"We're ALREADY seeing this happen - webkit has sufficient market share that sites don't bother building standards compliant version of their mobile site, they just write for webkit and consider their work done."
Shitty developers will go the lazy route and target the browser with the biggest share. Unfortunately, there are a lot of shitty web developers out there, many are borderline scam artists. My brother works for a small web dev company and they have a few big name clients. They always test every one of their sites on multiple browsers including Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and IE 6/7/8/9 on both Windows XP/7/8 and Mac OS (mobile browsers usually work if the page works correctly on the desktop browsers). Of course its not easy and often IE is a real steaming pile (especially 6/7/8) but they get the job done and done right.
Arrogant EE graduates with big egos and a chip on their shoulders, a.k.a. pricks (Hopefully you aren't one of them but I notice you like to use "we" a lot.) The same people who scoff at Arduinos and other easy to use electronics kits that make their expensive piece of paper (Degree) look marginal. Get over yourselves, you have the knowledge to *design* those kits.
From Merriam-Webster's dictonary - Build: 1: to form by ordering and uniting materials by gradual means into a composite whole : construct 2: to cause to be constructed 3: to develop according to a systematic plan, by a definite process, or on a particular base 4: increase, enlarge Synonyms: assemble, confect, construct, erect, fabricate, make, make up, piece, put up, raise, rear, set up, put together
Who cares if the robot doesn't have any real use and comes in kit form. The author used "build" instead of "assemble" and now everyone is having a shit fit. Who cares again? Oh that's right, obnoxious university grads. From the definition above, they did indeed build a robot. Even if they snapped two pieces together, they built the damn thing. Hell the dictionary even says the two words are synonymous with each other. Which brings me to our next word, design.
If they claimed to design a robot that can be remote controlled over the internet then I would be more inclined to agree with you. They didn't design the physical portion, the kit. They merely designed and wrote some software that allows an iPhone to control a robot kit. Lets say I build a robot with some motors, wheels, an FPGA board, glued it together using hot glue and a Popsicle sticks, and write the software. I did indeed design and build a robot. I may have not built the motors, FPGA chip, FPGA board or software development tools, but I did take those components and design a method of assembly and programming to make them into something else.
Note: I am not directly attacking you or calling you arrogant, etc. I am just sick and tired of the antisocial, arrogant attitudes I see in some grad students.
COBOL may be decades old but there are still young people taking up COBOL programming. I have a friend who is around 30 now. He was a CS major in university and one of his professors recommended he learn COBOL. He told me it is the most valuable and useless programming languages you could learn. Out of university he got a job with a company doing contract work for IBM doing guess what? COBOL code maintenance. Now he is living in California making six figures working for a big financial institution maintaining and writing COBOL. Not so useless now, is it?
Seriously, if you want to rob someones house all you need to do is to stakeout the place for a few days to get the owners habits down and then come back with a van with lettering on the side. I have seen so many beat to shit vans with writing done in marker, spray paint and those black-lettering-on-gold house number stickers. They look like creepy rape vans but they are legit. So its impossible to know who is legit and who isn't. Just roll up in a van or pickup truck, wear a tool belt and your good to go. The tool belt easily conceals the fact that the hammer and screwdriver are to break open a door or window. also some phony paperwork can also help if a cop rolls up but honestly, cops would most likely pass by if it looked like an ordinary work crew. No one robs a home in the middle of the night wearing black anymore, its all done in broad daylight when people are at work.
I bet you could just as easily walk down a street pretending to be a utility worker with a clip board and walk onto peoples property while looking at their power lines and meter. Then slip around the back and do a quick smash and grab.
is one of the oldest tricks in the books. I used to work for an entertainment company lugging around equipment. I have been to many venues and big hotels in Manhattan and some are pretty secure, requiring you to sign in and have your picture taken. But there are plenty where all you do is is walk in there like you own the place and no one says anything. As long as you are carrying something then they assume you are part of some staff and just let you walk right in. Even the secure places just require you to say you are from company X for party Y and they let you in without any scrutiny. The parties are planned by a planner who is not part of the venue. So security has no way to easily contact the planner to verify if vendor x is legit or not. They just do their job which is to get a signature and hand out a flimsy sticker pass. If you use a little creative social engineering and figure out what party is happening where you could easily gain access. Even carrying around some legit looking paper work is enough to get you into a venue.
Once we did a party in the museum of natural history, they have a private room in the back (I hear it was $20,000+ just to rent the room, rich kids, you should see some of the parties I have seen, amazing. Once I setup a million dollar bar mitzvah on the intrepid). Me and the guy I did the delivery with setup all the equipment and then walked down the hallway, jumped a set of ropes into the museum and went to the planetarium. No one stopped us or asked us what we were doing.
Across the street where I live is a house which the owner defaulted on his loan. Well he also had a loan through two other banks so the house sits there as the banks cant agree on a decent price which would let it sell. So one day I hear the house was robbed of all its copper pipe, electrical wiring along with the boiler and hot water heater. One neighbour said he saw a van parked outside with some men working in the house. They weren't working but robbing the place. All they needed to do was look legit and no one would question them. Essentially its more difficult to gain access if you look suspicious or try to hide what you are doing.
Just to add to this, the term "circuit breaker" refers to a switch that can open (interrupt) and close a circuit under load without arcing or damage. They are typically designed with springs or gas charges to very rapidly open the contacts without arcing or have channels around the contacts called arc chutes that extinguish arcs (older DC breakers had "blow out" coils, when opened the arc would be magnetically pushed out until it extinguished) . "Over current protection" refers to a device that guards against over load and short circuits. It may be part of the circuit breaker or external. Home circuit breakers are a combination of a circuit breaker with over current protection and are always a fixed amperage for the sake of simplicity. Disconnects are switches that are not designed to interrupt a circuit under load but to isolate circuits and circuit breakers.
Industrial breakers can be adjusted to within +-10% of their rating and some have the ability to be remotely opened and closed. Remember the scene in Jurassic Park where Ellie has to turn the power back on? Well that breaker charging scene is what you really do. The handle is pumped to charge the springs inside which open/close the breaker. You pump until "charged" appears in a window and then you push a "close" button to "turn on" the breaker. Those circuit breakers come in a variety of sizes and can handle 4000+ amps at 480 or 600 volts. After hurricane Sandy my company rented a trailer generator which had a pump type breaker. It was rated to 600 Amps and controlled by a PLC. The remote trip is handy if you want to dial in a maximum current which is lower then the breaker maximum. This allows you to match the capacity of the system being powered. Unfortunately the technician set the PLC to trip the breaker around 350 Amps which kept us from using the generators complete capacity as well as all of our machines. They tried to reset it but there was a software glitch which prevented them for turning the current up.
Utility circuit breakers used in switch gear are either oil or sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) filled. They are not designed with over-current protection built in, rather they are commanded by an automation system which has sensors for everything ranging from volts, amps to temperature phase loss and power factor. If you ever happen to get a good look at an outdoor substation, you can easily spot a circuit breaker. It has six insulators for the three phases coming in and three phases coming out and is rather small compared to a transformer. On either side there are disconnects, knife switches who's job it is to allow the circuit breaker to be completely isolated from the system. This allows technicians to service or replace it.
Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LpCdhuOyQ The first segment is a disconnect opened under load. You see it just arcs until a phase-to-phase short occurs which causes an upstream breaker to open. I recall it was a 138kV circuit. The third segment is a 500kV set of disconnects which were opened while still energized. The original story I read was that one of the poles in the SF6 breaker failed to open so they had no choice but to open the disconnect.
A better question would be, what system would allow 1000 password guesses per second to be authenticated? Most systems lock you out after 3 to 5 unsuccessful attempts. And I would hope that smart developers would put a time delay between how fast a user can reattempt to authenticate. So a computer sending authentication attempts in less than one second would be immediately blacklisted as a automated attack. Inserting a second or two delay between attempts would guarantee that. Assuming a computer could brute force a password by trying all possible strings, what system could that possibly be effective against? I can see that it could be useful against an encrypted file but an online banking site or other eCommerce site sounds impractical. anyone care to elaborate?
I get the feeling that people open source closed projects to get the community to do free work while they continue to receive revenue through donations. If that is the case then your doing it wrong. Also, in the article linked in the summary, the author does not say if he also GPL'd the content along with his game code. The content is where the money is.
If I had a closed project that was making me money I would not open it until it was no longer a profitable project. At that point I should a) have a new closed project available that is a new source of income or b) finding another source of profit altogether. If the stagnant project is no longer making me a significant amount of money then why keep it closed and let it die? If there was still a use for it then I would open it up and let the OS community have it for free. If they make it better and it once again becomes useful then that is awesome, they did something that I couldn't or didn't have the time to.
Another example is if I made a game and the game engine or framework was decent enough to give to the community then by all means, I would open source the game code. BUT I would keep the copyright on the content and continue to sell the game. Its like what id does for their previous generation tech. Everything from Wolfenstein to Doom 3 is open source. Why? Because the game engine is no longer profitable to license and the game itself is old and no longer selling. So their technology does not die and gets to live on. But of course the game content itself is not free. The levels, textures, sound, music and models are all under copyright and are not free. You don't get the content when you download the game engine. You also might not get event scripts, AI scripts or other bits that give them a technical edge. In gaming, the content is what makes your game an actual game. Content probably costs more time and money to develop than the actual game code. You don't give that away unless you really want to.
If your software is a tool then you either keep it closed and continue to profit from it or you face the fact that once you open it, it may no longer be a source of profit. Single use tools cant be modified into something else unless there is an API or framework beneath it that could be used for other tools. That can be opened up without impacting your existing tools profitability.
There are plenty of dual-licensed open source projects where the community gets a version that is only community supported and may lack certain features or content. Then if someone wants the full features or build a commercial product using the software, it must be commercially licensed.
For $400 I can put together a pretty powerful AMD A10 system that will run circles around the Zbox. I just priced it out on NE and here is what I got:
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X - $100 CPU: AMD A10-5700 Trinity 3.4GHz Quadcore 4GHz 65W - $128 RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 - $54 HDD: Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB - $65 Case: Rosewill RS-MI-01 BK Mini ITX Tower with 250W Power Supply - $47
TOTAL: $395
There ya go, a very capable PC that costs the same as the Zbox AND is built with standard parts. If the Zbox dies then guess what? You junk the whole thing save for the RAM and HDD. Sure the ITX system will be bigger but its still quite small compared to a desktop tower. Mine lacks an SD card slot, remote, second GBE port, Bluetooth and WiFi. But those can be added on for cheap, USB wifi ~$20, HTPC Remote ~$20, USB Bluetooth ~$15. And they aren't all that necessary depending on what you need. I would only need to add the Remote, the other features are useless for me.
I hope they provide the source to their security software or at least port it so it can run on on Linux/BSD. I want to continue to legally be able to watch DVD's and BluRay movies/TV shows on my Linux HTPC.
I imagine if the computer had a webcam, they would snap a picture along with the infringement evidence.
CAD **AA Lawyer: Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if we examine exhibit A you will see that at on November 12th 2014, at 11:24 PM Sally Smith visited a known website which engages in piracy or illegal downloading if you will. She downloaded what is called a torrent file which enabled the defendant to download an illegal copy of Star Trek: Into the Darkness. From that illegal copy our "copyright law enforcement software" logged that seventeen copies were uploaded to other users. We are seeking damages equal to the cost of making the film, squared.
Judge: what proof do you have that it was in fact Sally Smith who was actively engaging in the heinous crime of illegally downloading a precious piece of Hollywood?
CAD **AA Lawyer: Your honor, our "copyright law enforcement software" detected the presence of a web camera which allowed us to record the user as she committed the crime. Article 5 paragraph 34 of the Canadian copyright enforcement act explicitly allows us the right to enable remote viewing of criminal behaviour once it is detected.
and same goes for a portal movie. And for good reason, the lack of the character talking or making sounds makes the player feel as if they are Chell or Gordon. Games that feature character dialog make you feel more like a puppeteer. A movie cant capture that first person experience so they would have to avoid casting Gordon or Chell. My guess would be that any Valve based movie plot would be set in the HL or Portal universe and tell another heroes story.
A HL movie could be based on the Combine invasion of Earth bridging HL1 to HL2 (though it wouldn't have a happy ending) or telling another story set in another City 17 like Combine ruled dystopian city, maybe in the USA or another location. They can still take full advantage of the HL story, Combine enemy's and aliens while tying it in with events from the game. You will probably hear references to Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman Alyx and Dr Eli Vance, Kleiner etc. Maybe their actions of stirring up trouble in city 17 inspires other rebel groups to do the same in their respective prison cities. Plenty of opportunity.
Portal would be a bit more difficult as the game universe is limited to one lone character trapped in a high tech prison maze ran by a murderous AI. Basically a one-on-one story line. So the story would be a bit more tricky unless the plot is based on the period of time when GLaDOS went rouge and murdered the entire facility staff. Maybe a lone scientist or janitor escapes and they story is based on them. Portal 2 showed the final release of Chell, set far after the events of portal and HL2 so they could make a stereotypical "group of playing kids stumble upon danger" type plot. Maybe chronicle the rat man (I think that's the name), the person who wrote all the "cake is a lie" graffiti. Either way a Portal story would be tough.
Adult Swim does this and I wish other networks would follow suit. Even if its a 30 minute time slot they air the first half/quarter/third, break for a quick commercial block and then show the rest of the program uninterrupted. Then they show a 5+ minute commercial block until the next program airs. Its a perfect setup as it is no where near as obnoxious and I can easily tolerate the quick break. During the final break I can do something like get a drink, use bathroom etc.
Of course the advertisers would probably put the kibosh on such a practice because they know viewers will ignore the long block and do something else. That is why I watch TV shows off my DVR exclusively, I don't watch live TV.
Listen, the point I was making is spelled out in plain English: hand held gaming devices are competing with mobile phones that are more powerful and have more features. Just write an emulator and app store.
Maybe I am wrong and Android emulators suck. I don't know because I haven't tried one yet. But it does not at all sound impossible. I even found a controller for Android phones from Gametel. That is something that I would want. Want to game? Take out the controller.
"I don't have a phone and don't want one. But I sure as hell want a portable Linux PC with solid gaming controls on which I can run any emulator I want.
I have yet to meet someone who does not have a mobile phone. You are the minority in this case so an exception to the rule. Maybe a portable Linux gaming device will suit your needs. And at 320x240 it is going to be useless for much else. Why spend money on a single use device? It doesn't look cheap, if the price tag is in the 150-200 range then its already lost.
I hope another N900 like phone comes out that is comparable to the Galaxy SIII or Note 2. I want one convenient device that can do it all which runs a full blown totally unlocked GNU/Linux OS which has a touch interface that is as easy and slick as Android or iOS. Maybe KDE Plasma will be the ticket but I am not holding my breath.
" Sounds like you're the one with no clue." Another "slash dick" getting his snide remark in. what is so hard about being civil and polite around here?
Some schools are worse than others. I went to a public vocational/technical high school in Jamaica, Queens, NYC. Part of Jamaica is definitely a low income, mostly black neighborhood and is a bit rough. I am white and I walked 10 minutes from the bus stop to school every day and never encountered any serious problems. I was robbed twice in my freshman year but in both cases it was by a group of two or three older kids who were just trying to act hard and pick on younger kids. You just keep your mouth shut, hand them the few dollars in your pocket and they walk away. But the school was very safe and you were shocked when there was a fight in the hallway which was on average once, maybe twice a year. The principal and dean made any fight between students a big issue, even if it happened in your neighborhood far away from school. Your parents were required to come in and a counselor along with the dean and principal would have a meeting between both students and their parents.
But there were/are schools that are really BAD. One that comes to mind is Franklin K. Lane (called Lane for short) in Cypress Hills, Queens. A classmate from high school was friends with two Bangladeshi kids who just moved into the neighborhood. Since Lane was their zoned school so they go in to register there. As they were leaving the office, a gang of kids jumped them in the hallway and robbed them. One of the kids was punched in the face and the other slammed against the wall and punched in the stomach. That was their welcome to Lane, a hell hole of a high school. They were also jumped and robbed again outside of school not too long after that. They then transferred (which is in some cases, difficult) to another high school, forget which one. My classmate was also stabbed near there as well, its a rough Brooklyn neighborhood.
Some inner city public schools are pretty safe and others have the environment of a state prison.
The only reason this might be interesting is if its very cheap, I don't see a price listed anywhere. Why do people insist on re-inventing the wheel when it comes to portable consoles. I keep hearing of some ARM/MIPS-Linux hand held that turns out to be vaporware or bombs. Who is going to carry a 1ghz, 512MB 320x240 Linux console when their phone already has a quad-core ARM, 1-2GB RAM, gigabytes of storage and a high rez screen? Just because its open source doesn't mean much at all unless it can compete with iOS and Android phones on a hardware level AND make calls. You need to either replace their already powerful computer-phone or add to its capabilities. Not make yet another gadget for them to lug around.
You want to kickstart a mobile open source game emulation platform? Don't waste time re-inventing the wheel. Design a compact, portable, near-universal phone cradle that gives you a D-pad, analog stick, buttons and connects via USB or Bluetooth. Bonus points if the entire design can be available to download and be 3D printable. Then write an open source emulator for the app store (not available on iOS but that is not a concern). If you want, create your own open-source app store which allows users to browse the OSS game repository. The user simply has to allow "unknown sources". And if you want to go the extra mile, provide a frame work or game engine for novices to create games (like Flixel does). Now you have a portable open-source virtual console that is an addition to their existing device.
If you want to game on the go, this guy has the right idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM7BWFlZikw He should kick-start his idea and make a simple clip that attaches a phone to an off the shelf controller. SIMPLE.
The exploit you posted is two years old and fixed. But I do get your point about no OS being 100% secure. But most of these Industrial automation infections are most likely due to bad security practices or outdated and unpatched Windows systems.
My bet is the control systems are running windows XP or worse, 2000 (I wouldn't be surprised if NT can be found in some places). Manufactures of soft PLC/PAC hardware still offer systems pre-installed with Windows XP and XP embedded even though it is a security nightmare. The reason being backwards compatibility. Most industrial PC hardware is designed for long life spans. A PC motherboard that can be bought off Newegg from Asus or Gigabyte might change every few months or yearly. And every time a new chip set comes out the previous generation boards and chip-sets are discontinued. Industrial boards typically have runs lasting years to ensure a customer that 5 or even 10 years later they can get them a replacement board. Software is costly and redeveloping a multi-million dollar factory automation system is often impossible without very costly downtime. Something as simple as a windows update can completely bring an entire system down. In short the mentality is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". And often enough, you can get away with it.
I work for a shop where we still have three machines running windows 2000 for CNC motion control along with one running XP. I could upgrade to Windows 7 as the company who makes the CNC system has up to date software that runs on 7. Any time I have proposed upgrading the machines, the production manager, engineer and boss won't hear any of it (if it ain't broke, don't fix it!). I have to maintain a small inventory of P4 systems pre-loaded with XP pro and the CNC software to ensure that I have replacement systems at the ready. When I first started working you wouldn't believe the shit that was going on. The previous IT guy was a cousin of the owner who was a programmer, he wasn't an IT expert and was ignorant about security (im no expert either, but I make sure I follow best practices). I had employees plugging their iPhones into the CNC PC's to charge as well as listening to Pandora through a web browser on the CNC PC using a pair of speakers they bought in. I put a stop to that nonsense. I now have each computer on a domain account that is locked down (no web browser), no physical USB access by the operator and the CNC PC's on their own isolated network that is filtered by a firewall (pfSense). Its far from perfectly secure but it will stop 90+% of the silly nonsense that can screw you over.
Every gun owner I know has their gun(s) locked in the kind of case that would resist a rocket launcher anyway. I don't understand why that wasn't the case with Sandy Hook.
I am not 100%certain of the details but it was stated that his mother did take him shooting and taught him how to handle a firearm. It is quite possible she did have the guns locked in a safe but her son may have also had the key/combination. If she trusted him with the safe handling of firearms and never suspected he would snap (obviously she didn't or was oblivious) she might have also showed him the combination or location/copy of a key. So even if the guns were locked in Fort Knox, as long as he had access he would get a hold of them.
"With all due respect, you're talking out of your ass." "Try again, comrade."
You sound a bit snide when speaking. Try to be more polite when correcting others or pointing out their lack of knowledge. Otherwise you sound like a dick. Obviously he had no idea you could roll back the clock. Aside from that he made a very interesting and well informed guess at what the facility could be.
In the world of industrial automation, windows unfortunately seems to reign supreme. Just about every development environment for PLC and PAC controllers is windows and.Net based. And as of late, PC based automation (think PC based PLC/PAC) is becoming more popular and guess what is the primary platform? Windows. You might be thinking "How the hell can windows be used in a hard real-time application?" Well it is possible and the first time I ever saw it was in the Aerotech A3200 platform. Its a pretty neat CNC motion control platform which uses a Windows PC networked via fire wire to what they call intelligent drives. The software installs an RTX server (then from Ardence) which is given full hard real-time access to the 1394 adapter. The server runs the core motion control/automation kernel, Windows cant mask any of the interrupts which would cause "jitter" and delay on the 1394 bus. Not sure who else uses it but there has to be more. Beckhoff makes a lot of automation hardware that is all PC based and they offer their own automation software suite. Its all.Net Windows XPE, 7 and CE based and fully integrated into Visual studio. Kontron offers Linux support for their ThinkIO system but its roll your own. Not that its bad but in Automation, ease of development is crucial to timely delivery of a system. I don't want to sound overly dramatic but Windows and.Net has become a cancer in the industrial automation world. Maybe cancer is too strong a word, drug might be more appropriate. Visual studio and.Net along with C# is quite alluring to companies looking to build a large automation system with the least amount of programming effort. Even the big players like Allen Bradley and Siemens all have Windows only software. Sure maybe some of it can run under WINE but that isn't the point here.
I have yet to see any automation company make any effort to offer a real soup-to-nuts Linux based automation platform that doesn't require you to roll your own C/C++ code (if someone does please let me know). There is EPICS which is used on many particle accelerators but I still cant figure out how to use it. The only partial exception is Opto22 who's SnapPAC hardware controller runs Linux. But their PC automation control software is Windows only as well as their Development, configuration and HMI tools.
Linux also lacks big CAD/CAM names like Solid Works, Autocad, BobCAD/CAM and even Ashlar Vellum. However, most of them offer OSX versions but its not Linux. Thankfully, FreeCAD looks to be the most promising FOSS CAD application along with PyCAM for converting the CAD models to G code for CNC machines.
I would say that the Divorce rates are up because a) divorce is no longer religiously and socially taboo. Which leads to b) people are less religious today, its more of a tradition than a true spiritual belief. I bet there were a lot of marriages that were unhappy but they learned to work things out and live with each other. They feared god or being labelled a social outcast. Getting divorced was considered a sin and people would look at you funny, a stain on your reputation for the rest of your life.
Today, women aren't the "helpless homemakers" they once were expected to be. Women didn't work. They cooked, cleaned, made babies and raised them. So they needed a man to provide for them and married young, usually in their late teens/early 20's. Now that women work, they are no longer helpless home makers. They can provide for themselves. So where is the drive to get married? Children? Even then how do women cope with having a kid and a career? Do they want to give up their career (My mother did and she holds a masters degree)? That is why more people are getting married in their 30's instead of their early 20's or late teens like they did 50+ years ago. They become firmly planted and then search for a mate. I also believe the high cost of living strains relationships as two incomes are now mandatory to survive. So two people must work in order to rent/buy a home, pay bills and raise kids. You better love eachother and not just be physical. In short: "shits complicated".
Anecdotal examples: I have a friend who knocked up a girl while in the Army. He married her and started to hate her but loved his son. After a few years of them living in partial misery and splitting up for almost a year, he made a massive effort to put aside his differences with her and be there for his son. Well it worked and he actually learned to love her if that can be believed. They now have three kids and live quite happily. They need effort to make things work, some people don't have that kind of commitment.
My mothers parents shouldn't have been together either. My grandmother was a firecracker of an Irish woman who didn't take shit from anyone but loved her family members (Awesome grandma!). But my grandfather was an atheist, hateful, misanthropic man who also didn't take shit from anyone and was a genius and skilled craftsman in his own right. The two never expressed any love or affection towards each other. They slept in separate rooms and my grandfathers room was such a disaster that he mainly slept on the couch. As a kid I was terrified of him as he always watched you with a scowl and yelled at you for doing just about anything. He rarely attended family gatherings and hung out at a Polish social club in jersey. Later on in life he did warm a bit and I got to know him better. When he died, only my mother was there. A great man in many ways. How did two people like that get married? My bet is grandpa knocked up grandma and it was the late 40's, you better get married. They don't have wedding photos either. I once asked my mother why there weren't and she just said "its difficult to explain". So that is my conclusion. They just sucked it up and learned to live with each other. If they grew up today they would have certainly never been married or divorced very quickly.
At that point you might as well call the dumb box a computer. Its not that simple either, all that texture and pixel data must be crunched at once to determine lighting and other effects. You may as well move the GPU to the dumb box. Then your left with streaming the game content into memory on loading. That could be in the gigabyte range so its time to install local flash or hard disk storage as a cache. Then your back to having a full computer instead of a dumb box.
There was a time where I naively thought streaming game video from mainframe like systems over cable TV could work (this was in the 90's). The idea was who needs expensive game consoles when cable could deliver a gaming service through their networks. Then I learned about computer architecture and programming which snapped me into the reality. You needs tons of bandwidth which didn't (and for the most part still doesn't) exist and the latency of sending the signal from the controller -> mainframe render the frame -> your TV. You're better off using cloud services for serving you games into a local cache and then running them on the local CPU and GPU.
Slashdot Mirror
"We're ALREADY seeing this happen - webkit has sufficient market share that sites don't bother building standards compliant version of their mobile site, they just write for webkit and consider their work done."
Shitty developers will go the lazy route and target the browser with the biggest share. Unfortunately, there are a lot of shitty web developers out there, many are borderline scam artists. My brother works for a small web dev company and they have a few big name clients. They always test every one of their sites on multiple browsers including Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and IE 6/7/8/9 on both Windows XP/7/8 and Mac OS (mobile browsers usually work if the page works correctly on the desktop browsers). Of course its not easy and often IE is a real steaming pile (especially 6/7/8) but they get the job done and done right.
Arrogant EE graduates with big egos and a chip on their shoulders, a.k.a. pricks (Hopefully you aren't one of them but I notice you like to use "we" a lot.) The same people who scoff at Arduinos and other easy to use electronics kits that make their expensive piece of paper (Degree) look marginal. Get over yourselves, you have the knowledge to *design* those kits.
From Merriam-Webster's dictonary - Build:
1: to form by ordering and uniting materials by gradual means into a composite whole : construct
2: to cause to be constructed
3: to develop according to a systematic plan, by a definite process, or on a particular base
4: increase, enlarge
Synonyms: assemble, confect, construct, erect, fabricate, make, make up, piece, put up, raise, rear, set up, put together
Who cares if the robot doesn't have any real use and comes in kit form. The author used "build" instead of "assemble" and now everyone is having a shit fit. Who cares again? Oh that's right, obnoxious university grads. From the definition above, they did indeed build a robot. Even if they snapped two pieces together, they built the damn thing. Hell the dictionary even says the two words are synonymous with each other. Which brings me to our next word, design.
If they claimed to design a robot that can be remote controlled over the internet then I would be more inclined to agree with you. They didn't design the physical portion, the kit. They merely designed and wrote some software that allows an iPhone to control a robot kit. Lets say I build a robot with some motors, wheels, an FPGA board, glued it together using hot glue and a Popsicle sticks, and write the software. I did indeed design and build a robot. I may have not built the motors, FPGA chip, FPGA board or software development tools, but I did take those components and design a method of assembly and programming to make them into something else.
Note: I am not directly attacking you or calling you arrogant, etc. I am just sick and tired of the antisocial, arrogant attitudes I see in some grad students.
COBOL may be decades old but there are still young people taking up COBOL programming. I have a friend who is around 30 now. He was a CS major in university and one of his professors recommended he learn COBOL. He told me it is the most valuable and useless programming languages you could learn. Out of university he got a job with a company doing contract work for IBM doing guess what? COBOL code maintenance. Now he is living in California making six figures working for a big financial institution maintaining and writing COBOL. Not so useless now, is it?
Seriously, if you want to rob someones house all you need to do is to stakeout the place for a few days to get the owners habits down and then come back with a van with lettering on the side. I have seen so many beat to shit vans with writing done in marker, spray paint and those black-lettering-on-gold house number stickers. They look like creepy rape vans but they are legit. So its impossible to know who is legit and who isn't. Just roll up in a van or pickup truck, wear a tool belt and your good to go. The tool belt easily conceals the fact that the hammer and screwdriver are to break open a door or window. also some phony paperwork can also help if a cop rolls up but honestly, cops would most likely pass by if it looked like an ordinary work crew. No one robs a home in the middle of the night wearing black anymore, its all done in broad daylight when people are at work.
I bet you could just as easily walk down a street pretending to be a utility worker with a clip board and walk onto peoples property while looking at their power lines and meter. Then slip around the back and do a quick smash and grab.
is one of the oldest tricks in the books. I used to work for an entertainment company lugging around equipment. I have been to many venues and big hotels in Manhattan and some are pretty secure, requiring you to sign in and have your picture taken. But there are plenty where all you do is is walk in there like you own the place and no one says anything. As long as you are carrying something then they assume you are part of some staff and just let you walk right in. Even the secure places just require you to say you are from company X for party Y and they let you in without any scrutiny. The parties are planned by a planner who is not part of the venue. So security has no way to easily contact the planner to verify if vendor x is legit or not. They just do their job which is to get a signature and hand out a flimsy sticker pass. If you use a little creative social engineering and figure out what party is happening where you could easily gain access. Even carrying around some legit looking paper work is enough to get you into a venue.
Once we did a party in the museum of natural history, they have a private room in the back (I hear it was $20,000+ just to rent the room, rich kids, you should see some of the parties I have seen, amazing. Once I setup a million dollar bar mitzvah on the intrepid). Me and the guy I did the delivery with setup all the equipment and then walked down the hallway, jumped a set of ropes into the museum and went to the planetarium. No one stopped us or asked us what we were doing.
Across the street where I live is a house which the owner defaulted on his loan. Well he also had a loan through two other banks so the house sits there as the banks cant agree on a decent price which would let it sell. So one day I hear the house was robbed of all its copper pipe, electrical wiring along with the boiler and hot water heater. One neighbour said he saw a van parked outside with some men working in the house. They weren't working but robbing the place. All they needed to do was look legit and no one would question them. Essentially its more difficult to gain access if you look suspicious or try to hide what you are doing.
Just to add to this, the term "circuit breaker" refers to a switch that can open (interrupt) and close a circuit under load without arcing or damage. They are typically designed with springs or gas charges to very rapidly open the contacts without arcing or have channels around the contacts called arc chutes that extinguish arcs (older DC breakers had "blow out" coils, when opened the arc would be magnetically pushed out until it extinguished) . "Over current protection" refers to a device that guards against over load and short circuits. It may be part of the circuit breaker or external. Home circuit breakers are a combination of a circuit breaker with over current protection and are always a fixed amperage for the sake of simplicity. Disconnects are switches that are not designed to interrupt a circuit under load but to isolate circuits and circuit breakers.
Industrial breakers can be adjusted to within +-10% of their rating and some have the ability to be remotely opened and closed. Remember the scene in Jurassic Park where Ellie has to turn the power back on? Well that breaker charging scene is what you really do. The handle is pumped to charge the springs inside which open/close the breaker. You pump until "charged" appears in a window and then you push a "close" button to "turn on" the breaker. Those circuit breakers come in a variety of sizes and can handle 4000+ amps at 480 or 600 volts. After hurricane Sandy my company rented a trailer generator which had a pump type breaker. It was rated to 600 Amps and controlled by a PLC. The remote trip is handy if you want to dial in a maximum current which is lower then the breaker maximum. This allows you to match the capacity of the system being powered. Unfortunately the technician set the PLC to trip the breaker around 350 Amps which kept us from using the generators complete capacity as well as all of our machines. They tried to reset it but there was a software glitch which prevented them for turning the current up.
Utility circuit breakers used in switch gear are either oil or sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) filled. They are not designed with over-current protection built in, rather they are commanded by an automation system which has sensors for everything ranging from volts, amps to temperature phase loss and power factor. If you ever happen to get a good look at an outdoor substation, you can easily spot a circuit breaker. It has six insulators for the three phases coming in and three phases coming out and is rather small compared to a transformer. On either side there are disconnects, knife switches who's job it is to allow the circuit breaker to be completely isolated from the system. This allows technicians to service or replace it.
Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LpCdhuOyQ The first segment is a disconnect opened under load. You see it just arcs until a phase-to-phase short occurs which causes an upstream breaker to open. I recall it was a 138kV circuit. The third segment is a 500kV set of disconnects which were opened while still energized. The original story I read was that one of the poles in the SF6 breaker failed to open so they had no choice but to open the disconnect.
A better question would be, what system would allow 1000 password guesses per second to be authenticated? Most systems lock you out after 3 to 5 unsuccessful attempts. And I would hope that smart developers would put a time delay between how fast a user can reattempt to authenticate. So a computer sending authentication attempts in less than one second would be immediately blacklisted as a automated attack. Inserting a second or two delay between attempts would guarantee that. Assuming a computer could brute force a password by trying all possible strings, what system could that possibly be effective against? I can see that it could be useful against an encrypted file but an online banking site or other eCommerce site sounds impractical. anyone care to elaborate?
I get the feeling that people open source closed projects to get the community to do free work while they continue to receive revenue through donations. If that is the case then your doing it wrong. Also, in the article linked in the summary, the author does not say if he also GPL'd the content along with his game code. The content is where the money is.
If I had a closed project that was making me money I would not open it until it was no longer a profitable project. At that point I should a) have a new closed project available that is a new source of income or b) finding another source of profit altogether. If the stagnant project is no longer making me a significant amount of money then why keep it closed and let it die? If there was still a use for it then I would open it up and let the OS community have it for free. If they make it better and it once again becomes useful then that is awesome, they did something that I couldn't or didn't have the time to.
Another example is if I made a game and the game engine or framework was decent enough to give to the community then by all means, I would open source the game code. BUT I would keep the copyright on the content and continue to sell the game. Its like what id does for their previous generation tech. Everything from Wolfenstein to Doom 3 is open source. Why? Because the game engine is no longer profitable to license and the game itself is old and no longer selling. So their technology does not die and gets to live on. But of course the game content itself is not free. The levels, textures, sound, music and models are all under copyright and are not free. You don't get the content when you download the game engine. You also might not get event scripts, AI scripts or other bits that give them a technical edge. In gaming, the content is what makes your game an actual game. Content probably costs more time and money to develop than the actual game code. You don't give that away unless you really want to.
If your software is a tool then you either keep it closed and continue to profit from it or you face the fact that once you open it, it may no longer be a source of profit. Single use tools cant be modified into something else unless there is an API or framework beneath it that could be used for other tools. That can be opened up without impacting your existing tools profitability.
There are plenty of dual-licensed open source projects where the community gets a version that is only community supported and may lack certain features or content. Then if someone wants the full features or build a commercial product using the software, it must be commercially licensed.
For $400 I can put together a pretty powerful AMD A10 system that will run circles around the Zbox. I just priced it out on NE and here is what I got:
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X - $100
CPU: AMD A10-5700 Trinity 3.4GHz Quadcore 4GHz 65W - $128
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 - $54
HDD: Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB - $65
Case: Rosewill RS-MI-01 BK Mini ITX Tower with 250W Power Supply - $47
TOTAL: $395
There ya go, a very capable PC that costs the same as the Zbox AND is built with standard parts. If the Zbox dies then guess what? You junk the whole thing save for the RAM and HDD. Sure the ITX system will be bigger but its still quite small compared to a desktop tower. Mine lacks an SD card slot, remote, second GBE port, Bluetooth and WiFi. But those can be added on for cheap, USB wifi ~$20, HTPC Remote ~$20, USB Bluetooth ~$15. And they aren't all that necessary depending on what you need. I would only need to add the Remote, the other features are useless for me.
I hope they provide the source to their security software or at least port it so it can run on on Linux/BSD. I want to continue to legally be able to watch DVD's and BluRay movies/TV shows on my Linux HTPC.
I imagine if the computer had a webcam, they would snap a picture along with the infringement evidence.
CAD **AA Lawyer: Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if we examine exhibit A you will see that at on November 12th 2014, at 11:24 PM Sally Smith visited a known website which engages in piracy or illegal downloading if you will. She downloaded what is called a torrent file which enabled the defendant to download an illegal copy of Star Trek: Into the Darkness. From that illegal copy our "copyright law enforcement software" logged that seventeen copies were uploaded to other users. We are seeking damages equal to the cost of making the film, squared.
Judge: what proof do you have that it was in fact Sally Smith who was actively engaging in the heinous crime of illegally downloading a precious piece of Hollywood?
CAD **AA Lawyer: Your honor, our "copyright law enforcement software" detected the presence of a web camera which allowed us to record the user as she committed the crime. Article 5 paragraph 34 of the Canadian copyright enforcement act explicitly allows us the right to enable remote viewing of criminal behaviour once it is detected.
Judge: proceed.
and same goes for a portal movie. And for good reason, the lack of the character talking or making sounds makes the player feel as if they are Chell or Gordon. Games that feature character dialog make you feel more like a puppeteer. A movie cant capture that first person experience so they would have to avoid casting Gordon or Chell. My guess would be that any Valve based movie plot would be set in the HL or Portal universe and tell another heroes story.
A HL movie could be based on the Combine invasion of Earth bridging HL1 to HL2 (though it wouldn't have a happy ending) or telling another story set in another City 17 like Combine ruled dystopian city, maybe in the USA or another location. They can still take full advantage of the HL story, Combine enemy's and aliens while tying it in with events from the game. You will probably hear references to Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman Alyx and Dr Eli Vance, Kleiner etc. Maybe their actions of stirring up trouble in city 17 inspires other rebel groups to do the same in their respective prison cities. Plenty of opportunity.
Portal would be a bit more difficult as the game universe is limited to one lone character trapped in a high tech prison maze ran by a murderous AI. Basically a one-on-one story line. So the story would be a bit more tricky unless the plot is based on the period of time when GLaDOS went rouge and murdered the entire facility staff. Maybe a lone scientist or janitor escapes and they story is based on them. Portal 2 showed the final release of Chell, set far after the events of portal and HL2 so they could make a stereotypical "group of playing kids stumble upon danger" type plot. Maybe chronicle the rat man (I think that's the name), the person who wrote all the "cake is a lie" graffiti. Either way a Portal story would be tough.
Some people do: [NSFW] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_electrostimulation
Adult Swim does this and I wish other networks would follow suit. Even if its a 30 minute time slot they air the first half/quarter/third, break for a quick commercial block and then show the rest of the program uninterrupted. Then they show a 5+ minute commercial block until the next program airs. Its a perfect setup as it is no where near as obnoxious and I can easily tolerate the quick break. During the final break I can do something like get a drink, use bathroom etc.
Of course the advertisers would probably put the kibosh on such a practice because they know viewers will ignore the long block and do something else. That is why I watch TV shows off my DVR exclusively, I don't watch live TV.
Listen, the point I was making is spelled out in plain English: hand held gaming devices are competing with mobile phones that are more powerful and have more features. Just write an emulator and app store.
Maybe I am wrong and Android emulators suck. I don't know because I haven't tried one yet. But it does not at all sound impossible. I even found a controller for Android phones from Gametel. That is something that I would want. Want to game? Take out the controller.
"I don't have a phone and don't want one. But I sure as hell want a portable Linux PC with solid gaming controls on which I can run any emulator I want.
I have yet to meet someone who does not have a mobile phone. You are the minority in this case so an exception to the rule. Maybe a portable Linux gaming device will suit your needs. And at 320x240 it is going to be useless for much else. Why spend money on a single use device? It doesn't look cheap, if the price tag is in the 150-200 range then its already lost.
I hope another N900 like phone comes out that is comparable to the Galaxy SIII or Note 2. I want one convenient device that can do it all which runs a full blown totally unlocked GNU/Linux OS which has a touch interface that is as easy and slick as Android or iOS. Maybe KDE Plasma will be the ticket but I am not holding my breath.
" Sounds like you're the one with no clue."
Another "slash dick" getting his snide remark in.
what is so hard about being civil and polite around here?
This gets modded insightful?
Some schools are worse than others. I went to a public vocational/technical high school in Jamaica, Queens, NYC. Part of Jamaica is definitely a low income, mostly black neighborhood and is a bit rough. I am white and I walked 10 minutes from the bus stop to school every day and never encountered any serious problems. I was robbed twice in my freshman year but in both cases it was by a group of two or three older kids who were just trying to act hard and pick on younger kids. You just keep your mouth shut, hand them the few dollars in your pocket and they walk away. But the school was very safe and you were shocked when there was a fight in the hallway which was on average once, maybe twice a year. The principal and dean made any fight between students a big issue, even if it happened in your neighborhood far away from school. Your parents were required to come in and a counselor along with the dean and principal would have a meeting between both students and their parents.
But there were/are schools that are really BAD. One that comes to mind is Franklin K. Lane (called Lane for short) in Cypress Hills, Queens. A classmate from high school was friends with two Bangladeshi kids who just moved into the neighborhood. Since Lane was their zoned school so they go in to register there. As they were leaving the office, a gang of kids jumped them in the hallway and robbed them. One of the kids was punched in the face and the other slammed against the wall and punched in the stomach. That was their welcome to Lane, a hell hole of a high school. They were also jumped and robbed again outside of school not too long after that. They then transferred (which is in some cases, difficult) to another high school, forget which one. My classmate was also stabbed near there as well, its a rough Brooklyn neighborhood.
Some inner city public schools are pretty safe and others have the environment of a state prison.
The only reason this might be interesting is if its very cheap, I don't see a price listed anywhere. Why do people insist on re-inventing the wheel when it comes to portable consoles. I keep hearing of some ARM/MIPS-Linux hand held that turns out to be vaporware or bombs. Who is going to carry a 1ghz, 512MB 320x240 Linux console when their phone already has a quad-core ARM, 1-2GB RAM, gigabytes of storage and a high rez screen? Just because its open source doesn't mean much at all unless it can compete with iOS and Android phones on a hardware level AND make calls. You need to either replace their already powerful computer-phone or add to its capabilities. Not make yet another gadget for them to lug around.
You want to kickstart a mobile open source game emulation platform? Don't waste time re-inventing the wheel. Design a compact, portable, near-universal phone cradle that gives you a D-pad, analog stick, buttons and connects via USB or Bluetooth. Bonus points if the entire design can be available to download and be 3D printable. Then write an open source emulator for the app store (not available on iOS but that is not a concern). If you want, create your own open-source app store which allows users to browse the OSS game repository. The user simply has to allow "unknown sources". And if you want to go the extra mile, provide a frame work or game engine for novices to create games (like Flixel does). Now you have a portable open-source virtual console that is an addition to their existing device.
If you want to game on the go, this guy has the right idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM7BWFlZikw He should kick-start his idea and make a simple clip that attaches a phone to an off the shelf controller. SIMPLE.
That or something like this is also pretty damn cool, iPhone only though :-( http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/icademobile. That is what someone should kickstart.
The exploit you posted is two years old and fixed. But I do get your point about no OS being 100% secure. But most of these Industrial automation infections are most likely due to bad security practices or outdated and unpatched Windows systems.
My bet is the control systems are running windows XP or worse, 2000 (I wouldn't be surprised if NT can be found in some places). Manufactures of soft PLC/PAC hardware still offer systems pre-installed with Windows XP and XP embedded even though it is a security nightmare. The reason being backwards compatibility. Most industrial PC hardware is designed for long life spans. A PC motherboard that can be bought off Newegg from Asus or Gigabyte might change every few months or yearly. And every time a new chip set comes out the previous generation boards and chip-sets are discontinued. Industrial boards typically have runs lasting years to ensure a customer that 5 or even 10 years later they can get them a replacement board. Software is costly and redeveloping a multi-million dollar factory automation system is often impossible without very costly downtime. Something as simple as a windows update can completely bring an entire system down. In short the mentality is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". And often enough, you can get away with it.
I work for a shop where we still have three machines running windows 2000 for CNC motion control along with one running XP. I could upgrade to Windows 7 as the company who makes the CNC system has up to date software that runs on 7. Any time I have proposed upgrading the machines, the production manager, engineer and boss won't hear any of it (if it ain't broke, don't fix it!). I have to maintain a small inventory of P4 systems pre-loaded with XP pro and the CNC software to ensure that I have replacement systems at the ready. When I first started working you wouldn't believe the shit that was going on. The previous IT guy was a cousin of the owner who was a programmer, he wasn't an IT expert and was ignorant about security (im no expert either, but I make sure I follow best practices). I had employees plugging their iPhones into the CNC PC's to charge as well as listening to Pandora through a web browser on the CNC PC using a pair of speakers they bought in. I put a stop to that nonsense. I now have each computer on a domain account that is locked down (no web browser), no physical USB access by the operator and the CNC PC's on their own isolated network that is filtered by a firewall (pfSense). Its far from perfectly secure but it will stop 90+% of the silly nonsense that can screw you over.
A drilling hammer is just as effective and quite compact.
Every gun owner I know has their gun(s) locked in the kind of case that would resist a rocket launcher anyway. I don't understand why that wasn't the case with Sandy Hook.
I am not 100%certain of the details but it was stated that his mother did take him shooting and taught him how to handle a firearm. It is quite possible she did have the guns locked in a safe but her son may have also had the key/combination. If she trusted him with the safe handling of firearms and never suspected he would snap (obviously she didn't or was oblivious) she might have also showed him the combination or location/copy of a key. So even if the guns were locked in Fort Knox, as long as he had access he would get a hold of them.
You left out something to do with Nazi's/gassing jews and the word nigger for 4chan HAL.
"With all due respect, you're talking out of your ass."
"Try again, comrade."
You sound a bit snide when speaking. Try to be more polite when correcting others or pointing out their lack of knowledge. Otherwise you sound like a dick. Obviously he had no idea you could roll back the clock. Aside from that he made a very interesting and well informed guess at what the facility could be.
In the world of industrial automation, windows unfortunately seems to reign supreme. Just about every development environment for PLC and PAC controllers is windows and .Net based. And as of late, PC based automation (think PC based PLC/PAC) is becoming more popular and guess what is the primary platform? Windows. You might be thinking "How the hell can windows be used in a hard real-time application?" Well it is possible and the first time I ever saw it was in the Aerotech A3200 platform. Its a pretty neat CNC motion control platform which uses a Windows PC networked via fire wire to what they call intelligent drives. The software installs an RTX server (then from Ardence) which is given full hard real-time access to the 1394 adapter. The server runs the core motion control/automation kernel, Windows cant mask any of the interrupts which would cause "jitter" and delay on the 1394 bus. Not sure who else uses it but there has to be more. Beckhoff makes a lot of automation hardware that is all PC based and they offer their own automation software suite. Its all .Net Windows XPE, 7 and CE based and fully integrated into Visual studio. Kontron offers Linux support for their ThinkIO system but its roll your own. Not that its bad but in Automation, ease of development is crucial to timely delivery of a system. I don't want to sound overly dramatic but Windows and .Net has become a cancer in the industrial automation world. Maybe cancer is too strong a word, drug might be more appropriate. Visual studio and .Net along with C# is quite alluring to companies looking to build a large automation system with the least amount of programming effort. Even the big players like Allen Bradley and Siemens all have Windows only software. Sure maybe some of it can run under WINE but that isn't the point here.
I have yet to see any automation company make any effort to offer a real soup-to-nuts Linux based automation platform that doesn't require you to roll your own C/C++ code (if someone does please let me know). There is EPICS which is used on many particle accelerators but I still cant figure out how to use it. The only partial exception is Opto22 who's SnapPAC hardware controller runs Linux. But their PC automation control software is Windows only as well as their Development, configuration and HMI tools.
Linux also lacks big CAD/CAM names like Solid Works, Autocad, BobCAD/CAM and even Ashlar Vellum. However, most of them offer OSX versions but its not Linux. Thankfully, FreeCAD looks to be the most promising FOSS CAD application along with PyCAM for converting the CAD models to G code for CNC machines.
I would say that the Divorce rates are up because a) divorce is no longer religiously and socially taboo. Which leads to b) people are less religious today, its more of a tradition than a true spiritual belief. I bet there were a lot of marriages that were unhappy but they learned to work things out and live with each other. They feared god or being labelled a social outcast. Getting divorced was considered a sin and people would look at you funny, a stain on your reputation for the rest of your life.
Today, women aren't the "helpless homemakers" they once were expected to be. Women didn't work. They cooked, cleaned, made babies and raised them. So they needed a man to provide for them and married young, usually in their late teens/early 20's. Now that women work, they are no longer helpless home makers. They can provide for themselves. So where is the drive to get married? Children? Even then how do women cope with having a kid and a career? Do they want to give up their career (My mother did and she holds a masters degree)? That is why more people are getting married in their 30's instead of their early 20's or late teens like they did 50+ years ago. They become firmly planted and then search for a mate. I also believe the high cost of living strains relationships as two incomes are now mandatory to survive. So two people must work in order to rent/buy a home, pay bills and raise kids. You better love eachother and not just be physical. In short: "shits complicated".
Anecdotal examples:
I have a friend who knocked up a girl while in the Army. He married her and started to hate her but loved his son. After a few years of them living in partial misery and splitting up for almost a year, he made a massive effort to put aside his differences with her and be there for his son. Well it worked and he actually learned to love her if that can be believed. They now have three kids and live quite happily. They need effort to make things work, some people don't have that kind of commitment.
My mothers parents shouldn't have been together either. My grandmother was a firecracker of an Irish woman who didn't take shit from anyone but loved her family members (Awesome grandma!). But my grandfather was an atheist, hateful, misanthropic man who also didn't take shit from anyone and was a genius and skilled craftsman in his own right. The two never expressed any love or affection towards each other. They slept in separate rooms and my grandfathers room was such a disaster that he mainly slept on the couch. As a kid I was terrified of him as he always watched you with a scowl and yelled at you for doing just about anything. He rarely attended family gatherings and hung out at a Polish social club in jersey. Later on in life he did warm a bit and I got to know him better. When he died, only my mother was there. A great man in many ways. How did two people like that get married? My bet is grandpa knocked up grandma and it was the late 40's, you better get married. They don't have wedding photos either. I once asked my mother why there weren't and she just said "its difficult to explain". So that is my conclusion. They just sucked it up and learned to live with each other. If they grew up today they would have certainly never been married or divorced very quickly.
At that point you might as well call the dumb box a computer. Its not that simple either, all that texture and pixel data must be crunched at once to determine lighting and other effects. You may as well move the GPU to the dumb box. Then your left with streaming the game content into memory on loading. That could be in the gigabyte range so its time to install local flash or hard disk storage as a cache. Then your back to having a full computer instead of a dumb box.
There was a time where I naively thought streaming game video from mainframe like systems over cable TV could work (this was in the 90's). The idea was who needs expensive game consoles when cable could deliver a gaming service through their networks. Then I learned about computer architecture and programming which snapped me into the reality. You needs tons of bandwidth which didn't (and for the most part still doesn't) exist and the latency of sending the signal from the controller -> mainframe render the frame -> your TV. You're better off using cloud services for serving you games into a local cache and then running them on the local CPU and GPU.