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Two simple extensions to the BitTorrent protocol would eliminate the need for trackers:

No, that won't work. (Prehaps you elided major bits in the service of brevity...)

Allow peers to download the torrent from one another

That part could function, but would be of low utility. It might be fun to see what other files some host is seeding, but that won't get you very far.

Allow peers to exchange lists of neighbours

There is no such thing as a "neighbor" in bittorrent. There are "peers" and "seeds" (which are just peers at 100%). But merely listing off the other peers someone knows won't solve anything- after all, today's peers aren't aware of any peers aside from those working on the exact same *.torrent file. (In the case of 2nd-generation clients like Azurues, the process is aware of all torrents to which that user is connected. That increases the graph connectedness, but not by much)

For the neighbours list to be at all interesting, there would have to be a new mechanism added to maintain a portion of a dynamic mesh- each peer must strive to be aware of at least ~10 other random peers, distinct from those working on the same download. That's new code unlike anything already in bittorrent. Far more important than writing that code is convincing users to run it (instead of just stripping their clients down to the original bittorrent functionality). If I author a 100% legal file (like a Knoppix ISO), my goal is in seeing that file get maximum distribution. I do NOT want to devote my bandwidth and CPU resources to maintaining a dynamic global mesh whose primary utility is to copyright infringers evading prosecution. (If they weren't afraid of government suppression, then the same functions could be accomplished more efficiently with centralized websites, like the just-terminated Supernova)

And then, even if a (nearly) fully-connected global mesh of bittorrent peers is created, you still haven't outlined any searching function. A peer could search for a file by exhaustively walking the mesh and downloading every single *.torrent for pattern-matching, but that's monstrously inefficient. Far better searching could be added with a few new message types, but it would require much time and bandwidth; easily more bandwidth than the actual contents of the shared files! (Indeed, the biggest technical challenge to the Gnutella protocol was how to optimize that searching- a job that was neither easy, nor wholely successful) A strongly legal user (such as a corporation distributing patches for their commercial software) will not enjoy a continual flood of search requests for Paris Hilton videos. "Our customers can find our torrent on our web page! Why would we even want searching in the protocol? I'll have to check with legal, but I don't think we can install this P2P stuff..."

P2p filesharing apps have 3 features that can be peerified:
0. Mesh maintenance
1. Filename searching
2. File content transfer

The Kazaa and Gnutella networks function because the same program does all 3, and end-users have little ability to selectively disable (One can't download without forwarding some search requests). BitTorrent only implements one of those features, rendering it simpler and more elegant (especially if you follow the Unix design philosophy. "Do one thing & do it well"). For (legal|illegal) torrents, the first 2 functions are handled by (google.com|piratebay.org).

It would be worthwhile (at least for intellectual satisfaction) to create a P2P solution to the first 2 functions as a bittorrent complement, but such would be best done in a separate application. It should sit in the taskbar updating the mesh, pop up a window to search for a file, and then hand off the actual downloading to the user's favorite bittorrent client. ("CRL invoking BT")

Kenosis-enabled BitTorrent is not anonymous. But anonymous P2P is being worked on.

Work in progress. :-)

It is amazing that the whole multi-stage - three parachutes amongst other - landing was a success and the images are very interesting, but why the images seem to be ever more blurry than these of the Venera 14 from 1982?

I'm working on a decentralised, searchable version of BitTorrent called BitTrickle. If you're a Python hacker, please consider lending a hand - it's probably only a day's work for someone who knows the BT source code.

Damn you - I've just finished writing up my ideas for a decentralised version of BitTorrent called BitTrickle!

I never quite realized the telecom illiteracy of /. readers reached such levels, but a +4 informative for this one is too much (I hope that by now it has fallen).

Hz (bandwidth) is not bps (bitrate)!

With a strong enough Signal-to-Noise ratio, you can fit the largest of bitrates in the narrowest of bandwidths. See the Hartley-Shannon law for this...

There's also GNUnet, which is similar to Freenet but with files broken up into equal-sized chunks to allow parallel downloads. All these systems are fine for avoiding an adversary like the RIAA that has limited powers and only wants to collect a few IP addresses for lawsuits, but they shouldn't be considered anonymous or censorship-resistant in any strong sense. Freenet, MUTE and JetiAnts can be DOSed pretty easily and GNUnet's anonymity can be undermined. I'm researching censorship-resistant communication for my PhD so I've got a literature review and bibliography online if you're interested.

There's also GNUnet, which is similar to Freenet but with files broken up into equal-sized chunks to allow parallel downloads. All these systems are fine for avoiding an adversary like the RIAA that has limited powers and only wants to collect a few IP addresses for lawsuits, but they shouldn't be considered anonymous or censorship-resistant in any strong sense. Freenet, MUTE and JetiAnts can be DOSed pretty easily and GNUnet's anonymity can be undermined. I'm researching censorship-resistant communication for my PhD so I've got a literature review and bibliography online if you're interested.

rat

you specify the other end's ip address and single udp port. easy to port-forward.

it doesn't encode end-point data in stream, so rat won't get all confused when the other end identifies itself as a non-routable ip address, as with some protocols.

and with multicast, you can do teleconferencing with multiple people.

Sadly, the most pressing problem isn't the availabilty of biological tools, but the fact that researchers are being allowed to gain patents on their genome sequences, even though such people as The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are against it. They've no problem with patented gene therapies, but patenting the genes themselves is just a horrible thing for cutting edge science.

• Dasher is very different from T9. T9 is basically a lexicon lookup system, and has to be abandoned for words not in the dictionary. Dasher lets the user write any string in the language, though some are considered more likely than others. There is a good analysis of T9 here.
• Dasher does not constrain the writer.Dasher calculates the likelihood of symbols in the string based on the patterns it sees in the symbols of a training corpus. This allows the program to be tailored for various applications. (e.g. train it on a corpus of 10000 text messages, & itll strt 2 ryt lyk dis tho ppl cud stl ryt prpr nglsh. gr8.).
• Statistical modelling does not enforce anything. I suspect that the intent behind the statement about 'correctness' is that spellings present in the training corpus will be preferred. For example, a dasher user is unlikekly to misspell 'receipt' (assuming that the word appears in the training text) because once you 'rec' has been written, 'ei...' will be shown with a higher probability than 'ie'.
• Apropos does not aim to replace TeX. The intent of the two programs is different: Tex is a typesetting program, geared towards representing the notation of mathematics, while Apropos uses MathML in order to capture the meaning of mathematical expressions. Apropos does display the notation to the user, but only because people use notation to understand mathematics. Meaning of a mathematical expression is independent of the notation (e.g. f'(x) vs. df(x)/dx), and humans use a lot of context to parse notation. This is why conversion from Content MathML to TeX (and other display formats) is straightforward, but TeX to Content MathML is ambiguous.
• Apropos' model operates at a higher level thancharacters or words. Apropos predicts based on the grammar of Content MathML. It does not 'exploit' the redundancy in the syntax of XML - that should be obvious by trying it out once. It does not ask the user to create symbols of XML, rather it aids in constructing the mathematical expression by representing it as a (prefix) tree. So there is no question of Apropos predictions being based on inefficiencies in XML.
• Finally, both Dasher & Apropos do not try to stifle creativity, free speech, geekiness or bad spelling. (well, maybe bad spelling). They are only designed to seek out redundancies in languages and exploit them to make repetitive tasks a little easier.

Please read my report for a detailed description of how Apropos works. I have contrasted the system with both T9 & TeX.

The magnitude of damage when something goes wrong (ignoring the statistical chances, if Murphy's law doesn't alert this to you, Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island should)

Millions of people have died from Coal power. Less than 100 have died from Nuclear power. Here's an event that makes Chernobyl look like a walk in the park:

The Great Smog

Now sit and think for a moment which technology is more dangerous. The one we've embraced (coal) that we know is killing millions, or the one we've shunned (nuclear) which has killed very few, even in the worst disaster in history?

The unwanted side effect of wide spread use of nuclear power: nuclear proliferation.

Not such a big deal when the reactor is on its way to Mars. And since the materials are U235 before the engines are activated, it will be pretty hard for "terrorists" to obtain any plutonium from them.

So others can have fun slashdotting other technologies, here are some websites. There are probably others, but this should keep those who do really want to move away from TCP happy.

• Actual sourcecode to transmit binaries by multicast
  
• IETF Reliable Multicast Transport - Charter + RFCs
  
• Introduction to Multicasting (a little old, doesn't cover things like IGMPv3)
  
• Lightweight Reliable Multicast Protocol
  
• Microsoft's Reliable Multicast
  
• SUN's Reliable Multicast system
  
• Navy Research Laboratory implementation
  
• Scalable Reliable Multicast
  
• Cooperative Reliable Multicast
  
• Reliable Multicast for Wireless environments
  
• Selectively Reliable Multicast
  

A mathematical treatment of population genetics in groups was given by W. D. Hamilton in "Innate Social Aptitudes of Man". In the last sentence of that paper, Hamilton, the originator of modern kin selection theory, states:

One hears that game theorists, trying to persuade people to play even two-person games like 'Prisoner's Dilemma', often encounter exasperated remarks like: 'There ought to be a law against such games!' Some of the main points of this paper can be summarized as an answer to this comment: that often, in real life, there is a law, and we can see why, and that sadly we also see the protean nature of this Dilemma, which, when suppressed at one level, gathers its strength at another.

It is indeed a dilemma but it isn't without a rigorous treatement within genetic theory.

Steve Sailer has written an an excellent review of the politically touchy issue of ethnic nepotism given from Hamilton's group selective perspective.

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

In a dawn raid that shocked and overwhelmed local security in its ferocity, the normally pacifistic forces of the Gay Nigger Assocation of America (seemingly backed up by a highly trained militia recruited from the French district of New Orleans), attacked and captured Americas second most notorious Nigger, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As baffled secret service officials still searched for a motive, their questions were soon answered in the form of a video (distributed via Ogrish.com) showing a now naked and bound Rice knelt before her captors, who were all masked and of african-american descent. In a carefully prepared statement, Miss Rice stated that her captors had been accommodating, providing her with fresh dongs and gay nigger seed to sustain her during the difficult journey to her current location, which is believed to be Central Nigeria.

His voice muffled by the cloth covering all but his eyes, the leader of the kidnappers (who referred to himself as "Tuvai"), demanded the release of one of their members, known only as "l0de", currently being held and beaten with sacks of Jewish gold in the notorious Camp X-ray (located in US naval base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba). The dark men then chillingly warned that "If our demands were not met within 72 hours, we shall decapitate the zionist with our dongs".

In response, a disheveled President Bush, who had to postpone his somewhat mysterious personal vacation to Columbia, stated that if Miss Rice was not returned immediately he would "personally march to Nigeria himself" to see the utter destruction of the GNAA.

After being silently informed by the carefully hovering Dick Cheney that Nigeria was infact across several thousand miles of Ocean and such a feat was impossible, the mobilsation of the US Airforce began, with Nigerian capital Abuja City already described by Fox News as "a smoking ruin". Although Reuters, AP and the BBC have maintained that it is "unharmed and currently in the middle of a mass orgy".

OSTG was unavailible for comment, however it has been confirmed via Netcraft that LostCluster has been given a pre-emptive +5, fellatio from Slashdot editor Michael Sims, several hours before the articles posting.

About l0de:

Long time GNAA and Teens4christ member l0de has amassed a loyal following both among the listeners to his weekly "l0de radio hour" internet broadcast/terrorist sleeper cell activation code, and among the AIDS ridden homosexuals that frequent the New Orleans area.

His disappearance soon after his arrest by local authorities has been blamed on the Secret Service, who, it is alleged, were tipped off an hour previously regarding threats made by l0de on his September 11th lrh special to hijack a Carnival Cruise Ship and ram it into the White House.

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a

Sorry, kinda OT, but I just thought some of you might like to know about the eccentric Jeremy Bentham. I was an earth sciences student at UCL, and every time you enter the South Wing you see JB's mummified corpse sitting in it's chair in it's little display case.

Some trivia:
The head displayed on this body is not JB's real head. This is because students from Kings College (long time rivals of UCL - Kings was an anglican uni IIRC, and UCL was full of godless heathens) kept stealing the head and playing footbal with it

JB entrusted the university to the board on the sole condition that he attended every important meeting. Hence it is the university's obligation to wheel him into every meeting the university has.

Lickle mini-bio here http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/jb.htm

then integrate the whole thing into Orbiter.
this would be incredible. not just simulating the whole spacecraft in such detail, but actually doing the whole flight.

i wasnt my fault. i they tell me to stir the tanks, i stir the tanks.

When will someone add those moons to orbiter?

Orbiter's home page

The nights out are also good too

You can say that again :)

You can't communicate properly if everybody uses a diffent pronociation.

If a word has a few recognized pronunciations in relatively free variation, such as [gIf] "GIF" (hard) and [dZIf] "GIF" (soft), or [d{ns] "dance" (American) and [dAns] "dance" (British), speakers will tend to settle on one pronunciation and use it throughout a conversation. (Explanation of phonetic symbols)

There is a huge loop of fiber going all the way around Africa that was put there during the dotcom boom by a company called Africa One. Apparently it is mostly dark, because no one can pay to use it:

See here for a large pic.

More info:
Wired News
Lucent
Some interview

So this is interesting for wireless sake, but not interesting for the sake of Internet connectivity in Africa. This fiber loop needs to be put to use to enable cheap Internet in Africa. Many Internet connections are still done by satellite, which is expensive and slow.

Orbiter Space Flight Simulator.

Eye-opening, to say the least . . . and also a heck of a lot of fun!

Having a separate phone and PDA neatly fits the Unix model. The phone is there to make calls and can also act as a modem (Bluetooth is your friend). The PDA is for email, contacts, checkbook, notes, etc.

By contrast, smartphones represent Gatesian bloat and feature creep. They are, inevitably, a half-assed kludge of the two that do both things half-assed but neither particularly well. Usually, you end up with a PDA on a cell-phone sized screen.

Ah, great solution, "sue". Guess you must be American.

I'm not. I'm English.

Here in Merrie Olde England, a few years ago, the London Ambulance Service decided that a computer could work out the most efficient route from A to B through a busy city far better than a human controller. Reference Here

Thus the computer could decide which ambulance was best placed to answer a specific call based on its geographic location far more efficiently than a person.

It couldn't. People died. Nobody was ultimately held liable. Had the problem been that a bunch of vehicles with faulty steering was sold as ambulances, the manufacturer would have been feeling the pain for years.

It is my 'umble, very 'umble opinion, that there are some things which we still do not understand sufficiently to turn into reliable computer systems. Oh, we understand them ourselves OK - regular drivers know where's a bad place to drive in their home town at rush hour - but we simply don't have a thorough enough understanding to be able to turn it into a reliable computer system. Yet we still try it.

Some packets have to travel several hops over the trust network, so you have two new problems: sharing the bandwidth and finding short routes.

The first problem is solved by requiring every participant to contribute as many resources to the network as they use. You do this by charging your neighbours for forwarding their packets, and paying them to forward your packets. You're free to set the price as high as you want, and they're free to send the packets by a cheaper route, so you're in competition with their other neighbours to carry their traffic. The payment happens hop-by-hop so you don't need a digital currency, you just keep score with each of your neighbours.

The second problem (finding short routes) is solved by flooding, because that's a good way of finding the lowest-latency route in a dynamic network. But you don't want to flood the entire network because that kills scalability. Instead, anyone who wants to receive connections sends out periodic advertisement broadcasts. Each node that receives the advertisement adds an entry to its route cache. Anyone who wants to establish a connection broadcasts a search for a node with a route to the destination. If the search reaches a node that has seen the advertisement, it proceeds along the cached route to the destination. Since the broadcasts only need to overlap at one node, the diameter of each broadcast is on average half the diameter of the network, so the traffic scales according to the square root of the number of nodes, which is better than unlimited flooding but still not great.

You don't necessarily trust people more than one hop away, so you need end-to-end proof of delivery using digital signatures. When a packet is acknowledged, each node along the route updates its route cache (even the nodes that weren't in range of the original advertisement), so finding a route to a well-known destination just requires finding someone who's communicated with it recently.

I was about to ask where you could get the Orbiter add-on for the asteroid. I've not heard of Celestia. I might have to check it out.

Does Celestia let you land on the asteroid? Does it let you compute your own interplanetary transfer orbits?

(A warning to the newbie... Orbiter's learning curve is *very* steep, but well worth it. Getting the trans-jovian transfer orbit burn just right was pretty cool. Landing on Io was even cooler.)

/me pulls out his dictionary...

• grammer -> grammar
  D'oh! I was afraid of missing something. I was being really careful too.
• noname -> no-name
  That's debatable. Either way, you're making a compound word. Down here in .AU, "noname" actually is a brand name. Although they certainly don't make network switches.
• castor wheels -> casters
  Nup, "castor" is in my Oxford dictionary. It specifically mentions wheels on furniture. Perhaps "caster" is an Americanism.
• 16 wheeler -> 18 wheeler
  Do I look like a trucker? Is this TruckDot? Anyway, this doesn't have anything to do with spelling or grammar.
• plug into -> plug in to
  Alright. Note to self: "into" is quite different to "in to".
• centre -> center
  Once again, an Americanism. The correct Commonwealth spelling is centre. (BTW, it's annoying that the American spelling is in the HTML standard)
• a days time -> a day's time
  I always thought this was another Americanism but it seems it isn't. I'm trying really hard to remember what I learnt in school. Hmmm...

Slowly becomming a grammar and spelling nazi...

Requirements are both good and necessary, but they do require something that I've noticed a severe lack of amongst programmers: Discipline. The discipline to develop preliminary functional models, perform up front what-if analysis, do the FMEA's and maybe a few MSC models for the interfaces. Then map it all back into what the customer says they want and walk them though it. Sound like a lot of work? It is. It also requires a modest amount of negotiating skill and the willingness to both educate the customer, when necessary, and the determination to stick to your guns when you know you are right, always.

I can hire truckloads of happy little coders who don't have a clue about requirements, and then train them (which I often have to do), but I treasure the software engineer who knows and understands the value of requirements, knows what the term "traceability" means, and can effectively translate the customer's needs and wants into a set of models and requirements definitions that accurately and adequately capture the design objectives.

And, yes, things do change during the course of a project, and new things are discovered. That's why the requirements specification is a "live" document subject to continuous review, and there are things called "derived requirements".

And, just one other thing to consider. If you assume a unit cost of defect removal of one (1) at the coding stage, then it's been shown that finding and removing a defect at the requirements stage only costs around .2! That's right. It gets better. Over half of all errors in SW are introduced at the requirements stage. Not doing any requirements? Then brace yourself for some long and agonizing test and debug sessions. Don't believe me? Take a look at this report:

NIST study on software defects

It's big, but chock full of good information.

For an introduction to requirements engineering, this is one of my favorite books:

Davis' book on software requirements techniques

And lastly, here are some links for the curious:

FMEA/FMECA info
Good article on DO-178B
Some more info on DO-178B
A paper on requirements traceability
Info on SDL and MSC

Then again, I guess there are some folks who enjoy whacking away at their software, growing it "incrementally" (no relation to the formal model, BTW), and spending their time at the back end of the project listening to the customer scream about missed delivery dates while they frantically do the compile-test-debug dance over and over. For myself, I'd rather see it just work with a minimum of verification hassle from the outset and then get on with my life.

According to this, it was Grace Hopper.

Why not investigate some of the alternatives while the site is ./ed.
http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/
Sun's attempt
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/A.Steed/3ddesktop/

What you don't get from watching TeeVee is how much those bullets hurt. Ouch. Just as well though, because now they don't kill you outright. They send you to Afghanistan to soak up bullets from Bin Laden. Then they put curry poweder in the wounds, viniger and brown paper and you fall down the hill and break your crown - James Hetfield.

• 300 MHz PC or better (Pentium, Athlon, etc.)
• 128MB RAM or more
• Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP
• DirectX 7.0 or higher
• DirectX compatible 3D graphics accelerator card with at least 16MB of video RAM (32MB or more recommended) and DXT texture compression support.
• Approximately 60MB of free disk space for the minimum installation (additional high-resolution textures and addons will require more space).
• DirectX compatible joystick (optional)

The Witty worm has shown that users of minority operating systems need to be concerned about "flash worms" - internet worms that spread faster than humans can respond, making it impossible to protect yourself simply by patching your system. Many Unix users have become complacent, believing that worm epidemics can be blamed on the poor quality of Microsoft's software, its dominant market position, or sloppy system administration. Witty has shown that these assumptions are false, and we are all at risk.

The threat to servers is fairly well understood, and network services generally run with reduced permissions and/or in chroot sandboxes to reduce the damage they can cause if infected. However, ordinary users also run network-exposed software which is vulnerable to worms. The following is a proposal for protecting personal data against worms.

Imagine that each user of a Unix system has two accounts: a "real" account and a "shadow" account. The shadow account is used for running network-exposed software. It has its own home directory for configuration files and so on, and it cannot access the user's "real" home directory. The real user has a setuid script for launching programs as the shadow user. Logins are not permitted on the shadow account.

The problem is that we want to have full access to our files even from our most exposed applications: web browsers, email clients and instant messaging programs. To make this possible we need to recognise the difference between "personal files" and "program files". This terminology may stick in the throats of Unix veterans, but the distinction is a real and important one: personal files have inherent value to the user. Program files may be vital to the operation of some program, but they can be replaced.

The value of personal files is of course invisible to the computer, but it can be seen in the way a user interacts with those files. Personal files are manually selected in the file manager or file selection dialog, while program files are opened by applications using hardcoded names or settings in some configuration file. For a large class of programs, interaction with personal files is manual while interaction with program files is automatic.

This distinction makes it possible to give sandboxed applications limited access to personal files: a sandboxed program can keep its program files inside the sandbox, and be granted access to personal files outside the sandbox when the user selects them manually. This is achieved by using a separate "open" program that runs as the real user, presents a file selection dialog to the user, and dumps the contents of the selected file to its standard output. A similar "save" program saves the contents of its standard input to a location selected by the user. These setuid programs can be called by sandboxed applications to allow "consensual" access to personal files, without allowing automatic access that might be exploited by a worm.

Example: a Unix system has one user, Andy, with two accounts: andy and andy-shadow. In andy's home directory is a setuid script belonging to andy-shadow, which simply changes to andy-shadow's home directory and executes the program named on the command line. This allows Andy to run any program in a sandbox, including a shell or file manager if the sandbox needs cleaning. In andy-shadow's home directory are two setuid programs, open and save, which are owned by andy and executable (but not writable) by andy-shadow. Sandboxed applications can call these programs to open and save files with Andy's help, but they cannot directly access his home directory. If they need to save any settings etc, they use andy-shadow's home directory.

Shadow accounts (and the corresponding setuid programs) can be created automatically for all users. T

Ida and Dactl

One of those universe/solar system simulations - I forget the name.
Possibly because there's more than one name to forget... (=

Let's see, for general touring around the Solar system and neighborhood, there's nothing quite like Celestia. Hours of fun, and very pretty to look at.
Noctis is also similar, but set in a fictional universe.
For more pretty pictures, but less interactivity, see The Solar Journey homepage or the Solar System Simulator. Also The Nine Planets for Kids.
Naturally, kids aren't that interested in just flying around. Well, Orbit lets them blow each other up in space, but with realistic physics and visuals. Once that gets boring, you can let them fly a space shuttle to the ISS with Orbiter. Beware, though. Orbiter is no simple game - you actually need to know how space flight works. There's also the Microsoft Space Simulator, which Orbiter has more or less superseded.

If you're not looking to get that far off the ground, FlightGear's an excellent flight simulator in which you can fly everything from the original Wright Brothers' craft right up to concept superplanes.

More links, mainly astronomy related, here, here, here, here, and here.

Finally, you might wish to try browsing the Tucows Games site and Freshmeat's game section (you'll need to login to make full use of Freshmeat).

Good luck, have fun searching.

This program is an excelent, free space simulator. Fly the Apollo 11 mission, launch the space shuttle and dock at ISS, or for real fun, launch a probe from earth, have it gravity assist around venus, and go out to the outer planets. The physics seems very realistic and real world. Math will for sure be a huge help in this. The main site is Here, and also check out Dan's ORbiter page, with many great addons and sound updates here. For a great video of orbiter in action (But without any view of the controls or the mathmatics involved) check out video 3 from this page.

Did I mention its all free as in beer?

This article talks about Rajan Mahadevan who memorized some 31,000+ digits of pi for the (then) world record. Another interesting article on Mahadevan if you're into that.

The first article, however, discusses what it takes to become considered "best" in your area of study. Read through it for a fascinating look at performance and intelligence and how it relates to the amount of practice. The short version, for those who are allergic to reading, is that you can reach a level considered "best" after about 10,000 hours of practice regardless of whether you start out slow or whether you're a quick study.

Want to become a killer programmer? Put in 10 solid hours a day coding (and related research activities) for 3 years (ie: 1000 days). After 18 months, you'll be at a stage where you're qualified to teach. After 2 years you'll be considered very good. And after 3 years, you'll get a call from Carmack. (Okay, maybe I made that last one up.)

Cantonese is the "second" official language of Hong Kong after Putongwua (Mandarin) and English is an increasingly distant third."

As I understand it, about 38 percent of people in Hong Kong speak English, and the state language policy is currently trilingual but biliterate -- meaning Cantonese, English, and Mandarin are all taught as spoken languages, but only Cantonese and English literacy is taught.

Literacy is, of course, the germane topic when it comes to computer use.

The logo of the new project can be seen here.