In my family, my younger brother and I have been real close to each other and our parents. We all look out for each other if you will. I remember many years ago, when my brother was around 10 years of age or so (I am 11 years older) and he was watching a PBS documentary about WWII. Up to that point, none of us (parents and I) really talked to him about death and the fragility of life. Also, he had already seen his share of violence on other channels (which had already been established as fake...they are just acting, etc).
So, he is watching this fairly brutal footage of dead soldiers from the war (missing body parts, fairly un-recognizable body masses, lots of black-n-white blood) and causually questions how much those actors are getting paid. From his prior experience to media, he just figured it was all fake. This of course was the time that we all helped him understand the critical distinction that that footage was REAL (as opposed to blaming PBS for showing such horrific footage). They weren't actors, and they weren't coming back to life. Pretty sobbering for him at the time, I remember him crying for quite awhile.
My point here is, we took that time to help him understand the distinctions between real and fantasy. And encouraged him to always ask for clarification when confused in the future. You provide that personal attention and care to your children/siblings and they will be better for it.
He has since gone through a multitude of violent gaming sprees on his computer and knows that none of that need be expressed by himself in the real world. He's been picked on, scorned by bullies, etc. through high school, but knew that the answer was not to retaliate in a violent manner as others have recently.
Whether or not the shooters at Columbine ever truly learned this distinction is a moot point now. We can never truly know. But I can only think that this extra attention can only be beneficial to your children in the long run.
A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
What if the strategy were as follows: Each person goes into the room and decides to wait 30 seconds before saying anything. Then whoever sees that the other two people are wearing the same colored hats, they will say "pass". If two of them say pass, the third one will know the color of his own hat. This covers the case of three hats being the same color. If the hats are dispersed in a 1-2 relationship, then that one person will say pass...nobody else will and the next two people can guess by looking at each other. This seems like a pretty obvious solution to get a 100% chance of winning and is basically the first thing that popped into my head...I don't see why the article claims they can win only 75% of the time....am I missing something here?
You have stated a somewhat similar strategy to the one that they came up with in the article. However, you must realize that there is a condition to the game which you are omitting: "Once they have had a chance to look at the other hats, the players must simultaneously guess the color of their own hats or pass."
Your solution can lead to 100% success, *IF* the players can guess in succession (this eliminates ever losing when the hats are all the same color). However, since the rules of the puzzle state that all three must guess at the same time, the cases where all the hats are the same color inject the possibility of them all being wrong. Hence lowering the probability down to 75%, or whatever they came up with. To show how they would be wrong with your strategy: if all hats are same color, and all players must guess simultaneously, all three would say 'pass' (since each one sees the other two wearing the same colored hats). Since no one guessed correctly, no one wins.
The article is a little funny with its wording when it says the following: "The group can win every time this happens by using the following strategy: Once the game starts, each player looks at the other two players' hats. If the two hats are different colors, he passes. If they are the same color, the player guesses his own hat is the opposite color." This makes it sound like they are guessing in succession, when in reality this is the strategy chosen and executed concurrently among all the players to maximize their chance of winning.
This solution would be fine...if the rules of the puzzle allowed someone to be wrong. In reading the rules you'll see: "The group shares a hypothetical $3 million prize if at least one player guesses correctly and no players guess incorrectly."
From what I see of your strategy, you base the success rate on only one person guessing correctly while the other two may be right or wrong. If Player 3 is always guessing red, but really has blue which causes Player 2 to guess red, they all still lose since one of them (player 3) guessed incorrectly.
Hrm, I guess I should do my story submissions in the middle of the night to get them up here. I sent in this same link...with similar worded description mid-Friday morning and got rejected.
I'm sure I've heard of this happening many times from others, so I know it's nothing isolated. I just wonder, when is a good time for sending in a particular 'genre' of submission? Is paranoid conspiracy theory more likely to be posted in the late night than the light of day? Will M$ bashing articles achieve higher success rate between the hours of 2pm and 4pm?
Ah well, I'm tired, enough bitching for the night. Carry on.
I think it really is time that some of the companies that produce software started to make it clear that patching is an important part of software maintenance for everyone
Actually, the new dreaded Windows XP claims that it automatically calls Windows Update in the background whenever the user is connected to the Internet (which M$ probably wants to be all the time). Therefore, Joe average user *supposedly* doesn't need to worry about manually doing the updates...good ole M$ will make sure his computer is running nice and clean all the time.
Interesting that some companies tried to cash in on this...such as those who made 'Oil Change'. Never used it myself, but I believe the premise is that it scans all your programs installed, then goes out on the Interenet and see if there are updates for them and subsequently dl's and installs them. The user still has to run the program, but supposedly doesn't have to worry about anything else.
I'm actually curious how the auto-WindowsUpdate will work if someone immeadiately installs ZoneLabs 'ZoneAlarm' on their machine. It's pretty good at detecting foreign things running on your machine. It would probably block the update and the user would think it's a trojan program running on their machine. Come to think of it, I think ZoneAlarm would stop this IE defect. If the firewall is running properly, when the illegal code tries to run itself on your machine, it wouldn't be able to go back through the firewall. Even if it modified IE (zonealarm wont run a program after an update unless you tell it to...it doesn't rely on trusting the name of the program) and tried to run through that it should be stopped. Unless they've found a way through ZoneAlarm....
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
And my favorite, from the previous story, has got to be; 'It will also probably strike at the heart of arguments about how regulated (and by whom) ISPs ought to by. '
Interesting you mention this. After reading this I went back to the main page and saw the error. Then I refreshed the main page (about 10-15 minutes had elapsed), and the "by" had been corrected to "be". Seems Timothy either read your comment or corrected his error on his own.
Back to the subject on hand, I found it intriguing to read the old/. article posted 2 years ago and see how many people disregarded this as a total sham. While I am still a tiny bit skeptical (prefering to experience the performance first hand to truly understand it), it would appear the product is viable enough if NASA and other supercomputing centers are using this. It will be a good follow up to see in the next few months the actual 'real-world' computing performance this has imparted to NASA's research.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
Heh, the name you'll get your bill from says ATT@Home. I went with the cable solution because even thought I am only 2 blocks from the CO in town, my apartment still cant get DSL. Whee!
The latency here varies but for game playing I'm generally around 110 ping...kinda crappy I think for a broadband connection. But, they do limit upload speeds here to only 128Kb/s, so that adds to the suckage.
Downloads and page loads are quite fast as my particular neighborhood isn't saturated yet. Although speeds typically drop during 6p-10p as the girl next door with the same service overloads on Napster downloads. Have peaked out at 400KB/s during big downloads, which equates to roughly 3Mb/s...and oddly enough, my best times are during the midday rush.
Funny thing during the installation. The service guy is finishing everything up and the last check box says something like, 'show user fast download speed'. So he goes to some site that downloads a few things and reports your speed. Well, it was only a few small files and very small graphic files spanning only a few seconds. The page comes back showing a download of around 600KB/s or around 4.8Mb/s (which is possible in burst speeds since the pipe can in theory pass up to 10Mb/s). Well a graphic comes up showing a relation to other speeds. It goes something like 14.4 modem, 28.8, 56k, 128k, T1 and then...T3! It flashes a big message, 'your connection is better than a T3 connection!' I fell over laughing my ass off. The service guy doesn't get it, why don't I like my T3 connection? I just shake my head and *pray* that the web page people made a typo and dont really think that a T3 classification is just taking a T1 and multiplying by 3 (their logic is T1=1.5Mb/s therefore 4.5Mbs=T3 WRONG! T3 classification is approximately 45Mb/s...something which if correct would be quite awesome) I can just imagine there are tons of my neighbors going "gee honey, we got ourselves a T3 connection, we're really cool!"
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
The article touches on "deep web content" hidden by new technologies such as Active server pages and Cold Fusion. Is this seen solely as a problem from the search engines themselves, or are the sites designed as such the ones complaining?
If the sites themselves are complaining about no one able to find their content, aren't there ways to help that? Run a query on their database site to generate a possible site list of the content and then provide that list to the search engines. The search engines could then provide a link (found based on a content search) that would put the user on the page where they enter the form (or whatever) information to generate the page needed. Not being familiar with XML, but knowing that it has some features to aid in content grouping, could this be needed to recode the sites in?
Obviously if the sites themselves dont want this deep content easily viewed except by deep clicking through their whole site, or some pay-per-view system, that is their choice. I feel that they are limiting themselves however. If they think they have robust enough content to useful to users, they should strive to make that content as widely available as possible.
Should proprietory websites even be considered as 'Internet-web content'? Those seem to me to be 'Intranet content' which most often should not be seen by the general public (ie: internal company policies only needed by employess of company X). For that information to be set free you should either need a very savvy person to break in from the outside or a traitor from the inside. If its only certain products listed that the company doesn't want to available to the public, well that is too bad for them, I'll just get a quote elsewhere and pay someone else my money.
"evidence of a widening gap between the deep Web and the freely-accessible 'surface Web,' which could become a clutter of recreational and amateur-oriented content -- the online equivalent of public cable access television or self-published novels." Funny, ever since the late eighties, I've always seen the whole web like this. It's more like the big corporations tried to muscle in on the public cable channel and realized they might be better off on their own channel.
From the TechRepublic article: "A member who prefers to remain anonymous wrote, "I think it is an invasion of privacy. I don't send in registration cards, because I don't want companies having my personal data." Another nonissue. Activation requires no personal information at all. As with all Microsoft products, users will have the option to register Office XP and Windows XP, but the only required data point on the product activation screen is the country you're in."
I think both of these people missed the possible violation of privacy surrounding this software. Whether or not you fill in the 'registration' part of the software, the 'activation' part still happens over the Internet. I refuse to believe that when the clearinghouse handling this receives an activation request via the Internet, that it is going to throw away the IP header information from whence it came (this should leave a pretty good breadcrumb trail to you). Good marketing information actually, now they'll know just how many people coming from Ma-n-Pa ISP in Idaho are using their new product. And for those who activate over the phone (I believe this will be available), I'm sure they will social engineer more information out of you than you would care to give.
Now they probably couldn't go after every violation that will crop up. But say they see a large number of 'instances' occuring from a particular subnet range (small company perhaps, or a small community sharing a local ISP). They could nab a large group all at once.
This is true. But why are things like cell division and genetics even being blocked?? I admin'd a Bess server at an ISP and remember that those type of pages were supposed to be screened (by Bess officials) into categories outside of 'sex', 'violence', etc. Then the admin of the server says, allow biology sites but block sex sites and so on throughout the list of categories.
While the override feature is nice, it can get very tedious and suddenly you end up with a ton of holes punched through your filter. Plus it only allows up to an hours worth of viewing before you have to re-enter your password again (correct me if that part is wrong, I just remember we couldn't put in more than 59 minutes...that might have been semantics on our part). Are not all pages under the Bess filter still personally screened by actually people as they claimed to us that they were? Sounds like a) the pages are not eye screened anymore, b) they are but the people doing it are not placing them in the correct categories anymore, c) the school server admin turned on 'block all categories'.
I would suggest your friend go to the school server admin and work with him/her to fix the category blocking.
And finally, I think IP addressing allows circumvention...but I can't remember trying this on Bess. You will basically need to do a dnslookup on the domain name to get the IP address of the website. Then just try going to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and see if that works. Also, I think if you convert it to octal (cant remember, it was posted here earlier) form it should work (looks something like http://485720959295). If someone knows that formula, please post it.
I still don't see what's so bad about selling information to advertisers as long as the advertisers aren't able to trace it back to an *individual*.
Having been an admin at a small ISP which offered a separate Bess service to customers, I can say the above may not always be the case. The data collected through the filters is completely traceable right back to the users account on the ISP. Granted, *initially*, they were probably stripping off that information so that the marketeers had no tracing ability. But what if, down the road, the DOD was concerned why it was getting so many hits on certain website...it wouldn't take much to get the information it needed.
On a side note here, if i remember right, Bess always claimed to have 200+ people who personally reveiwed pages in order to distinguish between pr0n sex sites and biology-sex sites. Then these pages are placed into similar sounding categories. Therefore, the admin has typically around 3-4 dozen categories that sites fall into and can block or allow any combination of these categories. Above someone mentioned about not being able to reach biology related sites. I wonder if their admin is lazy and is using the default 'block all categories' setup. We didn't have these problems at our ISP since we paid attention to the categories and set the proper status on them. Also, at the specific site, you can allow certain sites to go through that may otherwise be blocked by a category.
Students do not own the connection, nor do they support it in any way, therefore, students should not be able to make decisions regarding the management of the school's internet connection.
Ok, so as more and more assignments require accessing information over the Internet, the students become tied to using Internet access to acheive this information. What of the students whose families are unable to provide Internet connections or decent computing power at home? The students only recourse is to access the information through the schools computers (or a library...but they are under the same filtering scheme most likely) and thus become subject to the targeted advertising. The schools are providing a free service, yes, but they are requiring their use more and more...so the students should have a say in how things are managed. If the only reason the Internet access was in school was to provide entertainment surfing during non-class-time, then your point might have a bit of worth.
Only if the refence you provide for the content is on your machine. You may simply provide a freenet key and the user can then obtain the file anonymously using freenet. You may provide an FTP location on some offshore server that is outside the bounds of US jurisdiction. It could be anywhere. The majority may be on your machine, but this isnt a requirement.
You mentioned right before this that the searching and transfering will be combined into a single client, which is a good first step towards making the system easy to use for most everyone.
However, with the above sentence, I still don't see this network becoming the widespread choice for Joe Q. User out there. Sure the enduser may be able to find the material and retrieve it easy now, but those wanting to present the material (may) have to go to greater lengths to protect themselves (if there should be a need to). If Joe Q. User wants to present his files anonymously, but has to tap into other resources (he/she will probably be unaware of freenet) to do this, the amount of data available on the network may not reach the 'mainstream popularity' levels needed to transform this into the next killer-app.
OTH, I do suppose nowadays, Joe Q. User is easily trackable through Napster as well (apologies if this not the case, I don't use the program). Even though workarounds allowed those banned users to reconnect, I presume that incoming/outgoing connection traces could still be produced resulting in end user addresses. If this is case, then the millions of Joe Q's out there don't really care about anonymity on the Internet (which, oddly enough, is mostly true). Thusly, they probably won't care about hosting the data (legal or illegal) on their own computer.
Perhaps an integration with Freenet somehow within one interface might be possible (sorry, not fully up on the workings of freenet today...gonna go study up on it now though) to make this an easy to use Ma & Pa app.
According the article, it doesn't sound like they are trying to create a new form of bateria per se. But rather looking for existing strains that already coexist in the natural environment. Hence the search for bateria living in the super-hot, CO2 spewing gysers of Yellowstone.
So provided they aren't looking to change the genetic structure of this creature, and attempt to provide it an environment it is used to living in, hopefully the chances of rapid mutation/evolution should be small. After all, if they are already feeding off of CO2 and thriving by the billions out in nature, there doesn't seem to any detrimental effects upon the environment currently due to them.
Of course, if exposure to radically new chemicals and waste allows for a increased chance of mutation (since they've most likely never been exposed to the crap they potentially might be), we could have a problem. Especially if the bateria adapts to survive and proliferate at normal temperatures. I suspect it still needs some medium to grow in, but if it were to become airborne, there could be the (hopefully very small) probability of them consuming CO2 right out of the atmosphere. This could lead to impacting vegetation growth...and if our vegetation cannot survive, we ourselves could have a big problem (ie: lack of O2, food sources, etc).
What about actually getting the data? Is it transferred over DTCP as well?
ALPINE will be heavily dependant on alternate delivery systems to actually *transfer* the data located within the network. The entire ALPINE is primarilly used for information location. This is the big hole in most peer based networks, as it is probably one of the more complex tasks. Once a resource has been located, you may use OceanStore, Freenet, Swarmcast, FTP, etc, to actually retreive the data. Trying to transfer anything of decent size over DTCP would be insane.
So it sounds initially they require the user to utilize two different programs to acheive their goal: 1) the Alpine to *find* the data, 2) something else to get it. I think in order for this system to reach widespread use (especially in the Windoze community), these two functions need to be combined into one interface. Is that not what helps proliferate Napster, people who barely know how to turn on the computer and quickly find and download stuff from one program. Perhaps they will incorporate both 'features' into a final product...or did I miss that in the faq?
Secondly, doesn't this facilitate in finding an end users location? After finding the information, now I get to manually enter the IP address into FTP to connect and download. Does this not make it easier for a program to simply track down 'file X', log IP addresses to file and then resolve these IP's and hunt down the users? It would seem that in the early stages of the networks growth, it could be easily quashed by the corporate forces as the number of users would be small and easy to track down/handle. OTH, if it scales as easily as it says it does into the billions of connections...at that point it might become futile trying to track down and wrangle up everyone. Still, industries could start going after random individuals and will probably inact a new law dispensing severe penalities for those caught (probably from precents set nowdays in the Napster case).
This is where having the same program find the files and transfer them could come in handy. Instead of ever presenting the final address, perhaps it could transfer this data amongst the network in an encrypted fashion. Then when the user see a match has been found for the data/file being searched, he/she tells the program to get it. Keeping the addressing route encrypted within itself should help issue of anonymous usage (I think this was mentioned earlier already as well).
Interesting system concept anyhow (what with the multiplexing schema).
I think that with individuals being able to run their own recording studios in their livingrooms we could see a move to making attainment of music much cheaper or even free.
The article mentions that perhaps the industry's move to implement watermarking will allow independent artists to distribute music using that technology. I don't quite see that happening, as I feel the RIAA will want to keep that technology to themselves.
What I think will happen, and should happen, is that musical artists should throw out their creations for free all over the Internet and elsewhere. Make themselves heard. I think their real compensation in the future will come from charging for live interaction.
Most of the music I listen to comes from local independent musicians who give away their CD's. But they are so good, it's worth every dollar to go see them at pubs and concert halls around town. It helps generate human contact and you spend time hanging out with your friends drinking beer and listening to good music. And this isn't just your back garage punk band...that isn't my mainstay of music nowadays (of course I still listen to it). These bands range from rock to ska to electronic DJ's to Jazz fusion and even classical. There is nothing quite as fun as being only 5 feet away from a good band...maybe even having a beer with them afterwards.
I'm sure touring is hard on bands, but most of my musician friends love it. They get to travel around, meet new people and do what they love doing. It helps inspire a better sense of community. Some of the extra good local bands here now have some followings in other states too. If I get a bands CD for free over the Internet, hear how good they are and hear rave reviews of their local concerts...I would travel across state to see them.
I don't know if their popularity will ever quite soar to where someone is shelling out $150 a ticket (yuk...U2!) to sit far away from the musicians in a large stadium. Rather impersonal. But I think those type of concerts will die out as well, once the RIAA loses its grip some more and stops the endless promoting of no-talen bands like N-sync and the like. Once they start losing their marketing grip, newer generations wont be so brainwashed into believing the tripe they promote today.
So in conclusion, I think these super-cheap home studios will lead to more free music for all. This will generate musicians who truly focus on their music and promote themselves through the community...not some faceless, money-grabbing corporation.
I think that the reason people fear this site, isnt so much what it depicts towards animals, but rather what it says about human nature.
The vast majority of people nowadays go about their daily routine ignoring and repressing most of their inner feelings and thoughts. Mostly due to societial/religious conditioning to keep those 'bad thoughts' out of their heads.
Along comes this site and people freak out...how could a 'human' do such a thing?? Worse still, how could a human even have a 'thought' like this?? Having been so conditioned to not even question that they themselves might have a 'dark-side'. There is no way they could ever conceive such a notion in their mind let alone do it.
Unfortunately the truth of the matter is (as most readers here know), we (humans) ARE capable of thinking and doing this sort of thing (...and worse). Of course thinking and acting on those thoughts are quite different. More people need to understand their own dark and violent nature to be able to control it and laugh at the cruel joke of it all.
The scary people out there are the ones who deny acknowledging their dark nature and then one day have it creep up and overtake them. Those are the people that would actually go and glue their cats anus shut and stuff them into a bottle. And later, after they are being hauled off to jail (or whatever), they are going "I don't know why I did it...". Neighbors saying "He seemed like such a nice person...".
More satire at our perverse nature wont desensitize us, it will allows us to better understand ourselves and lead more productive lives.
And for any trolls here from the humane society, sheesh read the sentence about them having a US government approved license for this...that should tip you to the joke of it all.
I guess I can speak from experience in regards to the ma and pa ISP's vanishing.
I worked for one such company here in northern CO for quite a while. Most of our problems were due to USWorst's line and switches servicing the rural boondocks...which we tended to cater to. But, personal customer service was prime. People would even bring their computers in for me to fix in the office. Well, a few years ago the owners decided it was time to get out of the business. Thus we got sold off to RMI.net (now IC&C). There happened to be about a dozen ma and pa ISP's that they purchased at the same time then, and all their customers went to the new company.
"We don't want to make a mistake like we did before, so you will have all the control over your customers" came the reassurance. "We wont be meddling with your business" was another. Of course, I'd heard such phrases before and began planning my escape route. And for the short time frame, things were just like before...just the checks were signed differently.
Sure enough, it only took them 5 months before massive layoffs. All the ma and pa ISP's employees got canned (well, less than 10 employees across then all stayed...but only for the final transition period, then they were gone too) including myself. Didn't mind, already had plan in place...plus I got a nice severance.
Now in the aftermath, the customer service and technical support is lacking...due to the fact that it is centralized in another state. Also, the companies main services are to big businesses, so all the residential customers kinda get crapped on. Heck, I had a dozen or so customers actually track me down a few months after I left looking for some help.
So it goes I guess. Probably only a matter of time before they hand all their residential customers over to ATT or Juno or AOHell.
I have actually been working on this idea for a few years now and should point out a few ideas here in case Ford is listening.
1 - The governing idea is not so good. As much as I dislike the majority of people who feel they can go as fast as they want anytime/anywhere they want (a whole other rant I wont go into right now), having the ability to speed in an emergency needs to be left to the individual driver.
2 - The GPS speed zone information is a good thing. However, many people mentioning it here seem to see the speed zone information being stored in a fixed device in the users car (kind of like buying Street Atlas CD and running it on your laptop in your car). Most likely the speed zone database will be centralized (not a super good idea, but should keep the information current) and continuously updated and sent to your car. It is probably an unused feature of OnStar (or used...I dont have that system) right now. This can allow the area in question to have quickly updated information sent out to all vehicles in question in the area. A school zone would register as 15-20mph in early morning and afternoon, but register as 35 the rest of the day.
3 - Getting this information to the driver should and probably will be done via heads up display, instead of todays viewscreens where the driver has to take his eyes off the road. With a HUD, the driver could see his current speed and the speed zone information right in front. Very useful for when that speed limit sign has been obscured by excessive tree growth!
4 - Back to governing. Instead of allowing some computer to hope that its getting the right signal and then limit the speed, it could notify the nearest officer on patrol. Probably in a unmarked car, the officer could approach the potential speeder (they'll know where they are at by the GPS info), match speed and see if system is reporting true then make arrest or what-have-you. Perhaps give the officer the ability (instead of arresting first time offenders) to activate the governer and bring the vehicle back down to normal speed. This could also give said individual a chance to say "Hey, the wifes giving birth here...how about an escort?"
Good stuff and needed too, since the population is only increasing and everyone just has to have a car. The situation is quite bad here in Colorado along most of the I-25 corridor, and I've seen worse on some of the California speedways too.
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So, he is watching this fairly brutal footage of dead soldiers from the war (missing body parts, fairly un-recognizable body masses, lots of black-n-white blood) and causually questions how much those actors are getting paid. From his prior experience to media, he just figured it was all fake. This of course was the time that we all helped him understand the critical distinction that that footage was REAL (as opposed to blaming PBS for showing such horrific footage). They weren't actors, and they weren't coming back to life. Pretty sobbering for him at the time, I remember him crying for quite awhile.
My point here is, we took that time to help him understand the distinctions between real and fantasy. And encouraged him to always ask for clarification when confused in the future. You provide that personal attention and care to your children/siblings and they will be better for it.
He has since gone through a multitude of violent gaming sprees on his computer and knows that none of that need be expressed by himself in the real world. He's been picked on, scorned by bullies, etc. through high school, but knew that the answer was not to retaliate in a violent manner as others have recently.
Whether or not the shooters at Columbine ever truly learned this distinction is a moot point now. We can never truly know. But I can only think that this extra attention can only be beneficial to your children in the long run.
A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
"1.5Ghz. It's there. Except when you need it."
You have stated a somewhat similar strategy to the one that they came up with in the article. However, you must realize that there is a condition to the game which you are omitting: "Once they have had a chance to look at the other hats, the players must simultaneously guess the color of their own hats or pass."
Your solution can lead to 100% success, *IF* the players can guess in succession (this eliminates ever losing when the hats are all the same color). However, since the rules of the puzzle state that all three must guess at the same time, the cases where all the hats are the same color inject the possibility of them all being wrong. Hence lowering the probability down to 75%, or whatever they came up with. To show how they would be wrong with your strategy: if all hats are same color, and all players must guess simultaneously, all three would say 'pass' (since each one sees the other two wearing the same colored hats). Since no one guessed correctly, no one wins.
The article is a little funny with its wording when it says the following: "The group can win every time this happens by using the following strategy: Once the game starts, each player looks at the other two players' hats. If the two hats are different colors, he passes. If they are the same color, the player guesses his own hat is the opposite color." This makes it sound like they are guessing in succession, when in reality this is the strategy chosen and executed concurrently among all the players to maximize their chance of winning.
From what I see of your strategy, you base the success rate on only one person guessing correctly while the other two may be right or wrong. If Player 3 is always guessing red, but really has blue which causes Player 2 to guess red, they all still lose since one of them (player 3) guessed incorrectly.
I'm sure I've heard of this happening many times from others, so I know it's nothing isolated. I just wonder, when is a good time for sending in a particular 'genre' of submission? Is paranoid conspiracy theory more likely to be posted in the late night than the light of day? Will M$ bashing articles achieve higher success rate between the hours of 2pm and 4pm?
Ah well, I'm tired, enough bitching for the night. Carry on.
Actually, the new dreaded Windows XP claims that it automatically calls Windows Update in the background whenever the user is connected to the Internet (which M$ probably wants to be all the time). Therefore, Joe average user *supposedly* doesn't need to worry about manually doing the updates...good ole M$ will make sure his computer is running nice and clean all the time.
Interesting that some companies tried to cash in on this...such as those who made 'Oil Change'. Never used it myself, but I believe the premise is that it scans all your programs installed, then goes out on the Interenet and see if there are updates for them and subsequently dl's and installs them. The user still has to run the program, but supposedly doesn't have to worry about anything else.
I'm actually curious how the auto-WindowsUpdate will work if someone immeadiately installs ZoneLabs 'ZoneAlarm' on their machine. It's pretty good at detecting foreign things running on your machine. It would probably block the update and the user would think it's a trojan program running on their machine. Come to think of it, I think ZoneAlarm would stop this IE defect. If the firewall is running properly, when the illegal code tries to run itself on your machine, it wouldn't be able to go back through the firewall. Even if it modified IE (zonealarm wont run a program after an update unless you tell it to...it doesn't rely on trusting the name of the program) and tried to run through that it should be stopped. Unless they've found a way through ZoneAlarm....
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
Interesting you mention this. After reading this I went back to the main page and saw the error. Then I refreshed the main page (about 10-15 minutes had elapsed), and the "by" had been corrected to "be". Seems Timothy either read your comment or corrected his error on his own.
Back to the subject on hand, I found it intriguing to read the old /. article posted 2 years ago and see how many people disregarded this as a total sham. While I am still a tiny bit skeptical (prefering to experience the performance first hand to truly understand it), it would appear the product is viable enough if NASA and other supercomputing centers are using this. It will be a good follow up to see in the next few months the actual 'real-world' computing performance this has imparted to NASA's research.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
The latency here varies but for game playing I'm generally around 110 ping...kinda crappy I think for a broadband connection. But, they do limit upload speeds here to only 128Kb/s, so that adds to the suckage.
Downloads and page loads are quite fast as my particular neighborhood isn't saturated yet. Although speeds typically drop during 6p-10p as the girl next door with the same service overloads on Napster downloads. Have peaked out at 400KB/s during big downloads, which equates to roughly 3Mb/s...and oddly enough, my best times are during the midday rush.
Funny thing during the installation. The service guy is finishing everything up and the last check box says something like, 'show user fast download speed'. So he goes to some site that downloads a few things and reports your speed. Well, it was only a few small files and very small graphic files spanning only a few seconds. The page comes back showing a download of around 600KB/s or around 4.8Mb/s (which is possible in burst speeds since the pipe can in theory pass up to 10Mb/s). Well a graphic comes up showing a relation to other speeds. It goes something like 14.4 modem, 28.8, 56k, 128k, T1 and then...T3! It flashes a big message, 'your connection is better than a T3 connection!' I fell over laughing my ass off. The service guy doesn't get it, why don't I like my T3 connection? I just shake my head and *pray* that the web page people made a typo and dont really think that a T3 classification is just taking a T1 and multiplying by 3 (their logic is T1=1.5Mb/s therefore 4.5Mbs=T3 WRONG! T3 classification is approximately 45Mb/s...something which if correct would be quite awesome) I can just imagine there are tons of my neighbors going "gee honey, we got ourselves a T3 connection, we're really cool!"
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
If the sites themselves are complaining about no one able to find their content, aren't there ways to help that? Run a query on their database site to generate a possible site list of the content and then provide that list to the search engines. The search engines could then provide a link (found based on a content search) that would put the user on the page where they enter the form (or whatever) information to generate the page needed. Not being familiar with XML, but knowing that it has some features to aid in content grouping, could this be needed to recode the sites in?
Obviously if the sites themselves dont want this deep content easily viewed except by deep clicking through their whole site, or some pay-per-view system, that is their choice. I feel that they are limiting themselves however. If they think they have robust enough content to useful to users, they should strive to make that content as widely available as possible.
Should proprietory websites even be considered as 'Internet-web content'? Those seem to me to be 'Intranet content' which most often should not be seen by the general public (ie: internal company policies only needed by employess of company X). For that information to be set free you should either need a very savvy person to break in from the outside or a traitor from the inside. If its only certain products listed that the company doesn't want to available to the public, well that is too bad for them, I'll just get a quote elsewhere and pay someone else my money.
"evidence of a widening gap between the deep Web and the freely-accessible 'surface Web,' which could become a clutter of recreational and amateur-oriented content -- the online equivalent of public cable access television or self-published novels." Funny, ever since the late eighties, I've always seen the whole web like this. It's more like the big corporations tried to muscle in on the public cable channel and realized they might be better off on their own channel.
Not your normal AC.
I think both of these people missed the possible violation of privacy surrounding this software. Whether or not you fill in the 'registration' part of the software, the 'activation' part still happens over the Internet. I refuse to believe that when the clearinghouse handling this receives an activation request via the Internet, that it is going to throw away the IP header information from whence it came (this should leave a pretty good breadcrumb trail to you). Good marketing information actually, now they'll know just how many people coming from Ma-n-Pa ISP in Idaho are using their new product. And for those who activate over the phone (I believe this will be available), I'm sure they will social engineer more information out of you than you would care to give.
Now they probably couldn't go after every violation that will crop up. But say they see a large number of 'instances' occuring from a particular subnet range (small company perhaps, or a small community sharing a local ISP). They could nab a large group all at once.
Not your normal AC.
While the override feature is nice, it can get very tedious and suddenly you end up with a ton of holes punched through your filter. Plus it only allows up to an hours worth of viewing before you have to re-enter your password again (correct me if that part is wrong, I just remember we couldn't put in more than 59 minutes...that might have been semantics on our part). Are not all pages under the Bess filter still personally screened by actually people as they claimed to us that they were? Sounds like a) the pages are not eye screened anymore, b) they are but the people doing it are not placing them in the correct categories anymore, c) the school server admin turned on 'block all categories'.
I would suggest your friend go to the school server admin and work with him/her to fix the category blocking.
And finally, I think IP addressing allows circumvention...but I can't remember trying this on Bess. You will basically need to do a dnslookup on the domain name to get the IP address of the website. Then just try going to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and see if that works. Also, I think if you convert it to octal (cant remember, it was posted here earlier) form it should work (looks something like http://485720959295). If someone knows that formula, please post it.
Not your normal Ac.
Having been an admin at a small ISP which offered a separate Bess service to customers, I can say the above may not always be the case. The data collected through the filters is completely traceable right back to the users account on the ISP. Granted, *initially*, they were probably stripping off that information so that the marketeers had no tracing ability. But what if, down the road, the DOD was concerned why it was getting so many hits on certain website...it wouldn't take much to get the information it needed.
On a side note here, if i remember right, Bess always claimed to have 200+ people who personally reveiwed pages in order to distinguish between pr0n sex sites and biology-sex sites. Then these pages are placed into similar sounding categories. Therefore, the admin has typically around 3-4 dozen categories that sites fall into and can block or allow any combination of these categories. Above someone mentioned about not being able to reach biology related sites. I wonder if their admin is lazy and is using the default 'block all categories' setup. We didn't have these problems at our ISP since we paid attention to the categories and set the proper status on them. Also, at the specific site, you can allow certain sites to go through that may otherwise be blocked by a category.
Students do not own the connection, nor do they support it in any way, therefore, students should not be able to make decisions regarding the management of the school's internet connection.
Ok, so as more and more assignments require accessing information over the Internet, the students become tied to using Internet access to acheive this information. What of the students whose families are unable to provide Internet connections or decent computing power at home? The students only recourse is to access the information through the schools computers (or a library...but they are under the same filtering scheme most likely) and thus become subject to the targeted advertising. The schools are providing a free service, yes, but they are requiring their use more and more...so the students should have a say in how things are managed. If the only reason the Internet access was in school was to provide entertainment surfing during non-class-time, then your point might have a bit of worth.
Not your normal AC
You mentioned right before this that the searching and transfering will be combined into a single client, which is a good first step towards making the system easy to use for most everyone.
However, with the above sentence, I still don't see this network becoming the widespread choice for Joe Q. User out there. Sure the enduser may be able to find the material and retrieve it easy now, but those wanting to present the material (may) have to go to greater lengths to protect themselves (if there should be a need to). If Joe Q. User wants to present his files anonymously, but has to tap into other resources (he/she will probably be unaware of freenet) to do this, the amount of data available on the network may not reach the 'mainstream popularity' levels needed to transform this into the next killer-app.
OTH, I do suppose nowadays, Joe Q. User is easily trackable through Napster as well (apologies if this not the case, I don't use the program). Even though workarounds allowed those banned users to reconnect, I presume that incoming/outgoing connection traces could still be produced resulting in end user addresses. If this is case, then the millions of Joe Q's out there don't really care about anonymity on the Internet (which, oddly enough, is mostly true). Thusly, they probably won't care about hosting the data (legal or illegal) on their own computer.
Perhaps an integration with Freenet somehow within one interface might be possible (sorry, not fully up on the workings of freenet today...gonna go study up on it now though) to make this an easy to use Ma & Pa app.
Not your normal AC.
So provided they aren't looking to change the genetic structure of this creature, and attempt to provide it an environment it is used to living in, hopefully the chances of rapid mutation/evolution should be small. After all, if they are already feeding off of CO2 and thriving by the billions out in nature, there doesn't seem to any detrimental effects upon the environment currently due to them.
Of course, if exposure to radically new chemicals and waste allows for a increased chance of mutation (since they've most likely never been exposed to the crap they potentially might be), we could have a problem. Especially if the bateria adapts to survive and proliferate at normal temperatures. I suspect it still needs some medium to grow in, but if it were to become airborne, there could be the (hopefully very small) probability of them consuming CO2 right out of the atmosphere. This could lead to impacting vegetation growth...and if our vegetation cannot survive, we ourselves could have a big problem (ie: lack of O2, food sources, etc).
Not your normal AC.
What about actually getting the data? Is it transferred over DTCP as well?
ALPINE will be heavily dependant on alternate delivery systems to actually *transfer* the data located within the network. The entire ALPINE is primarilly used for information location. This is the big hole in most peer based networks, as it is probably one of the more complex tasks. Once a resource has been located, you may use OceanStore, Freenet, Swarmcast, FTP, etc, to actually retreive the data. Trying to transfer anything of decent size over DTCP would be insane.
So it sounds initially they require the user to utilize two different programs to acheive their goal: 1) the Alpine to *find* the data, 2) something else to get it. I think in order for this system to reach widespread use (especially in the Windoze community), these two functions need to be combined into one interface. Is that not what helps proliferate Napster, people who barely know how to turn on the computer and quickly find and download stuff from one program. Perhaps they will incorporate both 'features' into a final product...or did I miss that in the faq?
Secondly, doesn't this facilitate in finding an end users location? After finding the information, now I get to manually enter the IP address into FTP to connect and download. Does this not make it easier for a program to simply track down 'file X', log IP addresses to file and then resolve these IP's and hunt down the users? It would seem that in the early stages of the networks growth, it could be easily quashed by the corporate forces as the number of users would be small and easy to track down/handle. OTH, if it scales as easily as it says it does into the billions of connections...at that point it might become futile trying to track down and wrangle up everyone. Still, industries could start going after random individuals and will probably inact a new law dispensing severe penalities for those caught (probably from precents set nowdays in the Napster case).
This is where having the same program find the files and transfer them could come in handy. Instead of ever presenting the final address, perhaps it could transfer this data amongst the network in an encrypted fashion. Then when the user see a match has been found for the data/file being searched, he/she tells the program to get it. Keeping the addressing route encrypted within itself should help issue of anonymous usage (I think this was mentioned earlier already as well).
Interesting system concept anyhow (what with the multiplexing schema).
Not your normal AC.
The article mentions that perhaps the industry's move to implement watermarking will allow independent artists to distribute music using that technology. I don't quite see that happening, as I feel the RIAA will want to keep that technology to themselves.
What I think will happen, and should happen, is that musical artists should throw out their creations for free all over the Internet and elsewhere. Make themselves heard. I think their real compensation in the future will come from charging for live interaction.
Most of the music I listen to comes from local independent musicians who give away their CD's. But they are so good, it's worth every dollar to go see them at pubs and concert halls around town. It helps generate human contact and you spend time hanging out with your friends drinking beer and listening to good music. And this isn't just your back garage punk band...that isn't my mainstay of music nowadays (of course I still listen to it). These bands range from rock to ska to electronic DJ's to Jazz fusion and even classical. There is nothing quite as fun as being only 5 feet away from a good band...maybe even having a beer with them afterwards.
I'm sure touring is hard on bands, but most of my musician friends love it. They get to travel around, meet new people and do what they love doing. It helps inspire a better sense of community. Some of the extra good local bands here now have some followings in other states too. If I get a bands CD for free over the Internet, hear how good they are and hear rave reviews of their local concerts...I would travel across state to see them.
I don't know if their popularity will ever quite soar to where someone is shelling out $150 a ticket (yuk...U2!) to sit far away from the musicians in a large stadium. Rather impersonal. But I think those type of concerts will die out as well, once the RIAA loses its grip some more and stops the endless promoting of no-talen bands like N-sync and the like. Once they start losing their marketing grip, newer generations wont be so brainwashed into believing the tripe they promote today.
So in conclusion, I think these super-cheap home studios will lead to more free music for all. This will generate musicians who truly focus on their music and promote themselves through the community...not some faceless, money-grabbing corporation.
- not your normal AC
The vast majority of people nowadays go about their daily routine ignoring and repressing most of their inner feelings and thoughts. Mostly due to societial/religious conditioning to keep those 'bad thoughts' out of their heads.
Along comes this site and people freak out...how could a 'human' do such a thing?? Worse still, how could a human even have a 'thought' like this?? Having been so conditioned to not even question that they themselves might have a 'dark-side'. There is no way they could ever conceive such a notion in their mind let alone do it.
Unfortunately the truth of the matter is (as most readers here know), we (humans) ARE capable of thinking and doing this sort of thing (...and worse). Of course thinking and acting on those thoughts are quite different. More people need to understand their own dark and violent nature to be able to control it and laugh at the cruel joke of it all.
The scary people out there are the ones who deny acknowledging their dark nature and then one day have it creep up and overtake them. Those are the people that would actually go and glue their cats anus shut and stuff them into a bottle. And later, after they are being hauled off to jail (or whatever), they are going "I don't know why I did it...". Neighbors saying "He seemed like such a nice person...".
More satire at our perverse nature wont desensitize us, it will allows us to better understand ourselves and lead more productive lives.
And for any trolls here from the humane society, sheesh read the sentence about them having a US government approved license for this...that should tip you to the joke of it all.
-not your normal AC
I worked for one such company here in northern CO for quite a while. Most of our problems were due to USWorst's line and switches servicing the rural boondocks...which we tended to cater to. But, personal customer service was prime. People would even bring their computers in for me to fix in the office. Well, a few years ago the owners decided it was time to get out of the business. Thus we got sold off to RMI.net (now IC&C). There happened to be about a dozen ma and pa ISP's that they purchased at the same time then, and all their customers went to the new company.
"We don't want to make a mistake like we did before, so you will have all the control over your customers" came the reassurance. "We wont be meddling with your business" was another. Of course, I'd heard such phrases before and began planning my escape route. And for the short time frame, things were just like before...just the checks were signed differently.
Sure enough, it only took them 5 months before massive layoffs. All the ma and pa ISP's employees got canned (well, less than 10 employees across then all stayed...but only for the final transition period, then they were gone too) including myself. Didn't mind, already had plan in place...plus I got a nice severance.
Now in the aftermath, the customer service and technical support is lacking...due to the fact that it is centralized in another state. Also, the companies main services are to big businesses, so all the residential customers kinda get crapped on. Heck, I had a dozen or so customers actually track me down a few months after I left looking for some help.
So it goes I guess. Probably only a matter of time before they hand all their residential customers over to ATT or Juno or AOHell.
1 - The governing idea is not so good. As much as I dislike the majority of people who feel they can go as fast as they want anytime/anywhere they want (a whole other rant I wont go into right now), having the ability to speed in an emergency needs to be left to the individual driver.
2 - The GPS speed zone information is a good thing. However, many people mentioning it here seem to see the speed zone information being stored in a fixed device in the users car (kind of like buying Street Atlas CD and running it on your laptop in your car). Most likely the speed zone database will be centralized (not a super good idea, but should keep the information current) and continuously updated and sent to your car. It is probably an unused feature of OnStar (or used...I dont have that system) right now. This can allow the area in question to have quickly updated information sent out to all vehicles in question in the area. A school zone would register as 15-20mph in early morning and afternoon, but register as 35 the rest of the day.
3 - Getting this information to the driver should and probably will be done via heads up display, instead of todays viewscreens where the driver has to take his eyes off the road. With a HUD, the driver could see his current speed and the speed zone information right in front. Very useful for when that speed limit sign has been obscured by excessive tree growth!
4 - Back to governing. Instead of allowing some computer to hope that its getting the right signal and then limit the speed, it could notify the nearest officer on patrol. Probably in a unmarked car, the officer could approach the potential speeder (they'll know where they are at by the GPS info), match speed and see if system is reporting true then make arrest or what-have-you. Perhaps give the officer the ability (instead of arresting first time offenders) to activate the governer and bring the vehicle back down to normal speed. This could also give said individual a chance to say "Hey, the wifes giving birth here...how about an escort?"
Good stuff and needed too, since the population is only increasing and everyone just has to have a car. The situation is quite bad here in Colorado along most of the I-25 corridor, and I've seen worse on some of the California speedways too.
Anemophilous
- exploring all that which is...on his bike.