Thanks chic.

In reply to this comment by chicchorea:
Many congratulations on your Silver Star fleeting to Gold as it may be.

Many congratulations on your Silver Star fleeting to Gold as it may be.

Umm, so the guy's store doesn't make ends meet anyway?

I can appreciate the fleeting heartwarmth this provides but this falls firmly in to the 'give a man a fish/teach a man to fish' category for me.

Music by... ?

edit: a few clicks later and viola! Music by: Fleet Foxes - Mykonos

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^possom:
What amuses me is that "hacking cell phones" has turned out to be "guessing voicemail passwords". I bet most of their information was gained by entering 1234 or 1111 into people's voicemail. Hacking? Stupid cell phone users for sure.

There are only 9999 possibilities and, since voicemail generally doesn't employ any sort of tarpitting or other brute force protections, I'm sure one could write a script to try voicemail passwords pretty rapidly. You don't even have to try them in succession since voicemail systems can handle multiple simultaneous connections.
Why find some clever backdoor or exploit when you can brute force the thing in a matter of an hour?


These guys aren't that smart. The majority of people aren't that smart and so, yes, entering default pins is characterised as "hacking". However it's done it still means an offence under the RIP Act. Of course it would be interesting if they did secure some hacker's services to brute force passwords. Nothing would surprise me from hereon in.

Story goes that some guy in the early days of phone use alerted a tabloid to this problem who surprisingly did not get back to him or run a story based on the tip. What happened is that the practice rapidly spread through Fleet Street. Another little scam journalists would do is hand new phones to crime victims they had access to so they could "stay in touch". The phones either had the default pin or changed to one the journalist knew.

At first I thought they were using empire at war as the engine, but it does indeed look 2d so it is totally custom. Unfortunately it is kinda sad too, there is no excuse for that display to be chugging like that for 2d images (yes, even at a super high resolution wall display like this, todays consumer CPUs would make hundreds of thousands of 2d objects a joke to throw around).

As for the interface, well to be fair, the people who created this demonstration are probably not game creators. The interface looks nothing more then a simplistic method of choosing what ship types to spawn for an unwinable demonstration battle. In a real game things would be more stream lined. Empire at war is a good example of that. Alot of options can be automated, much like what would happen in a real battle, would you be the fleet commander and not worrying about the deployment of tie fighters from destroyers.

>> ^frizlefry:

Fingerprints on my screen and inefficient slow controls with the possibility of repetitive stress injuries? Sign me up!


Btw friz, welcome to 2011, with millions of touch phones and tablets all over the world being used. Todays glass can be coated in a way where thumb prints don't cause to much of an issue. May be a slight prismatic look when sweaty, but people have no problems enjoying gaming on them. The touch interface shown here is far more superior then a gamepad or mouse could do. Having one hand on a keyboard to help facilitate issuing command types with your next touch could easily be handled with an onscreen panel too.

What an awesome teacher, what awesome life lessons, not shying away from the important things about life, death, friends, bullying, appropriate punishment.

Just wonderful. You can but hope for a teacher like this for your children. You can do all you can to make it so, choose the best school possible, try to get them into the classes with the best teachers. But in the end there's so, so, so few teachers like this.

I had a pretty awesome grade 6 teacher that had a letter writing thing where we posted letters to him in a classroom mailbox and he responded to them all. To this day I remember his response to one of mine where me, as an 11 year old, was saying how angry I was that our new car was being delayed in delivery for a few days. Utterly ridiculous outrage for such a small thing. He put it all in perspective, and being that I'm pretty darn good at putting things in perspective now, and that I still remember that letter, I think that it had a huge effect on me.

Just little things like that, things that are fleeting, can make such a huge impact on who you are as a person, how you face the world for the rest of your life.

These kids are becoming so much more compassionate people from this, it is enough to choke you up, really is.

Tracklist:

1. ABBA - Money Money Money
2. Coldplay - Cemetaries of London
3. The Clash - Rock the Casbah
4. Common - Play Your Cards Right
5. Podcast Tour of London
6. The Bravery - An Honest Mistake
7. Corrine Baily Ray - Seasons Change
8. Vangelis - Conquest of Paradise
9. Nadia Ali - Fine Print
10. Plastician - Japan
11. Rihanna - Disturbia
12. Beirut - Elephant Gun
13. Burial - Endorphin
14. Nine Inch Nails - Deep
15. Gospel Choir - You are Worthy of My Praise
16. Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
17. Danny Byrd - Ill Behaviour
18. Bruce Springsteen - Down to the River
19. Podcast Japanese 101
20. Katy Perry - Teenage Dream
21. Jay Z - Jigga that N***a
22. Disney's The Jungle Book - I Wanna Be Like You
23. Jessie J - Price Tag
24. Bonobo - Kota
25. Lady Gaga - Highway Unicorn
26. Vybz Kartel - All Out
27. Travis - Love Will Come Through
28. Black Eyed Peas - That's the Joint
29. Drake - Sooner Than Later
30. Fleet Foxes - The Shrine / An Argument
31. Kings of Convenience - I Don't Know What I Can Save You From

Taken from YouTube description>> ^Opus_Moderandi:

^ ^ 2 very good points. Can someone that's not as lazy as me compile a list of the songs and artists mentioned? I can only pick out a few here and there...

>> ^CrushBug:

originally called the "yamato" which was changed for obvious reasons

Lyrics:

“Fight of the Century” Lyrics.

Written by John Papola and Russ Roberts

KEYNES
Here we are… peace out! great recession
thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression
Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson
Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

HAYEK
We brought out the shovels but we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!

KEYNES
Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine…
have a look, the great recession ended back in ’09.
I deserve credit. Things would have been worse
All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse

HAYEK
Econometricians, they’re ever so pious
Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?
Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat
But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
…the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

KEYNES
we could have done better, had we only spent more
Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War
You can carp all you want about stats and regression
Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?

HAYEK
Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
the Last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
yet the economy thrived and grew ever faster

KEYNES
You too only see what you want to see
The spending on war clearly goosed GDP
Unemployment was over, almost down to zero
That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero

HAYEK
Creating employment’s a straigtforward craft
When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft
If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet
We’d be at full employment with nothing to eat

REFRAIN REPEATS

HAYEK
jobs are the means, not the ends in themselves
people work to live better, to put food on the shelves
real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

KEYNES
My solution is simple and easy to handle..
its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?
The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices
revitalizing the economy’s juices

it’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark
To bring it to life, we need a quick spark
Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going
Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing

HAYEK
You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”
But some sectors are healthy, and some in a rut
So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter
too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall
no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.
The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
so what would you do to help those unemployed?
this is the question you seem to avoid
when we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?
Doing nothing until markets equil-i-brate?

HAYEK
I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for who?
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many and not by the few.

We shouldn’t repeat what created our troubles
I want real growth not just a series of bubbles
Let’s stop bailing out losers and let prices work
If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

KEYNES
Come on, Are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations
Challenge your world view of self-regulation?
Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned
Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned

HAYEK
Oversight? The government’s long been in bed
With the Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve led
Prosperity’s all about profit and loss
When you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost

the lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know,
the world is complex, not some circular flow
the economy’s not a class you can master in college
to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races
I look at the world on a case by case basis
When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves
And do what I can to cure our disease

The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail
Thats why free markets are so prone to fail
In a volatile world we need more discretion
So state intervention can counter depression

HAYEK
People aren’t chessmen you can move on a board
at your whim–their dreams and desires ignored
With political incentives, discretion’s a joke
The dials you’re twisting… are just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices
so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis
give us a chance so we can discover
the most valuable ways to serve one another

FINAL REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

I don't torrent movies simply because I feel movies are ridiculously cheap and easy to get. I also don't buy the "torrent as trialware" line either...either you like a movie enough to watch it, or you don't. If you are curious enough to watch a movie, you'll rent it, no one is forcing you to buy anything and there is a sort of unspoken consent that guess what...you may actually not like this movie. There is no such thing as a guarantee to liking a movie so every movie is a risk that I accept. Movies are ridiculously quick to be released on DVD so it's not exactly hard to wait for DVDs to be released and rented to find out if you like them, not to mention word of mouth from friends and family and critics reviews to add to your information to make an informed decision on whether or not you like or don't like a movie enough to actually buy it.

TV on the other hand is broadcast over the air and either never to be shown again or rarely to be shown again. Cable companies overcharge for their services and their equipment And for some reason, most season DVDs of TV are ridiculously expensive. And on top of it, once I've watched it...I rarely feel the need to watch it again so I delete it. Maybe a couple years down the road I'll want to watch it again, but ill download it, watch it, and delete it again. Movies I tend to re-watch over and over so I feel I get my money's worth even for the more expensive DVDs. And on top of it, many TV stations now stream their shows for free off the internet which, IMO is no different from torrenting.

Movie DVDs offer me value for my money, TV DVD's do not. I realize that may be a fleeting or subtle distinction, but that's how I see it.

Planet Earth isn't fricken Star Trek: Star Fleet head quarters.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

How about this--it is both small governments and big government's fault!

I'll go you one better -- the very game of making this about "big" vs. "small" is to make sure nobody spends any time demanding that the people responsible actually do a better job.

>> ^imstellar28:
We as a cultural group are not making decisions about the kind of world we want to live in, we are subcontracting it to a small majority who are choosing not to make this fleeting existence a better place for all, but rather a richer place for themselves.

Right, which is why we as a society should stand up and demand a better government, instead of a "smaller" government. People need to realize that all that means is turning over government functions to private entities whose explicit goal is to make themselves richer, while expecting that it will somehow result in making this fleeting existence a better place for all. That's a step away from the desired state, not towards it.

@Peroxide "unchecked capitalism"

There is no such thing as unchecked capitalism unless the government gets involved and that is precisely what is happening here. It is the consumers role to provide the "checks" in capitalism.

If you disagree with a corporation like Serco, why not simply refrain from giving them your money and let them go out of business? Ah yes, because you don't have a choice in the matter - the government is taking your money and spending it how it sees fit, not how you see fit. That is the problem. We as a cultural group are not making decisions about the kind of world we want to live in, we are subcontracting it to a small majority who are choosing not to make this fleeting existence a better place for all, but rather a richer place for themselves.

Let's be honest, if you were in the same situation could we really trust you to make the right decisions? The fact is there are very few people who could trusted with such a monumental responsibility.

Sure, but personality only goes so far. Also, I don't know a thing about her or her personality. All I knwo is that looking at her makes me limp and hearing her makes it go up inside.>> ^Payback:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
Effing seriously? Every single one of these is absolutely unattractive and borderline ugly.

I guess our definitions apply to intelligence and personality AS WELL as mere physical beauty, which is ultimately fleeting and irrelevant.