I've got a feeling that after a sufficient amount of torture, you'd give up a password just to make them stop for a little while. You won't be thinking rationally and realizing that eventually you'll run out of passwords and won't be able to stop them any more. You'll just be aware that if you tell them "tulip", they'll stop pulling your fingernails out with pliers, or whatever. And you'll tell them.
I read a magazine article a couple of years ago about some ubergaming machine. Seems like it's a fairly popular topic, for some odd reason. Anyway, their machine came in at over $25,000.
Of course, about $20,000 of that was some absolutely ridiculous sound system, something that had its own control console and about 30 speakers.
Or she can chop the body up into managable chunks and carry them up the stairs one at a time. And the monitor is LCD, so even Moms should be able to get it up the stairs.
Just because they asked you to list your past employers doesn't mean that they didn't have that information on file already. If they paid taxes for you, you're in the system as their employee.
Having you list the information yourself is probably done to help verify your identity. If something you list doesn't match what they have in the computer, your application gets flagged and a real human being investigates it.
Some of you might find this interesting. I was working with an Email list for job applicants to my company this morning. I decided to do a quick analysis of what domain these candidates had their Email at.
These are applicants for an entry-level blue collar job. They're supposed to be at least 21 years old, but at this point of the employment process, that hasn't been verefied yet. About 2/3 or our applicants are male. We have locations in all 50 US states, as well as Puerto Rico and Canada.
I figured a list of people who requested the workaround would somehow find its way into the hands of the RIAA. Then a few months later, we'll find out that this guy who the RIAA sued for illegal P2Ping was *also* copying CD's and giving them to friends and family and coworkers. "See, folks? Sony trusted this customer and gave him a workaround for the copy protection scheme, and this lowlife ABUSED that trust! You see what we're up against? You see why we need severe penalties for music pirates and totally impenetrable copy protection?"
I'm filing a class-action suit against Ms Spears. These viruseses have caused untold billions of dollars worth of damage and lost production, and she must be held accountable!
I must have missed the part where he taped his glasses together. What makes him a geek?
I don't think geeks are becoming more popular. I think we're just expanding the definition of "geek" until just about anyone can qualify. You wear glasses? You're in! Own a computer? Woah, how geeky! Damn, *and* a PDA??? You must be the ubergeek!
Seriously... being smart and tech savvy isn't enough to qualify for geek status any more. We need to raise the bar.
So a gaming company could just hire a few voice actors, put them on salary, and not have to worry about this royalty crap? That might make sense for a large gaming company. Of course, I'm sure the union would have a problem with that, too.
And on the flip side, what about temp employees who are only brought on board to work on a certain project. They know that when the game goes gold, they'll be released. Since they're not salaried, shouldn't they be entitled to royalties?
The entrance page at Budweiser.com wants you to put in your date of birth before you continue, and states "You must be 21 years of age or older to enter this site". I guess they're a little sensitive about the whole "encouraging minors to drink" thing.
Granted, those precautions will stop absolutely nobody, but Bud can just shrug their shoulders and tell you it's the best that they can do. If there were a TLD that was intended for adults only, Bud could move their site there.
Would they want to? Probably not, but they might be exposing themselves to lawsuits otherwise. But nobody could reasonably expect them to move their website to a TLD that's intended for porn.
The concept of a TLD intended strictly for adults is a good one. Giving it a cheesy.XXX extention is stupid. It immediatly paints the whole domain as the lair of animal loving farmgirls and hot transsexuals.
There are plenty of "legitmate" adult businesses who would be interested in a TLD intended for people 18 and older. Alcohol, tobacco, R-rated movies... all of these could have been pitched the idea of putting their stuff on a TLD that parents could restrict access to. But there's no way Budweiser is going to move or redirect their web traffic to budweiser.xxx
It's not an addiction if you're expecting something vital or important. I keep Outlook running all the time at work, and it checks my Email every five minutes. Thats because part of my job is communicating with my coworkers, and email is one of the ways we do it.
It's an addiction if you check your email obsessively, even though you know there's not anything vital in there. More spam, email from some joke list you signed up for, some piece of crap about a boy in England who has cancer and wants postcards... nothing even remotely important, but still you look. And you'll look again in 20 minutes, just in case.
Think of it as obessively checking your answering machine for new messages, even though the little light isn't blinking.
Crates I can understand. Crates I can see in the real world. Generally, guns and ammunition and supplies are stored in crates until someone needs them. Yeah, maybe it's a little strange that I bust open this huge crate and all thats inside is a box of shotgun shells, but I don't want the game to try and render all the useless crap that was inside. Just show me what I need.
But exploding barrels? Never seen one of those. They're all over the place in your average FPS, though. HL2? Yep, exploding barrels! Doom 3? You bet! Painkiller? What's hell without exploding barrels?
What is in these barrels that makes them violently explode after if you shoot them? And why do people just leave them laying around all over the place? Don't they know those things are dangerous? Shouldn't someone have disposed of them properly?
But no. Exploding barrels are clearly marked, and are stacked up or laying around just about everywhere. Nobody else seems bothered by them.
Re:Gamers never know what's good for them
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
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· Score: 1
I played my first HL2 on medium. I don't want a game to stress me out, but I do want to immerse myself in a good game. Giving the enemies some teeth forces me to strategize, and gives me an adreneline rush when something unexpected happens. The impact of four enemies rushing out of a building to attack you is considerably lessened if you can just stand there and empty your gun into them without any worries. I find the "Smell the Roses" run through the game more enjoyable when I've got some idea what to expect, and I know what things I want to check out more thoroughly.
One VERY nice thing about HL2 is being able to adjust the difficulty level on the fly. If a certain section of the game (like the big battle in Nova Prospekt) is kicking your butt, just dial the difficulty down until you're past that part. If you're getting bored and need a challenge, then ramp it up to max.
There are problems with proof all around. How do we know the ex-boyfriend is the one who posted the pictures? Is there some sort of technical evidence, did he admit to it, or do we just have her allegations to go on?
I don't have too much difficulty envisioning a scenario where she puts the pictures up herself so that she can sue the ex or have him arrested. And if Yahoo doesn't take the pictures down.. well heck, they have *lots* of money.
I'm not saying this is what happened, or even likely, but people have done stranger things.
Your locking doors wouldn't have prevented 9-11. The pilot would have opened the door at the first sign of trouble, because that was the accepted policy at the time. Cooperate with the hijackers, do whatever they want, just so long as you get the plane down safely on the ground somewhere. Then let the negotiating teams take over.
Post 9-11, of course, all the rules have changed. Now the pilot is going to get off the hijacker alert as soon as he's aware that there is a problem, and from there it's out of his hands. A couple of Air Force jets will intercept the airplane, it'll be instructed to fly somewhere remote and land, and if it doesn't it'll be shot down.
Armed guards - Brilliant. Do everything you can reasonably do to make sure that the passengers have no weapons, then put a few pistols on board. There's a reason that prison guards are unarmed.
Bigger seats - Sure, airlines are making lots of money. They can easily afford to pull out a few rows of seats to accomodate the occasional nutcase who can't handle cramped conditions for a few hours. Like someone else said.. if you need more room, fly first class. Or don't fly.
That won't work, but you're on the right track. From TFA, the big sticking point is that the voice actors want residuals if a game sells over X units. In other words, they want you to pay them a bunch of money up front, then more money if the game does well. How 'bout they make a choice? You can have your $250 an hour up front, OR you can take a percentage of whatever profits the game might make. You don't get both.
My first experience with voice acting was when I bought the speech add-on pack for Privateer for $14.95. It was a steaming pile of excrement. I swear they must have grabbed a secretary and a couple of janitors to do the voice "acting".
Most of the voice acting today is at least competent. It's rarely outstanding, but I'm not sure what constitutes outstanding voice acting. I guess if you're not aware that you're listening to some actor, and you just accept that it's an orc or an alien or whatever that's talking, then it's good voice acting.
Slashdot would be an example of one of those "trivial" sites, like newspaper archives. But you're correct, using a single password would mean that a security breach anywhere would compromise all of your accounts. Someone puts a keystroke logger on your work computer, gets your login there, and all of sudden they're in your bank account and ebay and wherever else they want to go.
Changing passwords every 30 days is sensible, too. People share their passwords with their coworkers, and you really can't stop them. You can let Dave use your account now and it's not a big deal. What about in six months though, when he gets laid off? If he still has your password written down somewhere and it hasn't been changed, he could cause some trouble.
Library officials say the added security is necessary to ensure people who are using the computers are who they say they are.
Okay, I'll bite. Why is this "necessary"? Are there really that many people using library computers to break the law? Couldn't we just let people use the computers anonymously and not worry about who they are?
The article cites a couple of reasons for the scanners, like keeping kids from borrowing a friends card to get around a parental ban on adult sites, but that hardly seems to justify this sort of drastic solution.
Stealing data might not be that difficult. Stealing data without anyone knowing that the theft occured is somewhat more difficult. If you break open a door, jimmy a file cabinet, steal a laptop... someone will notice, and security will presumably be improved to prevent that from happening again. You can break into a wireless network without anyone noticing, and you can steal data for a long, long time.
At home I've got 128 bit WEP and SSID turned off. It would require a few minutes of effort to break in, and there's really nothing on my system that would justify even that minimal effort. I'm a very boring person. Also, there are plenty of unsecured networks in my area, so it's unlikely that someone will hack me just to get net access.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a feeling that after a sufficient amount of torture, you'd give up a password just to make them stop for a little while. You won't be thinking rationally and realizing that eventually you'll run out of passwords and won't be able to stop them any more. You'll just be aware that if you tell them "tulip", they'll stop pulling your fingernails out with pliers, or whatever. And you'll tell them.
...well, it would have been, except I downloaded this thing and started playing with it.
It's seriously cool. Ran amazingly smoothly, too! Not something I'd want to run off a dialup, though.
I read a magazine article a couple of years ago about some ubergaming machine. Seems like it's a fairly popular topic, for some odd reason. Anyway, their machine came in at over $25,000.
Of course, about $20,000 of that was some absolutely ridiculous sound system, something that had its own control console and about 30 speakers.
Nah, she'll just bury him down there.
Or she can chop the body up into managable chunks and carry them up the stairs one at a time. And the monitor is LCD, so even Moms should be able to get it up the stairs.
I'd introduce the two of you, but you're AC so there's no way to tell who you really are. Too bad.
I think I'll just start modding them down. They seem to expect it, and I hate for people to be disappointed.
Just because they asked you to list your past employers doesn't mean that they didn't have that information on file already. If they paid taxes for you, you're in the system as their employee.
Having you list the information yourself is probably done to help verify your identity. If something you list doesn't match what they have in the computer, your application gets flagged and a real human being investigates it.
Some of you might find this interesting. I was working with an Email list for job applicants to my company this morning. I decided to do a quick analysis of what domain these candidates had their Email at.
These are applicants for an entry-level blue collar job. They're supposed to be at least 21 years old, but at this point of the employment process, that hasn't been verefied yet. About 2/3 or our applicants are male. We have locations in all 50 US states, as well as Puerto Rico and Canada.
yahoo.com 7110
aol.com 3255
hotmail.com 2857
msn.com 556
sbcglobal.net 539
comcast.net 334
bellsouth.net 293
earthlink.net 134
gmail.com 132
cox.net 118
I'm not sure what this all means, but it does explain why you're having trouble finding a Yahoo ID that hasn't already been taken.
And that goes doubly for stupid things.
Actually, it's only funny when it provokes a predictable, bitter reaction from some uptight asshole.
So yes, in this case it was hilarious.
I figured a list of people who requested the workaround would somehow find its way into the hands of the RIAA. Then a few months later, we'll find out that this guy who the RIAA sued for illegal P2Ping was *also* copying CD's and giving them to friends and family and coworkers. "See, folks? Sony trusted this customer and gave him a workaround for the copy protection scheme, and this lowlife ABUSED that trust! You see what we're up against? You see why we need severe penalties for music pirates and totally impenetrable copy protection?"
I'm filing a class-action suit against Ms Spears. These viruseses have caused untold billions of dollars worth of damage and lost production, and she must be held accountable!
I must have missed the part where he taped his glasses together. What makes him a geek?
I don't think geeks are becoming more popular. I think we're just expanding the definition of "geek" until just about anyone can qualify. You wear glasses? You're in! Own a computer? Woah, how geeky! Damn, *and* a PDA??? You must be the ubergeek!
Seriously... being smart and tech savvy isn't enough to qualify for geek status any more. We need to raise the bar.
So a gaming company could just hire a few voice actors, put them on salary, and not have to worry about this royalty crap? That might make sense for a large gaming company. Of course, I'm sure the union would have a problem with that, too.
And on the flip side, what about temp employees who are only brought on board to work on a certain project. They know that when the game goes gold, they'll be released. Since they're not salaried, shouldn't they be entitled to royalties?
The entrance page at Budweiser.com wants you to put in your date of birth before you continue, and states "You must be 21 years of age or older to enter this site". I guess they're a little sensitive about the whole "encouraging minors to drink" thing.
Granted, those precautions will stop absolutely nobody, but Bud can just shrug their shoulders and tell you it's the best that they can do. If there were a TLD that was intended for adults only, Bud could move their site there.
Would they want to? Probably not, but they might be exposing themselves to lawsuits otherwise. But nobody could reasonably expect them to move their website to a TLD that's intended for porn.
The concept of a TLD intended strictly for adults is a good one. Giving it a cheesy .XXX extention is stupid. It immediatly paints the whole domain as the lair of animal loving farmgirls and hot transsexuals.
There are plenty of "legitmate" adult businesses who would be interested in a TLD intended for people 18 and older. Alcohol, tobacco, R-rated movies... all of these could have been pitched the idea of putting their stuff on a TLD that parents could restrict access to. But there's no way Budweiser is going to move or redirect their web traffic to budweiser.xxx
Prediction: This will fail miserably.
It's not an addiction if you're expecting something vital or important. I keep Outlook running all the time at work, and it checks my Email every five minutes. Thats because part of my job is communicating with my coworkers, and email is one of the ways we do it.
It's an addiction if you check your email obsessively, even though you know there's not anything vital in there. More spam, email from some joke list you signed up for, some piece of crap about a boy in England who has cancer and wants postcards... nothing even remotely important, but still you look. And you'll look again in 20 minutes, just in case.
Think of it as obessively checking your answering machine for new messages, even though the little light isn't blinking.
Exploding barrels.
Crates I can understand. Crates I can see in the real world. Generally, guns and ammunition and supplies are stored in crates until someone needs them. Yeah, maybe it's a little strange that I bust open this huge crate and all thats inside is a box of shotgun shells, but I don't want the game to try and render all the useless crap that was inside. Just show me what I need.
But exploding barrels? Never seen one of those. They're all over the place in your average FPS, though. HL2? Yep, exploding barrels! Doom 3? You bet! Painkiller? What's hell without exploding barrels?
What is in these barrels that makes them violently explode after if you shoot them? And why do people just leave them laying around all over the place? Don't they know those things are dangerous? Shouldn't someone have disposed of them properly?
But no. Exploding barrels are clearly marked, and are stacked up or laying around just about everywhere. Nobody else seems bothered by them.
I played my first HL2 on medium. I don't want a game to stress me out, but I do want to immerse myself in a good game. Giving the enemies some teeth forces me to strategize, and gives me an adreneline rush when something unexpected happens. The impact of four enemies rushing out of a building to attack you is considerably lessened if you can just stand there and empty your gun into them without any worries. I find the "Smell the Roses" run through the game more enjoyable when I've got some idea what to expect, and I know what things I want to check out more thoroughly.
One VERY nice thing about HL2 is being able to adjust the difficulty level on the fly. If a certain section of the game (like the big battle in Nova Prospekt) is kicking your butt, just dial the difficulty down until you're past that part. If you're getting bored and need a challenge, then ramp it up to max.
There are problems with proof all around. How do we know the ex-boyfriend is the one who posted the pictures? Is there some sort of technical evidence, did he admit to it, or do we just have her allegations to go on?
I don't have too much difficulty envisioning a scenario where she puts the pictures up herself so that she can sue the ex or have him arrested. And if Yahoo doesn't take the pictures down.. well heck, they have *lots* of money.
I'm not saying this is what happened, or even likely, but people have done stranger things.
Your locking doors wouldn't have prevented 9-11. The pilot would have opened the door at the first sign of trouble, because that was the accepted policy at the time. Cooperate with the hijackers, do whatever they want, just so long as you get the plane down safely on the ground somewhere. Then let the negotiating teams take over.
Post 9-11, of course, all the rules have changed. Now the pilot is going to get off the hijacker alert as soon as he's aware that there is a problem, and from there it's out of his hands. A couple of Air Force jets will intercept the airplane, it'll be instructed to fly somewhere remote and land, and if it doesn't it'll be shot down.
Armed guards - Brilliant. Do everything you can reasonably do to make sure that the passengers have no weapons, then put a few pistols on board. There's a reason that prison guards are unarmed.
Bigger seats - Sure, airlines are making lots of money. They can easily afford to pull out a few rows of seats to accomodate the occasional nutcase who can't handle cramped conditions for a few hours. Like someone else said.. if you need more room, fly first class. Or don't fly.
That won't work, but you're on the right track. From TFA, the big sticking point is that the voice actors want residuals if a game sells over X units. In other words, they want you to pay them a bunch of money up front, then more money if the game does well. How 'bout they make a choice? You can have your $250 an hour up front, OR you can take a percentage of whatever profits the game might make. You don't get both.
My first experience with voice acting was when I bought the speech add-on pack for Privateer for $14.95. It was a steaming pile of excrement. I swear they must have grabbed a secretary and a couple of janitors to do the voice "acting".
Most of the voice acting today is at least competent. It's rarely outstanding, but I'm not sure what constitutes outstanding voice acting. I guess if you're not aware that you're listening to some actor, and you just accept that it's an orc or an alien or whatever that's talking, then it's good voice acting.
Slashdot would be an example of one of those "trivial" sites, like newspaper archives. But you're correct, using a single password would mean that a security breach anywhere would compromise all of your accounts. Someone puts a keystroke logger on your work computer, gets your login there, and all of sudden they're in your bank account and ebay and wherever else they want to go.
Changing passwords every 30 days is sensible, too. People share their passwords with their coworkers, and you really can't stop them. You can let Dave use your account now and it's not a big deal. What about in six months though, when he gets laid off? If he still has your password written down somewhere and it hasn't been changed, he could cause some trouble.
From TFA:
Library officials say the added security is necessary to ensure people who are using the computers are who they say they are.
Okay, I'll bite. Why is this "necessary"? Are there really that many people using library computers to break the law? Couldn't we just let people use the computers anonymously and not worry about who they are?
The article cites a couple of reasons for the scanners, like keeping kids from borrowing a friends card to get around a parental ban on adult sites, but that hardly seems to justify this sort of drastic solution.
Stealing data might not be that difficult. Stealing data without anyone knowing that the theft occured is somewhat more difficult. If you break open a door, jimmy a file cabinet, steal a laptop... someone will notice, and security will presumably be improved to prevent that from happening again. You can break into a wireless network without anyone noticing, and you can steal data for a long, long time.
At home I've got 128 bit WEP and SSID turned off. It would require a few minutes of effort to break in, and there's really nothing on my system that would justify even that minimal effort. I'm a very boring person. Also, there are plenty of unsecured networks in my area, so it's unlikely that someone will hack me just to get net access.