Some software players, particularly non-commerical ones like IFOEDIT, or some of the open-source players that have appeared, let you toggle ignoring the bits that prohibit user operations (like FF/skip) at places like the FBI warning. Yeah, it's a slight hassle having to hook your PC up to a TV, but I don't know of any standalone units that have this feature.
If I read the register article right, the protocol source code is payware. Charging for source code which is already part of Windows functionality (you don't get anything extra)? Seems sleazy to me.
Problem is, most of these emails are relayed through servers in foreign countries (usually in Asia) using SMTP daemons which don't accurately record the IP address of the connecting host in the Received: lines (they just record whatever the HELO command gives, which is obviously prone to spoofing). Therefore, you could trace an email to Asia, but then the trail stops there.
As previous/. stories have described, getting the sysadmins in Asia to do something about it is easier said than done.
The main reason for the fork was because WineX includes reverse-engineered copy-protection support code to support games running. If Transgaming released the source code to that, it would be entirely possible to modify/hack the code so that you could play pirated games, a likely violation of the DMCA and exposing Transgaming to all sorts of legal issues. If they don't release the source code to the copy-protection, they can honesty claim that it's only an emulator, and still doesn't allow you to circumvent copy-protection. That's fine, I guess.
But I really do agree that they really should open-up their non copy-protected related code, and make that LGPL, and back-port any (non-copy protection) improvements into the official WineHQ tree.
Security research project addressing this issue
on
Attack Of The Dreamcasts
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It's designed to precisely address this issue by limiting network access from hosts whose Hardware Ethernet addresses are unknown to the local subnet only (not past the router) until it is authenticated (by some password or other scheme). Thus, if you put a Dreamcast on a SPINACH network, it could only reach hosts on the immediate subnet, unless you spoofed the MAC address or something...
David Farber, the moderator of a popular online mailing list on technology with recipients all over the globe, envisions a time when he'll have to cut back on his postings for fear of lawsuits elsewhere.
Many countries do not value free speech the way the United States does, nor do they give speakers as much leeway in defending libel lawsuits. So mailing list mavens like Farber need to be concerned about whether items they post might violate a law somewhere.
"We live in a world where we communicate worldwide and we travel worldwide," Farber said. "If I violate some Australian law and then land in Sydney, do they throw me in jail?"
While the article makes no mention of it, David Farber is no mere ordinary citizen, he's the Chief Technologist of the FCC (yes, this is the same David Farber -- the photo in the CNN article is him)
Yes, the FCC does not regulate the Internet itself. Yet, if anyone is in a position to do something about such questionable tactics on a government policy level, it's Mr. Farber...
Bigger drive, no onerous potential DRM issues, can use it with any channel/cable system, not just locked into a single companys. And of course, runs Linux;-).
To me, the only advantage that these integrated boxes have is the ability to record digital MPEG-2 directly from the cable/satellite, without converting to and converting it back from analog and the loss. But guess what... the quality of the digital video stream is not all that great to begin with in most cases (the source signal is generally analog, passed through a real-time MPEG-2 encoder at the broadcasting facility, so it's not as good as say DVD) So quality loss is sort of negligle, IMO.
I'm very, very disappointed at Yahoo for selling out to a despotic government, to say the least. Anyhow, I'm not surprised that the Chinese would do this -- I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent. I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
"shutter" device that fits on top of license plate, and can "open" and "close"... controllable from inside the car. Simply "close" the shutter" to prevent picture of license plate from being snapped.:-) Open it immediately thereafter so that cops don't nail you for driving without plates.
I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent. I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
The DirectX 7 and 8 exposed programmable pixel/vertex shading abilities long before OpenGL did. The development of these DirectX versions and the first GPUs capable of them from nVidia et al were basically hand in hand.
Also, oil needs to be replaced only once every 7500 miles, compared to about 3000 miles for most gas cars. Don't forget -- Toyota includes all scheduled maintenence for the first 22500 or 30000 miles (I forgot which, one of those two) for FREE as well.
I'm a very happy owner of the Toyota Prius... I've actually gotten about 55 MPG in city driving, assuming I'm not in a hurry, above even the manufacturer's figures. It has been 100% reliable thus far.
I was considering the Insight, but it's only two seats, and two doors as you mentioned, so I decided to go with the Prius, as it's basically the same size as any other compact sedan.
I was looking into pure electric and gas cars, but decided not to at this time, because sometimes I like to take long-distance trips (eg, between the Bay Area, and LA, or to Nevada/Las Vegas) and there are no electric or gas refueling stations for long stretches outside urban areas, making long-distance road trips impossible with these vehicles' current range.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/ It might be useful for you as well, although it's geared more towards current owners.
As for the car itself, It's proven to be 100% reliable thus far in the 14 months that I've had it, and I've been averaging 50 MPG or so. It definitely is worth it, at least for me, since I commute about 45 miles a day round trip.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. If you want an independent assessment, john1701a.com has a lot of info on it from a owner. The group groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/ has a lot to offer as well with many helpful people.
Finally, since this is/. after all, there's a growing subculture dedicated to "hacking" the prius (eg, installing MP3 players that integrate with the onboard touchscreen system, or even wiring video input into the screen, installing cameras for seeing when you back up, etc...:-) )
GPS is a one-way technology only... so does the system communicate stats in real-time over some other wireless data net to the company? Or does it store GPS position data in a buffer that's only later reviewed when the car is returned? If so, one just needs to clear the buffer somehow; I'm sure a hacker will figure it out.
In any case, I suspect that the system gets power from the car's electrical system, in which case, finding the right fuse to pull should be sufficient...;)
My advice -- just forget the trouble of looking into the Chinese language; it's not worth it. Why? Well, I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent. I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
The preview would be automatically generated on-the-fly by the filesharing program to accurately reflect the contents of the MP3 file, and not controllable by the user.
Consider the visual analog: a web photo album... pretty much every photo site automatically generates thumbnails (very small versions of pictures) for every full-size photo uploaded, so that a user may quickly see and find the photo desired without trial and error downloading.
I propose P2P programs should as a feature, for every MP3 file shared, create the musical equivalent of a thumbnail pic: a very low bit-rate, down-sampled "preview" version of a MP3 file that could be nearly instanteously downloaded and listened to, to determine its authenticity, before a user actually takes the time to download the real version. This downsampling would be automatic and transparent.
Prudent users would always "preview" before they download, and bogus files would be quickly identified thusly.
It does not absolve Gamespy of responsibility -- but fortunately the actual impact is now. Nimda only infects servers running IIS as a HTTP server, and I'm sure not many gamers are running IIS on their machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Some software players, particularly non-commerical ones like IFOEDIT, or some of the open-source players that have appeared, let you toggle ignoring the bits that prohibit user operations (like FF/skip) at places like the FBI warning. Yeah, it's a slight hassle having to hook your PC up to a TV, but I don't know of any standalone units that have this feature.
If I read the register article right, the protocol source code is payware. Charging for source code which is already part of Windows functionality (you don't get anything extra)? Seems sleazy to me.
Problem is, most of these emails are relayed through servers in foreign countries (usually in Asia) using SMTP daemons which don't accurately record the IP address of the connecting host in the Received: lines (they just record whatever the HELO command gives, which is obviously prone to spoofing). Therefore, you could trace an email to Asia, but then the trail stops there.
/. stories have described, getting the sysadmins in Asia to do something about it is easier said than done.
As previous
The main reason for the fork was because WineX includes reverse-engineered copy-protection support code to support games running. If Transgaming released the source code to that, it would be entirely possible to modify/hack the code so that you could play pirated games, a likely violation of the DMCA and exposing Transgaming to all sorts of legal issues. If they don't release the source code to the copy-protection, they can honesty claim that it's only an emulator, and still doesn't allow you to circumvent copy-protection. That's fine, I guess.
But I really do agree that they really should open-up their non copy-protected related code, and make that LGPL, and back-port any (non-copy protection) improvements into the official WineHQ tree.
Check out the SPINACH project at Stanford: http://mosquitonet.stanford.edu/publications/spina ch.html
It's designed to precisely address this issue by limiting network access from hosts whose Hardware Ethernet addresses are unknown to the local subnet only (not past the router) until it is authenticated (by some password or other scheme). Thus, if you put a Dreamcast on a SPINACH network, it could only reach hosts on the immediate subnet, unless you spoofed the MAC address or something...
My background is in computer graphics, so here are some of my recommendations if you're interested in this specific topic:
Foley, Feiner, van Dam, Hughes: Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice, second edition (may have a even newer one out...)
Glassner, Principles of Digital Image Synthesis -- a good all-around reference for rendering, useful as a jumping-off point for more in-depth works.
Graphics Gems series (up to Volume 5, the last I checked)
If you're interested in interactive 3-D algorithms (eg, games), 3-D Game Engine Design (forgot the author)
A little aside:
David Farber, the moderator of a popular online mailing list on technology with recipients all over the globe, envisions a time when he'll have to cut back on his postings for fear of lawsuits elsewhere.
Many countries do not value free speech the way the United States does, nor do they give speakers as much leeway in defending libel lawsuits. So mailing list mavens like Farber need to be concerned about whether items they post might violate a law somewhere.
"We live in a world where we communicate worldwide and we travel worldwide," Farber said. "If I violate some Australian law and then land in Sydney, do they throw me in jail?"
While the article makes no mention of it, David Farber is no mere ordinary citizen, he's the Chief Technologist of the FCC (yes, this is the same David Farber -- the photo in the CNN article is him)
Yes, the FCC does not regulate the Internet itself. Yet, if anyone is in a position to do something about such questionable tactics on a government policy level, it's Mr. Farber...
The article says they just logged in with the user's name and password... did they obtain it volutarily, or involuntarily (network sniffer, etc...)?
Anyone know? It doesn't seem that US authorities are involved in this whatsoever, though.
Bigger drive, no onerous potential DRM issues, can use it with any channel/cable system, not just locked into a single companys. And of course, runs Linux ;-).
To me, the only advantage that these integrated boxes have is the ability to record digital MPEG-2 directly from the cable/satellite, without converting to and converting it back from analog and the loss. But guess what... the quality of the digital video stream is not all that great to begin with in most cases (the source signal is generally analog, passed through a real-time MPEG-2 encoder at the broadcasting facility, so it's not as good as say DVD) So quality loss is sort of negligle, IMO.
I'm very, very disappointed at Yahoo for selling out to a despotic government, to say the least. Anyhow, I'm not surprised that the Chinese would do this -- I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent.
I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
"shutter" device that fits on top of license plate, and can "open" and "close"... controllable from inside the car. Simply "close" the shutter" to prevent picture of license plate from being snapped. :-) Open it immediately thereafter so that cops don't nail you for driving without plates.
I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent.
I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
This is Sony we're talking about, a company with interests in record labels as well as making hardware... wonder how they've crippled it?
The DirectX 7 and 8 exposed programmable pixel/vertex shading abilities long before OpenGL did. The development of these DirectX versions and the first GPUs capable of them from nVidia et al were basically hand in hand.
Also, oil needs to be replaced only once every 7500 miles, compared to about 3000 miles for most gas cars. Don't forget -- Toyota includes all scheduled maintenence for the first 22500 or 30000 miles (I forgot which, one of those two) for FREE as well.
I'm a very happy owner of the Toyota Prius... I've actually gotten about 55 MPG in city driving, assuming I'm not in a hurry, above even the manufacturer's figures. It has been 100% reliable thus far.
/. after all, there's a growing subculture dedicated to "hacking" the prius (eg, installing MP3 players that integrate with the onboard touchscreen system, or even wiring video input into the screen, installing cameras for seeing when you back up, etc... :-) )
I was considering the Insight, but it's only two seats, and two doors as you mentioned, so I decided to go with the Prius, as it's basically the same size as any other compact sedan.
I was looking into pure electric and gas cars, but decided not to at this time, because sometimes I like to take long-distance trips (eg, between the Bay Area, and LA, or to Nevada/Las Vegas) and there are no electric or gas refueling stations for long stretches outside urban areas, making long-distance road trips impossible with these vehicles' current range.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/ It might be useful for you as well, although it's geared more towards current owners.
As for the car itself, It's proven to be 100% reliable thus far in the 14 months that I've had it, and I've been averaging 50 MPG or so. It definitely is worth it, at least for me, since I commute about 45 miles a day round trip.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. If you want an independent assessment, john1701a.com has a lot of info on it from a owner. The group groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/ has a lot to offer as well with many helpful people.
Finally, since this is
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/08/153022 2&mode=nested&tid=159 ;-)
For me, postal spam it's not as bad as email, because it doesn't cost you in disk space or bandwidth.
For modelling and rendering? Is it the standard Maya + Renderman combo? Or something proprietary?
GPS is a one-way technology only... so does the system communicate stats in real-time over some other wireless data net to the company? Or does it store GPS position data in a buffer that's only later reviewed when the car is returned? If so, one just needs to clear the buffer somehow; I'm sure a hacker will figure it out.
;)
In any case, I suspect that the system gets power from the car's electrical system, in which case, finding the right fuse to pull should be sufficient...
My advice -- just forget the trouble of looking into the Chinese language; it's not worth it. Why? Well, I'm an American businessman in the import- export business, so as you might guess, my frequent travels take me to many places around the world, on every continent.
I wanted to share my experience in the "great" country of China.
So, I was in Shenzhen China last December for about a week on business. A bit of background: Shenzhen, like Hong Kong and a few other places, is a "Special Economic Zone" that the Chinese government set up to try and give foreigners the illusion that China really ISN'T a drab, decaying fascist state that's economically languishing behind the rest of the world. Here, rules are relaxed and capitalism is encouraged, not surppressed. Well, let me tell you this, if this is China's best, then I'd hate to see the worst.
Anyways, when I stepped off the train from Hong Kong (which was no paradise itself, as that place has gone down the shitter since the Brits left) I was shocked. The whole place smelled like a combination of vomit and dog shit that had been left out in the sun for a day or so. And it was probably BECAUSE there was vomit and dog shit all over. I almost retched, and I've certainly been in some sketchy places in my travels but NOTHING like this.
People spit everywhere. Trash litters the streets. I found myself looking DOWNWARD much more than looking FORWARD when I walked.
Noise pollution is endemic. It doesn't help that their infernal language consists of abrupt rapid fire tones that is a cacophony for any human ear to bear. How do they speak and listen to that shit without going crazy all day long is beyond me.
Anyways, Chinamen stink -- literally. There is no concept of personal hygiene whatsoever. Meetings with even top officials were hourlong sessions of having to endure hot sweaty bodies and rancid breath eminating from mouths missing a few teeth. Geez, at least use deodorant for crying out loud.
The hypocrisy, corruption, and double-standards from the highest levels of government on over are the norm at the same time China opens up to the world. Foreigners get charged as much as five times for transportation, lodging, food, and everything else.
Traffic is horrible. Rules are non-existent except for at traffic lights: red means to go fast, green means to go REALLY REALLY fast.
The Chinese people themselve are pretty apathetic and everyone just wants to get out of that hell hole, so you see smuggling rings shipping people out hidden in truck beds and ships, all too often with tragic results.
The whole country, in my assessment is a lost case. Even the cheap labor can be found in Southeast Asia or Mexico. Same goes for pirated stuff -- SE Asia and Eastern Europe will keep on churning them out.
Anyways, the one redeeming quality were the girls. I paid 100 yuan (about $12 US) for a great fuck, with a 16 year old who seemed quite new and "unblemished" if you get my drift. Boy, was she tight, made all the right noises, sucked and fucked all night long and let me cum all over her. Much better than even the vaunted Thai whores, and worlds apart from anything in Las Vegas or in Europe. Best bargain I have EVER found in my life!
So yeah, screw the hell hole that's China. It's a lost cause of a country suspsended by a hollow facade of so-called new capitalism that's just show more than anything.
The preview would be automatically generated on-the-fly by the filesharing program to accurately reflect the contents of the MP3 file, and not controllable by the user.
Consider the visual analog: a web photo album... pretty much every photo site automatically generates thumbnails (very small versions of pictures) for every full-size photo uploaded, so that a user may quickly see and find the photo desired without trial and error downloading.
I propose P2P programs should as a feature, for every MP3 file shared, create the musical equivalent of a thumbnail pic: a very low bit-rate, down-sampled "preview" version of a MP3 file that could be nearly instanteously downloaded and listened to, to determine its authenticity, before a user actually takes the time to download the real version. This downsampling would be automatic and transparent.
Prudent users would always "preview" before they download, and bogus files would be quickly identified thusly.
That's why it's preferable to use distilled water, a very poor conductor.
It does not absolve Gamespy of responsibility -- but fortunately the actual impact is now. Nimda only infects servers running IIS as a HTTP server, and I'm sure not many gamers are running IIS on their machines.