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I'd like to see a timeline of every spike and every event that it supposedly predicts. How many major events (I can think of a lot that weren't mentioned in this piece) were missed?

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/data_access.html looks like a good place to start. Surfing around their site a bit, it looks like all of their software is available in source form, and that they are quite willing to share their data.

On a related note, the BIOS chip in one of my machines has a thermal noise based RNG built in (quite common actually). I may have to experiment with that a bit.

No need to make the black box.
You can see the current data here

*UPDATED WITH CORRECT LINK*

No need to make the black box.
You can see the current data here

One of their pages says:

"...and the complete database at the end of 2001 occupies approximately 3 gigabytes of storage in a highly compressed form."

I'd love to get my hands on the compression algorithm they use to highly compress those random numbers.

There is another very bizarre phenomenon being studied at Princeton that is related and apparently shares a lot of the same hardware. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research project was started to study the human machine interface, and quickly determined that humans, individually and collectively, can have a small influence on truly random events. The effect doesn't extend to pseudorandom events such as a PC's "random" number generator, which is actually deterministic. The magnitude of the effect varies with the individual(s) involved, but is on the order of one in ten thousand. However, this small result is statistically proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The experiments have been widely replicated by different researchers using different random events (Johnson noise in resistors, balls falling through a long sequence of pegs ala pachinko, etc.) Even more bizarre is the way the effect is not limited by time or space. People from the other side of the world have influenced random events, and if my memory is correct, random events in sealed experiments have been altered by human efforts in the future and the past.

I think this seems to be too widespread to be a hoax. There is apparently too much independent verification to dismiss it, regardless of how little correlation it has with our belief about how the universe works. The effect may be small, but any significantly valid effect is a huge step in advancing our understanding of the universe and consciousness. I think we'll need a better understanding of quantum physics to fully appreciate what is really happening. My personal favorite crackpot theory is that our brains operate at different levels, all the way down to quantum effects at the lowest levels.

It's probably too early to use this effect in any meaningful engineering devices, but I can't help myself. I want to buy some commercial time on a TV station that is broadcast at the same time as the live lotto drawing that's broadcast on a competing station. Then, I'd run a commercial that flashes "LOTTO" and a sequencial string of my lottery numbers, in high contrast, with each appearing for a tenth of a second. It'd look weird enough that people would watch to see what the heck it is, and the 100 ms strobing numbers would feed straight into their subconscious minds. Maybe I'd take a tip from subliminal advertisers and mix in words like "DEATH" or "SEX", or graphic images, to pump up the emotional level.

• http://www.jsasoc.com/docs/Sep1101.pdf and
• http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/jseScargle.p df

Well, I think you should send your concern to them (rdnelson@princeton.edu)...

BTW (or not BTW) according to the image on their homepage, princeton has got a lot of chicks. Is it true? :)

Unforutnatly, Let's take a look at how they define a signficant world event shall we?

My favorite: Binding Spell on Bin Laden

Yeah, a wickan spell chain letter. That was sure a significant world event. This is what they count as a success??

Who the fuck was Bob Morris? Why was I not told about this significant world event?

All that and they can only manage a 8% success rate?

Lets get back to orginal question. How do they define "significant world event?" Bob Morris dying? A wiccan spell on Bin Laden? Do you conisder these Significant world events? Does anybody? What is their criteria? What about when my Grandma Died? I was pretty broken up abouth that. Did it register?

Unforutnatly, Let's take a look at how they define a signficant world event shall we?

My favorite: Binding Spell on Bin Laden

Yeah, a wickan spell chain letter. That was sure a significant world event. This is what they count as a success??

Who the fuck was Bob Morris? Why was I not told about this significant world event?

All that and they can only manage a 8% success rate?

Lets get back to orginal question. How do they define "significant world event?" Bob Morris dying? A wiccan spell on Bin Laden? Do you conisder these Significant world events? Does anybody? What is their criteria? What about when my Grandma Died? I was pretty broken up abouth that. Did it register?

You might be interested in the independent analysis of the Sept. 11 claims posted here:
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/Sep1101.pdf

The bottom line:
The "prediction" was a complete coincidence.

Via what Time frame? I have asked you this three times. I have recived no response.

Jesus Christ. Look on their friggin' website.

Here is each event, and the time frames used for each.

Here is a listing of the observed spike's probability for each event.

Via what Time frame? I have asked you this three times. I have recived no response.

Jesus Christ. Look on their friggin' website.

Here is each event, and the time frames used for each.

Here is a listing of the observed spike's probability for each event.

The question to ask is: "are these devices really random number generators?"

I don't understand (at all) what "quantum-indeterminate electronic noise" is but that is what these boxes are measuring and basing their random numbers for. So they really are not random numbers but numbers based on variations of "quantum-indeterminate electronic noise".

BTW, more of the project here

The question to ask is: "are these devices really random number generators?"

I don't understand (at all) what "quantum-indeterminate electronic noise" is but that is what these boxes are measuring and basing their random numbers for. So they really are not random numbers but numbers based on variations of "quantum-indeterminate electronic noise".

BTW, more of the project here

> In other words, they look at the data after something has happened searching for a "spike" that will almost certainly be there.

To give an illustration of one aspect of the problem you mention:

At the EGG Story page, scroll down and look at the plots labeled "Cumulative Deviation (Random Walk)", "New Years, 1998", "Pope in Holy Land". In these plots the smooth curve represents the 95% confidence bound on how far the deviation can be expected to go by pure chance. (I'm assuming their calculations are correct.)

Notice that in all cases the curve and the data plot both start at t=0, y=0, which I will call the "zero point" for the plot. Now consider the effect of the specific choice of t=0. Look at the first plot mentioned above, the "Cumulative Deviation (Random Walk)" plot, and notice that the data drops down to y=0 just a bit before t=300. Suppose you scrolled the data leftward until your zero point was at that point just before t=300; I pick this point because it has the same y as the original zero point, so nothing changes on the y axis: the boundary curve doesn't change at all, but the data is shifted leftward.

Hey! This random walk now has a sudden upward trend at t=0 (formerly t=~300), and the deviation rides above the boundary line for about 100 time steps. But wait - there's more! We can do the same think if we pick the plot's original t=700 or so, though with a slightly less impressive jump above the boundary line. Or we can get a really nice peak if we move our zero point to t=600 or so, and re-zero the data on the y axis so that the new zero point has x=0, y=0.

I can create three "significant" indicators in their example 10-minute random walk simply by cherry-picking the starting point.

How many do you think I could create if I had a free rein to pick anwhere in the previous four days of data?

Even the "researchers" don't claim that they can predict the lottery.

What they claim: When lots of people think the same thing it makes "random event generators" give "less random" output.

The best the could possibly find with their data(if they were statistically rigorous): There is more entropy in radio waves during significant world events. Their
how it works site actually states they are measuring RF activity. Of course RF activity changes during "significant world events".

If their devices were radioactive material + Geiger counters, or even Lava-lamp images it might be a different story.

About mid-way through the FAQ, it details their 'experimental method'. The rednova article points out they saw a spike 4 hours before 9/11 and 24 hours before the asian tsunami. How far back do they go? Do they set the limit before they start looking? If not, and they're prepared to look back indefinitely, they'll always find a spike! In which case, the rate of 'coincident' spikes will of course be significantly higher than random chance!

Maybe it's because, in Feynman's words, science is skepticism.

I was shocked to find Feynman quoted on their site; it's damned near insulting. Feyman actually went to Princeton and like Einstein, Sagan, Hawking, and the other great scientists of our time understood the importance of doubting and doublechecking results until you're absolutely sure you're seeing what you think you're seeing.

Have a read of Cargo Cult Science for some Epistemology 101 buddy.

If it actually works, the live data should probably <g> have shown a deviation giving several hours' advance notice of posting the story on the Slashdot, considering the well-known catastrophic impact of a few million geeks hitting the same server (and furiously debating the theory)...

The parent article is just a crap media writeup, I wish the "editors" had made that clear in the summary.

Princeton has had an "alternative" sciences department for decades: PEAR, most often cited for their research into remote viewing. They consistantly veer on the side of quackery, preferring to dismiss any elements of their "science" that categorically refute their findings in favour of a more popular conclusion, albeit confused and absurd.

Perhaps you should consider that the way this machine supposedly predicts the future is entierly subjective. What is the cutoff point for when randomness becomes non-randomness? What is the cutoff point for what is a significant world event? What happens when the detecor goes off and nothing takes place? What predictions do the scientists make about what the machne will do before and during a significant world event, however they may define that? Most importanly however, why did the article fail to mention any of this? Perhaps you should consider the article for 5 minutes before accusing others of unfounded skepticism.

Perhaps if you read the website about the project, which was linked from the article, you would find all of your questions answered. Perhaps you should actually try to understand what they've been doing before dismissing it. All the data is there. Analyze it yourself. Do the experiment yourself, it doesn't require any expensive or exotic hardware. Till you've done at least some of the above you can have no valid scientific opinion, only prejudice.

It seems pretty far-fetched to me, but I'm working my way through the Princeton site now and I've not seen any glaring errors in their methodology yet.

sqrt(192*0.05*0.95) = 3.02

So we're 5.4 events away from expectations with a standard deviation of 3.02 events. This translates (through the student t-distribution) to a probability of about 0.08. That's intriguing, although not a mind blowingly low probability.

Aside from the statistics, they've got a problem with the scientific method. They don't have any control days, so if their machines just produced unlikely streams of numbers more often than they should, the researchers could accidentally assume they are predicting the future. A better test would be to run the REGs for a year, collect the stream of data, and keep it secret. Then, at the end of the year, the scientists could pick out an equal number of "important" and "unimportant" days. If there's a statistically significant difference in the frequency of unlikely REG data on important and unimportant days, then you've got something. If not, they might just have a problem with their REGs.

(I'd link to a better explanation of how I calculated standard deviation here, but the page I fould was an ugly pdf. You may have better luck simply Googling for it.)

It turns out you can watch these eggs live over at the It's fascinating stuff, although it feels a bit overly dramatic. It keeps making heartbeat sounds, and whenever a statistical deviation exceeds a certain boundary it goes 'ping'.

So not only is it a website that predicts the future, it's a website that goes 'ping' that predicts the future. what more could a geek want?

For more information on REGs, here's a link to Dr. Nelson's website: http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/

Geeks will appreciate that you can download the raw data from the Global Consciousness Project and analyze it yourself. They even provide you a head start in your programming with their C++ package. In addition, there is a realtime driven display coded in Java, and "data driven music."

The entire premise behind the Global Consciousness Project is that the Noosphere exists, and that, when a large amount of people are focused on the same thing it effects things in ways that are difficult to measure. There are dozens of these eggs (64) all around the world returning truly random data to the princeton server, which is inside a special casing to protect it from any extraneous waves/radiation/youname it. Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random". This typically means that when people start hearing about a globally impacting event on the news, the data becomes less random.

Using current methods it is impossible to prove that this is what they are measuring. But the data goes to show that they are measuring something. If you don't believe me or the news article, download the data and analyze it yourself, and if you're feeling the tingling of those psychic wavelengths, you can even register a prediction of your own ;)

Geeks will appreciate that you can download the raw data from the Global Consciousness Project and analyze it yourself. They even provide you a head start in your programming with their C++ package. In addition, there is a realtime driven display coded in Java, and "data driven music."

The entire premise behind the Global Consciousness Project is that the Noosphere exists, and that, when a large amount of people are focused on the same thing it effects things in ways that are difficult to measure. There are dozens of these eggs (64) all around the world returning truly random data to the princeton server, which is inside a special casing to protect it from any extraneous waves/radiation/youname it. Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random". This typically means that when people start hearing about a globally impacting event on the news, the data becomes less random.

Using current methods it is impossible to prove that this is what they are measuring. But the data goes to show that they are measuring something. If you don't believe me or the news article, download the data and analyze it yourself, and if you're feeling the tingling of those psychic wavelengths, you can even register a prediction of your own ;)

Geeks will appreciate that you can download the raw data from the Global Consciousness Project and analyze it yourself. They even provide you a head start in your programming with their C++ package. In addition, there is a realtime driven display coded in Java, and "data driven music."

The entire premise behind the Global Consciousness Project is that the Noosphere exists, and that, when a large amount of people are focused on the same thing it effects things in ways that are difficult to measure. There are dozens of these eggs (64) all around the world returning truly random data to the princeton server, which is inside a special casing to protect it from any extraneous waves/radiation/youname it. Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random". This typically means that when people start hearing about a globally impacting event on the news, the data becomes less random.

Using current methods it is impossible to prove that this is what they are measuring. But the data goes to show that they are measuring something. If you don't believe me or the news article, download the data and analyze it yourself, and if you're feeling the tingling of those psychic wavelengths, you can even register a prediction of your own ;)

Geeks will appreciate that you can download the raw data from the Global Consciousness Project and analyze it yourself. They even provide you a head start in your programming with their C++ package. In addition, there is a realtime driven display coded in Java, and "data driven music."

The entire premise behind the Global Consciousness Project is that the Noosphere exists, and that, when a large amount of people are focused on the same thing it effects things in ways that are difficult to measure. There are dozens of these eggs (64) all around the world returning truly random data to the princeton server, which is inside a special casing to protect it from any extraneous waves/radiation/youname it. Their data purport, and indeed seem, to show that during times when many people are focused on the same thing, this random data is suddenly "less random". This typically means that when people start hearing about a globally impacting event on the news, the data becomes less random.

Using current methods it is impossible to prove that this is what they are measuring. But the data goes to show that they are measuring something. If you don't believe me or the news article, download the data and analyze it yourself, and if you're feeling the tingling of those psychic wavelengths, you can even register a prediction of your own ;)

I predict this link to the real-time GCP will not work in 10 minutes:
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/bsktobsrv/basketobs erver.wall.html/

For the full story and project details, go here Global Consiousness Project

Anyone remember from 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress', that Heinlein predicts rocket tech will have evolved into something far simpler that what we have today (or back then even)? His summary of space tech for the next couple of hundered years went something like:

1. Exceedingly basic and unreliable.

2. Exceedingly complex and expensive.

3. Basic, reliable and cheap.

I wonder when no.3 will arrive...http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byte serv.prl/~ota/disk1/1989/8904/8904.PDF

Umm, Britney Spears is electronic. She's as popular as ever. Half of the currently popular music contains some electronic instrumentation, sampling, processing, or whatever. Everyone:

ELECTRONIC != TECHNO != RAVE

Only the unwashed think of rave music when they hear electronic music.

There are a number of classical composers who create electronic music. Paul Lanksy comes to mind. Check out his composition Idle Chatter Junior The whole electro-acoustic movement is very alive and creating completely new and unique forms of music.

But if you really must limit yourself to the popular dance/techno/rave styles, there is still a lot going on. Here's a very detailed map of the history of popular electronic music.

LS

Kazaa and Old Version
Legal Intimidation

See Kazaa?
You wanted to be selfish now take that idiots!
I just hope you decay down further and further - you bunch of bullying spyware-endorsing thugs.

There is some justice in this world - your actions will come back to haunt you.

Can't wait when Valve gets their own comeuppance for the way they've been treating their own customers.

Dont you guys get it?
Dont the companies get it?
Call this supersition - but the collective disapproval of thousands does bring about bad-luck and misfortune.
It's been scientifically proven.
But noone wants to know.

If you piss off your customer base - you will pay .. somehow, somewhat .. eventually. See it in anyway you want - even sociologically - it's damn obvious.

If you please people - you will benefit from good auspices.
It's all but a statistical phenomena; whatever way you choose ... it's all about shifting the odds for-or-against you.

Why doesn't Microsoft collapse?
Because they balance their nasty acts with very good deeds : charity,employee satisfaction,good customer service,acts of sporadic apparent "generosity" .. with that they keep buying themselves more and more time.

I'm no fan of Bush, but frankly you should be ashamed of yourself.

The truth is that most of the nation is neither red nor blue, but various shades of purple:

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/

The condescending attitude and disrespect of "blue-staters" toward the "red-staters" is one of the biggest reasons why you are losing election after election. And as the map cited above shows, you are also marginalizing people that agree with you.

Yes, it is. Look it up. Or just click this. Go to the bottom of the page where it notes that "quick" is also an adverb (not to mention a noun also). Notice the example it uses. "come here, quick." Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Consequently, "quick" and "quickly" are synonyms of each other.

Just about every every college or university with a decent Computer Science program has people studying NLP (Natural Language Processing). Government agencies are probably the biggest source of grants for research, so DARPA funding this is nothing new. Additionally, NLP is just a sub-field in AI. AI has somewhat turned into a bunch of sub-fields that all relate to computers doing something "intelligent". Other areas of AI include computer vision, expert system development, machine learning...etc. There's a more "open" version of something like CYC(an Ontology) called WordNethttp://wordnet.princeton.edu/, lead by George Miller of Princeton's Psychology Department. You may be familiar with it. It is like a dictionary, but the important part isn't the definitions, it is the subconcept/superconcept(hyponym/hypernym) relationships among senses of words.

Applications for NLP are all over the place. Search engines, for example, use a limited amount. There is a professor at UCF http://www.cs.ucf.edu/ who has developed a system to look up answers to questions in an encyclopedia and respond (in sentences). It also crosses over with data mining, and uses machine learning very often. Here is a link to one of the biggest annual conferences on NLP: http://www.aclweb.org/

Personally, I always loved that color and thought it was the most stylish one of the lot.

"she comes in colors everywhere..."

Sam

I'm so sorry, but I find I can't agree with your statement that a mechanical system is "capable of detecting when its processor is overheating". A system is not "aware" in the sense of being "conscious" since obviously machines are not capable, at this point, of being conscious. Indeed, you seem to be making exactly the mistake I was attempting to describe. That is, you've mistaken the intelligence of the created with the intelligence of the creator. The programmer was aware that at a certain temperature level, damage can occur. His awareness of this is what leads to a particular design, but at no time is the design itself "aware". Is this clear?

As for the definition of "self-awareness", I think I'll stick to the stick to the conventional meaning as it is normally defined.

The noun "self-awareness" has 1 sense in WordNet.

1. self-awareness -- (awareness of your own individuality)

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stag e=1&word=self-awareness

The noun "awareness" has 2 senses in WordNet.

1. awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness -- (having knowledge of; "he had no awareness of his mistakes"; "his sudden consciousness of the problem he faced"; "their intelligence and general knowingness was impressive")

2. awareness, sentience -- (state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "the crash intruded on his awareness")

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stag e=1&word=awareness

Please note that awareness is dependant upon:

a) "consciousness"
b) "sentience"

These are clearly two qualities that cannot, at this time, be mechanically produced.

I'm so sorry, but I find I can't agree with your statement that a mechanical system is "capable of detecting when its processor is overheating". A system is not "aware" in the sense of being "conscious" since obviously machines are not capable, at this point, of being conscious. Indeed, you seem to be making exactly the mistake I was attempting to describe. That is, you've mistaken the intelligence of the created with the intelligence of the creator. The programmer was aware that at a certain temperature level, damage can occur. His awareness of this is what leads to a particular design, but at no time is the design itself "aware". Is this clear?

As for the definition of "self-awareness", I think I'll stick to the stick to the conventional meaning as it is normally defined.

The noun "self-awareness" has 1 sense in WordNet.

1. self-awareness -- (awareness of your own individuality)

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stag e=1&word=self-awareness

The noun "awareness" has 2 senses in WordNet.

1. awareness, consciousness, cognizance, cognisance, knowingness -- (having knowledge of; "he had no awareness of his mistakes"; "his sudden consciousness of the problem he faced"; "their intelligence and general knowingness was impressive")

2. awareness, sentience -- (state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "the crash intruded on his awareness")

http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn?stag e=1&word=awareness

Please note that awareness is dependant upon:

a) "consciousness"
b) "sentience"

These are clearly two qualities that cannot, at this time, be mechanically produced.

We also can't write a program that verifies whether or not a given theorem in a sufficiently powerful formal system is true. This doesn't seem to stop us from doing math, or even writing theorem provers.

There are many, many programs about which we can programmatically verify generally undecidable properties. And if we can't for a given input, we can either disallow it as input, recognize it and give up, or just let our program loop merrily. In fact, I would be surprised if there is a real-world program out there now or in the future that can't written so that it can be be verified to halt or not. Has anybody been stopped from necessary computation by Post's Correspondence Problem? Doubtful.

There is a whole field of creating these types of compilers known as Proof Carrying Code. The idea is that a user specifies a security policy detailing what properties a program needs (halts, memory-safe), then a compiler automatically supplies and bundles with the code a proof if one exists, which is then verified before the program is run. This is real technology that works on large classes of real programs.

Whats the point of that, Blizzard coming to the East Coast? Why's that an opportunity to stay at home? Because they're setting up new WoW servers?

[a minute later]

Oh wait, you mean that kind of blizzard.

[another 2 minutes later]

Wait, I get it. We're talking snow, right? That falls from the - how ya call it - "sky", so hard that you can't go outside.

Right.

"Outside". *wink*

Whats the point of that, Blizzard coming to the East Coast? Why's that an opportunity to stay at home? Because they're setting up new WoW servers?

[a minute later]

Oh wait, you mean that kind of blizzard.

[another 2 minutes later]

Wait, I get it. We're talking snow, right? That falls from the - how ya call it - "sky", so hard that you can't go outside.

Right.

"Outside". *wink*

i have come to the conclusion that the self-taught are the people you want to work with and for.

the self-taught have a better skillset at picking up new skillsets when the pressure is on, they're more willing to and capable of learning by experimentation, they tend to be far more flexible and diverse in their abilities and they're are often more motivated to try out new solutions.

three cheers for the autodidacts

This indicates that it is because they joined together ``for the purpose of reaffirming their intention of continuing intercollegiate football in such a way as to maintain the values of the game, while keeping it in fitting proportion to the main purposes of academic life.'' which happened in 1945. Wikipedia suggests that the Ivy part comes from some of the old buildings hav Ivy growing on them.

http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/search.html allows you to search a database of 3d models by submitting text, 2d [orthagonal] sketch(s), or a 3d [isometric] sketch, or even a 3d model file. Note that at this time these sketches are drawn by the user at search time, but there is nothing to say they can't use a border detection algorithm to accept image input. Also, once you have some results, you can select 'find similar shape'.

Show me in the princeton review where programing languages of choice are listed for each college?

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/schedule.php?d isplay_semester=fall04

Each module tutor is listed, with their telephone number and email address

you can also try contacting the Undergraduate Coordinator

* Tina McCoy: 410 CS Building, 609-258-1746, tmmccoy@cs.princeton.edu

Of course you could also VISIT the place and ask real people.

It is your future, gamble with it if you like.

You also are a hypocrite. You obviously didn't have something nice to say.

Really? Let's see. According to Wordnet, smut can be defined as:

"Creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc. of no LITERARY OR ARTISTIC value other than to stimulate sexual desire."

Need I say more?

And what does it have to do with elitism?

Well, does the word crass mean anything to you? He was obviously knocking wikipedia for their refusal to discriminate. Given where he now earns his keep, it's hard to reconcile his words with his actions.

You also say: As for the stopped participating part, we all need to feed ourselves and our families. Why work for free for something that is filled with venom and abuse? His point was get paid and deal with the abuse or work for free if there is no abuse.

Well, I'm not sure where you're going with that, but I didn't get that he was doing this to feed his family. Furthermore, if he was simply there to make money, it would not excuse trolling/heckling. One could conclude from your remarks that abuse may be tolerated if the services are offered quid pro quo, as opposed to pro bono.

Well, it's a free country, if you feel you can work well under such conditions, knock yourself out.

You also are a hypocrite. You obviously didn't have something nice to say.

I guess the point I was trying to make was not OBVIOUS to you. An entire community is being castigated for their efforts on a project which can be described in a word as noble.

You also are a hypocrite. You obviously didn't have something nice to say.

Really? Let's see. According to Wordnet, smut can be defined as:

"Creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc. of no LITERARY OR ARTISTIC value other than to stimulate sexual desire."

Need I say more?

And what does it have to do with elitism?

Well, does the word crass mean anything to you? He was obviously knocking wikipedia for their refusal to discriminate. Given where he now earns his keep, it's hard to reconcile his words with his actions.

You also say: As for the stopped participating part, we all need to feed ourselves and our families. Why work for free for something that is filled with venom and abuse? His point was get paid and deal with the abuse or work for free if there is no abuse.

Well, I'm not sure where you're going with that, but I didn't get that he was doing this to feed his family. Furthermore, if he was simply there to make money, it would not excuse trolling/heckling. One could conclude from your remarks that abuse may be tolerated if the services are offered quid pro quo, as opposed to pro bono.

Well, it's a free country, if you feel you can work well under such conditions, knock yourself out.

You also are a hypocrite. You obviously didn't have something nice to say.

I guess the point I was trying to make was not OBVIOUS to you. An entire community is being castigated for their efforts on a project which can be described in a word as noble.

kernel: The semantics of setuid class of calls is very confusing. Worse, it varies from from one flavour of Unix to another.
Look at David Wagner's "Setuid Demystified" paper The graphs in pages 9, 10 and 11 are scary.


user level programs:
I use Microsoft Windows sometimes and I find the "system restore" to be a nice feature. It is just convenient to press a button than worry about depdencies when you screwed up etc. Especially useful is you are sending a laptop to your computer illiterate mother in India and expect that she is probably going to try and install some random programs. If something goes wrong, I can ask her to turn the clock back, sitting in the other side of the world.



Sudhakar