I suspect in a lot of places where Snort is used, it's mostly just sitting there quietly generating thousands of mostly '(http_inspect) DOUBLE DECODING ATTACK' alerts and being completely ignored. It's easy enough to set it up, but out of the box it typically generates an awful lot of noise in the form of largely useless alerts, so it takes some configuring (and understanding of exactly what those alerts are) to get it to a point where it's really useful.

And yes, I reckon that the commercial aspect to Snort probably is a key factor in this argument. They push that quite heavily IMO with (e.g.) new rules only being available to subscribers and other users having to register and wait until they're 30 days old to download them.

I'm curious as to whether Suricata is any good, I might have to check it out. Also, meerkats.

If you'd checked the link, you'd realise that as far as Zalman go, you're comparing a $3400 63" 3D Plasma TV with a < $500 21.5" LCD 3D monitor. They're not really directly comparable I'd say...

The main point I was making, though, is just that LCD displays which use circular polarization exist.

For larger 3D LCD displays using circular polarization, as another poster (jagsta) mentioned LG manufacture some. I'm not sure they're available to the home user yet (they're in pubs in the UK using Sky's 3D service), but the indications are the displays will be a bit cheaper than the active glasses equivalent, and more so when you account for the cost of additional pairs of glasses if you have family/friends.

Zalman make 3D LCD displays that use circular polarization (using horizontal interlacing). You can use the same cheap light glasses that cinemas provide with them.

I have one myself - http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=384 - and it works, but there are quite a few limitations. Obviously there's the consequences you'd expect from horizontal interlacing, less resolution to each eye. For PC gaming the Nvidia drivers are pretty good, but, they only work with the earlier Zalman monitor. Zalman didn't cough up the cash to Nvidia for them to continue support, so even though the Nvidia drivers are quite capable of supporting the newer Zalman monitors, they won't (although unofficially, it is possible to get them to work with a bit of hackery). Otherwise there are 3rd party drivers (http://www.iz3d.com/ for example) which have their own issues, e.g. variable quality and being detected by PunkBuster as a hack.

There's also quite extreme limitations on the vertical viewing angle for 3D, a 10-12 degree range. Move your head up or down out of that and the image splits.

As for the PS3, it won't detect this monitor as being 3D enabled at the moment. It relies entirely on automatic detection, there's apparently no way to manually configure it, so if it doesn't detect the display as 3D, that's it, no 3D for you. I'm not sure the PS3 even supports horizontally interlaced 3D output at the moment either.

I wouldn't really recommend it at the moment. It does work, the effect is great with the Nvidia drivers, and it is a bit cheaper than active shutter glasses solutions, but I expect (hope?) the technology to improve quite rapidly over the next year or so, so I'd hold off going down this route at the moment (if I didn't already have one).

It has to be no, given the way the question is phrased. I find it hard to even envisage a hypothetical scenario where the answer could be provably yes.

If a creative work financially fails, there's likely to be multiple factors that could be blamed. Quality, advertising, reviews, distribution, piracy...

How exactly could it be proven that piracy was a significant factor?

Have a look here: http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/image.htm for Google Earth based dashboards showing WLCG live grid sites, links, data transfer and job activity.

Correct. Tier 3 is local batch farm facilities, etc., which aren't really part of the project as such.

*sigh* Don't be such a tool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_pricing

Read the first two sentences. Then shut up.

That was referring to ticketed events, where demand exceeds supply.

I don't think anyone's selling tickets for you to sit in your underwear watching cat videos somehow.

I was arguing against the notion that letting demand of entertainment determine pricing is some kind of cultural evil... it isn't.

Isn't it? As opposed to other approaches, it effectively and consistently excludes particular groups from particular events, biasing attendance towards other groups. It's hard to see how that could be a good thing, culturally...

Leaving aside points about merchandise sales, diversity of attendance, size of fan base, and the difference between specific and generic entertainment, look at it this way.

Say an artist wants to sell tickets to his gigs at a fixed price he considers fair, that the majority of his fans would be able to afford. Bear in mind this is about who actually attends the gig as much as it is anything else.

Why exactly should he not be allowed to do that? How is it fair, to the artist, to circumvent his intentions and require demand-set pricing (whether directly, or indirectly by allowing scalping)?

Well, I'm not real sure that someone who can afford to attend a concert for $100 a seat would be priced out by tickets that were $150 (or $20 and $30, you get the idea).

That basically boils down to, "if someone has $100, they must have $150". You can see the problem with that, right?

As for luck being more 'virtuous' than $50, it's not really about virtue, it depends what you're aiming for. If you want diversity in terms of attendance - and there are good reasons for that - then yes, luck is going to be a better system than 'most money wins'.

And in terms of cheaper tickets becoming available, I don't think that's really likely to be the case to any significant extent. If tickets sold out previously, they're unlikely to become cheaper, and if they weren't selling out previously it's often the case that they would have been available cheaply on the door or through promotions towards the date of the event anyway.

Yes, in this context, it is.

In that case it would make sense for the promoter to sell tickets off cheap (an unsold ticket gets you nothing); that'd be a saving for the customer compared to fixed pricing.

Fixed pricing doesn't preclude the promoter dropping that price if the tickets haven't sold. That already happens.

You are making an awful lot of assumptions (the biggest one being that every single show will sell well enough that people that can afford fixed prices will be priced out).

Not really, no. I think you're confusing 'reasoned conclusion' with 'assumption' there.

With a demand-based pricing system, prices would inevitably rise for any popular event where demand exceeds supply. A rise in prices will price out some people who could have afforded the lower fixed prices, inherently so (the exact degree to which that is true will depend on the extent of the rise which will in turn depend on the particular supply/demand siutation of a particular event, but it will be true to some degree for any popular event).

There are of course events where demand doesn't exceed supply, but those aren't really relevant in this context I think. Getting tickets to unpopular not-sold-out shows isn't usually a problem...

Artifical scarcity? Get a grip. It's actual scarcity. There are only so many tickets available. It is impossible for everyone to be able to attend every event they want.

Demand-based pricing wouldn't change that ('make things better for everyone?' Are you nuts?) except for the richest. But instead of ability to attend being based on timing and luck, essentially, it biases attendance towards wealth. This would make it worse for many. Further, it would reduce the diversity of those attending. That would be bad, both culturally, and for the artists/teams/etc., if you think about it. It is not a good idea.

And just FYI, front row seats are often held back from the initial sale for friends and family of the artist, etc. In those cases, they go on sale later if and when they're not taken up.