If the trojan is active, it can make the device vulnerable to control in a way it's not designed to. The device is bluetooth capable, so this introduces at least the possibility of remote attacks. If they are simply present but not active, then yes, this is mostly harmless.
Which is the other side of the coin. I do a lot of video editing, mostly in taking... erm... aquired videos and converting them for one format or another (VCD, DVD, Pocket PC, cropping to eliminate letterbox on my PC). I have to say that even with the experience I've got with that, the whole myriad of formats, resolutions, aspect ratios, and codecs is just mind bogling right now. The sheer learning curve for these technologies is overwhelming, and I've been in technology since TI-99's were (briefly) cool. And, what, I'm going to take the word of a pimply-faced sales guy at Future Shop that the system I'm buying will display my stuff right? Ya... this is me believing you kid.
No, I'm quite happy to wait another few years to let everything settle down a little. Let other people fund the format wars - keep my money out of it.
I'm one of those "most people". I have a large family - six children. I still have VHS tapes all over my house. Two of my childrens' TV/console setups just got DVD players yesterday (two $30CDN ones from a grocery store). HD/Blue-Ray are far more exciting to me as storage technologies where I can combine several DVDs onto one disc (for backing up our discs), than they are exciting to me as display technologies.
I've sat down in front of wide screen HD, and I'm underwhelmed. I'm perfectly happy with 4:3 and cropped sides. The whole push for widescreen boggles me. My eye can't focus on enough of the screen at once for it to matter. So I see Gollum crawling up on Frodo and Sam twelve frames later than the HD folk. Oh please, let me pay enough for a family car for that privilege.
I love technology. I have more PCs networked in my house than most people have a right to. But I like having technology that works FOR me. HD/Blue-ray don't work for me yet.
P2P is an important contribution. The longer we have it, and the more entrenched it becomes, then the harder it will become for the government here to enact draconian copyright laws like your DMCA. Yes, let's criminalize in one law what another law expressly allows.
That is the stupidity. The other stupidity is that "you the people" allow it.
I know it gives mychildren access to research tools they never would have had. Wikipedia, HowStuffWorks, and other similar sites have taught my children a great deal. Heck, taught me a great deal. I enjoy an hour sitting down and just browsing through articles. Count the number of errors per article if you like, heck even discount the science articles altoghether - popular culture has never been documented as well in history as it is in Wikipedia.
Anyone who thinks that the delay wasn't on purpose is on warcrack. By "on purpose", I mean specifically "delayed to keep people paying monthly fees longer, simply because we know they will hang on for the expansion".
Everything about the game is intended to keep you addicted longer. I got out, along with my kids, and we're all happier for it. Yes, 0.1% of the population can be wrong.
I don't think there are very many people who haven't run into something like this at one point or another. If it hadn't been a forum, if it instead had been a telephone support call, and they ignored it, that would not have been slashdot worthy, because that happens to everyone. Support for any company has always been PR-tically correct. Companies many times will admit only to problems they have a fix for. This is just the way it is, and if every case of this was Slashdotted, the site would be flooded with it.
OMFG THEY DELETED MY POST! IMMA SLASHDOT THEIR ASS! Get over it and suck it up princess. While I sympathize with you, we've all been through this. Had forum posts deleted, questions avoided or answered in PR-speak, issues ignored.
Who is to say they didn't tell this to the reviewers. The author said they spoke with the vendor on the phone and intimated at a fairly lengthy conversation.
Reviews where they can say they debunked a manufacturer claim get more page hits. Do the math.
The "problem" of a computer with divide-by-zero errors is not a problem, it's a feature. It's not something you need to or even want to fix. You could easily design a computer that doesn't have an error in that situation if that's what you want. Replacing the error condition with a new symbol accomplishes nothing. The program still has to deal with the result in some order to present a real-world result to the user. A divide-by-zero error is the way programs do that.
It's easy to solve a "problem" when you're the architect of the definition of the problem in the first case. Dr. Anderson first defines a problem: calculators and computers throw an error when you try to divice by zero, and then defines an artificial solution - but the problem was artificial in the first place.
We've all run into poorly designed programs that don't handle divide-by-zero errors properly and crash. This isn't a problem of dividing by zero, this is a problem of a computer program not handling its data properly or not catching and handling its errors. We've also all run into programs that attempt to reference a null pointer. By the same reasoning, we could define the memory that a "null pointer" points to as some new type of virtual space called "nullspace" (trekies should appreciate my resistance to the temptation to call it "subspace"), and call it valid. Make the computer such that reading from "nullspace" always returns zero. Suddenly no programs crash from dereferencing a null pointer any more. It doesn't mean that the program is going to now do something useful. It probably means it will end up displaying garbage to the user, hanging in an infinite loop, or branching off to never never land. It seems as if Doctor Anderson is making a value decision about the error report that calculators and errors report. It's an error, and that must be bad so it needs to be fixed. It's a feature, and intended to assist in writing good software.
Now as far as it goes mathematically, that's even simpler to address. There's nothing you can do with nullity on paper that you can't do by simply leaving it as (0/0) in the equation.
So from either approach (mathematically or from a computer science perspective), it's nonsense.
The author's own response to some of the critics (or, I should say, alleged response) doesn't help my opinion. You can read this as the fourth comment after the BBC story. Tossing out the names of two other Ph.Ds and offering vague references to undescribed "axioms" built around this new symbol all reinforce my opinion that Doctor Anderson sounds precisely like the character Robert from the movie "Proof". A tale... full of sound and fury, signifying nullity.
Electronic voting is great, just what needs to change is the method of input. An intangible "push button" system where you then have to create an after-the-fact paper trail is backwards. Why adopt a paperless system when you want a paper trail? It makes no sense. Simply have the paper trail be the input system. Florida had it right, just it's implementation was lousy.
Here in Canada, in our last election we marked an "X" on the ballot in a circle beside the candidate we wanted. While I watch, that ballot is fed into a machine which records the vote on it. Simple, and fast, and accomplishes all that any purely electronic system accomplishes. American-style election drama is completely unknown up here - and we have a much larger area to work the logistics for. No punched holes, no hanging chads, no lost votes, no wait.
The other side of the coin, though, is if DVDs are released consequent with the theatre, then downloads will go through the roof. DVD rips available day one of release? This is such a stupid idea, that the only reason I can see for it is that the movie industry wants the downloads to skyrocket so they can point at huge downloads and sinking theatre attendance and promote more even draconian DRM laws than what the DMCA already is.
It only doesn't come cheap because people have been convinced that it can't come cheap.
For example, why is huge server infrastructure needed? This is archiving, not serving. Archiving, by definition, is where you have data that is important enough to keep but where the immediate need is low enough that the burden for providing it is on the looker. If someone wants the data, they can look up the location and find it in room full of DVDs.
There are lots of off-the-shelf storage solutions with shelf-lives to 2090 and beyond.
Assurance of authenticity? Good grief, again, this is archiving, not real-time bank transactions. The data is in the hands of one party - who the heck needs to be assured of its authenticity? Anyway, an assurance of authenticity is only as good as the word of the assurer. What's the word (digital or not) of some assurer 50 years dead going to be going to be worth in 2090?
In short, you don't need to award a third of a billion dollars for this sort of nonsense. Hire some pimply, fresh-out-of-college nerd for 30k a year and you'll get a solution that makes a lot more sense.
What a waste of money. Massechussets is doing it for free. All you need to do is make sure that all your document file format standards are free and open. After that, it doesn't matter if they exist in 2090 or not. If they don't exist, it's because no one has really needed the documents. If some historian comes along and does need the document, then a document import filter can be easily created because the document's file format was based on a free and open standard.
Suddenly the volume of documents you need to maintain drops from all of them, to just the documents that describe the file format standards.
The amount of energy in a hurricane is a bigger number than will fit in any of our heads. No little wind farm, or even (on our scale) massive wind farm is going to change this.
Additionally, there is the implementation detail that hurricanes form over water, so you'd be needing to build a floating one. This is something that, what, would cover the whole tropical ocean surface, or would it be towed to the location where a hurricane is beginning to form?
The reality is, once the air is moving, nothing you nor I can do will stop it.
This is a common question and there were indeed some experiments at hurricane modification. Most of the common ideas, including some of the ones that the original author proposes, are explained it the NOAA FAQ on tropical storms in the section TROPICAL CYCLONE MODIFICATION AND MYTHS.
The point is that any modern scanner will scan a higher resolution than you will ever need. Unless, of course, you want to scan a penny and blow the image up poster size.
The original poster is saying that he understands this and is (IMO rightfully) less concerned than the numbers game that many scanner manufacturers have played in the past and more concerned with image fidelity and quality.
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If the trojan is active, it can make the device vulnerable to control in a way it's not designed to. The device is bluetooth capable, so this introduces at least the possibility of remote attacks. If they are simply present but not active, then yes, this is mostly harmless.
Of course no warnings. Warnings only come out after the lawyers are consulted. One must, after all, get one's priorities straight.
Which is the other side of the coin. I do a lot of video editing, mostly in taking... erm... aquired videos and converting them for one format or another (VCD, DVD, Pocket PC, cropping to eliminate letterbox on my PC). I have to say that even with the experience I've got with that, the whole myriad of formats, resolutions, aspect ratios, and codecs is just mind bogling right now. The sheer learning curve for these technologies is overwhelming, and I've been in technology since TI-99's were (briefly) cool. And, what, I'm going to take the word of a pimply-faced sales guy at Future Shop that the system I'm buying will display my stuff right? Ya... this is me believing you kid.
No, I'm quite happy to wait another few years to let everything settle down a little. Let other people fund the format wars - keep my money out of it.
I'm one of those "most people". I have a large family - six children. I still have VHS tapes all over my house. Two of my childrens' TV/console setups just got DVD players yesterday (two $30CDN ones from a grocery store). HD/Blue-Ray are far more exciting to me as storage technologies where I can combine several DVDs onto one disc (for backing up our discs), than they are exciting to me as display technologies.
I've sat down in front of wide screen HD, and I'm underwhelmed. I'm perfectly happy with 4:3 and cropped sides. The whole push for widescreen boggles me. My eye can't focus on enough of the screen at once for it to matter. So I see Gollum crawling up on Frodo and Sam twelve frames later than the HD folk. Oh please, let me pay enough for a family car for that privilege.
I love technology. I have more PCs networked in my house than most people have a right to. But I like having technology that works FOR me. HD/Blue-ray don't work for me yet.
P2P is an important contribution. The longer we have it, and the more entrenched it becomes, then the harder it will become for the government here to enact draconian copyright laws like your DMCA. Yes, let's criminalize in one law what another law expressly allows.
That is the stupidity. The other stupidity is that "you the people" allow it.
I know it gives mychildren access to research tools they never would have had. Wikipedia, HowStuffWorks, and other similar sites have taught my children a great deal. Heck, taught me a great deal. I enjoy an hour sitting down and just browsing through articles. Count the number of errors per article if you like, heck even discount the science articles altoghether - popular culture has never been documented as well in history as it is in Wikipedia.
No, internet usage is an important metric.
Canada has two finalists. PRetty good eh?
"Cutbacks have forced us to introduce the Imperial Nanowalker"
Anyone who thinks that the delay wasn't on purpose is on warcrack. By "on purpose", I mean specifically "delayed to keep people paying monthly fees longer, simply because we know they will hang on for the expansion". Everything about the game is intended to keep you addicted longer. I got out, along with my kids, and we're all happier for it. Yes, 0.1% of the population can be wrong.
I don't think there are very many people who haven't run into something like this at one point or another. If it hadn't been a forum, if it instead had been a telephone support call, and they ignored it, that would not have been slashdot worthy, because that happens to everyone. Support for any company has always been PR-tically correct. Companies many times will admit only to problems they have a fix for. This is just the way it is, and if every case of this was Slashdotted, the site would be flooded with it. OMFG THEY DELETED MY POST! IMMA SLASHDOT THEIR ASS! Get over it and suck it up princess. While I sympathize with you, we've all been through this. Had forum posts deleted, questions avoided or answered in PR-speak, issues ignored.
Who is to say they didn't tell this to the reviewers. The author said they spoke with the vendor on the phone and intimated at a fairly lengthy conversation. Reviews where they can say they debunked a manufacturer claim get more page hits. Do the math.
The "problem" of a computer with divide-by-zero errors is not a problem, it's a feature. It's not something you need to or even want to fix. You could easily design a computer that doesn't have an error in that situation if that's what you want. Replacing the error condition with a new symbol accomplishes nothing. The program still has to deal with the result in some order to present a real-world result to the user. A divide-by-zero error is the way programs do that.
It's easy to solve a "problem" when you're the architect of the definition of the problem in the first case. Dr. Anderson first defines a problem: calculators and computers throw an error when you try to divice by zero, and then defines an artificial solution - but the problem was artificial in the first place.
We've all run into poorly designed programs that don't handle divide-by-zero errors properly and crash. This isn't a problem of dividing by zero, this is a problem of a computer program not handling its data properly or not catching and handling its errors. We've also all run into programs that attempt to reference a null pointer. By the same reasoning, we could define the memory that a "null pointer" points to as some new type of virtual space called "nullspace" (trekies should appreciate my resistance to the temptation to call it "subspace"), and call it valid. Make the computer such that reading from "nullspace" always returns zero. Suddenly no programs crash from dereferencing a null pointer any more. It doesn't mean that the program is going to now do something useful. It probably means it will end up displaying garbage to the user, hanging in an infinite loop, or branching off to never never land. It seems as if Doctor Anderson is making a value decision about the error report that calculators and errors report. It's an error, and that must be bad so it needs to be fixed. It's a feature, and intended to assist in writing good software.
Now as far as it goes mathematically, that's even simpler to address. There's nothing you can do with nullity on paper that you can't do by simply leaving it as (0/0) in the equation.
So from either approach (mathematically or from a computer science perspective), it's nonsense.
The author's own response to some of the critics (or, I should say, alleged response) doesn't help my opinion. You can read this as the fourth comment after the BBC story. Tossing out the names of two other Ph.Ds and offering vague references to undescribed "axioms" built around this new symbol all reinforce my opinion that Doctor Anderson sounds precisely like the character Robert from the movie "Proof". A tale... full of sound and fury, signifying nullity.
Electronic voting is great, just what needs to change is the method of input. An intangible "push button" system where you then have to create an after-the-fact paper trail is backwards. Why adopt a paperless system when you want a paper trail? It makes no sense. Simply have the paper trail be the input system. Florida had it right, just it's implementation was lousy.
Here in Canada, in our last election we marked an "X" on the ballot in a circle beside the candidate we wanted. While I watch, that ballot is fed into a machine which records the vote on it. Simple, and fast, and accomplishes all that any purely electronic system accomplishes. American-style election drama is completely unknown up here - and we have a much larger area to work the logistics for. No punched holes, no hanging chads, no lost votes, no wait.
I am really beginning to hate April 1st.
The other side of the coin, though, is if DVDs are released consequent with the theatre, then downloads will go through the roof. DVD rips available day one of release? This is such a stupid idea, that the only reason I can see for it is that the movie industry wants the downloads to skyrocket so they can point at huge downloads and sinking theatre attendance and promote more even draconian DRM laws than what the DMCA already is.
It only doesn't come cheap because people have been convinced that it can't come cheap. For example, why is huge server infrastructure needed? This is archiving, not serving. Archiving, by definition, is where you have data that is important enough to keep but where the immediate need is low enough that the burden for providing it is on the looker. If someone wants the data, they can look up the location and find it in room full of DVDs. There are lots of off-the-shelf storage solutions with shelf-lives to 2090 and beyond. Assurance of authenticity? Good grief, again, this is archiving, not real-time bank transactions. The data is in the hands of one party - who the heck needs to be assured of its authenticity? Anyway, an assurance of authenticity is only as good as the word of the assurer. What's the word (digital or not) of some assurer 50 years dead going to be going to be worth in 2090? In short, you don't need to award a third of a billion dollars for this sort of nonsense. Hire some pimply, fresh-out-of-college nerd for 30k a year and you'll get a solution that makes a lot more sense.
What a waste of money. Massechussets is doing it for free. All you need to do is make sure that all your document file format standards are free and open. After that, it doesn't matter if they exist in 2090 or not. If they don't exist, it's because no one has really needed the documents. If some historian comes along and does need the document, then a document import filter can be easily created because the document's file format was based on a free and open standard.
Suddenly the volume of documents you need to maintain drops from all of them, to just the documents that describe the file format standards.
The amount of energy in a hurricane is a bigger number than will fit in any of our heads. No little wind farm, or even (on our scale) massive wind farm is going to change this.
Additionally, there is the implementation detail that hurricanes form over water, so you'd be needing to build a floating one. This is something that, what, would cover the whole tropical ocean surface, or would it be towed to the location where a hurricane is beginning to form?
The reality is, once the air is moving, nothing you nor I can do will stop it.
This is a common question and there were indeed some experiments at hurricane modification. Most of the common ideas, including some of the ones that the original author proposes, are explained it the NOAA FAQ on tropical storms in the section TROPICAL CYCLONE MODIFICATION AND MYTHS.
The point is that any modern scanner will scan a higher resolution than you will ever need. Unless, of course, you want to scan a penny and blow the image up poster size. The original poster is saying that he understands this and is (IMO rightfully) less concerned than the numbers game that many scanner manufacturers have played in the past and more concerned with image fidelity and quality.