Re:Sinclair ?
on
High Score
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· Score: 3, Informative
There's a reason that people don't remember the Sinclair when talking about the history of video/computer games, and that reason is that the Sinclair was and is utterly unimportant in this regard.
I disagree. With titles such as Alien 8, Head Over Heels, Laser Squad, Manic Miner and Spindizzy, the Sinclair was both an inspiration and an affordable training ground for many of Britain's current top coders. A lot of promising and prominent commercial game designers have listed Spectrum games among their all-time favorites - among them Frederic Raynal of Alone in the Dark fame, David Perry of Shiny Entertainment and Demis Hassabis of up-and-coming Elixir Studios. Read an interview in the British games magazine Edge sometime, and you'll see just how often the Spectrum pops up.
Actually, a sphere passing through a 2D world would appear to be a point, then a line of increasing length, then decreasing length, then a point again.
If 2D lifeforms did exist (Planiverse suggests they would need zipper-like 2D organ structures) it's quite likely they would have some form of 'depth' perception - along a plane, of course. A sphere intersecting with their world could indeed be recognized as a circle, much like our brains can recognize the depth difference between a ball and a flat disc.
The interesting thing about a book like Planiverse is that it inspires you to think about higher dimensions, using the simple 2D to 3D examples in the book as analogies. In my opinion, this serves as a better starting point for learning about the fourth dimension than any visualization applet.
Re:Good, but did the same mistake as Batman did
on
Review: Spiderman
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Much like Batman, Spider-Man has plenty of enemies in the comic book series; Sandman would in fact be the least of his problems. Unlike Batman though, Spider-Man doesn't seem to be limited to just one or two interesting arch-nemeses.
For the first movie, I would've liked to see Spidey take on a non-superhuman like the Kingpin. That way, the audience would've gotten a better idea of how Spider-Man's powers compare to those of a human foe, albeit an extremely rich, well-armed and resourceful one.
Then there's Dr. Octopus. To an extent, his mechanical tentacles give him similar mobility to Spider-Man, which should make for some very interesting battles and chase scenes across the cityscape. The problem with Doc Ock is that he's another crazed scientist in a techno suit, making him less suitable for an immediate sequel.
Speaking of crazed scientists, there's also the Lizard, whose tragic history would place Spider-Man's own genesis into an interesting context. If you've ever seen the Spider-Man cartoons, you'll know that at some point in the story the spider-half of Parker's genetic makeup becomes dominant, essentially transforming him into a giant spider very slowly. He seeks out the help of Lizard's human alter ego, who in turn is desperately trying to keep his own animal side from gaining control.
And of course you've got Rhino, who's probably not impressive enough as an enemy; Elektro, whose powers seem too straightforward (let's not mention his ridiculous costume either); Mysterio, who would make for some very tiresome illusion-inside-an-illusion storytelling; and Sandman, who.. well... After 'The Mummy', his powers just wouldn't be all that impressive to audiences.
The ultimate foe for Spider-Man would probably be Venom, or maybe Carnage. The problem with those two is their back story: even if it could be squeezed into one movie, it's probably too far-fetched for most movie audiences. A genetically altered human gaining spider-like powers is hard enough to swallow; let's not enter symbiotic alien suits from a galaxy far away into the equasion. Still, as long as Venom remains an evil, more powerful version of Spider-Man, Raimi can adapt his back story however he sees fit.
And if they REALLY run out of ideas, they could always have some mercenary uncover all of Osbourne's research, expose himself to the same technology, and turn him into the Hobgoblin...
As games are starting to require more memory all the time, you can't simply save & exit or minimize one without a significant amount of waiting and/or rattling from your hard disk. By the time the game has disappeared from view, your boss may already be onto you. And then there's the Windows taskbar, prominently displaying the game's minimized icon.
Back in the days of DOS, most Sierra adventure games came equipped with a solution in the form of a 'boss key' - F5, if I remember correctly. Quickly pressing the key when you heard your boss approaching wouldn't exit or minimize the game - this is 640k DOS, after all - but it would bring up a mockup screenshot of a spreadsheet.
Something similar could be used in modern games. It wouldn't actually exit the game, but it would very quickly display a fake workscreen without the telltale taskbar icon. It could even have a limited amount of interactivity or animation. If your boss asked you to punch up a different document, for instance, it could display a fake BSOD the moment you touched the Start button.
Then, you could make a big scene out of it, claiming that this always happens because your computer has far too little memory and the video card has no 3D capabilities...
...it's Slashdot as well. I go limp with frustration every time I read about the latest DMCA lawsuit while waiting for the porn to load in my other browser window. Recently, I've even begun to recall articles on Microsoft security leaks while having sex with my girlfriend, just so I can prolong orgasm. I'm telling you, that Plug&Play issue from a while back left us both raw and dehydrated.
Really? I didn't think his post was all that inflammatory. I thought he was merely trying to illustrate the other side of the story, the one that didn't become completely obvious to me from reading the web page. Yet, for whatever reason, people are furious, calling him a troll or worse. He has a different viewpoint -- he must be one of them! Pinko! Commie!
Well, I happen to think he raised a few good points in his post. Perhaps he's wrong; fine, we can discuss this here, and point out the weaknesses in his arguments. But merely calling him names, pegging him with the spammers and saying he deserves that is... well, it's not even zealotry, it's McCarthyism.
I defended some of his arguments. Does that make me a spambag? Am I now officially part of the mainsleaze spam lobby? Do I deserve to written off as a clueless marketdroid, too? Are you prepared to level that accusation at me, in all honesty?
Perhaps you're right. I hope you are, because the hole Shifman is digging for himself is becoming awfully deep. I don't think he really needs to be protected from the anti-spam activists who are obviously smarter than him. I do, however, get the impression that he could use a little protection from himself every now and then.
I don't know for certain. It's just that Shifman strikes me as someone who doesn't know how to face his mistakes, or deal with his anger. As he becomes angrier, he resorts to worse forms of harassment - which amuses the anti-spam activists greatly - which in turn makes him angrier. At what point exactly do you say "enough's enough"? When he becomes so blinded with anger that he physically hurts someone? Or himself?
Do you want this man to be pointed out the error of his ways, or ridiculed into oblivion? And if he stubbornly refuses to accept his errors, does that excuse you to continue pressing his buttons until his fits of anger no longer amuse you?
Imagine a police officer giving a Tourette's Syndrome patient a ticket for speeding - the Tourette's patient becomes agitated, loses himself in a stream of cursewords, and all of a sudden his fine is doubled for insulting an officer of the law. Will he A) sheepishly accept the ticket and go about his business or B) become more agitated and therefore more prone to shouting obscenities?
Okay, the parallel's a bit off and I admit that I don't know much about Tourette's syndrome at all, but I think you catch my drift. If I get spammed on any account other than Hotmail, I will usually try and send a notice to the spammer and his ISP. Anything he sends after that, I just have to delete. I mean, if he doesn't get it by then, he probably never will - and his ISP obviously doesn't care.
In my experience, people who use the term 'anti-spam zealots' are either spambags themselves, of members of the mainsleaze spam lobby, (i.e. Ken Magill of the Direct Marketing Associations, or various random clueless marketdroids who occasionally write for mainstream rags).
That's harsh, man. The guy just presented an alternative viewpoint to this whole case - one which he obviously researched and which tells a story many people reading about the Shifman case probably don't know about - and you call him spambag, sleaze, or clueless.
And then you wonder why he uses a term like 'anti-spam zealot'... Sheesh.
Look, I hate spam as much as the next guy, and Shifman obviously is at fault here, but-- dammit, did it really take four of you to poke through the bars of this rabid dog's cage? I think that question is actually quite legitimate.
Same here; I've yet to see it, but just about the only comment I've heard levelled at LotR is that Ian McKellen pretty much out-acts everyone else on the screen. Other than that, many (professional, respected, established) critics in my country are billing it as one of the top movies of 2001.
Hey Nagora, are you sure you didn't accidentally walk in to a rerun of Dungeon & Dragons?
No doubt some politician somewhere is going to try to sell this as an argument for stricter controls on computer games - or perhaps on encryption technology, as the terrorist probably communicated through encrypted messages.
The irony here is that, if you follow this rationale of "outlaw any technology that could be misused" to its extreme, the first thing you should outlaw is the kerosine-filled airplanes which actually caused all the damage. But you won't hear any politician suggest that.
I kinda got that feeling, too... Right after the first speculations on Bin Laden involvement began to surface, I was reminded of this article on Slashdot, posted last week:
Israel was there first and the stupid Arabs took it after Nazi's took the country.
I suggest you throw your computer in the waste bin and try to find the nearest history book. Comment priviliges will be revoked until you have a proper perspective on this situation. Sorry.
> Nintendo's Game Boy Advanced handheld console >(Does anybody *still* use those?) which will be
Don't be such a snob. Let's not forget that one of the most succesful RPG adventures in recent time appeared exclusively on the Game Boy. You might have heard of it; it's an obscure little game by the name of "Pokémon". The fact that Nintendo is still here today, in spite of overwhelming competition from Sony (and to a lesser degree, Sega) can be attributed mostly to the success of the Game Boy. That's not bad for a piece of twenty-year old technology. I only wish PC programmers knew how to extend the lifespans of their platforms like that.
Once I had this dream (more like a nightmare) about a game called SimKampf. As you can probably gather from the title, it involved building and maintaining a concentration camp, as well as harvesting "resources" for new construction materials and technology.
The really disturbing part was that in my dream, the game was addictive as hell, sort of like the original SimCity. It even looked similar; imagine that instead of drawing power lines with your cursor, you had to draw electric fences. Oh, and there were no residential or commercial area's. Just miles and miles of factory-like buildings, complete with smoking chimneys...
Needless to say I was kinda freaked out when I woke up the next morning. I mean, it was probably just a late-night-pizza-and-war-movie-induced dream, but I couldn't help but feel ashamed. It was, without a doubt, the single most horrific game idea I've ever had.
I pointed this out a couple of posts ago; Mr. Poe probably wouldn't have overlooked a problem as glaring as this (that is, if he bothered to read back his own encrypted text), so one has to assume it was done intentionally. Ambiguous characters might default to one of the alphabets, or they might constitute an alphabet of their own. Either way, it makes it that much harder to figure out.
I tried seperating the alphabets, but it's very difficult because certain characters are impossible to tell apart from eachother. For instance, the lowercase 'c', 'o', 's', 'v', 'w', 'x' and 'z' are almost identical to their smallcaps counterparts.
Also, the aligment of the alphabets on certain lines makes it extremely hard to tell what alphabet a letter belongs to. For instance, try to separate the lowercase 'b' from upside-down lowercase 'q', lowercase 'd' from upside-down lowercase 'p', lowercase 'n' from upside-down lowercase 'u', lowercase and smallcaps 'o' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'o', lowercase and smallcaps 'x' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'x', and lowercase and smallcaps 'x' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'z'.
Poe must have known this would be a problem when he constructed the puzzle. Perhaps ambiguous characters default to a certain alphabet, or form an alphabet by themselves?
I live in the Netherlands, where guns are outlawed and soft-drugs are legal. Our crime-rates are amongst the lowest in Europe (almost on par with Germany, although Germany has not legalized soft-drugs), and are - proportionally speaking - far lower than those of the US.
In fact, Barry McAffrey, drug advisor for the Clinton administration and an avid supporter of the so-called "War on Drugs" (tm), was forced to reconsider his opinions about the Netherlands when he visited our country last year. Up until then, he had claimed that our drug policies were a total failure - when in fact they are a huge succes, judging by both national and international statistics.
(The funny thing is, when he voiced his opinions about the Netherlands the first time, the US media were all over it. But the second time, when he reconsidered them in front of several national and international television crews during a press statement, even CNN somehow failed to pick up on it.)
But I'm digressing. Let me just say this: ask yourself why, outside of the US, public shooting sprees like the one in Columbine virtually never happen. Sure, the UK and Australia had some a while back, but those were exceptions, whereas in the US it seems like is starting to happen on a bi-monthly basis.
The reason? Gun laws. We outlaw guns. See, the argument pro-gun activists use is that when guns are outlawed, only criminals carry guns. That may be true, but a lot of the damage in public shooting sprees is done by mentally unstable people, not criminals. Criminals conduct their shootings in drive-by's and up-close hits. The last thing they want is to be caught, so they do it quickly, quietly, and preferably without witnesses.
Mentally unstable people, on the other hand, don't care about getting caught. They just want to shoot as many people as they feel are responsible for their demise, and if a few innocents get in the way, that's okay - they probably intended to kill themselves afterwards anyway, so they don't have to deal with any consequences.
One argument I've heard against this is that if we're all allowed to carry guns, and one of us goes on a shooting spree, we can stop that person by taking him out with a gun. It seems logical, except for one thing: by the time a gun is drawn in defense, chaos has already ensued, people are running everywhere, and a lot of life has already been lost.
So what's the answer? I don't know. I don't claim to have the perfect solution, except that when I look at the situation here in the Netherlands (and, to a lesser extent, in Europe) and compare that to the US, I can't help but feel good gun-laws could have saved some lives.
One closing thought: a friend of mine once half-jokingly confessed how he wished he had a shotgun, so he could shoot everyone who was bullying him at school. The problem was, he said, that he had no idea how to get one. He imagined he would probably have to deal with all sorts of shady characters before getting his hands on one, and that just seemed too much of a hassle. So that's all it remained to him: a secret wish.
Maybe, but there's no reason why that same governement in North Korea can't buy or construct similar software without having to steal it from the US - given enough time and resources, of course.
That's the whole problem with US encryption export restrictions; anything that can be thought of or manufactured in the US of A, can also be thought of or manufactured anywhere else in the world (well, technically speaking anyway). While the US governement was vigilantly trying to protect its technology, the rest of the world was simply playing catch-up. Now that non-US companies are freely selling and exporting encryption products of similar or identical strength as their American counterparts to anywhere in the world, US companies are finding themselves crippled by the very laws that were meant to protect them.
Slashdot Mirror
Much like Batman, Spider-Man has plenty of enemies in the comic book series; Sandman would in fact be the least of his problems. Unlike Batman though, Spider-Man doesn't seem to be limited to just one or two interesting arch-nemeses.
For the first movie, I would've liked to see Spidey take on a non-superhuman like the Kingpin. That way, the audience would've gotten a better idea of how Spider-Man's powers compare to those of a human foe, albeit an extremely rich, well-armed and resourceful one.
Then there's Dr. Octopus. To an extent, his mechanical tentacles give him similar mobility to Spider-Man, which should make for some very interesting battles and chase scenes across the cityscape. The problem with Doc Ock is that he's another crazed scientist in a techno suit, making him less suitable for an immediate sequel.
Speaking of crazed scientists, there's also the Lizard, whose tragic history would place Spider-Man's own genesis into an interesting context. If you've ever seen the Spider-Man cartoons, you'll know that at some point in the story the spider-half of Parker's genetic makeup becomes dominant, essentially transforming him into a giant spider very slowly. He seeks out the help of Lizard's human alter ego, who in turn is desperately trying to keep his own animal side from gaining control.
And of course you've got Rhino, who's probably not impressive enough as an enemy; Elektro, whose powers seem too straightforward (let's not mention his ridiculous costume either); Mysterio, who would make for some very tiresome illusion-inside-an-illusion storytelling; and Sandman, who.. well... After 'The Mummy', his powers just wouldn't be all that impressive to audiences.
The ultimate foe for Spider-Man would probably be Venom, or maybe Carnage. The problem with those two is their back story: even if it could be squeezed into one movie, it's probably too far-fetched for most movie audiences. A genetically altered human gaining spider-like powers is hard enough to swallow; let's not enter symbiotic alien suits from a galaxy far away into the equasion. Still, as long as Venom remains an evil, more powerful version of Spider-Man, Raimi can adapt his back story however he sees fit.
And if they REALLY run out of ideas, they could always have some mercenary uncover all of Osbourne's research, expose himself to the same technology, and turn him into the Hobgoblin...
As games are starting to require more memory all the time, you can't simply save & exit or minimize one without a significant amount of waiting and/or rattling from your hard disk. By the time the game has disappeared from view, your boss may already be onto you. And then there's the Windows taskbar, prominently displaying the game's minimized icon.
Back in the days of DOS, most Sierra adventure games came equipped with a solution in the form of a 'boss key' - F5, if I remember correctly. Quickly pressing the key when you heard your boss approaching wouldn't exit or minimize the game - this is 640k DOS, after all - but it would bring up a mockup screenshot of a spreadsheet.
Something similar could be used in modern games. It wouldn't actually exit the game, but it would very quickly display a fake workscreen without the telltale taskbar icon. It could even have a limited amount of interactivity or animation. If your boss asked you to punch up a different document, for instance, it could display a fake BSOD the moment you touched the Start button.
Then, you could make a big scene out of it, claiming that this always happens because your computer has far too little memory and the video card has no 3D capabilities...
...it's Slashdot as well. I go limp with frustration every time I read about the latest DMCA lawsuit while waiting for the porn to load in my other browser window. Recently, I've even begun to recall articles on Microsoft security leaks while having sex with my girlfriend, just so I can prolong orgasm. I'm telling you, that Plug&Play issue from a while back left us both raw and dehydrated.
Really? I didn't think his post was all that inflammatory. I thought he was merely trying to illustrate the other side of the story, the one that didn't become completely obvious to me from reading the web page. Yet, for whatever reason, people are furious, calling him a troll or worse. He has a different viewpoint -- he must be one of them! Pinko! Commie!
Well, I happen to think he raised a few good points in his post. Perhaps he's wrong; fine, we can discuss this here, and point out the weaknesses in his arguments. But merely calling him names, pegging him with the spammers and saying he deserves that is... well, it's not even zealotry, it's McCarthyism.
I defended some of his arguments. Does that make me a spambag? Am I now officially part of the mainsleaze spam lobby? Do I deserve to written off as a clueless marketdroid, too? Are you prepared to level that accusation at me, in all honesty?
Must be easy living in your world.
Perhaps you're right. I hope you are, because the hole Shifman is digging for himself is becoming awfully deep. I don't think he really needs to be protected from the anti-spam activists who are obviously smarter than him. I do, however, get the impression that he could use a little protection from himself every now and then.
Because even rapists and murderers have rights?
I don't know for certain. It's just that Shifman strikes me as someone who doesn't know how to face his mistakes, or deal with his anger. As he becomes angrier, he resorts to worse forms of harassment - which amuses the anti-spam activists greatly - which in turn makes him angrier. At what point exactly do you say "enough's enough"? When he becomes so blinded with anger that he physically hurts someone? Or himself?
Do you want this man to be pointed out the error of his ways, or ridiculed into oblivion? And if he stubbornly refuses to accept his errors, does that excuse you to continue pressing his buttons until his fits of anger no longer amuse you?
Imagine a police officer giving a Tourette's Syndrome patient a ticket for speeding - the Tourette's patient becomes agitated, loses himself in a stream of cursewords, and all of a sudden his fine is doubled for insulting an officer of the law. Will he A) sheepishly accept the ticket and go about his business or B) become more agitated and therefore more prone to shouting obscenities?
Okay, the parallel's a bit off and I admit that I don't know much about Tourette's syndrome at all, but I think you catch my drift. If I get spammed on any account other than Hotmail, I will usually try and send a notice to the spammer and his ISP. Anything he sends after that, I just have to delete. I mean, if he doesn't get it by then, he probably never will - and his ISP obviously doesn't care.
So... then... technically, George is actually doing me a favor?
Then again-- 35 year old virgin sci-fi geeks and screaming teenage girls in the same theater? I mean, just imagine the smell.
Same here; I've yet to see it, but just about the only comment I've heard levelled at LotR is that Ian McKellen pretty much out-acts everyone else on the screen. Other than that, many (professional, respected, established) critics in my country are billing it as one of the top movies of 2001.
Hey Nagora, are you sure you didn't accidentally walk in to a rerun of Dungeon & Dragons?
No doubt some politician somewhere is going to try to sell this as an argument for stricter controls on computer games - or perhaps on encryption technology, as the terrorist probably communicated through encrypted messages.
The irony here is that, if you follow this rationale of "outlaw any technology that could be misused" to its extreme, the first thing you should outlaw is the kerosine-filled airplanes which actually caused all the damage. But you won't hear any politician suggest that.
I kinda got that feeling, too... Right after the first speculations on Bin Laden involvement began to surface, I was reminded of this article on Slashdot, posted last week:
Hosting Provider Shut Down By FBI
I wonder if the Feds were already on to something then? Or maybe they knew something was up, and they were desperately trying to find out what?
I suggest you throw your computer in the waste bin and try to find the nearest history book. Comment priviliges will be revoked until you have a proper perspective on this situation. Sorry.
> Nintendo's Game Boy Advanced handheld console
>(Does anybody *still* use those?) which will be
Don't be such a snob. Let's not forget that one of the most succesful RPG adventures in recent time appeared exclusively on the Game Boy. You might have heard of it; it's an obscure little game by the name of "Pokémon". The fact that Nintendo is still here today, in spite of overwhelming competition from Sony (and to a lesser degree, Sega) can be attributed mostly to the success of the Game Boy. That's not bad for a piece of twenty-year old technology. I only wish PC programmers knew how to extend the lifespans of their platforms like that.
Once I had this dream (more like a nightmare) about a game called SimKampf. As you can probably gather from the title, it involved building and maintaining a concentration camp, as well as harvesting "resources" for new construction materials and technology.
The really disturbing part was that in my dream, the game was addictive as hell, sort of like the original SimCity. It even looked similar; imagine that instead of drawing power lines with your cursor, you had to draw electric fences. Oh, and there were no residential or commercial area's. Just miles and miles of factory-like buildings, complete with smoking chimneys...
Needless to say I was kinda freaked out when I woke up the next morning. I mean, it was probably just a late-night-pizza-and-war-movie-induced dream, but I couldn't help but feel ashamed. It was, without a doubt, the single most horrific game idea I've ever had.
I pointed this out a couple of posts ago; Mr. Poe probably wouldn't have overlooked a problem as glaring as this (that is, if he bothered to read back his own encrypted text), so one has to assume it was done intentionally. Ambiguous characters might default to one of the alphabets, or they might constitute an alphabet of their own. Either way, it makes it that much harder to figure out.
I tried seperating the alphabets, but it's very difficult because certain characters are impossible to tell apart from eachother. For instance, the lowercase 'c', 'o', 's', 'v', 'w', 'x' and 'z' are almost identical to their smallcaps counterparts.
Also, the aligment of the alphabets on certain lines makes it extremely hard to tell what alphabet a letter belongs to. For instance, try to separate the lowercase 'b' from upside-down lowercase 'q', lowercase 'd' from upside-down lowercase 'p', lowercase 'n' from upside-down lowercase 'u', lowercase and smallcaps 'o' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'o', lowercase and smallcaps 'x' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'x', and lowercase and smallcaps 'x' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'z'.
Poe must have known this would be a problem when he constructed the puzzle. Perhaps ambiguous characters default to a certain alphabet, or form an alphabet by themselves?
Oh my god... Radja, you are joking, right?
I live in the Netherlands, where guns are outlawed and soft-drugs are legal. Our crime-rates are amongst the lowest in Europe (almost on par with Germany, although Germany has not legalized soft-drugs), and are - proportionally speaking - far lower than those of the US.
In fact, Barry McAffrey, drug advisor for the Clinton administration and an avid supporter of the so-called "War on Drugs" (tm), was forced to reconsider his opinions about the Netherlands when he visited our country last year. Up until then, he had claimed that our drug policies were a total failure - when in fact they are a huge succes, judging by both national and international statistics.
(The funny thing is, when he voiced his opinions about the Netherlands the first time, the US media were all over it. But the second time, when he reconsidered them in front of several national and international television crews during a press statement, even CNN somehow failed to pick up on it.)
But I'm digressing. Let me just say this: ask yourself why, outside of the US, public shooting sprees like the one in Columbine virtually never happen. Sure, the UK and Australia had some a while back, but those were exceptions, whereas in the US it seems like is starting to happen on a bi-monthly basis.
The reason? Gun laws. We outlaw guns. See, the argument pro-gun activists use is that when guns are outlawed, only criminals carry guns. That may be true, but a lot of the damage in public shooting sprees is done by mentally unstable people, not criminals. Criminals conduct their shootings in drive-by's and up-close hits. The last thing they want is to be caught, so they do it quickly, quietly, and preferably without witnesses.
Mentally unstable people, on the other hand, don't care about getting caught. They just want to shoot as many people as they feel are responsible for their demise, and if a few innocents get in the way, that's okay - they probably intended to kill themselves afterwards anyway, so they don't have to deal with any consequences.
One argument I've heard against this is that if we're all allowed to carry guns, and one of us goes on a shooting spree, we can stop that person by taking him out with a gun. It seems logical, except for one thing: by the time a gun is drawn in defense, chaos has already ensued, people are running everywhere, and a lot of life has already been lost.
So what's the answer? I don't know. I don't claim to have the perfect solution, except that when I look at the situation here in the Netherlands (and, to a lesser extent, in Europe) and compare that to the US, I can't help but feel good gun-laws could have saved some lives.
One closing thought: a friend of mine once half-jokingly confessed how he wished he had a shotgun, so he could shoot everyone who was bullying him at school. The problem was, he said, that he had no idea how to get one. He imagined he would probably have to deal with all sorts of shady characters before getting his hands on one, and that just seemed too much of a hassle. So that's all it remained to him: a secret wish.
- VictorMaybe, but there's no reason why that same governement in North Korea can't buy or construct similar software without having to steal it from the US - given enough time and resources, of course.
That's the whole problem with US encryption export restrictions; anything that can be thought of or manufactured in the US of A, can also be thought of or manufactured anywhere else in the world (well, technically speaking anyway). While the US governement was vigilantly trying to protect its technology, the rest of the world was simply playing catch-up. Now that non-US companies are freely selling and exporting encryption products of similar or identical strength as their American counterparts to anywhere in the world, US companies are finding themselves crippled by the very laws that were meant to protect them.