The great thing about card games is that there's a finite number of cards dealt, and therefore statistical rules apply... the chances of drawing an Ace from a deck of cards increase for every non-Ace you draw.
Y'know, you're right. And colluding 'bots can take advantage of shared hand data, you're also quite right. Certainly inescapable when we're modeling a finite 52-card deck.
Maybe we oughta stop doing that? Game wouldn't change too far, except in the farthest edge cases. Wonder what the changes would look like.
I want it clunky, I want it unworkable, I want it ineffective, and I want it to crash systems. I want it to destroy data. I want it to/cost you money/. Cost to maintain, cost to repair, cost to replace.
What kind of crazy person would slit their own wrists just because the knife is 'open source'?
I could have just clicked "Submit" without proofreading it. I didn't, because I took the care to make sure that it was at least reasonably free of typos. And gee, if the result of my posting would be a transaction of hundreds of millions of dollars, I would have proofread it even more carefully.
You'd think that, but there's still a little ground to cover. Let's talk/scale/. You checked your post quite carefully... one of, what, five posts you made today? Ten? But you had the leisure to take as much time as you liked with your post, in an environment, if not/removed/ from your workplace, at least just a little less stressful than it had to be.
Authors can't proofread their own work. Can you believe that? All they do is make words, and they have to hire a person -- lots of 'em, sometimes -- whose sole job is to sit around and correct typos. Talk about careless.
My fiancee worked in a credit-card payment processing facility. Lightning-fast ten-key work. They did a fair bit of quality control... and they never, ever, checked their own work. Sure, honesty's a part of it... but only part. The other part is the fact that you see what you meant to do.
Last element is scope. A hundred bajillion dollar transaction is pretty impressive... the first time you do it. Even the tenth time. Not the thousandth.
There is/no circumstance/ in which I would fire a person for one genuine mistake, and it's my job to make such calls. I just won't do it. Error/will/ happen. It's management's job to prevent error, and waving my hands and saying "don't err" is/not management/. Providing training (note the story uses the word "unfamiliar", always a damning sign) and supplying intelligent tools and processes that fight error is the way you handle that.
When you see a mistake,/figure out what caused it/ and/figure out how to keep it from happening again/. If you come up with "fire the worthless layabout", you're just not doing your job -- worse, you're actively sabotaging it, because you've done nothing to keep it from happening again. Oh, sure, tell me about how much more careful everyone will be now that they're brushing up their resumes and preemptively interviewing elsewhere because they know you won't protect them.
Engineers aren't impressed because they see crummy systems. Managers aren't impressed because they see crummy employee handling. I suppose the stockholders -- and you -- aren't impressed because, hey, they lost an awful lot of money there. It's just more complicated than that.
Is this person helpless? Is she unable to fend for herself in the world? Is she not responsible for her own actions, positive or negative? She did something, she screwed it up in a major way, and she should suffer the consequences of it. Other heads will roll, but before you chop the heads off of the people who allowed someone to do something massively stupid, you first fire the person who actually did something massively stupid.
Long post there. Got everything spelled right, too, I see. Emphasis all in the right places. Proper paragraphing, all the parenthesis balanced right. Good job.
But... you do all that in one shot? Just slam down a couple hundred words and smack the Post button? No. You didn't. You told it to Preview the post -- you made use of the system's built-in error-correction functions, enabling you to properly review your submission.
You can see where I'm going with this.
Slashdot's viewers are jumping all over the company because the signs of a trans-user cock-up are glaringly obvious to anyone who's ever been, seen, or inflicted a user with a bad interface getting hosed.
You can't be perfect all the time. Error is a part of life. You will make errors. You engineer systems to detect and correct them. Computers are only part of these systems, too. Workflow, double-checks --/you shouldn't be able to do that kind of damage with a typo/. Remember the story about the battleship on manuevers some ensign killed with a divide-by-zero? They cashier him? No, they did not. (Never, ever, ever letting him live it down,/ever/, no matter what -- different story.)
Malice earns termination, determined malfeasance or just plain failure to perform earns termination, sure, never dream of arguing. A spectacular debacle earning/demotion/? Sure, I can see it. But firing someone for a/typo/? That's an engineering problem, not HR.
My work is better and safer than that. Or it tries to be.
Were you even reading? If churches/unions/bosses/leaders/spouses can get away with forcing an overall total of many thousands of voters to knowingly vote a particular way against their will AND get away with it, the country is already in so deep shit that that's a minor concern.
Look. If --/today, at this very moment/ -- we suddenly started issuing receipts that would verify votes, what do you really think would happen? Do you really think that churches and unions would/not/ hold rallies and exert tremendous pressures on people to show their "solidarity" for this cause or that candidate?
Do you think they wouldn't use such a/weapon/? It wouldn't... occur to them, or it wouldn't be worth/doing/?
By the time a country can allow people to force thousands of voters to _knowingly_ vote a particular way, AND get away with it
Were you even listening?/Country/-level force was the one vector I wasn't worried about and didn't mention. It's your church or your union or your family I fear.
... encrypted serial number for each vote. After you vote your code can be printed on a receipt and you can use the code online to verify that your vote was counted correctly.
THAT's why it hasn't caught on. This either dangerous or worthless. If you can see who you voted for, I can make you show me who you voted for, and I can punish noncompliance. If you can't see who you voted for, then you don't know a darn thing about how or if your vote was counted.
Receipts the voter takes home do not work. Ever. The voter must be completely unaccountable to third parties, and any receipt they can receive can be demanded and checked for adherence to the demander's agenda. Want a raise? Want an A? Want cash? Want to go to Heaven? Then hand over that receipt, and we'll make sure you voted right.
...and to top it all off, the file extensions were ".cp". So I was like great, is this C code or C++ code? I wasn't able to tell from browsing two files so I said to myself "well, if it's C++ there has to be a class in there somewhere, right?".
It was C+ code, combining features of both languages.
300 terabytes, advancing to a petabyte in three years? I can see it now.
"Yeah! We got it! The whole Human Genome! We scanned that sucker in... wait, what? You meant.../all/ the genome? Okay. Uhm. Well, we already got Alice scanned in. I guess we can have Bob done in another couple years or so, maybe Charlie after that, but I think we're going to need to look at how we're doing this..."
I pledge, the next time I hear of such a possible exploit, to rip as much information from the system as the website gives me permission to retrieve. Every bit of it -- I shall construct scripts, pore over forums, and create a list of possible students whose data I will then attempt to extract.
Additionally, with these links in hand, I shall paste them to random places on the internet, and specific places such as the most likely forums to find such students. I will also disguise their nature and essence, so that users will not know what they click on until it's too late.
So the next time Stanford comes calling, you go ahead and/blame me/. I could've been the one to do it, after all. You don't know I didn't. They don't know I didn't.
Or they could just accept that their own goddamn marketing department creates an illusion of prestige, and that people with a limited amount of time to waste on non-responsive colleges/sitting on/ important information like that are going to want to know who to stop wasting time on, and that if they don't like it they can/fix their fucking permissions/. Do they not know any decent webapp programmers? Who've they been graduating?
The "innocent animal" bit only makes sense if you also consider mosquitos innocent, the earthworms that get sliced up by farm equipment creating vegan meals to be innocent, and so on. Bah. This topic is so rife with nonsensical, contradictory emotional baggage and anthropomorphized Disney-esque pablum. Yeesh.
I'll give you that. Wholly and without question, your words are true as written.
But that/still/ doesn't mean I have to give the slightest amount of respect to anybody who talks about the "sport" of hunting -- or one who decries "internet hunting" as somehow less pure. Both end with a bag of meat that used to be breathing, and neither bullet, arrow, noose, pipe bomb, or laser tripmine is more "sporty" than the other.
When you get down to it, as long as you aren't actually driving the species extinct, I have to conclude that I don't especially care if you're blowing animals away or not. America employs a great many people who stand around/deciding/ when and how you may blow animals away; I have to conclude they know what they're talking about. You wanna go do that, fine. Go for it. I'm not stopping you.
If those guys took bribes for product placement, they could make a mint without ever selling a game.
(Imagine players struggling to find those last -- goodness. Anything. Or borrow a page straight from PA's playbook, and play a level while keeping your Thirst Bar full with refreshing Sprite bottles.)
The bonus level where you pick up alcoholic beverages with a katamari and have the Lord of All Cosmos mix you a drink would be silly, I suppose.
Another example of the growing and insidious meme "since digitial information is so easy to steal, it must be OK to do so".
Rather try, "Because digital information is so easy to/infringe/ -- it is of course neither theft nor piracy, and if we're going to make up words I'm going to call it copyright jaywalking -- perhaps the laws surrounding it need to be reexamined."
Sherlock. Dinner With Moriarty. And the inestimably difficult Watson's Map.
You may need someone to help you to a wall that you might bang your head against it, though.
Kaser's games are the most delightful puzzles of symbolic logic and deduction. Clean and simple, they'll keep you busy... pretty much forever. Shareware versions are available for download.
Dan Rather was actually good at hiding his political beliefs, I doubt Stewart could be as successful.
Just because it's viciously slanted is no reason not to trust him -- after all, you know how far to trust him. What's to worry about?
Even someone pretending to be neutral has agendas you can't see, can't know, and can barely even guess at. Pressure from corporate owners? Pressure from sources for favorable reports to ensure future access to the source?
Stewart's/fake/ news show is quite literally the only one I watch. I rely on newswires for everything else. I'd have no more reason to distrust Stewart as a real newsguy than I would any other -- less, actually.
I hope to God that Samantha Bee falls down a well, though.
I haven't read anything to suggest that they'll use it for self-checkout purposes.
I/have/ -- at least suggestions, if not anything definite. Even so, haven't you read the RFID vendor propaganda? THEY darn well suggest using it for self-checkout.
But thanks for the handy tips on shoplifting. The next time I want to steal from a company because I feel they're too rich already, I'll remember you.
Outlining security flaws in a plan/yet to be deployed/ can only be a service./My/ employers -- and yours -- might someday have cause to consider something similar. Hopefully you'll remember me then, too.
By not using UPCs -- Wal-Mart's pushing for RFID tags in all God's merchandise. That'd make self-checkout both faster and more difficult to defeat.
Although... with a portable software RFID reader and tag broadcaster, and a soft canvas tote bag lined with copper mesh, you might be able to scam it after all.
Yeah -- a Faraday cage with a reader on the inside and a multiple-channel transmitter on the other. (Hardwired together. I know.) Stick a recycle/globe logo on the bag's surface, so it's a hippie shopping bag.
Items are dropped into the bag and their code is stored. The bag transmits either that item code or a previously scanned code of a similar but cheaper item. Field user interface is dead simple.
If they use and trust RFID for self-checkout, wait until things are/very/ busy, grab a bunch of items that turn into much smaller items in your tote, wave it at the stand, pay in cash, and saunter on out the most crowded door. Flash the receipt at the harried greeter on your way out.
Primary weakness is either visual inspections by/sharp-eyed/ and diligent greeters or trained professionals who recognize aberrant behavior and have the leeway to follow it up.
Honestly, though, these people deserved to be caught. They found $10K in stolen goods? They used an/informant/ to track 'em down? Waaaaaaaaay too big a footprint. Bound to happen. Bringing in friends and making it a/business/ and -- you just know they had to brag about it. Mention it to people.
Slashdot Mirror
Y'know, you're right. And colluding 'bots can take advantage of shared hand data, you're also quite right. Certainly inescapable when we're modeling a finite 52-card deck.
Maybe we oughta stop doing that? Game wouldn't change too far, except in the farthest edge cases. Wonder what the changes would look like.
I want it clunky, I want it unworkable, I want it ineffective, and I want it to crash systems. I want it to destroy data. I want it to /cost you money/. Cost to maintain, cost to repair, cost to replace.
What kind of crazy person would slit their own wrists just because the knife is 'open source'?
Have you seen what color ink is going for lately? Be lucky to break even if you printed anything smaller than 20s.
So I bought ten egregiously bad ones from a display at Wal-Mart and six shotglasses.
You'd think that, but there's still a little ground to cover. Let's talk /scale/. You checked your post quite carefully... one of, what, five posts you made today? Ten? But you had the leisure to take as much time as you liked with your post, in an environment, if not /removed/ from your workplace, at least just a little less stressful than it had to be.
Authors can't proofread their own work. Can you believe that? All they do is make words, and they have to hire a person -- lots of 'em, sometimes -- whose sole job is to sit around and correct typos. Talk about careless.
My fiancee worked in a credit-card payment processing facility. Lightning-fast ten-key work. They did a fair bit of quality control... and they never, ever, checked their own work. Sure, honesty's a part of it... but only part. The other part is the fact that you see what you meant to do.
Last element is scope. A hundred bajillion dollar transaction is pretty impressive... the first time you do it. Even the tenth time. Not the thousandth.
There is /no circumstance/ in which I would fire a person for one genuine mistake, and it's my job to make such calls. I just won't do it. Error /will/ happen. It's management's job to prevent error, and waving my hands and saying "don't err" is /not management/. Providing training (note the story uses the word "unfamiliar", always a damning sign) and supplying intelligent tools and processes that fight error is the way you handle that.
When you see a mistake, /figure out what caused it/ and /figure out how to keep it from happening again/. If you come up with "fire the worthless layabout", you're just not doing your job -- worse, you're actively sabotaging it, because you've done nothing to keep it from happening again. Oh, sure, tell me about how much more careful everyone will be now that they're brushing up their resumes and preemptively interviewing elsewhere because they know you won't protect them.
Engineers aren't impressed because they see crummy systems. Managers aren't impressed because they see crummy employee handling. I suppose the stockholders -- and you -- aren't impressed because, hey, they lost an awful lot of money there. It's just more complicated than that.
Long post there. Got everything spelled right, too, I see. Emphasis all in the right places. Proper paragraphing, all the parenthesis balanced right. Good job.
But... you do all that in one shot? Just slam down a couple hundred words and smack the Post button? No. You didn't. You told it to Preview the post -- you made use of the system's built-in error-correction functions, enabling you to properly review your submission.
You can see where I'm going with this.
Slashdot's viewers are jumping all over the company because the signs of a trans-user cock-up are glaringly obvious to anyone who's ever been, seen, or inflicted a user with a bad interface getting hosed.
You can't be perfect all the time. Error is a part of life. You will make errors. You engineer systems to detect and correct them. Computers are only part of these systems, too. Workflow, double-checks -- /you shouldn't be able to do that kind of damage with a typo/. Remember the story about the battleship on manuevers some ensign killed with a divide-by-zero? They cashier him? No, they did not. (Never, ever, ever letting him live it down, /ever/, no matter what -- different story.)
Malice earns termination, determined malfeasance or just plain failure to perform earns termination, sure, never dream of arguing. A spectacular debacle earning /demotion/? Sure, I can see it. But firing someone for a /typo/? That's an engineering problem, not HR.
My work is better and safer than that. Or it tries to be.
... then we need to /fix this/.
Look. If -- /today, at this very moment/ -- we suddenly started issuing receipts that would verify votes, what do you really think would happen? Do you really think that churches and unions would /not/ hold rallies and exert tremendous pressures on people to show their "solidarity" for this cause or that candidate?
Do you think they wouldn't use such a /weapon/? It wouldn't... occur to them, or it wouldn't be worth /doing/?
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?
Were you even listening? /Country/-level force was the one vector I wasn't worried about and didn't mention. It's your church or your union or your family I fear.
THAT's why it hasn't caught on. This either dangerous or worthless. If you can see who you voted for, I can make you show me who you voted for, and I can punish noncompliance. If you can't see who you voted for, then you don't know a darn thing about how or if your vote was counted.
Receipts the voter takes home do not work. Ever. The voter must be completely unaccountable to third parties, and any receipt they can receive can be demanded and checked for adherence to the demander's agenda. Want a raise? Want an A? Want cash? Want to go to Heaven? Then hand over that receipt, and we'll make sure you voted right.
It was C+ code, combining features of both languages.
300 terabytes, advancing to a petabyte in three years? I can see it now.
/all/ the genome? Okay. Uhm. Well, we already got Alice scanned in. I guess we can have Bob done in another couple years or so, maybe Charlie after that, but I think we're going to need to look at how we're doing this..."
"Yeah! We got it! The whole Human Genome! We scanned that sucker in... wait, what? You meant...
I pledge, the next time I hear of such a possible exploit, to rip as much information from the system as the website gives me permission to retrieve. Every bit of it -- I shall construct scripts, pore over forums, and create a list of possible students whose data I will then attempt to extract.
Additionally, with these links in hand, I shall paste them to random places on the internet, and specific places such as the most likely forums to find such students. I will also disguise their nature and essence, so that users will not know what they click on until it's too late.
So the next time Stanford comes calling, you go ahead and /blame me/. I could've been the one to do it, after all. You don't know I didn't. They don't know I didn't.
Or they could just accept that their own goddamn marketing department creates an illusion of prestige, and that people with a limited amount of time to waste on non-responsive colleges /sitting on/ important information like that are going to want to know who to stop wasting time on, and that if they don't like it they can /fix their fucking permissions/. Do they not know any decent webapp programmers? Who've they been graduating?
I'll give you that. Wholly and without question, your words are true as written.
But that
When you get down to it, as long as you aren't actually driving the species extinct, I have to conclude that I don't especially care if you're blowing animals away or not. America employs a great many people who stand around
Just don't think you're somebody for it.
There's a /brand name/ on a tennis ball.
If those guys took bribes for product placement, they could make a mint without ever selling a game.
(Imagine players struggling to find those last -- goodness. Anything. Or borrow a page straight from PA's playbook, and play a level while keeping your Thirst Bar full with refreshing Sprite bottles.)
The bonus level where you pick up alcoholic beverages with a katamari and have the Lord of All Cosmos mix you a drink would be silly, I suppose.
You've now created a robot that opposes the will of carbon-based lifeforms by design.
It's sole purpose, bringing suffering to humanity.
AND THEN YOU BOOBY-TRAPPED THE OFF SWITCH.
Buncha friggin' geniuses./P
Sherlock. Dinner With Moriarty. And the inestimably difficult Watson's Map.
You may need someone to help you to a wall that you might bang your head against it, though.
Kaser's games are the most delightful puzzles of symbolic logic and deduction. Clean and simple, they'll keep you busy... pretty much forever. Shareware versions are available for download.
Dan Rather was actually good at hiding his political beliefs, I doubt Stewart could be as successful.
/fake/ news show is quite literally the only one I watch. I rely on newswires for everything else. I'd have no more reason to distrust Stewart as a real newsguy than I would any other -- less, actually.
Just because it's viciously slanted is no reason not to trust him -- after all, you know how far to trust him. What's to worry about?
Even someone pretending to be neutral has agendas you can't see, can't know, and can barely even guess at. Pressure from corporate owners? Pressure from sources for favorable reports to ensure future access to the source?
Stewart's
I hope to God that Samantha Bee falls down a well, though.
Worked pretty well for predicting the future -- actually, I'm not sure it was ever wrong.
I'd roll a 19, find out that the party was going ot get jumped by two bugbears and an iron-deficient halfling... and it was right!
Swear to God I want a "-1, Surely You're Redundant, Mr. Feynman" moderation just now.
Not /specifically/ directed at you, but the editors coulda saved a couple hundred posts if they'd mentioned him in the summary.
I've either got something useful to say, in which case your second comment doesn't apply, or I don't, in which case your first comment doesn't.
Settle on one, then try again.
I /have/ -- at least suggestions, if not anything definite. Even so, haven't you read the RFID vendor propaganda? THEY darn well suggest using it for self-checkout.
Outlining security flaws in a plan /yet to be deployed/ can only be a service. /My/ employers -- and yours -- might someday have cause to consider something similar. Hopefully you'll remember me then, too.
Anything else?