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Haha, this confirms that the difference between a Freedom Fighter and a Terrorist resides only on who gets to write the history books afterwards.

Err, no. Terrorism has a fairly narrow definition, and most of the things, which are labeled "terrorism" really aren't. From WordNet

terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act -- (the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)

Thus unleashing neither an insecure OS, nor the actual viruses taking advantage of that OS (which is done either for fame or monetary gain) qualifies.

Fine point. I'm happy to have the machine count checked against the paper trail stored within these machines. But I don't think *this* example is indicative of rampant fraud through electronic voting machines. I think it's a minor local screw up that ought to be verified.

It's just slashdot (and reddit, and dailykos, etc etc etc) looking for reasons to get people riled up and draw ad revenue. If you want to freak out about voting machine problems, check out the Princeton Diebold study.

This story, by comparison, is a big fat nothing.

Yup, and here's the links showing how to hack their voting machines:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8673726680 080882009&hl=en
More info: http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
This is *extremely* scary stuff. Not just theoretical, these guys have working code which proves you can steal votes without detection -- it lies dormant during the testing phase, and only "activating" during the real election.

It doesn't have to be like this -- electronic voting *can* be done properly (confirmation sheet behind a glass plate which goes into a lock box), but the approach being taken is inexcusably irresponsible of both the gov't purchasers and manufactures, to the degree it makes me extremely suspicious of the motivations of those involved. Especially, if you remember, when the CEO of the Diebold makes statements like he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" in a fundraising pitch.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/30/technology/electio n_diebold/

I think you'll find that Rivest's (not Shamir's) three ballot system is flawed too. In fact, it's less understandable than the article's system, and it's still susceptible to vote buying, as described by Appel: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/Defeatin gThreeBallot.pdf.

I used to get a ton of spam on my guestbook. I tried doing lots of little things in the code and it turns out the spam was being submitted without them filling out the HTML form. To force this to happen, I found a neat idea on some German website (it's down, so I mirrored it). The code will not accept a post if there is no number/checksum pair.
That cut out a lot of the spam. The rest has been gone since I added another, required field "What is my first name?" It is like a captcha but much easier. No one will complain that they get it wrong. For your site, maybe something like "Finish the name of this show 'I Love ...' "

Here's one: the fact that machines are willing to load new code off of memory cards during everyday use, which means that worst-case scenarios like the Princeton virus attack are possible. (When I first came across a reference to the Princeton virus attack, I assumed it was bad science fiction; nobody would be stupid enough to make a machine that was vulnerable to that sort of attack. Wrongola.)

Perhaps these will be of interest http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ and a write up. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s

Was the 2004 election stolen?

A call for investigation

Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

They Said it Couldn't be Done

Minor point of order -- while I agree with the last sentence of your post, your title & first line make no sense.

obviate (v): to rid of, eliminate, or do away with.

It does not mean "to make obvious".

Is this what you are thinking...

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

?

With all the vulnerabilities in voting machines, it amazes me that the states do not mandate paper trails. Someone wouldn't even need access to the source code to start changing votes. For example, in this report from ABC News on October 1st, they discuss a method to almost invisibly manipulate both votes recorded and logs, all with only a couple minutes access to a voting machine.

Here's an excerpt:
In a paper last month, "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine," (available at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/) Princeton computer professor Edward W. Felten and two graduate students Ariel J. Feldman and J. Alex Halderman discussed a common Diebold machine. They showed that anyone who gets access to the machine and its memory card for literally a minute or two could easily install the group's invisible vote-stealing software on the machine. (Poll workers and others have unsupervised access for much longer periods.) Changing all logs, counters, and associated records to reflect the bogus vote count that it generates, the software installed by the infected memory card (similar to a floppy disk) would be undetectable. In fact, the software would delete itself at the end of Election Day.

I'm on the Princeton DARPA team, and we're on Track B. The prize money at the end was a nice incentive and certainly garnered attention for the competition, but that's not where the real harm lies. For passing the site visit, there was a prize of $50,000, and for making it to the finals, a $250,000 prize (don't quote me on the amounts, that's just my recollection). These milestone prizes would've gone a long way to offset the financial disparity between Track A teams (who've received substantial DARPA grants) and the Track B teams. We're on a shoestring budget, and that money would've been incredibly useful. Instead, we now have to go the entire distance without a dime from the government.

------
http://pave.princeton.edu/

In general, young people tend to have more extreme views than older people. That's why societies with a larger proportion of young people tend to have more radical governments (and why Western governments are becoming more conservative as their populations get older). Young people are also more impressionable. (my opinion - unsubstantiated)

While just your opinion - unsubstantiated, It is probably more corect the incorect. This leads us to the unimplied position that people get smarter with age too. I'm wondering how correct the younger generation could actualy be.

I think freedom of speech is a really difficult (yet important) issue. It's certainly *not* as simple as "everyone should be able to say whatever they want."

Well change that to "Saying whatever you want unless it unjustly effects someone or some one else" and your are even closer. The only difference though, Is that a person has to justify the corectness of speech that effects others or something outside thier direct control.

'm not sure what pro gay actually means,

It means not taking a position against gays or or anything purposed as being positive for gays by anyone claiming to represent gays. Anything other then that and people try to classify you as a gay basher or bigot.

but from the examples you cite I gather there are many aspects of political correctness that you do not agree with. P.C. does need to be recognised as an agenda, whether or not you agree with it (personally, I think it has some good and bad aspects).

I'm not the person who your replying to but this is the reason I bothered jumping in. I have a problem with P.C. becsause it takes negetives historicly presented as a negetive and attemps to turn them into a possitive. Not everytime but a good portion of the time. And P.C has been seen to do this and hijacked by people with agendas so there is that apearence.

Take being gay, As it was already brought up. Being gay boils down to a decision to an action. Reguardless if the person was born predipositioned or not to this decision, it is still a choice to make an action. Now It was considered perverted because it delt with going against sexual norms and implied morals. Synonyms for pervert also describe the same thought process. Not it isn't PC to refere to being gay in this way and we must use "alternative lifestyle" or something simular when talking about thier sexual preferce if we wish to say anything other then thier gay. Now without getting into the merrits of being gay is good or bad, we have seen PC being pushed into a position that attempts to remove all negetive canontations on a topic that has traditionaly be held negetive. If you don't follow suite, you are label a "hater", "basher", "homophobe" or something else negetive. This is agenda driven!

It's agenda could probably be described as "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything," which is probably a bit simplistic, but if everyone practiced it would probably result in a more harmonious society.

Not only is it overly simplistic, but it is damagingly wrong. Some things just should not be encouraged and activly be discouraged. Racial or religious discrimination for one. People who sufficate themselves durring sex for enjoyment or people who attmept to kill themselves for the attention. Or worse yet people who make others around them criticly ill so they can get the attention are good examples. PC attempts to kill the negetivness of these and label them as ill, sick, illusioned, or diseased instead of crazy or dumb.

You see,

SO are you saying that the majority of the people who live in israel are semites and the majority of the people living in palestine are not semites?

Last I checked that was not the case. Once again it is you who lack a grasp of reality.

The reality is that as a race the people living in israel are overwhelmingly caucasian.

Here's Princeton's Analysis of those voting machines.

Sleep tight.

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting

For a 3D model search engine, princeton has provided a 3d model search engine based on sketches of the three axis aligned planes.

http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/search.html

So we've done eyes, and we're talking about ears. Why have we not yet examined the possibilities of sticking a big tongue out into the sky?

they wish they had an easy way to throttle these people

Sneak up behind these people with a short piece of rope held between your hands, loop it over their heads, and pull. They are then throttled. Easy.

To make it easier, do it one person at a time.

First off, all of the predictions that we see in the article are from Colin Campbell. He's a geologist who represents the fringe of the "peak oil" movement, and founded the association for the study of peak oil and gas. The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak. First it was 1995. It's all the way back to 2007 now. Aaany day now, Colin!

Care to cite any sources for this? It's easy to argue with unfounded assertions. I'm not familiar with Colin Campbell, but he's just one of many people working on peak oil, including British Petroleum, the US DOE, and even T-Boone Pickens. Peak oil is real. Predictions for the year of peak production vary from 2006 to 2040 (see above links), but regardless, it will happen in our lifetime, according to the experts in the industry. The 1995-2007 discrepancy from one single person you discuss is not significant. In fact, some people are saying that it has happened this year already. Perhaps you should stop trying to be cute and research your facts.

The more expensive oil gets, the slower world economic growth occurs, which drastically reduces demand. At the same time, the more expensive oil gets, vast new reserves come online. At current oil prices, Saudi Arabia doesn't have the world's largest reserves: Venezuela does. Venezuela's reserves were once dwarfed by Saudi Arabia's because they're more expensive to produce from. With high prices, a vast amount of Venezuelan oil comes online.

Congratulations, you understand a bit of peak theory. Yes, this is all included. In peak oil theory, when peak oil is reached half of the world's retrievable oil still remains. Peak oil theory states that this half will be much more expensive to extract, which you corroborate here. Of course there are more undiscovered reserves, but the point is that the rate of production will continue to go down, because less and less is discovered per year. Instead of thinking in terms of money (which can be created and destroyed), think in terms of energy (which can't). Once it takes more energy to extract one barrel of oil than the oil provides, the oil becomes useless as an energy source.

But it doesn't stop there. Current prices are high enough to make Canadian tar sands profitable. Shell is leading the way here, and is majorly scaling up their operations. If you count the tar sands, Canada goes up into the world leader position. But hey, why stop there? Coal liquifaction is borderline profitable at current prices. The US has hundreds of years of coal to mine; even if we start converting it to oil, it's a massive energy influx. And do we really even need to get into oil shale, methane hydrates, ethanol (esp. from cellulose), biodiesel, waste polymerization, and vehicles driven by electricity or hydrogen (which, effectively, can be powered by the grid, which means that any potential power source will work).

See above comment. All of the sources you mention here are much more expensive and take more energy to extract.

Yes, prices will rise. So? We've gotten a free ride on ubercheap oil for too long. At current prices, however, countless technologies are either freshly viable or near-viable for energy production -- both for producing petroleum, and for producing petroleum alternatives. If prices rise further, it makes them all the prettier for investors. This peak

The music industry tried something similar with CDs...why do they think this will be different? http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/papers/drm20 02.pdf

You say that it's getting easier and easier to contemplate drilling in the arctic. Why do you suppose that is? Why is drilling in such an environmentally sensitive place like the ANWR in Alaska being considered? Why all the expense to build the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, running as it does through such dangerous regions like Chechnya, Dagestan, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, which if they aren't already active war zones are all set to become such in the near future? Chevron's Jack No. 2 well lies under five miles of water and rock in a region that is heavy hurricane country. Why drill there, and not in some easier spot? Lately, all of the new oil discoveries and the distribution facilities needed to support them are either are in (1) environmentally sensitive regions (like ANWR), (2) dangerous regions (like the path of the BTC pipeline), (3) places which are very difficult to get at (like the Jack No. 2 Well), or some combination of all three. All the easy oil has run out, and now we're being forced to rely on oil sources that are increasingly difficult to obtain. This is the core prediction of peak oil theory, and the fact that we do see it happening today makes me inclined to believe that they're basically correct, even if their specific predictions as to the date of the peak aren't exactly spot on. After all, their best prediction (due to Kenneth Deffeyes) was last December 16, 2005, and we won't know if he was correct for a few years or so. The fact that they've slipped several dates doesn't make their core prediction wrong.

By the way, it's no good synthesizing petroleum, and to mention it at all misses the point. Synthesizing oil consumes more energy than it produces, no matter what the process, so you have got to have some other source of energy if you're going to do it (it is, becomes, just like the much ballyhooed hydrogen economy, a carrier of energy rather than an energy source). The reason why we use petroleum that comes from out of the ground is that we get so much more energy from using it than we consumed trying to extract it. In the early part of the 20th century we got as much as 100 times as much energy using oil as we expended to get it. Right now it's down to about 20 times, and falling. It's doubtful that any future energy source (with the possible exception of nuclear energy) that we can bring online within the next decade or so will have a comparable level of efficiency to that of petroleum, even at today's reduced levels.

Kenneth Deffeyes said that back in February:

http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/current-events-06 -02.html

So here we have a similar set of circumstances--only the nation at risk has really changed--and the Dutch appear to be fighting mad over this. What gives?

My bet is that they have read Expert Political Judgement. Professor Tetlock published his research results in the book. His study about accuracy of experts spanned over 20 years. His basic result? Well, it's all about how you think not what you think. He wrote a small essay about the results: How Accurate Are Your Pet Pundits?.

A quote form the article: [F]ollowing the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, we classify experts as "hedgehogs" or "foxes." Hedgehogs are big-idea thinkers in love with grand theories: libertarianism, Marxism, environmentalism, etc. Their self-confidence can be infectious. They know how to stoke momentum in an argument by multiplying reasons why they are right and others are wrong.

That wins them media acclaim. But they don't know when to slam the mental brakes by making concessions to other points of view. They take their theories too seriously. The result: hedgehogs make more mistakes, but they pile up more hits on Google.

Eclectic foxes are better at curbing their ideological enthusiasms. They are comfortable with protracted uncertainty about who is right even in bitter debates, conceding gaps in their knowledge and granting legitimacy to opposing views. They sprinkle their conversations with linguistic qualifiers that limit the reach of their arguments: 'but,' 'however,' 'although.'

Because they avoid over-simplification, foxes make fewer mistakes. Foxes will often agree with hedgehogs up to a point, before complicating things: "Yes, my colleague is right that the Saudi monarchy is vulnerable, but remember that coups are rare and that the government commands many means of squelching opposition."

For those of you who still don't believe...

From Princeton University's Center of Information Technology Policy:

Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

Abstract: This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities -- a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

The paper records are the master copy which are counted when necessary. The voter can look at the paper before casting. As someone else said you cannot just lump all "paper methods" together say they have the same error. The new electronic Diebold machines also have fundemental flaws in designed that allow a virus to spread.

Most part of all this discussion is based on wrong information: the operating system of the Brazilia voting machines IS NOT Windows CE. It is VirtuOS, an old DOS like operating system... I have read and discussed about Diebold voting machines before on my blog (http://macarronada.blogspot.com/2006/09/voting-ma chines.html#links) and I understand that the process and hardware of the Brazilian machines are much better than the AccuVote-TS for example. They are simple, but better ( just remember: K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid). Just see the tests Princeton University professors did: http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/

There are some genuine breakthroughs amongst those 8000 press releases:

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ah/dish.gif

Except that, as this study has shown, paper trails are no guarantee of accuracy either, unless a paper is receipt is generated for EVERY SINGLE VOTER, and kept as a backup. And even then, there has to be some sort of trigger for someone to think that the vote needs to be reviewed. If the vote isn't close, most states don't recount, and if there is no recount, any inaccuracies are likely never to be discovered because no one will have reason or desire to look. Certain there is no state election official in the US that wants to be the one that steps up to the mic at a press conference three months after the general election to say "Sorry folks, just kidding. The results the machines reported don't match the paper receipt tally. Ms. X won the election, rather than Mr. Y, who was sworn in last week." There are only a fewer worse ways to spell "Constitutional Crisis".

Own Criminal Acts.

Hamdi v Rumsfeld calls for a need for 'Military Tribunals' so as to ensure that when they 'goof' it's under strictest cover, and no-one will ever know what happened.

Is it any accident the CIA is CIA (Covering Its Ass)?

Gonzales is looking to legitimize the fact that the .gov has already been caught with it's hands in the til...

The abuses of The Constitution are being watched by everyone, everywhere. What was once the beacon of hope and bastion of freedom for the whole world is being trashed by criminals and oligarchs who seek to douse its light once and for all. The abuses against the American public must be arrested at the earliest possible juncture.

The truly frightening thing is that you can't even trust your democratic process anymore. So who's the terrorist? Where does he live?

Even Republicans can't deny the fact that it's getting out of hand.

Just today: On Tuesday, President Bush said, "Freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed -- it must be chosen. From Beirut to Baghdad , people are making the choice for freedom.

Some choice.

In the case of the article, I believe golden age is right. With the current state of the market, every type of gamer can find their fair share of games. young, teen, adult, seniors, they can all play and from various source like consoles, cell phones, PCs, portable console and each source offers a pletora of styles and each styles has a truckload of titles.

A golden age is often ascribed to the years immediately following some technological innovation. It is during this time that writers and artists ply their skills to this new medium. Therefore, there are Golden Ages of both radio and television. During this nascent phase the technology allows new ideas to be expressed, as new art forms flower quickly into new areas.

golden age (a time period when some activity or skill was at its peak) "it was the golden age of cinema"

Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy has an excellent demonstration video showing how to hack a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine.

you'll need the right memory card, knowledge of the software (which you could learn at your leisure), a lock pick set or a screwdriver, and a few minutes alone with the machine

Electronic systems - including electronic voting machines - will always be able to be tampered with, no matter who makes them, no matter what their CEOs stupidly say, no matter what ongoing audit mechanisms are implemented, whether they're open or proprietary, and no matter what legislation or other initiatives mandate or recommend them.

Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one.

Remember, too, that voting legislation, in large part in response to issues in the 2000 election, designed to ensure fair, uniform, and universal access to voting for all citizens by mandating electronic voting equipment, such as HAVA (2002), were Democratic and bipartisan efforts.

The real issue is that Congress screwed up: they inherently, and erroneously, believed that since we trust so many critically important things to machines, certainly reliable electronic voting is possible, and indeed, we use automation, computers, and machines in almost every aspect of our lives to increase efficiency and reliability - why should voting be any different?

Except for one problem: when you're trying to administer a one-vote-per-person system that also maintains anonymity, and also disallows any external entity from discovering who voted for which candidates, when there is no permanent, voter-verified paper trail, the system as a whole cannot be trusted, since any level of security will always be able to be overridden. This has nothing to do with open source versus proprietary, or how shoddy physical security on e-voting systems is. A permanent, voter-verified paper trail solves all of these problems.

The only problem is that no legislation mandating electronic voting systems includes or speaks to any provisions requiring permanent paper receipt printing capability. All of the major e-voting vendors - Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia - have this capability, but it's an add-on that requires retrofitting existing equipment, or in some cases, purchasing new equipment. And that takes money many counties and municipalities - particularly in the most hotly contested areas - don't have. (Hint: it's not just poor areas that have long lines)

Our focus now should be on passing legislation that requires permanent voter-verified paper trail capability on all newly deployed e-voting systems, and allocates funds and creates a timeline for deployment on existing systems. Please, continue to raise this issue with both your county election officials and your elected representatives.

This issue is too important and too critical to the integrity of our election process to let rest.

---
Temporary disclaimer, since this seems to have been an issue for people reading my posts lately: I am not a Republican, did not vote for Bush in the last election, and have always voted for more non-Republican (usually Democratic) candidates since I have been voting.

The bicycle, not the automobile, is the most popular vehicle in the world. http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/maps/transportation. html

Unfortunately, if you're dealing with large crowds, it's usually a lot easier to use force than to try and solve the situation in a peaceful manner.

Or you erect walls to keep things from moving on, and let the riot burn itself out. Sure, you might have a few hundred thousand in property damage. But that's a lot cheaper than one or two lives.

I still advocate the use of controlled, strategic force necessary for crowd control. But non-lethal "harmless" weapons seem to encourage panicked, reactionary use. Perhaps as people realize that non-lethal weapons can kill rather well, their usage will become rarer and carry more weight.

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/

Yes. The conspiracy is that there are two frontrunners running for the Democrat candidate seat in the Maryland primary elections for Federal Senate: Kweisi Mfume, an african-american candidate running against Ben Cardin, an european-descent candidate. The Republicans frontrunner is Michael Steele, an african-american candidate.

If the Democrat european-descent candidate wins (which polls are showing he might), then it is expected that a larger number of african-american voters will actually vote along racial lines and vote Republican, which I had heard may be enough to swing the senate seat into Republican control (was Democrat). If the african-american candidate wins the Democratic election, then the racial voting margins would be eliminated, and the Democrats may hold the seat (although former NAACP-head Mfume has been quite inflamitory in the run-up to the primary).

Note that Montgomery and Prince George counties are the Maryland suburbs to Washington DC... with Montgomery County being one of the strongest Democratic-voting counties in 2004. If the Democrats want to win the seat, it is in their best interest to make sure that the african-american candidate wins. Montgomery County is 29% african-american, and Prince County is 65% african-american (according to the 2004 census)... note that only Montgomery county had their human error "accident" by not bringing voter cards until 10am to unlock the voting machines.

As a recently former resident of the nearby area, based on what I'm seeing in the comments, I offer the following...

1. If you want hills in Florida, you live near Lakeland or Tallahassee. A 30-40 foot high trash mound off of I-95 is quite visible. Furthermore, if I have my geography right, I've found it on Google Maps, and the last time I was on Indrio Rd (3 years ago), it wasn't that populated.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Port+St+Lu cie,+Fl&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=27.57646,-80.484982&spn=0. 012458,0.027122&t=h&om=1

2. In 2004, St. Lucie county voted as purple for Kerry as Orlando did: in an otherwise red region outside the Gold Coast. Furthermore, they have been home for years now to probably the raunchiest radio station in the state: the Orlando stations are tamer than these guys. Here's the question: will the progressives go for this project above senior and parental NIMBYs?

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/P urpleAmericaPosterAll50.gif
http://www.wzzr.com/main.html

3. St Lucie, Palm Bay, and other former GDC communities in the state are sucking in families for relatively cheap land rates, replacing elderly with youth via introduction and die-off. How that will affect future demographics, politics, etc, is up for debate.

Let's define art.

Art: The products of human creativity. (Source)
Art: The expression of creativity or imagination, or both. (Source)
Art: The formal expression of a conceived image or imagined conception in terms of a given medium. (Source)

With these definitions, I consider video games to be art. I always have considered them art. They are simply an expression of human creativity. Being on an interactive medium only adds to the art.

• "battle with two combatants, each with a bat'leth"

• "battle with two combatants, each with a disruptor"

• "hand-to-hand combat between two combatants"

• "battle where one combatant uses a bat'leth and the other uses a butter knife"

• "battle between three people, each of whom is trying to kill the other two"

• etc.

Additionally, you seem to extoll the virtues of unix's command line processing - specifically, it's unstructured interprocess communication

Do I detect a devotee of the Microsoft Powershell? The one also known as MSH, Mush, Monad, Gonad and whatever they changed it to this week?

Throwing pure data around is a pretty terrible way to pass things between programs - the receiving program has no information as to what format the data is in, or any other metadata. Even if you're throwing text around, that text does have an inherent structure - each line might be an entry, for instance - and that structure isn't necessarily universal

Oddly enough that point occured to Doug McIlroy and Ken Thompson when they were putting pipes into the Unix shell. "Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface". You are, of course, entitle to your opinion, but the model cooked up in Bell Labs has been rather successful, and is quite highly regarded in some circles.

Without structured communication, two communicating programs might get confused as to what constitutes a list format

You've read the MS publicity packs, but not done any actual shell coding, right? The way it works is you have a lot of text based filters with well documented input and output formats. Or you write your own - simple programs or scripts themselves. The lack of metadata tends not to be a problem.

Some of them can be recognized, true, but not every file format has its own unique magic number, and even then, playing guessing games with incoming data is a dangerous plan to reliability.

In practice, you find yourself doing things like grep at source files to auto generate Makefiles, or running colon delimited records of your own devising through awk to auto generate record formats. The end points are well understood in advance.

It's not like we're reading a random socket open to the big bad Internet where anything might come down the pipe. We're talking about operatng on files that you wrote yourself in the development directory. There's not a lot of scope for surprises. And if you do have to cope with arbitrary data arriving from off platform, there are tools to help handle that too. Iptables would be my first thought...

Welcome to the 21st century. Watch your head. Mind the gap.

http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/infographics/water.h tml

But he had been reading histories of early encryption research, and he saw a germ of an idea in the work of cryptographers who kept information secure by dividing it into pieces and dispersing it.
Germ?

This sounds like Bjarne's FGA on the subject. The fact is that there is no perfect C++ compiler- Typechecking, virtual overloading, and so on, all come with a cost. But consider this, nonbeliever: If you avoid every C++ feature, how is it you're programming in C++?

You don't get it, do you? typechecking is always done statically at compile time, unless you use dynamic_cast; virtual overloading is not avoidable, if you want message passing. C++'s mentality is that you can avoid the cost of what you are not using; so if you don't need virtual methods, you don't use them. If you only need stack allocation, then you don't pay the cost of allocating everything on the heap.

I doubt that. Do you have any facts to back that up?

modern video games have incredibly tight loops, multiple threads of execution, network I/O, controller I/O, real-time file I/O (if they are using disk spooling), fully fledged guis (especially PRGs), etc. Check out any modern video game on the PC to see that.

The Unreal engine alone is over 1 million lines of code.

Also check out this link.

Beware, "real time" means something very different to computer scientists than you're presently using it to mean. Java most certainly can deliver realtime performance- that is, deliver results within a hard and fixed time limit. Nearly all languages can be architectured in this manner.

In order to use real-time Java, you have to pay for IBM's real-time scheduler and garbage collector. Mainstream Java ain't real-time, not even for games. There may be Java games out there (especially on mobiles/PDAs), but we are talking about games with millions of lines of code and many man years behind them.

Read the fucking message. "Better" is such an extremely subjective term that you're a goddamned illiterate retard if you have no idea what I'm talking about: If I have to write a program to process a logfile, and I'm only going to use it once, what fucking use is C++ going to be besides slow me down?

There is no need to get angry, or curse, or call names. Can't you discuss politely?

If you don't like C++, then don't use it. Personally, I like it a lot, and for certain tasks is the best language there is. I already told you which tasks are that. And if C++ had garbage collection, it would be suitable for a lot more.

Perl, Awk, and Sed would all be excellent candidates for this. You want to cry about the fact that your favorite programming language sucks at something? Or do you really want to say that C++ is best at building video games because it's fast?

We are talking about serious programming languages here; Perl certainly does not qualify.

Guess what: Other languages are much faster.

I am always reading that, but there has never been a conclusive benchmark that proves it. Especially the 'much' faster part.

Some are faster because they're more deterministic (C)

C is not more deterministic than C++. For the tasks C++ does, C would have to implement them at least in the same way, albeit with much uglier syntax. Take message passing, for example: you can't get faster than vtables. The only difference is that C++ does it in a better way, whereas in C it is more difficult and error-prone.

others are faster because compilers are simply more mature (Java)

I am still waiting for the benchmark that proves that. Guess what? there is not such a beast. Even if the Java hotspot compiler can optimize a series of instructions better on a specific machine, overall Java has enough 'hotspots' to make it slower, overall, than C++.

Others still are faster because they can cheat and solve the problem completely differently (Haskell, P/LISP).

I have never seen a benchmark proving Haskell faster than C++. When Haskell can sort 100,000 records in a database as quickly as C++, then come and talk to

grand theft, although it contains the word 'grand' means more substantial theft than 1000, and the value is extremely variable on a per community basis..

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&o 7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&s=grand%20theft

According to WordNet and Wikipedia, eloquence can be a characteristic of written, as well as spoken, language.

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=theory

S: (n) theory (a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena) "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"

I.D. is not testable, and is thus not a scientific theory. I figured some douchebag would use the "a theory is just an idea" nonsense that the ID-lovers like to spout.

Transponders?

Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.

A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire).

I hope this guys RFID dumper helps people learn about their car more (if supported scanner is in the AIAG frequency standard range)

Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.

Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.

Taggant research papers :
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)

I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].

It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.

Photos of chips before molded deep into tires! :

http://www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html

You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.

Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.

The photo of the secret prototype WAS at :
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html ...but the link finally died in July 2004 and the new location does not have a photo of a RFID bridge underpass collector. But does discuss thhe toll booth RFID uses...

http://www.telematics-wireless.com/site/index1.php ?ln=en&main_id=33

but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.

The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in the last 3 years using "yellow" GUID barcode under dark ink regions to serialize printouts to thwart counterfeiting of 20 dollar bills. (30 to 40 percent of ALL California counterfeiting is done using cheap Epson inkjet printers, most purchased with credit ca

Wikipedia refers to 'highbrow' as "intellectual" or "high culture," and it's interesting that the etymology goes back to phrenology. Wordnet offers a short definition: "highly cultured or educated."

I feel that there are plenty of games that are "smart enough." Depends on how the player is able to interpret them. As with any creative work, the interpretation is up to the consumer, not the creator. When the consumer is able to get a meaning out of the work that the creator hadn't intended to convey - that's a sign of quality.

One might argue that the question "Why are there no highbrow video games?" points back to the questioner. Reworded for truth: "Why are there no video games that are smart enough for me?" Well, maybe you should look into yourself and figure out why you've placed yourself in a different intellectual class than "run-of-the-mill gamers." Take another look and see what meaning you can discover. There might be something you missed.