It appears to me that it is hard to find software that cannot be exploted somehow, given enough time to dig into every possible way of doing so. Isn't this an indication that there is simply something wrong in the way software is put togeather and executed? Maybe the people who design API's, compilers and whatever is used to make software needs to rethink the way the stuff works... or maybe software is quite simply such a complex task of engineering that to keep it possible, it must also be possible to exploit.
I have of course no idea how to change the world, or I'm sure I'd be either very rich, very famouse or both;)
Working in a research institute with loads of quantifiers, I've also seen this happen every now and then with researchers and their datasets or other lists. Especially students, as none tells them Excel has limitations in information amounts.
Maybe the problem simply is that Excel does't come with a big red sticker on its box that warns of this.
Seems this is only for the US and Canada. Maybe Slashdot needs to orient it's writing more to its global audience? (:
On a side note, VOIP (Skype) and Ryanair (low cost airline in Europe) is the very reason me (in Norway) and my girl (in Portugal) manages to keep together even tho the distance is enormous. Being able to go to Portgal for the price of an expensive bus ticket + almost free comunications = truly united Europe.
What makes this really interesting...
on
One Big Bang, Or Many?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
... is the consequenses if the universes truly exsist in linked cyclical nature. Imagine this: - You scramble the universe every now and then - You keep scrambeling forever - If time is infinite, and the possible combinations of matter and energy are not (even if unimaginably many) you will end up with the same combination occuring over and over again infinitly.
So, if our mind is truly is just a part of this physical world, and arise from the energy/matter combinations mentioned above, we will end up living this life an infinite number of times, and in an uthinabkle amount of alternative varieties...
Hello Buddha....
Kind of makes me regret I was late submiting my tax return, again...
I guess when you start up this thing, your official title as the person behind the wheel of the vehicle goes like this:
1.) You pedal, you are now officialy a "driver"
2.) You push the little red button, you are now officially a "pilot"
3.) You push the little red button a little too long, you are now officially a "satelite"
Now if only the Moller SkyCard had one of these on the back. Never mind vertical takeoff and landing, I want to get the moon!
Doesn't it make sence in some ways that a game that could possibly be modified outside the parents control should be labled as such? Maybe this labeling organisation (ESRB) should make themselves a new category scheme that says the experience could change over time, but the game itself is basically ok.
However, as many other Europeans, I still don't get how swearing and sex in a game makes it more dangerous than the voilence it's gameplay is based on. I remember a girl I know teling me about her Syrian father's opinion that "sex is more dangerous than voilence". Some people just need to adjust their compass...
Well, time to go out and beat up some hoockers! Oh yea...
Sorry, not everyone has English as their first language. It still makes it wrong of course, so here is the corrected version, according to M$ Word (with some unspecified dictionary, probably Oxford English, as that is the official of the place I work);)
"People should not fear their governments, governments should fear their people" - V for Vendetta
I wonder sometimes where language is going. Elements of English both in grammar and sound snear into my beloved Norwegian, and the same the other way around. Well well, guess there are other apocalypses for fear more than people not understanding one another, something that is allready upon us...;)
... its interesting and recognisable. That's why it got on slashdot now, and why it will create a buzz once lanuched. If the console is cheap, oh yea...
I think a high quality game requires high quality and quantity of workmanship. Look at the great Epics, such as Final Fantasy. Nintendo has done allot of Mario Party stuff for a while, and I think there is a limit to how long that is interesting. Of course it will yeild good result to be inovative, but I strongly suspect this will lead to this system being wastly more popular in Japan than in the EU and US, where the market for these small-fun-and-inovative games have traditionally been bigger.
Also, lets not forget that to be inovative in way such as the EyeToy, you need processing power. I bet the EyeToy people can do amazing things with the PS3 that the Revolution just won't handle. How EyeToy manages what it does on the PS2 is amazing to me.
In any event, lets see where it goes. Its good we have a contender in the battle for our spare hours that dares think outside the cube...uhm...box.;D So no matter where we go, we'll all stand to gain from the competition. Long live market economy;)
Chemical? I completely agree! Smokers and alcoholics, see if you can recognize this:
I'm at work, feeling that my focus is lacking. I keep thinking of WoW. Everything I want to do in Wow. Work seems dull, I can't get anything done. I leave, go for WoW. When I fire it up, it feels soothing, calm... sort of like a breezed. Then, during the time I WoW, eveything else goes away. Then I have to sleep.
The first thing I think of in the morning is WoW. Need a session before work. Then the cycle repeats, except the days I call in sick.
I was like this for a few weeks (thats how fast I got hooked!!), but social life, girlfriends and fun friends eventually _had_ to win. I felt worse not prioritizing my beautifull girl, than not playing. So she won, and so did my friends. I'm too scared to think what would happen, was I living on my own, not having many friends, not having a girl, and not having a good vibrant life in general.
I've commented earlier that I think Nintendo is tyring to hit a special marked with this console, and this controller, in an attempt to bring gaming to a broader audience. Capturing the old gamer's nostalgia for the old NES/SNES/N64 games is of course also a wise move.
But when I saw these specs, someone poured cold water down by neck. If you where a developer, would you invest in a platform like this? I mean, its basically an XBox. I'm thinking it will smell good for all those strange Japanese games that would not sell well in the West, but not for those who develop the other stuff... for the first time, I'm actually worried. Hopefully Nintendo won't be the only ones developing titles for this system! (like seems to be the state of the GameCube these days... I've not bought a NGC game since Wind Waker...)
But as I've said before, I think Nintendo is a smart company, and they will probably pull it through. Either that or they will be reduced to a Japan-only game company, and fail the next generation console launch in five-six years.
They're not excluding anything, they are just carefull. Go look at the the www.nintendo.com website. If you enter an unrated game, you are asked "do you really want to do this?".
The new Nintendo Wi-Fi service is the same deal. It tries to ensure you cannot get in touch with bad people. So, suddenly online gaming isn't dangerous for kids any more.
So, when you're a carefull dad and buys you Revolution, you'll turn on the parental lock, and feel safe your kid is in good hands. After the little ones are in bed tho', you sneak out to play Residen Evil Zero.;)
Isn't the very fact that Nintendo will now make available it's SNES library for a charge the very same reason they where so "nazi" about people's downloading and running their stuff for free? The day SNES9x/ZSNES matured, Nintendo tried it and said "hell, our future consoles can also do this, and we can make a fortune off it!"
Apart from this, I must say the Revolution plan is brillian: 1. Make a controller that inspires radical game design for a wider audience 2. Make avilable for that audience games whichh they have fuzzy feelings for from childhood. 3. Tell the same crowd (now parents) the console is safe for kids
Of course they won't "win the console wars", but they will win a market previously sceptical and hard for Sony and Microsoft to gain grounds in. Nintendo were allways a smart company, they actually make money!
Do you really want memories of wars, of terrorising leaders, of the horrors of Facism and Stalinism to die alongside these people? If you've lived through 5 dictatorships, and 5 democracies, you have a better judgement of what is right than if you live healthy for just 65 years, and live half you life wanting change, then half your life regretting it, feeling the old days where better.
I have a Portuguese girlfriend, and she tells me the young population of Portugal today sometimes says they think they need a "dictator light" to settle things in the country. My girl's father was a resistance memeber back in the 70's, and you cannot belive his horror when he hears this.
In the same way, when I was in school, I had the honour of doing a project to interview a WW2 veteran. It made a strong impression on me, and I am now working in an academic instutions researching conflict prevention. The veteran is now dead, and I belive I will never be able to transmit the same impression of war to my kids unless I - God forbid - experience it myself.
I belive one day we will be able to cure the condition known as aging. You don't need people to grow old and die. What a horrid statement... to die may be natural, but to live is a gift unlike any you will ever recive.
. Knut
P.s. of course, in the long run you'll need to expand beyond the mother nest to sustain a longer living population, but that is for a different debate. Eternal life has to come with supporting technologies, or it will surely kill the human race in its cradle.
Its striking that few of the inventions on the list are post 1100-1200. I read an article about this a long time ago in a popular science magazine, but cannot remember how it concluded.
In any event, muslims have an amazing history of science and civilization, and should carry this with pride. What should worry them, and the christians, is the anger towards "alien" influense, and the movements it creates amongst the most hardline belivers.
In the end, I strongly belive we must at some point start seeing our real history, and identify by it, rather than religion. We all climbed down from the trees, learned to talk and make tools, learned to have philosophy, and learned to belive in gods, the future, and ourselves. Religion, and who made-what-when is really just an abstraction from the real deal: we're all humans, in all our colors and faiths. And man, how amazing a creature we are...
If you look at the Microsoft webpages linked to from the main story, it has a flash movie showing to quarter-circles on bottom corner of the screen, featuring a virtual keyboard. The idea is neat, and I really hope it works (bearing in mind that it can probably be easy to push to "buttons" at the same time, and only get one response from the system...unlike the multi-point tuchscreen featured in an earlier Slashdot story).
Anyway, the idea of a super-PDA basically replacing the PC has for me allways been very attarctive, as long as I can plug the little beast into a screen at work, then my high-resolution TV at home, and a projector when I tell my boss how much money he will get when _I_ get what I ask.
The problem is that these super-PDAs are allways to big to be practical. Mobile phones got a well earned success when they became small enough to put comfortably in a pocket. The PSP I recenly bought doesn't, and that causes me to rarely use it... its just not practical.
Any super-PDA bigger than a medium size cellphone is doomed to be a laptop. Maybe the best solution is simply to put all your stuff online, and access this from home, work and your cellphone on demand.
Of course, the current cellphones have a long way to go as well. But with global wifi looking possible, the future is bright none the less... (:
It seems to me, who have no background in physics, that nuclear is the future, unless some new alternative pops up, yeilding a far better energy/danger ratio. If we truly can reuse the fuel through a breather reactor, and have basically unlimited energy for a hundred thousand years, who can serious say no?? I even think it would be a good psycological factor for humanity, to use a truly advanced form of energy supply. Anyone can burn coal, we've done it centuries... but getting our electricity from something we could not discover by accident, but only through understanding...maybe it would put our future in perspective. The future is science.
However, my question is how this report can conclude so differently from the previous slashdot discussion? Coal lobby, or scientific facts?
P.s.: But I'm not sure it will save the planet. Unless the world gets more stable and strong geopolitical climate, in which an authority (UN) can impose a nation to stop burning fossil fuel, I belive coal and oil will sell as long as there are supplies we can get with relative ease. Hopefully new rising nations will not pollute so much that the effort of other's will be in vain...
Slashdot Mirror
It appears to me that it is hard to find software that cannot be exploted somehow, given enough time to dig into every possible way of doing so. Isn't this an indication that there is simply something wrong in the way software is put togeather and executed? Maybe the people who design API's, compilers and whatever is used to make software needs to rethink the way the stuff works... or maybe software is quite simply such a complex task of engineering that to keep it possible, it must also be possible to exploit.
;)
I have of course no idea how to change the world, or I'm sure I'd be either very rich, very famouse or both
Take it away now,
. Knut
Working in a research institute with loads of quantifiers, I've also seen this happen every now and then with researchers and their datasets or other lists. Especially students, as none tells them Excel has limitations in information amounts.
Maybe the problem simply is that Excel does't come with a big red sticker on its box that warns of this.
Seems this is only for the US and Canada. Maybe Slashdot needs to orient it's writing more to its global audience? (:
On a side note, VOIP (Skype) and Ryanair (low cost airline in Europe) is the very reason me (in Norway) and my girl (in Portugal) manages to keep together even tho the distance is enormous. Being able to go to Portgal for the price of an expensive bus ticket + almost free comunications = truly united Europe.
... is the consequenses if the universes truly exsist in linked cyclical nature. Imagine this:
- You scramble the universe every now and then
- You keep scrambeling forever
- If time is infinite, and the possible combinations of matter and energy are not (even if unimaginably many) you will end up with the same combination occuring over and over again infinitly.
So, if our mind is truly is just a part of this physical world, and arise from the energy/matter combinations mentioned above, we will end up living this life an infinite number of times, and in an uthinabkle amount of alternative varieties...
Hello Buddha....
Kind of makes me regret I was late submiting my tax return, again...
I guess when you start up this thing, your official title as the person behind the wheel of the vehicle goes like this:
;)
1.) You pedal, you are now officialy a "driver"
2.) You push the little red button, you are now officially a "pilot"
3.) You push the little red button a little too long, you are now officially a "satelite"
Now if only the Moller SkyCard had one of these on the back. Never mind vertical takeoff and landing, I want to get the moon!
. Knut
Doesn't it make sence in some ways that a game that could possibly be modified outside the parents control should be labled as such? Maybe this labeling organisation (ESRB) should make themselves a new category scheme that says the experience could change over time, but the game itself is basically ok.
However, as many other Europeans, I still don't get how swearing and sex in a game makes it more dangerous than the voilence it's gameplay is based on. I remember a girl I know teling me about her Syrian father's opinion that "sex is more dangerous than voilence". Some people just need to adjust their compass...
Well, time to go out and beat up some hoockers! Oh yea...
No worries, no flame-feelings (:
Sorry, not everyone has English as their first language. It still makes it wrong of course, so here is the corrected version, according to M$ Word (with some unspecified dictionary, probably Oxford English, as that is the official of the place I work) ;)
;)
"People should not fear their governments, governments should fear their people"
- V for Vendetta
I wonder sometimes where language is going. Elements of English both in grammar and sound snear into my beloved Norwegian, and the same the other way around. Well well, guess there are other apocalypses for fear more than people not understanding one another, something that is allready upon us...
"People should not fear their gouvernments, gouvernments should fear their people"
- V for vendetta
... its interesting and recognisable. That's why it got on slashdot now, and why it will create a buzz once lanuched. If the console is cheap, oh yea...
When I saw Slahsdot today, my frist thought was: "someone with administrator access got home drunk last night".
I think a high quality game requires high quality and quantity of workmanship. Look at the great Epics, such as Final Fantasy. Nintendo has done allot of Mario Party stuff for a while, and I think there is a limit to how long that is interesting. Of course it will yeild good result to be inovative, but I strongly suspect this will lead to this system being wastly more popular in Japan than in the EU and US, where the market for these small-fun-and-inovative games have traditionally been bigger.
;D So no matter where we go, we'll all stand to gain from the competition. Long live market economy ;)
Also, lets not forget that to be inovative in way such as the EyeToy, you need processing power. I bet the EyeToy people can do amazing things with the PS3 that the Revolution just won't handle. How EyeToy manages what it does on the PS2 is amazing to me.
In any event, lets see where it goes. Its good we have a contender in the battle for our spare hours that dares think outside the cube...uhm...box.
Now on to how to cure my Slashdot addiction.... ;P
Chemical? I completely agree! Smokers and alcoholics, see if you can recognize this:
I'm at work, feeling that my focus is lacking. I keep thinking of WoW. Everything I want to do in Wow. Work seems dull, I can't get anything done. I leave, go for WoW. When I fire it up, it feels soothing, calm... sort of like a breezed. Then, during the time I WoW, eveything else goes away. Then I have to sleep.
The first thing I think of in the morning is WoW. Need a session before work. Then the cycle repeats, except the days I call in sick.
I was like this for a few weeks (thats how fast I got hooked!!), but social life, girlfriends and fun friends eventually _had_ to win. I felt worse not prioritizing my beautifull girl, than not playing. So she won, and so did my friends. I'm too scared to think what would happen, was I living on my own, not having many friends, not having a girl, and not having a good vibrant life in general.
I've commented earlier that I think Nintendo is tyring to hit a special marked with this console, and this controller, in an attempt to bring gaming to a broader audience. Capturing the old gamer's nostalgia for the old NES/SNES/N64 games is of course also a wise move.
But when I saw these specs, someone poured cold water down by neck. If you where a developer, would you invest in a platform like this? I mean, its basically an XBox. I'm thinking it will smell good for all those strange Japanese games that would not sell well in the West, but not for those who develop the other stuff... for the first time, I'm actually worried. Hopefully Nintendo won't be the only ones developing titles for this system! (like seems to be the state of the GameCube these days... I've not bought a NGC game since Wind Waker...)
But as I've said before, I think Nintendo is a smart company, and they will probably pull it through. Either that or they will be reduced to a Japan-only game company, and fail the next generation console launch in five-six years.
They're not excluding anything, they are just carefull. Go look at the the www.nintendo.com website. If you enter an unrated game, you are asked "do you really want to do this?".
;)
The new Nintendo Wi-Fi service is the same deal. It tries to ensure you cannot get in touch with bad people. So, suddenly online gaming isn't dangerous for kids any more.
So, when you're a carefull dad and buys you Revolution, you'll turn on the parental lock, and feel safe your kid is in good hands. After the little ones are in bed tho', you sneak out to play Residen Evil Zero.
Isn't the very fact that Nintendo will now make available it's SNES library for a charge the very same reason they where so "nazi" about people's downloading and running their stuff for free? The day SNES9x/ZSNES matured, Nintendo tried it and said "hell, our future consoles can also do this, and we can make a fortune off it!"
Apart from this, I must say the Revolution plan is brillian:
1. Make a controller that inspires radical game design for a wider audience
2. Make avilable for that audience games whichh they have fuzzy feelings for from childhood.
3. Tell the same crowd (now parents) the console is safe for kids
Of course they won't "win the console wars", but they will win a market previously sceptical and hard for Sony and Microsoft to gain grounds in. Nintendo were allways a smart company, they actually make money!
Do you really want memories of wars, of terrorising leaders, of the horrors of Facism and Stalinism to die alongside these people? If you've lived through 5 dictatorships, and 5 democracies, you have a better judgement of what is right than if you live healthy for just 65 years, and live half you life wanting change, then half your life regretting it, feeling the old days where better.
I have a Portuguese girlfriend, and she tells me the young population of Portugal today sometimes says they think they need a "dictator light" to settle things in the country. My girl's father was a resistance memeber back in the 70's, and you cannot belive his horror when he hears this.
In the same way, when I was in school, I had the honour of doing a project to interview a WW2 veteran. It made a strong impression on me, and I am now working in an academic instutions researching conflict prevention. The veteran is now dead, and I belive I will never be able to transmit the same impression of war to my kids unless I - God forbid - experience it myself.
I belive one day we will be able to cure the condition known as aging. You don't need people to grow old and die. What a horrid statement... to die may be natural, but to live is a gift unlike any you will ever recive.
. Knut
P.s. of course, in the long run you'll need to expand beyond the mother nest to sustain a longer living population, but that is for a different debate. Eternal life has to come with supporting technologies, or it will surely kill the human race in its cradle.
Its striking that few of the inventions on the list are post 1100-1200. I read an article about this a long time ago in a popular science magazine, but cannot remember how it concluded.
In any event, muslims have an amazing history of science and civilization, and should carry this with pride. What should worry them, and the christians, is the anger towards "alien" influense, and the movements it creates amongst the most hardline belivers.
In the end, I strongly belive we must at some point start seeing our real history, and identify by it, rather than religion. We all climbed down from the trees, learned to talk and make tools, learned to have philosophy, and learned to belive in gods, the future, and ourselves. Religion, and who made-what-when is really just an abstraction from the real deal: we're all humans, in all our colors and faiths. And man, how amazing a creature we are...
If you look at the Microsoft webpages linked to from the main story, it has a flash movie showing to quarter-circles on bottom corner of the screen, featuring a virtual keyboard. The idea is neat, and I really hope it works (bearing in mind that it can probably be easy to push to "buttons" at the same time, and only get one response from the system...unlike the multi-point tuchscreen featured in an earlier Slashdot story).
Anyway, the idea of a super-PDA basically replacing the PC has for me allways been very attarctive, as long as I can plug the little beast into a screen at work, then my high-resolution TV at home, and a projector when I tell my boss how much money he will get when _I_ get what I ask.
The problem is that these super-PDAs are allways to big to be practical. Mobile phones got a well earned success when they became small enough to put comfortably in a pocket. The PSP I recenly bought doesn't, and that causes me to rarely use it... its just not practical.
Any super-PDA bigger than a medium size cellphone is doomed to be a laptop. Maybe the best solution is simply to put all your stuff online, and access this from home, work and your cellphone on demand.
Of course, the current cellphones have a long way to go as well. But with global wifi looking possible, the future is bright none the less... (:
It seems to me, who have no background in physics, that nuclear is the future, unless some new alternative pops up, yeilding a far better energy/danger ratio. If we truly can reuse the fuel through a breather reactor, and have basically unlimited energy for a hundred thousand years, who can serious say no?? I even think it would be a good psycological factor for humanity, to use a truly advanced form of energy supply. Anyone can burn coal, we've done it centuries... but getting our electricity from something we could not discover by accident, but only through understanding...maybe it would put our future in perspective. The future is science.
However, my question is how this report can conclude so differently from the previous slashdot discussion? Coal lobby, or scientific facts?
P.s.: But I'm not sure it will save the planet. Unless the world gets more stable and strong geopolitical climate, in which an authority (UN) can impose a nation to stop burning fossil fuel, I belive coal and oil will sell as long as there are supplies we can get with relative ease. Hopefully new rising nations will not pollute so much that the effort of other's will be in vain...