Get real. "News for Nerds"? Referring to "stories" and "reporters"? Being bought out by Andover.net and having an IPO?
Slashdot isn't just pretending to be A news agency, they want to be THE GEEK news agency. And if they want that, as I've said a million times, they will have to DO IT RIGHT.
Every Slashdot "editor" (especially Taco, Hemos and Katz) needs to take classes in:
Plain Old Journalism
Journalistic Ethics
English (spelling, grammar and good sentence structure)
A doctor can be relied on to determine the existence of an injury and how to cure it. A doctor CANNOT always be relied on to determine the CAUSE of the injury, especially if it is "ergonomic". What training in ergonomics has a GP ever had?
For instance, who is to say if Worker A's back injury is because of bad ergonomics or because he spent too much time raking last weekend? ---
The existence of OSHA depends on the federally-regulated definition of "safe" which is just as difficult to define.
Furthermore, this just pushes the definition stage down a level. Now every case based on this law will have to decide "was the workstation ergonomic" without any guidance on what "ergonomic" means. ---
And if my horses escape, will they also close the barn door?
This is ridiculous: I have to sustain an actual injury (and have it treated) before anything can be done? That's like saying "IF you splash the cleaning fluid on your face and it eats away all your flesh AND a doctor verifies that you have no flesh on your face THEN you (but only you) can stop using the industrial bleach." ---
First off, I'll assume that you are taking an artistic license in order to fit the info into a headline when you attribute the light to the planet ("planet's light", indeed).
Secondly, isn't this about the 3rd or 4th time this has happened (for the first time each) in the last 10 years? ---
Why do these experiments require a living human? Can't they be performed on cadavers. All they need to know is the strength of various points of the body, they don't need a report afterward on "how it felt".
For instance, when you figure out a human skull needs to travel 12.9 mph to break through a windshield, why does the skull have to contain a conscious brain? Get a dead body, stuff the skull with jello and let 'er rip.
Someone is going to say "because human cadavers are scarce for research". I have 2 responses to that already:
The Incredible Machine and Lemmings, while they probably fit into the same category, don't fit any of your five.
That "Cosmopolitan Makeover" software doesn't fit any of your five. (I realize I'm going out on a limb by implying that it is "innovative", but I think it is, from a making-it-available-to-the-public perspective
I'm sure I could think of others, but I think the extreme homogeneity of your five categories indicate a lack of imagination on your part that I don't feel like correcting.
but it's a huge deal as for as realism and programming complexity goes to add full 3d.
Again, "programming complexity" is beside the point. If all it takes for you to buy a game is that it is hard to program, I've got a new game coming out you might like to buy. It's called "Prime Factorization"--you type in a 100-digit number and it will tell you if the number is prime or not.
As for realism: Yeah, realism sure seems like a requirement for the Wolf3D Clone Industry. Demons? Hand-launched guided missles? Magic potions? ---
As for your weak defense of Quake vs Doom vs Wolf3D: give me a break. It's like patiently explaining that frozen yogurt is created with bacterial cultures and sold in TCBY stores. So what? It's still just like ice cream! I want to know what is groundbreaking about it. Fat free? Maybe.
In the context of the game what is different between Quake and Wolf3D? Forget technical diffs (different rendering engines, indeed) and minor add-ons (ooooohhhh, multiple level dungeons--big whoop). ---
What's the real difference between Wolf3D, Doom and Quake? Nothing.
The company is (or was) very creative, and obviously has a lot of talented people. Why not put all that to work and make something new? I voted for Linux games with my dollars by buying Civ CTP for Linux (in Electronic Boutique in the mall, no less). I am NOT going to vote for re-hashed FPS's with my dollars. ---
It's this kind of financial and PR poke in the eye that makes a company like Dell seriously question their reliance on Microsoft. This will become even more clear the first time the headline reads "Lax Windows security Costs Dell millions". ---
I couldn't get SpeakFreely to work at all. The answer back from the mailing list was "because it doesn't work through an ip_masq (bad enough in itself). So then I tried just the sfecho from my machine, to the server and back: nothing. I messed with this (off and on) for about a week and got nothing. I wasn't very impressed. ---
"He's a farmer, In a low-tech society." The reason societies remain low-tech is the absence of information. If the farmer had had the information sooner (albeit generations sooner), he wouldn't have been low-tech.
Sure, the information of today may not feed (all) the children of today. But the information of today WILL feed the children of tomorrow. ---
"...talk with Chris Hoffman, one of the lead engineers from Netscape working on the Mozilla project, about why Mozilla is in fact a monumental success for the open source community, web developers, and end users in general."
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Mozilla AND I don't think it is dead (yet). BUT, isn't this a little like asking Bill Gates if Windows 2000 is dead? For crying out loud, what ELSE is the lead developer going to say? "Yeah, it's dead. I'm just playing Solitaire and reading Slashdot all day." ---
The test asks good questions in the sense of "they need to be asked", but not so good in the sense of "they don't have answers". Several of these problems have solutions printed in the first edition (1994?) of Applied Cryptography. (for instance, see the anonymous and secure poker protocol)
As for question 11, I don't know what the point of this is. If his point is "no amount of information in the world will feed a starving child", though, I have two responses:
1) Wanna bet? The first thing I'd look for information on edible plants, catching fish, trapping birds, etc. North Korea (even in the middle of a war) is not a wasteland.
2) Even if it were a wasteland, the problem is not that information won't feed a child. The problem is that the information wasn't applied early enough. Information on how to keep the soldiers out, how to prevent the child from getting sick (or even conceived), etc is all available. ---
The idea that this might be a hoax wouldn't even occur to me were it not for one thing: the site is hosted on AOL.
That fact requires me to swallow the following conclusion: There exists a programmer, capable of porting software to a CAMERA, who thought that using AOL would be cool.
I am in the midst of reading Applied Cryptography (1st edition). Amazing book so far, thanks for all the hard work you obviously put into it.
Here's my question: Your short timeline at the beginning of AC notes that public research in cryptography didn't really get under way until 1976 but that the NSA (and it's predecessors) started during WWII. What far ahead do you think the NSA (or whoever) is? In particular, do you have any reason to believe they have cracking algorigthms for some of today's hardest problems (NP-completeness, etc)? ---
The issue is NOT that such a machine would be impossible to make perfectly accurate. The issue is that someone else has decided what I can and cannot say via email. As a perfectly innocent person, I take issue with the fact that government appointed agents (software or meatware) are listening to my communications.
The proof that the 4th Amendment follows my logic and not yours is that it prohibits more than just seizure. It also prohibits simply searching. Just plain looking.
First of all, my thought experiment specified that the agent would only haul off those that had bomb-making equipment. No subjectivity at all. If you think the humanity of the agent makes a difference, just pretend they send in a robot. Or that the agent takes in a digital camera and a computer does the analysis later.
I notice that you keep evading answering my thought experiment with irrelevant objections. Might I suggest that this is because your position is untenably inconsistent?
Secondly, I already have told you what is so evil. I am a free human being. My life is not subordinate to anyone, much less a secret organization. It is not sufficient that I be able to speak my mind AFTER it has been OK'd by someone else. I require free and private speech period.
I'm not advocating that we throw the Constitution out the window. But...
Seeing this sentence in conjunction with the beginning of the next is always scary.
In any case, yes that is exactly what you are advocating. The 4th Amendment says I am immune from search and seizure without due process. My belongings (letters and emails have an automatic copyright) are being searched without due process. End of story.
how exactly do you propose we stop lunatics from conspiring to build bombs?
Despite your claims, bomb-making is not any easier because of the Internet. Talking about it may be, but actually building a bomb still requires physical materials. If those materials can be used for bombs and nothing else (for instance, uranium) then the owners of those materials should keep an eye on them. If the materials have multiple uses (for instance, nitrogen fertilizer) then other means will have to be found (blabber-mouth co-conspirators).
In any case, you can't just toss the rules out the window when they become inconvenient. Let's say there was no other way to find terrorists than to read every email and snailmail and listen to every phone call. Then the people in charge of that need to come out and say so and make a change to our existing laws. I wouldn't want to live in the country that did this, but at least it wouldn't be secret. ---
OK, so just change the details of the experiment. Let the agent come in while you (and your spouse) are gone to work and the kids are off to school. They still break down the door, but remember they are replacing it with an exact replica so you don't notice when you come home. Now what do you think about it?
My basic point is that what I say or do is absolutely no one's business but my own unless and until I committ a crime. That's exactly what the 4th Amendment is all about: the "due process" generally involves showing a judge that you have "probable cause" that a crime has been committed.
Your first objection is going to be "we can't wait until after the terrorist strikes to put him in jail". We don't have to: conspiracy to commit a crime is also a crime. But, and this is the crux of my argument, Echelon (or whoever) has to have probabe cause BEFORE listening to my communications. The listening itself cannot be the probable cause. ---
With the current situation I don't consider it as invasive as the theoretical Echelon would be. This is because I have other ways to travel besides by air. Echelon is supposedly monitoring ALL communications making them impossible to avoid.
In any case, the situations are not parallel. Air travel security is a bottleneck between a trigger and a non-linear effect. For instance, one person can use one small bomb to bring down millions of dollars of aircraft and kill many people. One email does not do the same thing. (One email can PLAN it, but planning and doing are two different things) ---
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot isn't just pretending to be A news agency, they want to be THE GEEK news agency. And if they want that, as I've said a million times, they will have to DO IT RIGHT.
Every Slashdot "editor" (especially Taco, Hemos and Katz) needs to take classes in:
---
A doctor can be relied on to determine the existence of an injury and how to cure it. A doctor CANNOT always be relied on to determine the CAUSE of the injury, especially if it is "ergonomic". What training in ergonomics has a GP ever had?
For instance, who is to say if Worker A's back injury is because of bad ergonomics or because he spent too much time raking last weekend?
---
Hogwash.
The existence of OSHA depends on the federally-regulated definition of "safe" which is just as difficult to define.
Furthermore, this just pushes the definition stage down a level. Now every case based on this law will have to decide "was the workstation ergonomic" without any guidance on what "ergonomic" means.
---
And if my horses escape, will they also close the barn door?
This is ridiculous: I have to sustain an actual injury (and have it treated) before anything can be done? That's like saying "IF you splash the cleaning fluid on your face and it eats away all your flesh AND a doctor verifies that you have no flesh on your face THEN you (but only you) can stop using the industrial bleach."
---
First off, I'll assume that you are taking an artistic license in order to fit the info into a headline when you attribute the light to the planet ("planet's light", indeed).
Secondly, isn't this about the 3rd or 4th time this has happened (for the first time each) in the last 10 years?
---
Leaving aside the question of does the definition of "scientist" include "mathematician", I thought STW was automatic once we had Fermat.
---
For instance, when you figure out a human skull needs to travel 12.9 mph to break through a windshield, why does the skull have to contain a conscious brain? Get a dead body, stuff the skull with jello and let 'er rip.
Someone is going to say "because human cadavers are scarce for research". I have 2 responses to that already:
---
The Incredible Machine and Lemmings, while they probably fit into the same category, don't fit any of your five.
That "Cosmopolitan Makeover" software doesn't fit any of your five. (I realize I'm going out on a limb by implying that it is "innovative", but I think it is, from a making-it-available-to-the-public perspective
I'm sure I could think of others, but I think the extreme homogeneity of your five categories indicate a lack of imagination on your part that I don't feel like correcting.
but it's a huge deal as for as realism and programming complexity goes to add full 3d.
Again, "programming complexity" is beside the point. If all it takes for you to buy a game is that it is hard to program, I've got a new game coming out you might like to buy. It's called "Prime Factorization"--you type in a 100-digit number and it will tell you if the number is prime or not.
As for realism: Yeah, realism sure seems like a requirement for the Wolf3D Clone Industry. Demons? Hand-launched guided missles? Magic potions?
---
civCTP runs on Linux which means I can play it.
As for your weak defense of Quake vs Doom vs Wolf3D: give me a break. It's like patiently explaining that frozen yogurt is created with bacterial cultures and sold in TCBY stores. So what? It's still just like ice cream! I want to know what is groundbreaking about it. Fat free? Maybe.
In the context of the game what is different between Quake and Wolf3D? Forget technical diffs (different rendering engines, indeed) and minor add-ons (ooooohhhh, multiple level dungeons--big whoop).
---
What's the real difference between Wolf3D, Doom and Quake? Nothing.
The company is (or was) very creative, and obviously has a lot of talented people. Why not put all that to work and make something new? I voted for Linux games with my dollars by buying Civ CTP for Linux (in Electronic Boutique in the mall, no less). I am NOT going to vote for re-hashed FPS's with my dollars.
---
It's this kind of financial and PR poke in the eye that makes a company like Dell seriously question their reliance on Microsoft. This will become even more clear the first time the headline reads "Lax Windows security Costs Dell millions".
---
Even better is this week's infographic: What to do about Microsoft.
---
I couldn't get SpeakFreely to work at all. The answer back from the mailing list was "because it doesn't work through an ip_masq (bad enough in itself). So then I tried just the sfecho from my machine, to the server and back: nothing. I messed with this (off and on) for about a week and got nothing. I wasn't very impressed.
---
"He's a farmer, In a low-tech society." The reason societies remain low-tech is the absence of information. If the farmer had had the information sooner (albeit generations sooner), he wouldn't have been low-tech.
Sure, the information of today may not feed (all) the children of today. But the information of today WILL feed the children of tomorrow.
---
"...talk with Chris Hoffman, one of the lead engineers from Netscape working on the Mozilla project, about why Mozilla is in fact a monumental success for the open source community, web developers, and end users in general."
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Mozilla AND I don't think it is dead (yet). BUT, isn't this a little like asking Bill Gates if Windows 2000 is dead? For crying out loud, what ELSE is the lead developer going to say? "Yeah, it's dead. I'm just playing Solitaire and reading Slashdot all day."
---
The test asks good questions in the sense of "they need to be asked", but not so good in the sense of "they don't have answers". Several of these problems have solutions printed in the first edition (1994?) of Applied Cryptography. (for instance, see the anonymous and secure poker protocol)
As for question 11, I don't know what the point of this is. If his point is "no amount of information in the world will feed a starving child", though, I have two responses:
1) Wanna bet? The first thing I'd look for information on edible plants, catching fish, trapping birds, etc. North Korea (even in the middle of a war) is not a wasteland.
2) Even if it were a wasteland, the problem is not that information won't feed a child. The problem is that the information wasn't applied early enough. Information on how to keep the soldiers out, how to prevent the child from getting sick (or even conceived), etc is all available.
---
Is it just me, or is Slashdot gotten really bland in the past 6 months?
This sort of comment pisses me off too. If you dont like it, dont damn well come here.
By the same logic: If you don't like my comments, don't read them.
---
The idea that this might be a hoax wouldn't even occur to me were it not for one thing: the site is hosted on AOL.
That fact requires me to swallow the following conclusion: There exists a programmer, capable of porting software to a CAMERA, who thought that using AOL would be cool.
No way.
---
I am in the midst of reading Applied Cryptography (1st edition). Amazing book so far, thanks for all the hard work you obviously put into it.
Here's my question: Your short timeline at the beginning of AC notes that public research in cryptography didn't really get under way until 1976 but that the NSA (and it's predecessors) started during WWII. What far ahead do you think the NSA (or whoever) is? In particular, do you have any reason to believe they have cracking algorigthms for some of today's hardest problems (NP-completeness, etc)?
---
...on lego scanners. I already know all about Turing.
---
Where can I get more info on this?
---
The issue is NOT that such a machine would be impossible to make perfectly accurate. The issue is that someone else has decided what I can and cannot say via email. As a perfectly innocent person, I take issue with the fact that government appointed agents (software or meatware) are listening to my communications.
The proof that the 4th Amendment follows my logic and not yours is that it prohibits more than just seizure. It also prohibits simply searching. Just plain looking.
---
First of all, my thought experiment specified that the agent would only haul off those that had bomb-making equipment. No subjectivity at all. If you think the humanity of the agent makes a difference, just pretend they send in a robot. Or that the agent takes in a digital camera and a computer does the analysis later.
I notice that you keep evading answering my thought experiment with irrelevant objections. Might I suggest that this is because your position is untenably inconsistent?
Secondly, I already have told you what is so evil. I am a free human being. My life is not subordinate to anyone, much less a secret organization. It is not sufficient that I be able to speak my mind AFTER it has been OK'd by someone else. I require free and private speech period.
I'm not advocating that we throw the Constitution out the window. But...
Seeing this sentence in conjunction with the beginning of the next is always scary.
In any case, yes that is exactly what you are advocating. The 4th Amendment says I am immune from search and seizure without due process. My belongings (letters and emails have an automatic copyright) are being searched without due process. End of story.
how exactly do you propose we stop lunatics from conspiring to build bombs?
Despite your claims, bomb-making is not any easier because of the Internet. Talking about it may be, but actually building a bomb still requires physical materials. If those materials can be used for bombs and nothing else (for instance, uranium) then the owners of those materials should keep an eye on them. If the materials have multiple uses (for instance, nitrogen fertilizer) then other means will have to be found (blabber-mouth co-conspirators).
In any case, you can't just toss the rules out the window when they become inconvenient. Let's say there was no other way to find terrorists than to read every email and snailmail and listen to every phone call. Then the people in charge of that need to come out and say so and make a change to our existing laws. I wouldn't want to live in the country that did this, but at least it wouldn't be secret.
---
OK, so just change the details of the experiment. Let the agent come in while you (and your spouse) are gone to work and the kids are off to school. They still break down the door, but remember they are replacing it with an exact replica so you don't notice when you come home. Now what do you think about it?
My basic point is that what I say or do is absolutely no one's business but my own unless and until I committ a crime. That's exactly what the 4th Amendment is all about: the "due process" generally involves showing a judge that you have "probable cause" that a crime has been committed.
Your first objection is going to be "we can't wait until after the terrorist strikes to put him in jail". We don't have to: conspiracy to commit a crime is also a crime. But, and this is the crux of my argument, Echelon (or whoever) has to have probabe cause BEFORE listening to my communications. The listening itself cannot be the probable cause.
---
With the current situation I don't consider it as invasive as the theoretical Echelon would be. This is because I have other ways to travel besides by air. Echelon is supposedly monitoring ALL communications making them impossible to avoid.
In any case, the situations are not parallel. Air travel security is a bottleneck between a trigger and a non-linear effect. For instance, one person can use one small bomb to bring down millions of dollars of aircraft and kill many people. One email does not do the same thing. (One email can PLAN it, but planning and doing are two different things)
---