I don't think the gas station, grocery, or the department story will take Bullion, and I wouldn't trust the cashier to give me the correct change if they did.
Oh so many jokes, and rightly. But. I will say this - even if you've made money legitimately, I'd say there's good reason to keep a little cash on hand. It's rare, but not unheard of (especially in recent years) for banks to fail. If I had a million or more, I think I'd like to keep 100,000 or so available as cash on hand, in case the rest of my money either got frozen temporarily (e.g. while the FDIC or other government or law enforcement agency takes over the bank and does an investigation), or disappears forever.
I don't think, however, I'd keep it in shoeboxes. Safe vaults were invented for a reason.
Funny you mention checklists in medicine. There's other people, in the medical field, who've made the exact same observation you have. I remember hearing an interview back in January, on NPR, with Doctor Atul Gawande who is trying to encourage the use of standardized medical checklists in hospitals in the U.S. He wrote a book called, _The_Checklist_Manifesto_.
Change takes time, but given the results that guy saw, this is probably going to become standard practice in hospitals and clinics across the U.S. and probably the world. This really needs to happen. Like you say, checklists work to help manage memory and complexity in time-critical situations where the work *must* be done right. I think people resist checklists, because it makes them feel like they've become some sort of cog in a machine, but I for one recognize the limits of my memory and ability to manage complexity in critical situations.
I don't think anyone is saying you have a fundamental right to play Windows games on Linux. But maybe, some people prefer to use Linux. You say "Linux is ideal for a lot of use cases. Gaming isn't one of them." The primary reason is simply that native builds of many games aren't available for Linux. From a technical standpoint, there's nothing wrong with Linux as a gaming platform (unless you count the lack of DirectX/Direct3D as a technical deficiency).
Linux might be a better platform for gaming for a lot of people, from a technical standpoint, as they'd quite possibly get better stability and slightly better performance.
There's nothing wrong with people hoping that a game developer would start supporting their platform of choice. Yes, they could dual-boot into Windows to play their games (that's what I do), but honestly, it'd be really *nice* to be able to just use Linux all the time and ditch Windows completely. I'd really like to be able to buy a build of a game I want for Linux instead of Windows. I'd be willing to pay for that.
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that the Linux gamer market is too small, currently, for most studios/publishers to bother with.
They'll probably try to implement some server-side checking to limit how often the URL can be accessed, so. . .
Just grab a copy of the key and:
Host it at a URL on a server you control so there's no limits; OR
grab a copy of the key, decrypt the software, and share the decrypted version (hacked as necessary to make it skip the check for the encryption and the key)
Everyone who backs any kind of DRM seems to ignore the big logical elephant in the room: If you grant someone access, even once, to anything, and they have any clue what they are doing, they can have access to it forever after, and they can copy it to anyone they want.
Once something is decrypted, once, it's no longer a secret.
You can either give someone access to something, or not give them access. You can't logically both give them access, and not give them access. Any security guards you build into the software itself to check for valid keys, authorization from a server, whatever, can just be cut out of the software like a surgeon removing an appendix.
The only thing which logically works for access control, is the online game model, because a significant part of the game itself resides on the server. But for single player games (or games like Quake, Diablo, etc. where you can run your own server), access control is a logical dead end.
All that said, just because someone *can* steal something, doesn't mean they should. There might really be some people in this world who genuinely just can't afford to pay for games for one reason or another (like they live in a country where, because of the strange realities of currency value differences, they can only make the equivalent of 80 dollars a year, and need that for silly things like food, clothes, shelter, basic hygiene products, school supplies and health care; BUT, for the most part, people who can't afford to pay for games, should probably be spending less time playing games at their computer and more time working, or job hunting, or taking classes or training of some kind to be able to get a better job. The people who have the technical skills to actually be able to hack out the DRM code in the game binaries clearly have enough knowledge of computer software development that they should easily be able to get $60,000+ per year jobs, not sure why they'd need to steal a $40-$60 game.
Can you hear the hard disk access on an NAS which is attached to your ethernet network, passes down a length of Cat5/6 through a network hub or switch, then down more Cat5/6 cabling to your computer? That's seriously impressive if you can. . .
That sounds like a problem in the design or manufacture of the "analog components of the system" (or the DAC which is both a digital and analog component), not a problem in the design of the cable. If replacing your digital cable *does* affect the quality of the sound being output, you have a problem with some other part of the system, not the cable.
Shouldn't any decently designed DAC have whatever technical measures are necessary to ensure that analog noise coming in on the digital line does not get passed out in the analog output of the DAC? Trying to solve the problem with the cable seems to me to be the wrong way to attack such a problem - the playback device which generates the final analog signal should take care of that problem. Of course, from that point forward (from the DAC to an amp, and from the amp to the speakers) you certainly do need to worry about those analog interference problems. But you shouldn't have to worry about it on the digital portion of the system.
I've seen in retails stores (Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Microcenter, etc) spindles of CD-Rs labelled as "Music" CDs-R. WTH is a "Music" CD-R? I can't conceive of any way it would be different from a normal CD-R, unless perhaps it was manufactured to last longer before developing errors, and be more scratch resistant or something?
I've never actually bought them, since the packaging never gave me any good explanation of how it was different. I've always figured it was just a scam to charge people 20% more?
As far as I've ever been able to figure out, the only claim someone might legitimately make about 'higher quality' digital cables is that you can run longer cable lengths before the signal degradation gets so bad that the 1's and 0's get truly corrupted so the signal can no longer be read reliably. So, optical cable you could probably run very long lengths (like across an auditorium, gym, large classroom, etc) without a problem, but perhaps with a long bit of copper wire, the signal loss would be too great.
Of course, that doesn't stop sales guys (who aren't usually technical people, which is how they ended up in sales to begin with, and often don't really care about the truth anyhow - they just care about the margin) from trying to sell people on the idea that 1 meter of optical or 'super' or 'monster' cable sounds better than 1 meter of regular cable.
Oh, don't we wish, but in reality, it'll become a contest of "My youthful indiscretion wasn't as bad as your youthful indiscretion". You know, "I might have posted something mean on the facebook page of another kid from my school, but *YOU* got drunk at a party when you were 16 and flashed your tits at a webcam".
It might not be time for residential networks and ISPs to flip the switch yet. . . but it's *definitely* time for all new home routers, DSL/Cable gateways, etc, to include full IPv6 compatibility. That way, when the ISPs decide it's time to turn on IPv6, they and their customers don't need to replace most of the hardware already deployed. IPv6 support at the vast majority of network endpoints needs to already be present before you can actually make the switch - you can't change the protocol and just force people to suddenly change.
ISPs need to start configuring networks to run in a dual-stack mode (at least as far as the end-user is concerned - once it hits the first ISP owned router, it could be all IPv6 from that point on), so that those who are ready to use IPv6 can start using it (yeah, you can use tunnel providers or 6to4 [which is really another sort of tunnel], right now, but that usually adds additional hops and latency to your connections - basically, if you are tunneling IPv6 traffic over IPv4, why bother using it to begin with).
Ok, this is how I read the sentence: "This promotes aerobic bacteria that convert the sludge's sugars and other organic materials into harmless nitrogen gas."
So, I see that as meaning (sugars + "other organic materials" [Urine and maybe other waste products]) is reacted together/metabolized by the bacteria, producing "harmless nitrogen gas" (as well as other byproducts [I guess that would be your implied 'and whatever'] which the writer doesn't mention because he's not interested in them).
Fine, I screwed up on that statement. Rest of the comment is still valid. Urine in waste water is definitely a source of nitrogen, and is an organic compound.
The article doesn't really explain how they use the methane. Are they burning it in the 'rocket engine' along with the N2O (using the N20 as both a source of energy, and a source of oxygen for combustion of the methane?
Is this in any way particularly different than the numerous existing natural gas electric power generation plants around the world?
Don't get me wrong, this seems like a good idea - use the waste water as a source of energy to run the treatment plant, but, the use of a 'rocket engine' (e.g. gas turbine generator) doesn't strike me as nearly as novel as this article portrays?
Urine is the body's way of disposing of excess nitrogen: Urea (one of the components of Urine) has the chemical formula: (NH_2)_2CO.
Thus, there's plenty of nitrogen in the 'other organic materials' in waste water. Not every hydrocarbon is exclusively hydrogen and carbon - other elements can be present too.
One thing Miguel says in the article is that he thinks Google could migrate Android over to C#/CIL. Aside from the concerns others have from a legal standpoint, from a purely technical standpoint, instead of migrating all that existing code to C#, wouldn't it make more sense to use the Mono VM, but compile all the existing Dalvik code (that is, all the source written in the Java-like Dalvik high-level lanaguage) to the.Net bytecode (CIL), if you wanted to migrate to Mono, instead of trying to convert it all to C#? I realize that Java and C# have a lot of similarities, but also a few significant differences, which I think would make it a bit costly to convert and debug all that existing code?
Buh, wah? The Q3A engine was GPL'ed years ago. What would be so special about the ET Engine, which would prevent it's release, because of some contract agreement with one of iD's licensee's? Other than Splash Damage (I suppose maybe they didn't want it open sourced before), was there any licensee of the ET engine? The other poster who responded said no one licensed the ET engine?
You know, about 5 years ago, I bet a lot of people would have been very excited about GPL release of ET. I suppose someone will probably do something with it, but this seems ridiculously long after the game's publication.
ET wasn't even a revenue generating game for them - they gave it away for free (well, I do remember seeing some copies for sale at computer stores - I guess you can get some people to pay for something they could just download for free, legally).
I know that iD makes some (maybe a considerable portion) of their revenue licensing out their engines to other commercial game developers (maybe even developers of non-game simulators, not sure), but even so - did anyone license the ET engine? I mean, I know it was basically the Q3A engine with some modifications - did anyone care about those specific modifications? Anyhow, releasing the game engine as GPL source release doesn't stop them from generating revenue from licensing it for commercial (non-GPL) use. Why wait so long?
I mostly don't notice low resolution, too much, if I'm enjoying a show, BUT the big exception is if there's something on screen where there's detail I need to make out (like maybe some hard to read small text, or something off in the distance[or just small] which has some important detail the audience is supposed to notice - like when a character is noticing some piece of evidence which is important to understanding further plot development), or sometimes when there is a lot of quick motion/action on-screen - low res feeds can get particularly high in the artifact count during rapid screen changes - fast motion, rapid camera cuts), and also when there are a lot of dark or similar colors on-screen (low-contrast footage).
Those are the situations I notice it, because it becomes hard to see what I need to to understand what's going on. The rest of the time, not such a big deal.
It's called an Ammendment for a reason. Yes, it's part of the original Bill of Rights which was enacted very soon after the Constitution was adopted. But, my point is, the reason it's an *Ammendment* is that it wasn't part of the original Constitution, and there was debate about it at the time. In the end, the significant majority who thought that the government should be limited to only what is allowed by the Constitution won.
But it was still a matter of debate until the Bill of Rights was ratified. Yes, I knew about the 10th Ammendment before your post. But, since it was an ammendment, that means it wasn't in effect at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. However, even though it wasn't officially part of the constitution then, my point was that I believe that even at the time of the drafting of the Consitution, many (though not all) of the drafter followed this philosophy *already* - it just didn't have the weight of law until the 10th ammendment.
I've sat an exam once or twice where almost no one finished the exam in the allotted time because there was too much material.
The professors heavily curved the exam grades in that case.
It's not common, but there is a bit of an art to properly designing an exam so that it can be completed by students who have what should be an acceptable level of mastery of the material, in the given time.
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I don't think the gas station, grocery, or the department story will take Bullion, and I wouldn't trust the cashier to give me the correct change if they did.
Oh so many jokes, and rightly. But. I will say this - even if you've made money legitimately, I'd say there's good reason to keep a little cash on hand. It's rare, but not unheard of (especially in recent years) for banks to fail. If I had a million or more, I think I'd like to keep 100,000 or so available as cash on hand, in case the rest of my money either got frozen temporarily (e.g. while the FDIC or other government or law enforcement agency takes over the bank and does an investigation), or disappears forever.
I don't think, however, I'd keep it in shoeboxes. Safe vaults were invented for a reason.
Funny you mention checklists in medicine. There's other people, in the medical field, who've made the exact same observation you have. I remember hearing an interview back in January, on NPR, with Doctor Atul Gawande who is trying to encourage the use of standardized medical checklists in hospitals in the U.S. He wrote a book called, _The_Checklist_Manifesto_.
Change takes time, but given the results that guy saw, this is probably going to become standard practice in hospitals and clinics across the U.S. and probably the world. This really needs to happen. Like you say, checklists work to help manage memory and complexity in time-critical situations where the work *must* be done right. I think people resist checklists, because it makes them feel like they've become some sort of cog in a machine, but I for one recognize the limits of my memory and ability to manage complexity in critical situations.
I don't think anyone is saying you have a fundamental right to play Windows games on Linux. But maybe, some people prefer to use Linux. You say "Linux is ideal for a lot of use cases. Gaming isn't one of them." The primary reason is simply that native builds of many games aren't available for Linux. From a technical standpoint, there's nothing wrong with Linux as a gaming platform (unless you count the lack of DirectX/Direct3D as a technical deficiency).
Linux might be a better platform for gaming for a lot of people, from a technical standpoint, as they'd quite possibly get better stability and slightly better performance.
There's nothing wrong with people hoping that a game developer would start supporting their platform of choice. Yes, they could dual-boot into Windows to play their games (that's what I do), but honestly, it'd be really *nice* to be able to just use Linux all the time and ditch Windows completely. I'd really like to be able to buy a build of a game I want for Linux instead of Windows. I'd be willing to pay for that.
Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that the Linux gamer market is too small, currently, for most studios/publishers to bother with.
They'll probably try to implement some server-side checking to limit how often the URL can be accessed, so. . .
Just grab a copy of the key and:
Everyone who backs any kind of DRM seems to ignore the big logical elephant in the room: If you grant someone access, even once, to anything, and they have any clue what they are doing, they can have access to it forever after, and they can copy it to anyone they want.
Once something is decrypted, once, it's no longer a secret.
You can either give someone access to something, or not give them access. You can't logically both give them access, and not give them access. Any security guards you build into the software itself to check for valid keys, authorization from a server, whatever, can just be cut out of the software like a surgeon removing an appendix.
The only thing which logically works for access control, is the online game model, because a significant part of the game itself resides on the server. But for single player games (or games like Quake, Diablo, etc. where you can run your own server), access control is a logical dead end.
All that said, just because someone *can* steal something, doesn't mean they should. There might really be some people in this world who genuinely just can't afford to pay for games for one reason or another (like they live in a country where, because of the strange realities of currency value differences, they can only make the equivalent of 80 dollars a year, and need that for silly things like food, clothes, shelter, basic hygiene products, school supplies and health care; BUT, for the most part, people who can't afford to pay for games, should probably be spending less time playing games at their computer and more time working, or job hunting, or taking classes or training of some kind to be able to get a better job. The people who have the technical skills to actually be able to hack out the DRM code in the game binaries clearly have enough knowledge of computer software development that they should easily be able to get $60,000+ per year jobs, not sure why they'd need to steal a $40-$60 game.
Can you hear the hard disk access on an NAS which is attached to your ethernet network, passes down a length of Cat5/6 through a network hub or switch, then down more Cat5/6 cabling to your computer? That's seriously impressive if you can. . .
That sounds like a problem in the design or manufacture of the "analog components of the system" (or the DAC which is both a digital and analog component), not a problem in the design of the cable. If replacing your digital cable *does* affect the quality of the sound being output, you have a problem with some other part of the system, not the cable.
When do software developers talk about circuits?
I thought Software Devs were more interested in languages, algorithms, data structures, run-time analysis, debuggers, and compilers.
Shouldn't any decently designed DAC have whatever technical measures are necessary to ensure that analog noise coming in on the digital line does not get passed out in the analog output of the DAC? Trying to solve the problem with the cable seems to me to be the wrong way to attack such a problem - the playback device which generates the final analog signal should take care of that problem. Of course, from that point forward (from the DAC to an amp, and from the amp to the speakers) you certainly do need to worry about those analog interference problems. But you shouldn't have to worry about it on the digital portion of the system.
Well, it's a darn good thing that you're the 93rd slashdotter to post the exact same comment. I might've missed it otherwise!
I've seen in retails stores (Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Microcenter, etc) spindles of CD-Rs labelled as "Music" CDs-R. WTH is a "Music" CD-R? I can't conceive of any way it would be different from a normal CD-R, unless perhaps it was manufactured to last longer before developing errors, and be more scratch resistant or something?
I've never actually bought them, since the packaging never gave me any good explanation of how it was different. I've always figured it was just a scam to charge people 20% more?
As far as I've ever been able to figure out, the only claim someone might legitimately make about 'higher quality' digital cables is that you can run longer cable lengths before the signal degradation gets so bad that the 1's and 0's get truly corrupted so the signal can no longer be read reliably. So, optical cable you could probably run very long lengths (like across an auditorium, gym, large classroom, etc) without a problem, but perhaps with a long bit of copper wire, the signal loss would be too great.
Of course, that doesn't stop sales guys (who aren't usually technical people, which is how they ended up in sales to begin with, and often don't really care about the truth anyhow - they just care about the margin) from trying to sell people on the idea that 1 meter of optical or 'super' or 'monster' cable sounds better than 1 meter of regular cable.
Oh, don't we wish, but in reality, it'll become a contest of "My youthful indiscretion wasn't as bad as your youthful indiscretion". You know, "I might have posted something mean on the facebook page of another kid from my school, but *YOU* got drunk at a party when you were 16 and flashed your tits at a webcam".
It might not be time for residential networks and ISPs to flip the switch yet. . . but it's *definitely* time for all new home routers, DSL/Cable gateways, etc, to include full IPv6 compatibility. That way, when the ISPs decide it's time to turn on IPv6, they and their customers don't need to replace most of the hardware already deployed. IPv6 support at the vast majority of network endpoints needs to already be present before you can actually make the switch - you can't change the protocol and just force people to suddenly change.
ISPs need to start configuring networks to run in a dual-stack mode (at least as far as the end-user is concerned - once it hits the first ISP owned router, it could be all IPv6 from that point on), so that those who are ready to use IPv6 can start using it (yeah, you can use tunnel providers or 6to4 [which is really another sort of tunnel], right now, but that usually adds additional hops and latency to your connections - basically, if you are tunneling IPv6 traffic over IPv4, why bother using it to begin with).
Ok, this is how I read the sentence: "This promotes aerobic bacteria that convert the sludge's sugars and other organic materials into harmless nitrogen gas."
So, I see that as meaning (sugars + "other organic materials" [Urine and maybe other waste products]) is reacted together/metabolized by the bacteria, producing "harmless nitrogen gas" (as well as other byproducts [I guess that would be your implied 'and whatever'] which the writer doesn't mention because he's not interested in them).
Fine, I screwed up on that statement. Rest of the comment is still valid. Urine in waste water is definitely a source of nitrogen, and is an organic compound.
The article doesn't really explain how they use the methane. Are they burning it in the 'rocket engine' along with the N2O (using the N20 as both a source of energy, and a source of oxygen for combustion of the methane?
Is this in any way particularly different than the numerous existing natural gas electric power generation plants around the world?
Don't get me wrong, this seems like a good idea - use the waste water as a source of energy to run the treatment plant, but, the use of a 'rocket engine' (e.g. gas turbine generator) doesn't strike me as nearly as novel as this article portrays?
Urine is the body's way of disposing of excess nitrogen: Urea (one of the components of Urine) has the chemical formula: (NH_2)_2CO.
Thus, there's plenty of nitrogen in the 'other organic materials' in waste water. Not every hydrocarbon is exclusively hydrogen and carbon - other elements can be present too.
One thing Miguel says in the article is that he thinks Google could migrate Android over to C#/CIL. Aside from the concerns others have from a legal standpoint, from a purely technical standpoint, instead of migrating all that existing code to C#, wouldn't it make more sense to use the Mono VM, but compile all the existing Dalvik code (that is, all the source written in the Java-like Dalvik high-level lanaguage) to the .Net bytecode (CIL), if you wanted to migrate to Mono, instead of trying to convert it all to C#? I realize that Java and C# have a lot of similarities, but also a few significant differences, which I think would make it a bit costly to convert and debug all that existing code?
Buh, wah? The Q3A engine was GPL'ed years ago. What would be so special about the ET Engine, which would prevent it's release, because of some contract agreement with one of iD's licensee's? Other than Splash Damage (I suppose maybe they didn't want it open sourced before), was there any licensee of the ET engine? The other poster who responded said no one licensed the ET engine?
You know, about 5 years ago, I bet a lot of people would have been very excited about GPL release of ET. I suppose someone will probably do something with it, but this seems ridiculously long after the game's publication.
ET wasn't even a revenue generating game for them - they gave it away for free (well, I do remember seeing some copies for sale at computer stores - I guess you can get some people to pay for something they could just download for free, legally).
I know that iD makes some (maybe a considerable portion) of their revenue licensing out their engines to other commercial game developers (maybe even developers of non-game simulators, not sure), but even so - did anyone license the ET engine? I mean, I know it was basically the Q3A engine with some modifications - did anyone care about those specific modifications? Anyhow, releasing the game engine as GPL source release doesn't stop them from generating revenue from licensing it for commercial (non-GPL) use. Why wait so long?
Lucy Lawless is *so* 1990's. I want to spend our last few days with Felicia Day, or perhaps Eliza Dushku.
I mostly don't notice low resolution, too much, if I'm enjoying a show, BUT the big exception is if there's something on screen where there's detail I need to make out (like maybe some hard to read small text, or something off in the distance[or just small] which has some important detail the audience is supposed to notice - like when a character is noticing some piece of evidence which is important to understanding further plot development), or sometimes when there is a lot of quick motion/action on-screen - low res feeds can get particularly high in the artifact count during rapid screen changes - fast motion, rapid camera cuts), and also when there are a lot of dark or similar colors on-screen (low-contrast footage).
Those are the situations I notice it, because it becomes hard to see what I need to to understand what's going on. The rest of the time, not such a big deal.
It's called an Ammendment for a reason. Yes, it's part of the original Bill of Rights which was enacted very soon after the Constitution was adopted. But, my point is, the reason it's an *Ammendment* is that it wasn't part of the original Constitution, and there was debate about it at the time. In the end, the significant majority who thought that the government should be limited to only what is allowed by the Constitution won.
But it was still a matter of debate until the Bill of Rights was ratified. Yes, I knew about the 10th Ammendment before your post. But, since it was an ammendment, that means it wasn't in effect at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. However, even though it wasn't officially part of the constitution then, my point was that I believe that even at the time of the drafting of the Consitution, many (though not all) of the drafter followed this philosophy *already* - it just didn't have the weight of law until the 10th ammendment.
I've sat an exam once or twice where almost no one finished the exam in the allotted time because there was too much material.
The professors heavily curved the exam grades in that case.
It's not common, but there is a bit of an art to properly designing an exam so that it can be completed by students who have what should be an acceptable level of mastery of the material, in the given time.