Heh, remember the story here on/. that Weird Al == Larry Wall? hmm...
I met Larry once, at Internet World or some similar thing, at the O'reilly booth. And I've seen Weird Al on TV. When I saw the story here, my first thought was 'Wouldn't suprise me'
I seem to recall some input they gave on the S boxes for DES, when it was being developed. A lot of people thought they put in a nice trap-door for themselves, until a few years later, when it was realized that the numbers they gave avoided some hole that the origional numbers had.
I can't really remember the source, and it's foggy in my mind, so don't trust the anecdote too much, unless someone else comes up with the references. However, if this was the case, it would point towards the NSA being a bit ahead of the outside world.
There's also the point that the outside world likes to publish things, and they don't. Assuming they at least read published material, they can't be much behind us, and are probably at least a little ahead
1) a mental state conducive to coding 2) longer productive hours 3) protection from alcohol-related liver damage (read that in the NYT magazine, I even have that one in my desk at work, 3/14/99, pg. 20 (a very good page:)) 4) my doctor says to take it with my migrane meds (silly cheap monitor, sometimes I can _see_ it refreshing if I look out the corner of my eye)
and now it protects me from the rads flying outta said monitor;)
I think Caffiene is proof that a) there is a God and b) God likes coders
I'm reminded of the book by Robert Forward where they find that critter made from negitive matter...I think the name had something to do with puppets...been a while since I read it. Anyway, it played around with what sorts of things you could do with negitave matter
I have NO IDEA how many lines of code I wrote. I know it's gotta be a ton, because I do a lot of assembler. The other thing is, I'm the optimize/debug guy around here. People hand me code, and I make it better. I just finished going through about 60 - 80 thousand lines of buggy fortran, but didn't actually write many lines of code. how does this count?
>Wonder what people would say about IE if they >didn't know M$ was the one who wrote it.
I'd say: "Huh, it doesn't run on my linux box" and "It has a poor implementation of Java" (found out when someone using it flamed me over how poorly some applet I wrote ran. Worked fine under Netscape and appletviewer!) and the ever popular "When people write web pages using programs written by that same mystery company, and look over them with it, they come out with odd mistakes like apostrophies that are question marks on my browser" (isn't there a program out to fix this? Why doesn't anyone use it? Because they can't see the problem)
This cube has serious memory-value for me: First day of my current job, I'm surrounded by SGI's and I found a bit of uninsulated copper wire. Of course, first thing I did with that wire was to twist it into the cube, and I even had enough for a little stand... Found it's remains a couple of weeks ago, the cat was playing with it (it had also been stepped on). Now SGI's ditching it, and guess what? I'm about to leave this job...
Are they gonna stop making funny colored boxen, too? The new logo looks like they might o more plain...although, black + white cases would look kinda spiffy...
The media tries to get people to read/watch/listen They look at the internet and say "ooh, this newfangled thing, people will pay attention to us if we talk about it!". They look at war and say "ooh, war! If people are still people, they WILL read about war!". They figure that if they combine the two, and hype it a lot, instant success! readers/watchers/listeners galore! So they do...and the average Joe reads watches and listens.
Considering that he seems to want to attract the technical type people, but he just doesn't seem to have a clue when it comes to technical things, perhaps we could send a few emails like:
Dear Al, You seem to like us, but every time you open your mouth in our direction, you make yourself look like a fool. So here's some clues: ... ... ...
---- obviously not stated like that, but the overall message the same
*straps on headset, and prepares to use M$-TR* I wanna check my email ooh, an attached document, wonder what it is *Hard drive starts to grind as M$-Word is started* Noo, I didn't really want to ope- send email to all freinds, with the following document attatched...
Seeing the number of biochemy people reminded me of a good use for this thing, that the other, cheaper neutron source mentioned a bit ago can't do, cause those neutrons aren't fast enough: Neutron Diffraction. I do a little bit with studying Protein+DNA binding, and it could be nice to know which of those dots is water, and which is a sodium ion. Because neutron diffraction needs serious accelorators to perform, not very many complexes have been studied...Mabey this could make neutron studies as common as x-ray diffraction is today.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, remember the story here on /. that Weird Al == Larry Wall? hmm...
I met Larry once, at Internet World or some similar thing, at the O'reilly booth. And I've seen Weird Al on TV. When I saw the story here, my first thought was 'Wouldn't suprise me'
I seem to recall some input they gave on the S boxes for DES, when it was being developed. A lot of people thought they put in a nice trap-door for themselves, until a few years later, when it was realized that the numbers they gave avoided some hole that the origional numbers had.
I can't really remember the source, and it's foggy in my mind, so don't trust the anecdote too much, unless someone else comes up with the references. However, if this was the case, it would point towards the NSA being a bit ahead of the outside world.
There's also the point that the outside world likes to publish things, and they don't. Assuming they at least read published material, they can't be much behind us, and are probably at least a little ahead
well, lessee. What do coders get from caffeine?
:))
;)
1) a mental state conducive to coding
2) longer productive hours
3) protection from alcohol-related liver damage (read that in the NYT magazine, I even have that one in my desk at work, 3/14/99, pg. 20 (a very good page
4) my doctor says to take it with my migrane meds (silly cheap monitor, sometimes I can _see_ it refreshing if I look out the corner of my eye)
and now it protects me from the rads flying outta said monitor
I think Caffiene is proof that a) there is a God and b) God likes coders
I'm reminded of the book by Robert Forward where they find that critter made from negitive matter...I think the name had something to do with puppets...been a while since I read it. Anyway, it played around with what sorts of things you could do with negitave matter
I have NO IDEA how many lines of code I wrote. I know it's gotta be a ton, because I do a lot of assembler. The other thing is, I'm the optimize/debug guy around here. People hand me code, and I make it better. I just finished going through about 60 - 80 thousand lines of buggy fortran, but didn't actually write many lines of code. how does this count?
>Wonder what people would say about IE if they
>didn't know M$ was the one who wrote it.
I'd say:
"Huh, it doesn't run on my linux box"
and
"It has a poor implementation of Java" (found out when someone using it flamed me over how poorly some applet I wrote ran. Worked fine under Netscape and appletviewer!)
and the ever popular
"When people write web pages using programs written by that same mystery company, and look over them with it, they come out with odd mistakes like apostrophies that are question marks on my browser" (isn't there a program out to fix this? Why doesn't anyone use it? Because they can't see the problem)
This cube has serious memory-value for me: First day of my current job, I'm surrounded by SGI's and I found a bit of uninsulated copper wire. Of course, first thing I did with that wire was to twist it into the cube, and I even had enough for a little stand... Found it's remains a couple of weeks ago, the cat was playing with it (it had also been stepped on). Now SGI's ditching it, and guess what? I'm about to leave this job...
Are they gonna stop making funny colored boxen, too? The new logo looks like they might o more plain...although, black + white cases would look kinda spiffy...
The media tries to get people to read/watch/listen
They look at the internet and say "ooh, this newfangled thing, people will pay attention to us if we talk about it!". They look at war and say "ooh, war! If people are still people, they WILL read about war!". They figure that if they combine the two, and hype it a lot, instant success! readers/watchers/listeners galore! So they do...and the average Joe reads watches and listens.
Considering that he seems to want to attract the technical type people, but he just doesn't seem to have a clue when it comes to technical things, perhaps we could send a few emails like:
Dear Al,
You seem to like us, but every time you open your mouth in our direction, you make yourself look like a fool. So here's some clues:
...
...
...
----
obviously not stated like that, but the overall message the same
*straps on headset, and prepares to use M$-TR*
I wanna check my email
ooh, an attached document, wonder what it is *Hard drive starts to grind as M$-Word is started* Noo, I didn't really want to ope-
send email to all freinds, with the following document attatched...
Geez, you guys scared the crap outta me.
Now I hafta wash these pants
Calmacil
Seeing the number of biochemy people reminded me of a good use for this thing, that the other, cheaper neutron source mentioned a bit ago can't do, cause those neutrons aren't fast enough: Neutron Diffraction. I do a little bit with studying Protein+DNA binding, and it could be nice to know which of those dots is water, and which is a sodium ion. Because neutron diffraction needs serious accelorators to perform, not very many complexes have been studied...Mabey this could make neutron studies as common as x-ray diffraction is today.