For those not so programming-savvy (i.e. me, 5 minutes ago), a quine is "a program that generates a copy of its own source text as its complete output."
Pretty much all I remember about this one is going to a drive-in in Bucks County, PA (setting of Shyamalan's Signs) for my 8th (?) birthday. The cute little mushroom thing in the sewer that gets all scary with sharp teeth STILL freaks me out.
After Three's Company, Stay Tuned is John Ritter's magnum opus. With a cast rounded out by the ever-funny Eugene Levy and Jeffrey Jones, this one is surely a winner. Unfortunately, Principal Rooney is currently facing child sex charges. Weird, huh.
You might want to check that again. The blue patch around Negev (Middle East) corresponds to the the one over the Pacific Ocean just south-west of Baja. Don't be so paranoid. Sheesh.
It occurs to me that just as there is a VERY small percentage of muslims that can be termed fundamentalists, and a small percentage of those can be called militant (we'll stop here and call those terrorists, thought the parent made a further distinction), there is a small percentage of Occidental fundamentalists (read: Bush and Co.). Some of these fundamentalists are militant as well; and, they have bigger guns.
And keep in mind that though we may perceive a large majority of moderate muslims and Westerners who wish to keep the peace, live in harmony, etc, still the fundamentalists are either in a position of political power, or rich (and so ostensibly in charge), or religious zealots (and thus commanding power by way of God). Some of our "leaders" are all three.
In America, we could be said to be even more guilty, since we elected our fundamentalist and militant leaders. Whereas, in non-democratic areas, fundamentalists and militant fundamentalists have power via money or religion.
Actually this is a great idea. I mean, the VAIO thing seems unlikely. There is also a media center PC with minidisc, but it retails at 2999, so I won't even bother providing a link.
However, I have a friend that just bought a Sony MiniDisc/MP3 player from Best Buy. Incidentally, it was $129, less than half the price listed here. I am not entirely sure it was the same model, but I think it is. I have no reason for the price discrepancy.
In any case, if you were not set on the medium (optical vs. minidisc), this might suit your purposes. You could disassemble this and make it smaller, though it is pretty damn small as it is. You were unclear in your post whether your desire is just to prove that you can hack an MP3 player together, or whether you were trying to save money, but $129 is pretty darn cheap. If it is missing the features you want, you could buy this and hack those in. A bigger LCD would be nice. Also, there is this, a computer MiniDisc drive. It might help you with construction/experimentation, or even using this device in your ultimate invention.
The cons as I see them are that you are tied down to a proprietary, closed-source medium. It is relatively popular, but not ubiquitous (like CDR).
In other words, the real killer apps are simple, addictive, and easily integrate into our current technological life. Tetris did this, (though, admittedly, it was not simple). It does not often happen with non-game applications.
But consider how different the IM you use now is from the one you used 8 years ago. There have been no changes to the essential nature of the app, just additional fru-fru alterations (rich text, away messages).
Thus, the real world-sweeping apps (not viruses) are compact, have one or few purposes, and often fill a hole that was there but unknown. Reminds me vaguely of the free long-distance cell phone revolution.
Now, I know the articles I'm about to site are about identifying possible extra-terrestrial life, but I believe that calling atmospheric dust extra-solar is just as specious.
The first article is about the supposed space bacteria collected off of a weather balloon at high altitudes. You've got to be kidding me... That stuff did not just float thousands of light years just to get caught and identified off a weather balloon not even in space.
The second article concerns the Murchison meteorite. This one they know came from outer space and still cant tell whether it had Earthy or Non-Earthy critters living inside.
My point is that the possibility of contamination and disturbance of the results in experiments looking at both organic and inorganic compounds is astronomical (pardon the pun). I agree with an above post: some grad student didn't wash his hands after going to the bathroom and touched a sample.
The other side of the coin to this is that you get employers or "victims" or what-have-you artificially inflating the damages supposedly caused by a hacker.
However, the punishment in my case was extremely harsh and did not fit the crime. I equate my illegal actions not to a person who molests children or burglarizes a house (I heard these specious analogies before), but to a person who illegally copies software.
The difference in my case is the software was proprietary. I was not an industrial spy, nor did I ever attempt to profit or damage any systems or information that I had illegally accessed. The government falsely claimed I had caused millions of dollars of loss, in an effort to demonize me in the press and the court. The truth of the matter is I regretfully did cause losses, but nowhere near a million dollars. The theory the government used to reach those numbers was to use the same formula for traditional theft or fraud cases. When a person steals money or property, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines use the value of the property lost, damaged, or destroyed as the loss amount. This formula works well with tangible property, but when the property at issue is information, or in my case source code, does the same formula reflect the true intended or actual loss? The government requested that my victims provide their research and development costs as the value of the information I either copied, or reviewed online (source code). Federal prosecutors simply added up all the R&D costs associated with the source code I had accessed, and used that number (approx $300 million) as the loss, even though it was never alleged that I intended to use or disclosed any source code. Interestingly enough, none of my victims had reported any losses attributable to my activities to their shareholders, as required by securities laws. Unfortunately, due to media hyperbole, the unknowing public believes I had caused these tremendous losses.
Suffice it to say, we need to find a compromise where we can accurately represent the loss of intellectual property without undually exaggerating its (non-material) worth.
I do not know how serious "seriously impaired" is. But even a large keyboard may require too much mobility/flexibility to operate efficiently. While it does not seem from your post that her condition is as bad as Hawking's (ALS a.k.a. Lou Gherig's Disease (sp.?)), she may benefit from an interface similar to his.
According to this old write-up on Hawking's website, he uses a simple DOS interface. A cursor moves across the screen (through the letters?), and he stops it on the desired letter with a click of a button. Now, this could be improved upon easily if your grandmother has slightly more mobility, though it requires some reaction time. Add word-guessing software (and sentence guessing) that learns her most common words to help speed up text entry, as per the suggestions above. I envision a two button device... a hacked mouse for example... where the left button selects the letters from a scrolling cursor, and the right button selects the words that pop up as suggestions simultaneously.
A cursor scrolling through the letters, stopped on "G"... "A" was entered first:
A B C D E F G etc...
She enters: A G
Suggestions List: (pops up under the scrolling cursor, so she can continue to enter letters if she likes, as the suggestions narrow)
AGE
AGO
AGORAPHOBIA
- - - - - - - -
AGE COMES BEFORE BEAUTY.
AGED BEEF TASTES BETTER.
etc.
As she becomes accustomed to the software, you can gradually increase the scroll time through the letters; and, as she enters more and more text, the system will get better at guessing what she will say and rank the probable selections higher in the list. Also, depending on how many buttons she can use (2 is quite enough), you can add certain functions to combinations of clicks. For example, Hawking lacks an "undo" button. Here, you could make it 'right click - left click - right click' in relatively quick succession. Or, to switch to numbers and punctuation, you could program it so that she pressess both buttons simultaneously, or set it to another combo, etc.
Finally, a quick google shows a project working on open source (albeit VB) software to improve upon Hawking's interface while keeping in mind the poor mobility of ALS victims.
This comment is insightful, but I would like to point out that they are really marginally less useful than a bicycle. First, see this article. Segway was banned in San Francisco... bikes were not. While you cannot ride your bike on a sidewalk, they are much more convenient for street travel than SHT's. A bike is more cheaply and easily repaired. While you can't go riding a bike around the office, I am SURE that your employer would not permit you to drive one of these things around indoors (unless of course you work in a Boeing hanger or something). You don't need a training class with Dean Kamen to ride a bike.
That doesn't mean they aren't really cool. But I bike is infinitely more practical. We wont see mountain-segways anytime soon, and if I can't ride it in the park, I don't want one.
This is reminiscent of some of John Cage's avante-garde work. Here is the AMG write-up. While his creations did not use inaudible sound explicitly, he is famous for his 4'33", a piece of this length completely silent. I have a friend who saw it "performed" live, and he was apparently quite moved. The pianist sits down at the piano, lifts the key-gaurd, and prepares to play. The performer remains attentive at the keys for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, then finishes and closes the key-guard. My friend said he was struck by how open he became to the sounds around him, to the concertgoers. These were things he'd never heard before. And there was an order to it, that was somehow created from all of the audience members intensely focused on eachother.
I have an Inspiron 8000, and for me also, even new, it got about a 45 min battery life. I have had it just over a year and ALWAYS run it off of the AC. Not to mention, I just updated Win2k with SP3 and now it doesn't suspend properly, either. Should I get a new battery and only plug in the AC when it is almost dead? Should I complain? I have seen on the website they offer a double-capacity battery (for a not-so-modest price), but man these are expensive. Should I call and complain forcefully?
OK, I am going to try to use my good karma to get a conversation started. It will be slightly off-topic, but on-topic insofar is slashdot being the medium through which we communicate individual stories like this.
I have googled and not found any answers, and I couldn't think of a better place (paradoxically enough) to ask this question: Is Slashdot slow or what? For the last week or two, but especcially recently, and from different kinds of connections, also. I was wondering, are we being (d)DOS-ed? Or, did some server go down, or what? It is driving me nuts, so I was wondering if someone could help clear this up. Couldn't think of a better place, other than Ask Slashdot, which is just silly.
Thankfully we are already safe from the Bug-Bladdered Beast of Trall. Simply, close your eyes. Since, it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you.
for a very similar discussion, where this CD is mentioned. Though, the main focus of that thread is another, though not as good, OS free-software CD for windows.
However, there were a few convenient mirror images and a similar product from thinkgeek.
Honestly though, isn't this just something to take to a LAN party or something; that is, just another way to mod your PC. The light from the monitor (at least CRTs) is enought to illuminate the keys for the most part. And if you are spending enough time with the computer that you are typing in the dark, you shouldn't have to look at the keyboard much anyway, right? This is cool-looking, but useless aside from wow-factor. Especially if you don't already have translucent keys, in which case only the between-keys area is lit anyway.
Neat picture, though, I don't know whether it will really cool down the room. Won't the heat just build in the wall, and not dissipate as quick because of the lack of air. Then, the walls will be warm and again warm the room. Hmmmmm.
OK. First, obviously this story is a duplicate... but don't mod me redundant just yet. The story is still on the front page, too. In any case, the same questions get asked here and are not being answered to the extent they were in the other discussion. So here:
I found these comments to be most helpful in the other discussion... certainly surpassing what I've seen here. Who can blame them: who wants to keep posting the same stuff over and over again, even if it is smart writing? Anyway, sorry for the whoring. I'll stop now.
Yes, this is what I meant. Thank you for the correction. And, according to a recent Philadelphia magazine article on local beer and breweries, most of the country's (and the Philly region's) Yuengling is brewed in Florida now. Also, the different flavors of Yuengling (5 or so at last count) are really just different mixtures of 2 flavor concentrates. Yards brewing company, a new microbrewery within city limits, just expanded their operation and might be open to tours. Plus their beer blows Yuengling's out of the water.
Slashdot Mirror
For those not so programming-savvy (i.e. me, 5 minutes ago), a quine is "a program that generates a copy of its own source text as its complete output."
Apparently Douglas Hofstadter (of GEB fame)coined the phrase after logician Willard van Orman Quine.
For more see: http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm
GoogleNews's spidering of this slashdot thread is already listed as the first "match". That's pretty cool. Maybe Google should offer an IPO. hehe.
This is the same tech, essentially, that drives those flat-panel computer speakers, and the Soundbug over at thinkgeek.
Funny...
I have a design for an almost perpetual motion machine that works.
The two worst movies of my childhood are:
1. Mom and Dad Save the World
Pretty much all I remember about this one is going to a drive-in in Bucks County, PA (setting of Shyamalan's Signs ) for my 8th (?) birthday. The cute little mushroom thing in the sewer that gets all scary with sharp teeth STILL freaks me out.
2. Stay Tuned
After Three's Company , Stay Tuned is John Ritter's magnum opus. With a cast rounded out by the ever-funny Eugene Levy and Jeffrey Jones, this one is surely a winner. Unfortunately, Principal Rooney is currently facing child sex charges. Weird, huh.
You might want to check that again. The blue patch around Negev (Middle East) corresponds to the the one over the Pacific Ocean just south-west of Baja. Don't be so paranoid. Sheesh.
It occurs to me that just as there is a VERY small percentage of muslims that can be termed fundamentalists, and a small percentage of those can be called militant (we'll stop here and call those terrorists, thought the parent made a further distinction), there is a small percentage of Occidental fundamentalists (read: Bush and Co.). Some of these fundamentalists are militant as well; and, they have bigger guns.
And keep in mind that though we may perceive a large majority of moderate muslims and Westerners who wish to keep the peace, live in harmony, etc, still the fundamentalists are either in a position of political power, or rich (and so ostensibly in charge), or religious zealots (and thus commanding power by way of God). Some of our "leaders" are all three.
In America, we could be said to be even more guilty, since we elected our fundamentalist and militant leaders. Whereas, in non-democratic areas, fundamentalists and militant fundamentalists have power via money or religion.
Amazing!
I can see the mysterious future without a mysterious subscription plan!
For those wondering what the hell SLAC is, it stands for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Apparently, the SLAC library (SPIRES) stores pretty much every particle physics experiment data and write-up ever.
Here is the pretty picture and their about page.
For those interested, here are the slashdot threads for the last two moon additions to Jupiter:
1. New Moon of Jupiter Discovered
S/2002 J1- Catchy name, eh? Beats the hell out of say, Europa or Ganymede. Incidentally, this ran on 12/28/02.
2. Jupiter's 11 New Moons
This one ran on 5/17/02.
Actually this is a great idea. I mean, the VAIO thing seems unlikely. There is also a media center PC with minidisc, but it retails at 2999, so I won't even bother providing a link.
However, I have a friend that just bought a Sony MiniDisc/MP3 player from Best Buy. Incidentally, it was $129, less than half the price listed here. I am not entirely sure it was the same model, but I think it is. I have no reason for the price discrepancy.
In any case, if you were not set on the medium (optical vs. minidisc), this might suit your purposes. You could disassemble this and make it smaller, though it is pretty damn small as it is. You were unclear in your post whether your desire is just to prove that you can hack an MP3 player together, or whether you were trying to save money, but $129 is pretty darn cheap. If it is missing the features you want, you could buy this and hack those in. A bigger LCD would be nice. Also, there is this, a computer MiniDisc drive. It might help you with construction/experimentation, or even using this device in your ultimate invention.
The cons as I see them are that you are tied down to a proprietary, closed-source medium. It is relatively popular, but not ubiquitous (like CDR).
The pros: it's cheap. It's easy. It's small.
Good Luck. -Foster
Reminds me of the "Snood Effect". Also, here. (Search: Why Snood Gets No Respect)
In other words, the real killer apps are simple, addictive, and easily integrate into our current technological life. Tetris did this, (though, admittedly, it was not simple). It does not often happen with non-game applications.
But consider how different the IM you use now is from the one you used 8 years ago. There have been no changes to the essential nature of the app, just additional fru-fru alterations (rich text, away messages).
Thus, the real world-sweeping apps (not viruses) are compact, have one or few purposes, and often fill a hole that was there but unknown. Reminds me vaguely of the free long-distance cell phone revolution.
Now, I know the articles I'm about to site are about identifying possible extra-terrestrial life, but I believe that calling atmospheric dust extra-solar is just as specious.
The first article is about the supposed space bacteria collected off of a weather balloon at high altitudes. You've got to be kidding me... That stuff did not just float thousands of light years just to get caught and identified off a weather balloon not even in space.
The second article concerns the Murchison meteorite. This one they know came from outer space and still cant tell whether it had Earthy or Non-Earthy critters living inside.
My point is that the possibility of contamination and disturbance of the results in experiments looking at both organic and inorganic compounds is astronomical (pardon the pun). I agree with an above post: some grad student didn't wash his hands after going to the bathroom and touched a sample.
Kevin Mitnick, in his Slashdot interview, explained this in detail:
Suffice it to say, we need to find a compromise where we can accurately represent the loss of intellectual property without undually exaggerating its (non-material) worth.
I do not know how serious "seriously impaired" is. But even a large keyboard may require too much mobility/flexibility to operate efficiently. While it does not seem from your post that her condition is as bad as Hawking's (ALS a.k.a. Lou Gherig's Disease (sp.?)), she may benefit from an interface similar to his.
According to this old write-up on Hawking's website, he uses a simple DOS interface. A cursor moves across the screen (through the letters?), and he stops it on the desired letter with a click of a button. Now, this could be improved upon easily if your grandmother has slightly more mobility, though it requires some reaction time. Add word-guessing software (and sentence guessing) that learns her most common words to help speed up text entry, as per the suggestions above. I envision a two button device... a hacked mouse for example... where the left button selects the letters from a scrolling cursor, and the right button selects the words that pop up as suggestions simultaneously.
A cursor scrolling through the letters, stopped on "G"... "A" was entered first:
A B C D E F G etc...
She enters: A G
Suggestions List: (pops up under the scrolling cursor, so she can continue to enter letters if she likes, as the suggestions narrow)
AGE
AGO
AGORAPHOBIA
- - - - - - - -
AGE COMES BEFORE BEAUTY.
AGED BEEF TASTES BETTER.
etc.
As she becomes accustomed to the software, you can gradually increase the scroll time through the letters; and, as she enters more and more text, the system will get better at guessing what she will say and rank the probable selections higher in the list. Also, depending on how many buttons she can use (2 is quite enough), you can add certain functions to combinations of clicks. For example, Hawking lacks an "undo" button. Here, you could make it 'right click - left click - right click' in relatively quick succession. Or, to switch to numbers and punctuation, you could program it so that she pressess both buttons simultaneously, or set it to another combo, etc.
Finally, a quick google shows a project working on open source (albeit VB) software to improve upon Hawking's interface while keeping in mind the poor mobility of ALS victims.
That doesn't mean they aren't really cool. But I bike is infinitely more practical. We wont see mountain-segways anytime soon, and if I can't ride it in the park, I don't want one.
This is reminiscent of some of John Cage's avante-garde work. Here is the AMG write-up.
While his creations did not use inaudible sound explicitly, he is famous for his 4'33", a piece of this length completely silent. I have a friend who saw it "performed" live, and he was apparently quite moved. The pianist sits down at the piano, lifts the key-gaurd, and prepares to play. The performer remains attentive at the keys for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, then finishes and closes the key-guard.
My friend said he was struck by how open he became to the sounds around him, to the concertgoers. These were things he'd never heard before. And there was an order to it, that was somehow created from all of the audience members intensely focused on eachother.
I have an Inspiron 8000, and for me also, even new, it got about a 45 min battery life. I have had it just over a year and ALWAYS run it off of the AC. Not to mention, I just updated Win2k with SP3 and now it doesn't suspend properly, either. Should I get a new battery and only plug in the AC when it is almost dead? Should I complain? I have seen on the website they offer a double-capacity battery (for a not-so-modest price), but man these are expensive. Should I call and complain forcefully?
OK, I am going to try to use my good karma to get a conversation started. It will be slightly off-topic, but on-topic insofar is slashdot being the medium through which we communicate individual stories like this.
I have googled and not found any answers, and I couldn't think of a better place (paradoxically enough) to ask this question: Is Slashdot slow or what? For the last week or two, but especcially recently, and from different kinds of connections, also. I was wondering, are we being (d)DOS-ed? Or, did some server go down, or what? It is driving me nuts, so I was wondering if someone could help clear this up. Couldn't think of a better place, other than Ask Slashdot, which is just silly.
Thankfully we are already safe from the Bug-Bladdered Beast of Trall. Simply, close your eyes. Since, it thinks that if you can't see it, it can't see you.
OK folks, this is pretty much a duplicate story.
See:
this story
for a very similar discussion, where this CD is mentioned. Though, the main focus of that thread is another, though not as good, OS free-software CD for windows.
First, the site is already slashdotted...
However, there were a few convenient mirror images and a similar product from thinkgeek.
Honestly though, isn't this just something to take to a LAN party or something; that is, just another way to mod your PC. The light from the monitor (at least CRTs) is enought to illuminate the keys for the most part. And if you are spending enough time with the computer that you are typing in the dark, you shouldn't have to look at the keyboard much anyway, right? This is cool-looking, but useless aside from wow-factor. Especially if you don't already have translucent keys, in which case only the between-keys area is lit anyway.
Here is the correct link: R.A.C.H.A.L..
Neat picture, though, I don't know whether it will really cool down the room. Won't the heat just build in the wall, and not dissipate as quick because of the lack of air. Then, the walls will be warm and again warm the room. Hmmmmm.
OK. First, obviously this story is a duplicate... but don't mod me redundant just yet. The story is still on the front page, too. In any case, the same questions get asked here and are not being answered to the extent they were in the other discussion. So here:
1. Could anyone of you tell how much time/processnig power this will need in comparisson to things like the RSA challenge?
Thank you.
Answer: Somewhat more complicated.
2. Doesn't this violate that DMCA thingy?
Answer: RE: DMCA Anyone?
3. How is this done anyhow?
Answer: RE: Buffer Overflow...
I found these comments to be most helpful in the other discussion... certainly surpassing what I've seen here. Who can blame them: who wants to keep posting the same stuff over and over again, even if it is smart writing? Anyway, sorry for the whoring. I'll stop now.
Yes, this is what I meant. Thank you for the correction. And, according to a recent Philadelphia magazine article on local beer and breweries, most of the country's (and the Philly region's) Yuengling is brewed in Florida now. Also, the different flavors of Yuengling (5 or so at last count) are really just different mixtures of 2 flavor concentrates. Yards brewing company, a new microbrewery within city limits, just expanded their operation and might be open to tours. Plus their beer blows Yuengling's out of the water.