Re:What is a non nerd/geek called?
on
Geeks vs. Nerds
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· Score: 1
But what is a non nerd/geek called? I like the word hipster or urban hipster, because, like nerd/geek, is vaguely insulting.
I call them mundanes occasionally. The B5 origins of this are obvious. I first heard it used by a SF geek/nerd to refer to outsiders, so I don't claim this is an original idea or anything...
Someone might want to correct me but can these spammers be systematically spamming aaaaaaaaa to zzzzzzzz? Might explain why my unrevealed emails too get spammed for no reason. Unless of course those companies sell out our address.
I believe that must be what happens with hotmail, as I've not revealed my address widely yet it gets a load of spam. Sounds to me like someone ran a dictionary against @hotmail.com and remembered which ones didn't bounce.
For ISPs which give you your own subdomain, DNS zone transfers (or dictionary attacks on the DNS where ISPs do not allow zone transfers) are another variant on this: the DNS definitely was used by Insight.com to spam Demon and Freeserve users. Shame really, as I might have wanted to use Force9 or buy hardware from Insight.
LOTS AND LOTS of spam comes from Hotmail accounts.
Lots and lots of spam has a hotmail envelope from address or a hotmail reply address, but I've never had spam which actually originated at hotmail.
Spamming via hotmail would be really painful and slower (even with a Perl script to handle it for you) than just finding an open relay and/or a throwaway dialup account. Unless all the other ways of spamming get locked down, I don't think we'll see this happening much.
Since we're having a uk.religion.christian/Slashdot crossover (hello Tim), I'll add my name to that list.
I imagine there are quite a few Christian hackers: when I was at Cambridge, a lot of the CU (Christian Union, ie student Christian society) blokes were scientists or engineers of some description, far more than you'd expect from the proportion of scientists in the university intake.
I'm not sure why this should be: possibly science/engineering types are still inclined to believe in absolute truth and other ideas which arts students would presumably reject.
OTOH the female CU members didn't seem to show the same bias. Possibly because there are fewer female scientists to start with, and most of them are in biology, where the "science is incompatible with Christianity" nonsense seems to be more common than in the physical sciences, presumably because the American polarisation of views on evolution is regrettably becoming more common over here, too.
Neural networks do store information. The data is stored in the weights.
Indeed. You can work out the information storage capacity of a neural network's neurons: I vaguely remembered this from my degree so I looked up the lecture notes here (if you download the whole book, start on page 436 for this stuff). Turns out that for a binary threshold neuron, you can store a number of bits equal to 2 x the number of connections to the neuron.
As some people have already pointed out, if the brain's neurons are not like those of a neural network in that there are other things to consider (firing rates, etc) then the brain can store more information than this, but at that ought at least to give a lower bound. The exercise on p. 446 asks you to estimate this and asks "Is your brain full yet?":-)
The Salesman problem is an example of this type of problem if I remember correctly. Oh and n-body orbital equations too.
I don't think you're right about the N-body problem. The problem with that is that it cannot be solved analytically: it's a problem in calculus rather than in discrete mathematics.
Social Darwinism. If those who don't believe what you believe in are beat up, your world view will tend to win out.
It's even simpler than that, I think: straight Darwinism will explain it (unless I've misunderstood what Social Darwinism is).
If someone bullies others in their formative years, they considerably reduce the others' chances of reproductive success, because this success requires a basic level of self-confidence and social skills. Bullying can squash those skills before they've had a chance to develop, or at least slow down that development. I think boys being bullied by other boys is another form of male competitiveness, which I think is largely to do with competition for the best mates.
FWIW, I'd echo the comments of those people who said that it gets better at college (A-Levels in the UK, I guess) and university.
I believe it's more a society thing than an availibility of guns thing. while I was in Europe for a little while I always kind of got the impression that everyone was somewhat more mature regarding, mostly, sex, guns and education.
Nice of you to say so:-)
I suspect that even were guns outlawed in the US people who wanted to do such things as these would get them anyway.
A similar point is made by another poster, who goes on to add that he thinks all Americans should carry guns. I'm reminded of a line from the "Yes, Prime Minister" books (humourous take on British politics), when the French ambassador wants his bodyguards to have SMGs for the visit of the French President to London. Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Machiavellian civil servant of the books, replies:
"There are x foreign embassies in London. Doubtless many of their staff would wish to carry machine guns too. Her Majesty's Government is not convinced that his would make London a safer place."
I agree that the problem goes deeper than the availability of guns (the UK has also experienced gun massacres despite our much stricter gun laws), but what is seems crazy to me (and, I would guess, to other Europeans) is the steadfast insistence of some Americans that having guns freely available actually makes things safer.
I think that the right to bear arms has established a gun culture in the States, and it's now that culture which you have to deal with. If guns were banned tomorrow, you'd still have the culture there, and you're right in saying that this would mean that people would still think about doing things like this and that they'd probably get the guns to do it with. But ISTM that part of turning around that culture must be to remove the ridiculously easy availability of firearms. It's like turning around a supertanker though: the thing has so much momentum that this would take a lot of time and effort. What you have to decide is whether it's worth it.
Under the UK data protection act...
on
ISP Sues Spammer
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· Score: 1
I may be entirely wrong about this, but I think here in good old blighty, sending unsolicited commercial email would (or possibly should) leave you liable to prosecution under the Data Protection act...
"Should", maybe. "Would", no, alas. The DPR got a complaint from me about ProPhoto (the spammer in question here). They wrote back after a while to tell me that they would be taking no action. It's possible they just put the fear into Adrian Paris without actually prosecuting, I suppose, but on the face of it the DPR is pretty toothless when it comes to dealing with spammers. I get the impression that they're trying to learn about the Internet but they don't really know enough to be effective at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
I call them mundanes occasionally. The B5 origins of this are obvious. I first heard it used by a SF geek/nerd to refer to outsiders, so I don't claim this is an original idea or anything...
I believe that must be what happens with hotmail, as I've not revealed my address widely yet it gets a load of spam. Sounds to me like someone ran a dictionary against @hotmail.com and remembered which ones didn't bounce.
For ISPs which give you your own subdomain, DNS zone transfers (or dictionary attacks on the DNS where ISPs do not allow zone transfers) are another variant on this: the DNS definitely was used by Insight.com to spam Demon and Freeserve users. Shame really, as I might have wanted to use Force9 or buy hardware from Insight.
Lots and lots of spam has a hotmail envelope from address or a hotmail reply address, but I've never had spam which actually originated at hotmail.
Spamming via hotmail would be really painful and slower (even with a Perl script to handle it for you) than just finding an open relay and/or a throwaway dialup account. Unless all the other ways of spamming get locked down, I don't think we'll see this happening much.
(Shouldn't that be trotters up?)
Since we're having a uk.religion.christian/Slashdot crossover (hello Tim), I'll add my name to that list.
I imagine there are quite a few Christian hackers: when I was at Cambridge, a lot of the CU (Christian Union, ie student Christian society) blokes were scientists or engineers of some description, far more than you'd expect from the proportion of scientists in the university intake.
I'm not sure why this should be: possibly science/engineering types are still inclined to believe in absolute truth and other ideas which arts students would presumably reject.
OTOH the female CU members didn't seem to show the same bias. Possibly because there are fewer female scientists to start with, and most of them are in biology, where the "science is incompatible with Christianity" nonsense seems to be more common than in the physical sciences, presumably because the American polarisation of views on evolution is regrettably becoming more common over here, too.
Indeed. You can work out the information storage capacity of a neural network's neurons: I vaguely remembered this from my degree so I looked up the lecture notes here (if you download the whole book, start on page 436 for this stuff). Turns out that for a binary threshold neuron, you can store a number of bits equal to 2 x the number of connections to the neuron.
As some people have already pointed out, if the brain's neurons are not like those of a neural network in that there are other things to consider (firing rates, etc) then the brain can store more information than this, but at that ought at least to give a lower bound. The exercise on p. 446 asks you to estimate this and asks "Is your brain full yet?" :-)
I don't think you're right about the N-body problem. The problem with that is that it cannot be solved analytically: it's a problem in calculus rather than in discrete mathematics.
It's even simpler than that, I think: straight Darwinism will explain it (unless I've misunderstood what Social Darwinism is).
If someone bullies others in their formative years, they considerably reduce the others' chances of reproductive success, because this success requires a basic level of self-confidence and social skills. Bullying can squash those skills before they've had a chance to develop, or at least slow down that development. I think boys being bullied by other boys is another form of male competitiveness, which I think is largely to do with competition for the best mates.
FWIW, I'd echo the comments of those people who said that it gets better at college (A-Levels in the UK, I guess) and university.
Nice of you to say so :-)
I suspect that even were guns outlawed in the US people who wanted to do such things as these would get them anyway.
A similar point is made by another poster, who goes on to add that he thinks all Americans should carry guns. I'm reminded of a line from the "Yes, Prime Minister" books (humourous take on British politics), when the French ambassador wants his bodyguards to have SMGs for the visit of the French President to London. Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Machiavellian civil servant of the books, replies:
I agree that the problem goes deeper than the availability of guns (the UK has also experienced gun massacres despite our much stricter gun laws), but what is seems crazy to me (and, I would guess, to other Europeans) is the steadfast insistence of some Americans that having guns freely available actually makes things safer.
I think that the right to bear arms has established a gun culture in the States, and it's now that culture which you have to deal with. If guns were banned tomorrow, you'd still have the culture there, and you're right in saying that this would mean that people would still think about doing things like this and that they'd probably get the guns to do it with. But ISTM that part of turning around that culture must be to remove the ridiculously easy availability of firearms. It's like turning around a supertanker though: the thing has so much momentum that this would take a lot of time and effort. What you have to decide is whether it's worth it.
"Should", maybe. "Would", no, alas. The DPR got a complaint from me about ProPhoto (the spammer in question here). They wrote back after a while to tell me that they would be taking no action. It's possible they just put the fear into Adrian Paris without actually prosecuting, I suppose, but on the face of it the DPR is pretty toothless when it comes to dealing with spammers. I get the impression that they're trying to learn about the Internet but they don't really know enough to be effective at the moment.