Charged particles are easily manipulated with EM fields so using magnets to "deflect" them is not exactly an "unobvious" application. Of course a bit of engineering will be required to determine how strong the magnets need to be to handle a given level of particle energy.
Now classifying the information just means someone else will have to re-invent the "magnetic deflector" - and will probably get to put their name on it to boot.
Well I said "something like", there was a nifty short parody that was set on "The Dentless"
I think it was the Brittania that had the dangerously low shielding on the Q-gun breech. She survived firing it only once, but once was enough even if she was then hunted down and destroyed (booby-trapped self-destruct actually) by the Boskonians. Later Q-Gun designs beefed up the breech shielding considerably - a 20 mile long column of duodec combustion gas was nothing to sneer at.
The Dauntless was the next big ship they let Kinnison play around with. But he sure liked his diesel powered(!), inherently indetectable "speedster"s.
Of course, poor ol Doc Smith did kind of miss out on nuclear power for most of hsi Lensman books. And now we know that "primary beams" will not be showing up on a starship near us - they will just use X-Ray lasers pumped by fusion bombs.
Nope, but it sounds exactly like the magnetic radiation shielding used in a sci-fi juvie from the 80's or 90's. It was set in the moons of Jupiter and the characters used small open "shuttles" that had magnets placed on the frame around the passengers. This protected them from radiation in the Jovian system.
Make the drive coils out of uranium and power it with allotropic iron. Of course, you will have to give the ship a good British-sounding name like "The Dentless".
ANd remember to really reinforce the breech shielding on the Q-Gun.
"Here I was thinking that science was the study of reality"
Reality check time: People are real - even the ones that are less intellectually gifted than yourself. The last time I checked (which I admit was a few years back) smart folks used (and even invented) various forms of mathematics in an attempt to better model and thereby understand reality.
When your ever so elegant (or not as the case may be) mathematical guarantee - which after all is only a model - comes up against the reality you are trying to model differences will appear. Think of another old cliche if you will.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice..."
In practice, enough people are evil conniving bastiches that they WILL defeat your e-voting system. And even the folks too stupid to understand the math behind your guarantee do understand "evil conniving bastiches" Now add to that the substantial group of people who must defend their "culture" from intellectuals to the point that even as children they humiliate, harass, and assault those who shows signs of greater intelligence. That group of people also know that your guarantee is nothing (to them) but a damned lie - because you are one of the "evil conniving bastiches".
So, the reason your e-voting plan fails is because too many folks will have no faith in it. Calling them stupid might console you, but why not ask yourself why you are so hung up on replacing paper ballots?
If your proof of security can not be easily understood by a person with an IQ of 80 upon the first time you demonstrate that proof in 30 seconds or less then your proof is not valid.
Period.
But since you are sure (and maybe you can derive said proof yourself), you will want to argu about it.
You lose the argument.
Period.
If you still want to argue and demand my reasoning you still fail and your much vaunted proof is not even good for toilet paper.
Because, much as you believe that e-voting is the way to go, you are missing the point.
It isn't about proof, It isn't about "mathematical guarantees". It is all about perception. If a significant protion of people have no faith in the system, then the system will fail. I picked IQ 80 as a cut off point, but there is no minimum IQ to cast a ballot, there is not even a literacy requirement that people be able to read the darn thing.
No matter how much you polish up your whiz-bang e-vote machine with "mathematical proofs", you are still polishing a stinking, steaming pile of dung. In addition, there is the little matter of "proving" that the "secure system" you have "mathematically guaranteed" is the actual system in use.
Paper ballots (regardless of the method of production) that allow for human recounts are far more trustworthy than anything that has a "mathematical guarantee". If you don't understand that , just go ahead and console yourself with the following:
"Half of all people have a below average intellect" (translated for the "smart folks" - every other person in the world is STUPID)
While I am not shouting "Wolverines" from the rooftop, I would remind you that the natural prey of the "citizen guerrila" is not the armed forces in set piece battles.
They may target individual members of the armed forces as targets of opportunity, and to help define the struggle in terms most favorable to the guerrila, but the natural prey of the "citizen guerrila (aka "patriots" per Thomas Jefferson) is going to be the government officials and their supporters - regardless of their military/civilian status.
For examples of "citizen guerrilas" which will hopefully not cause flame wars over the current political situation I refer you to the tactics and weapons employed by the French Resistance in the early 1940s.
Well, I think the main point they are going for is that a "liquid lens" (mirror), would by virtue of being spun would not have to be machined to unbelievably fussy tolerances in order to perform it's job in a high resolution manner. In addition, a liquid mirror would not be permanently harmed by every speck of dust that impacted it.
Of course, three is another approach as well. Instead of a single large mirror (liquid or not), one may instead use an array of smaller mirrors. It is trivially easy to make a lot of small optically flat mirror of perhaps 30 cm in diameter, as opposed to a curved mirror of a much larger size. I'll let the optical/astronomy/math geeks run with this one to figure out an appropriate size array of "flat" mirrors would be within tolerances for truly enormous curved mirror. Indeed the name for one such proposed telescope is the OWL (Overwhelmingly Large Telescope) - hmm is that bigger than unbelievably huge?
" It's not the government's place to encourage creativity"
Umm.. better re-read the little phrase in the Constitution that authorizes copyrights and patents. You know, the bit about promoting progress in the useful arts and sciences. It explicitly is the govenrment's place to encourage creativity. It's a pity that the govenrment seems to limit said encouragement to creative accounting practices nowadays.
Perhaps you meant it is not the government's place to discourage mindless banal entertainments?
I believe the poster means that as it is a not a real dialog box, but a clever fraud, the code behind the "Yes" and "No" buttons can do whatever the malware author wants. Press "Yes/OK" and malware is installed. Press "No" or "Cancel" and malware is still installed.
If you are still "clue impaired", just don't push any buttons on the "dialog box" and just close the darn thing with the little "X" in the upper right corner (it is the safest option you have).
And your laundry list of "features" pretty well demonstrates the difference. People play MMOs to have fun with other players. What you would make a good solo game for a micromanager.
Just consider your "ecology" So what happens when a griefer guild shows up and slaughters all the wolves and bears in your forest? How do prevent this or can they even?
economies: much as I hate to admit it (I like the idea of a player economy as well), player based economies are actually very destructive to game enjoyment. The "Auction Hall" global market with instant results just provides massive encouragement for goldselling services and the resulting rampant inflation. The more resources and money supply is controlled by the publisher, the more the econommy winds up in control of the goldsellers.
If it is so darn "not difficult", why haven't you written your own game and have a few hundred thousand subscribers already?
However, the idea of allowing players to have a real impact on the game world is a good one, but once again darn near impossible in an MMO. Making real changes requires that new content be constantly generated to replace that which is no langer valid. Example: THe players have finally ended the zombie chicken infestation at Farmer Brown's. No longer will zombie chickens trouble the farm. Ever. So what new content do you propose for the beginning characters? Perhaps they could work on the rat infestation over at Farmer Smith's? What if someone gives Farmer Smith a pregnant cat(reproducing)? Oh the ecological horrors - plus the destruction of more content intended for beginning players.
Just ramp up those examples for "end game" content and you get a glimmer of the problem. It just takes too long to come up with new storylines/adventures. So players making real changes in games like this will be best done as solo games.
Or the games will have to have multiple "sub-games" built into them to keep folks occupied. (See Eve Online) which does have a failry robust and involved (although unfortunately corrupt) economy and PvP system.
Probably because they will want to sell it outside of China at some point. Especially if it supports a few extra "undocumented" instructions to make cyberwarfare and espionage a bit easier for them.
And of course, x-86 compatiblity allows leverage of existing code bases too.
Kinda bad news for the other races in the game eh? especially the ones in the faction that opposes the faction with the humans. (note I have no idea how WAR handles the whole faction thing - maybe both factions have humans?)
Thanks, I missed that little bit (DC) in the middle. Now as long as Warner does not own DC, they can sue someone with money.
If Warner owns DC, then it is a glaringly obvious case of copyright infringement. The kind of copyright infringement that really does involve the second part of "civil and criminal" penalties. In that case, Fox should be talking to the FBI and not just their trained attack lawyers.
Why didn't Fox realize it sooner? Well they did buy the rights 20 odd years ago, that most likely means the folks involved in that purchase are no longer involved with Fox, or just plain forgot about some comic book property they bought back when comic book movies were mostly bombing (effects were not up to the job etc). Probably some comic loving clerical lackey at Fox looked at the old contracts and realized - "Hey we have the rights to the Watchmen!"
Why the heck didn't the author remember that he sold the movie rights to Fox in the 80's and no longer had anything he could legally sell to Warner? Warner will settle with Fox and they should go for both civil and criminal (fraud) charges against the author.
Or just go visit your local Target and look on the endcap. Spend an effing 99 cents for a pretty box with a few codes in it and you have your codes for the open Beta and the early headstart.
Repeat - that pretty lil box with the codes in it costs ninety nine pennies. Not anywhere near an actual pre-order price.
Oh yeah, it also has one of these other pieces of paper called a "coupon". It is good for 5 bucks off the price of the game if you decide to buy it later.
Sure, you will keep your photgraphs as they are, but what happens when you see other photographs - perhaps even altered video later that might clearly show something that did not really happen. On of the points was that even the people who "were there" adapt their own memories to match the photograpic "evidence".
Sure you know that Spielberg digitally altered the guns in "E.T." to big honking walkie talkies. Sure you know that "Han shot first". You might even remember when Oprah had Ann-Margaret's body.
But those were all pretty high profile examples. Do you really remember if cousin Lynette was at cousin Bill's wedding twelve years ago? There she is in the group shot - and again at the reception. Or to borrow from George O. - make up your own much more sinister example. Perhaps someone who consistently shows up in media footage of fires for example.
Those silly rednecks were tricked by the wily Bigfoot. He was just playing possum.
Now the moon landings are fake - and as soon as the Chinese go there for real they will provide photgraphic eveidence that there are no NASA artifacts at "Tranquility Base".
Sorry, but I don't think you can hang that one on Texas. The pharmacies I go to for my Drixoral fix all have a cute little sign quoting the relevant section of the USA PATRIOT Act as their authority for demanding ID and stating the penalties for any economies with the truth you may want to take.
I never realized how much money from home-grown meth labs went into the pockets of the terrorists. I am glad the DOJ has cleared that up for us.
I don't know about fixing the system, but I think a very good case might be made for "fixing" all congresscritters - and any "contributions" they may have made to the gene pool before they entered politics.
ad-hominem attack check (neocon shill, retard) hmm double check demand that folks you disagree with be silenced (STFU, demand that metamods support your position) check and mate
Maddening as it must be to you, screaming STFU and demanding that folks who disagree with you should be silenced by whatever means necessary is only going to contribute to the downfall of the society.
Oh wait.. I missed the ID you posted under. I invite you to consider that Taco actaully made that two words - not just Anonymous.
And for gaming the system, when there were enough elephants in the Senate, how many judicial nominations for the donkeys did they prevent from coming to a vote?
Now answer the same question when it was a donkeys in the Senate and an elephant in the White House? (what is the origin of the term "borked"?)
Was it the donkeys or the elephants that restrained themselves from changing the rules to make it clear judicial nominations were not to be filibustered?
Slashdot Mirror
Charged particles are easily manipulated with EM fields so using magnets to "deflect" them is not exactly an "unobvious" application. Of course a bit of engineering will be required to determine how strong the magnets need to be to handle a given level of particle energy.
Now classifying the information just means someone else will have to re-invent the "magnetic deflector" - and will probably get to put their name on it to boot.
Well I said "something like", there was a nifty short parody that was set on "The Dentless"
I think it was the Brittania that had the dangerously low shielding on the Q-gun breech. She survived firing it only once, but once was enough even if she was then hunted down and destroyed (booby-trapped self-destruct actually) by the Boskonians. Later Q-Gun designs beefed up the breech shielding considerably - a 20 mile long column of duodec combustion gas was nothing to sneer at.
The Dauntless was the next big ship they let Kinnison play around with. But he sure liked his diesel powered(!), inherently indetectable "speedster"s.
Of course, poor ol Doc Smith did kind of miss out on nuclear power for most of hsi Lensman books. And now we know that "primary beams" will not be showing up on a starship near us - they will just use X-Ray lasers pumped by fusion bombs.
Nope, but it sounds exactly like the magnetic radiation shielding used in a sci-fi juvie from the 80's or 90's. It was set in the moons of Jupiter and the characters used small open "shuttles" that had magnets placed on the frame around the passengers. This protected them from radiation in the Jovian system.
Make the drive coils out of uranium and power it with allotropic iron.
Of course, you will have to give the ship a good British-sounding name like "The Dentless".
ANd remember to really reinforce the breech shielding on the Q-Gun.
"Here I was thinking that science was the study of reality"
Reality check time:
People are real - even the ones that are less intellectually gifted than yourself.
The last time I checked (which I admit was a few years back) smart folks used (and even invented) various forms of mathematics in an attempt to better model and thereby understand reality.
When your ever so elegant (or not as the case may be) mathematical guarantee - which after all is only a model - comes up against the reality you are trying to model differences will appear. Think of another old cliche if you will.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice..."
In practice, enough people are evil conniving bastiches that they WILL defeat your e-voting system. And even the folks too stupid to understand the math behind your guarantee do understand "evil conniving bastiches" Now add to that the substantial group of people who must defend their "culture" from intellectuals to the point that even as children they humiliate, harass, and assault those who shows signs of greater intelligence. That group of people also know that your guarantee is nothing (to them) but a damned lie - because you are one of the "evil conniving bastiches".
So, the reason your e-voting plan fails is because too many folks will have no faith in it. Calling them stupid might console you, but why not ask yourself why you are so hung up on replacing paper ballots?
If your proof of security can not be easily understood by a person with an IQ of 80 upon the first time you demonstrate that proof in 30 seconds or less then your proof is not valid.
Period.
But since you are sure (and maybe you can derive said proof yourself), you will want to argu about it.
You lose the argument.
Period.
If you still want to argue and demand my reasoning you still fail and your much vaunted proof is not even good for toilet paper.
Because, much as you believe that e-voting is the way to go, you are missing the point.
It isn't about proof, It isn't about "mathematical guarantees". It is all about perception. If a significant protion of people have no faith in the system, then the system will fail. I picked IQ 80 as a cut off point, but there is no minimum IQ to cast a ballot, there is not even a literacy requirement that people be able to read the darn thing.
No matter how much you polish up your whiz-bang e-vote machine with "mathematical proofs", you are still polishing a stinking, steaming pile of dung. In addition, there is the little matter of "proving" that the "secure system" you have "mathematically guaranteed" is the actual system in use.
Paper ballots (regardless of the method of production) that allow for human recounts are far more trustworthy than anything that has a "mathematical guarantee". If you don't understand that , just go ahead and console yourself with the following:
"Half of all people have a below average intellect" (translated for the "smart folks" - every other person in the world is STUPID)
While I am not shouting "Wolverines" from the rooftop, I would remind you that the natural prey of the "citizen guerrila" is not the armed forces in set piece battles.
They may target individual members of the armed forces as targets of opportunity, and to help define the struggle in terms most favorable to the guerrila, but the natural prey of the "citizen guerrila (aka "patriots" per Thomas Jefferson) is going to be the government officials and their supporters - regardless of their military/civilian status.
For examples of "citizen guerrilas" which will hopefully not cause flame wars over the current political situation I refer you to the tactics and weapons employed by the French Resistance in the early 1940s.
Well, I think the main point they are going for is that a "liquid lens" (mirror), would by virtue of being spun would not have to be machined to unbelievably fussy tolerances in order to perform it's job in a high resolution manner. In addition, a liquid mirror would not be permanently harmed by every speck of dust that impacted it.
Of course, three is another approach as well. Instead of a single large mirror (liquid or not), one may instead use an array of smaller mirrors. It is trivially easy to make a lot of small optically flat mirror of perhaps 30 cm in diameter, as opposed to a curved mirror of a much larger size. I'll let the optical/astronomy/math geeks run with this one to figure out an appropriate size array of "flat" mirrors would be within tolerances for truly enormous curved mirror. Indeed the name for one such proposed telescope is the OWL (Overwhelmingly Large Telescope) - hmm is that bigger than unbelievably huge?
" It's not the government's place to encourage creativity"
Umm.. better re-read the little phrase in the Constitution that authorizes copyrights and patents. You know, the bit about promoting progress in the useful arts and sciences. It explicitly is the govenrment's place to encourage creativity. It's a pity that the govenrment seems to limit said encouragement to creative accounting practices nowadays.
Perhaps you meant it is not the government's place to discourage mindless banal entertainments?
I believe the poster means that as it is a not a real dialog box, but a clever fraud, the code behind the "Yes" and "No" buttons can do whatever the malware author wants. Press "Yes/OK" and malware is installed. Press "No" or "Cancel" and malware is still installed.
If you are still "clue impaired", just don't push any buttons on the "dialog box" and just close the darn thing with the little "X" in the upper right corner (it is the safest option you have).
And your laundry list of "features" pretty well demonstrates the difference. People play MMOs to have fun with other players. What you would make a good solo game for a micromanager.
Just consider your "ecology"
So what happens when a griefer guild shows up and slaughters all the wolves and bears in your forest? How do prevent this or can they even?
economies: much as I hate to admit it (I like the idea of a player economy as well), player based economies are actually very destructive to game enjoyment. The "Auction Hall" global market with instant results just provides massive encouragement for goldselling services and the resulting rampant inflation. The more resources and money supply is controlled by the publisher, the more the econommy winds up in control of the goldsellers.
If it is so darn "not difficult", why haven't you written your own game and have a few hundred thousand subscribers already?
However, the idea of allowing players to have a real impact on the game world is a good one, but once again darn near impossible in an MMO. Making real changes requires that new content be constantly generated to replace that which is no langer valid. Example: THe players have finally ended the zombie chicken infestation at Farmer Brown's. No longer will zombie chickens trouble the farm. Ever. So what new content do you propose for the beginning characters? Perhaps they could work on the rat infestation over at Farmer Smith's? What if someone gives Farmer Smith a pregnant cat(reproducing)? Oh the ecological horrors - plus the destruction of more content intended for beginning players.
Just ramp up those examples for "end game" content and you get a glimmer of the problem. It just takes too long to come up with new storylines/adventures. So players making real changes in games like this will be best done as solo games.
Or the games will have to have multiple "sub-games" built into them to keep folks occupied. (See Eve Online) which does have a failry robust and involved (although unfortunately corrupt) economy and PvP system.
Probably because they will want to sell it outside of China at some point. Especially if it supports a few extra "undocumented" instructions to make cyberwarfare and espionage a bit easier for them.
And of course, x-86 compatiblity allows leverage of existing code bases too.
The mouse is used in the hammer throw - that is why it has a cord. :)
If your mouse has no cord, you are disqualified because your mouse is underage
Just messing with ya.
Kinda bad news for the other races in the game eh?
especially the ones in the faction that opposes the faction with the humans.
(note I have no idea how WAR handles the whole faction thing - maybe both factions have humans?)
Thanks, I missed that little bit (DC) in the middle. Now as long as Warner does not own DC, they can sue someone with money.
If Warner owns DC, then it is a glaringly obvious case of copyright infringement. The kind of copyright infringement that really does involve the second part of "civil and criminal" penalties. In that case, Fox should be talking to the FBI and not just their trained attack lawyers.
Why didn't Fox realize it sooner? Well they did buy the rights 20 odd years ago, that most likely means the folks involved in that purchase are no longer involved with Fox, or just plain forgot about some comic book property they bought back when comic book movies were mostly bombing (effects were not up to the job etc). Probably some comic loving clerical lackey at Fox looked at the old contracts and realized - "Hey we have the rights to the Watchmen!"
Why the heck didn't the author remember that he sold the movie rights to Fox in the 80's and no longer had anything he could legally sell to Warner? Warner will settle with Fox and they should go for both civil and criminal (fraud) charges against the author.
Or just go visit your local Target and look on the endcap. Spend an effing 99 cents for a pretty box with a few codes in it and you have your codes for the open Beta and the early headstart.
Repeat - that pretty lil box with the codes in it costs ninety nine pennies. Not anywhere near an actual pre-order price.
Oh yeah, it also has one of these other pieces of paper called a "coupon". It is good for 5 bucks off the price of the game if you decide to buy it later.
Sure, you will keep your photgraphs as they are, but what happens when you see other photographs - perhaps even altered video later that might clearly show something that did not really happen. On of the points was that even the people who "were there" adapt their own memories to match the photograpic "evidence".
Sure you know that Spielberg digitally altered the guns in "E.T." to big honking walkie talkies.
Sure you know that "Han shot first".
You might even remember when Oprah had Ann-Margaret's body.
But those were all pretty high profile examples. Do you really remember if cousin Lynette was at cousin Bill's wedding twelve years ago? There she is in the group shot - and again at the reception. Or to borrow from George O. - make up your own much more sinister example. Perhaps someone who consistently shows up in media footage of fires for example.
Those silly rednecks were tricked by the wily Bigfoot. He was just playing possum.
Now the moon landings are fake - and as soon as the Chinese go there for real they will provide photgraphic eveidence that there are no NASA artifacts at "Tranquility Base".
Sorry, but I don't think you can hang that one on Texas. The pharmacies I go to for my Drixoral fix all have a cute little sign quoting the relevant section of the USA PATRIOT Act as their authority for demanding ID and stating the penalties for any economies with the truth you may want to take.
I never realized how much money from home-grown meth labs went into the pockets of the terrorists. I am glad the DOJ has cleared that up for us.
because some of the old COBOL folks are old?
As in, having better thngs to do than be hassled by a bunch of whiney snot-nosed MBAs trying to pudh them into 80 hour weeks?
And in some cases, due to failing health and general mortality, just not up to more than a limited amount of work?
And sure, some of them will decide to keep doing it themselves - until they decide to retire, and then who takes over maintenance and development?
I don't know if the moderators are playing along with the parent's joke or if that flamebait indicates a great big whooshing noise...
Tangential:
Don't be talking crazy talk there.
I don't know about fixing the system, but I think a very good case might be made for "fixing" all congresscritters - and any "contributions" they may have made to the gene pool before they entered politics.
Hmm...
ad-hominem attack check (neocon shill, retard) hmm double check
demand that folks you disagree with be silenced (STFU, demand that metamods support your position) check and mate
Maddening as it must be to you, screaming STFU and demanding that folks who disagree with you should be silenced by whatever means necessary is only going to contribute to the downfall of the society.
Oh wait.. I missed the ID you posted under. I invite you to consider that Taco actaully made that two words - not just Anonymous.
And for gaming the system, when there were enough elephants in the Senate, how many judicial nominations for the donkeys did they prevent from coming to a vote?
Now answer the same question when it was a donkeys in the Senate and an elephant in the White House? (what is the origin of the term "borked"?)
Was it the donkeys or the elephants that restrained themselves from changing the rules to make it clear judicial nominations were not to be filibustered?