I usually just delete any comments I find to be annoying (as well as rename variables, align indents, etc.) until the code is readable. Also, the more I code, the more idioms I learn, the more of my own comments I delete as being silly. I think everyone goes through this as part of the learning process, though maybe not everyone deletes their own useless comments.
You forget one thing: editorial bias. The articles that get posted and the posts that get moderated up describe the average Slashdotter quite well. It doesn't take a genius to notice the Bill Gates icon made up like the Borg as indicating editorial bias, nor does it take a genius to notice the one-sidedness in the "Windows vs. Linux" (non-)issue.
But it's pretty pointless to complain about it. The people who pump Linux/BSD/whatever up so mightily over Windows are beyond hopeless, and Slashdot is their mothership.
They even beat out the World Trade Center benefit where the charity was given a $100kUSD bonus ($145k). That was incredible. Definitely not Celebrity Jeopardy.
For those interested, the former record holders are listed here.
> Unfortunately, I wouldn't trust ballots filled out in pencil due to the fact the marks can be erased.
As votes are anonymous, there's no actual difference between modifying a ballot and stuffing the ballot box. It's equally (or even less) difficult to throw out a vote or insert fraudulent votes as it is to modify an existing vote.
Therefore, if we already have measures to prevent ballot box tampering, that is sufficient to avoid fraudulent modifications possible with pencil.
Manipulating N objects simultaneously isn't possible. As it (kind of) says in one of the articles above, the system only moves one object at a time, but only a small amount. Then it moves to the next one, and so on, just really, really fast so it seems like all are moving at the same time.
This is similar to how your monitor works. It doesn't turn all the pixels on at the same time, but one at a time, it just switches really fast. The result is what seems like a continuous image.
"Could this be earth bacteria which hitched a ride and survived the trip?"
The alleged bacteria operated on a 24.66 hour rhythm, the period of a Martian day, not an earth day. Therefore, the bacteria would be Martian, not earthling.
You can do better than that too. If the payee has multiple banks in varying jurisdictions, you can also make it extremely difficult to trace the money. Naturally, this is only really useful for porn and contraband online, but it's nice to bring back that anonymity of paying in cash.
For an algorithm that I think works to do as you wrote above, you can see my report on limited knowledge purchasing.
By definition, the alt.* newsgroups are optionally carried by the news admins at each NNTP drop. It's not the same as if they banned comp.lang.c++.moderated, a voted in newsgroup. Thus, just because the administrator has decided not to opt in, it doesn't necessarily follow they are exerting editorial control. Or at least sufficient editorial control to warrant being branded as a publisher.
Of course it has usable software pre-installed. What else would you expect? It's a personal digital assistant, not a stripped-down x86 "box" made for hobbiest tinkerers.
Writing code takes more time than writing a post. Also, it's not reasonable to expect your end users to willingly pitch in to fix software they don't like. This is an unnatural response when there is functional software available, especially for free.
While you may enjoy improving Mozilla, and I appreciate that, not everyone does. "Organizing an effort to fix it" is a difficult and costly venture that can only be the progeny of love for Mozilla. Considering that Mozilla's popularity is iffy these days, expect more gripes than helping hands.
Most of the weblogs don't really cut it when it comes to user-supported news because they aren't meant to be much more than metabrowsers + a little editorial content. However, I wonder if there are any sites that aim for journalistic ethics and yet are user suppoorted? And I mean good, social ethics, not bad, corporate ethics.
If there aren't, I wonder what such a site would require? I'll tell you right now, it will not be anything like a weblog. The whole idea of a static article header followed by comments is totally wrong. As information is acquired, the story should be improved to fit the facts. Retractions are old media.
Actually, I suppose I'm falling back on the idea of wikis. Figures.
Profit? Information is not free (as in beer)
on
Deja For Sale
·
· Score: 1
It is very wrongheaded to conclude that the archive should just be provided without cost. The information itself is free (as in liberty), but the collection and archiving is not free (as in costless).
Also, there is value in the archive, technically speaking, provided you are interested in reading it. Consider that without archives, there would be demand and no supply. I'd bet you'd want to pay for them then. But, if you don't want the archives, don't pay for them.
On the other hand, if you do want them, the only free (as in liberty) and fair method would be to distribute the cost amongst the users proportionate to their use (as opposed to having some volunteer "sugar daddy" front the cost for you). If there aren't enough people willing to do this, then the only way to maintain the archive would be for some non-public, non-volunteer body to buy it. Then that body should be able to recoup their costs + interest, ethically speaking.
I worry about this. At the current time, the small community that I steer, MeatballWiki, is very stable, lots of signal. However, as it becomes popular, it will degrade in quality because community doesn't scale (I fear).
Now, here's something to think about. The number one security issue is not attacks, trolls and grits lovers. The number one security issue are human mistakes. Most of our security policy revolves around soft security, as it is better to leave community concerns to the community and not to a powerful few. And over time we will only improve the community with simple systems like KeptPages.
But, I think, I think that the way out is to use the graph density against itself. If you give people the freedom to manage the system, I think a good community structure will emerge. Moderation systems imposed by the site seem disjunctive, not driving the members to solve problems collectively. This is bad. The community must build itself.
Anyway, as always this is a technology solution vs. community solution dilemma. And I'll bet that you're wrong, Signal11. I'll bet that if you let the whole community help itself, there are a lot more people interested in making it work than don't.
CDs/DVDs are a terrible medium for this. They should do the same thing as the Clock of the Long Now does with their Rosetta Disk (life expectancy >10 000 years). Actually, the Long Now foundation is well positioned with such luminaries as Stewart Brand, Danny Hillis and Mitch Kapor on its board.
> So you're saying, before Java came out, these
> same, mysterious "corporate investors" wanted
> graduates with *PASCAL SKILLS*?!
There was no high tech boom when Pascal was popular. No one (important) wanted their skills.
> Then Java came along with a very clean OO-style
> of programming.
I can't believe you said that. Java replaced Smalltalk at Carleton. Java does not nor will it ever have a cleaner OO implementation than Smalltalk. In fact, Java's OO implementation is terrible. Far worse than C++.
> Java has replaced Pascal as the "teaching
> language" in many (most?) colleges now.
Because their corporate investors want graduates with Java skills, not Pascal. They deleted Smalltalk from our curriculum at Carleton University in favour of Java because of pressure from both industry and co-op students who both wanted Java skills. Smalltalk was far better at teaching OO, but alas, money talks.
I find it bizarre that we excise the people who know how to solve problems. We complain about buggy code, but we eliminate people who know the techniques to solving large problems.
I feel computer programming is an apprenticeable skill. Indeed, it's similar to writing (as in English). It takes 20 years for a naturally gifted writer to reach the proficiency of a master, and only a handful of years for an apprenticed writer. We need something similar to a Master's of Fine Arts.
Programming isn't just algorithms, it's mostly heuristics. They can't teach those heuristics in academia.
As a young programmer, I know I've learnt more engineering skills by glomming myself onto master programmers than from textbooks that teach only theory. Indeed, I know that no amount of fancy diagrams will make a bad designer good; they may only make a good designer better.
Sorry, I'm ranting. I just wish that finding suitable mentors was easier. If you want a silver bullet, that's it: Share information.
It isn't necessary to use the same system for online authentication as you happen to use for driver's licenses (some of us don't live in the States). Governments also maintain identity databases for tax collection, for instance. The Canadian government recently announced it has a citizen profile database; these kinds of things do exist for legitimate reasons.
As a computer scientist, I'm sure you're aware that the government doesn't need to make public every piece of information it knows about you in order to authenticate you. Indeed, all they have to do is map an instance in their identity database to one "instance" of a person (er, you).
Even then, with a shadow identity, it would be trivial for you to choose what authenticated information to send. You just ask the government database to authenticate you to the foreign site and send with the ticket some information about you. Naturally, it will be encrypted--for whatever protection that gives you.
Slashdot Mirror
I usually just delete any comments I find to be annoying (as well as rename variables, align indents, etc.) until the code is readable. Also, the more I code, the more idioms I learn, the more of my own comments I delete as being silly. I think everyone goes through this as part of the learning process, though maybe not everyone deletes their own useless comments.
But it's pretty pointless to complain about it. The people who pump Linux/BSD/whatever up so mightily over Windows are beyond hopeless, and Slashdot is their mothership.
For those interested, the former record holders are listed here.
As votes are anonymous, there's no actual difference between modifying a ballot and stuffing the ballot box. It's equally (or even less) difficult to throw out a vote or insert fraudulent votes as it is to modify an existing vote.
Therefore, if we already have measures to prevent ballot box tampering, that is sufficient to avoid fraudulent modifications possible with pencil.
This is similar to how your monitor works. It doesn't turn all the pixels on at the same time, but one at a time, it just switches really fast. The result is what seems like a continuous image.
The alleged bacteria operated on a 24.66 hour rhythm, the period of a Martian day, not an earth day. Therefore, the bacteria would be Martian, not earthling.
For an algorithm that I think works to do as you wrote above, you can see my report on limited knowledge purchasing.
Naturally, I am not a lawyer.
Of course it has usable software pre-installed. What else would you expect? It's a personal digital assistant, not a stripped-down x86 "box" made for hobbiest tinkerers.
While you may enjoy improving Mozilla, and I appreciate that, not everyone does. "Organizing an effort to fix it" is a difficult and costly venture that can only be the progeny of love for Mozilla. Considering that Mozilla's popularity is iffy these days, expect more gripes than helping hands.
My personal favourite gopher is the WELLGopher.
Finally, be warned about using gopher in current browsers. Since no one cares about gopher any more, the existing clients are rather crashprone.
If there aren't, I wonder what such a site would require? I'll tell you right now, it will not be anything like a weblog. The whole idea of a static article header followed by comments is totally wrong. As information is acquired, the story should be improved to fit the facts. Retractions are old media.
Actually, I suppose I'm falling back on the idea of wikis. Figures.
Also, there is value in the archive, technically speaking, provided you are interested in reading it. Consider that without archives, there would be demand and no supply. I'd bet you'd want to pay for them then. But, if you don't want the archives, don't pay for them.
On the other hand, if you do want them, the only free (as in liberty) and fair method would be to distribute the cost amongst the users proportionate to their use (as opposed to having some volunteer "sugar daddy" front the cost for you). If there aren't enough people willing to do this, then the only way to maintain the archive would be for some non-public, non-volunteer body to buy it. Then that body should be able to recoup their costs + interest, ethically speaking.
Actually, I think the whole idea that information wants to be free (as in costless) is just wrong.
...he was recently mentioned in the /. article Top 10 Most Important Tech People of the Decade. This is another good reason why he made it to the list.
Now, here's something to think about. The number one security issue is not attacks, trolls and grits lovers. The number one security issue are human mistakes. Most of our security policy revolves around soft security, as it is better to leave community concerns to the community and not to a powerful few. And over time we will only improve the community with simple systems like KeptPages.
Unfortunately, an online community is about communication. It's easier to communicate with 100 people than the 200 000. In fact, you compsci folk already understand the connected graph squaring problem. Sucks, eh?
But, I think, I think that the way out is to use the graph density against itself. If you give people the freedom to manage the system, I think a good community structure will emerge. Moderation systems imposed by the site seem disjunctive, not driving the members to solve problems collectively. This is bad. The community must build itself.
Anyway, as always this is a technology solution vs. community solution dilemma. And I'll bet that you're wrong, Signal11. I'll bet that if you let the whole community help itself, there are a lot more people interested in making it work than don't.
> be *all*) are public - you know who your rep
> voted for
That isn't true. Most votes are verbal and aren't recorded.
CDs/DVDs are a terrible medium for this. They should do the same thing as the Clock of the Long Now does with their Rosetta Disk (life expectancy >10 000 years). Actually, the Long Now foundation is well positioned with such luminaries as Stewart Brand, Danny Hillis and Mitch Kapor on its board.
Accessibility is tough, but Lynx friendliness takes you a long way there in a simple, straightforward manner.
> same, mysterious "corporate investors" wanted
> graduates with *PASCAL SKILLS*?!
There was no high tech boom when Pascal was popular. No one (important) wanted their skills.
> Then Java came along with a very clean OO-style
> of programming.
I can't believe you said that. Java replaced Smalltalk at Carleton. Java does not nor will it ever have a cleaner OO implementation than Smalltalk. In fact, Java's OO implementation is terrible. Far worse than C++.
> language" in many (most?) colleges now.
Because their corporate investors want graduates with Java skills, not Pascal. They deleted Smalltalk from our curriculum at Carleton University in favour of Java because of pressure from both industry and co-op students who both wanted Java skills. Smalltalk was far better at teaching OO, but alas, money talks.
It also has the advantage of being more accessible (for people and cellphones), easier to lint and easier to write.
I have written more--plus some tips--on MeatballWiki.
When will people learn that everything they say online will be there forever?
Well, I guess they'll learn the hard way. Happy flaming.
I feel computer programming is an apprenticeable skill. Indeed, it's similar to writing (as in English). It takes 20 years for a naturally gifted writer to reach the proficiency of a master, and only a handful of years for an apprenticed writer. We need something similar to a Master's of Fine Arts.
Programming isn't just algorithms, it's mostly heuristics. They can't teach those heuristics in academia.
As a young programmer, I know I've learnt more engineering skills by glomming myself onto master programmers than from textbooks that teach only theory. Indeed, I know that no amount of fancy diagrams will make a bad designer good; they may only make a good designer better.
Sorry, I'm ranting. I just wish that finding suitable mentors was easier. If you want a silver bullet, that's it: Share information.
As a computer scientist, I'm sure you're aware that the government doesn't need to make public every piece of information it knows about you in order to authenticate you. Indeed, all they have to do is map an instance in their identity database to one "instance" of a person (er, you).
Even then, with a shadow identity, it would be trivial for you to choose what authenticated information to send. You just ask the government database to authenticate you to the foreign site and send with the ticket some information about you. Naturally, it will be encrypted--for whatever protection that gives you.
Privacy rights are independent of ownership rights.