Very very occasionally, if the description sounds interesting, I'll paste the description/requirements into Google. Most of these spamming third-party recruiters just copy-paste from public job postings, so Google can usually find the original posting on the employer's Web site.

I have a polite canned reply, which basically says that unless the recruiter's client is looking for developers to work 100% remotely, AND that their pay scales are likely to exceed Google's by a significant margin, AND that they do really cool stuff, then I'm not interested. Oh, and I don't do referrals of friends (they get plenty of spam themselves).

I don't actually mind the recruiter spam. It only takes a couple of keystrokes to fire the canned response, and there's always the possibility that someone will have an opportunity that meets my criteria. Not likely, but possible. I'm not looking for a new job, but if an opportunity satisfies my interest requirements, I'm always open to a discussion.

However, when they keep pushing even when they know their job doesn't fit my requirements, then I get pissed and blackhole their agency. That also takes only a couple of keystrokes :-)

That's one way. There are always other options. The key is to hook in at the layer that you're debugging. The wire is almost never that layer, unless you're debugging the network card driver. Or the hardware, but in that case Wireshark (or Ethereal, as I still think of it in my head) is usually too high-level.

a mouse driver can be modified to filter through the cheat software before moving onto the anti-cheat device, then the game, etc... the time-shift wouldn't be really large enough to alert anyone (and might even help emulate a 'human' factor into the cheat, thereby saving you from writing in a few random delays). Same w/ the keyboard, come to think of it...

This, right here. Wanna play for money? Use our computers - each one is normalized, matched, patched, and clean of everything but the game... hell, fill the USB and other ports with epoxy if you're worried about someone sneaking in a geek stick with cheats, and proxy the hell out of it to prevent Internet access. Allow players to configure the game through the UI if they want, but otherwise no other action allowed outside of the game itself, and seal the cases with tamper-evident tape.

The only possible obstacle is from players who demand to use customized config files for their game of choice. Example: the Quake 2/3 WeaponsFactory** MOD relied *very* heavily on players using fairly heavily modified key/mouse mapping configs, because otherwise you'd never be able to do much in the game - it was that complex when using some of its team characters for best effect.

Of course, the tournament could audit the config files to insure no cheating, but there's a lot of gray area in there (e.g. having a specific combination of player events tied to one key or click that can perform fairly incredible stunts, etc).

** WeaponsFactory was the Quake2 answer to the lack of Team Fortress in that game version.

Sorry, but a hardware-based solution isn't going to be much different.

I say this because for years, software applications like 3DS Max/Viz required a hardware dongle latched onto the back of one's workstation before the app would even launch (it was replaced by a software version of C_DILLA eventually). Before and after, it was almost trivial to emulate the hardware, its responses, and 'plug' the emulated hardware into a virtual port. Today, most mobos don't have as much variety of hardware I/O (you're lucky to find a serial port nowadays), which probably means USB, HDMI, or Thunderbolt... and the original 3DS dongle required a parallel port, FFS.

Even comparisons of input-to-screen don't mean much, because the eventual circumvention/cheat will emulate one, the other, or both, and send the 'results' to who/whatever is monitoring the user's gameplay.

Furthermore, I daresay that once money gets involved (via eSports), the incentive to built/implement a seamless means of circumventing the cheat-detector will be far greater than the motivation of some asshat griefer who wants to punk on a few pub server players.

To an outside observer. I don't think it's the same in the inertial frame.

Before we call this real, we need to put one on some object in orbit, leave it in continuous operation, and use it to raise the orbit by a measurable amount large enough that there would not be argument regarding where it came from. The Space Station would be just fine. It has power for experiments that is probably sufficient and it has a continuing problem of needing to raise its orbit.

And believe me, if this raises the orbit of the Space Station they aren't going to want to disconnect it after the experiment. We spend a tremendous amount of money to get additional Delta-V to that thing, and it comes down if we don't.

If a brain surgery fails, one person either has his life screwed-up, he gets killed, he becomes crippled, or nothing happens but at great expense to find out. Either way, it only affects one person.

If geoengineering fails, every human being in current existence has their lives screwed-up, get killed, becomes inhabitants of a crippled ecosystem, or nothing happens but at incredibly greater expense to find out. Either way, it affects everyone.

The greater the potential/actual impact, the greater the caution required. A brain surgeon can try a failed experimental procedure again on some other person. No one among the budding geoengineers seem to have a spare Earth on hand for some odd reason.

Asking because apparently no one knows just yet exactly *why* this thing is putting out, err, 'thrust'. They know how, well, sort of...

My guess is it's the same sort of testing magic the latest cold fusion dude in italy is peddling.

The practical result says that it works anyway.

I suspect that there is a balance in physics somewhere... just that no one knows where or what that is yet.

I am kind of curious though - does it have the acceleration curve of a VASMIR/Ion engine, or can we build something with it that will give greater speed in less time?

(...also, is the acceleration graph linear, curved sharply in either direction, hits a curve at a certain point... what?)

What bank is this? There's nothing wrong with public shaming in cases like this, in fact it does the world a service.

Also, you should seriously consider switching banks. Your post prompted me to check the banks I use. One is great, one is okay. I'll watch the okay one.

Think of it this way... psychology is the 1960-70's equivalent of today's MBA, and have many similarities:

* neither has an objective means of measuring success or failure, in spite of claiming to have a wide array of methods by which to do so.
* neither the psychologist or the MBA is held accountable for incompetence or non-criminal malice.
* sometimes either one can take on the semblance of religion, minus a deity.
* the big 'do-nothing-but-are-promised-great-riches' degree of the 60's-80's was psychology, as hordes of students took that class thinking just that. In the 90's through today it's the MBA program.
* both can stretch logic and credulity in their work to attempt things that would get an engineer either incarcerated or killed.

(...add your own here...)

(Trigger warning for the MBAs and Psych majors: this is what is known as a joke.)