If people can find general small scale security exploits in Windows, what makes you think they'd be able to hide a full blown back door?
Sorry but it's just fantasy, paranoia. We've had this theory before but no one ever manages to find any traces of this backdoor. If you have it installed you can dissect the OS to your hearts content, you can be rest assured for all the money and skill the NSA have it's nothing compared to the millions of researchers, hackers and criminals that would love nothing more than to find that backdoor.
You seem to be taking it a step further and suggesting it's bugged- tell me, if it's for intelligence gathering why is no one seeing any unrecognised outbound traffic on their networking hardware that could be part of this? do you think the NSA have developed a protocol that is invisible to routers but somehow still gets routed? Or do you think every router manufacturer in the world is in on it too and people who have dissected those have just not found it either?
It's a wild conspiracy theory, it's non-sensical and has no basis in reality. The PC is an open platform, you can't just hide that sort of thing from everyone, someone is going to find traces of it, evidence of it.
But get this, here's a bigger reason it's a stupid idea- do you really think the KGB could get this past CSIS, MI5, MI6, the FSB and other foreign intelligence services? Don't you think MI5 would be up in arms if the NSA had access to the data of the UK's biggest companies able to bankrupt them at any moment by leaking their most confidential secrets?
Twist Microsoft's words all you want, but it's pretty clear what they said. It doesn't just sound paranoid, it is paranoid, irrationally so. It is what it is, the guy helped advise Microsoft on security- from the summary at least it doesn't sound like he got close to the source code even.
But then, perhaps I'm a Microsoft/NSA plant right? Surely that's a good explanation to keep yourself convinced of such a ludicrous idea as conspiracy nuts ultimately choose to do?
Yep. In recent times also Mercenairies 2 was one of the best coop games I've ever played, if not the best, the free world with so many vehicles and toys to play with just opened so many doors to play around- just doing fun stuff like sticking the cruise missile target beacon onto the side of your friends helicopter and watch him fly around with a cruise missile chasing him was pretty funny. Attacking the enemy base by stealing a large enemy helicopter then slowly dismantling their base by airlifting all their tanks off the edge of a cliff one by one rather than going in guns blazing was pretty funny too.
I'm concerned what'll happen now- will EA do away with the EA authentication servers which you have to connect to to be able to play coop even on the XBox where being connected to live should do? I'm guessing this likely means no Mercenairies 3 either which is sad.
Pandemic produced quite a few good games, it's sad that it's yet another company EA has raped, because well, rape really is the most relevant term to describe what EA does to companies it takes over.
Yes, it seems that basically it's just a thin client for Google's web apps. I'm not sure what the point is really, I have one of those on my PC in software already, it's called Firefox.
I find the choice of DirectX quite interesting, I've been looking recently at doing some basic game programming again just for a bit of fun and was rather shocked to find what an utter mess graphics programming has become on the Windows platform.
Many years ago, when I last played around with graphics programming it was pretty straightforward, you used DirectX or OpenGL. For your game editors you'd use MFC or the Win32 API (or something 3rd party like SDL). It didn't really matter which you chose, but if you chose say C++, OpenGL and MFC for example you'd just use those for your editors, the game engine, you could use that one set of technologies for your entire development process.
Fast forward 10 years to the point we have things like Java and.NET offering perfectly acceptable managed code performance, with the benefits you'd expect from managed code- no worrying about deleting variables, pointers and so on, you can just write your code and it works, and works on whatever platform there is a VM for. Tools like Visual Studio have taken forward editing of the interface fairly well for Windows Forms and such and WPF. I thought great,.NET, Windows Forms, XNA, making an editor and a game will make no time at all.
What should have happened in the last 10 years:
The single toolchain should still exist, but with the benefits of managed code,.NET and such to make development across the relevant platforms (i.e. for the XBox 360 and PC with XNA) much more quick and easy.
What actually happened:
GDI is crap, they release DirectX and GDI+. Later.NET came along, Microsoft thought, hey, we need a managed version of DirectX and created Managed DirectX. They start thinking about interfaces for the future and realise GDI+ and Windows Forms don't cut it, apparently DirectX isn't to stray from games related stuff so they release WPF which has it's own 2D and 3D rendering libraries. They want XBox development, using C++ or C# with DirectX would be too easy, so instead let's create a new API and set of tools, called XNA they think. Great, and XNA is quick and easy to get to grips with, I'll give them that, in fact, it's so easy they decide to ditch Managed DirectX because it's now obsolete. But wait, what's that? XNA makes it easy to import content and compile it into the executable but is crap for your Windows level editors because it's not designed for loading content on the fly? The recommendation for managed Windows apps is WPF, but what use is that when my game engine is in XNA because it needs to run on the 360? What about editors that require decent 2D rendering of primitive shapes rather than sprites? WPF is great, XNA isn't so again, half the project in C# w/ XNA, half in C# w/ WPF? Somewhere in there along came Direct2D which gives you your 2D but then it's back to C++ for half the project and C# for the other half. So we now have Direct3D, Direct2D, GDI+, WPF, XNA and the obsoleted Managed DirectX all to do very similar tasks, but neither allowing you to do so with a single toolchain for something like an Xbox 360/PC community game that requires decent windows editors. There are 3rd party solutions like SlimDX which is a managed wrapper for DirectX but it's still a port to XNA for the community game. Effectively with have GDI/GDI+ for low end Windows forms 2D rendering, WPF for high end Windows Forms rendering, DirectX for C++ graphics development, XNA for Xbox and Windows development, but not for use in Windows applications that need decent 2D primitive support and to load models on the fly etc. Oh, and if you previously jumped on the Managed DirectX bandwagon, then, well, apparently it's tough shit.
I can't help feel Microsoft have really dropped the ball- DirectX could've done the lot if the project was managed properly. Quite why they didn't stick with DirectX, keep Managed DirectX and integrate these into WPF for rendering purposes I don't know. We've gone from a fairly unified graphics pipeline to multip
The fundamental mistake with your argument is assuming the version of Windows they use isn't secure.
No seriously, don't laugh, Windows server has come along leaps and bounds in the past two or three releases, it's really a pretty solid server OS nowadays.
The assumption that all Windows versions are like the Windows versions of old is a false assumption to make, it's really not what it used to be in terms of security weakness.
This is generally why when sites get hacked nowadays it's not the OS that gets hit anymore- it's often not even the web server, but things like exposed database servers, unpatched SSH implementations, weak admin passwords, or the web applications themselves.
Yeah, besides, real wallpaper has stuff like pictures of Transformers and Thomas the Tank Engine on it. If it doesn't come with pictures like that on it isn't wallpaper!
Yes, my point with kevlar is not that it mitigates firearms completely, but that up until that point, if someone shot you, you'd almost certainly become combat ineffective for probably the rest of whatever war you're fighting. The introduction of kevlar did at least open the door for many more troops to be back out and fighting anything from straight away or to just a few days. The point is the firearm was no longer something that could just masacre troops en-masse quite like it could used to in in the pre-kevlar days. Like you say, it's not something that negates the firearm, but it severely dampens the effect they have in comparison to the pre-kevlar days, other advancements in personal armour as you mention have a similar improved effect. There is an impressive video on YouTube of a soldier in Iraq getting hit by a round, falling to the floor and getting right back up in combat pose to look for the shooter and I think that illustrates the difference between now and the pre-bullet proof armour days quite well!
Regarding silk, you're correct from a Western viewpoint that it would be mostly only nobles that would wear it, but this was primarily because it tended to come from asia and to a lesser extent the middle east. It was relatively common amongst the Mongols, the Saracens, the Japanese and such for example. The shortage of it and hence the limitation to nobles in Europe stemmed from the difficulties of import more than anything, it just wasn't available in plentiful enough quantity in Europe as it was in Asia for everyone to be equipped with it.
Yes, similarly there should've been a dialog to ask if you want to allow the Firefox team to disable the plugin, and an option to re-enable it.
This is Firefox's problem, it's been a great browser for years (although I find it is getting more and more sluggish with each release sadly), but their tools to integrate into the common Windows network setup that most the world's business sits on still needs a lot of work and if Microsoft release a.NET plugin for companies to switch from IE to Firefox for their business apps then simply disabling the plugin without asking (although it does tell you, whatever use that is) and without giving an option to reenable was a moronic decision. Particularly as many companies will have a corporate security policy in place which would've negated the security flaw making it a non-issue to them anyway.
It has to work both ways because some people actually appreciate the idea of.NET with Firefox. Fighting that just gives large business one more reason to stick with IE which doesn't bode well for FOSS.
It's not that simple, different arrow heads were effective against different armour types, this is why sometimes chain was worn with plate.
Arrows with thin, pointed heads (bodkin arrows) were more effective against chain mail armour because they could pierce between the links and split them much more effectively than wide edged broadhead arrows could.
In contrast, bodkins weren't terribly effective against plate - not so much because of the shape, but because they were rarely hardened. Whilst hardened broadheads fired from longbows could penetrate plante they were far from the death's knell of plate, hence why the Spanish conquistadors in South America were plenty happy to use it still despite the natives being extremely skilled archers having indepently created longbows.
The real death's knell for plate was the spread of firearms, something the native people of South America did not generally have (they had looted weapons and such but not widespread) as a weapon to fight back against the conquistadors.
Even certain silk armour was popular in some parts of the world, because it didn't tear when hit by a broadhead and so the silk could be used to remove the head preventing infection from the arrow head. It would sometimes be used under chain, plate or both.
Really, it's just not as simple as longbow beats plate, the only weapon to successfully have a long reign against pretty much all types of personal body armour has been the firearm until the invention of kevlar.
Erm, the press did name and shame the judge, it's been pretty high profile.
Why do you think the pirate party has two members of the European parliament when Sweden only gets a total of 12 members? The Swedish people were so outraged they were willing to place their vote on it.
At least have a clue about what you're talking about before making such ignorant assumptions please. Really, it'd only take a quick Google search to find out that your suggestion that this hasn't been discussed in mainstream media - national and international is false.
Oh, and stop misrepresenting the link you posted- it's the corruption perceptions index, not the corruption index. Perception and reality are not always the same thing so please don't try and sell them as so. Here, enjoy some facts:
The letter was followed by a police raid against The Pirate Bay, after which eventually no criminal charges were brought and equipment eventually returned to them.
Bear in mind also, that the judgement against the pirate bay folks was even known by the MPAA and so forth and leaked to them before the judge had formally announced the decision in court, where the decision is supposed to be announced also.
I'm sorry if it hurts your false illusion of Sweden as a nation that's immune from corruption. If anything though, it should illustrate to you how bad corruption is internationally, the fact that even some of the better countries in the world are still corrupt to the core, it's an illustration of the sad state of affairs today.
It's more simple than that, you seem to imply that the law can be interpreted in some arbitrary way which is defined by some specific lawyer. The fact is, law is written, and should be interpreted as written, when there is no offence listed then you cannot simply create an offence and fudge it under existing law as this judge did, else there's no point creating laws in the first place as you can just fudge every new offence under whatever you feel the closest existing law is and people can run around scared that anything they do maybe deemed illegal tommorrow by some arbitrary decision made by a judge.
As Swedish law is written there is no offence for what they have done, feel free to check for yourself, or get someone else to check for you if you don't know Swedish. You don't need to be a lawyer to be able to see what is (and hence, isn't) written in law. The problem is, it's not as if this was even a grey area where you could argue either way, their case was a clear cut win from any objective standpoint.
The real problem is that under standard interpretation of Swedish law they weren't in breach of the law in the first place. The only reason they have been found guilty is because of a corrupt judge who made up a false interpretation of the law to suit his goals and to find them guilty.
So on one hand this view that they're in breach of the law is incorrect as it falsely assues judges are infallible, which of course we know full well they are not, but similarly I don't think this will be much help because as the creative industries got away with installing their own judge once and ensuring his position and stance was upheld (even though he did not follow Swedish law as it is written) and so realistically they'll just be able to do it again.
Effectively, for the TPB guys the law doesn't matter, because whether they stay within it or not a corrupt court system is allowing them to be found guilty regardless. If anything I'd say that they have done this because it's possibly harder to shut down and perhaps easier to move around than a full blown tracker. I don't really blame them for just playing a game of cat and mouse instead, if their own country has failed them in initially allowing an unwarranted police raid due to foreign pressure, then not giving them a fair trial by allowing a judge with a blatant conflict of interest to preside of their trial, and then protect the judge when they follow the proper process for handling such conflict of interest- again, all because of pressure from foreign corporate interests, then I think it's perfectly justified for them to shun the law.
I'm sure they're also perfectly aware of the consequences, some call this stupid, but then, that's the difference between people willing to risk their freedom for something they believe in and people who just whinge about things on sites like Slashdot I suppose.
Mate, I'm British and have a 45 minute drive to work each day. Trust me, that game didn't demonize British drivers- most of them really are that bad. You've got to fight for your life on our roads just to get to work, going home is even worse!
What, you mean like, say, in the later levels of the very same game where you shoot the shit out of the American military because a US general was behind it all?
Wait, let me get this right, this would be the same Russian government that murdered Alexander Litvinenko who had been granted asylum in a foreign country with radiation poisoning- a rather horrible way to go? Or how about annexing foreign territory in Georgia by carrying out ethnic cleansing and issuing Russian passports to the remaining people there? What about beating and arrest of people who complain about election fraud? or similar treatment of opposition supporters? How about the tens, perhaps now even hundreds of journalists and activists murdered on their soil who dare say a bad word about the government?
Bwahahahaha, seriously, wait, let me stop laughing a second... the Russian government is worried about looking demonized?
They should've thought about that before committing a horrific assassination on foreign soil which frankly, is as much a terrorist act as any.
Maybe their government should.. you know, stop acting like international terrorists, before worrying that a game makes them look that way.
"The U.N. exists to exert and expand U.N. control, wherever possible (just like any large organization, government or otherwise). Helping people is at best a secondary motive and sometimes not even not even a motive at all."
What? You do realise the UN comprises of every country in the world except Taiwan, Kosovo and Vatican city right? They're the only ones left to exert control over.
You really believe the UN exists purely to exert control over those 3 remaining countries?
Or are you one of those ignorant people who thinks UN = UNSC without realising that it also handles and has successfully handled for many decades things like international telecommunications standards, international postal standards, international air transport standards, international maritime standards and so on?
How do you think we'd safely fly planes across the world without crashing more regularly if it weren't for the fact we had an organisation like the UN to standardise these things?
Why would you assume that the internet couldn't be handled just as well by the UN as these other important international systems that people use seamlessly day to day for say, sending letters without care of content, or making telephone calls without monitoring- unless your call is to or in the US of course due to US' own internal warrantless wiretapping?
But back to human rights, the current human rights council is fairly young, being formed only in March 2006 precisely because it's predecessory was accused of the issues you state. See here for a list of current nations:
Note that the countries involved rotate such that all countries get a turn in there and that any one time there are many countries to ensure a balance international consensus. Put this into the context of your comments and again it seems to suggest you don't know what you're on about, if a balanced view is maintained and all 192 member states out of 195 total states in the world sits on the panel, what is your objection exactly? that the whole world is bad? if so then is that a problem with the UN or a reflection of shit rights in general even in the supposedly most liberal nations on Earth?
What about the world food program that regularly keeps millions of people alive- you know, that fundamental human right to life? The WHO and UNESCO have certainly not been perfect, but there's no denying they've done a lot to make the world a better place. The international court of justice has done some good, and also, although not part of the UN the ICC is closely aligned, and does a great job thanks to folk like Luis Moreno-Ocampo willing to prosecute for war crimes in Darfur in the face of pressure from some of the world's giants like China.
It seems most people who slag off the UN have little knowledge of what it does beyond those parts of it in the news all the time like the security council and world bank. It's a big organisation that does a lot of good work. It's not a bunch of countries imposing their will on everyone else on every issue bar the security council, but even that is accountable. It's an organisation to ensure international consensus on international issues. It is the perfect place for the internet to be managed. This is demonstrated by it's competence in looking the international maritime, aviation, postal, telecomms systems, versus, say, the US handling of ICANN, allowing it to seize the domains of foreign businesses on the court order of some non-factor redneck court in downtown jesus land, the proposal to commercialise TLDs and completely fuck up domain hierarchy and so on. Most hatred for the UN (and other international organisations) seems to stem mostly from xenophobia and ignorance rather than any actual understanding of what the bodies do and achieve. I'm not saying they're all perfect, far from it, but I am saying it's rediculous to suggest they're bad, when
Yes, and to put it into context this is the same Brazilian government that asked it's nations botanists to do an audit of all known plant species in the country to get an idea of how many were endangered for an official report. The botanists used the criteries set by CITES - the international treaty on endangered species, to classify the status of the plants and around 3000 species were endangered.
After delaying and delaying when no one could understand why, the government finally released the compiled list.........with only about 1000 species listed as endangered.
I recall when I was younger, many years ago, back towards the end of the cold war reading a Tom Clancy scenario about the fight for power amongst Russia's factions with the fall of communism and whether it would be the Russian orthodox church, the Russian mafia, the KGB, the Communist party or one or two others that would take power. At the time it was an intriguing story although I only read a brief overview- I don't know if it was about a full book or something, but still, an interesting tale all the same.
The radioactive trail left behind by Lugovoi in the 3 hotels he stayed in, and his multiple plane flights across Europe were a bit of a give away too to be fair.
I actually have to agree, although I'd argue part the issue is that the person asking the question doesn't have a massively high level of technical competence if it takes them so long to solve these sorts of problem which compounds the issue.
I had the same problem with my Dad, and although it didn't take long to fix each time, it was annoying because having spent all day fixing stupid IT problems back then at work, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was exactly the same thing.
The real solution is summed up in the parents title "Give up". I told him that it was the last time I'm going to fix it and he'd have to take it to PC World who'd charge him probably £50 or more if he wanted it done after that. I explained every time that he was getting the problems because he was clicking stupid things or opening attachments he wasn't expecting or giving his e-mail address out to any web form that asked, yet only when under threat of having to pay to get the problem fixed did this actually sink in with him, because since then, he's never had a piece of Malware again.
The more you help these people, the less reason they have to pay attention and not be stupid. Force them to think for themselves or they'll simply never bother to and you'll be stuck supporting them forever.
Interestingly, I think there's a deeper point here. What constitutes a good AI? From the summary it sounds like it's ability to win.
Creating an AI that can win I imagine wouldn't be too hard, because by focussing around just rushing the hell out the player or whatever as you can in most RTS games you can probably get a pretty high win rate for the AI.
Yet, that's not what I'd call a good AI, to me a good AI would be one that can build little squads, setup patrols and flank you and so forth, yet, it may not be harder to beat if the player uses the same rushing type tactic as above against such a more intelligent AI.
I don't think the former AI- one that just tries to win even if using dull tactics even adds anything to AI, we've been able to do this for ages, and it's not that fun to play against. The latter may be easier to beat, but is also much more fun to play against, it also opens the door for more advanced AI techniques so in general seems the better option to aim for.
As a followup it seems you're correct, that Facebook does indeed collect information about you via your friend's profile in an opt-out manner. The Facebook policies are contradictory on this as some sections state they will never do this, but then, well, I'll let this article give the full run down:
Wikipedia provides a good rundown on some principles of the data protection act in plain English, and seems to confirm my understanding of the DPA also. The relevant points are:
- Data must not be disclosed to other parties without the consent of the individual whom it is about, unless there is legislation or other overriding legitimate reason to share the information (for example, the prevention or detection of crime). It is an offence for Other Parties to obtain this personal data without authorisation.
- Personal information may not be sent outside the European Economic Area unless the individual whom it is about has consented or adequate protection is in place, for example by the use of a prescribed form of contract to govern the transmission of the data.
- Subject to some exceptions for organisations that only do very simple processing, and for domestic use, all entities that process personal information must register with the Information Commissioner's Office.
Clearly Facebook and the 3rd parties collecting data are in breach of the first principle. It is also possible depending on the party that they could be in breach of the second and third principles also. The DPA does not cover anonymised information, but according to the above article, and the Facebook settings themselves, the data is clearly identifiable information.
I'd hope the "friends info" bit just means your number of friends etc. because moving on to your last paragraph I can say with absolute certainty that this is a breach of the data protection act. A company is not allowed to handle personal data from any source unless you have explicitly given permission for them to do so, or if they have a legitimate business reason (i.e. credit check agencies). Marketing, research and so forth is most certainly not a legitimate reason, so these companies would without a doubt fall foul. Even in the case of a 3rd party handling data you must be notified, which of course, I haven't been. I've certainly given no explicit permission for these companies to handle my personal data, and they certainly have no legitimate reason for having it.
I'll look into it, as I assumed the 3rd parties only got your data if you accepted that they do so, as I say if this is not the case this is without a doubt a breach of the data protection act and so I'll refer it to the UK's information commissioner. Not that I'd expect a result under our current government, because they also authorised and protected Phorm's illegal data interception scheme so the chance of them enforcing the law is low.
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If people can find general small scale security exploits in Windows, what makes you think they'd be able to hide a full blown back door?
Sorry but it's just fantasy, paranoia. We've had this theory before but no one ever manages to find any traces of this backdoor. If you have it installed you can dissect the OS to your hearts content, you can be rest assured for all the money and skill the NSA have it's nothing compared to the millions of researchers, hackers and criminals that would love nothing more than to find that backdoor.
You seem to be taking it a step further and suggesting it's bugged- tell me, if it's for intelligence gathering why is no one seeing any unrecognised outbound traffic on their networking hardware that could be part of this? do you think the NSA have developed a protocol that is invisible to routers but somehow still gets routed? Or do you think every router manufacturer in the world is in on it too and people who have dissected those have just not found it either?
It's a wild conspiracy theory, it's non-sensical and has no basis in reality. The PC is an open platform, you can't just hide that sort of thing from everyone, someone is going to find traces of it, evidence of it.
But get this, here's a bigger reason it's a stupid idea- do you really think the KGB could get this past CSIS, MI5, MI6, the FSB and other foreign intelligence services? Don't you think MI5 would be up in arms if the NSA had access to the data of the UK's biggest companies able to bankrupt them at any moment by leaking their most confidential secrets?
Twist Microsoft's words all you want, but it's pretty clear what they said. It doesn't just sound paranoid, it is paranoid, irrationally so. It is what it is, the guy helped advise Microsoft on security- from the summary at least it doesn't sound like he got close to the source code even.
But then, perhaps I'm a Microsoft/NSA plant right? Surely that's a good explanation to keep yourself convinced of such a ludicrous idea as conspiracy nuts ultimately choose to do?
Yep. In recent times also Mercenairies 2 was one of the best coop games I've ever played, if not the best, the free world with so many vehicles and toys to play with just opened so many doors to play around- just doing fun stuff like sticking the cruise missile target beacon onto the side of your friends helicopter and watch him fly around with a cruise missile chasing him was pretty funny. Attacking the enemy base by stealing a large enemy helicopter then slowly dismantling their base by airlifting all their tanks off the edge of a cliff one by one rather than going in guns blazing was pretty funny too.
I'm concerned what'll happen now- will EA do away with the EA authentication servers which you have to connect to to be able to play coop even on the XBox where being connected to live should do? I'm guessing this likely means no Mercenairies 3 either which is sad.
Pandemic produced quite a few good games, it's sad that it's yet another company EA has raped, because well, rape really is the most relevant term to describe what EA does to companies it takes over.
Yes, it seems that basically it's just a thin client for Google's web apps. I'm not sure what the point is really, I have one of those on my PC in software already, it's called Firefox.
I find the choice of DirectX quite interesting, I've been looking recently at doing some basic game programming again just for a bit of fun and was rather shocked to find what an utter mess graphics programming has become on the Windows platform.
Many years ago, when I last played around with graphics programming it was pretty straightforward, you used DirectX or OpenGL. For your game editors you'd use MFC or the Win32 API (or something 3rd party like SDL). It didn't really matter which you chose, but if you chose say C++, OpenGL and MFC for example you'd just use those for your editors, the game engine, you could use that one set of technologies for your entire development process.
Fast forward 10 years to the point we have things like Java and .NET offering perfectly acceptable managed code performance, with the benefits you'd expect from managed code- no worrying about deleting variables, pointers and so on, you can just write your code and it works, and works on whatever platform there is a VM for. Tools like Visual Studio have taken forward editing of the interface fairly well for Windows Forms and such and WPF. I thought great, .NET, Windows Forms, XNA, making an editor and a game will make no time at all.
What should have happened in the last 10 years:
The single toolchain should still exist, but with the benefits of managed code, .NET and such to make development across the relevant platforms (i.e. for the XBox 360 and PC with XNA) much more quick and easy.
What actually happened:
GDI is crap, they release DirectX and GDI+. Later .NET came along, Microsoft thought, hey, we need a managed version of DirectX and created Managed DirectX. They start thinking about interfaces for the future and realise GDI+ and Windows Forms don't cut it, apparently DirectX isn't to stray from games related stuff so they release WPF which has it's own 2D and 3D rendering libraries. They want XBox development, using C++ or C# with DirectX would be too easy, so instead let's create a new API and set of tools, called XNA they think. Great, and XNA is quick and easy to get to grips with, I'll give them that, in fact, it's so easy they decide to ditch Managed DirectX because it's now obsolete. But wait, what's that? XNA makes it easy to import content and compile it into the executable but is crap for your Windows level editors because it's not designed for loading content on the fly? The recommendation for managed Windows apps is WPF, but what use is that when my game engine is in XNA because it needs to run on the 360? What about editors that require decent 2D rendering of primitive shapes rather than sprites? WPF is great, XNA isn't so again, half the project in C# w/ XNA, half in C# w/ WPF? Somewhere in there along came Direct2D which gives you your 2D but then it's back to C++ for half the project and C# for the other half. So we now have Direct3D, Direct2D, GDI+, WPF, XNA and the obsoleted Managed DirectX all to do very similar tasks, but neither allowing you to do so with a single toolchain for something like an Xbox 360/PC community game that requires decent windows editors. There are 3rd party solutions like SlimDX which is a managed wrapper for DirectX but it's still a port to XNA for the community game. Effectively with have GDI/GDI+ for low end Windows forms 2D rendering, WPF for high end Windows Forms rendering, DirectX for C++ graphics development, XNA for Xbox and Windows development, but not for use in Windows applications that need decent 2D primitive support and to load models on the fly etc. Oh, and if you previously jumped on the Managed DirectX bandwagon, then, well, apparently it's tough shit.
I can't help feel Microsoft have really dropped the ball- DirectX could've done the lot if the project was managed properly. Quite why they didn't stick with DirectX, keep Managed DirectX and integrate these into WPF for rendering purposes I don't know. We've gone from a fairly unified graphics pipeline to multip
The fundamental mistake with your argument is assuming the version of Windows they use isn't secure.
No seriously, don't laugh, Windows server has come along leaps and bounds in the past two or three releases, it's really a pretty solid server OS nowadays.
The assumption that all Windows versions are like the Windows versions of old is a false assumption to make, it's really not what it used to be in terms of security weakness.
This is generally why when sites get hacked nowadays it's not the OS that gets hit anymore- it's often not even the web server, but things like exposed database servers, unpatched SSH implementations, weak admin passwords, or the web applications themselves.
Yeah, besides, real wallpaper has stuff like pictures of Transformers and Thomas the Tank Engine on it. If it doesn't come with pictures like that on it isn't wallpaper!
Yes, my point with kevlar is not that it mitigates firearms completely, but that up until that point, if someone shot you, you'd almost certainly become combat ineffective for probably the rest of whatever war you're fighting. The introduction of kevlar did at least open the door for many more troops to be back out and fighting anything from straight away or to just a few days. The point is the firearm was no longer something that could just masacre troops en-masse quite like it could used to in in the pre-kevlar days. Like you say, it's not something that negates the firearm, but it severely dampens the effect they have in comparison to the pre-kevlar days, other advancements in personal armour as you mention have a similar improved effect. There is an impressive video on YouTube of a soldier in Iraq getting hit by a round, falling to the floor and getting right back up in combat pose to look for the shooter and I think that illustrates the difference between now and the pre-bullet proof armour days quite well!
Regarding silk, you're correct from a Western viewpoint that it would be mostly only nobles that would wear it, but this was primarily because it tended to come from asia and to a lesser extent the middle east. It was relatively common amongst the Mongols, the Saracens, the Japanese and such for example. The shortage of it and hence the limitation to nobles in Europe stemmed from the difficulties of import more than anything, it just wasn't available in plentiful enough quantity in Europe as it was in Asia for everyone to be equipped with it.
Yes, similarly there should've been a dialog to ask if you want to allow the Firefox team to disable the plugin, and an option to re-enable it.
This is Firefox's problem, it's been a great browser for years (although I find it is getting more and more sluggish with each release sadly), but their tools to integrate into the common Windows network setup that most the world's business sits on still needs a lot of work and if Microsoft release a .NET plugin for companies to switch from IE to Firefox for their business apps then simply disabling the plugin without asking (although it does tell you, whatever use that is) and without giving an option to reenable was a moronic decision. Particularly as many companies will have a corporate security policy in place which would've negated the security flaw making it a non-issue to them anyway.
It has to work both ways because some people actually appreciate the idea of .NET with Firefox. Fighting that just gives large business one more reason to stick with IE which doesn't bode well for FOSS.
It's not that simple, different arrow heads were effective against different armour types, this is why sometimes chain was worn with plate.
Arrows with thin, pointed heads (bodkin arrows) were more effective against chain mail armour because they could pierce between the links and split them much more effectively than wide edged broadhead arrows could.
In contrast, bodkins weren't terribly effective against plate - not so much because of the shape, but because they were rarely hardened. Whilst hardened broadheads fired from longbows could penetrate plante they were far from the death's knell of plate, hence why the Spanish conquistadors in South America were plenty happy to use it still despite the natives being extremely skilled archers having indepently created longbows.
The real death's knell for plate was the spread of firearms, something the native people of South America did not generally have (they had looted weapons and such but not widespread) as a weapon to fight back against the conquistadors.
Even certain silk armour was popular in some parts of the world, because it didn't tear when hit by a broadhead and so the silk could be used to remove the head preventing infection from the arrow head. It would sometimes be used under chain, plate or both.
Really, it's just not as simple as longbow beats plate, the only weapon to successfully have a long reign against pretty much all types of personal body armour has been the firearm until the invention of kevlar.
Erm, the press did name and shame the judge, it's been pretty high profile.
Why do you think the pirate party has two members of the European parliament when Sweden only gets a total of 12 members? The Swedish people were so outraged they were willing to place their vote on it.
At least have a clue about what you're talking about before making such ignorant assumptions please. Really, it'd only take a quick Google search to find out that your suggestion that this hasn't been discussed in mainstream media - national and international is false.
Oh, and stop misrepresenting the link you posted- it's the corruption perceptions index, not the corruption index. Perception and reality are not always the same thing so please don't try and sell them as so. Here, enjoy some facts:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/retrial-threatened-as-judge-denies-conflict-of-interest-in-pirate-bay-trial-1673261.html
http://www.thelocal.se/22602/20091012/
Perhaps the most damning though, is this:
http://torrentfreak.com//images/pirate_mpa.pdf
The letter was followed by a police raid against The Pirate Bay, after which eventually no criminal charges were brought and equipment eventually returned to them.
Bear in mind also, that the judgement against the pirate bay folks was even known by the MPAA and so forth and leaked to them before the judge had formally announced the decision in court, where the decision is supposed to be announced also.
I'm sorry if it hurts your false illusion of Sweden as a nation that's immune from corruption. If anything though, it should illustrate to you how bad corruption is internationally, the fact that even some of the better countries in the world are still corrupt to the core, it's an illustration of the sad state of affairs today.
It's more simple than that, you seem to imply that the law can be interpreted in some arbitrary way which is defined by some specific lawyer. The fact is, law is written, and should be interpreted as written, when there is no offence listed then you cannot simply create an offence and fudge it under existing law as this judge did, else there's no point creating laws in the first place as you can just fudge every new offence under whatever you feel the closest existing law is and people can run around scared that anything they do maybe deemed illegal tommorrow by some arbitrary decision made by a judge.
As Swedish law is written there is no offence for what they have done, feel free to check for yourself, or get someone else to check for you if you don't know Swedish. You don't need to be a lawyer to be able to see what is (and hence, isn't) written in law. The problem is, it's not as if this was even a grey area where you could argue either way, their case was a clear cut win from any objective standpoint.
The real problem is that under standard interpretation of Swedish law they weren't in breach of the law in the first place. The only reason they have been found guilty is because of a corrupt judge who made up a false interpretation of the law to suit his goals and to find them guilty.
So on one hand this view that they're in breach of the law is incorrect as it falsely assues judges are infallible, which of course we know full well they are not, but similarly I don't think this will be much help because as the creative industries got away with installing their own judge once and ensuring his position and stance was upheld (even though he did not follow Swedish law as it is written) and so realistically they'll just be able to do it again.
Effectively, for the TPB guys the law doesn't matter, because whether they stay within it or not a corrupt court system is allowing them to be found guilty regardless. If anything I'd say that they have done this because it's possibly harder to shut down and perhaps easier to move around than a full blown tracker. I don't really blame them for just playing a game of cat and mouse instead, if their own country has failed them in initially allowing an unwarranted police raid due to foreign pressure, then not giving them a fair trial by allowing a judge with a blatant conflict of interest to preside of their trial, and then protect the judge when they follow the proper process for handling such conflict of interest- again, all because of pressure from foreign corporate interests, then I think it's perfectly justified for them to shun the law.
I'm sure they're also perfectly aware of the consequences, some call this stupid, but then, that's the difference between people willing to risk their freedom for something they believe in and people who just whinge about things on sites like Slashdot I suppose.
Mate, I'm British and have a 45 minute drive to work each day. Trust me, that game didn't demonize British drivers- most of them really are that bad. You've got to fight for your life on our roads just to get to work, going home is even worse!
What, you mean like, say, in the later levels of the very same game where you shoot the shit out of the American military because a US general was behind it all?
Wait, let me get this right, this would be the same Russian government that murdered Alexander Litvinenko who had been granted asylum in a foreign country with radiation poisoning- a rather horrible way to go? Or how about annexing foreign territory in Georgia by carrying out ethnic cleansing and issuing Russian passports to the remaining people there? What about beating and arrest of people who complain about election fraud? or similar treatment of opposition supporters? How about the tens, perhaps now even hundreds of journalists and activists murdered on their soil who dare say a bad word about the government?
Bwahahahaha, seriously, wait, let me stop laughing a second... the Russian government is worried about looking demonized?
They should've thought about that before committing a horrific assassination on foreign soil which frankly, is as much a terrorist act as any.
Maybe their government should.. you know, stop acting like international terrorists, before worrying that a game makes them look that way.
...or accidently pick up a still active satellite on your way round ;)
"The U.N. exists to exert and expand U.N. control, wherever possible (just like any large organization, government or otherwise). Helping people is at best a secondary motive and sometimes not even not even a motive at all."
What? You do realise the UN comprises of every country in the world except Taiwan, Kosovo and Vatican city right? They're the only ones left to exert control over.
You really believe the UN exists purely to exert control over those 3 remaining countries?
Or are you one of those ignorant people who thinks UN = UNSC without realising that it also handles and has successfully handled for many decades things like international telecommunications standards, international postal standards, international air transport standards, international maritime standards and so on?
How do you think we'd safely fly planes across the world without crashing more regularly if it weren't for the fact we had an organisation like the UN to standardise these things?
Why would you assume that the internet couldn't be handled just as well by the UN as these other important international systems that people use seamlessly day to day for say, sending letters without care of content, or making telephone calls without monitoring- unless your call is to or in the US of course due to US' own internal warrantless wiretapping?
But back to human rights, the current human rights council is fairly young, being formed only in March 2006 precisely because it's predecessory was accused of the issues you state. See here for a list of current nations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council#Members
Note that the countries involved rotate such that all countries get a turn in there and that any one time there are many countries to ensure a balance international consensus. Put this into the context of your comments and again it seems to suggest you don't know what you're on about, if a balanced view is maintained and all 192 member states out of 195 total states in the world sits on the panel, what is your objection exactly? that the whole world is bad? if so then is that a problem with the UN or a reflection of shit rights in general even in the supposedly most liberal nations on Earth?
What about the world food program that regularly keeps millions of people alive- you know, that fundamental human right to life? The WHO and UNESCO have certainly not been perfect, but there's no denying they've done a lot to make the world a better place. The international court of justice has done some good, and also, although not part of the UN the ICC is closely aligned, and does a great job thanks to folk like Luis Moreno-Ocampo willing to prosecute for war crimes in Darfur in the face of pressure from some of the world's giants like China.
It seems most people who slag off the UN have little knowledge of what it does beyond those parts of it in the news all the time like the security council and world bank. It's a big organisation that does a lot of good work. It's not a bunch of countries imposing their will on everyone else on every issue bar the security council, but even that is accountable. It's an organisation to ensure international consensus on international issues. It is the perfect place for the internet to be managed. This is demonstrated by it's competence in looking the international maritime, aviation, postal, telecomms systems, versus, say, the US handling of ICANN, allowing it to seize the domains of foreign businesses on the court order of some non-factor redneck court in downtown jesus land, the proposal to commercialise TLDs and completely fuck up domain hierarchy and so on. Most hatred for the UN (and other international organisations) seems to stem mostly from xenophobia and ignorance rather than any actual understanding of what the bodies do and achieve. I'm not saying they're all perfect, far from it, but I am saying it's rediculous to suggest they're bad, when
Yes, and to put it into context this is the same Brazilian government that asked it's nations botanists to do an audit of all known plant species in the country to get an idea of how many were endangered for an official report. The botanists used the criteries set by CITES - the international treaty on endangered species, to classify the status of the plants and around 3000 species were endangered.
After delaying and delaying when no one could understand why, the government finally released the compiled list.... .....with only about 1000 species listed as endangered.
I recall when I was younger, many years ago, back towards the end of the cold war reading a Tom Clancy scenario about the fight for power amongst Russia's factions with the fall of communism and whether it would be the Russian orthodox church, the Russian mafia, the KGB, the Communist party or one or two others that would take power. At the time it was an intriguing story although I only read a brief overview- I don't know if it was about a full book or something, but still, an interesting tale all the same.
I guess the KGB won.
The radioactive trail left behind by Lugovoi in the 3 hotels he stayed in, and his multiple plane flights across Europe were a bit of a give away too to be fair.
I actually have to agree, although I'd argue part the issue is that the person asking the question doesn't have a massively high level of technical competence if it takes them so long to solve these sorts of problem which compounds the issue.
I had the same problem with my Dad, and although it didn't take long to fix each time, it was annoying because having spent all day fixing stupid IT problems back then at work, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was exactly the same thing.
The real solution is summed up in the parents title "Give up". I told him that it was the last time I'm going to fix it and he'd have to take it to PC World who'd charge him probably £50 or more if he wanted it done after that. I explained every time that he was getting the problems because he was clicking stupid things or opening attachments he wasn't expecting or giving his e-mail address out to any web form that asked, yet only when under threat of having to pay to get the problem fixed did this actually sink in with him, because since then, he's never had a piece of Malware again.
The more you help these people, the less reason they have to pay attention and not be stupid. Force them to think for themselves or they'll simply never bother to and you'll be stuck supporting them forever.
Interestingly, I think there's a deeper point here. What constitutes a good AI? From the summary it sounds like it's ability to win.
Creating an AI that can win I imagine wouldn't be too hard, because by focussing around just rushing the hell out the player or whatever as you can in most RTS games you can probably get a pretty high win rate for the AI.
Yet, that's not what I'd call a good AI, to me a good AI would be one that can build little squads, setup patrols and flank you and so forth, yet, it may not be harder to beat if the player uses the same rushing type tactic as above against such a more intelligent AI.
I don't think the former AI- one that just tries to win even if using dull tactics even adds anything to AI, we've been able to do this for ages, and it's not that fun to play against. The latter may be easier to beat, but is also much more fun to play against, it also opens the door for more advanced AI techniques so in general seems the better option to aim for.
Interestingly now there is only one result in that search for Go!, the rest are now for Google's language.
Maybe it isn't just Microsoft that manipulates their search engine results in their favour after all.
As a followup it seems you're correct, that Facebook does indeed collect information about you via your friend's profile in an opt-out manner. The Facebook policies are contradictory on this as some sections state they will never do this, but then, well, I'll let this article give the full run down:
http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/blog/facebook-quizzes-sharing-your-private-data
Wikipedia provides a good rundown on some principles of the data protection act in plain English, and seems to confirm my understanding of the DPA also. The relevant points are:
- Data must not be disclosed to other parties without the consent of the individual whom it is about, unless there is legislation or other overriding legitimate reason to share the information (for example, the prevention or detection of crime). It is an offence for Other Parties to obtain this personal data without authorisation.
- Personal information may not be sent outside the European Economic Area unless the individual whom it is about has consented or adequate protection is in place, for example by the use of a prescribed form of contract to govern the transmission of the data.
- Subject to some exceptions for organisations that only do very simple processing, and for domestic use, all entities that process personal information must register with the Information Commissioner's Office.
Clearly Facebook and the 3rd parties collecting data are in breach of the first principle. It is also possible depending on the party that they could be in breach of the second and third principles also. The DPA does not cover anonymised information, but according to the above article, and the Facebook settings themselves, the data is clearly identifiable information.
I'd hope the "friends info" bit just means your number of friends etc. because moving on to your last paragraph I can say with absolute certainty that this is a breach of the data protection act. A company is not allowed to handle personal data from any source unless you have explicitly given permission for them to do so, or if they have a legitimate business reason (i.e. credit check agencies). Marketing, research and so forth is most certainly not a legitimate reason, so these companies would without a doubt fall foul. Even in the case of a 3rd party handling data you must be notified, which of course, I haven't been. I've certainly given no explicit permission for these companies to handle my personal data, and they certainly have no legitimate reason for having it.
I'll look into it, as I assumed the 3rd parties only got your data if you accepted that they do so, as I say if this is not the case this is without a doubt a breach of the data protection act and so I'll refer it to the UK's information commissioner. Not that I'd expect a result under our current government, because they also authorised and protected Phorm's illegal data interception scheme so the chance of them enforcing the law is low.