Okay, so first I'm going to have to choose between some seven versions of what amounts to a Mac-skinned Windows Server 2003... and then I'm going to have to pay to keep other people from screwing it up, when I can get FREE virus protection on my current XP box? Yeah, just keep piling on the upgrade costs. I LOVE IT.
I don't think I'm going to be switching to Vista any time soon, that's for fucking sure.
You have to understand that most politicians, regardless of where they come from, suffer from severe cranial-anal inversion, a medical condition in which the head becomes inexplicably and inexorably lodged in the victim's own ass. It's very difficult - if not impossible - to see the forest for the trees if your version of a bird's eye view is a view of the back of your own teeth.
I'm no climatologist, but I can tell just from what I've observed locally that the climate is behaving very strangely. In all my life, I've never remembered having temperatures in excess of 60 degrees Fahrenheit during the first week of January. (I'm in central Indiana currently.) It has only snowed twice this month. The rest of the month we've been recieving heavy rains, and even a couple thundershowers - also unheard of for this time of year in this area. Just last year, we had an average temperature of 20-30 degrees throughout the month of January, and 2005 was supposed to have been the hottest year on record to date. I'm kind of worried about what the rest of the year will be like if it's a full 30-40 degrees above average already. What bothers me the most, however, is that Indiana is hardly alone; this is happening everywhere. The climate is clearly fucked.
Tell that to the hacks that run this country and now yours, or better yet, to the pre-school dropout losers that run CO2science.org, or whatever the hell that site was. If you raised a big stink about that down here, I'd imagine they'd have half a mind to call you out on being an LSD-head and throw you in jail for 'terrorism', since criticism is so dangerous and all, and this shit is pretty scary. I suppose what's more important is that we, the people, know what's going on ourselves and really can see the situation for what it is. Governments usually can't be trusted for a whole lot, and I really doubt many of the 'big boys' of the world are going to step in on this one, no matter what the EU says. That leaves the bulk of the work in our hands, but if you want something done right - say, unfucking the climate - then you have to do it yourself.
I've found that obesity of the wallet tends to lead to blindness unless carefully treated... Textbook case, huh?
Electronic voting machines and their makers never fail to amaze me. I mean, voting's a big deal, right? Elections are supposed to be honest, the results are supposed to be untampered, and we're supposed to come out with a real winner chosen by the people, no matter who we're electing for what position. Voting is practically the backbone of our democracy, and one of the most influential ways that we can speak out in our towns and in our country... And yet, for some reason, most if not all voting machines appear to be almost designed to be hacked, if they aren't defective outright.
Here in my own county, residents are very concerned about the coming elections that will be held here for county positions. Electronic voting machines will be deployed widely - I don't believe they're Diebold's, but that's not the point - and elected officials have already been cited as asking their associates off the record to find ways to crack these machines. I shit you not. The story has been mostly swept under the rug, but somehow I don't think that these guys are out to stress test these machines, given the far from spotless reputation of Madison County's upper management. The machines in question leave no paper trail whatsoever, and are practically a mirror image of Diebold's machines in functionality and security. In other words, they're fancy piles of electronic garbage designed to produce the same.
This bothers me a great deal. It really makes me just want to stick with old fashioned paper voting, or simply drive the point home by defacing one of these boxes on election day with a third-rate off the shelf hack. Preferrably both, if possible. It's ironic that the single greatest threat to the advancement of society today is the advancement of high technology. Broken tech and rigged voting machines threaten our democratic process, while robust surveillance threatens our privacy and freedom, and yet people just eat this stuff up. It's sick. Not to say that the advancement of technology is evil, but in some cases it's application would appear to be extremely counterproductive to our society and the preservation of the basic values of our country...
See, if he didn't take that plunge into mediocrity, go partially insane, and then die in obscurity, we'd all be transmitting power wirelessly by now. WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE OBSESSED WITH 3.
Now Tesla's dead, and we're gonna run out of copper. GREAT.
... in the computing world that applies not only to many aspects of the evolution of technology, especially software.
"Garbage in, garbage out."
I wonder how much of Vista is actually based on new code. Is Vista going to be Windows XP in Mac OSX's clothing? And is it going to inherit the same piss-poor security it's predecessor had? I certainly hope not.
I've been telling my friends this kind of thing for a while... My opinion of the video game industry at large is already very negative, and my opinion of their bitches - yes, I said bitches, because that's what your usual video game journalist seems to be; an unwitting, unwilling bitch of a the magazine's marketing department and the 'big studios', fellating video games and companies he or she may not even like - in the press is even worse. This article sums the case up nicely. Video game magazines suck.
To restate some of the points made in the article, the average 'professional game reviewer and journalist', whose job it is to insult our taste and intelligence with their awful articles and reviews, is very juvenile and apparently unskilled in the field of journalism in general. This may or may not be an accurate portrayal of their skill as journalists - they may in fact be instructed to convey themselves as though their balls have yet to drop - but it doesn't make me think higher of them, considering that they appear to be lowering themselves to the level of mere children in order to please the marketing department. I can barely stomach most video game journalism, because it sounds like I'm listening to a pretentious, hyperactive twelve year old rave on about a new game his parents bought for him and then compliment his own 'skill' as a gamer, even though he hasn't played the game past the first level yet, and probably can't. I know the magazines are trying to relate to teens and pre-teens, because that's where the money's really at... but give me a break. This isn't 'PSM 4Kidz!'. This is supposed to be a witty, intelligent, professionally written publication, not some snot nosed brat's 5th grade English project about what video games he got for Christmas.
The reviews really get to me in particular. The previews, too, because they're so vapid and superficial, often praising only the visual elements of the games instead of telling me whether or not I'll be able to enjoy it sober, but the reviews are the best. My friends are frequently let down by the magazines, and yet they still eat it up. (Shame on them.) Each time it's the same story. They get hooked in by the hype in the previews, read these amazing reviews, and then go buy the game... And what happens? Two out of three times the game sucks ass, and they wind up feeling cheated. The reviews are, in my eyes, commercials. They're written like commercials, they flow like commercials, the pages are even set up like commercials. This is advertising, not an honest review, and it shows. Sometimes the reviews aren't even remotely accurate, falsely portraying certain elements of the games they cover to make them look better. This is why I wait to read user reviews of games online or learn about them through the grapevine. I'd rather learn about a game from somebody who has actually played it, not some two-bit hack of a journalist who's essentially being paid to lie.
Hearing this all come from a real insider - an actual video game journalist - is very refreshing, and I'm glad that he's finally coming clean about it with himself. That's the kind of honesty I'd like to see more often in the publications! Movie reviews could use a bit of that, too, but that's another story for another day. This guy really hits the nail on the head, and it's good to see a reviewer do some reviewing of his own, and take a good look at his work and what he and his colleagues have really been contributing to... It's a shame he might not have a job much longer. Maybe he'll go and start his own magazine or something...
I think I just heard the sound of flood gates opening in the distance, followed by the rushing and roaring of what is surely a massive volume of water.
Or maybe that was the sound of thousands of Slashdotter keyboards blazing...
At any rate, this is interesting because it once again prompts the lot of us to dig up the tired old argument, "Just because more vulnerabilities are being found doesn't mean the system is less secure." As I'm certain others before me have already stated countless millions upon billions of times, the fact that the vulnerabilities are being found and repaired in a timely manner and in a much higher number is probably the reason UNIX and Linux are more secure, not less. Windows, on the other hand... vulnerabilities are slowly found, but nobody can fix them except for - you guessed it - Microsoft. (Or, in some rare cases like the recent unofficial patch for the latest Windows security hole, or should I say chasm, by some concerned programmer out there who thinks the problem is serious enough to warrant them going out of their way to figure out how to fix it without having source code on hand.)
I personally feel a lot better knowing people are actually finding security holes in software I use, and fixing them on the spot. More holes doesn't mean worse software, it means better oversight. Depending upon how successfully the vulnerabilities in an operating system or application are repaired and how quickly that is accomplished, more holes found just might equate into better security overall.
That won't, however, save us from the hordes of pro-proprietary blowhards boasting that closed source commercialware is always more secure, waving these numbers like a flag. Brace yourselves for the bullshit.
Granted this is all just speculation based upon what seem to be unverified sources, but... If this is true, it comes as no surprise to me. It's just the next step in Google's plan to replace the big bad computing oligopoly with the soon-to-be Google media, communications, and software monopoly. Of course, I'm just a crazy doomsayer without a clue, so what do I know.
2006 is going to be very interesting.
Like anyone with an ounce of sense didn't see this coming. Here we are, we puny humans, with our rudimentary grasp on genetics, modifying plants and animals and the like and releasing them into the open... and not expecting them to cross-breed and cross-pollinate with their unmodified counterparts. You know, it's this kind of crap that makes me think sometimes that being as smart as we are has made us pretty dumb.
This could make for a good movie, though. "DEATH CORN: THE TASSELING." I can see it now, a story about rogue genetically modified corn that overgrows the world, but is resistant to every herbicide, pest, bacteria, virus, and fungus known to afflict our crops. Hey, fact is often stranger than fiction. Maybe the world will in fact one day be destroyed by corn. That'd be fun.
Okay. 'Intel Inside', may not have been an incredible slogan, but at least it was... mildly catchy and somewhat memorable. It had a flow to it, it didn't sound silly, and while I doubt that the presence of an Intel processor is actually a selling point for computers nowadays, I never thought that 'Intel Inside' was a bad slogan.
'Leap Ahead', however, sounds retarded. Really now, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if you're changing off a good, well-known slogan for one that sounds stupid. I'm pretty sure the marketing department was really brainstorming this one...
"We need to give Intel a FRESH TWIST. We need to appeal to the consumer electronics market, and now more than ever our ability to market these products is going to be a factor in the future of our firm. I say we start with a new slogan and go from there."
"Uh."
(20 hours later.)
"... What about 'Leap Ahead'?"
"That's stupid. You're stupid. But our shifts have been over for about twelve hours, so let's just leave it at that."
"But speaking from 21 years' observation, this doesn't seem to have affected any of the surrounding area in any significant way."
Maybe not in your area, but imagine that effect multiplied a few hundred or a few thousand times, though. If you build or remove enough buildings and put up or tear down enough trees in a certain area, the climate is definitely going to change in the area in question. Where you live, adding trees and buildings made the air more humid. Here, removing them seems to have had the same effect. Where I live, there's a lot of clay soil, and in areas where there are no trees, the soil doesn't retain much water at all. This tells me that after it rains or after condensation occurs, all that water is going right back into the air as soon as the sun hits the ground. I'm also in a valley, and it seems to be getting more and more hot and humid here, too. There also happens to be a ton of development coming in, a trend that started a few years back.
If you put together a bunch of microclimates, you get a bigger picture. I think that if microclimates are studied closer, we'll get a much better understanding of our overall climate in general, as you implied. Factors including geography, soil content, the kinds of plant life present, the amount of roadways present, and how many and what kinds of buildings there are all play a role in determining the nature of an area's climate, and it seems to me also that most climate studies neglect to take factors like that into consideration.
I personally feel that it's going to take a lot more than cutting greenhouse gases to curb global warming. Changing what we cover our buildings and roads with and where we put trees and other plants is going to have a lot to do with it, too, and that seems to be much easier to grasp and implement than plans like ones I've been hearing of that involve removing CO2 from the air and storing it and other crap like that. Besides, having a desirable local climate is nice anyhow...
That makes a lot of sense, but I have to wonder if other dark things we tend to place in the sun aren't in fact contributing a great deal to the global warming problem, in addition to other factors such as greenhouse gases... I wonder how much more heat is retained in areas with tar roofs and black-top streets and parking lots, as opposed to areas with gravel and dirt roads and shingled/fiberglass roofs.
That aside, this is a very interesting finding. There's no doubt in my mind that the logging industry will use this as an excuse to ramp up production in the face of opposition from environmentalists, but it could also be useful in helping us understand how to control our own climate naturally. Maybe certain kinds of trees and plants reflect more heat than others. Maybe certain arrangements and placements of trees and plants are cooler or hotter than others. Landscaping for climate control, anyone?
Okay, seeing as all you physics buffs are hell bent on burning me at the stake over this little comment, I'm willing to play ball. However, unlike a couple of you, I'll refrain from lowering myself to the level of name-calling. (It's my humble opinion that while I'm no genius, I'm hardly a 'dunderhead'.)
"This thing doesn't exactly slow down your car."
Alright. Let me rephrase that. I'm perfectly aware that this thing can slow down your car. However - and I hope you folks realize this - that reduction in speed may or may not be so large as to actually matter. Granted the present design looks a lot like a speedbump, but speedbumps don't change shape and fold in like this thing does. By the look of it, once you hit it, it folds in, causing whatever mechanism is responsible for this thing generating power to do it's thing. Yes, there's some speed lost as you hit it. How much speed is lost could actually make or break this thing, as well as whether or not it creates a significant bump. I should've added in that I'd really like to see this thing in action, to make sure it's really all it's cracked up to be. Yaknow, numbers, videos, that kind of crap.
As for my comments about wasted energy and how that seems to work out, someone with an ounce of maturity was willing to explain that away without demeaning me, and I accept that reasoning as well. If the energy gained is less than the energy lost, it probably would seem pretty silly to move forward with this technology. Once again, this thing will have to be designed in order to interfere with the movement of the vehicle as little as possible while still doing its job. It seems that the surface of the ramp is textured. Maybe that's so the tires won't slip as much, and the speed difference is minimized? Anyhow, my reasoning is, it'd seem that with this system the car moves up over the ramp, pushes down on the ramp, and the ramp goes and does its thing. Gravity makes objects resting on surfaces push against said surfaces, and the surface pushes back, so there's an equilibrium there. (lol elementary physics) If that same energy deforms a surface and in doing so allows an electricity generating mechanism to function, that device is using energy that would otherwise just keep the car on the road. If I'm right in that the ramp is textured to allow car tires to grab it better, perhaps that would allow more of the energy being transferred to the tires to go into making the car move. If the speed difference is tiny if not nonexistant, and the machine still works, that'd be dandy.
Complexity? Yeah, that's an issue. I wonder if that ramp and any clones of it are capable of storing energy in themselves... Naturally, cutting energy costs for street lights and stop lights doesn't decrease the cost of repairing them if they break, but it increases the amount of money available to fix them if they do, right? If done right, the system could present a minimal degree of complexity and low maintenance costs, especially if it's built to last and is largely self-contained. If it's not all it's cracked up to be, though, there'd be no point in using it anyway. "Yeah, I'm going to place a piece of complex, fragile machinery directly in the path of oncoming traffic, with the intention of having several hundred vehicles run over it every day." I honestly hope there aren't people around with the lack of common sense necessary to buy something like this if it can't take the punishment... It's not impossible for it to be durable, either. The very same cars that'll be making these things work are proof that a machine can work long and hard without breaking down often. (At least, that was the case with some older automobiles I'm familiar with.) It might actually work, and it might not be that big a hassle to put these things into action.
Another thing to consider, cost wise, is if the amount of energy lost by the vehicle constitutes a greater cost than the amount of energy produced by the ramp. That's what it sounds like you're all getting at, is that this thing needs to not o
Okay, okay. I get the idea, this is essentially a means by which electricty can be derived from the same energy that drives your vehicle. However... isn't this energy that would just be wasted, anyway? This thing doesn't exactly slow down your car. It's not like it's sucking power right out of your engine. This is kinetic energy combined with the force of gravity and the weight of your car, energies that would just be wasted and poured into the ground otherwise. Ten kilowatts, depending on your perspective, may or may not in fact be 'drops in the barrel' energy wise, but it's more than enough to power devices like stop lights and road signs, granted it's stored efficiently and the devices attached to it are similarly efficient.
On a well traveled road, energy that is essentially being wasted can be recaptured and used to power lights and signs for several intersections without placing any load on the local power grid. Sure, these things are pricey, but as their price decreases with time and their efficiency and output both climb, doesn't it make sense that these things just might pay for themselves? That reduces the cost of maintaining roads in the long run by cutting out virtually all energy expenses in areas that are frequently traveled - and if the system becomes efficient enough, it could cut out the energy costs for an entire community's roadways and intersections.
This isn't 'another gas tax'. This is one less reason to have gas taxes. On a highway like ol' I-69 here in Indy, a couple handfuls of these ramps could power every lighted roadside sign and traffic signal within the city of Indianapolis, with energy to spare. Higher traffic translates directly into greater energy gains. If these things are durable enough to take the punishment, they'd pay for themselves within a matter of weeks. Now let's think about even more heavily traveled roadways, like those in New York City or LA. 10 kilowatts per panel times a few thousand automobiles a day, that's megawatts and megawatts of power being generated every day. The excess could be put into the city electrical grid, however small an amount it may be by then, and used to power other things. Street lights, low-demand municipal facilities, etc... All of this from WASTE. This is an excellent idea, and I hope to see technology like this move forward.
And before anyone replies to this, no, this is not 'just another way for the government to control our cars'. I won't be concerned about that until they start installing spike strips in these things. (And with or without ramps, that could be done at every intersection anyway....) This is hardly ripping off the taxpayer, either, if a comparatively small expense saves a ton more money. Sure, right now that expense isn't small, but it'll get smaller if enough communities buy into this stuff - perhaps even going from a few thousand dollars to just a few hundred. Money in the bank, and back in our pockets, folks... No problems here.
I don't think even a revolution, much less a scandal, will accomplish that, when our own President thinks of the Constitution as a "goddamn piece of paper." That doesn't make Ben Franklin kick any less ass, though.
Agreed. That's like saying, "HEY GUYS! I'M GONNA HIDE ALL OF THIS STUFF IN A BOX SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF TIMES SQUARE. I HOPE NOBODY SEES IT!"
As for the roundabout logic, I don't think that their giving away the source code for Windows slowed down the transition from Microsoft to open source all that much, especially in regard to nations that lack a great deal of funding... Considering that they forbade recompilation and modification of the code, any advantages gained by having the source code besides the ability to make programs that supplement it are eliminated. I dunno, maybe I read wrong, but it seems that the entire GSP deal was a bit... odd.
Wasn't that the entire point of the Trusted Computing initiative? To give everyone online - or at least every machine - an identity? And is it not true that some of the biggest proponents of this garbage some of the people we should be trusting the least?
The pathway to Hell is paved with good intentions. Now that it seems that we won't have a choice in the matter, it looks like apparently hardware manufacturers, software vendors, media conglomerates, and politicians know what's better for us than we do. Don't buy into this bullshit.
Okay, okay. This is going to sound a LOT like yet another one of the innumerable mindless, inflammatory anti-Microsoft rants out there, but please, hear me out, okay?
Two years ago, according to several sources including Computer World - the story may also have been covered here - Microsoft gave China access to the entirety of the Windows operating system source code. This was part of a so-called 'Government Security Program', which would allow governments and international political and military organizations to supposedly build stronger security systems and firewalls. This is nothing new, I know. Microsoft has shared the Windows source code with people before. The difference here is that they are handing it directly to a governmental entity, possibly including governments that percieve the United States as an enemy or a threat. Other participants in the GSP include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Microsoft had been in talks with other 30 nations and other parties at the time the article I've referenced was written. (I'm afraid I'm strapped for time, so I can't exactly do more research at the moment to find out who the other 30 are.)
This sounds interesting, and I'd actually buy this GSP garbage if it wasn't for the fact that the agreement states that these governments can't modify or recompile the source code themselves. Either Microsoft's head honchos are really naive, or they're counting on us being just as stupid. Anyone with half a brain can understand just how much power that source code can grant you. With it, you have the ability to know every security hole - intentional or otherwise - that exists in the Windows operating system, which to this day powers a vast majority of the computers in the world. That code, which is closed to us commoners, could easily be percieved not as a security tool - who wants to use Windows for security? - but rather, as a weapon. The GSP, I theorize, was most likely a cover for a program that likely netted Microsoft a great deal of money and a lot of international government support... Honestly. China? They'd have to be braindead to think that China wouldn't use this power against us.
Admittedly, we have the same power, and we've probably had it for longer, too. This doesn't make us safer, though, if it's sealed up inside some vault somewhere, not being used to fix the security holes in Windows that plague many home users and businesses. Now we're acting surprised that China, after the fact, is training an elite team of hackers? This isn't a surprise, it's the NEXT LOGICAL STEP. That'd be like a soldier standing on Normandy Beach in 1944 saying, "Okay, I'm in the middle of a battle. I could use this here rifle to, yaknow, pick off some of these yay-hoos shootin' at me, but... Eh, I think I'll go after 'em with my combat knife instead." *HUMILIATION* So what now? China has the one weapon in the world that can actually rival the destructive and disruptive power of a nuclear weapon without even a fraction of the mess. They have the source code of the most popular and one of the least secure operating systems today, along with who knows what else. Of COURSE they're going to start attacking us. They don't LIKE us.
So what does this make Microsoft? Like I said before, are the head honchos of Microsoft really that amazingly, impossibly stupid, or have they been passing out source code to our enemies - source code that they refuse to give to virtually anyone else outside of a partner in business or an Ivy League university program - for a while now? As far as I know, the manner in which they handle the source code they give out to business partners and educational institutions is extremely strict. I've only heard of one partial leak ever occurring, and wasn't the person responsible for it found pretty quick? Anyway... Okay, here's China, saying "Microsoft Windows is a threat and a vulnerability," source code in hand, training a team of elite hackers to launch coordinated attacks against U.S. interests... Can we hold Microsof
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Okay, so first I'm going to have to choose between some seven versions of what amounts to a Mac-skinned Windows Server 2003... and then I'm going to have to pay to keep other people from screwing it up, when I can get FREE virus protection on my current XP box? Yeah, just keep piling on the upgrade costs. I LOVE IT.
I don't think I'm going to be switching to Vista any time soon, that's for fucking sure.
You have to understand that most politicians, regardless of where they come from, suffer from severe cranial-anal inversion, a medical condition in which the head becomes inexplicably and inexorably lodged in the victim's own ass. It's very difficult - if not impossible - to see the forest for the trees if your version of a bird's eye view is a view of the back of your own teeth.
I'm no climatologist, but I can tell just from what I've observed locally that the climate is behaving very strangely. In all my life, I've never remembered having temperatures in excess of 60 degrees Fahrenheit during the first week of January. (I'm in central Indiana currently.) It has only snowed twice this month. The rest of the month we've been recieving heavy rains, and even a couple thundershowers - also unheard of for this time of year in this area. Just last year, we had an average temperature of 20-30 degrees throughout the month of January, and 2005 was supposed to have been the hottest year on record to date. I'm kind of worried about what the rest of the year will be like if it's a full 30-40 degrees above average already. What bothers me the most, however, is that Indiana is hardly alone; this is happening everywhere. The climate is clearly fucked.
Tell that to the hacks that run this country and now yours, or better yet, to the pre-school dropout losers that run CO2science.org, or whatever the hell that site was. If you raised a big stink about that down here, I'd imagine they'd have half a mind to call you out on being an LSD-head and throw you in jail for 'terrorism', since criticism is so dangerous and all, and this shit is pretty scary. I suppose what's more important is that we, the people, know what's going on ourselves and really can see the situation for what it is. Governments usually can't be trusted for a whole lot, and I really doubt many of the 'big boys' of the world are going to step in on this one, no matter what the EU says. That leaves the bulk of the work in our hands, but if you want something done right - say, unfucking the climate - then you have to do it yourself.
I've found that obesity of the wallet tends to lead to blindness unless carefully treated... Textbook case, huh?
Propaganda? Here? Surely you jest.
Electronic voting machines and their makers never fail to amaze me. I mean, voting's a big deal, right? Elections are supposed to be honest, the results are supposed to be untampered, and we're supposed to come out with a real winner chosen by the people, no matter who we're electing for what position. Voting is practically the backbone of our democracy, and one of the most influential ways that we can speak out in our towns and in our country... And yet, for some reason, most if not all voting machines appear to be almost designed to be hacked, if they aren't defective outright.
Here in my own county, residents are very concerned about the coming elections that will be held here for county positions. Electronic voting machines will be deployed widely - I don't believe they're Diebold's, but that's not the point - and elected officials have already been cited as asking their associates off the record to find ways to crack these machines. I shit you not. The story has been mostly swept under the rug, but somehow I don't think that these guys are out to stress test these machines, given the far from spotless reputation of Madison County's upper management. The machines in question leave no paper trail whatsoever, and are practically a mirror image of Diebold's machines in functionality and security. In other words, they're fancy piles of electronic garbage designed to produce the same.
This bothers me a great deal. It really makes me just want to stick with old fashioned paper voting, or simply drive the point home by defacing one of these boxes on election day with a third-rate off the shelf hack. Preferrably both, if possible. It's ironic that the single greatest threat to the advancement of society today is the advancement of high technology. Broken tech and rigged voting machines threaten our democratic process, while robust surveillance threatens our privacy and freedom, and yet people just eat this stuff up. It's sick. Not to say that the advancement of technology is evil, but in some cases it's application would appear to be extremely counterproductive to our society and the preservation of the basic values of our country...
Porcelain keyboards, anyone?
See, if he didn't take that plunge into mediocrity, go partially insane, and then die in obscurity, we'd all be transmitting power wirelessly by now. WHY DID HE HAVE TO BE OBSESSED WITH 3. Now Tesla's dead, and we're gonna run out of copper. GREAT.
... in the computing world that applies not only to many aspects of the evolution of technology, especially software.
"Garbage in, garbage out."
I wonder how much of Vista is actually based on new code. Is Vista going to be Windows XP in Mac OSX's clothing? And is it going to inherit the same piss-poor security it's predecessor had? I certainly hope not.
If by malware you mean data-mining...
... I say, "Thank you."
I've been telling my friends this kind of thing for a while... My opinion of the video game industry at large is already very negative, and my opinion of their bitches - yes, I said bitches, because that's what your usual video game journalist seems to be; an unwitting, unwilling bitch of a the magazine's marketing department and the 'big studios', fellating video games and companies he or she may not even like - in the press is even worse. This article sums the case up nicely. Video game magazines suck.
To restate some of the points made in the article, the average 'professional game reviewer and journalist', whose job it is to insult our taste and intelligence with their awful articles and reviews, is very juvenile and apparently unskilled in the field of journalism in general. This may or may not be an accurate portrayal of their skill as journalists - they may in fact be instructed to convey themselves as though their balls have yet to drop - but it doesn't make me think higher of them, considering that they appear to be lowering themselves to the level of mere children in order to please the marketing department. I can barely stomach most video game journalism, because it sounds like I'm listening to a pretentious, hyperactive twelve year old rave on about a new game his parents bought for him and then compliment his own 'skill' as a gamer, even though he hasn't played the game past the first level yet, and probably can't. I know the magazines are trying to relate to teens and pre-teens, because that's where the money's really at... but give me a break. This isn't 'PSM 4Kidz!'. This is supposed to be a witty, intelligent, professionally written publication, not some snot nosed brat's 5th grade English project about what video games he got for Christmas.
The reviews really get to me in particular. The previews, too, because they're so vapid and superficial, often praising only the visual elements of the games instead of telling me whether or not I'll be able to enjoy it sober, but the reviews are the best. My friends are frequently let down by the magazines, and yet they still eat it up. (Shame on them.) Each time it's the same story. They get hooked in by the hype in the previews, read these amazing reviews, and then go buy the game... And what happens? Two out of three times the game sucks ass, and they wind up feeling cheated. The reviews are, in my eyes, commercials. They're written like commercials, they flow like commercials, the pages are even set up like commercials. This is advertising, not an honest review, and it shows. Sometimes the reviews aren't even remotely accurate, falsely portraying certain elements of the games they cover to make them look better. This is why I wait to read user reviews of games online or learn about them through the grapevine. I'd rather learn about a game from somebody who has actually played it, not some two-bit hack of a journalist who's essentially being paid to lie.
Hearing this all come from a real insider - an actual video game journalist - is very refreshing, and I'm glad that he's finally coming clean about it with himself. That's the kind of honesty I'd like to see more often in the publications! Movie reviews could use a bit of that, too, but that's another story for another day. This guy really hits the nail on the head, and it's good to see a reviewer do some reviewing of his own, and take a good look at his work and what he and his colleagues have really been contributing to... It's a shame he might not have a job much longer. Maybe he'll go and start his own magazine or something...
Maybe it'll be powered by somehow catalyzing really bad Star-Trek fanfiction.
At last, we finally know how we can counter global warming!
I think I just heard the sound of flood gates opening in the distance, followed by the rushing and roaring of what is surely a massive volume of water.
Or maybe that was the sound of thousands of Slashdotter keyboards blazing...
At any rate, this is interesting because it once again prompts the lot of us to dig up the tired old argument, "Just because more vulnerabilities are being found doesn't mean the system is less secure." As I'm certain others before me have already stated countless millions upon billions of times, the fact that the vulnerabilities are being found and repaired in a timely manner and in a much higher number is probably the reason UNIX and Linux are more secure, not less. Windows, on the other hand... vulnerabilities are slowly found, but nobody can fix them except for - you guessed it - Microsoft. (Or, in some rare cases like the recent unofficial patch for the latest Windows security hole, or should I say chasm, by some concerned programmer out there who thinks the problem is serious enough to warrant them going out of their way to figure out how to fix it without having source code on hand.)
I personally feel a lot better knowing people are actually finding security holes in software I use, and fixing them on the spot. More holes doesn't mean worse software, it means better oversight. Depending upon how successfully the vulnerabilities in an operating system or application are repaired and how quickly that is accomplished, more holes found just might equate into better security overall.
That won't, however, save us from the hordes of pro-proprietary blowhards boasting that closed source commercialware is always more secure, waving these numbers like a flag. Brace yourselves for the bullshit.
Granted this is all just speculation based upon what seem to be unverified sources, but... If this is true, it comes as no surprise to me. It's just the next step in Google's plan to replace the big bad computing oligopoly with the soon-to-be Google media, communications, and software monopoly. Of course, I'm just a crazy doomsayer without a clue, so what do I know. 2006 is going to be very interesting.
Like anyone with an ounce of sense didn't see this coming. Here we are, we puny humans, with our rudimentary grasp on genetics, modifying plants and animals and the like and releasing them into the open... and not expecting them to cross-breed and cross-pollinate with their unmodified counterparts. You know, it's this kind of crap that makes me think sometimes that being as smart as we are has made us pretty dumb.
This could make for a good movie, though. "DEATH CORN: THE TASSELING." I can see it now, a story about rogue genetically modified corn that overgrows the world, but is resistant to every herbicide, pest, bacteria, virus, and fungus known to afflict our crops. Hey, fact is often stranger than fiction. Maybe the world will in fact one day be destroyed by corn. That'd be fun.
Okay. 'Intel Inside', may not have been an incredible slogan, but at least it was... mildly catchy and somewhat memorable. It had a flow to it, it didn't sound silly, and while I doubt that the presence of an Intel processor is actually a selling point for computers nowadays, I never thought that 'Intel Inside' was a bad slogan.
'Leap Ahead', however, sounds retarded. Really now, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if you're changing off a good, well-known slogan for one that sounds stupid. I'm pretty sure the marketing department was really brainstorming this one...
"We need to give Intel a FRESH TWIST. We need to appeal to the consumer electronics market, and now more than ever our ability to market these products is going to be a factor in the future of our firm. I say we start with a new slogan and go from there."
"Uh."
(20 hours later.)
"... What about 'Leap Ahead'?"
"That's stupid. You're stupid. But our shifts have been over for about twelve hours, so let's just leave it at that."
"But speaking from 21 years' observation, this doesn't seem to have affected any of the surrounding area in any significant way."
Maybe not in your area, but imagine that effect multiplied a few hundred or a few thousand times, though. If you build or remove enough buildings and put up or tear down enough trees in a certain area, the climate is definitely going to change in the area in question. Where you live, adding trees and buildings made the air more humid. Here, removing them seems to have had the same effect. Where I live, there's a lot of clay soil, and in areas where there are no trees, the soil doesn't retain much water at all. This tells me that after it rains or after condensation occurs, all that water is going right back into the air as soon as the sun hits the ground. I'm also in a valley, and it seems to be getting more and more hot and humid here, too. There also happens to be a ton of development coming in, a trend that started a few years back.
If you put together a bunch of microclimates, you get a bigger picture. I think that if microclimates are studied closer, we'll get a much better understanding of our overall climate in general, as you implied. Factors including geography, soil content, the kinds of plant life present, the amount of roadways present, and how many and what kinds of buildings there are all play a role in determining the nature of an area's climate, and it seems to me also that most climate studies neglect to take factors like that into consideration.
I personally feel that it's going to take a lot more than cutting greenhouse gases to curb global warming. Changing what we cover our buildings and roads with and where we put trees and other plants is going to have a lot to do with it, too, and that seems to be much easier to grasp and implement than plans like ones I've been hearing of that involve removing CO2 from the air and storing it and other crap like that. Besides, having a desirable local climate is nice anyhow...
That makes a lot of sense, but I have to wonder if other dark things we tend to place in the sun aren't in fact contributing a great deal to the global warming problem, in addition to other factors such as greenhouse gases... I wonder how much more heat is retained in areas with tar roofs and black-top streets and parking lots, as opposed to areas with gravel and dirt roads and shingled/fiberglass roofs.
That aside, this is a very interesting finding. There's no doubt in my mind that the logging industry will use this as an excuse to ramp up production in the face of opposition from environmentalists, but it could also be useful in helping us understand how to control our own climate naturally. Maybe certain kinds of trees and plants reflect more heat than others. Maybe certain arrangements and placements of trees and plants are cooler or hotter than others. Landscaping for climate control, anyone?
Okay, seeing as all you physics buffs are hell bent on burning me at the stake over this little comment, I'm willing to play ball. However, unlike a couple of you, I'll refrain from lowering myself to the level of name-calling. (It's my humble opinion that while I'm no genius, I'm hardly a 'dunderhead'.)
"This thing doesn't exactly slow down your car."
Alright. Let me rephrase that. I'm perfectly aware that this thing can slow down your car. However - and I hope you folks realize this - that reduction in speed may or may not be so large as to actually matter. Granted the present design looks a lot like a speedbump, but speedbumps don't change shape and fold in like this thing does. By the look of it, once you hit it, it folds in, causing whatever mechanism is responsible for this thing generating power to do it's thing. Yes, there's some speed lost as you hit it. How much speed is lost could actually make or break this thing, as well as whether or not it creates a significant bump. I should've added in that I'd really like to see this thing in action, to make sure it's really all it's cracked up to be. Yaknow, numbers, videos, that kind of crap.
As for my comments about wasted energy and how that seems to work out, someone with an ounce of maturity was willing to explain that away without demeaning me, and I accept that reasoning as well. If the energy gained is less than the energy lost, it probably would seem pretty silly to move forward with this technology. Once again, this thing will have to be designed in order to interfere with the movement of the vehicle as little as possible while still doing its job. It seems that the surface of the ramp is textured. Maybe that's so the tires won't slip as much, and the speed difference is minimized? Anyhow, my reasoning is, it'd seem that with this system the car moves up over the ramp, pushes down on the ramp, and the ramp goes and does its thing. Gravity makes objects resting on surfaces push against said surfaces, and the surface pushes back, so there's an equilibrium there. (lol elementary physics) If that same energy deforms a surface and in doing so allows an electricity generating mechanism to function, that device is using energy that would otherwise just keep the car on the road. If I'm right in that the ramp is textured to allow car tires to grab it better, perhaps that would allow more of the energy being transferred to the tires to go into making the car move. If the speed difference is tiny if not nonexistant, and the machine still works, that'd be dandy.
Complexity? Yeah, that's an issue. I wonder if that ramp and any clones of it are capable of storing energy in themselves... Naturally, cutting energy costs for street lights and stop lights doesn't decrease the cost of repairing them if they break, but it increases the amount of money available to fix them if they do, right? If done right, the system could present a minimal degree of complexity and low maintenance costs, especially if it's built to last and is largely self-contained. If it's not all it's cracked up to be, though, there'd be no point in using it anyway. "Yeah, I'm going to place a piece of complex, fragile machinery directly in the path of oncoming traffic, with the intention of having several hundred vehicles run over it every day." I honestly hope there aren't people around with the lack of common sense necessary to buy something like this if it can't take the punishment... It's not impossible for it to be durable, either. The very same cars that'll be making these things work are proof that a machine can work long and hard without breaking down often. (At least, that was the case with some older automobiles I'm familiar with.) It might actually work, and it might not be that big a hassle to put these things into action.
Another thing to consider, cost wise, is if the amount of energy lost by the vehicle constitutes a greater cost than the amount of energy produced by the ramp. That's what it sounds like you're all getting at, is that this thing needs to not o
... And for what?
Okay, okay. I get the idea, this is essentially a means by which electricty can be derived from the same energy that drives your vehicle. However... isn't this energy that would just be wasted, anyway? This thing doesn't exactly slow down your car. It's not like it's sucking power right out of your engine. This is kinetic energy combined with the force of gravity and the weight of your car, energies that would just be wasted and poured into the ground otherwise. Ten kilowatts, depending on your perspective, may or may not in fact be 'drops in the barrel' energy wise, but it's more than enough to power devices like stop lights and road signs, granted it's stored efficiently and the devices attached to it are similarly efficient.
On a well traveled road, energy that is essentially being wasted can be recaptured and used to power lights and signs for several intersections without placing any load on the local power grid. Sure, these things are pricey, but as their price decreases with time and their efficiency and output both climb, doesn't it make sense that these things just might pay for themselves? That reduces the cost of maintaining roads in the long run by cutting out virtually all energy expenses in areas that are frequently traveled - and if the system becomes efficient enough, it could cut out the energy costs for an entire community's roadways and intersections.
This isn't 'another gas tax'. This is one less reason to have gas taxes. On a highway like ol' I-69 here in Indy, a couple handfuls of these ramps could power every lighted roadside sign and traffic signal within the city of Indianapolis, with energy to spare. Higher traffic translates directly into greater energy gains. If these things are durable enough to take the punishment, they'd pay for themselves within a matter of weeks. Now let's think about even more heavily traveled roadways, like those in New York City or LA. 10 kilowatts per panel times a few thousand automobiles a day, that's megawatts and megawatts of power being generated every day. The excess could be put into the city electrical grid, however small an amount it may be by then, and used to power other things. Street lights, low-demand municipal facilities, etc... All of this from WASTE. This is an excellent idea, and I hope to see technology like this move forward.
And before anyone replies to this, no, this is not 'just another way for the government to control our cars'. I won't be concerned about that until they start installing spike strips in these things. (And with or without ramps, that could be done at every intersection anyway....) This is hardly ripping off the taxpayer, either, if a comparatively small expense saves a ton more money. Sure, right now that expense isn't small, but it'll get smaller if enough communities buy into this stuff - perhaps even going from a few thousand dollars to just a few hundred. Money in the bank, and back in our pockets, folks... No problems here.
I don't think even a revolution, much less a scandal, will accomplish that, when our own President thinks of the Constitution as a "goddamn piece of paper." That doesn't make Ben Franklin kick any less ass, though.
And you all thought the McCarthy era was over... Nope.
Wow. Where the hell have I been? No wonder my code of ethics is getting me a lot of odd stares.
Agreed. That's like saying, "HEY GUYS! I'M GONNA HIDE ALL OF THIS STUFF IN A BOX SITTING IN THE MIDDLE OF TIMES SQUARE. I HOPE NOBODY SEES IT!" As for the roundabout logic, I don't think that their giving away the source code for Windows slowed down the transition from Microsoft to open source all that much, especially in regard to nations that lack a great deal of funding... Considering that they forbade recompilation and modification of the code, any advantages gained by having the source code besides the ability to make programs that supplement it are eliminated. I dunno, maybe I read wrong, but it seems that the entire GSP deal was a bit... odd.
Wasn't that the entire point of the Trusted Computing initiative? To give everyone online - or at least every machine - an identity? And is it not true that some of the biggest proponents of this garbage some of the people we should be trusting the least?
The pathway to Hell is paved with good intentions. Now that it seems that we won't have a choice in the matter, it looks like apparently hardware manufacturers, software vendors, media conglomerates, and politicians know what's better for us than we do. Don't buy into this bullshit.
Okay, okay. This is going to sound a LOT like yet another one of the innumerable mindless, inflammatory anti-Microsoft rants out there, but please, hear me out, okay?
Two years ago, according to several sources including Computer World - the story may also have been covered here - Microsoft gave China access to the entirety of the Windows operating system source code. This was part of a so-called 'Government Security Program', which would allow governments and international political and military organizations to supposedly build stronger security systems and firewalls. This is nothing new, I know. Microsoft has shared the Windows source code with people before. The difference here is that they are handing it directly to a governmental entity, possibly including governments that percieve the United States as an enemy or a threat. Other participants in the GSP include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Microsoft had been in talks with other 30 nations and other parties at the time the article I've referenced was written. (I'm afraid I'm strapped for time, so I can't exactly do more research at the moment to find out who the other 30 are.)
This sounds interesting, and I'd actually buy this GSP garbage if it wasn't for the fact that the agreement states that these governments can't modify or recompile the source code themselves. Either Microsoft's head honchos are really naive, or they're counting on us being just as stupid. Anyone with half a brain can understand just how much power that source code can grant you. With it, you have the ability to know every security hole - intentional or otherwise - that exists in the Windows operating system, which to this day powers a vast majority of the computers in the world. That code, which is closed to us commoners, could easily be percieved not as a security tool - who wants to use Windows for security? - but rather, as a weapon. The GSP, I theorize, was most likely a cover for a program that likely netted Microsoft a great deal of money and a lot of international government support... Honestly. China? They'd have to be braindead to think that China wouldn't use this power against us.
Admittedly, we have the same power, and we've probably had it for longer, too. This doesn't make us safer, though, if it's sealed up inside some vault somewhere, not being used to fix the security holes in Windows that plague many home users and businesses. Now we're acting surprised that China, after the fact, is training an elite team of hackers? This isn't a surprise, it's the NEXT LOGICAL STEP. That'd be like a soldier standing on Normandy Beach in 1944 saying, "Okay, I'm in the middle of a battle. I could use this here rifle to, yaknow, pick off some of these yay-hoos shootin' at me, but... Eh, I think I'll go after 'em with my combat knife instead." *HUMILIATION* So what now? China has the one weapon in the world that can actually rival the destructive and disruptive power of a nuclear weapon without even a fraction of the mess. They have the source code of the most popular and one of the least secure operating systems today, along with who knows what else. Of COURSE they're going to start attacking us. They don't LIKE us.
So what does this make Microsoft? Like I said before, are the head honchos of Microsoft really that amazingly, impossibly stupid, or have they been passing out source code to our enemies - source code that they refuse to give to virtually anyone else outside of a partner in business or an Ivy League university program - for a while now? As far as I know, the manner in which they handle the source code they give out to business partners and educational institutions is extremely strict. I've only heard of one partial leak ever occurring, and wasn't the person responsible for it found pretty quick? Anyway... Okay, here's China, saying "Microsoft Windows is a threat and a vulnerability," source code in hand, training a team of elite hackers to launch coordinated attacks against U.S. interests... Can we hold Microsof