A simple defence would be to have ultrasonic noise generators emitting enough interference to effectively jam any transmissions. It should be no more audible than the transmissions.
Of course, the average user wouldn't need or probably want this (unless they're security paranoid/enthusiasts), but it might be useful in environments where information security is essential. Maybe even 'hardened' secure devices could have built in noise generators that can't be software disabled as an extra defence feature.
It might seem simpler to just limit the frequency ranges of the built in speakers/microphones, but it doesn't eliminate the threat completely as it is still possible there could be a headset, USB sound interface or devices in the microphone and earphone jacks in use without these filters. This way, regardless of the kind of sound I/O, the surrounding area of the device is blacked out.
The whole concept of 'swearwords', IMHO is terribly outdated anyway. As someone else mentioned above, while these select words are considered taboo, their synonyms are not. Why is it okay to say 'crap' or 'poo' and not 'shit'? They mean the exact same thing.
I can only imagine it was taboo to say 'shit' in public because of what it meant, but no-one seems to care about that any more. Everyone remembers it's a taboo word, but not why.
It would be nice to see a new Commander Keen game, but it probably won't come from Apogee, or 3D realms for that matter. Last I checked it's still the IP of id software, which developed the original Keen games. Apogee was just one of the publishers of the games.
Also, the games were designed by Tom Hall, who left id ages ago (actually, he worked for 3D realms for a while), but now works at KingsIsle Entertainment.
Hmm...
I can imagine a drug dealer or someone building his own robot to anonymously attack and destroy this one. Then this one gets repaired and beefed up, and maybe a few friends add their own robots to the posse. The next time the offending 'bot comes around, the robots swarm around it and take it out. Then this 'bot's builder gets some of his mates and they make bigger and badder robots to combat this new threat; adding chainsaws and flamethrowers.
Soon, the whole thing escalates to a super-serious Robot Wars on the city streets!
Mechanical gangs fighting it out for street territory!
Soon, everyone would be too scared to go out at night in case they run into a gang of robots; barricading themselves in their homes and lying awake in horror to the sounds of the metallic carnage going outside their windows!
Melodrama aside, it would be pretty cool to watch the all-out robotic street brawls --from a distance. It'd be like something out of Terminator.
GLQuake still runs fine on my shiny new nVidia, and at crazy resolutions and frame rates:) OpenGL written applications have a tendancy to work forever anyway, (unlike a certain other API we all know *cough* DirectX *cough*) at least graphically.
There's got to be a better game example for this.
I hope my old Voodoo hasn't been thrown out. Like to see it in action;)
It's been a while since I've used it, but I found RHIDE http://sourceforge.net/projects/rhide to be quite useful. It's an old-skool Borland IDE clone with build in debugger support and runs in a console.
Wait a minute! These things can run at 350GHz (o_o) at ROOM TEMPERATURE! The fancy cooling is all nice and good, and 500GHz... well congratulations!
But heck, I'll take one even without the cooling.
Why is it that as soon as processors get more powerful, memory becomes cheaper and hard disks get bigger, the next operating systems and applications suddenly need a lot more of it; but still present you with essentially the exact same thing?
Programs written in interpreted languages need higher systems specs to run at the speeds we are used to. Sure, the modern systems can handle it no problem; but shouldn't faster computers mean faster programs and response times? Instead we get the same or only slightly faster results because we program them in slower ways because it's easier and faster for us to do it that way. Maybe we're all just getting lazy.
And with operating systems, I mean Vista in particular: by the system requirements you can tell it's a resource hog. I was horrified by the system requirements of XP when it was released, and after I upgraded and started using it I asked myself: 'What was the big deal? How is this better than 2000 besides a shinier interface?' What about Vista requires the system specs it asks for? The even shinier interface?
I played the IBM/PC (that sounds so strange now) version of The Bard's Tale and I loved it! It's still a cool game, although I have played the NES version from their screenshot and it sucks, BAD. Didn't like the new Bard's Tale game at all: it had absolutely NO connection to the original series other than the name and a bard. Wow.
Didn't know there was a speccy version. Will have to look out for it...
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A simple defence would be to have ultrasonic noise generators emitting enough interference to effectively jam any transmissions. It should be no more audible than the transmissions.
Of course, the average user wouldn't need or probably want this (unless they're security paranoid/enthusiasts), but it might be useful in environments where information security is essential. Maybe even 'hardened' secure devices could have built in noise generators that can't be software disabled as an extra defence feature.
It might seem simpler to just limit the frequency ranges of the built in speakers/microphones, but it doesn't eliminate the threat completely as it is still possible there could be a headset, USB sound interface or devices in the microphone and earphone jacks in use without these filters. This way, regardless of the kind of sound I/O, the surrounding area of the device is blacked out.
The whole concept of 'swearwords', IMHO is terribly outdated anyway. As someone else mentioned above, while these select words are considered taboo, their synonyms are not. Why is it okay to say 'crap' or 'poo' and not 'shit'? They mean the exact same thing. I can only imagine it was taboo to say 'shit' in public because of what it meant, but no-one seems to care about that any more. Everyone remembers it's a taboo word, but not why.
It would be nice to see a new Commander Keen game, but it probably won't come from Apogee, or 3D realms for that matter. Last I checked it's still the IP of id software, which developed the original Keen games. Apogee was just one of the publishers of the games. Also, the games were designed by Tom Hall, who left id ages ago (actually, he worked for 3D realms for a while), but now works at KingsIsle Entertainment.
Hmm... I can imagine a drug dealer or someone building his own robot to anonymously attack and destroy this one. Then this one gets repaired and beefed up, and maybe a few friends add their own robots to the posse. The next time the offending 'bot comes around, the robots swarm around it and take it out. Then this 'bot's builder gets some of his mates and they make bigger and badder robots to combat this new threat; adding chainsaws and flamethrowers.
Soon, the whole thing escalates to a super-serious Robot Wars on the city streets!
Mechanical gangs fighting it out for street territory!
Soon, everyone would be too scared to go out at night in case they run into a gang of robots; barricading themselves in their homes and lying awake in horror to the sounds of the metallic carnage going outside their windows!
Melodrama aside, it would be pretty cool to watch the all-out robotic street brawls --from a distance. It'd be like something out of Terminator.
GLQuake still runs fine on my shiny new nVidia, and at crazy resolutions and frame rates :) OpenGL written applications have a tendancy to work forever anyway, (unlike a certain other API we all know *cough* DirectX *cough*) at least graphically.
;)
There's got to be a better game example for this.
I hope my old Voodoo hasn't been thrown out. Like to see it in action
It's been a while since I've used it, but I found RHIDE http://sourceforge.net/projects/rhide to be quite useful. It's an old-skool Borland IDE clone with build in debugger support and runs in a console.
Wait a minute! These things can run at 350GHz (o_o) at ROOM TEMPERATURE! The fancy cooling is all nice and good, and 500GHz... well congratulations!
But heck, I'll take one even without the cooling.
Why is it that as soon as processors get more powerful, memory becomes cheaper and hard disks get bigger, the next operating systems and applications suddenly need a lot more of it; but still present you with essentially the exact same thing?
Programs written in interpreted languages need higher systems specs to run at the speeds we are used to. Sure, the modern systems can handle it no problem; but shouldn't faster computers mean faster programs and response times? Instead we get the same or only slightly faster results because we program them in slower ways because it's easier and faster for us to do it that way. Maybe we're all just getting lazy.
And with operating systems, I mean Vista in particular: by the system requirements you can tell it's a resource hog. I was horrified by the system requirements of XP when it was released, and after I upgraded and started using it I asked myself: 'What was the big deal? How is this better than 2000 besides a shinier interface?' What about Vista requires the system specs it asks for? The even shinier interface?
What's going to happen to OpenGL? The API can't die! I don't want to have to use DirectX! What will I use in Linux?
I played the IBM/PC (that sounds so strange now) version of The Bard's Tale and I loved it! It's still a cool game, although I have played the NES version from their screenshot and it sucks, BAD. Didn't like the new Bard's Tale game at all: it had absolutely NO connection to the original series other than the name and a bard. Wow. Didn't know there was a speccy version. Will have to look out for it...