Slashback: Pong, Economics, Stability

Slashback with updates and clarifications from several previous stories -- read on below for updates on connecting continents, mechanical pong, Microsoft's ASP fix, and more.

That was fast. jsin writes "Microsoft has provided a patch for the ASP.NET exploit mentioned [on October 7th] on Slashdot, among other outlets. From the article: "To aid customers in protecting their ASP.NET applications, an HTTP module has been developed that implements canonicalization best practices. By applying this module to your web server, all ASP.NET applications on the server are protected against canoncalization problems known to Microsoft as of the publication date.""

Warring academics , never pretty. DAldredge writes with news of another side to the economic debate in academia over the plans of this year's two leading presidential candidates, pointing to this "statement Wednesday by 368 economists, including six Nobel laureates: Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, and -- the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Economics -- Edward C. Prescott. The economists warned that Sen. Kerry's policies 'would, over time, inhibit capital formation, depress productivity growth, and make the United States less competitive internationally. The end result would be lower U.S. employment and real wage growth.'"

The steel cage match with the members of the Harvard Business School opposed to Bush's economic policies has yet to be announced.

Hey Pal, would you please Pay? Daemon writes "eBay made an official announcement stating that they are stabilizing their Paypal services after a few days of problems: 'Most members are now able to log in to the PayPal site to access account information, use shipping functions, use PayPal debit cards, and pay for items online with no difficulty.'

Again, it seems there are still problems on the horizon (or hidden under?) since they say: 'Should you encounter any errors when attempting to log in or use different PayPal functions, please try again.' The full announcement can be viewed on their System Status Announcement Board."

Do please try this at home. adelayde writes "Here we have an article on a wireless IP link between Europe and Africa. It documents the full details about the 802.11b link between the two continents, traversing the Gibraltar Strait, as part of the Transacciones / Fadaiat project and with it placed within the geo-political context of immigration and freedom of movement. The announcement was originally posted to Slashdot in June 2004."

What I want to see is a mechanical Ping-Pong! yathosho writes "German magazine Spiegel Online has posted an interview with art-student Niklas Roy, creator of Pongmechanik, an electromechanical conversion of the classical game Pong."

(We mentioned this amazing looking device last month.)

PayPal woes

[The Swedish Guy]

eBay made an official announcement stating that they are stabilizing their Paypal services after a few days of problems: 'Most members are now able to log in to the PayPal site to access account information, use shipping functions, use PayPal debit cards, and pay for items online with no difficulty.' Again, it seems there are still problems on the horizon (or hidden under?) since they say: 'Should you encounter any errors when attempting to log in or use different PayPal functions, please try again.' The full announcement can be viewed on their System Status Announcement Board."

I can't help but wonder how many eBay transactions have ended in negative feedback for both sellers and buyers, how many transactions have simply been lost in the digital void, and what kind of responsibility (if any!) PayPal will take. I know I have had several PayPal payments recently that I'm not sure whether they have been sent, or if they've just been swallowed by the system, and would certainly like some sort of information from PayPal's side. I did receive one just a couple of hours ago, though, which seems to indicate that the PayPal system does indeed function somewhat normally now.

Re:Thanks for bringing back slashback

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah slashbacks are good. Now who wants to join me in an email campaign to bring back the quickies?

Re:the economist letter about Kerry

[odin53]

I remember that Economist article and poll. You have to remember that the article itself says that it was an informal poll and that there was probably some bias. More importantly, though, the letter was signed by 368 economists; in contrast, the Economist poll was completed by only 56 economics professors, some of which did not even answer every question.

You can't seriously say that the Economist poll is as representative of economists' views of Bush's/Kerry's economic plans as the letter. The Economist wouldn't even say that.

Pong Mechanik

[euxneks]

The documentary on the website was very informative and interesting. He doesn't use any ICs or computer chips.. It's all relay switches! _very_ cool.. There is also a bit of toungue in cheek in the documentary making it very interesting.

Whoa, open source! ;)

[JanusFury]

Hey, Microsoft provided the source for the patch, along with the binary? Perhaps this heralds a new age of full-disclosure and openness, with Linux and Windows users walking hand-in-hand towards a freer, safer new world?

No, probably not.

Private system? WHAT private system?

[Capitalist1]

What we have now in the U.S. is NOT a private health-care system. It's a facist - meaning state-run under the guise of nominal private ownership - system. Basically, it's Socialist, but everyone pretends that the entities are still privately owned. Put another way, the entities can do whatever they want, as long as it's what the government tells them.

The current state of the health care industry is the inevitable result of our movement toward Socialism. Saying we need to Socialize the industry is exactly the same idea as curing someone's headache by shooting them between the eyes.

Re:Private system? WHAT private system?

[servognome]

You're confusing socialism with regulation. The health care industry can do what ever they want, unless the goverment says otherwise. And they can get away with alot, like treatment refusals and having english majors decide the best treatment option. The healthcare industry is still beholdent to private stockholders, they just have to work within the confines of goverment regulation that tries to protect patients.
What you may be referring to is Medicare where the goverment says "we pay x for y treatment" and the hospital has to accept that. This is no different from what health insurance companies do.

Let's Play Ball

[The-Bus]

Two things I want to mention about this:

First is the saying that if you ask all the economists to lay down on the ground and point towards north you would find a pile of people pointing in all different directions.

The second (more serious) statement is regarding the Hawley-Smoot Act [wikipedia.org] which is Wiki'd to say:

Another factor contributing to the Great Depression was America's position in international trade. Protectionist impulses would drive nations to protect domestic production against competition from foreign imports by erecting high tariff walls. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of June 1930 raised U.S. tariffs to unprecedented levels. It practically closed U.S. borders and, with retaliatory tariffs from U.S. trading partners, caused the immediate collapse of the most important export industry, American agriculture. American foreign trade seriously declined, and the volume of world trade steadily decreased. Prior to the Great Depression, a petition signed by over 1000 economists was presented to the U.S. government warning that the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act would bring disastrous economic repercussions, however, this did not stop the act from being signed into law.

This was, to remind everyone, at the beginning of the Great Depression. Protectionism did not help. I don't think we're repeating the same mistake, but pay attention...

Pong interview translation

[Grond]

(note: I'm not a native german speaker, but this is probably better than the fish would do.)

"Table tennis from the computer Stone-age"

A Berlin art student has reverse-engineered the classic videogame 'Pong' as an electro-mechanical device. He spent hundreds of hours assembling the monstrosity, that realistically pings and pongs via two wood blocks. In an interview with Spiegel Online the builder, Niklas Roy, explains was motivated him to do it.

Spiegel Online: How did you come up with the idea to build such a curious toy?

Roy: I wanted to react against what's happening these days in the games and film special effects industries. There virtual realities are made which copy the real world. My goal was to turn the tables and transport a virtual world into reality.

Spiegel Online: How much work is inside this big box?

Roy: A whole lot. From the idea to the finished machine took about a year. In total the project took about 900 hours of work.

Spiegel Online: Why of all things did you pick this Ping-Pong game?

Roy: Because it's a symbol. It's one of the first computergames, and definitely the first commercially successful one. And it's a virtual world that's calculated by a computer in real time. Although it's an imitation tennis game, it's nevertheless immediately recognizable as a video game. At the same time it's simplicity was well suited to my purposes.

Spiegel Online: Did you buy (new) all the parts from which you built it?

Roy: Yes, everything but the telephone relays. Those are from an Internet auction. I got them from an auction of a 50s telephone system. The parts together cost about 2500 Euros.

Spiegel Online: Where is the game now?

Roy: At the moment at my house. But it was exhibited at the 'Garage' festival in Stralsund this summer. Pongmechanick will probably be shown at the 'Viper' art festival in Basel and definitely at the hacker congress of the Chaos Computer Club in December in Berlin.

Spiegel Online: Was were the greatest technical challenges?

Roy: Without a doubt the mechanical parts. The whole thing consists of two parts: the relay controls and the mechanical display with collision detection. The mechanical part was the most complicated because it's naturally the most error-prone.

Spiegel Online: You tried several approaches for the mechanics before it worked...

Roy: In the beginning I wanted to set the moving parts on coasters and move them on carts. DC motors would've pulled the carts back and forth with strings. But it didn't work like I'd imagined. So I used chains instead of strings, and they move gliders instead of carts. The gliders simply slide along rails.

Spiegel Online: You hear it when the ball hits the flipper. How was that solved technically?

Roy: The original Pong had just two sounds: one high and one low beep. I wanted a one-to-one translation as much as possible. So I bought two wood blocks from a percussion store, one high and one low sounding. These are hit by electromagnets that came from door bells.

Spiegel Online: Where did your affinity for computer games and tinkering with relays come from?

Roy: Wenn you're 30 years old, like I am, then Pong is almost certainly the first video game that you played. And as a child I always tinkered a lot. I built an alarm system for my room and experimented with electricity. I always had a knack for it.

Spiegel Online: Do you believe that mechanical games in general have a future?

Roy: I can imagine that (note: I'm not a native speaker, but this is probably better than the fish would do.)

"Table tennis from the computer Stone-age"

A Berlin art student has reverse-engineered the classic videogame 'Pong' as an electro-mechanical device. He spent hundreds of hours assembling the monstrosity, that realistically pings and pongs via two wood blocks. In an interview with Spiegel Online the builder, Niklas Roy, explains was motivated hi

not fast enough

[Doc Ruby]

"That was fast."

Don't they test this crap before they kick it out the door in Redmond? They've lowered expectations of their shabby, expensive (especially TCO) products so low that some of us are glad when a serious compromise takes Microsoft only weeks after public disclosure/pressure forces them to spend the time and money to debug. Can't they spend some of their tens of billions of dollars in profit on some of the unemployed

Politicians' promises

[A nonymous Coward]

I suppose you think it easy to laugh at the idea of Kerry keeping any political promises, but at least it's just hypothetical, whereas with the incumbent, you can see right out in public view what promises have been kept ...

• states rights (unless it's something he doesn't like, such as medical marijuana and gay marriage)
  
• fiscal conservative (from $325B surplus to $425B deficit in one term)
  
• no nation building (but installing half-assed puppets is ok)
  
• less government (except for fraudulently described government prescription boondoggles)
  
• distrust of Big Brother (unless he gets to be the Big Brother and call it PATRIOT USA)
  

So you see it isn't just potential presidents who make promises. The main difference is that whereas Kerry might not keep his promises, Bush has definitely broken his.

The moral is to always throw out the incumbent. Once incumbents realize that there is no point in campaigning for a second term, some of the chicanery to buy votes might just be replaced by honest corruption.