One thing I've noticed, as a game type person who's never seen this game. None of the reviews or explanations I've read describe how the game is won, or how it's lost. I gather the object is to keep gathering things and growing bigger and bigger until...? Are there enemies opposing you, or a timer you have to beat, or something like that?
Does this mean they can sue Google, since Google links to pretty much everything? I'm gure Google has a lot more money then some spare guy in Australia.
He's showing off how l33t he is by bragging on his USB key. Seriously, the article reads like some high schoolers English essay. My favorite sentence is "This is frustrating, for sure.", although "Technology has advanced so fast" is a close second. And of course there's absolutely nothing in there that resembles clever insight or original thought.
I built my boys a system last weekend, and I made sure to put in a floppy drive. I know I'll never need to use it, but if I had omitted it I'd have inevitably run into some bizarre combination of circumstances where a floppy drive was desperately needed. Call it insurance.
I doubt Intel will give back to the consumer directly unless someone holds a gun to their head. However, someone did file a
Class Action Suit against Intel, so you might get lucky there.
You'll have to check the details, I stopped reading after I saw the part about it only applying to people who had purchased an Intel processor since 2001.
In Deus Ex, the generally politically liberal Ion Storm Austin created a world where you could choose between violence and pacifistic approaches, but the charismatic characters urged you towards peace while the monsters suggested violence.
Okay, why did the author of the article find some characters "charismatic", while others struck him as "monsters"? Doesn't that reaction say as much about his bias as it does about the game itself?
Yeah, but it's kind of a grey area. For example, most games have "cheat codes" that let you access parts of the game that aren't there during normal gameplay. Granted, the cheat codes are put in the game deliberately, and you can argue that a hack is something different.
But what if the "hack" involves something as simple as renaming a file? Doesn't it seem in that case that the manufacturer actually intended for anyone who bought the game to be able to exploit that hole?
I'd buy a religious-themed game if it was fun. I just have a feeling that if a company sets out to make a Christian game, the fun part will take back seat to the Getting out the Message part.
But wouldn't a MMORPG with a reincarnation theme be cool? You'd have free reign to shoplift, steal, PK whatever. But when you died, your good deeds would be balanced against your sins. If you were good, you come back as a priest or a warrior or something. If you were bad, you come back as a peasant or a slave or a dung beetle.
I wonder if a spyware company could fool MS Antispyware by generating a few hundred thousand false clicks in favor of their software? Granted it wouldn't be terribly ethical, but I don't see that stopping too many spyware distributors.
If they give me something for free that I definitely would have paid $50 for, doesn't that make it a "50 dollar value"? It's the flip side of most pirating issues. Many pirates claim that their downloading an Mp3 or game or whatever doesn't really cost the owner anything, since there was no way they'd actually pay money for the product.
By the same token, I was definitely going to buy Hl2, and I was going to buy it the day it came out. If I have a coupon that lets me get the game for free, doesn't that make the coupon a $50 value?
I still don't see sufficient numbers of people making the connection between Claria and their clock thingy and then deciding that they'll disregard Microsofts recommendation and keep Claria. I think your typical user is much more likely to blindly accept whatever Microsoft tells them, and if their clock thingy doesn't work right... well, there are lots of other things on their computer that don't work right, whats one more?
I think it's a *whole* lot more likely that when Microsoft got involved in business discussions with Claria, some bright start at MS decided that it wouldn't be a good idea for them to be do business with a spyware company. So they reclassify Claria, and viola! Now they don't market spyware, and they're a respectable member of the community.
Oh, come on. Microsoft may take feedback into consideration, but surely it's not the only factor in selecting the default action. And what the *hell* would motivate hundreds of thousands of users to change the default action that Microsoft recommends and keep a piece of crap like Claria? Especially considering that these are people who are clueless enough to have installed Claria in the first place.
So lets just say that theoretically this guy and the guy who turned him in are working together. Adult writes the worm and gives it to the kid. Kid releases it onto the unsuspecting Internet. Adult turns him in. Kid gets a slap on the wrist Adult collects $250,000. A few months down the road, adult splits the cash with the kid. Profit!
The kid won't have any incentive to screw his partner over - he released the worm, so he's guilty regardless. The adult could provide the kid with some proof about who really wrote the worm. If the adult tries to keep the cash, the kid turns him in and the adult gets put away for 10 years and loses the reward money, to boot.
Yeah, that makes sense. Kid breaks the law, so we punish him by sending him to computer science school. I assume the state is going to pay for this.
Meanwhile the kid down the street, who knows just as much about computers but somehow managed to resist the temptation to drop a worm on the internet, gets to work two jobs and apply for scholarships and financial aid and try to figure out how he'll afford a higher education.
Nah... stay in Texas and fight. There are plenty of alternatives to state-sponsered public education. If you move somewhere cool, you let the fundamentalists win!
If it's a situation where you can plausibly deny ownership of the laptop, then sure - go for it. If we're talking about a scenario where they know that there's some information on the laptop that they want access to, they're going to have a decent idea who it belongs to. If the laptop is in your house, or your office, or the trunk of your car, or you're carrying it through an airport, I think you're going to have a tough time convincing whoever that it's not really your laptop.
No, the fact of the matter is that while English pronunciation may not be 100% consistent, virtually all words do follow the same set of rules. You can't pronounce "Raymond Luxury Yacht" as "Throatwarbler Mangrove" no matter how hard you try. And its pretty rare for an English speaker to mangle the pronunciation of a word so badly that the listener can't understand what they're trying to say.
I think it would work the opposite way. Months later, you might not remember specifically that the product was promoted via popup, but you'd be aware that the product caused some faint negative subconscious vibe. Something like that is enough to make me downgrade a product... I figure I must have read a bad review about the product or the company or something.
Or to put it in a broader sense, you can stop just about anything if you make it a high enough priority. If China wants to censor the internet badly enough, then can devote significant resources to the activity, institute draconian penalties for breaking the law, offer lavish rewards for people who turn others in, etc.
If you're that worried about someone cutting off a hand or whatever, combine biometrics with something else. Have the scanner send a signal to a security guard at a remote location when someone requests access. The guard checks a camera, verifies that nothing suspicious appears to be going on, and grants the person access. If the guard sees a bloody hand on the scanner, or a couple of guys wearing ski masks in the background, he sounds an alarm instead.
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One thing I've noticed, as a game type person who's never seen this game. None of the reviews or explanations I've read describe how the game is won, or how it's lost. I gather the object is to keep gathering things and growing bigger and bigger until...? Are there enemies opposing you, or a timer you have to beat, or something like that?
I thought about that, then I realized that they would be green all over.
Some things just shouldn't be green.
Does this mean they can sue Google, since Google links to pretty much everything? I'm gure Google has a lot more money then some spare guy in Australia.
If the floppy drive isn't mounted in the case, there's now way I'll be able to find it when disaster strikes.
This way, it's the floppy disks themselves that I won't be able to find.
He's showing off how l33t he is by bragging on his USB key. Seriously, the article reads like some high schoolers English essay. My favorite sentence is "This is frustrating, for sure.", although "Technology has advanced so fast" is a close second.
And of course there's absolutely nothing in there that resembles clever insight or original thought.
I built my boys a system last weekend, and I made sure to put in a floppy drive. I know I'll never need to use it, but if I had omitted it I'd have inevitably run into some bizarre combination of circumstances where a floppy drive was desperately needed. Call it insurance.
So if HP and /. get in a cycle of press releases and news stories... we could see a resonance cascade scenario!
I doubt Intel will give back to the consumer directly unless someone holds a gun to their head. However, someone did file a Class Action Suit against Intel, so you might get lucky there.
You'll have to check the details, I stopped reading after I saw the part about it only applying to people who had purchased an Intel processor since 2001.
In Deus Ex, the generally politically liberal Ion Storm Austin created a world where you could choose between violence and pacifistic approaches, but the charismatic characters urged you towards peace while the monsters suggested violence.
Okay, why did the author of the article find some characters "charismatic", while others struck him as "monsters"? Doesn't that reaction say as much about his bias as it does about the game itself?
These days, it takes an internet savvy child to avoid all the porn out there.
Yeah, but it's kind of a grey area. For example, most games have "cheat codes" that let you access parts of the game that aren't there during normal gameplay. Granted, the cheat codes are put in the game deliberately, and you can argue that a hack is something different.
But what if the "hack" involves something as simple as renaming a file? Doesn't it seem in that case that the manufacturer actually intended for anyone who bought the game to be able to exploit that hole?
I'd buy a religious-themed game if it was fun. I just have a feeling that if a company sets out to make a Christian game, the fun part will take back seat to the Getting out the Message part.
But wouldn't a MMORPG with a reincarnation theme be cool? You'd have free reign to shoplift, steal, PK whatever. But when you died, your good deeds would be balanced against your sins. If you were good, you come back as a priest or a warrior or something. If you were bad, you come back as a peasant or a slave or a dung beetle.
I wonder if a spyware company could fool MS Antispyware by generating a few hundred thousand false clicks in favor of their software? Granted it wouldn't be terribly ethical, but I don't see that stopping too many spyware distributors.
If they give me something for free that I definitely would have paid $50 for, doesn't that make it a "50 dollar value"? It's the flip side of most pirating issues. Many pirates claim that their downloading an Mp3 or game or whatever doesn't really cost the owner anything, since there was no way they'd actually pay money for the product.
By the same token, I was definitely going to buy Hl2, and I was going to buy it the day it came out. If I have a coupon that lets me get the game for free, doesn't that make the coupon a $50 value?
I still don't see sufficient numbers of people making the connection between Claria and their clock thingy and then deciding that they'll disregard Microsofts recommendation and keep Claria. I think your typical user is much more likely to blindly accept whatever Microsoft tells them, and if their clock thingy doesn't work right... well, there are lots of other things on their computer that don't work right, whats one more?
I think it's a *whole* lot more likely that when Microsoft got involved in business discussions with Claria, some bright start at MS decided that it wouldn't be a good idea for them to be do business with a spyware company. So they reclassify Claria, and viola! Now they don't market spyware, and they're a respectable member of the community.
If the power is out, then there won't be any more interference! Duh!
Oh, come on. Microsoft may take feedback into consideration, but surely it's not the only factor in selecting the default action. And what the *hell* would motivate hundreds of thousands of users to change the default action that Microsoft recommends and keep a piece of crap like Claria? Especially considering that these are people who are clueless enough to have installed Claria in the first place.
On the other hand, if Microsoft could come up with some half-assed evidence that the informant was involved somehow, they'd save themselves $250,000.
I mean sure, it's not much, but every little bit counts.
So lets just say that theoretically this guy and the guy who turned him in are working together. Adult writes the worm and gives it to the kid. Kid releases it onto the unsuspecting Internet. Adult turns him in. Kid gets a slap on the wrist Adult collects $250,000. A few months down the road, adult splits the cash with the kid. Profit!
The kid won't have any incentive to screw his partner over - he released the worm, so he's guilty regardless. The adult could provide the kid with some proof about who really wrote the worm. If the adult tries to keep the cash, the kid turns him in and the adult gets put away for 10 years and loses the reward money, to boot.
Yeah, that makes sense. Kid breaks the law, so we punish him by sending him to computer science school. I assume the state is going to pay for this.
Meanwhile the kid down the street, who knows just as much about computers but somehow managed to resist the temptation to drop a worm on the internet, gets to work two jobs and apply for scholarships and financial aid and try to figure out how he'll afford a higher education.
That'll teach 'em.
Nah... stay in Texas and fight. There are plenty of alternatives to state-sponsered public education. If you move somewhere cool, you let the fundamentalists win!
If it's a situation where you can plausibly deny ownership of the laptop, then sure - go for it. If we're talking about a scenario where they know that there's some information on the laptop that they want access to, they're going to have a decent idea who it belongs to. If the laptop is in your house, or your office, or the trunk of your car, or you're carrying it through an airport, I think you're going to have a tough time convincing whoever that it's not really your laptop.
No, the fact of the matter is that while English pronunciation may not be 100% consistent, virtually all words do follow the same set of rules. You can't pronounce "Raymond Luxury Yacht" as "Throatwarbler Mangrove" no matter how hard you try. And its pretty rare for an English speaker to mangle the pronunciation of a word so badly that the listener can't understand what they're trying to say.
I think it would work the opposite way. Months later, you might not remember specifically that the product was promoted via popup, but you'd be aware that the product caused some faint negative subconscious vibe. Something like that is enough to make me downgrade a product... I figure I must have read a bad review about the product or the company or something.
Or to put it in a broader sense, you can stop just about anything if you make it a high enough priority. If China wants to censor the internet badly enough, then can devote significant resources to the activity, institute draconian penalties for breaking the law, offer lavish rewards for people who turn others in, etc.
If you're that worried about someone cutting off a hand or whatever, combine biometrics with something else. Have the scanner send a signal to a security guard at a remote location when someone requests access. The guard checks a camera, verifies that nothing suspicious appears to be going on, and grants the person access. If the guard sees a bloody hand on the scanner, or a couple of guys wearing ski masks in the background, he sounds an alarm instead.