Uh, several of these ddos attacks (at least in the Netherlands, where the police and government sites were being ddos'ed by teenagers) were made using LOIC, a piece of software that people install *voluntarily* to aid this kind of attacks. I'm not sure you can call these machines "infected", since the software has to be installed manually, and doesn't spread on its own like most botnet-malware. While i do not approve of that kind of software, i would not want an OS that cleans my system of software that i install myself, with or without asking.

Just because there is a limited number of options because of rules on movement etcetera, that doesn't mean that this limited number of plays isn't a bloody huge number beyond the capacity of most computers. Imagine the starting position of a chess game: white has 20 moves, and black has the same 20 moves. That is already 400 combinations, after only 1 move. In the next move, there are a few more options because a bishop can escape, say 25 options, same for black. That's a quarter of a million possibilities after only 2 moves.

Besides, brute force doesn't get you far. There is the "horizon problem", where a chess computer thinking x moves ahead, will keep pushing back threats until they are x+1 moves away, only to reappear on the horizon in the very next move. It takes more than brute force to work around that.

Yes, i guess you could call chess deterministic, but perhaps not, given the huge number of possibilities. And since you make the comparison with poker... I dare to guess that there are more possible chess games than poker games, given a limit on the amount of money involved.

I always thought Nazi Gold was a right-extremist radio station?

I expect it's a bit different with cars and bikes... You take them on public roads, shared by others, and there is all kinds of safety regulations involved. You cannot just take anything with wheels and an engine on the road without the neccessary paperwork. I see what you're getting at, but there are rules on the road. However, if you just use it on private, closed circuits, i guess it's a different matter.

What, and Windows users aren't? I agree that most Mac users aren't exactly the brightest computer users, but get real, most Windows users don't even know other OS's exist, let alone what an OS is. Mindless flock of sheep, really.

Hah, and if your potential customers try to reach you, and find out your service is painstakingly slow... Who do you think they will blame? Their provider (who has no trouble with them visiting facebook or whatever), or your site? Hm?

The only thing you'll accomplish, is having fewer customers than you could have had. I'm afraid that this game cannot be played by two that simple.

So it's Lucas' fault now that you are too weak to resist? For f***'s sake, if you don't like it, let your money talk and don't buy it.

I think the correct SW line would be: who's more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Actually, the man himself told us during the recent Discworld convention that he did this. As for the alzheimer: he seemed remarkably strong and clear, and fortunately in much better (mental) shape than i expected him to be.

I didn't see it mentioned when quickly scanning TFA, but how does this codec handle packet loss?

It is all nice and well to develop a codec to cram as much speech as possible in as few bits as possible, but in this case, one lost packet could mean a gap of several seconds. The success of a low-bandwidth codec, at least when it comes to IP telephony, also depends on how well it can handle lost packets. Low bandwidth codecs are usually used in low bandwidth networks, such as the internet, and there the packetloss is the highest.

Same goes for delay and jitter, by the way. If a stream of packets is delayed, and more voice is crammed in fewer bits, then the delays in the voice stream will get longer too.

Agreed. I was walking on a parking lot to my car. No earbuds or anything, and my ears are fine. Looked left, nothing. Looked right, nothing. Looked left, and there was a Prius that must have come from behind me and turned, 3 feet away from me, waiting for me to cross, and i did not hear or see it coming. Nothing happened, the driver saw me... But i did not hear it coming whatsoever. It kinda scared me to see a big black car 3ft away from me, where there was none a few seconds before.

Bad example, in Starcraft's case: if you register your game serial at Blizzard, you have access to download it from their site. (I didn't even install SC2 from the disc it came on, i just entered the serial and downloaded it, couldn't be arsed to insert the disc.)

It's a study done in the Netherlands. Most people there drive a stick shift. My parents are about the only people i know driving automatic transmissions. It's considered a luxury.

Yes, i've seen that in a rather shocking real life documentary on SyFy, called MegaFault. They could stop an earthquake ripping open half the US (avoiding large cities, thank God) by firing lasers at it. Then some lave came up, then something froze, it got all too high-tech for me... But the same mastermind that designed KITT in the new Knight Rider was behind it, i am grateful we have such geniusses with us in this era.

...of a re-release of all 5 Oddworld-games for Windows through steam, including Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath? Wikipedia links to http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/10/12/oddworld-games-being-ported-to-pc/1 and appearantly it was confirmed by Oddworld Inhabitants for early 2010.