China. Although we might have to rely on internal manufacturing or India if they survived the war.
The country holding by far the most debt is Japan which held $679 billion at the end of March, 2005. In recent years the People's Republic of China has also become a major holder of Treasury debt, holding $223.5 billion at that time.
So while China doesn't have the US exactly by the proverbial economic balls, it has a big chunk of it. Lets just say that it would be more likley that China could control the US policy by threat of economics than threat of force. Main reason why US would be hard pressed to actually raise a finger to stop an invasion of Taiwan and why the US would never invade Iran over its nuclear program because China would object (Iran's second biggest oil consumer is China after Japan and has already threatened to veto any move to sanction Iran in the UN Security council).
Of course the "easiest" (and therefore the "best") user interface will be the one that is as close to 100% identical to the only one they've used before.
I would have to disagree... I do phone support for a living and help people that have only used windows computers and are not that technically literate and when I ask them to look for a folder in a list they often will look at the files and expect it the entire list to be alphabetical order like on a Mac. I have to correct them and say to look at the top of the listing for yellow folders and look for the folder name there.
The funny thing is that these people have never used a Mac.
Apparently for those who have never used a computer the most logical expectation is that all the files and folders are alphabetical. When I first started using OS X, I found it quite annoying since windows always had it the other way around but take a person who has used windows but never bothered to actually learn it and you'll find they'll expect something else..
Now, the Xeons do a bit better than the run-of-the-mill P4, but 10x faster? No way.
You have to understands this is rendering and not actual tasks of running a multi-threaded desktop environment. If they were using something like Maya3d or their own inhouse app... The answer is yes way.
When you render to 3d it uses all of the cpu and every cpu you have and every register on the cpu and cache if the rendering software is up to snuff. So what you are looking for is raw computer horsepower. Each cpu can effectively reduce your render time by half (this is in theory because if one scene has more detail/polygons than another than the cpu that is given those frames to render will take longer, but most of the time the quality is the same), but with high end rendering you are looking as massive amounts of time spent rendering depending on how many frames and how high of quality (resolution) you are shooting for.
Although I am only familiar with low end Maya3d setups. My hunch is they have customized their OS to only run minimal os and the maya rendering farm software. If they are using Maya3d or something equivalent it will take advantage of all cpu registers and cache and what not. If you have xeons with large amounts of cache on the cpu then you will see a benefit with rendering more so than just a regular p4. However, the P4 can usually outperform the Xeon when you need something with mult-threads like running a video game or an OS with a GUI.
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Who is going to spend that kind of money if the minute they get approval, some other company can sell these devices without the clinical testing costs?
The US Military
This seems like a better choice of biometric than most, because unlike a finger, it can't be cut off or "cloned" using gelatin or another way of transferring the fingerprint.
Look, if they want to use the cell that bad, they could just beat phone owner until he gives the PIN number.
I think he'd unlock it at the first sign of violence and say "GEE! I have only 1400 minutes left on my plan so here you go!"
Saying that security systems fail because you cut their finger off is a moot point because if you've gone to that point you might as well just take the person hostage and force him to operate whatever you are trying to gain access to. Any peice of information or action can be extracted from anyone given enough time and forceful method if you want it that bad. Otherwise the person would have to carry around a cyanide pill for when he is captured and I don't think people are going to do that just to prevent a robbery.
Do you know how many people have been forced at gun point to withdraw money from ATMs?
A lot.
The switch to x86 doesn't change the API of MacOS X and hence won't magically give you Intel PC software.
Right. But...
Virtual PC will run a whole lot faster.
Nothing significantly better exists, or the vast majority of people would have jumped ship long ago.
You mean like OS/2 warp? Or Lotus Word Pro or Word Perfect? People will buy a worse product if it is branded better than the technically better competitor.
A corporation's purpose is to make money.
It can make money if it wants to. A corporation's purpose is to create an artificial enity to protect its investors from legal litigation. That is the whole purpose of the corporate charter. Having a corporate charter keeps the investors safe from legal action against the company and protects them from personal loss.
As in if you sue the company and it runs out of money, you can't sue the share holders to get more out of their personal belongings.
There are plenty of non-profit corporations out there by legal definition unable to make a profit because of tax reasons.
Besides that a corporation has to answer to the investors or else it would loose face and everyone would sell their stock. Most investors want the company to make money in order to get a return on their investment. However their in no social contract or legal law that says a corporation must make money for the shareholders.
If the company leaders decide the companies goal is to not make money, but other lofty aspirations (or not... this could be just devious something like take over a political system or overthrow a small African nation) they can long as the shareholders don't mind.
Although most will if they loose large sums of money in the process...
Yeah, that whole apollo program was a complete failure wasn't it? Or the Manhattan project?
Those projects weren't monolithic or authoritarian. They had the brightest minds of their time all collaborating with free reign of direction of the project without some political body directing them specifics in their day to day work. Besides the massive security with the Manhattan project I don't think that the US government had a say in the scientists work other than to get the project done as soon as possible. And these projects weren't for money either...
If you want to give an example of monolith and authoritarian project, I would suggest looking at Germany's V2 project or the Soviet Nuclear Program headed by Beria (Stalin's lethal Security NKVD chief). Both of these projects used massive amounts of forced/slave labor.
However, those projects didn't fail. *coughs* Just their political systems. Although Apollo did have the help of Wernher von Braun from the V2 and the Soviets got a head start by stealing US atomic secrets.
instead of being destructive pricks whose only long-term result is making everyone else's life more difficult.
A technical solutions is always better than a political one.
You can't legislate away crime. We've been trying for 5,000 years since the Code of Hammurabi. You simply cannot even prevent crime with capital punishment, locking them up, or giving them money to not commit crime. (Take Enron CEO's for example *coughs*)
These steps may reduce the overall crime level, but they can't stop people from simply walking in an unlocked door and taking your things or your life.
A technical solution not only implies that the crime is wrong, but you take steps to prevent it so that the crime cannot actually be commit. Such as locks on your doors and better security like the tokens the article talks about.
The only other way to prevent crime is to change human nature and that will have to take the path of social engineering.
This isn't a really bad Hollywood movie like "The Day After Tomorrow"
As long as Lake Vostok doesn't melt we should be fine.
nineteen eighty-four.
Well that is the last thing that I need...
A newspaper that watches me while I take a dump.
Correlation is not causation.
Doesn't matter if global warming is man made or not.
As another poster put it once:
"If you are out the sea with a group of people on a row boat and that row boat starts to leak, you aren't going to debate on what is causing it to leak or spend times debating on what you can do to stop the leak, but you start to row to shore right then and there."
I think the point of the mater is no longer if we are causing global warming, but accepting that we must do something about it. If it is natural then we must do something unnatural to stop it in the near future.
Whether this means painting the sahara/ghobi desert in reflective white paint or putting thousands of reflective satellites in orbit... Or just cutting back on CO2 emissions... I don't know what we need to do. I am not a scientist.
But if the earth is getting hotter naturally, we should not just stand by idly and let it happen if it is going to mean the destruction of western civilization.
That being said, there are a lot of inherent difficulties in producing video games targeted to the *ahem* adult market. The first of course, is that Walmart won't sell it.
The adult film industry has no problem in selling their wares without them being in Wal-Mart. Don't they make more money than the regular film industry or at least an equivalent?
I'd have to agree *coughs* not that I spend the majority of my time playing H-Games, but...
Most H-Games have really fun and enjoyable puzzles and gameplay compared to a great of non perverted games. Mostly, puzzles and things that give you an incentive to accomplish in order to see "the booty".
Sometimes I wonder if we made perverted educational software and gave it to boy teams about advanced calculus, chemistry, biology and physics would they learn more.
As in... You had to memorize the periodic table or sovle the advanced equation before you see a "booty" shot. Although I don't know if this would go over well with teachers and parents.
Because it will still cost $200 million to make a game with said photorealistic graphics. As such, only retreads of successful titles will be tolerated.
Nah. You just have to wait 5 years and John Carmark will release the source code.
Something from that article the parent listed I really agree with:
Experienced Linux users may find it odd that the Ubuntu installer does not prompt them for a root password. Instead of having a root user, Ubuntu uses the first normal user as the admin user. Instead of having root privileges all the time, however, Ubuntu uses sudo to manage system administration tasks. Mac users will recognize this behavior, since Mac OS X works essentially the same way. You can set up a root user if you need to, but this system works well for newer Linux users who may not be used to working as root.
I found this odd when I installed Ubuntu for the first time too, but it seems logical not to have a root account by default for security reasons especially for people who aren't familiar with best practices.
I think you are over reacting.
When you play a video game you are supposed to refer to first person unless referring to a AI controlled 3rd person.
If the kid was saying "Look! The hoodlum whacked a hooker!" and he was actually the one controlling the character kiling the prostitute, I'd give him a funny look.
Then again I'd sort of wonder where he learned the word "hooker" from.
Millions of kids (including myself) have grown up with violent video games and we have never killed, mained, raped, or even stolen from another person. The exceptions are people who were crazy to begin with. They were just as likely to kill someone because they played a video game as they were to read a quote in the bible and go kill someone. I have a friend who has a saying for people who use things as an excuse to avoid personal responsibility "Drugs don't make people do bad things. Bad people who do bad things just tend to do drugs."
Plus, music is something you can listen to while doing other things, such as walking down the street or working on your computer. Videos are not well-suited to tha, and that makes them somewhat less useful.
Unless, you are taking a bus or someone else is driving and or you've got a 15 minute break and you are just sitting a break room. I think this would be good for say downloading BBC news casts before you leave to work, but for watching Lord of the Rings while trying actually work may not be the best idea.
Sounds like it's exactly like the DRM for music, except you can't burn actual DVDs. Until someone posts the workaround next week.
If it is quicktime video all you have to do is just convert it to an *.m2v or some other MPeg2 format. You can buy a Quicktime codec to do this or use Final Cut Pro. Then you have make a DVD image through some type of program than can ecode a DVD disc. (like DVD Studio) If you actually have paid for DVD Studio Pro you can then burn it to DVD. Otherwise, you can use roxio to burn the image and I think later macs support this nativley...
However, you can most likely find third party apps to do this all for free because if you actually paid for Final Cut Pro and DVD studio like I did then you out of $2,000 right then and there and just to make DVD out of stuff you download from the net is just not worth that price tag (making your own videos/movies is, but I sometimes wonder why I didn't just buy alcohol instead seeing my creative talent was not that great)
However it would have just been nice if Apple supports burning to DVDs through iDVD, but I doubt it.
Software developers would start having this insurance,
Most incorporated software companies already have insurance for liability not inclusive to software.
In fact they most likley have a ton of other types of insurance for various legal reasons such as workers comp lawsuits, accidental injuries, and various other litigation possibilities.
For the mom 'n' pop and indie developers this would be a finacial burdern that is even more of a problem than what they have to go through right now.
Ahh yes, the future is bright. The future is BallmerVision.
So I have to throw a chair at my TV to get it to work?
Wasn't the point of the Merger to increase revenue of both companies rather than to shut one down.
Of course mergers are never a benefit to the consumer, buying companies shareholders, or the employees of both companies (one gets laid off while the other picks up the slack with no pay raise).
The only people that benefit are the shareholders of the company being bought and maybe some insiders of the buying company who gain by their purchase or CEO bonus.
Personally, I think business mergers should be outlawed... It decreases competition and actually hurts capitalism (the economy) in general. Only indviduals should only be allowed to own stock in corporations and corporations should be forbidden in owning stock in other corporations. Of course if it was put into law, corporations would just get around this buy some proxy method.
Then again, the stockmarket is a good way to ruin a good company with a good business model, but shitty investors who are out to suck the comapny dry of all its venture capital.
"Enemy Submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term Submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villians who sink our ships, while Submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs." -Winston Churchill
This is why we have terminology difference for things that are actually the same thing, but of different nationality... Politics and propaganda.
Ooorr, they could just wipe China with the "Save Taiwan " excuse. If China is "dead", then there will be no one to pay the debt to. US Military is way more powerfull than China's.
But where would Wal Mart get their goods from? If people couldn't shop at Wal Mart then civilization as we know it would collapse resulting in the US going into anarchy.
Though seriously, we could force China out of Tawain, South Korea, Afghanistan, India or where ever they invade (by no means could the US ever occupy mainland China without going through another Vietnam War, but 100x worse), but we'd most likely see our economy tank with the lack of cheap goods coming from China. Although we might have to rely on internal manufacturing or India if they survived the war.
So while China doesn't have the US exactly by the proverbial economic balls, it has a big chunk of it. Lets just say that it would be more likley that China could control the US policy by threat of economics than threat of force. Main reason why US would be hard pressed to actually raise a finger to stop an invasion of Taiwan and why the US would never invade Iran over its nuclear program because China would object (Iran's second biggest oil consumer is China after Japan and has already threatened to veto any move to sanction Iran in the UN Security council).
Of course the "easiest" (and therefore the "best") user interface will be the one that is as close to 100% identical to the only one they've used before.
I would have to disagree... I do phone support for a living and help people that have only used windows computers and are not that technically literate and when I ask them to look for a folder in a list they often will look at the files and expect it the entire list to be alphabetical order like on a Mac. I have to correct them and say to look at the top of the listing for yellow folders and look for the folder name there.
The funny thing is that these people have never used a Mac.
Apparently for those who have never used a computer the most logical expectation is that all the files and folders are alphabetical. When I first started using OS X, I found it quite annoying since windows always had it the other way around but take a person who has used windows but never bothered to actually learn it and you'll find they'll expect something else..
Now, the Xeons do a bit better than the run-of-the-mill P4, but 10x faster? No way.
You have to understands this is rendering and not actual tasks of running a multi-threaded desktop environment. If they were using something like Maya3d or their own inhouse app... The answer is yes way.
When you render to 3d it uses all of the cpu and every cpu you have and every register on the cpu and cache if the rendering software is up to snuff. So what you are looking for is raw computer horsepower. Each cpu can effectively reduce your render time by half (this is in theory because if one scene has more detail/polygons than another than the cpu that is given those frames to render will take longer, but most of the time the quality is the same), but with high end rendering you are looking as massive amounts of time spent rendering depending on how many frames and how high of quality (resolution) you are shooting for.
Although I am only familiar with low end Maya3d setups. My hunch is they have customized their OS to only run minimal os and the maya rendering farm software. If they are using Maya3d or something equivalent it will take advantage of all cpu registers and cache and what not. If you have xeons with large amounts of cache on the cpu then you will see a benefit with rendering more so than just a regular p4. However, the P4 can usually outperform the Xeon when you need something with mult-threads like running a video game or an OS with a GUI.