... and the only help available for the modem is online...
Installing an OS with an installer is all well and good. Then you have to install the drivers, updates, patches, etc...
Special tools to update your firmware so that the old OS will work again.
So yes, I'm going to piss and whine. Moving in, the realtor supplied for free an interior decorating company, installed new siding on the house at his own expense, and was sunshine and roses.
Moving out, we find that squatters have lived in the house we want to go back to, the wiring and pipes have been stripped out by metal salvagers, and the place was condemned. And the realtor says "You're on your own."
10 months ago, give or take, the price of gas rose to where buying a bike (and using it regularly) would pay off in something over a year. The price of gas fell dramatically not too many months after that, but C'est la vie.
My commute is a mere 3 miles (each way). It took me the same 4-8 weeks to reach the point of not being totally knackered after the ride.
On the other hand, I haven't lost a lot of weight. And the 3 miles still takes me about 20 minutes one way, 30 minutes the other. (Hills, don't ya know.) My bicycling speed has increased, gradually, but even at this point, I would have to roughly double my current speed to reach the figures you quote.
While I don't cruise in top gear, I don't think I'd be getting twice my current speed if I were able to stay in that gear all the way. Perhaps your bike is geared differently than mine.
And, of course, you're getting about three times the workout I am. I'm still a pudge, though I think my heart has benefitted from this.
In the end, "lines of code" bears little resemblance to anything of any real interest.
A lot of modern MMOs are media - sound, pictures, scripts to make things go. You compare Vanguard, EQ2, and WoW, but include the amount of space taken up by the media.
You compare various games by the number of expansions. (A little Yoda voice runs through my head: "Expansions do not make one great".) But an expansion that contains "a new region, and the population and quests and all that go with it" could be almost entirely scripted, conceivably. A different expansion could add a major change to how the game handles things without adding new content. (City of Heroes "ragdoll physics" comes to mind.)
You make a more useful comparison ("Vanguard is...a huge game"), though. I think features are a much more interesting comparison than simply "lines of code".
Code can be loose or concise, well written or poorly written, maintainable or not. All of which affect the "lines of code" without necessarily affecting functionality. "Lines of code" can be "wasted" on a small feature that nobody cares about; or a very few "lines of code" could have a critical impact on (eg) whether your latency was 100ms or 850ms.
I agree, though, that WoW has done a spectacular job of restraining itself so that the hardware that originally ran it can still run very nearly everything it could originally. (Allow me to regale you, some time, with my stories of Alterac Valley on dialup...) Not all companies have managed that trick, and most require beefier hardware than WoW does.
And all this while maintaining their compatibility - in at least the original content areas - with the hardware they originally wrote it for. Hardware that is grossly out of date today. (I should know, I have some of it...)
Other companies (*cough* NCSoft *cough*) have made changes that make the game very much less playable with the original hardware specs. It'll *run*, but performance sucks.
> so important to keep secret that not even opposing counsel can know about it.
NYCL can correct me on this, but I don't believe that court-sealed documents are kept secret from parties in the suit. General public, yes. I have inferred that documents are sealed to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.
Things like medical records, identity of assault victims, trade secrets, that sort of thing. See, for example, this treatise on sealing documents.
That reference notes that two most common argument for sealing are: a party in the case will be harmed, or that it affects another court case.
Given the number of cases the RIAA has in the air, I would suspect the latter. Remember, the RIAA is the defendant in the class action case. So the sealing was in the interests of the defendant. What I find odd is that the plaintiff was not apparently given the opportunity to object to the sealing. (Are such objections only made after the fact?)
I find it curious that you take issue with the Al Capone reference from a law enforcement perspective (IE, the police didn't catch him, IRS did), when the original context was an economic and social one (he made lots of money, did "bad things" and had a lot of guns in his employ).
1) "Level grinding services" - amazing how willing some people are to provide an account name and password. And for those who take their account back and change the password...
2) Brute force guessing - I would be surprised if there are no bots that locate a random account name, then (over days or weeks, even) brute force passwords. Once a weak password is broken, loot and scoot.
3) Trojan horses - not all WOW Addons are reliable. And when the addon is reliable, the "installer" may not be. One Keylogger later, your account is pwned.
4) OS exploits - at least one case that I know about, a video linked to on some forum had an exploit attached.
So: yes, to the non-technological person, by magic.
Reading up on the topic, the UN knew about the uranium before the gulf war in 1991. They knew where it was, and that nothing had been done with it.
That's why the (fake) story about the Niger yellowcake was at all noteworthy. They didn't know where this (entirely fictitious) new yellowcake was, and assumed the worst.
So yes, nukes were at the forefront of the issue, but only as a pretext.
It is amazing, sometimes, how we can (collectively) forget information.
It's not just military stuff. It's any "institutional knowledge", including legislative. Want to know just why a particular nonsensical law got passed? Bet you can't find out: the legislators involved may well be gone, and even when they were around, they may have had reasons to lie about it.
Someone becomes an expert, then retires/gets fired/is hit by a truck, and 3 years later, something breaks. Suddenly, you have a system that nobody left knows the passwords to, and sometimes, one that nobody knows what does.
I believe this only plays out, though, if a quorum has actually been called for.
This link seemed appropriate to a discussion of quorums.
I do not know, though if the quorum has to be present in the vote tally. I suspect that yes, X number of members have to cast a vote. I don't think, though, that they necessarily have to be there for even the full voting procedure.
In this specific instance, though, it is a senate rule, not part of the constitution.
> because it has a detrimental effect on the value/selling prices of our homes.
You have a point. Be certain to get back to him when you can prove damages.
Your home value will have decreased much more due to the economy than your neighbor's behavior could ever cause. Unless your neighbor woke up crazy one morning and started shooting holes in things.
Judges are only nonpartisan on the ballot. And supposedly in court. The point being that political preferences are not supposed to color interpretations of the law.
They have the same rights to join political parties as everyone else.
As the link above mentions, requiring nonpartisanship among judges is not something that has been around forever, either. As it is a matter of state laws (for state judges), laws -and when they were made- vary.
I would click my tongue and say "Kids these days...", but that was generally before MY time too.
First, can you suggest a better venue to censor a state prosecutor? Myself, I do not know of any method within a state law framework of affecting a state prosecutor's behavior. Complain, sure. I'd bet that the state bar association would be a good place to start. Compel? Not so much.
And second, "calling his bluff" is not such a good idea either. Stopping a prosecutor from filing charges is dangerous enough (as you say). What chance do you think they would have of vetoing them?
As previous posters have said, even the threat of charges is enough to require lawyering up. The cost of the defense goes up a lot just in responding to charges. And you do have to SHOW that the evidence is thin to the judge, which in most cases requires the assistance of a lawyer. If you fail at that, then you're in for a trial, and REAL lawyer time.... or a nominal defense by an overworked public defender who won't have time (or, often, experience) to mount a robust defense.... or a pro se defense, which is likely to be even worse than that of the public defender.
Even if they later drop the charges, you're in for a world of headaches.
You really do want to head things off as early as you possibly can. This is earlier than most, though...
Using this service is likely to promote "presumption of guilt". In countries that profess that they don't do that, there'll be some other pretext used to allow them leeway to snoop.
Part of an invention is the process by which it operates and is constructed.
Having an idea for something is not the same as inventing it.
I have to take issue with this. You've presumed that the invention contains some principle heretofore unknown. Now that's a quite valid definition of 'invention'. But it does not include everything that is patentable, nor does it include everything that is an innovation.
Just for one example, you should apply your definition to drugs. The process by which it operates is entirely natural; the invention is the application. Possibly also the construction of the drug, but not necessarily.
For another example, pick anything repurposed. How about, "attaching a camera to a radar gun with a single trigger, and the radar result displayed in the frame". Two items that already exist. Combining them, though, is an invention. There is no doubt that such a thing can be made, even jury rigged. The operation (of the two items together) qualifies as an invention.
To insist on a working model in all cases (to PROVE that it would work) is pedantic. Save it for when a design innovation ("this cup really does right itself, no matter how you drop it!") or a principle innovation ("With this combination of electronics, I create a self-levitating body!").
Of course, there's always the crazies ("With blessed water from artesian wells, and these prayers and incantations, I can summon the Imp of the Perverse!"). Those, sure. Insist on a demonstration. Within a pentagon.... er, pentacle.
Perhaps you are already aware of the comments above about not being able to play two separate steam-registered online games simultaneously. I wonder, though, because if you were, you would probably have instead said...
"it's a step in the right direction, but more work is needed".
Stop right there. Anything more than that, and you involve observers.
The inventor thinks he is innovating. The observer, knowing precedents to the invention, does not.
Context is implicit in "a new way". Moving things by wheeled dredges (that is, carts) would have been an innovation to the Incas, but not to the Sumerians.
Saying "should have" is simply a justification for blame.
There is no "should". There is only "do", or "do not".
Fortunately we do have a presumption of innocence in the court system. And I don't feel like tossing that out, just to get at a corporation I don't like.
Feel free to prove their guilt, though. I've got popcorn. AND pompoms.
Did you get your tax return, after sending in a detailed list of every expenditure you made (including the dollar you gave to the pan handler that time in New York), had the list stamped by a notary public, provided a list of all family members out to 3 generations (living or dead) with their social security numbers, who can testify you are who you say you are? You did? So... shut up.
Just because something is possible despite obstacles, doesn't mean you should not complain about the obstacles.
Um.. you do know that we elected Obama as President, not God, right?
Omniscence doesn't come with the job. Attributing every decision (good OR bad) to the president is as much of a cop-out as attributing none of them to him.
What he CAN do, however, is correct the situation. And it is your job (and that of every citizen) to see to it that such things are brought to his attention.
The president, however, is pretty much permanently slashdotted. You might look up the size of the White House mail room, then ask yourself how much of that influx any one person can handle.
Note that the same situation exists for pretty much all elected representatives - and that just on the legislation they're passing. Ask the staff of your state representative, if you don't believe me, how much of what passes they get a chance to read.
And so yes, you do have to deal with intermediaries, staffers, underlings of that figurehead you want to fix everything. But you'd better actually contact them, instead of simply complaining on slashdot about them.
Slashdot Mirror
... and the only help available for the modem is online...
Installing an OS with an installer is all well and good.
Then you have to install the drivers, updates, patches, etc...
Special tools to update your firmware so that the old OS will work again.
So yes, I'm going to piss and whine. Moving in, the realtor supplied for free an interior decorating company, installed new siding on the house at his own expense, and was sunshine and roses.
Moving out, we find that squatters have lived in the house we want to go back to, the wiring and pipes have been stripped out by metal salvagers, and the place was condemned. And the realtor says "You're on your own."
What's not to like?
I have a similar story, but different outcome.
10 months ago, give or take, the price of gas rose to where buying a bike (and using it regularly) would pay off in something over a year. The price of gas fell dramatically not too many months after that, but C'est la vie.
My commute is a mere 3 miles (each way). It took me the same 4-8 weeks to reach the point of not being totally knackered after the ride.
On the other hand, I haven't lost a lot of weight. And the 3 miles still takes me about 20 minutes one way, 30 minutes the other. (Hills, don't ya know.) My bicycling speed has increased, gradually, but even at this point, I would have to roughly double my current speed to reach the figures you quote.
While I don't cruise in top gear, I don't think I'd be getting twice my current speed if I were able to stay in that gear all the way. Perhaps your bike is geared differently than mine.
And, of course, you're getting about three times the workout I am. I'm still a pudge, though I think my heart has benefitted from this.
So yeah, even here, cases will differ.
In the end, "lines of code" bears little resemblance to anything of any real interest.
A lot of modern MMOs are media - sound, pictures, scripts to make things go. You compare Vanguard, EQ2, and WoW, but include the amount of space taken up by the media.
You compare various games by the number of expansions. (A little Yoda voice runs through my head: "Expansions do not make one great".) But an expansion that contains "a new region, and the population and quests and all that go with it" could be almost entirely scripted, conceivably. A different expansion could add a major change to how the game handles things without adding new content. (City of Heroes "ragdoll physics" comes to mind.)
You make a more useful comparison ("Vanguard is ...a huge game"), though. I think features are a much more interesting comparison than simply "lines of code".
Code can be loose or concise, well written or poorly written, maintainable or not. All of which affect the "lines of code" without necessarily affecting functionality. "Lines of code" can be "wasted" on a small feature that nobody cares about; or a very few "lines of code" could have a critical impact on (eg) whether your latency was 100ms or 850ms.
I agree, though, that WoW has done a spectacular job of restraining itself so that the hardware that originally ran it can still run very nearly everything it could originally. (Allow me to regale you, some time, with my stories of Alterac Valley on dialup...) Not all companies have managed that trick, and most require beefier hardware than WoW does.
And all this while maintaining their compatibility - in at least the original content areas - with the hardware they originally wrote it for. Hardware that is grossly out of date today. (I should know, I have some of it...)
Other companies (*cough* NCSoft *cough*) have made changes that make the game very much less playable with the original hardware specs. It'll *run*, but performance sucks.
Maybe you can find free popcorn, but you'd have to pay if it was Hot Buttered popcorn.
> so important to keep secret that not even opposing counsel can know about it.
NYCL can correct me on this, but I don't believe that court-sealed documents are kept secret from parties in the suit. General public, yes. I have inferred that documents are sealed to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.
Things like medical records, identity of assault victims, trade secrets, that sort of thing. See, for example, this treatise on sealing documents.
That reference notes that two most common argument for sealing are: a party in the case will be harmed, or that it affects another court case.
Given the number of cases the RIAA has in the air, I would suspect the latter. Remember, the RIAA is the defendant in the class action case. So the sealing was in the interests of the defendant. What I find odd is that the plaintiff was not apparently given the opportunity to object to the sealing. (Are such objections only made after the fact?)
I find it curious that you take issue with the Al Capone reference from a law enforcement perspective (IE, the police didn't catch him, IRS did), when the original context was an economic and social one (he made lots of money, did "bad things" and had a lot of guns in his employ).
And how do they hack your account? Magic?
1) "Level grinding services" - amazing how willing some people are to provide an account name and password. And for those who take their account back and change the password...
2) Brute force guessing - I would be surprised if there are no bots that locate a random account name, then (over days or weeks, even) brute force passwords. Once a weak password is broken, loot and scoot.
3) Trojan horses - not all WOW Addons are reliable. And when the addon is reliable, the "installer" may not be. One Keylogger later, your account is pwned.
4) OS exploits - at least one case that I know about, a video linked to on some forum had an exploit attached.
So: yes, to the non-technological person, by magic.
Reading up on the topic, the UN knew about the uranium before the gulf war in 1991. They knew where it was, and that nothing had been done with it.
That's why the (fake) story about the Niger yellowcake was at all noteworthy. They didn't know where this (entirely fictitious) new yellowcake was, and assumed the worst.
So yes, nukes were at the forefront of the issue, but only as a pretext.
It is amazing, sometimes, how we can (collectively) forget information.
It's not just military stuff. It's any "institutional knowledge", including legislative. Want to know just why a particular nonsensical law got passed? Bet you can't find out: the legislators involved may well be gone, and even when they were around, they may have had reasons to lie about it.
Someone becomes an expert, then retires/gets fired/is hit by a truck, and 3 years later, something breaks. Suddenly, you have a system that nobody left knows the passwords to, and sometimes, one that nobody knows what does.
I believe this only plays out, though, if a quorum has actually been called for.
This link seemed appropriate to a discussion of quorums.
I do not know, though if the quorum has to be present in the vote tally. I suspect that yes, X number of members have to cast a vote. I don't think, though, that they necessarily have to be there for even the full voting procedure.
In this specific instance, though, it is a senate rule, not part of the constitution.
> because it has a detrimental effect on the value/selling prices of our homes.
You have a point. Be certain to get back to him when you can prove damages.
Your home value will have decreased much more due to the economy than your neighbor's behavior could ever cause. Unless your neighbor woke up crazy one morning and started shooting holes in things.
"After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things -- terrible, yes, but great."
Judges are only nonpartisan on the ballot. And supposedly in court. The point being that political preferences are not supposed to color interpretations of the law.
They have the same rights to join political parties as everyone else.
As the link above mentions, requiring nonpartisanship among judges is not something that has been around forever, either. As it is a matter of state laws (for state judges), laws -and when they were made- vary.
I would click my tongue and say "Kids these days...", but that was generally before MY time too.
First, can you suggest a better venue to censor a state prosecutor? Myself, I do not know of any method within a state law framework of affecting a state prosecutor's behavior. Complain, sure. I'd bet that the state bar association would be a good place to start. Compel? Not so much.
And second, "calling his bluff" is not such a good idea either. Stopping a prosecutor from filing charges is dangerous enough (as you say). What chance do you think they would have of vetoing them?
As previous posters have said, even the threat of charges is enough to require lawyering up. The cost of the defense goes up a lot just in responding to charges. And you do have to SHOW that the evidence is thin to the judge, which in most cases requires the assistance of a lawyer. If you fail at that, then you're in for a trial, and REAL lawyer time. ... or a nominal defense by an overworked public defender who won't have time (or, often, experience) to mount a robust defense. ... or a pro se defense, which is likely to be even worse than that of the public defender.
Even if they later drop the charges, you're in for a world of headaches.
You really do want to head things off as early as you possibly can. This is earlier than most, though...
And how do you feel about pretending to be a human?
Using this service is likely to promote "presumption of guilt". In countries that profess that they don't do that, there'll be some other pretext used to allow them leeway to snoop.
Part of an invention is the process by which it operates and is constructed.
Having an idea for something is not the same as inventing it.
I have to take issue with this. You've presumed that the invention contains some principle heretofore unknown. Now that's a quite valid definition of 'invention'. But it does not include everything that is patentable, nor does it include everything that is an innovation.
Just for one example, you should apply your definition to drugs. The process by which it operates is entirely natural; the invention is the application. Possibly also the construction of the drug, but not necessarily.
For another example, pick anything repurposed. How about, "attaching a camera to a radar gun with a single trigger, and the radar result displayed in the frame". Two items that already exist. Combining them, though, is an invention. There is no doubt that such a thing can be made, even jury rigged. The operation (of the two items together) qualifies as an invention.
To insist on a working model in all cases (to PROVE that it would work) is pedantic. Save it for when a design innovation ("this cup really does right itself, no matter how you drop it!") or a principle innovation ("With this combination of electronics, I create a self-levitating body!").
Of course, there's always the crazies ("With blessed water from artesian wells, and these prayers and incantations, I can summon the Imp of the Perverse!"). Those, sure. Insist on a demonstration. Within a pentagon. ... er, pentacle.
Perhaps you are already aware of the comments above about not being able to play two separate steam-registered online games simultaneously. I wonder, though, because if you were, you would probably have instead said ...
"it's a step in the right direction, but more work is needed".
Or, in lol-speak, "'i' iz da Babi Jezus".
Innovation is using something in a new way,...
Stop right there. Anything more than that, and you involve observers.
The inventor thinks he is innovating.
The observer, knowing precedents to the invention, does not.
Context is implicit in "a new way". Moving things by wheeled dredges (that is, carts) would have been an innovation to the Incas, but not to the Sumerians.
Saying "should have" is simply a justification for blame.
There is no "should". There is only "do", or "do not".
Fortunately we do have a presumption of innocence in the court system. And I don't feel like tossing that out, just to get at a corporation I don't like.
Feel free to prove their guilt, though. I've got popcorn. AND pompoms.
Did you get your tax return, after sending in a detailed list of every expenditure you made (including the dollar you gave to the pan handler that time in New York), had the list stamped by a notary public, provided a list of all family members out to 3 generations (living or dead) with their social security numbers, who can testify you are who you say you are? You did? So... shut up.
Just because something is possible despite obstacles, doesn't mean you should not complain about the obstacles.
Compare that to Russia, where they can connect up EVERY computer to high speed internet.
All three of them.
Um.. you do know that we elected Obama as President, not God, right?
Omniscence doesn't come with the job. Attributing every decision (good OR bad) to the president is as much of a cop-out as attributing none of them to him.
What he CAN do, however, is correct the situation. And it is your job (and that of every citizen) to see to it that such things are brought to his attention.
The president, however, is pretty much permanently slashdotted. You might look up the size of the White House mail room, then ask yourself how much of that influx any one person can handle.
Note that the same situation exists for pretty much all elected representatives - and that just on the legislation they're passing. Ask the staff of your state representative, if you don't believe me, how much of what passes they get a chance to read.
And so yes, you do have to deal with intermediaries, staffers, underlings of that figurehead you want to fix everything. But you'd better actually contact them, instead of simply complaining on slashdot about them.