Go to your town/city/village/whatever hall. Ask for the cable commissioner. This is the guy that renews the cable company's contract (or doesn't, if there are too many complaints . . .:^). If you really want something to be done, bug him. The local cableco does not want to have their contract lapse. You'll be surprised how quickly they can get things done when the cable commissioner is breathing down their necks.
Hey! That's my sig! You can't have it! Hmmm. Maybe I should put it in a 600x600 pixel banner ad and copyright it. If I ROT-26 encrypt it beforehand, I can even put it under the DMCA.
I don't know how that cleared the patent office in the first place. If patents are going to be granted for technical innovations, shouldn't they be reviewed by specialists in the fields they affect?
Our game design and technology are specifically conceived with this problem [cheating] in mind
We place very little trust in the client software
We are doing a RPG, not a FPS
Security Through Obscurity does not work anyway.
This does make some sense. I know I wouldn't seriously play a game like Quake for anything more than fun, due to the extensive trust given to the clients. This does make me wonder, though, whether they address the problem of spoofed packets? Presumably, if they don't trust the client, they keep track of where each player is, and can therefore determine whether, according to the rules, a player can do what his packets are saying he's doing.
A few questions. First, is there any widely-used operating system (or BIOS, for that matter) that can even address, let alone use a 10.8 terabyte drive? Second, I see no reference as to what kind of interface will it have (IDE, SCSE, USB *shudder*, etc.). Third, since this will have no moving parts, could this be considered solid state storage? Finally, since there are no moving parts, wouldn't this have incredibly quick access times?
Somehow I get the feeling that the company that makes these fans is misusing their own products. Imagine this: company executives are in a boardroom with a huge fan on the wall. One of the blades is painted a color. They turn off the air conditioning and wait for the fan to stop.
Corporate lawyer: Yes! Sue for asinine reasons! Let's see here. Who can we sue?
VP of marketing: Hmmm. We have competitors. Let's sue them for patent infringement to increase our marketshare.
This has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard
on
Suing Over... Fans?
·
· Score: 2
Not on one count, but on two. First, who cares? They're just fans. Second:
> Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry's suit stems from alleged patent violations of one of the company's competitors, which sells miniature fans that Creative and nVidia incorporate into graphics cards as GPU coolers.
Uh, why not go after the company that makes the infringing fans instead of the companies that use them? It makes no more sense for them to go after Creative and nVidia than it would for them to go after the consumers that use the cards with the offending fans.
. . . for signs of it blacking out. You never know when an insect-like race will suddenly decide to invade the solar system. What's the next step, building an orbiting schoolhouse for training soldiers?
> Again, I'm not aware of the curcumstances in Stalinist Russia.
A Marxist who doesn't know about the Soviet Union . ..
> it should at least be obvious the contry as a whole is drifting to the right
Actually, it's drifting back to the center. For the past few decades, it's been taking a sharp turn to the left. (Can anyone say "Hippie Movement"?)
> how our current president in essence stole the election
Good question. How exactly did he steal it?
> This was aided in large part by the media
What, you didn't see all the news shows with people claiming that Bush's election was a fraud? If the networks were cooporating, or even just idly standing by, they wouldn't have gone on about it for weeks (and months, now).
> If you consider fascism the most right-wing of all governments, than you can see how we are step by step becoming a fascist country.
Two things: First, Fascism was Italian nationalism. I don't see much of that here. Second, historically in our country, it's been the left-wing group that's aligned itself with socialism. Look at the social reformers of the 1920s, specifically the unions. While unions were necessary then, they often proclaimed socialist beliefs and intents. The natural follower of socialism is communism, which is simply socialism applied to politics. The government owns everything and decides what is right for the people. While the claims of communism are that the government will eventually dissolve itself, I don't think that's ever happened. Communist governments just turn into dictatorships or oligarchies.
Um. Why is this news? What possible use could a 256 meg MRAM module have? I can see this being news once it reaches 4 megs in 2003. As it is, 256 KB would only really be useful in something like a BIOS or (very) small data quantities. Even if you had 64 of these, you'd still only have 8 megs of solid-state storage. That would be enough to store a few documents, but you could save those to a hard drive instead. The only applications where the speed of solid-state storage aids them are too large to fit in these modules, unless you were to use more of these than would be cost-effective. It's a great advancement, but it's not newsworty. Yet.
What is their definition of offensive and/or objectionable? To one person, things such as instructions on how to make a fur coat might be offensive. To others, sites advocating abortion might be offensive. If the government decides what is permissible and what isn't, the German people will be the worse off for it. What will likely happen is the subjects that offend the policy-makers will be blocked, whether the public finds them offensive or not.
Not to sound nutty, but this is frighteningly like an Internet equivalent of Soviet reaction to opposition to official policy. They would take dissenters and confine them to asylums until they were "competent" enough to rejoin society. While the German government isn't doing anything quite that severe, by defining social standards, it reduces its population's freedom to think unorthodox thoughts.
> Data is kept intact when you power down your system by powering the QikDRIVE card with an external power supply.
OK. I hope you've got a UPS on that. I'd hate to see someone get everything configured in an operating system stored in one of these and then see the power go out.
> (If) DirectTV figures out a way to send a signal that will prevent them from working, that shouldn't be illegal either.
It's not, at least according to them. On each card it states that it is owned by someone else (I forgot who) and is merely loaned to you, subject to recall at any time. It's not illegal to destroy property you own. I don't know how this would stand up to a court challenge, but that's the way things stand right now.
> Their milk looks and tastes like the real thing, but once its proteins are filtered and purified into a fine white powder, they can be spun into tough thread.
I dunno about you, but I'd be a little bit wary of milk that can be spun into thread by filtering out the proteins. The very fact that they know what it tastes like seems to suggest that there are people that don't care. Don't proteins get filtered out in your body anyway? Although I suppose you'd be able to market this as an alternative to calcium . ..
You know, it's things like this that make me question what exactly we own. The airwaves are public property, at least, they were the last time I checked. Yet, I think a company has a right to reclaim its investment in some satellites. Launching those things isn't cheap.
A question, though. If the airwaves are public, what's illegal about using a signal that you didn't permit someone to send onto your property? I think that DirecTV is spending far too much money trying to stop the fraction of a percent of their viewers from stealing service. Is it really cost effective?
I realize I'm probably going to get slapped down for this, but hear me out first.
I don't think that a GPL'd online game is a good thing. GPL'd code is far easier to reverse engineer than binaries are. By posting the code to a game, people can see the protocols in use, the packets that would be passed back and forth, etc. Cheating would be far easier with an open-source game, especially if the characters are stored client-side. Even if they're not, spoofed packets can be sent to the server to alter the course of play. Look at what happened to Quake, for example.
While I appreciate open-source software, I don't think that it's a good idea to release the code to online games.
Sure, this could be used in missile defense, and it would probably be very effective. But I think a better use would be in space-based offense rather than defense.
Suppose you've got an army and some tanks gathering somewhere. Just reposition your satellite, obliterate the tanks (the shrapnel would be quite dangerous to the enemy troops near it) and then send in your ground forces. There you go. Quick, simple, and efficient.
Yeah. But a notebook is just about the only thing that this would be useful with, unless you have either a frontside USB port on your desktops (which isn't too common outside of specially-manufactured brand name products) or a USB hub. I know I wouldn't want to have to crawl behind my computer just to plug one of these things in.
Slashdot Mirror
"Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."
Here's what you do:
:^). If you really want something to be done, bug him. The local cableco does not want to have their contract lapse. You'll be surprised how quickly they can get things done when the cable commissioner is breathing down their necks.
Go to your town/city/village/whatever hall. Ask for the cable commissioner. This is the guy that renews the cable company's contract (or doesn't, if there are too many complaints . . .
Did anyone notice the figures for the 2-year government contract? $72,000,000 for 20,000 phones with unlimited usage.
$72,000,000/20,000 = $3,600 per phone.
There are 24 months in 2 years, so $3,600/24 = $150/mo.
Where can I get a deal like that? $150/mo. with unlimited service worldwide (or nearly so)? Sounds good to me.
> Thank you for visiting Swiftboard.com. We are currently accepting no new orders.
.
Well, shoot. Now what am I going to hook up to my CueCat . .
Hey! That's my sig! You can't have it! Hmmm. Maybe I should put it in a 600x600 pixel banner ad and copyright it. If I ROT-26 encrypt it beforehand, I can even put it under the DMCA.
So will the CueCat be appearing on Itchy and Scratchy?
> The whole school system should be setup to push each student to the maximum of their potential, regardless of how high or low it is.
Things used to be that way, but times have changed. For example, check out some questions from the 1901, 1926, and 1999 exams.
Mirror, mirror, on the 'Net,
Is there one who has one yet?
I don't know how that cleared the patent office in the first place. If patents are going to be granted for technical innovations, shouldn't they be reviewed by specialists in the fields they affect?
Hmmm.
Our game design and technology are specifically conceived with this problem [cheating] in mind
We place very little trust in the client software
We are doing a RPG, not a FPS
Security Through Obscurity does not work anyway.
This does make some sense. I know I wouldn't seriously play a game like Quake for anything more than fun, due to the extensive trust given to the clients. This does make me wonder, though, whether they address the problem of spoofed packets? Presumably, if they don't trust the client, they keep track of where each player is, and can therefore determine whether, according to the rules, a player can do what his packets are saying he's doing.
A few questions. First, is there any widely-used operating system (or BIOS, for that matter) that can even address, let alone use a 10.8 terabyte drive? Second, I see no reference as to what kind of interface will it have (IDE, SCSE, USB *shudder*, etc.). Third, since this will have no moving parts, could this be considered solid state storage? Finally, since there are no moving parts, wouldn't this have incredibly quick access times?
Somehow I get the feeling that the company that makes these fans is misusing their own products. Imagine this: company executives are in a boardroom with a huge fan on the wall. One of the blades is painted a color. They turn off the air conditioning and wait for the fan to stop.
Corporate lawyer: Yes! Sue for asinine reasons! Let's see here. Who can we sue?
VP of marketing: Hmmm. We have competitors. Let's sue them for patent infringement to increase our marketshare.
Not on one count, but on two. First, who cares? They're just fans. Second:
> Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry's suit stems from alleged patent violations of one of the company's competitors, which sells miniature fans that Creative and nVidia incorporate into graphics cards as GPU coolers.
Uh, why not go after the company that makes the infringing fans instead of the companies that use them? It makes no more sense for them to go after Creative and nVidia than it would for them to go after the consumers that use the cards with the offending fans.
. . . for signs of it blacking out. You never know when an insect-like race will suddenly decide to invade the solar system. What's the next step, building an orbiting schoolhouse for training soldiers?
One word: EPROMs.
> Again, I'm not aware of the curcumstances in Stalinist Russia.
.
A Marxist who doesn't know about the Soviet Union . .
> it should at least be obvious the contry as a whole is drifting to the right
Actually, it's drifting back to the center. For the past few decades, it's been taking a sharp turn to the left. (Can anyone say "Hippie Movement"?)
> how our current president in essence stole the election
Good question. How exactly did he steal it?
> This was aided in large part by the media
What, you didn't see all the news shows with people claiming that Bush's election was a fraud? If the networks were cooporating, or even just idly standing by, they wouldn't have gone on about it for weeks (and months, now).
> If you consider fascism the most right-wing of all governments, than you can see how we are step by step becoming a fascist country.
Two things: First, Fascism was Italian nationalism. I don't see much of that here. Second, historically in our country, it's been the left-wing group that's aligned itself with socialism. Look at the social reformers of the 1920s, specifically the unions. While unions were necessary then, they often proclaimed socialist beliefs and intents. The natural follower of socialism is communism, which is simply socialism applied to politics. The government owns everything and decides what is right for the people. While the claims of communism are that the government will eventually dissolve itself, I don't think that's ever happened. Communist governments just turn into dictatorships or oligarchies.
If you're going to troll, troll intelligently.
Um. Why is this news? What possible use could a 256 meg MRAM module have? I can see this being news once it reaches 4 megs in 2003. As it is, 256 KB would only really be useful in something like a BIOS or (very) small data quantities. Even if you had 64 of these, you'd still only have 8 megs of solid-state storage. That would be enough to store a few documents, but you could save those to a hard drive instead. The only applications where the speed of solid-state storage aids them are too large to fit in these modules, unless you were to use more of these than would be cost-effective. It's a great advancement, but it's not newsworty. Yet.
What is their definition of offensive and/or objectionable? To one person, things such as instructions on how to make a fur coat might be offensive. To others, sites advocating abortion might be offensive. If the government decides what is permissible and what isn't, the German people will be the worse off for it. What will likely happen is the subjects that offend the policy-makers will be blocked, whether the public finds them offensive or not.
Not to sound nutty, but this is frighteningly like an Internet equivalent of Soviet reaction to opposition to official policy. They would take dissenters and confine them to asylums until they were "competent" enough to rejoin society. While the German government isn't doing anything quite that severe, by defining social standards, it reduces its population's freedom to think unorthodox thoughts.
> Data is kept intact when you power down your system by powering the QikDRIVE card with an external power supply.
OK. I hope you've got a UPS on that. I'd hate to see someone get everything configured in an operating system stored in one of these and then see the power go out.
> (If) DirectTV figures out a way to send a signal that will prevent them from working, that shouldn't be illegal either.
It's not, at least according to them. On each card it states that it is owned by someone else (I forgot who) and is merely loaned to you, subject to recall at any time. It's not illegal to destroy property you own. I don't know how this would stand up to a court challenge, but that's the way things stand right now.
> Their milk looks and tastes like the real thing, but once its proteins are filtered and purified into a fine white powder, they can be spun into tough thread.
.
I dunno about you, but I'd be a little bit wary of milk that can be spun into thread by filtering out the proteins. The very fact that they know what it tastes like seems to suggest that there are people that don't care. Don't proteins get filtered out in your body anyway? Although I suppose you'd be able to market this as an alternative to calcium . .
You know, it's things like this that make me question what exactly we own. The airwaves are public property, at least, they were the last time I checked. Yet, I think a company has a right to reclaim its investment in some satellites. Launching those things isn't cheap.
A question, though. If the airwaves are public, what's illegal about using a signal that you didn't permit someone to send onto your property? I think that DirecTV is spending far too much money trying to stop the fraction of a percent of their viewers from stealing service. Is it really cost effective?
I realize I'm probably going to get slapped down for this, but hear me out first.
I don't think that a GPL'd online game is a good thing. GPL'd code is far easier to reverse engineer than binaries are. By posting the code to a game, people can see the protocols in use, the packets that would be passed back and forth, etc. Cheating would be far easier with an open-source game, especially if the characters are stored client-side. Even if they're not, spoofed packets can be sent to the server to alter the course of play. Look at what happened to Quake, for example.
While I appreciate open-source software, I don't think that it's a good idea to release the code to online games.
Sure, this could be used in missile defense, and it would probably be very effective. But I think a better use would be in space-based offense rather than defense.
Suppose you've got an army and some tanks gathering somewhere. Just reposition your satellite, obliterate the tanks (the shrapnel would be quite dangerous to the enemy troops near it) and then send in your ground forces. There you go. Quick, simple, and efficient.
Yeah. But a notebook is just about the only thing that this would be useful with, unless you have either a frontside USB port on your desktops (which isn't too common outside of specially-manufactured brand name products) or a USB hub. I know I wouldn't want to have to crawl behind my computer just to plug one of these things in.