I work at an ISP, and over half of our tech support calls yesterday were because of this worm. You wouldn't believe the number of people who thought we were somehow going into their computer and not only kicking them off the internet, but rebooting their computers. (Yes, sir, the tech support staff feels horribly underworked today, so we thought we'd make things more exciting and pi** off a few customers in the process.) I hope they find the person involved and perform medical experiments on him.
The same person (John Kemeny) that came up with BASIC came up with an ordering method based on ranked ballots that minimize the "bubble sort" distances of the electorate. The Kemeny method is neutral, Condorcet, and consistent.
Unfortunately, it is also NP-hard to calculate, and Saari claims that its consistency comes at the price of ignoring the "individual rationality of voters" assumption. Of course, you'd expect an argument from a "Borda Booster" -- assuming the rationality of *some* voters is just plain silly:)
Subwoofers are one of the few things that home audio do-it-yourselfers can build that is at least somewhat cost-effective in terms of material, effort, and result (well, maybe planar ribbon loudspeakers, though the lines of magnets might be a bit of a pain). Put a nice, massive driver and bandpass filter into a well-dampened box of appropriate volume and spousal approval and you'll have something that not only adds to the depth of music, but will also give you a martini "shaken, not stirred" during your James Bond movie marathon.:)
"A method of sending out unsolicited mass electronic mailings to email addresses of individuals who have expressed absolutely no interest in the product or service being offered. Such 'spam' is to consist exclusively of worthless potions, creams, and pills for enlarging or reducing areas of the body, pyramid schemes to get rich quick, offers for clubs no one in their right mind would join, and letters from deposed heads of state begging you to help move money from poor African nations."
If only someone would patent *that* and sue the #$%@! out of all of the infringers!
Make a movie starring bin Laden and a Pig...
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 1
Why not have video wizards come up with pictures and short movies -- complete with sound -- starring bin Laden (and other terrorists) in intimate and compromising pictures with pigs, other unclean animals, and each other? You could make it look absolutely real. Release it anonymously and watch what happens. Sure, it's disgusting, but the reaction would be priceless:)
If they are going to minimize distances in two dimensions, it seems that a hexagonal architecture would be better, since six elements can be placed at a minimal distance as opposed to 4.
In addition, if you offset the rows of hexagons correctly, you have sphere-packing architecture, where each element has 12 minimal-distance neighbors. For static chip architectures (ones that don't change in time), this should result in the shortest distance between computing elements.
My guess is that a 3-D sphere packing architecture would be the best overall, but some smart scientist will probably come out with a 4-D sphere packing architecture that depends on 24 minimal distance time-variant elements. That might be the limit, at least until we start using superstring computing elements! (grin)
I've been running this program for over a year, and I think this method of distributed supercomputing will become more and more prevalent. The nice thing about it, you can directly support projects that interest you -- can you imagine trying to get Congress to approve funds for a SETI supercomputer?
On the subject of huge telescopes, one astronomer (whose name escapes me at the moment) suggested using a particular crater on the far side of the moon to create an enormous radio telescope shielded from the radio noise of Earth -- kind of the lunar big brother of Arecibo.
This would be an utterly cool idea, but why stop there? Push a big earth-crossing comet to hit the lunar farside, and then you have a big crater *and* water to start a lunar base. Going a step farther, push a bunch of comets and make the far side look like a giant golf ball, and have a huge array of telescopes (including smaller arrays of optical telescopes). You could start colonizing the moon *and* read license plates from Alpha Centauri. Well, almost -- you could certainly tune in on their cell-phone conversations;-)
Once you've put the Monstrous Array of Lunar Telescopes (MALT) into place, you could then start on the particle physicists dream machine, the Lunar UltraCollider (LUCky), a particle accellerator completely around the moon's equator. Not only would it have superconducting magnets and gravity to keep the particles on track, there would be a hard vacuum to run it in, and room in the tunnel for a moon-encircling subway. Plus, it would be a bit less dangerous to humans if a strange particle or microsingularity started gobbling up local real estate. *And* we can pulse super-secret particle messages to the alien civilizations discovered by MALT.
PHEW! Now that *that* design challenge is out of the way, I shall now design a Ringworld and then a Dyson Sphere.
I agree we need a new top-level domain, but I kind of like.par (for parody). Or have both.par and.alt -- the more top-level domains we have to play with, the less chance that a big company will come along and register them all.
Along with XXX and the other interesting top-level domains suggested, we should have a.par domain for parody sites, registered on a strictly first-come, first served basis. Having a.par domain should be considered evidence that site is not interested in diluting trademark, so etoys.par, microsoft.par, and peta.par would exist so we can make fun of these companies;-) Anyone attempting to sue a clearly-labeled parody site should be summarily laughed out of court. (Pardon me while I register whitehouse.par)
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I work at an ISP, and over half of our tech support calls yesterday were because of this worm. You wouldn't believe the number of people who thought we were somehow going into their computer and not only kicking them off the internet, but rebooting their computers. (Yes, sir, the tech support staff feels horribly underworked today, so we thought we'd make things more exciting and pi** off a few customers in the process.) I hope they find the person involved and perform medical experiments on him.
/Obligatory movie reference.
The same person (John Kemeny) that came up with BASIC came up with an ordering method based on ranked ballots that minimize the "bubble sort" distances of the electorate. The Kemeny method is neutral, Condorcet, and consistent.
:)
Unfortunately, it is also NP-hard to calculate, and Saari claims that its consistency comes at the price of ignoring the "individual rationality of voters" assumption. Of course, you'd expect an argument from a "Borda Booster" -- assuming the rationality of *some* voters is just plain silly
I was just wondering if anyone knew whether either format could encode Ambisonic surround sound.
Snarfangel
Subwoofers are one of the few things that home audio do-it-yourselfers can build that is at least somewhat cost-effective in terms of material, effort, and result (well, maybe planar ribbon loudspeakers, though the lines of magnets might be a bit of a pain). Put a nice, massive driver and bandpass filter into a well-dampened box of appropriate volume and spousal approval and you'll have something that not only adds to the depth of music, but will also give you a martini "shaken, not stirred" during your James Bond movie marathon. :)
So this, what, doubles the number of games available for the Mac?
"A method of sending out unsolicited mass electronic mailings to email addresses of individuals who have expressed absolutely no interest in the product or service being offered. Such 'spam' is to consist exclusively of worthless potions, creams, and pills for enlarging or reducing areas of the body, pyramid schemes to get rich quick, offers for clubs no one in their right mind would join, and letters from deposed heads of state begging you to help move money from poor African nations."
If only someone would patent *that* and sue the #$%@! out of all of the infringers!
Why not have video wizards come up with pictures and short movies -- complete with sound -- starring bin Laden (and other terrorists) in intimate and compromising pictures with pigs, other unclean animals, and each other? You could make it look absolutely real. Release it anonymously and watch what happens. Sure, it's disgusting, but the reaction would be priceless :)
If they are going to minimize distances in two dimensions, it seems that a hexagonal architecture would be better, since six elements can be placed at a minimal distance as opposed to 4. In addition, if you offset the rows of hexagons correctly, you have sphere-packing architecture, where each element has 12 minimal-distance neighbors. For static chip architectures (ones that don't change in time), this should result in the shortest distance between computing elements. My guess is that a 3-D sphere packing architecture would be the best overall, but some smart scientist will probably come out with a 4-D sphere packing architecture that depends on 24 minimal distance time-variant elements. That might be the limit, at least until we start using superstring computing elements! (grin)
Actually, to me German operas sound completely different from Italian ones :)
Snarfangel
Quick! Snatch up www.slashdos.com and www.slashdos.org before it's too late!
I've been running this program for over a year, and I think this method of distributed supercomputing will become more and more prevalent. The nice thing about it, you can directly support projects that interest you -- can you imagine trying to get Congress to approve funds for a SETI supercomputer?
and perform all of those tests they were afraid to with real astronauts. "What happens if we run out of fuel and are in low earth orbit?"
On the subject of huge telescopes, one astronomer (whose name escapes me at the moment) suggested using a particular crater on the far side of the moon to create an enormous radio telescope shielded from the radio noise of Earth -- kind of the lunar big brother of Arecibo.
;-)
This would be an utterly cool idea, but why stop there? Push a big earth-crossing comet to hit the lunar farside, and then you have a big crater *and* water to start a lunar base. Going a step farther, push a bunch of comets and make the far side look like a giant golf ball, and have a huge array of telescopes (including smaller arrays of optical telescopes). You could start colonizing the moon *and* read license plates from Alpha Centauri. Well, almost -- you could certainly tune in on their cell-phone conversations
Once you've put the Monstrous Array of Lunar Telescopes (MALT) into place, you could then start on the particle physicists dream machine, the Lunar UltraCollider (LUCky), a particle accellerator completely around the moon's equator. Not only would it have superconducting magnets and gravity to keep the particles on track, there would be a hard vacuum to run it in, and room in the tunnel for a moon-encircling subway. Plus, it would be a bit less dangerous to humans if a strange particle or microsingularity started gobbling up local real estate. *And* we can pulse super-secret particle messages to the alien civilizations discovered by MALT.
PHEW! Now that *that* design challenge is out of the way, I shall now design a Ringworld and then a Dyson Sphere.
I can hardly wait. Now if they would only add a daisy-wheel percussion section, we'd be all set.
I agree we need a new top-level domain, but I kind of like .par (for parody). Or have both .par and .alt -- the more top-level domains we have to play with, the less chance that a big company will come along and register them all.
Along with XXX and the other interesting top-level domains suggested, we should have a .par domain for parody sites, registered on a strictly first-come, first served basis. Having a .par domain should be considered evidence that site is not interested in diluting trademark, so etoys.par, microsoft.par, and peta.par would exist so we can make fun of these companies ;-) Anyone attempting to sue a clearly-labeled parody site should be summarily laughed out of court. (Pardon me while I register whitehouse.par)