The new 3E rules are much much better at converting to a sane mathmatical formula. Instead of having lots and lots of charts with varying numbers, a lot of things have been reduced to a linear function. (an example would be the +1 bonus for every two points above 10 in ability scores) But it is still far from perfect, but perhaps that is part of the magic. Instead of reducing everything down to some simple formula, you have to correspond or heaven forbid, make something up.
/moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions".
Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. The word "mu" is actually from Chinese, meaning "nothing"; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not recognise the Discordian question-denying use. It almost certainly derives from overgeneralisation of the answer in the following well-known Rinzei Zen teaching riddle:
A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu retorted, "Mu!"
## quote I can't stand vi, and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux. ## end
I am sure you will get a hundred replies pointing you to simple editors for linux. But I would just like to point out my favorite simple text editor nano
It is actually becoming pretty standard on linux distributions (gentoo and debian)
It is similar to the old DOS edit and is a clone of a text editor called pico.
Momentum. I do side work updating a few lawyers computer networks around town. Way back in the DOS days, word perfect was the standard. Lawyers tend to have money, so they were the first to adopt computers for their secretaries. And to do word processing on a 386/486 with DOS, you bought word perfect. Well technology has gone forward, but their secretaries still want to use wordperfect because all the other law firms are using it.
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau; Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus And Newton's Particles of Light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
I play a little chess. When I was younger I had a 1600 rating. I wanted to play because I was humilated at getting beat by the chessmaster on Nintendo. So I practiced and finally became good enough to beat the computer (albiet only a Nintendo) What I learned then (and seems to be common knowledge among chess players) is that when playing a computer, you stand a much better chance if you keep all your pawns on the board and manouver your pieces behind them. Computers think about the game in a very different manner, and I think eight pawn chess highlights where their weakness lies. They do not have a plan. They do not start the game with a long term plan to the ending. I believe that in the past, Garry was a true sportsman and did not play eight pawn chess against the strongest computers. He played real chess. He played what he would play against another Grandmaster. I really think he could probably beat the computer almost all of the time by playing eight pawn chess.
I remember when I first found out about muds. My internet connection was through a BBS and so I remember setting up macros and triggers through my BBS communication program (Telix). I lost a lot of time to that first mud (Isengard) Later on, I got a shell account and had TinyFugue. I remember the author of TF said he would never do a windows port because of the development tools and insufficiencies of the OS and that got me interested in UNIX. Then I heard about this automap feature in a program called Zmud and I was hooked. It was a long time ago now. I feel like I have gotten over playing in a fake world where you rewards can be taken away at a whim (though is that so different then the real world?)
To try and stay on topic, Tiny Fugue is now on windows. I would go with that, but man that automap feature of Zmud was so handy. You just clicked on a room on the map, and it would automatically move you around at light speed... go E, go W, go D
I have run the same argument with programmers I know and have reached similar conclusions. The real problem is when you have to start working with code someone else has made. With C++ you have to start delving into the mind of the other programmer and find out how he decided to OO. What did he feel constituted an object? It adds another layer of abstraction that you have to "figure out" in order to work on the code.
My company was also in an IP range that was blocked by SPEWS because of another companies actions in the same class C IP range.
This problem is really with the way SPEWS operates. Other blackhole lists are much more reasonable and only block by an IP per IP basis.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that administrators just og out to places like orisoft and subscribe to every blackhole list that exists without reading about how the blackhole lists are made.
I want to pipe in and second this view. A big gripe of mine is how arbitrary OO, classes can be on how they are organized. It feels like "another level" of abstraction based upon what the programmer felt constituted an object at the time. I have yet to find an OO PHP application that could not be just as easily implemented with includes, functions, and arrays.
There are some things you will only learn by having hand on experience with an actual router in your hands. Back in the day, it seemed like all the classes and training were using the 2501 for testing. I wanted to pipe in and mention a very good software simulator of a small LAN environment.
http://www.boson.com/netsim/
Ive used this software, and it is really good. You can drag and drop different routers and connect them up through swtiches or serial cables and run through all the commands of setting up a connection. Setup RIP, IGRP static routes, etc.. It feels very much like being logged in to a cisco router.
>>Using the information without informing yourself first is asking for trouble imho.
I do believe that is the heart of the matter. I do not believe that many administrators are going through the effort of checking each and every rbl that is listed in osirusoft.
I believe that if many of these administrators knew that SPEWS policy was to escalate cases to cover entire class C ranges (whether or not all the subnets are spammers or not such as this case) thereby doing what is termed collateral damage... many of those administrators would not be subscribed to osirusoft (due to SPEWS)
It is difficult to acertain what the majority of users of SPEWS know, but from searching through google it seems to my (albiet limited) knowledge that the users do no know the consequences.
Part of the problem seems to be administrators subscribe to osirusoft without the knowledge of how all the various blacklists aggregated under osirusoft work. osirusoft does not state boldly and in plain language how SPEWS works.
SPEWS has many class C's blocked when sometimes the spammer was only operating in a subnet of the class C. It does not even appear that their rational of blocking an ISP for hosting a spammer is quite valid, because they do not block all of the IP ranges of the ISP, they just block on a class C, by class C basis. I suspect the reason for this is because it is easy to block a class C, but not a subnet (because of the way decimal notation of IP ranges works)
It just does not seem like these mail administrators using osirusoft know that SPEWS is blocking class C's with the goal being that if enough innocent people are affected, then those innocent people will complain and get the spammer banned. Their tool for accomplishing this is blocking class C's
>>I wouldn't suggest blocking based on osirusoft alone
osirusoft is combining many many rbl. The problem I have with it is osirusoft just seems to include every rbl they can get a hold of. SPEWS specifically seems to generate a lot of false positives. This seems to be because they will block entire netblocks, the administrators can not be contacted, the list is closed, and efforts to try an contact the administrators of the list are often futile as exemplified here It would seem to me that just using one or two "quality" rbl would be just as effective.
Here are some relevant quotes from people posting about their SPEWS blacklisting problems.
"Hi, we are a law firm that bought from UUnet and it seems the last owners of this IP block were spammer. We're not, can you please remove us." "Every heard of due diligence? Thats what you get for buying from UUNet, you'll get unlisted when they clean up all their spammers."
"Hi, we bought from some people who turned out to have a problem with hosting some spammers, but we're locked into a 3 year contract. We're a small shop without the money for lawyers to get out of it. We're not spammers, could you please unblock this one piece of IP which is just us." "Sorry, you have to change providers. They breached your contract by failing to provide full internet access (since people are filtering them based on our listing)"
Are you sure you investigated exactly what osirusoft does? I fint it unfortunate that so many administrators seem to put in osirusoft as a blacklist without examing what it does. Osirusoft combines the blackhole listing of many many other blackhole listings, one of which is unfortunately, SPEWS. SPEWS in my opinion is overzealous with blacklisting and it is unfortunate that osirusoft includes them in its list. To read more about the problem, read this posting here
here is a relavent quote...
ii. a grep on osirusoft - which yields about 1/2 the messages - but.. when there's a false positive, there's a really good chance that it's in this group - and of this class of false positives, there's a close to 100% liklihood that it's SPEWS that's given the false positive
Just want to pipe in and say you are right on the money. We acquired our IP block from a telecom only to find that the IP range was listed in SPEWS. We have had the IP range for 3 years now, and it is still listed in SPEWS.
It is unfortunate though, that many administrators just sign up their mail servers to all the blacklists they can find without considering the quality of the lists and how they are maintained.
"windows 95" was a typo, although as pointed out by another reply, it was included in version C of win95. It basically, ran through and installed ie 4 after installing win95 B.
I dispute your claime that "EVERY SINGLE OEM" copy was shipped with the Plus Pack installed. I worked as a PC technician at the time, and I recall quite a few Compaq's and IBMs that did not install the plus pack.
Also, being in the plus pack and being in the operating system is a diffirent thing. Quite a few people ran out and boght windows 95 in a box.
" 2) Moshe is not smart enough to boot Mac OS X into command line, "Since for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to shut down the GUI environment of OS X" -- Moshe "I can't use Google" Bar. Here's a tip Moshi, when the log on screen pops up, type ">console" [osxfaq.com] in the user line. "
It must be very very difficult to be an online journalist, be human, and be berated for not being perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the broodwich?
1 02 4x768.jpg
http://www.aquateencentral.com/images/broodwich
I went about trying to write an online character generator a couple years ago.
Character Generator
The new 3E rules are much much better at converting to a sane mathmatical formula. Instead of having lots and lots of charts with varying numbers, a lot of things have been reduced to a linear function. (an example would be the +1 bonus for every two points above 10 in ability scores) But it is still far from perfect, but perhaps that is part of the magic. Instead of reducing everything down to some simple formula, you have to correspond or heaven forbid, make something up.
question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming
that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the
answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat
your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it
suggests that you have one and are still beating her.
According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the
correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to
mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on
incorrect assumptions".
Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in
language, and many have adopted this suggestion with
enthusiasm. The word "mu" is actually from Chinese, meaning
"nothing"; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense,
but native speakers do not recognise the Discordian
question-denying use. It almost certainly derives from
overgeneralisation of the answer in the following well-known
Rinzei Zen teaching riddle:
A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"
Joshu retorted, "Mu!"
## quote
I can't stand vi, and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux.
## end
I am sure you will get a hundred replies pointing you to simple editors for linux. But I would just like to point out my favorite simple text editor nano
It is actually becoming pretty standard on linux distributions (gentoo and debian)
It is similar to the old DOS edit and is a clone of a text editor called pico.
Momentum.
I do side work updating a few lawyers computer networks around town. Way back in the DOS days, word perfect was the standard. Lawyers tend to have money, so they were the first to adopt computers for their secretaries. And to do word processing on a 386/486 with DOS, you bought word perfect. Well technology has gone forward, but their secretaries still want to use wordperfect because all the other law firms are using it.
>> You *can't* prove a negative.
Not entirely true
Proving a Negative
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; 'tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel's paths they shine.
The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton's Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.
http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html#news130 This Week in Chess
I play a little chess. When I was younger I had a 1600 rating. I wanted to play because I was humilated at getting beat by the chessmaster on Nintendo. So I practiced and finally became good enough to beat the computer (albiet only a Nintendo) What I learned then (and seems to be common knowledge among chess players) is that when playing a computer, you stand a much better chance if you keep all your pawns on the board and manouver your pieces behind them. Computers think about the game in a very different manner, and I think eight pawn chess highlights where their weakness lies. They do not have a plan. They do not start the game with a long term plan to the ending. I believe that in the past, Garry was a true sportsman and did not play eight pawn chess against the strongest computers. He played real chess. He played what he would play against another Grandmaster. I really think he could probably beat the computer almost all of the time by playing eight pawn chess.
Bill Nighy Movie List
Bill Nighy Interview
Eddie Izzard Home Page
Eddie Izzard Interview
I remember when I first found out about muds. My internet connection was through a BBS and so I remember setting up macros and triggers through my BBS communication program (Telix). I lost a lot of time to that first mud (Isengard) Later on, I got a shell account and had TinyFugue. I remember the author of TF said he would never do a windows port because of the development tools and insufficiencies of the OS and that got me interested in UNIX. Then I heard about this automap feature in a program called Zmud and I was hooked. It was a long time ago now. I feel like I have gotten over playing in a fake world where you rewards can be taken away at a whim (though is that so different then the real world?)
To try and stay on topic, Tiny Fugue is now on windows. I would go with that, but man that automap feature of Zmud was so handy. You just clicked on a room on the map, and it would automatically move you around at light speed... go E, go W, go D
I have run the same argument with programmers I know and have reached similar conclusions. The real problem is when you have to start working with code someone else has made. With C++ you have to start delving into the mind of the other programmer and find out how he decided to OO. What did he feel constituted an object? It adds another layer of abstraction that you have to "figure out" in order to work on the code.
My company was also in an IP range that
was blocked by SPEWS because of another
companies actions in the same class C
IP range.
This problem is really with the way SPEWS
operates. Other blackhole lists are much
more reasonable and only block by an IP
per IP basis.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact
that administrators just og out to
places like orisoft and subscribe to
every blackhole list that exists without
reading about how the blackhole lists
are made.
I want to pipe in and second this view. A big gripe of mine is how arbitrary OO, classes can be on how they are organized. It feels like "another level" of abstraction based upon what the programmer felt constituted an object at the time. I have yet to find an OO PHP application that could not be just as easily implemented with includes, functions, and arrays.
There are some things you will only learn by having hand on experience with an actual router in your hands. Back in the day, it seemed like all the classes and training were using the 2501 for testing. I wanted to pipe in and mention a very good software simulator of a small LAN environment.
http://www.boson.com/netsim/
Ive used this software, and it is really good. You can drag and drop different routers and connect them up through swtiches or serial cables and run through all the commands of setting up a connection. Setup RIP, IGRP static routes, etc.. It feels very much like being logged in to a cisco router.
I just wanted to point people to
a project that tries to catch buffer
overflows under linux.
freshmeat entry
homepage
>>Using the information without informing yourself first is asking for trouble imho.
I do believe that is the heart of the matter. I do not believe that many administrators are going through the effort of checking each and every rbl that is listed in osirusoft.
I believe that if many of these administrators knew that SPEWS policy was to escalate cases to cover entire class C ranges (whether or not all the subnets are spammers or not such as this case) thereby doing what is termed collateral damage... many of those administrators would not be subscribed to osirusoft (due to SPEWS)
>>the users of SPEWS accept these consequences.
It is difficult to acertain what the majority of users of SPEWS know, but from searching through google it seems to my (albiet limited) knowledge that the users do no know the consequences.
Part of the problem seems to be administrators subscribe to osirusoft without the knowledge of how all the various blacklists aggregated under osirusoft work. osirusoft does not state boldly and in plain language how SPEWS works.
SPEWS has many class C's blocked when sometimes the spammer was only operating in a subnet of the class C. It does not even appear that their rational of blocking an ISP for hosting a spammer is quite valid, because they do not block all of the IP ranges of the ISP, they just block on a class C, by class C basis. I suspect the reason for this is because it is easy to block a class C, but not a subnet (because of the way decimal notation of IP ranges works)
It just does not seem like these mail administrators using osirusoft know that SPEWS is blocking class C's with the goal being that if enough innocent people are affected, then those innocent people will complain and get the spammer banned. Their tool for accomplishing this is blocking class C's
>>I wouldn't suggest blocking based on osirusoft alone
osirusoft is combining many many rbl. The problem I have with it is osirusoft just seems to include every rbl they can get a hold of. SPEWS specifically seems to generate a lot of false positives. This seems to be because they will block entire netblocks, the administrators can not be contacted, the list is closed, and efforts to try an contact the administrators of the list are often futile as exemplified here It would seem to me that just using one or two "quality" rbl would be just as effective.
Here are some relevant quotes from people posting about their SPEWS blacklisting problems.
"Hi, we are a law firm that bought from UUnet and it seems the last owners
of this IP block were spammer. We're not, can you please remove us."
"Every heard of due diligence? Thats what you get for buying from UUNet,
you'll get unlisted when they clean up all their spammers."
"Hi, we bought from some people who turned out to have a problem with
hosting some spammers, but we're locked into a 3 year contract. We're a
small shop without the money for lawyers to get out of it. We're not
spammers, could you please unblock this one piece of IP which is just us."
"Sorry, you have to change providers. They breached your contract by
failing to provide full internet access (since people are filtering them
based on our listing)"
Are you sure you investigated exactly
what osirusoft does?
I fint it unfortunate that so many
administrators seem to put in osirusoft
as a blacklist without examing what it
does. Osirusoft combines the blackhole
listing of many many other blackhole
listings, one of which is unfortunately,
SPEWS. SPEWS in my opinion is
overzealous with blacklisting and it
is unfortunate that osirusoft includes
them in its list. To read more about
the problem, read this posting
here
here is a relavent quote...
ii. a grep on osirusoft - which yields about 1/2 the messages -
but.. when there's a false positive, there's a really good chance that
it's in this group - and of this class of false positives, there's a close
to 100% liklihood that it's SPEWS that's given the false positive
You can alos check out antispews.
Just want to pipe in and say you
are right on the money. We acquired
our IP block from a telecom only
to find that the IP range was listed
in SPEWS. We have had the IP range
for 3 years now, and it is still
listed in SPEWS.
It is unfortunate though, that many
administrators just sign up their
mail servers to all the blacklists
they can find without considering
the quality of the lists and how they
are maintained.
"windows 95" was a typo, although as
pointed out by another reply, it was
included in version C of win95. It
basically, ran through and installed ie 4
after installing win95 B.
I dispute your claime that "EVERY SINGLE
OEM" copy was shipped with the Plus Pack
installed. I worked as a PC technician
at the time, and I recall quite a few
Compaq's and IBMs that did not install
the plus pack.
Also, being in the plus pack and being
in the operating system is a diffirent
thing. Quite a few people ran out and
boght windows 95 in a box.
What you state is not exactly true.
IE 1 and 2 was not bundled with windows.
IE 3 was bundled with OSSR 2 of windows 95,
but was not setup to run. You had to click
on it to install it, and you could get rid
of it.
OSSR 2 was not something you could buy
over the counter either.
IE4 was integrated into windows 95 and
you could not get rid of it.
" 2) Moshe is not smart enough to boot Mac OS X into command line, "Since for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to shut down the GUI environment of OS X" -- Moshe "I can't use Google" Bar. Here's a tip Moshi, when the log on screen pops up, type ">console" [osxfaq.com] in the user line. "
It must be very very difficult to be
an online journalist, be human, and be
berated for not being perfect.
I have found that quite a few search
engines take the description meta tag
and list it next to the search results.
dogpile for one does this