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CodeCon, Placebos, Fear, Yoyo-hacking, Dune, etc.
doom writes "Annalee Newitz rambles about CodeCon, placebos,
random numbers, fear, yoyo-hacking, Dune and more.
This is what it means to be a geek:
Techsploitation."
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A true geek would've also taken the time to personally post their article on slashdot.
Is yo-you hacking like cracking severs while lissening to Vanilla Ice?
*sighs contentedly*
Takes me back to the days when internet connections were text-based and being a hacker meant being a proud explorer of a new frontier.
Where has all the magic gone eh? Thank goodness there are people out there who are keeping the magic alive!
A little planning goes a long way...
Only on slashdot have these been combined in a single sentence.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Is that when you hack a server to bring it down, wait for it to come back up again then down, up, down...
There's a link to "Nude Beaches" on the same page, which has got to be a lot more inteersting than guys modifying yo-yos :-)
i know
if i wanted articles of this level of intelectual calibre i would get my lowdown from "TechTV" or "the Screensavers"
Ummm, put down the porn for two seconds to spell check, ok?
Is it such a slow day at Slashdot? Why is this dump of mental diarrhea "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters"? Someone is at some geek conference, throws a bunch of sci-fi references with a couple of buzzwords and some piece about a software that doesn't work but "will do soon" and suddenly we have a truly wondrous article about how good it is to be a geek.
... what is not journalism. It's mostly a rambling trend of thought that, unfortunately, is very publishable on the internet.
"Hacking YoYos" ??? Hardly. That's not new, and it certainly wasn't invented at this conference. People (and self) have always 'modified' a yoyo when it wasn't performing well.
I won't even go into the logic the writer espouses while complaining that doctors are allowed to cause pain in the name of science. Anyone remember the 'call for volunteers' that NASA wanted to lay on their back at a negative incline for months to simulate weightlessness? That's a hell of allot more intrusive and damaging than being poked or heated.
Enough New-Age crap.
... as soon as the site loaded I couldn't help from clicking the "Nude Beaches" link.
I have no idea what that article was about. What is CodeCon? Nevermind the shiny LED's and the yo-yo's, someone find that writer an editor. In fact, speaking of editors, how the hell did this get posted in the first place?
Oh, and for some reason, the Shmoo site is down. *goes in search of a mirror*
I read the "article" and then I read the replies and noticed everyone talking about how horribly written and short it was.
I liked it.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
She does make a good point about how arbritrary perceptions are. I think the most interesting thing she said was that the brain ceases to interpret pain as pain, because this indicates some understanding that the signals are still being processed, just not in the normal way. Thing about it for a second. That's not even the normal "ignore your pain" ideal, it goes even further. What if we really do have the ability to interpret our senses as we see fit?
Using glue, you can install Linux on your yoyo.
You don't need a lab to make mud.
...good thing the FBI wasn't around. With the DMCA, he could of gotten into big time trouble with that yoyo.
"Is it such a slow day at Slashdot? Why is this dump of mental diarrhea "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters"? Someone is at some geek conference, throws a bunch of sci-fi references with a couple of buzzwords and some piece about a software that doesn't work but "will do soon" and suddenly we have a truly wondrous article about how good it is to be a geek."
Not every article on slashdot is revolutionary brilliant. Neither are all replies. Get over it. I for one can't see what's so insightful about your whining.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
This is just my XP box, up...down....up....down
You broke my googlewhack!
You should read up on chaos theory and probability before you call someone an idiot jaz. Random numbers don't exist period, even taking them from external sources is still pseudo-random generation, it just adds the further complication that you cannot control or predict how the noise will interact, and so can't guarentee that it will be uniform, the most useful sort of random number, as it can be translated into any other random number.
Furthermore, my point was not to use a pseudo-random number generator (and by the way, using a Lehmer Congruential Generator will produce better results than sampling a lava lamp for sure, never use rand(), it has horrible properties), my point was this:
Given a source of noise, translating that noise to a number between 1 and 10 is amazingly easy. You are controling your input device's range, and you know what possible values it produces, so it's a simple matter of finding where the generated number lies within that range.
And while pseudo-random numbers which seem more random than others (truly random numbers do not exist period) are valuable, one of them is not. Why the hell would I want to pay $1 to a bunch of wannabe's for a number between 1 and 10? Or any other single random number.
Next time you call someone an idiot, make sure you know what you are talking about first.
Heh... note the email address Annalee Newitz is using here... she evidentally creates a new mail alias for every column: sugarpill@techsploitation.com
Ah, slash ids pushing a billion and whining about what a sewer it's become...
I loved this article! Of course, I was at CodeCon, at the Google reception, and I stuffed my face at Sparky's. Would anyone like some origami paper (or foil?), I always have some with me...
In case anyone is wondering, CodeCon is what Bram Cohen (of BitTorrent fame) started after getting tired of conferences where you pay a ridiculous fee to hear some marketeer ramble on about some vaporware that won't ever see the light of day. CodeCon is a conference for hackers to show off their projects; the presentation must be made by a developer and you must demo some working code. It was also less than $100 for three days of presentations.
burris
The first thing you do to a new yo-yo is adjust the string. "mod", "hack", whatever - memes getting old, fast.
it reminds me of that cool scene in the movie Dune, when Paul sticks his hand in the pain box for a really long time and you hear that spooky voice-over intoning, "I will not fear; fear is the mind-killer."
Yeah, it was a great movie... Now if only someone would write one of those novelized adaptations. That would be great!
Somehow "hacking a yo-yo" seems much more in the spirit of what hacking (as opposed to cracking) is all about -- playfully seeking to improve the way things work.
;)
But then I suppose that I'm just grasping after an earlier halcyon age, when everything was somehow better (including spelling)
...humorless literalism.
It's foolish and ill-informed when people accuse columnists (or anyone else who isn't a journalist) of being poor journalists. Columnists aren't journalists in the same way that a reporter is: they have a much wider ambit--commentary, opinion, whatever.
Annalee Newitz's job isn't to go to a conference and report the facts: it's to ramble, amuse and, yeah, maybe inform a little.
And it's not merely "publishable on the internet," purdue. As far as I'm concerned, she's one of the few reasons to pick up the Bay Guardian, a very much dead-trees-and-ink city weekly.
\
Think about it -- a sugar pill can help alleviate pain (and help heal a wide range of disease) with ZERO side effects. Isn't that the ultimate goal of any pharmacologist? This is an area of research we should all embrace, though it requires an open mind to do so. The mind has far more control over our body than medical science has been willing to admit.
More on Integrative Medicine
Time series data from radioactive decay will generate truly random numbers in a non-uniform distribution. (Prerequisite: belief in quantum physics.)
Use one good one (many bits long) to seed your PRNG.
Demonstrably wrong statements, an abusive tone and gratuitous play of buzzwords does nothing to make you look less an idiot.
je ne suis pas un fou
Western science can open up to placebos all the like. Lawyers will not.
Lawyer:And on the day of June 2nd, 2003, did your client not come into your office complaining of backpain?
Doctor: Yes.
Lawyer: And what did you prescribe to her?
Doctor: Well her complaints were very general, so I gave her a placebo.
Lawyer: In lieu of Actual medicine?
Doctor:No, you see, the placebo effect is actually a well understood and practic...
Lawyer: No further questions for this witness your honor.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean