And discussion of something that really happened involving the URL mentioned in the story, even as a joke, doesn't really strike me as offtopic. It's the kind of stuff people like talking about here. But whatever. Way down the page someone saying "hey, flakyhost can't be found" was modded 'troll'. Crazy, crazy world.
I remember, while working overnight security in a college dorm, having a conversation with a very confused pizza place manager. I was explaining to him that the time changed at 2:00 AM; the clock jumps from 1:59:59 to 3:00. So I wanted to know whether they were closing at the 'normal' 3:00 AM (that is, 4:00 AM), or the 'actual' 3:00 AM (which seemed like 2:00 AM).
He angrily insisted that they were going to stay open just as long after midnight as they usually did, and they would close at 3:00 AM. I tried to explain that these two things were mutually impossible, but he was having none of it.
I talked to him a couple hours later. He sheepishy related that he had recieved an angry call from the main office asking why he was still opened at 3:30 AM.
And they've still declined to use the high-res b&w imagery available on Terraserver, or some other color image package that MapQuest had for a while. There are far too many locations (like my current apartment) that are still at crap-level. I wait impatiently.
Sort of reminds me of the bit in Cryptonomicon where Randy ponders posting his root password on a big message board so he could plausibly claim that the damage he was about to do had been caused by someone else. Not sure how well that would hold up, but if he kept the initial posting quiet and they saw the attacks from all around, it might be a little harder to finger him in court.
The first one only spells out the plot for people familiar with the show.
I watched the Serenity trailer before seeing the show. Then I saw the whole show in the gap between then and this new trailer.
I had watched the first trailer several times and I did not understand that it was about this one ship. It's obvious in hindsight, but all the shots of fleets made me assume it was something about space war and politics, nothing like what the show turned out to be (which is wonderful).
I guess my semi-on-topic point is to keep in mind that once you understand something, you cannot look at it with the eyes of someone who doesn't. Once you hear a theme or words in a piece of your favorite music, it's impossible to not hear it, and hard to understand how someone doesn't. And as a fan, it's very hard to tell how something will play with non-fans. So fans are not in good positions to judge trailers aimed at the public, more than you might think.
Of course, it always starts with chinese farmers and then it leads to more controversial types of racism about jews and blacks.
Actually, I'm not really sure racism works like that. I mean, the [blocked by Godwin's filter] killed all sorts of people, yes, but generally I'm not sure it's so much a "gateway" thing. Espeically in this case.
I understand that; I was responding to the OP's talk of how accomplishments aren't as noteworthy in general if there are other people who've done it. I mean, this is the youngest person to get an MSCE so far, right? That's something interesting. I was just saying "yeah, she's the youngest, but someone else could have been the youngest instead!" doesn't necessarially mean it's completely meaningless.
It is a given that for every brilliant person in the world, there is another with the same capabilities who never had the same opportunities. Every Beethoven, Euler, or olympic sprinter had potential or technical equals, they just didn't end up in the right position for us to hear about them. That doesn't stop us from celebrating the ones who do it. The biggest lesson we can take away from this is that we should encourage these kids. Not say "sure, you did it, but other people could have, too."
This of course came as a shock to the dedicated OS/2 userbase, which had recieved no hints that it might no longer be in the forefrunt of the computer culture . . .
As far as the young internet citizenry goes, I'm moderate to right-wing on DRM and data liberalization (I'm fairly left-wing in real life). This might not be the best label; what I mean is that while I like the ideas of free information, I think there's a lot of bias in the debate and blood in the water on both sides. I think there are decent points and stupiditiy on both sides, and I don't know that anyone really has a grasp on what this new world is going to look like. I'm in favor of not doing anything too rash and waiting to see how it plays out.
A few points worth keeping in mind:
There's a tendency around here to consider what can happen to the exclusion of what likely will happen. That is, just because there's a way to copy something doesn't mean enough people will go to the trouble to do so. There's no theoretical problem with copying paperbacks, but the average Joe doesn't have the time or the equipment, and most in the American system get their books from legal stores.
However, as with most parts of the debate, this digital revolution introduces a new twist: once something is broken, it can spread quickly. You don't have to re-break it for each copy. So you have a legal network and an illegal network sitting next to each other, struggling for supremacy.
I think what it comes down to is that people who want to control how easy it is to get to something can do so, but only by a matter of degree. It will always be possible to get an illegal copy of anything digital. But they can probably continue to make it difficult. This might be wrong, though; maybe there is no effective stranglehold that can be put on p2p traffic as bandwidth grows. Maybe file distribution systems will allow total anonymity for everyone in a more practical sense than Freenet. I'm not sure.
Let's try to look at the possible futures:
1. Total DRM failure:
KaZaA networks get better and better, cleaner and cleaner. DRM is cracked constantly and repeatedly struck down in court.
It seems that here there are still several possibilities.
1a. First: Total artistic anarchy. No average consumer pays money for videos or music. No one is forced to watch commercials in breaks in the shows. No one buys CDs. No one pays for their movies.
1a1. There are interesting lessons of history here that I don't know very much about and someone should go into in comments. We really might see a fading of big-budget media-creation enterprises. A lot of people don't think this would be so bad.
1a2. We might also see alternative payment methods arise. There's the idea that the market can handle anything. People will pay for what they want, one way or another. Concerts or patronages become the way artists make money.
1b. Second:
Artistic anarchy augmented by voluntary payment. People buy from iTunes or donate because they honestly want -- or are convinced by PR campaigns -- to support the artists they like. I think this is sort of wishful thinking. It might go for a while. But people don't like to spend money. Maybe this will blend into the 'patron' model, with a few rich people doing basically this.
1c. Third:
A tax supporting art.
This could happen.
2. Partial DRM failure:
What we have now. DRM and similar efforts makes it hard work to get stuff illegally, but easy enough. We continue with the current system, where there's a class of people who pays, for one reason or another (usually to avoid the difficulties and risks of illegal copying), and a large class that downloads whatever they want and pays for little. The system takes a hit but continues for quite some time. Then things get hazy.
Meanwhile, DRM is making a lot of problems for people who are just trying to move things player-to-player. People lose their music and get upset.
3. DRM general success:
Re:Carefully worded response
on
RockStar Speaks
·
· Score: 1
Please, kind sirs and madams, mod the parent post in a heavenward direction. I thank thee kindly.
Why we have this complex, unbelieveably expensive shuttle, I will never know.
Ooh, I know this one! "To get into space."
But you're right, it's not like this is rocket science. It's obvious that the people working on the shuttle don't know what the fuck they're doing, and we are the ones to tell them.
Okay, I sat down and did this as a continuous problem, put it in the form of a differential equation, and handed it to this bright high school kid to do for me. The answer is that it takes roughly N * ln N hefore there is a 50% chance you have heard every song. (That is the point where you have heard, on average, 10499.5 songs). In this case, 104,498 listens. So pretty close to what you said. I assume you did the sum numerically; I thought you might be interested in this more theoretical approach.
math: if P is the total # of songs and T(N) is the total number of songs you have heard after listen N, on average, then the increase in songs each listen dT(N)/dN is given by
dT(N)/dN = 1 - (1/P) * T(N)
This is saying that the change in T is proportional to the number of unheard songs so far. This is very straightforward.
Solving this gives you T(N) = P + (1-P)*e^(-N/P).
Now I missed where this kid did the integration, but basically you find the point in time X where the total sum of the number of songs you hear, from time X to infinity, on average, is less than 0.5. Meaning that there's a less than 1/2 chance that you'll hear a new song at all. Anyway, he did the integration of
int from X to infinity { 1 - 1/P * T(N) } = 0.5, plugging in the solution for T(N) found above, and he gave me
X = P * ln 2 + P ln (P-1)
So the ratio X/P is
XperP = ln 2 + ln (P - 1)
Which means that if you have 100 songs, it will take you 100 * (ln 2 + ln (100-1)) listens to hear them all.
Any discussion of this is incomplete without basically quoting all of Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier, which is a wonderful book and discusses exactly how to make this sort of decision. You will be smarter after reading it.
I've seen this IMAX special, and some other articles/things, that lead me to believe that dolphins are fucking smart. Just very different from us. But that there can be communication and stuff.
I'm not totally sure how to handle that, mathematically. Remember, unheard isn't just a linear function of songs listened to here, since they repeat. Are you accounting for that?
I keep meaning to solve this problem; I've done many related ones, but I'm never sure of the answer to this. Either way, it's a probability, probably a possion thing, of listening to N songs and hearing all of your P songs at least once. N is 0 up to P and then nonzero forever. I don't knw where the hump on the curve falls, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently, nobody's picked up that domain.
Someone just did. It links to his blog, where he welcomes people to slashdot and poitns out that he's been banned from posting and doesn't know why.
He appears to generally be a poster in good standing. I wonder why he'd be banned.
And discussion of something that really happened involving the URL mentioned in the story, even as a joke, doesn't really strike me as offtopic. It's the kind of stuff people like talking about here. But whatever. Way down the page someone saying "hey, flakyhost can't be found" was modded 'troll'. Crazy, crazy world.
We don't need more business-hour confusion.
I remember, while working overnight security in a college dorm, having a conversation with a very confused pizza place manager. I was explaining to him that the time changed at 2:00 AM; the clock jumps from 1:59:59 to 3:00. So I wanted to know whether they were closing at the 'normal' 3:00 AM (that is, 4:00 AM), or the 'actual' 3:00 AM (which seemed like 2:00 AM).
He angrily insisted that they were going to stay open just as long after midnight as they usually did, and they would close at 3:00 AM. I tried to explain that these two things were mutually impossible, but he was having none of it.
I talked to him a couple hours later. He sheepishy related that he had recieved an angry call from the main office asking why he was still opened at 3:30 AM.
Incorrect. The sources cited discuss the anecdote in the context of their titles.
And they've still declined to use the high-res b&w imagery available on Terraserver, or some other color image package that MapQuest had for a while. There are far too many locations (like my current apartment) that are still at crap-level. I wait impatiently.
Sort of reminds me of the bit in Cryptonomicon where Randy ponders posting his root password on a big message board so he could plausibly claim that the damage he was about to do had been caused by someone else. Not sure how well that would hold up, but if he kept the initial posting quiet and they saw the attacks from all around, it might be a little harder to finger him in court.
usenet, september 1993
The first one only spells out the plot for people familiar with the show.
I watched the Serenity trailer before seeing the show. Then I saw the whole show in the gap between then and this new trailer.
I had watched the first trailer several times and I did not understand that it was about this one ship. It's obvious in hindsight, but all the shots of fleets made me assume it was something about space war and politics, nothing like what the show turned out to be (which is wonderful).
I guess my semi-on-topic point is to keep in mind that once you understand something, you cannot look at it with the eyes of someone who doesn't. Once you hear a theme or words in a piece of your favorite music, it's impossible to not hear it, and hard to understand how someone doesn't. And as a fan, it's very hard to tell how something will play with non-fans. So fans are not in good positions to judge trailers aimed at the public, more than you might think.
Just a general note that I've only just realized.
Of course, it always starts with chinese farmers and then it leads to more controversial types of racism about jews and blacks.
Actually, I'm not really sure racism works like that. I mean, the [blocked by Godwin's filter] killed all sorts of people, yes, but generally I'm not sure it's so much a "gateway" thing. Espeically in this case.
Allow me to join the chorus of "my story exactly".
Though it was my cousin who pushed me over the brink; she had the DVDs and we were on vacation with nothing to do.
And minus the Cowboy Bebop reference.
email it to rmunroe@gmail.com and I'll put it up somewhere for you
Where's a simple, easy-to-install skin that does that?
I understand that; I was responding to the OP's talk of how accomplishments aren't as noteworthy in general if there are other people who've done it. I mean, this is the youngest person to get an MSCE so far, right? That's something interesting. I was just saying "yeah, she's the youngest, but someone else could have been the youngest instead!" doesn't necessarially mean it's completely meaningless.
It is a given that for every brilliant person in the world, there is another with the same capabilities who never had the same opportunities. Every Beethoven, Euler, or olympic sprinter had potential or technical equals, they just didn't end up in the right position for us to hear about them. That doesn't stop us from celebrating the ones who do it. The biggest lesson we can take away from this is that we should encourage these kids. Not say "sure, you did it, but other people could have, too."
This of course came as a shock to the dedicated OS/2 userbase, which had recieved no hints that it might no longer be in the forefrunt of the computer culture . . .
. . . "interesting?"
A few points worth keeping in mind:
There's a tendency around here to consider what can happen to the exclusion of what likely will happen. That is, just because there's a way to copy something doesn't mean enough people will go to the trouble to do so. There's no theoretical problem with copying paperbacks, but the average Joe doesn't have the time or the equipment, and most in the American system get their books from legal stores.
However, as with most parts of the debate, this digital revolution introduces a new twist: once something is broken, it can spread quickly. You don't have to re-break it for each copy. So you have a legal network and an illegal network sitting next to each other, struggling for supremacy.
I think what it comes down to is that people who want to control how easy it is to get to something can do so, but only by a matter of degree. It will always be possible to get an illegal copy of anything digital. But they can probably continue to make it difficult. This might be wrong, though; maybe there is no effective stranglehold that can be put on p2p traffic as bandwidth grows. Maybe file distribution systems will allow total anonymity for everyone in a more practical sense than Freenet. I'm not sure.
Let's try to look at the possible futures:
1. Total DRM failure:
KaZaA networks get better and better, cleaner and cleaner. DRM is cracked constantly and repeatedly struck down in court.
It seems that here there are still several possibilities.
2. Partial DRM failure:
What we have now. DRM and similar efforts makes it hard work to get stuff illegally, but easy enough. We continue with the current system, where there's a class of people who pays, for one reason or another (usually to avoid the difficulties and risks of illegal copying), and a large class that downloads whatever they want and pays for little. The system takes a hit but continues for quite some time. Then things get hazy.
Meanwhile, DRM is making a lot of problems for people who are just trying to move things player-to-player. People lose their music and get upset.
3. DRM general success:
Please, kind sirs and madams, mod the parent post in a heavenward direction. I thank thee kindly.
I honestly couldn't finish the article because of those unnerving spider ads on the side.
Freak me out, man.
(Firefox at work doesn't come with ad blocker by default.)
But has Netcraft confirmed oh god my life is an empty shell and I have no meaning or purpose.
But you're right, it's not like this is rocket science. It's obvious that the people working on the shuttle don't know what the fuck they're doing, and we are the ones to tell them.
And the lander didn't use a solid fuel rocket.
Okay, I sat down and did this as a continuous problem, put it in the form of a differential equation, and handed it to this bright high school kid to do for me. The answer is that it takes roughly N * ln N hefore there is a 50% chance you have heard every song. (That is the point where you have heard, on average, 10499.5 songs). In this case, 104,498 listens. So pretty close to what you said. I assume you did the sum numerically; I thought you might be interested in this more theoretical approach.
math:
if P is the total # of songs and T(N) is the total number of songs you have heard after listen N, on average, then the increase in songs each listen dT(N)/dN is given by
dT(N)/dN = 1 - (1/P) * T(N)
This is saying that the change in T is proportional to the number of unheard songs so far. This is very straightforward.
Solving this gives you T(N) = P + (1-P)*e^(-N/P).
Now I missed where this kid did the integration, but basically you find the point in time X where the total sum of the number of songs you hear, from time X to infinity, on average, is less than 0.5. Meaning that there's a less than 1/2 chance that you'll hear a new song at all. Anyway, he did the integration of
int from X to infinity { 1 - 1/P * T(N) } = 0.5, plugging in the solution for T(N) found above, and he gave me
X = P * ln 2 + P ln (P-1)
So the ratio X/P is
XperP = ln 2 + ln (P - 1)
Which means that if you have 100 songs, it will take you 100 * (ln 2 + ln (100-1)) listens to hear them all.
Any discussion of this is incomplete without basically quoting all of Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier, which is a wonderful book and discusses exactly how to make this sort of decision. You will be smarter after reading it.
Nah, it's fine. Just have the feed from a dashboard camera go to an always-on-top window in the corner of the screen and keep an eye on it.
Anyone who says that's not perfectly safe is a facist.
I've seen this IMAX special, and some other articles/things, that lead me to believe that dolphins are fucking smart. Just very different from us. But that there can be communication and stuff.
Check some of it out.
I'm not totally sure how to handle that, mathematically. Remember, unheard isn't just a linear function of songs listened to here, since they repeat. Are you accounting for that?
I keep meaning to solve this problem; I've done many related ones, but I'm never sure of the answer to this. Either way, it's a probability, probably a possion thing, of listening to N songs and hearing all of your P songs at least once. N is 0 up to P and then nonzero forever. I don't knw where the hump on the curve falls, though.
Help?