Well you can make $10k in 9 month working low end jobs. Just sleep in a shelter,eat rama noodles , get clothes from salvation army etc. -I am serious. You can save money having crap job in US.
Light?!? DVDs were armor plated! Not only heavily encrypted but also region protected and the specs were entirely secret and had to be reverse engineered. It took several years before CSS was broken, and even then, it was broken by exploiting a minor mistake in the key generation algorithm.
Wikipedia: The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia.
Decss was released in octorber 1999. Several year if you look from japan's perspective,but real mainstream use didnt being till 2001 . And there is no "minor" mistakes - all those " copy " protection techologies are impossbile in principle . you have to deliver a signal to a user eventually . -copy protection will never work on large scale .
Well even then you still can hook ripping device somewhere (in worst case it would be probably somwhere in the monitor - you can't put TPM chip for each pixel ).It will just mean that average joe will not be able to rip his home movie collection -which only affect paying customers,as pirates dont even need disks (they get it straight from P2P).
Lol "illegal aliens" are they deadly threat or something? Why dont you look at ford and pinto when human life was considered not worth $2.48 safety device (because accountant calculated damage from non installing device would account to $2.11) . Or at current power group lobby behind coal power plants,which are number one air and radioactive waste polluter - that deaths on millions a year scale .
Allowing people to "sue" is a non-market solution first place. Well really in this whole market vs regulation I can not fully take free market position.As it was proven before again and again that without regulations corporations get into monopolies and trusts aimed against consumers, that they will not do anything if it doesnt help their bottom line short term (such as safety and environmental regulations).
Well not to smear Blizzard or anything - I actually think they are one of the best studios out there.But what Blizzard really does is takes and old idea and implements it very well. Wow is no exception. Starting with warcraft - idea ripped of dune 2(and then sequels ) starcraft -just another RTS , not a single fresh idea. Diablo could be sorta considered "fresh" idea -if the idea of stripping down RPG of everything but items and action can be passed as a novelty.
Wow does not have single new element in MMORPG genre, but every single element they borrowed is implemented very well. Blizzard designers know how to take an old idea and make it fun . In Wow they just looked carefully at most outrageous and unfun elements of current generation MMORPGs (such as long level grinds, unnecessary travel time, outrageous death penalties, cookie cutter classes) and removed them,replaced with what was proven to be fun (quest based leveling , fun combat, fast travel, practically no death penalty, creative classes ). On top of that they added awesome world/dungeon design, good itemization, flawless server/client code ( noobs complaining about Wow "bugs and downtime" haven't seen previous generation MMORPGS) , awesome lore and world. And here you go - 7 mln subscribers,when it was estimated "that total US market for MMORPG is 500k subscriptions"
And really Wow is EQ done right. -This does not diminish achievement of Blizzard in any way,because Verant/SOE and hordes of others could not even implement their original ideas right.
Strength of Blizzard is to polish and popularize old ideas. But innovation?- that the wrong thing to expect from them. And thats why I like them - they see trough bullshit and cut straight to fun.
I bet the do not pay the prices you quoted.- Oracle contracts for big customers are all very special things,and for blizzard which has probably thousands of servers I bet the licenses per server do not cost too much.
How it is different from anything else? If anything automatic update checking is a boon.Example -BF2,after a long break I want to play it,but I cant,because I didnt patch to the latest version. Now I have to manually find the patch,download it,install and then find no -cd crack (if its available) -since it will ask me for CD which is long time gone. -Thats a hassle. Steam on the other hand updates everything automatically in less than 5 minutes (usually) and never asks me for CD and I never have a headache of keeping it up to date manually and looking for no-cd patches.
Now if you happen to not have internet connection and want play a game it works just fine (just select offline mode). Steam does not need to be updated if you play offline only ( I played for few days with half a year old steam/games with no prob- I only played single player mode and with bots).
I mean seriously getting patches manually and looking for nocds(or worse- looking for media for 5 year old game) is a lot worse option than steam.Does steam require you to update? -no. Does it require media ? -no. Can it keep everything up to date at your discretion? -yes (you can set to update manually or automatically). Is steam in the tray required for anything except when playing? -NO. There is no single argument against steam in comparison to CDs .
1) Is it worth spending your real life hours on meaningless records in a database? 2) Can you seriously equate real life achievement to that record? 3) How spending best hours of your life on MMORPGs treadmill is different from being hooked on drugs,alcohol, TV, other kinds of pointless entertainment ?
I am guilty of same those things.And I feel hours of my life lost irrevocably (and I keep losing them as this addiction is something I can not defeat completely (well at least I got off of mmorpg crack, which I think is one of the most destructive kinds). Difference is to not seek excuses and try to combat it -there is no excuses . Do you want achieve something or be a rat pressing this pleasure button forever(sex/entertainment/food/sleep)?
Entertainment IS POINTLESS."Relaxing and enjoying yourself" is as meaningful as the subject it revolves around . -As long as you doing something productive in RL (inventing,engineering , building business, - anything having real impact on the world outside) it is all good, but as soon as it start revolving around fake things (consumerism and not production) it becomes waste of resources,whether your consume movies, videogames, music, drugs, food, goods.
See there are real games out there (for money,power, influence, scientific achievement etc) , yet people try to substitute them for instant gratification surrogates (drugs, TV, fiction , computer games). -Those surrogates are made to be addictive and provide pleasure without any real work involved. You have to see trough it or you will waste your life building air castles and being a king in a pointless fantasy .
I dont get why you get this feeling. -yes it checks your account login/password, but it never asks you to pay for games you already bought. If anything I like this system because I will never have to worry about media for games on steam - I can always redownload them at no fee and no questions asked. And you can play offline just fine ( when I had trouble with my provider I still could play all games no problem).
I mean I can understand that related to some crap activation system (cough..cough.. windows "genuine advantage") -but steam never ever asked me anything except login/pwd .
Wow what a bunch of BS and black PR. I bought HL2 at release (and I mainly bought it for CS:S) since then I reinstalled half a dozen times, changed hardware 3 times, changed many hard drives . And never ever I had to reinstall anything. Thats right - on a freshly installed Windows it all took 5 seconds to drage steam icon to desktop in 10 seconds later I could play (provided my games were up to date -case not it took all 2-3 minutes to get updates for last half a year) .
Steam is not perfect,and it hade some major problems at inception - true. Also I don't think Valve did any good job with HL2/CS:S and updates.But that has nothing to do with their delivery system - last 3 years it was working flawlessly for me. Bought couple of other games trough it and will buy Defcon when it comes out -all good experience.
But I start seriously thinking that all black PR about steam is done by major publishers and retailers,to curb spread of electronic distributions.Cause they know that will be death of them and their parasitic industry (retail/publishing thats it)
I never understood why they allowed anonymous edits first place . - It would not deter absolute majority serious about contributing.In fact I think many people like to have list of their contributions easily tracked from personal page.
Now they imho should also have a moderation system(similar to slashdot) -where random people would get chance to moderate articles/specific edits.People with low edit-karma should have their edits placed in "cesspool" and not let in unlet review by respected member of the community. And unlike slashdot on wikipedia you can actually give more power to truly competent people ( like more moderation powers, give them moren rights in domain the have proven to be competent, etc. ) encyclopedia is not about every Dick, Joe and Jane opinion, it is about facts and correct information. If some dick is unhappy he cannot smear perfectly good articles with his incompetent crap -good riddance,its not slashdot or digg.
I know about TCP and its application to DRM. But -thats what I said not in 5 years, Vista is not even here yet,not to mention most of the hardware for it , DVI/VGA are still standard video interfaces and none of DRM ridden interfaces are in main stream use (despite them being present on the market for last 5 years) .
A lof of infrastructure has to happen before RIAA wet dream has even possibility to become reality. And then guess what? - non DRM ridden platform will still be here,as there is still consumer demand for them.DRM ridden boxes will be just another appliance of limited use.
You're reduced to either hacking speakers and monitors, or literally pointing a video camera and microphone at the screen
And you know hacking speakers and monitors is not that hard really,even DRM ridden ones. You still have to unencrypt data somewhere,and as I said before putting TPM chip for every pixel is too expensive.Remember you only need one hacked monitor and one hacked sound card in the whole world to get the content on the loose. -All regular users get it same no hassle way (bittorent,p2p).
You miss the point again -average user will simply use bittorent -same way as before. You only need one dedicated person with right equipment to get undrmed copy,and its naive to think nobody will do it (well for start there is actual financia interest in 3d world countries to rip the movies and sell them in their home markets for $1 per DVD).
And is it was mentioned before DRM can not be effective in principle - you can always just rip off the screen (and with high res equipment it will be good quality) .
But I doubt it will ever comes to this,if anything they will have to catch unencrypted sctream from the point where it goes to screen matrix (you cant put encryption on each pixel - too expensive).If ever it comes too that even - all current DRM systems are far from ebing unhackable even by conventional means and I do not see situation change in next 5 years.And in 5 years world can be totally different place.
High income human: I have expendable income, and while I know I could download it for free, the Real Thing (tm) lasts longer, doesn't occupy HD space, and has lots of extra content. Totally worth the cut into my extra cash.
You know I will be totally happy to fork little cash for a good movie/song. Problem I don't want CD/dvds -its a crappy medium imho compared to images on hard drive. And I dont want any kind of DRM on neither my movies, neither my music,and last,but not last I want a good selection (NOT the kind which is in MTV top 100 or top box movies). -Well there is no such service, even allofmp3(and it is not entirely legal) does not provide good enough selection for music , As for movies no such service even exist at all. So torrents and directconnect will stay as my sources.
I used to pirate games exlusively as well for same reasons.But I buy now those which are available online (such as galciv2, or trough STEAM- HL2,darwinia , a lot of indy games).
It is a waste of time to make entries in each and every language. I found that despite even on the etnries concerning russia and russian culture I use english wiki (despite russian being my primary language and such) -simply because english articles are better in quality. I feel pity for all that time people spend translating articles instead of adding new ones.
- I know many people fluently speak more than one language since childhood and as a consequence can effortlessly master many more without much effort (if by the age of 6 you spoke more than one language your brain is "wired" well for learnign additional ones). Even those who stuck with only one language can learn one (and they should make it English).
That really depends on the company. For example although I work for an investment institution we have casual dress code most of the time (exception being prospects visits). For saturday/sunday work you can take day off some other time (well HR is a bitch , and always makes you go trough lot of hops to get it, but thats just she) .
Re:Ability to accept training
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
Well to be fair fast paced video games do improve hand eye coordination.And teamwork too ( if played competitively).whether it is better than playing old fashioned sports though is arguable (as sports usually build general athleticism as well,which video games do not).
Re:Ability to accept training
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
Ohh yeah sex,food and fun... -They are still animals for what it matters.Power is the only thing that is worth anything.And that " natural human state" is a pathetic thing.(Not that I agree is that shopping malls are good -that's pointless activity) . Hapinnes is a false target to aim for - it leads to pointless life of a rat clicking "happy button" till death.
Oh really ? Mind tell where they teach "perfect pitch"? I am tone deaf since I was born,that carried many consequences in my life (such as pronunciation problems in my native langage, inability to play any musical instrument , sever impairment in learning of foreign languages etc etc ) . At the same time I know people who never put one iota of efforts,yet they do have perfect pronunciation, can sing and play etc. And I do love listening to music ( spent 3 hours every day since high school) yet it never gave me any improvements over 15 year period.
I was getting pissed of at the fact that if you want raise/promotion you gotta find new job and be hired at desired level instead of being promoted. I was hinted by upper management that the mains reason companies do not do that is to not cause jealousy (you are promoted and your colleagues are not,that will cause political troubles and cat fights)
After reflecting on that I find that a very valid point . So getting new job every 2-3 years is a reality now if you want career growth. If you are lucky you will land eventually in this sweet CIO/CTO position yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
Portable hdd? Recordable media?
Well you can make $10k in 9 month working low end jobs. Just sleep in a shelter ,eat rama noodles , get clothes from salvation army etc. -I am serious. You can save money having crap job in US.
Light?!? DVDs were armor plated! Not only heavily encrypted but also region protected and the specs were entirely secret and had to be reverse engineered. It took several years before CSS was broken, and even then, it was broken by exploiting a minor mistake in the key generation algorithm.
,but real mainstream use didnt being till 2001 . And there is no "minor" mistakes - all those " copy " protection techologies are impossbile in principle . you have to deliver a signal to a user eventually . -copy protection will never work on large scale .
Wikipedia: The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia.
Decss was released in octorber 1999. Several year if you look from japan's perspective
Well even then you still can hook ripping device somewhere (in worst case it would be probably somwhere in the monitor - you can't put TPM chip for each pixel ) .It will just mean that average joe will not be able to rip his home movie collection -which only affect paying customers ,as pirates dont even need disks (they get it straight from P2P).
Lol "illegal aliens" are they deadly threat or something? Why dont you look at ford and pinto when human life was considered not worth $2.48 safety device (because accountant calculated damage from non installing device would account to $2.11) . Or at current power group lobby behind coal power plants ,which are number one air and radioactive waste polluter - that deaths on millions a year scale .
Allowing people to "sue" is a non-market solution first place. Well really in this whole market vs regulation I can not fully take free market position .As it was proven before again and again that without regulations corporations get into monopolies and trusts aimed against consumers, that they will not do anything if it doesnt help their bottom line short term (such as safety and environmental regulations).
Well not to smear Blizzard or anything - I actually think they are one of the best studios out there .But what Blizzard really does is takes and old idea and implements it very well. Wow is no exception. Starting with warcraft - idea ripped of dune 2(and then sequels ) starcraft -just another RTS , not a single fresh idea. Diablo could be sorta considered "fresh" idea -if the idea of stripping down RPG of everything but items and action can be passed as a novelty.
,replaced with what was proven to be fun (quest based leveling , fun combat, fast travel, practically no death penalty, creative classes ). On top of that they added awesome world/dungeon design, good itemization, flawless server/client code ( noobs complaining about Wow "bugs and downtime" haven't seen previous generation MMORPGS) , awesome lore and world. And here you go - 7 mln subscribers ,when it was estimated "that total US market for MMORPG is 500k subscriptions"
,because Verant/SOE and hordes of others could not even implement their original ideas right.
Wow does not have single new element in MMORPG genre, but every single element they borrowed is implemented very well. Blizzard designers know how to take an old idea and make it fun . In Wow they just looked carefully at most outrageous and unfun elements of current generation MMORPGs (such as long level grinds, unnecessary travel time, outrageous death penalties, cookie cutter classes) and removed them
And really Wow is EQ done right. -This does not diminish achievement of Blizzard in any way
Strength of Blizzard is to polish and popularize old ideas. But innovation?- that the wrong thing to expect from them. And thats why I like them - they see trough bullshit and cut straight to fun.
I bet the do not pay the prices you quoted .- Oracle contracts for big customers are all very special things ,and for blizzard which has probably thousands of servers I bet the licenses per server do not cost too much.
How it is different from anything else? If anything automatic update checking is a boon .Example -BF2 ,after a long break I want to play it ,but I cant ,because I didnt patch to the latest version. Now I have to manually find the patch ,download it ,install and then find no -cd crack (if its available) -since it will ask me for CD which is long time gone. -Thats a hassle. Steam on the other hand updates everything automatically in less than 5 minutes (usually) and never asks me for CD and I never have a headache of keeping it up to date manually and looking for no-cd patches.
Now if you happen to not have internet connection and want play a game it works just fine (just select offline mode). Steam does not need to be updated if you play offline only ( I played for few days with half a year old steam/games with no prob- I only played single player mode and with bots).
I mean seriously getting patches manually and looking for nocds(or worse- looking for media for 5 year old game) is a lot worse option than steam.Does steam require you to update? -no. Does it require media ? -no. Can it keep everything up to date at your discretion? -yes (you can set to update manually or automatically). Is steam in the tray required for anything except when playing? -NO. There is no single argument against steam in comparison to CDs .
Well try to answer these questions honestly :
,alcohol, TV, other kinds of pointless entertainment ?
.And I feel hours of my life lost irrevocably (and I keep losing them as this addiction is something I can not defeat completely (well at least I got off of mmorpg crack, which I think is one of the most destructive kinds). Difference is to not seek excuses and try to combat it -there is no excuses . Do you want achieve something or be a rat pressing this pleasure button forever(sex/entertainment/food /sleep)?
,engineering , building business, - anything having real impact on the world outside) it is all good, but as soon as it start revolving around fake things (consumerism and not production) it becomes waste of resources ,whether your consume movies, videogames, music, drugs, food, goods.
,power, influence, scientific achievement etc) , yet people try to substitute them for instant gratification surrogates (drugs, TV, fiction , computer games). -Those surrogates are made to be addictive and provide pleasure without any real work involved. You have to see trough it or you will waste your life building air castles and being a king in a pointless fantasy .
1) Is it worth spending your real life hours on meaningless records in a database?
2) Can you seriously equate real life achievement to that record?
3) How spending best hours of your life on MMORPGs treadmill is different from being hooked on drugs
I am guilty of same those things
Entertainment IS POINTLESS."Relaxing and enjoying yourself" is as meaningful as the subject it revolves around . -As long as you doing something productive in RL (inventing
See there are real games out there (for money
I dont get why you get this feeling. -yes it checks your account login/password, but it never asks you to pay for games you already bought. If anything I like this system because I will never have to worry about media for games on steam - I can always redownload them at no fee and no questions asked. And you can play offline just fine ( when I had trouble with my provider I still could play all games no problem).
I mean I can understand that related to some crap activation system (cough..cough.. windows "genuine advantage") -but steam never ever asked me anything except login/pwd .
Wow what a bunch of BS and black PR. I bought HL2 at release (and I mainly bought it for CS:S) since then I reinstalled half a dozen times, changed hardware 3 times, changed many hard drives . And never ever I had to reinstall anything. Thats right - on a freshly installed Windows it all took 5 seconds to drage steam icon to desktop in 10 seconds later I could play (provided my games were up to date -case not it took all 2-3 minutes to get updates for last half a year) .
.But that has nothing to do with their delivery system - last 3 years it was working flawlessly for me. Bought couple of other games trough it and will buy Defcon when it comes out -all good experience. ,to curb spread of electronic distributions .Cause they know that will be death of them and their parasitic industry (retail/publishing thats it)
Steam is not perfect,and it hade some major problems at inception - true. Also I don't think Valve did any good job with HL2/CS:S and updates
But I start seriously thinking that all black PR about steam is done by major publishers and retailers
I never understood why they allowed anonymous edits first place . - It would not deter absolute majority serious about contributing .In fact I think many people like to have list of their contributions easily tracked from personal page.
.People with low edit-karma should have their edits placed in "cesspool" and not let in unlet review by respected member of the community. And unlike slashdot on wikipedia you can actually give more power to truly competent people ( like more moderation powers, give them moren rights in domain the have proven to be competent, etc. ) encyclopedia is not about every Dick, Joe and Jane opinion, it is about facts and correct information. If some dick is unhappy he cannot smear perfectly good articles with his incompetent crap -good riddance ,its not slashdot or digg.
Now they imho should also have a moderation system(similar to slashdot) -where random people would get chance to moderate articles/specific edits
I know about TCP and its application to DRM. But -thats what I said not in 5 years, Vista is not even here yet ,not to mention most of the hardware for it , DVI/VGA are still standard video interfaces and none of DRM ridden interfaces are in main stream use (despite them being present on the market for last 5 years) . ,as there is still consumer demand for them .DRM ridden boxes will be just another appliance of limited use.
,even DRM ridden ones. You still have to unencrypt data somewhere ,and as I said before putting TPM chip for every pixel is too expensive .Remember you only need one hacked monitor and one hacked sound card in the whole world to get the content on the loose. -All regular users get it same no hassle way (bittorent,p2p).
A lof of infrastructure has to happen before RIAA wet dream has even possibility to become reality. And then guess what? - non DRM ridden platform will still be here
You're reduced to either hacking speakers and monitors, or literally pointing a video camera and microphone at the screen
And you know hacking speakers and monitors is not that hard really
You miss the point again -average user will simply use bittorent -same way as before. You only need one dedicated person with right equipment to get undrmed copy ,and its naive to think nobody will do it (well for start there is actual financia interest in 3d world countries to rip the movies and sell them in their home markets for $1 per DVD).
,if anything they will have to catch unencrypted sctream from the point where it goes to screen matrix (you cant put encryption on each pixel - too expensive) .If ever it comes too that even - all current DRM systems are far from ebing unhackable even by conventional means and I do not see situation change in next 5 years .And in 5 years world can be totally different place.
And is it was mentioned before DRM can not be effective in principle - you can always just rip off the screen (and with high res equipment it will be good quality) .
But I doubt it will ever comes to this
Linked list is such a a trivial problem to solve that I think the person who can not solve it is simply too dumb to be an engineer.
High income human: I have expendable income, and while I know I could download it for free, the Real Thing (tm) lasts longer, doesn't occupy HD space, and has lots of extra content. Totally worth the cut into my extra cash.
,and last ,but not last I want a good selection (NOT the kind which is in MTV top 100 or top box movies). -Well there is no such service, even allofmp3(and it is not entirely legal) does not provide good enough selection for music , As for movies no such service even exist at all. So torrents and directconnect will stay as my sources.
.But I buy now those which are available online (such as galciv2, or trough STEAM- HL2,darwinia , a lot of indy games).
You know I will be totally happy to fork little cash for a good movie/song. Problem I don't want CD/dvds -its a crappy medium imho compared to images on hard drive. And I dont want any kind of DRM on neither my movies, neither my music
I used to pirate games exlusively as well for same reasons
It is a waste of time to make entries in each and every language. I found that despite even on the etnries concerning russia and russian culture I use english wiki (despite russian being my primary language and such) -simply because english articles are better in quality. I feel pity for all that time people spend translating articles instead of adding new ones.
- I know many people fluently speak more than one language since childhood and as a consequence can effortlessly master many more without much effort (if by the age of 6 you spoke more than one language your brain is "wired" well for learnign additional ones). Even those who stuck with only one language can learn one (and they should make it English).
That really depends on the company. For example although I work for an investment institution we have casual dress code most of the time (exception being prospects visits). For saturday/sunday work you can take day off some other time (well HR is a bitch , and always makes you go trough lot of hops to get it, but thats just she) .
Knowledge, Technology and Power
Well obviously they have better social skils as there were 3 cooperativley obliterating you! Learn to socialize better freak!
Well to be fair fast paced video games do improve hand eye coordination .And teamwork too ( if played competitively) .whether it is better than playing old fashioned sports though is arguable (as sports usually build general athleticism as well ,which video games do not).
Ohh yeah sex ,food and fun... -They are still animals for what it matters .Power is the only thing that is worth anything .And that " natural human state" is a pathetic thing .(Not that I agree is that shopping malls are good -that's pointless activity) . Hapinnes is a false target to aim for - it leads to pointless life of a rat clicking "happy button" till death.
Oh really ? Mind tell where they teach "perfect pitch"? I am tone deaf since I was born ,that carried many consequences in my life (such as pronunciation problems in my native langage, inability to play any musical instrument , sever impairment in learning of foreign languages etc etc ) . At the same time I know people who never put one iota of efforts ,yet they do have perfect pronunciation, can sing and play etc. And I do love listening to music ( spent 3 hours every day since high school) yet it never gave me any improvements over 15 year period.
I was getting pissed of at the fact that if you want raise/promotion you gotta find new job and be hired at desired level instead of being promoted. I was hinted by upper management that the mains reason companies do not do that is to not cause jealousy (you are promoted and your colleagues are not ,that will cause political troubles and cat fights)
After reflecting on that I find that a very valid point . So getting new job every 2-3 years is a reality now if you want career growth. If you are lucky you will land eventually in this sweet CIO/CTO position yourself.