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.

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...

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?)

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.)

To be fair, radio is/was was as 'free' as Google is today.

The radio's 'product for sale' isn't the music, but the ears of its listeners sold in a 15/30/60 second time-slice to advertisers.

It goes back even farther than the 8-track era... I still have a *huge* collection of my father's mid-to-late 1960's equivalent of mix-tapes and concert bootlegs... on reel-to-reel.

But, yes, there were kids dragging portable reel-to-reel recorders out to concerts back when the Beatles were still a fairly new thing, and they were certainly running a wire from their friends' record players to the line-in/mic jack on the aforementioned player/recorders (and more than a few who rigged a few similar setups off their dads' brand-new HiFi AM/FM stereo sets.

The biggest draw from what I've heard is that you can fit a whole lot of LP albums and/or a metric ton of 45-RPM singles onto a single reel...

Agreed with Sibling. If the manager doesn't grasp how it is that IT or programming teams should be run (or at least how they run best), and is unable to get up to speed, then it all goes to shit in no time... people skills be damned.

I've worked for an IT manager that knew approximately bupkis about tech. Her MBA was all the qualification you needed, according to her. She trusted you, and yes she could really wrestle money out of the CFO to get you what you really needed. The problem was that she had a solid-running clique going, where the suck-ups got ahead in spite of their skillset (or rather, lack thereof). I also discovered that she preferred buzzwords over explanation when it came to project reports and proposals.

The worst part was that many of the folks under her were flamingly incompetent at procurement... they would choose technologies based on the geek factor, and few would do any real negotiations or probing with the vendors (and said vendors knew full well that if, say, I didn't give them what they wanted, they could simply go to my non-tech boss, declare that I'm too hard to work with, and *poof* - they got what they wanted from her, usually to the detriment of the budget.)

So, no... having an MBA may make you a competent Sales/HR/Whatever manager, but when it comes to technical teams, it doesn't guarantee jack.

In my case, it was a combination of alcohol and a buddy in the barracks with a tattoo gun. All but one turned out astoundingly well in spite of my dumbassed youthful decision. Mind you, 25 years later I still carry 'em everywhere I go (all of them were fully within USAF regulations, in that all but one hides nicely under my shirt, and a std. shirt collar hides the one on the back of my neck).

Funny thing though - nowadays, kids who get tattoos (esp. amateur ones) can remove them with what's called Wrecking Balm, which is supposed to fade and eventually remove a tattoo over the course of some weeks. (no idea if it fully works or not, though.)

I wonder if the hipster crowd will use that cream in a little circle on their wrist in order to get even more hipster cred...?

...you really should see it in action though. As someone who lives in Portland, OR... I can, even now, hear the distant howls of heart-rending anguish from the many coffeeshops drifting up to my office. You'd think that skinny jeans were banned or something.

Okay, just (half-) joking.

I'm slightly amused at it though - no one really thought it through that if you put colored shit in your dermis** , it will interfere with a device that relies on skin capacitance for some of its features? Really? Are we that damned ignorant (and overly-entitled) as human beings, or is my beard just getting too many gray hairs in it?

** I have four tattoos about my body, incidentally, so all you 'inked' mofos can keep your righteous indignation to yourselves. ;)

The first part of your comment is worth expanding on a little:

You are correct, but define "cheaper". Is the extra time required to complete a project due to language barrier cheaper? Is the $150/hr per head you're paying to hire H1-B contractors making $20/hr "cheaper"? Is the extra liability insurance... well, you get the idea.

It only seems cheaper at first... until the invoices roll in, deadlines slip, and things start getting ugly once the contract agency does... because what are you going to do about it if the contracting firm decides to pull all their guys out at the end of the week? ;)

But anyway... as you were.

Stop it... now you're just teasing. ;)

"We were running low on our 'being an asshole' quota this month. Now be sure to continue to watch as your wives and kids demand and purchase our products, chumps."

Mind you, that was just frustration talking... because seriously, what is anyone going to do about this?