there are a lot more sophisticated ways of hiding and transferring secret information. including texts, images, video and audio streams, ssl, gpg, tunneling, etc. why would anyone bother with a child games like that?
I agree that this particular example is probably just what you think it is for very much the same reasons. True short wave number stations have one extreme advantage over the other examples you used: receiving them is a totally passive activity. There is no way for somebody to monitor the station that's generating the sequence and figure out who is listening and decoding it. The recipient could be anyone, anywhere, so catching the spies making use of it is next to impossible.
Connecting to a web server to view an image with a steganographic message (even if it's OTP encrypted) is still an active activity. So is dialing up a VOIP number. If you can figure out where the message originates, you can figure out who is listening to it by monitoring a single point. Why give up that anonymity and still use something this inconvenient? If you're going to give up the recipient's anonymity, just publish encrypted sequences on a web site.
I should point out that there are those who are too stupid / weak willed not to try to get high by breathing aerosol propellants or sniffing glue. Having those things around my home is a minimal convenience that I could live without, but I'd be more than a little annoyed if I couldn't use them because some other idiot can't stop himself from killing brain cells with them.
Moreover, teaching in schools things like "ID may be possible" should not be in any way threatening to an objective and dispassionate scientific world. In fact, an objective and dispassionate scientist should welcome challenges to his theories. There should be no need for a defensive response to such a notion, except by the pseudo-scientific masses that fail to realize the plain truth: Reality dictates science, science does not dictate reality.
I would argue that teaching that "ID may be possible" is sort of a philosophical no-op that has no place in a science class. ID may be possible, just as Cthulu may be real, just as Zeus may be running the show. None of those things are really testable in any meaningful way, so there's no way of applying the scientific method to them. By going into ID in a science class, we are doing students a profound disservice by saying, "And of course, it's still scientifically OK to abandon the scientific method when it makes you feel good and still pretend you're doing science." Why not append "Or it could be magic" to all of our scientific theories, just to be philosophically complete? We could also say, "Earthquakes are the result of shifting tectonic plates. Or it could ALL BE IN YOUR MIND!"
A more productive approach would be to say, "Yes, evolutionary theory is not necessarily 100% fact. Neither is our theory of gravitation or any other scientific theory. All of our scientific knowledge is provisional, and we may change what we believe if new data appears." A firm grounding in the philosophy of science and what constitutes actual scientific inquiry would be a great thing to have. The ID supporters who claim to want just that would never go for it, though, as anybody who critically examines their claims would realize that the ID movement is not what it claims to be. ID is not a scientific alternative to evolution, but rather a philosophical alternative to science designed to quietly push a religious agenda. That is why most science educators are against ID--not because it dares to question their "dogma" or their positions as sage knowers of fact.
Yes, buy things like the Fight Club DVD, you sheep. Some people, if worried about excessive consumerism, would stop buying shit.
I was thinking something similar last night. My wife and I saw something about celebrity excess on TV. They mentioned a successful music group in Europe burning the equivalent of $1.7M in cash. Literally burning it. They claimed it was some sort of social commentary on materialism. My thought: If you burn ALL of your cash so you have to go to work and worry about paying the rent like the rest of us, then I'll take your commitment to that idea seriously. Until then, you're just an asshole.
Use standardized tests as your criterion, and you will develop... students with a high ability to score well on standardized tests.
I've never understood this attitude. If you can design a test that closely reflects the skills you're trying to teach, what is wrong with teaching kids to pass those tests? We don't say that learning to drive is just learning to score well on the behind-the-wheel driving test. Why? Because that test is actually a test of what you're supposed to learn.
Yes, it's more difficult to design a test that tests scientific reasoning skills than it is to come up with one that tests math skills, but I seriously doubt that it's impossible. If a test is flawed, point out its flaws and fix them. Don't complain about standardized testing in general, because if the test properly reflects the skills you're trying to teach, "teaching for the test" is exactly what we want to do!
What do I think is a good solution? As great as it is for students to know the boiling point of water, we should do more written exams that involve posing a problem and a list of observations. Ask the student to write hypotheses and explain how the hypotheses fit the observations. Then ask the student to design an experiment that would test the hypotheses and distinguish which ones fit the data better. Ask them to justify their answers all along the way. Yes, you can't have a machine grade it, but the AP exam board seems to be able to grade piles of written exams every year. We just need to spend the money on administering a proper exam so that "teaching for the exam" can become a virtue rather than a sin.
The world is not black and white. I benefit from hick in montana milking cows and some rancher in Argentina rasing a herd of delivious cows but it's not REASONABLE for me to pay tazxes in those places. But it's REASONABLE that I pay taxes when I telecommute to another state.
If you say so. I'm glad you're here to tell us what's reasonable. I happen to think that paying income tax on whatever part of my income I earned telecommuting is fine as long as I only pay it in one place is reasonable. I don't think it's reasonable for me to pay taxes on all of my income in two different states as if I owe all of my income equally to both of them as described in the commentor's summary (right or wrong... you never know with/.). Fortunately, you were here to correct me without any real explantion.
I'm forced to wonder, though, why just telecommuters? Why not financial instrument traders? Why don't people living near the border of two states pay full income tax in both of them? I think it might have something to do with drawing reasonable lines and the inablity to make a fair estimate of what they should be paying. Why that doesn't apply to telecommuters is anybody's guess.
Well you are a typical american, of course you would rather not pay taxes to benefit the state that nurtures your company. You probably would rather not pay any taxes anywhere.
Still though you directly benefit, not just one intangable way fifteen steps down the road.
Actually, I have no problem paying taxes, and I generally have a more left of center view on the topic than most Americans. I just happen to think that this particular idea is idiotic. Here's why:
1) Of course I benefit from New York's public services. I also benefit from Florida's public services. I also benefit from the French medical system. Given that we live in a very global economy, my company benefits fairly directly from the public service programs in most states and many foreign countries. I think it's great that those services exist, and I think that the world is a better place for it. That's not the question, though. The question is, should I be paying income tax on all of my income in every country in the EU, half of East Asia, and 35 out of 50 states in the US to cover services that only peripherally benefit me, or is there a more logical way of doing it, like taxing the businesses that make use of my services there?
2) Why on earth are telecommuters who earn their money in NY taxed as NY residents when wealthy out of state investors who make most of their money trading on the NYSE or NYMEX aren't? What about people who work for mail order companies that send most of their goods to New York? Should they pay full income tax in both states? Computers are wonderful things, but they can't allow you to be in two places at once, and there's no reason to write weird laws that pertain specifically to them and gouge telecommuters and not others whose income is earned in similar patterns.
This is not a question of not wanting to pay taxes at all, or even not being willing to pay taxes that don't directly benefit me for the good of a healthy society from which I benefit. It's a practial matter of sensible policy that extracts reasonable contributions from everybody in a particular constituency. We all clearly can't afford to pay income tax on 100% of our income in all 50 states, even though we benefit as a whole from the healthy governance of all of them. You seem to think that my proposal is an "every man for himself" solution of abolishing those government services. In reality, I'm just proposing that state residents pay for services that directly affect them and that any extra burden caused by the cost of interstate commerce should be borne by the businesses who take part in that commerce. Sure, the businesses would pass their costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices and employees in the form of lower wages, but that pattern would more reasonably reflect who is actually causing the public to incur the extra costs, and I doubt it's going to ruin anybody.
New York's current system is just a cynical attempt to extract some free tax money from a class of people who can't vote in local elections and thus have no recourse. It's a great way of raising taxes while still staying popular with your local constituency ("We'll just get those other guys to pay for it!"), but it's not espeically fair, and I would argue that it produces a larger deadweight loss in the nationwide economy than a more equitable structure that maintains the same services.
Many of the NYC services you think you "pay for" are actually paid for by NYC residents (trust me, this is not a small tax to pay, especially if you are an "unincorporated business"). You are paying New York State tax. So the roads, schools, and various city services, etc. are paid for by us (i.e. city residents). I really don't want to rant here, and I'm not a follower of the "red state welfare" crap, but NYC sends more tax money to NYS and the Fed than it ever sees back. There are all sorts of good reasons for this, but don't whine to us about taxes. We already pay more than our fair share.
Bear in mind that a huge percentage of the people you're talking to are in California. I think that we're pretty familiar with paying out far more than we receive in Federal taxes. As you said, there are good reasons for this (and a lot of not so good reasons), but I don't think that's a particularly rational reason for arbitrary inter-state transfers of income tax.
I have to wonder, though... what does NY state income tax pay for, and can you really justify the conclusion that people who telecommute to New York benefit from it an any material way (or, at least, any more than a wealthy out of state resident who makes most of his income buying and selling assets on the NYSE)?
NY has provided a whole slew of services to your business. Your business has chosen to be located in NY despite having the choice to move anyplace in the world. Therefore there must be something there that your business likes and since they seem to be thriving enough to hire you and let you work from a remote location they must be getting their money's worth.
In other words you might not have this job if your company wasn't located in NY.
That's a good reason for the business that employs you to pay taxes (which they do). I might not have a job if one of my company's clients wasn't located in New York. A guy who works at a paper mill in Montana might not have a job if companies located in New York weren't doing so well that they need a lot of paper. At the end of the day, we all benefit from everbody else's prosperity in one way or another. Reasonably, I owe my living to the economies of several states even though I don't telecommute. That's no good reason for me to pay for all of their local programs.
If a program is so important and far reaching that it really and sincerely affects people outside the state, federalize it and I'll gladly pay my fair share. Until then, I'd rather not be paying for New York roads, Virginia schools, and upkeep on state courthouses in Illinois.
That's not completely true. If sent in CBC mode, two chunks of data that are identical will produce identical cypher text.
I think you mean ECB mode. CBC mode does not suffer from this problem. I would guess that a system like this would prefer a mode like OFB or CFB to make it act more like a stream cipher, but I guess that given the size of a typical encryption block versus the data rate, CBC would work just fine as well. I seriously doubt that this system would be implemented using ECB for anything.
So I'm not sure what you're trying to show by giving a completely unrelated quote for which you've given zero context and whose context you do not discuss. There is no similarity between what you've done and what I did.
My point is that you're trying to lend the authority of Patterson and Gould to ideas with which they would vehemently disagree. Both of the statements they made were qualitative and not really raw data, so you're really quoting their interpretations of data rather than pure fact. That means that what they meant is just as important as the specific words they said. Both have repudiated your interpretation of their quote. This wouldn't be a problem if you were simply qouting facts and figures (as long as you did it carefully), but you're trying to say things like, "X thinks that there isn't enough evidence!" when X clearly doesn't think that at all.
I also have to ask again, since you're still responding to posts, why did you bring up Marxism? It seems like well poisoning to me, but I'm still interested in what your defense of that tactic might be.
As an aside, I have to wonder why you would refer to Gould as a "Marxist" in this discussion? I can't quite see how it's relevant, beyond the typical shameful attempt to smear him by presenting an irrelevant fact that may make him less popular. I only ask because that type of well poisoning is typical in these sorts of discussions, and nobody else seems to have pointed it out.
We have interfered with natural selection, allowing unfit people to survive. As a direct consequence of this, human stupidity will increase.
That's like how I hire new employees: Take the stack of resumes and shred all but one. That one is clearly a lucky person, and a person I want to have working for me. I certainly don't want any of the unlucky bastards who got their resumes shredded.
It seems to me like an interesting solution along those lines would be to sell software which, instead of trying to "block out the bad stuff" 100% of the time (totally impossible), makes a very easily read and difficult to tamper with audit trail for parents to read. Just install the software and tell the kids, "I'll be looking through the logs periodically, so behave yourselves." It's not a perfect solution, but I think that a kid proactively trying to avoid hitting inappropriate material will probably see less bad stuff than a kid actively trying to get around an omnipresent filter with no consequences if he succeeds.
Of course, the parent would have to take an active role in policing things and understand the occasional false positive. Maybe that's too much to ask.
Well, as they say, if the shoeshine boy (or a bunch of slashdotters) has financial tips for you, you might consider the possibility that there's some bubbling going on.
One of the more interesting class projects I had in college was to estimate the expected value of the S&P 500 not long after the bubble burst. The scary thing is, no matter how we twiddled our variables and assumptions, we couldn't get the estimated value up to even 75% of its value then. And it has been climbing since then.
Of course, that certainly doesn't mean that a crash is imminent. It does, however, indicate to me that stocks are still being bought based on "eyeballing" the price rather than a careful analysis of reasonable prices.
Although this post is a troll, it raises an interesting question Would scientists who discover something that shattered evolution, or any other theory, cover it up or deny it? I've seen a lot of intelligent people who accept the current scientific beliefs as perfect without question.
The answer to that is no, they probably wouldn't. Shattering major theories is how scientists go down in history as giants in their fields. I have a hard time with the idea that there is a general trend toward NOT wanting to collect a Nobel Prize and the respect of your colleagues forever more.
Sadly, I've seen a lot of intelligent people who think that a few minutes of "common sense examination" of data they see in the popular press is good enough to overturn the deep analysis and primary source data covered in the literature that they never read. Fewer, but still a surprising number, are amazingly quick to appeal to a conspiracy by scientists to make the results from their own field wrong. Their reasons range from the Atheist Agenda to the grant money that, of course, allows all research biologists to live in oppulent splendor.
There may be some subset of scientists who would cover up groundbreaking work, but I would venture to say that they're the subset of scientists who are too stupid to actually do any groundbreaking work in the first place.
As a bowler, I have to respond the same way I respond to that question when asked of my sport: Yes, it's a sport. However, the people who play it are not atheletes. Atheletes don't complain when playing makes them sweat, for example.
Many elephants go to "elephant graveyards" to die; will scientists in 60 million years stumble across one of these graveyards, see the tusks and the size of the animals and conclude the elephant was a vicious carnivore which hunted in packs? And will that era's Slashdot splash such spurious findings on the front page?
Others have addressed the nonsense about tusks/teeth, but I should point out that the distribution of different sized specimens (read: different ages) is strongly indicative of a living pack rather than a graveyard where old animals go to die. These people aren't just pulling things out of their asses as so many people here are quick to assume they are. I know that the geeks around here honestly believe that whatever they happen to do for a living is the one and only True Science, but give paleontologists some credit for being more than just glorified illustrators, please.
Watch any Discovery Channel dinosaur documentary and you'll see that a fragment of a tooth gets extrapolated into an animal.
And watching Disocvery Channel dinosaur documentaries is definitely the best way to judge an entire field of professional researchers. So what percentage of the time do you suppose paleontologists are right with their classifications?
Frankly, science and religion have little in common, other than the search for truth that was talked about in the movie Contact. I believe that science's purpose is to explain the natural (physical) world, but that it cannot say anything about the spiritual world. Religion/faith is about who we are in relation to the natural and spiritual world, and is suppose to show us how to fulfill our potential as human beings.
This is true. The two areas generally occupy distinctly different roles in our lives. However, when religion makes testable claims about the physical world, religious people should not be surprised when science ends up testing those claims. It's up to individuals to decide how they reconcile disagreements between religious claims and scientific results. Dawkins always goes with the science, and he believes that it's not logical to do otherwise. I can respect that, although I think that he can be a bit coarse when he shares where he stands on the issue.
I think that the point is that any common ancestor between the two is far enough back that it would not look especially like a pig or an ape (or it would look far more like one than the other), so it would be entirely unconvincing to creationists, even if it were to be pointed out. Technically, the earliest multicellular organisms would fit the bill, but those clearly won't impress anybody who isn't already onboard.
Mutation is not the same as Evolution, and does not discredit my claim of all of the larger events that Evolutionists stake their livelyhood on as being a fact, has been proven to be fake. Once again: Piltdown, Java, Nebraska, Orce, Neanderthal, Yale DNA Hybridization Scandal, etc... All proven fakes. You know it, I know it, others are too blind to care to even look it up.
I'm a real fan of the "some miniscule amount of the evidence was mistaken or fabricated, therefore all of the evidence is fabricated" argument. And creationists complain about unwarranted extrapolation!
Slashdot Mirror
Connecting to a web server to view an image with a steganographic message (even if it's OTP encrypted) is still an active activity. So is dialing up a VOIP number. If you can figure out where the message originates, you can figure out who is listening to it by monitoring a single point. Why give up that anonymity and still use something this inconvenient? If you're going to give up the recipient's anonymity, just publish encrypted sequences on a web site.
I should point out that there are those who are too stupid / weak willed not to try to get high by breathing aerosol propellants or sniffing glue. Having those things around my home is a minimal convenience that I could live without, but I'd be more than a little annoyed if I couldn't use them because some other idiot can't stop himself from killing brain cells with them.
A more productive approach would be to say, "Yes, evolutionary theory is not necessarily 100% fact. Neither is our theory of gravitation or any other scientific theory. All of our scientific knowledge is provisional, and we may change what we believe if new data appears." A firm grounding in the philosophy of science and what constitutes actual scientific inquiry would be a great thing to have. The ID supporters who claim to want just that would never go for it, though, as anybody who critically examines their claims would realize that the ID movement is not what it claims to be. ID is not a scientific alternative to evolution, but rather a philosophical alternative to science designed to quietly push a religious agenda. That is why most science educators are against ID--not because it dares to question their "dogma" or their positions as sage knowers of fact.
Yes, it's more difficult to design a test that tests scientific reasoning skills than it is to come up with one that tests math skills, but I seriously doubt that it's impossible. If a test is flawed, point out its flaws and fix them. Don't complain about standardized testing in general, because if the test properly reflects the skills you're trying to teach, "teaching for the test" is exactly what we want to do!
What do I think is a good solution? As great as it is for students to know the boiling point of water, we should do more written exams that involve posing a problem and a list of observations. Ask the student to write hypotheses and explain how the hypotheses fit the observations. Then ask the student to design an experiment that would test the hypotheses and distinguish which ones fit the data better. Ask them to justify their answers all along the way. Yes, you can't have a machine grade it, but the AP exam board seems to be able to grade piles of written exams every year. We just need to spend the money on administering a proper exam so that "teaching for the exam" can become a virtue rather than a sin.
I'm forced to wonder, though, why just telecommuters? Why not financial instrument traders? Why don't people living near the border of two states pay full income tax in both of them? I think it might have something to do with drawing reasonable lines and the inablity to make a fair estimate of what they should be paying. Why that doesn't apply to telecommuters is anybody's guess.
1) Of course I benefit from New York's public services. I also benefit from Florida's public services. I also benefit from the French medical system. Given that we live in a very global economy, my company benefits fairly directly from the public service programs in most states and many foreign countries. I think it's great that those services exist, and I think that the world is a better place for it. That's not the question, though. The question is, should I be paying income tax on all of my income in every country in the EU, half of East Asia, and 35 out of 50 states in the US to cover services that only peripherally benefit me, or is there a more logical way of doing it, like taxing the businesses that make use of my services there?
2) Why on earth are telecommuters who earn their money in NY taxed as NY residents when wealthy out of state investors who make most of their money trading on the NYSE or NYMEX aren't? What about people who work for mail order companies that send most of their goods to New York? Should they pay full income tax in both states? Computers are wonderful things, but they can't allow you to be in two places at once, and there's no reason to write weird laws that pertain specifically to them and gouge telecommuters and not others whose income is earned in similar patterns.
This is not a question of not wanting to pay taxes at all, or even not being willing to pay taxes that don't directly benefit me for the good of a healthy society from which I benefit. It's a practial matter of sensible policy that extracts reasonable contributions from everybody in a particular constituency. We all clearly can't afford to pay income tax on 100% of our income in all 50 states, even though we benefit as a whole from the healthy governance of all of them. You seem to think that my proposal is an "every man for himself" solution of abolishing those government services. In reality, I'm just proposing that state residents pay for services that directly affect them and that any extra burden caused by the cost of interstate commerce should be borne by the businesses who take part in that commerce. Sure, the businesses would pass their costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices and employees in the form of lower wages, but that pattern would more reasonably reflect who is actually causing the public to incur the extra costs, and I doubt it's going to ruin anybody.
New York's current system is just a cynical attempt to extract some free tax money from a class of people who can't vote in local elections and thus have no recourse. It's a great way of raising taxes while still staying popular with your local constituency ("We'll just get those other guys to pay for it!"), but it's not espeically fair, and I would argue that it produces a larger deadweight loss in the nationwide economy than a more equitable structure that maintains the same services.
I have to wonder, though... what does NY state income tax pay for, and can you really justify the conclusion that people who telecommute to New York benefit from it an any material way (or, at least, any more than a wealthy out of state resident who makes most of his income buying and selling assets on the NYSE)?
If a program is so important and far reaching that it really and sincerely affects people outside the state, federalize it and I'll gladly pay my fair share. Until then, I'd rather not be paying for New York roads, Virginia schools, and upkeep on state courthouses in Illinois.
I also have to ask again, since you're still responding to posts, why did you bring up Marxism? It seems like well poisoning to me, but I'm still interested in what your defense of that tactic might be.
-- Psalm 53
And there you have it. Straight from the Bible itself. Authoritative and unambiguous.
As an aside, I have to wonder why you would refer to Gould as a "Marxist" in this discussion? I can't quite see how it's relevant, beyond the typical shameful attempt to smear him by presenting an irrelevant fact that may make him less popular. I only ask because that type of well poisoning is typical in these sorts of discussions, and nobody else seems to have pointed it out.
"A man with one clock knows what time it is. A man with two clocks is never quite sure."
Of course, the parent would have to take an active role in policing things and understand the occasional false positive. Maybe that's too much to ask.
One of the more interesting class projects I had in college was to estimate the expected value of the S&P 500 not long after the bubble burst. The scary thing is, no matter how we twiddled our variables and assumptions, we couldn't get the estimated value up to even 75% of its value then. And it has been climbing since then.
Of course, that certainly doesn't mean that a crash is imminent. It does, however, indicate to me that stocks are still being bought based on "eyeballing" the price rather than a careful analysis of reasonable prices.
Sadly, I've seen a lot of intelligent people who think that a few minutes of "common sense examination" of data they see in the popular press is good enough to overturn the deep analysis and primary source data covered in the literature that they never read. Fewer, but still a surprising number, are amazingly quick to appeal to a conspiracy by scientists to make the results from their own field wrong. Their reasons range from the Atheist Agenda to the grant money that, of course, allows all research biologists to live in oppulent splendor.
There may be some subset of scientists who would cover up groundbreaking work, but I would venture to say that they're the subset of scientists who are too stupid to actually do any groundbreaking work in the first place.
As a bowler, I have to respond the same way I respond to that question when asked of my sport: Yes, it's a sport. However, the people who play it are not atheletes. Atheletes don't complain when playing makes them sweat, for example.
I think that the point is that any common ancestor between the two is far enough back that it would not look especially like a pig or an ape (or it would look far more like one than the other), so it would be entirely unconvincing to creationists, even if it were to be pointed out. Technically, the earliest multicellular organisms would fit the bill, but those clearly won't impress anybody who isn't already onboard.