The 1st time I encountered the internet was in the early '70s in a graduate level CS course at the University of Illinois. I remember the prof saying he had just come back from an early conference of net sites and everyone was excited because you could no longer draw the whole ARPAnet on a 3x5 index card, you now had to use an 8.5x11 piece of paper. Of course, even then the official map didn't have every site. There was a big grey box in one corner of the Center for Advanced Computation machine room that connected to the internet through U of I's router and reportedly went to some hush-hush military installation somewhere, but the map didn't show this connection at all. It was a real bulletproof router, though - made to military standards and looked like you could pound on it with a sledge as long as you wanted without causing it to drop a packet.
Wow, this is going to add a whole new dimension to model rocketry! Wonder how long before we see plans for homing systems appearing on rocketry websites? I used to fly model rockets with my kids at the county football stadium, which is right next to a National Guard armory. My 8 year old was getting a real gleam in his eye once as a couple helicopters lined up to land at the armory, passing right over us. Luckily I was able to grab him before he could push the launch button.
Nope, 'excessive force' is when they smash your face in the process of arresting you for stealing the twinkies. If the police want to shut down 12 city blocks to apprehend you it might be poor judgement, but it ain't excessive force. A while back near here (central NC) some poor turkey was pulled over by the local sherr'f depptiy because he was driving a truck with a stolen lawn mower or some such in the back. Said master criminal ran into the woods to get away. Unfortunately for him a van full of SWAT team types on their way to a training class saw the flashing lights & pulled over. Called their buddies in another van and a K9 unit that was also headed to the training class. Borrowed a helicopter from the highway patrol that just happened to be completing repairs at an airport nearby. Finally the couple dozen cops, deputy dawg, and bear in the sky flushed a very scared petty thief out of the woods. If I were him I'd have been peeing in my pants too, wondering if they had mistaken me for an escaped child murderer or CEO or some other completely vile creature to be spending this many resources on hauling my butt out of the woods. Moral of the story - it wasn't excessive force, just excessive zeal on the part of a bunch of cops who decided they'd rather chase a bad guy than go to some ol' training class.
A 'cheat catcher' was in use for intro programming courses at the University of Illinois when I went to grad school there in the early 70s. I suspect 90% of major universities now use some form of automatic similarity scanner.
Well, what if the breast implant biz DID switch to silicon? I can see the headlines now - "Message from alien civilization found by seti@home running in Jennifer Lopez' left breast!" Dolly Parton would have trouble leaving the country because she'd qualify as a supercomputer capable of running nuclear weapons design simulations.
Spammers are very adept at finding poorly protected sendmail servers and slamming them (i.e. getting it to send out copies of their spam appearing to originate from the slammed server), so just tracking back to sending IP frequently won't get you to the real culprit. Just about any identification scheme short of having messages digitally signed with the sender's DNA will be subject to the "oh, I'll just get another ID" scheme of avoiding filter.
I think we should form a nonprofit foundation (funded by paypal donations from irritated email users) to hire some out of work computer geeks to track down the spammers by whatever ad hoc methods they can invent and some recently retired Afghan mujahadeen to apply corrective actions once the spammer is identified...
I doubt that the reason they're doing this is "to battle Microsoft". Much more likely just a legal ploy to try to limit their liability for having their untrained telephone-answerers screw up someone's nice new XP install.
I think you're painting an overly bright picture of the contribution/results of these programs. What kind of real results has your program had over the long haul? All the similar programs I've seen have been pretty much a flop over the span of, say, 5 years - the target population usually has more problems than just "lack of opportunity" that make them less than desirable employees in a field that requires constant self-directed learning, a high tolerance for change/chaos, and solid ability to interact professionally with others. These programs tend to focus on teaching some techniques (perl, html, etc) and leave the students completely unprepared for dealing with their knowledge being old & out of date in 2 years.
Reminds me of an idea I had in a boring meeting many years ago - it was back during one of the "AI is the coming thing!" phases and somebody at one end of the table was talking about AI/robotics and somebody at the other end was talking about the (new at the time) phenomenon of people going to chat rooms for the equivalent of phone sex. This brought to mind a scene from an ancient Nancy Sinatra movie - Barbarella - the scene where she has a jolly old time with the Orgasmatron. Someone with more time on their hands than I have should invent a 21st century Orgasmatron - a control box that plugs into USB or serial port and has jacks to plug in special digitally-controlled vibrators and/or fake vaginas. Pair up with someone of your favorite sexual persuasion in a Orgasmatron-enabled chat room and have a grand old time getting each other hot & bothered without being limited to just words and emoticons...
... I can see it now - instead of a $20 wristpad in front of your mouse the new geektoy will be designer neck braces to avoid carp in the neck syndrome...
Slashdot Mirror
The 1st time I encountered the internet was in the early '70s in a graduate level CS course at the University of Illinois. I remember the prof saying he had just come back from an early conference of net sites and everyone was excited because you could no longer draw the whole ARPAnet on a 3x5 index card, you now had to use an 8.5x11 piece of paper. Of course, even then the official map didn't have every site. There was a big grey box in one corner of the Center for Advanced Computation machine room that connected to the internet through U of I's router and reportedly went to some hush-hush military installation somewhere, but the map didn't show this connection at all. It was a real bulletproof router, though - made to military standards and looked like you could pound on it with a sledge as long as you wanted without causing it to drop a packet.
Wow, this is going to add a whole new dimension to model rocketry! Wonder how long before we see plans for homing systems appearing on rocketry websites?
I used to fly model rockets with my kids at the county football stadium, which is right next to a National Guard armory. My 8 year old was getting a real gleam in his eye once as a couple helicopters lined up to land at the armory, passing right over us. Luckily I was able to grab him before he could push the launch button.
Nope, 'excessive force' is when they smash your face in the process of arresting you for stealing the twinkies. If the police want to shut down 12 city blocks to apprehend you it might be poor judgement, but it ain't excessive force.
A while back near here (central NC) some poor turkey was pulled over by the local sherr'f depptiy because he was driving a truck with a stolen lawn mower or some such in the back. Said master criminal ran into the woods to get away. Unfortunately for him a van full of SWAT team types on their way to a training class saw the flashing lights & pulled over. Called their buddies in another van and a K9 unit that was also headed to the training class. Borrowed a helicopter from the highway patrol that just happened to be completing repairs at an airport nearby. Finally the couple dozen cops, deputy dawg, and bear in the sky flushed a very scared petty thief out of the woods. If I were him I'd have been peeing in my pants too, wondering if they had mistaken me for an escaped child murderer or CEO or some other completely vile creature to be spending this many resources on hauling my butt out of the woods. Moral of the story - it wasn't excessive force, just excessive zeal on the part of a bunch of cops who decided they'd rather chase a bad guy than go to some ol' training class.
A 'cheat catcher' was in use for intro programming courses at the University of Illinois when I went to grad school there in the early 70s. I suspect 90% of major universities now use some form of automatic similarity scanner.
Well, what if the breast implant biz DID switch to silicon? I can see the headlines now - "Message from alien civilization found by seti@home running in Jennifer Lopez' left breast!" Dolly Parton would have trouble leaving the country because she'd qualify as a supercomputer capable of running nuclear weapons design simulations.
Spammers are very adept at finding poorly protected sendmail servers and slamming them (i.e. getting it to send out copies of their spam appearing to originate from the slammed server), so just tracking back to sending IP frequently won't get you to the real culprit. Just about any identification scheme short of having messages digitally signed with the sender's DNA will be subject to the "oh, I'll just get another ID" scheme of avoiding filter.
I think we should form a nonprofit foundation (funded by paypal donations from irritated email users) to hire some out of work computer geeks to track down the spammers by whatever ad hoc methods they can invent and some recently retired Afghan mujahadeen to apply corrective actions once the spammer is identified...
I doubt that the reason they're doing this is "to battle Microsoft". Much more likely just a legal ploy to try to limit their liability for having their untrained telephone-answerers screw up someone's nice new XP install.
I think you're painting an overly bright picture of the contribution/results of these programs. What kind of real results has your program had over the long haul? All the similar programs I've seen have been pretty much a flop over the span of, say, 5 years - the target population usually has more problems than just "lack of opportunity" that make them less than desirable employees in a field that requires constant self-directed learning, a high tolerance for change/chaos, and solid ability to interact professionally with others. These programs tend to focus on teaching some techniques (perl, html, etc) and leave the students completely unprepared for dealing with their knowledge being old & out of date in 2 years.
Reminds me of an idea I had in a boring meeting many years ago - it was back during one of the "AI is the coming thing!" phases and somebody at one end of the table was talking about AI/robotics and somebody at the other end was talking about the (new at the time) phenomenon of people going to chat rooms for the equivalent of phone sex. This brought to mind a scene from an ancient Nancy Sinatra movie - Barbarella - the scene where she has a jolly old time with the Orgasmatron. Someone with more time on their hands than I have should invent a 21st century Orgasmatron - a control box that plugs into USB or serial port and has jacks to plug in special digitally-controlled vibrators and/or fake vaginas. Pair up with someone of your favorite sexual persuasion in a Orgasmatron-enabled chat room and have a grand old time getting each other hot & bothered without being limited to just words and emoticons...
take a look at luddite.com
... I can see it now - instead of a $20 wristpad in front of your mouse the new geektoy will be designer neck braces to avoid carp in the neck syndrome...