My understanding of space is that it's a big zero, empty, nothing, spotted with clusters of various materials that are in the form of gases or solids.
the universe ends when there ceases to be matter. At least that's how I always thought of it. The definition is a little shakey for statistical reasons. have you ever taken a stats class(no offense intended, honest question)? if I remember correctly, there's some sort of limit or something... if you were to use particle distribution from the "center" of the universe out, you could probably make a rough guess at the 99.5% line or something to that effect. obviously we can't take inventory of every sub-atomic particle, so scientists guess. At least, that's what I'd do I suppose.
There is no physical boundary to our solar system, we just made one up in our heads to differentiate between "in here" and "out there".
again, it's not so much about physical lines as it is about theoretical lines. With our solar system, I guess I'd use the oort cloud as a limit. if all else failed, I suppose I'd define it as the farthest-out orbiting object.
It's just a big empty. Nothing. There's no "flat plain" of space. There's nothing stopping you from flying perpendicular to the orbits of our planets and taking a long distance picture.
a "flat plain of space" is referring to gravitational(and time?) distortions. gravity wells are a great example of this. it shows gravity become stronger as it gets closer to the object. You are correct about the perpendicular movement tho... SOmething you *do* have to consider is that more or less, everything in the solar system follows the same plain... a lot of systems are like that. the milky way is like that as well.
Blackhole's do _not_ lead down a funnel.
This I'd argue, is a matter of perspective. obviously there IS no funnel, you are correct, however, if you were getting sucked down one, in those brief moments before you die, it might look or feel like you're getting sucked down a funnel. Think with your eyes, not your brain. the photons around you aren't going to becoming at you from all angles- only from above. the the sides, nothingness, below you, death. you get pulled towards death while looking up, the remaining photons hitting you from all angles lessening, making it appear that the"opening" above you is getting smaller. I wish I could describe this sensation better with words, but I can't.
They reduce to a singularity, a point in space where upon one element may occupy the same space - and presumably time as well - as another element. It's a freaking dot that weighs an infinite amount, not a vacuum cleaner.
And what would be the difference? think of it as a vacuum cleaner with a spherical mouth and a really good trash compactor built in. whatever floats your boat to understand that the gravity is very strong, and pulls stuff in.
Maybe it's because I haven't studied astrophysics or advanced quantum theory, but it just seems to me that a lot of the time when a scientist says the universe is shaped like a soccer ball, or a donut, or a freaking celtic knot, he really has no idea.
it requires a very spacial mind(no pun intended) to see things like this. play with this for a while. I remember a friend of mine telling me about a book or something where a circle meets a sphere, and tries to describe to a 2d object what a 3d world is like...adventures in flatland perhaps? it's sorta like that...
It's space, nothing, a huge empty. If it's shaped like anything than what the hell is outside?
This really depends on if *all matter* came from one singularity or multiple.... for all we know, the universe could be part of a larger megaverse where no two universes are close enough to even detect each other. wouldn't that be a trip?
signed, -IANAAP(I am not an astro-physicist) morgajel.
p.s. yes I hate capital letters. p.p.s. and I can't spell either.
A bit misleading- John actually wrote the core engine, I wrote the gui wrapper for it. and yes virginia, I'm a whore(karma or otherwise):)
----- This message is in direct response to this article: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/10/01/223 7215.shtml ?tid=103&tid=126&tid=163&tid=98&tid=99
Linux is the absolute opposite of waste in government. As I type this, I sit at a Linux workstation, sending mail through a Linux mailserver. I have an email client, a web browser, instant messenger and an office suite. Not only that, but about $600 worth of educational software I plan to share with my kids when I have have some. Cost of this software: $0. Not because of piracy- because the creators of the software choose to give it away for free. I should know- I am also an open source developer.
Each Massachusetts computer using linux is $200+ that is not shipped out of state to a large corporate sinkhole. This money can be spent on important things like rebuilding roads and schools. If however you feel that the schools are over fiananced, I'm afraid there is little I can do to convice you otherwise.
Shame on you for speaking on a subject you know little of. Perhaps you should check news.google.com. Count the positive number of Linux articles in comparison to negative articles on other operating systems. Keep a tally over the course of a month.
As I mentioned before, I am an open source developer. I, along with my friend john, wrote the program GatGui. http://morgajel.com/index.php?GPMID=5&PMI D=6&MenuI D=7 GatGui is a cancer research tool. It helps identify which genes are most likely to be involved with certain forms of cancer. John and I give this program away for free. Why? Because damnit, PEOPLE NEED IT. It's not about the money, it's about helping people. Before you deride my effort, I should mention that GAT (previous version of GatGui) is being used by the Van Andel Institute for cancer research.
I suppose my program is evil and wasteful now, as well, huh?
My point is that you shouldn't complain about a product BEFORE you know what it is about. Do not let corporate sponsors, or those that are sponsored by them, make your decisions. If someone is Microsoft Certified, chances are they will support the decision to stay with Microsoft. Don't let ignorance blind you.
I apologize for typos- I was up late trying to find the cure for cancer. -Jesse Morgan
"Just doing my part here and voicing my opinion. get rid of DRM on the motherboard, or you lose the business of everyone I build computers for. Hardware level DRM is not a good Idea.
sincerely, - an irritated Computer Science Graduate"
Don't abuse it. if you want to go kazaa-ing, go somewhere else. remember- when people are nice, and you abuse their trust, they tend not to be nice anymore.
Try to keep it to a dull roar, or use something encrypted at least. If you make it blatently obvious that you're doing any sort of mp3 swaping, the BSA and RIAA will rain the holy shitstorm of litigation on the school. make sure if you use it, you write a letter of praise or something to the dean or head of IT praising their decision to make it open to the public.
*sigh* kids these days. in order to get the most out of your machine, you have to know what to do. there is one thing any pc user can do to speed up their machine- Butter your RAM- yes, butter your RAM.
The lubrication helps the bits move faster, as well as keeps the PC cool. There's also the added bonus that the smoke genie( that little guy who lives in your PC) will come up to the surface for a bite to eat. This can triple the speed of your computer if you can coax him to the surface... You have to be careful tho- if you put too much butter on there, the smoke genie can grease the bars of his cage with it and escape!
I've never quite been able to get the proportions right and have ended up frying every machine I tried it on- but for a while it was running fast!
oh, and it seems the parts around lansing are somewhere in between. a friend in hartland mi lost power at her house, but the applebees where she works down the street is still getting power.
I'm in grand rapids, and around 4pm all the fans in the apartment slowed down for about 30 seconds, then sped back up. The UPS made some clicking noises.
In Kalamazoo, they lost power. that's a good hour and a half to the south from where I am, so I feel lucky that we have power. I don't know how much of Michigan has power, but according to the reports the southeast doesn't.
have you ever been in a nursing home? seriously, I don't know if it's just the US, but old people are often treated an refuse.
Personally I don't think it's right, but I know a lot of people who just don't care/ don't have the patience, can't afford to take care of them, etc. What I'm curious about is will the aging process continue till we're 290 years old and falling apart? will the aging process as a whole just slow down? when my great grandkids are 50, will they look and feel like I did when I was 20?
There's a difference between slowing the aging process and extending it. There are concequences for both.
I think there'd be plenty of social issues to deal with first before we take a stab at being immortal.
This is a life and death battle. If you don't fight, there's a slim chance that some moron judge will side the wrong way.
SCO has the audacity to attack linux, and hence, Free Software. How many GCC developers run linux? How many of us do?
I'm completely looking forward to the linux revolution that's creeping in. This is our chance to prove how strong free sofware really is. We can't seem meek, because if we do, and just barely squeak by SCO, microsoft or someone else with a bag of cash is gonna crush us. We gotta give everything we got.
It's sorta like a prison movie. Either kick someone's ass the first day or become someone's bitch.
We need to pull out all the stops. No survivors. lay them of them to the man. cut up their credit cards. Throw the board of directors in the electric chair. If we hold back, there will be dire concequences.
Unfortunately all of my software is pretty simple, and there's no way of removing support for SCO since there's none to begin with.
Yes, This will hurt SCO users, but then again, they can always complain to SCO and notice that SCO doesn't give a damn about them. Perhaps they'll consider moving to another platform.
doubtful- I get the feeling this is SCO's blaze of glory before dying out.... I really can't see them recovering from this in any way.
Business make money by pleasing customers, not muscling them into paying. All their doing is pissing people off.
most of the younger generation (myself included) have never had much experience with any unix, only linux. it's what we can run at home on a spare box. It's cheap and easy. When we finally get up the ladder in companies that are actually RUNNINIG SCO products, we're gonna be trying our hardest to get it replace with something- ANYTHING.
come to think of it, what I'd like to see would be IBM offer a "SCO tradein".... trade your licence of unixware or whatever for an AIX or Redhat license with X days of support.
I've seen this scheme before, and I was just curious.... when you reassign a machine to a different job, say, from fileserver at a small company to webserver at a small company, what happens when more than 50 people connect in the case of a slashdotting?
do you have to go and buy a new license to license it "by processor" or what?
Since Grand Valley has such a piss poor computer to CS major ratio, most of my friends and I were forced to buy laptops to do our homework between classes(classes are sometimes scheduled with an hours or two between two 400 level classes, leaving 30-40 students hanging around a lab with 12 computers). Fortunatey they finally decided that the Computer Science building might be a good one to add wireless access to, so we all had bought wireless cards.
One of our classes, Programming Languages was taught by a very irritating professor who taught little more than hatred for her. Of course, since some of us had laptops and wireless access.
One of my few memories I took away from that class was when we gave our IRC channel a play by play of how horrible the lecture was, at some point almost bringing epiliptic seizures by flipping through 30 slides at a time. The Lectures were boring, plagerized, and mostly without merit- but we had wireless access and huddled in the safety of our IRC channel.
We often made it a game to try and make the others laugh out loud. Those were some of the greatest memories my time at college.
After recalling all of these fond memories, I decided to go back through my xchat logs and find all of the conversations had from 3pm to 4 pm from Feburay to April. I'll be nice and post some of them so you can see what was talked about. These chats are not complete, and may be edited.
shabbs, morgajel/grog, ogg/darkimage, mors/gronk, had laptops in the class and bill and Gen_G sat next to them. everyone else was usually in the lab, talking to us in the channel.
As one of the coders who has provided snippets for them, I gotta say that I the gpl licence works just fine. the purpose is to TEACH you how to do it, not just copy paste and be done with it. The gpl has a handy little clause that says you can rewrite the code and call it your own.
If you like my code, the only thing I ask is that you figure out what what it does before using it. If you understand it, you don't have to copy/paste it and can just write your own.
I think that gpl is perfect for this site because the snippets are small, and easy to rewrite. It's perfect for me because in order to rewrite it, you have to understand it, which is why I posted the snippets in the first place- to help people learn.
Good job sheenmaster, but you really gotta get a different handle:)
if you want to check out other projects I've worked on, check out morgajel.com
whoops, my bad- I was looking for the simpleton bold letters.
A agree with you tho- it'll be hard to prove who you are without tying your identity to a vote. I don't trust the current/any politicians to say "here is our closed source voting system. all you do is put all of your personal info in here, and we promise not to check and see who you voted for. Promise."
Funny story I have to go along with that, rather long but it's on topic and quite interesting.
My college tried doing something similar for student senate. They hired an art major who used frontpage to write a form. It included inputting your student ID(SSN), your name, your birthdate(for confirmation), and everyone you voted for on the ballot.
Of course, no one bothered to think that perhaps the data should be stored somewhere safe. Instead, it was stored in a flat file that was web accessable. A friend of mine who shall remain nameless was bored and decided to trace through the html.... 20 seconds later, he asked if anyone in the lab had voted online. a couple of people raised their hands. He then said, "hey Chris, is your SSN 123-23-1234?"
The demonstration was complete. There were about 700k of text in the file, over 900 names, SSN's and votes by 11am(half an hour after we found it.)
We had of course went and told everyone we could find that was in any position of power to kill the page and move the file offline.
Around noon, the file was removed, but the voting page was still up. Se looked into the code to find that they had changed the name of the frole from/results.dat to/secret/results1.dat.
I looked at the list as it grew larger, noticing more and more of my non-geek friends showing up on the list. We even went so far as to have Beavis vote, and then watched as he was added to the text file.
We reported it again, and by 2pm, they finally "stopped" the online elections.
Some of the people in the lab were less that impressed by that point. One individual who I've only seen once in that lab and never again, printed out the list. He then went and stapled 5 pages to each door in the Computer Science building. That prompted more of an investigation than anything else.
The funny part was that the people who counted the votes were the ones who were currently in office. Not only that, but one of the guys, the student senate president, had voted over 50 times for himself and his fellow encumbents.
Of course they blew over it in the school paper with a crap apology. I think one new person was elected that year.
Of course, no one would touch that story with a 10 foot pole- not slashdot, not the local news papers, not the local tv stations.
Moral of the story: my voter apathy prevented me from getting my identity stolen. Remember to be apathetic towards the voting process.
Anyways, my point is this was one example of a horriffic abuse of online voting, and I whole-heartedly agree that it's not ready. Not yet.
what exactly is SERVE? is it a website? a program? an authentication scheme? I browsed over the article looking for that, and didn't see it.
So why is Windows a requirement- client side software? if so, why does it matter what browser you use? it's obviously not a vb app that calls IE, because they say it works with netscape 6+ as well.
If it's browser independent(straight html) then it should work on any system. I don't think netscape uses vbscript, so I don't think that would be a hinderance either.
Perhaps they just listed windows because they didn't want people with an old Tandy or 386 trying it. Perhaps they didn't mean to offend the linux and Mac users, they were just ignorant of their existence.
If someone is bored, they could try contacting the creators of this project and see if they could get mozilla and opera added to that list of broswers, as well as linux.
Actually, perhaps the mozilla team could petition to have themselves added to the list if they meet all of the requirements. It would be good publicity to say "yes, we're government certified to handle your votes, and we have a better track record than IE. try us."
you should still know how to change a flat, add oil and wiper fluid, and know where the gas tank is. hell, even I know that stuff.
computers should be like as cars, your right. you need to know basic maintinence and care and know that if you don't, it's gonna get messed up real quick. if the oil light comes on, stop the car immediately. know that you shouldn't pour sugar in your gas tank or drive into trees. know basic stuff. don't ever open, reply to or send spam- just delete it. update your virus software often. fairly straight forward stuff.
Perhaps someone should make a list of basic do's and don't with your computer and post it somewhere. actually, I think I might do that later.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd guess it has more to do with the 300,000 emails saying "I AM BREAKING YOUR ENCRYPTION RIGHT NOW> HAHA< I R)X)R!"
My understanding of space is that it's a big zero, empty, nothing, spotted with clusters of various materials that are in the form of gases or solids.
the universe ends when there ceases to be matter. At least that's how I always thought of it. The definition is a little shakey for statistical reasons. have you ever taken a stats class(no offense intended, honest question)? if I remember correctly, there's some sort of limit or something... if you were to use particle distribution from the "center" of the universe out, you could probably make a rough guess at the 99.5% line or something to that effect. obviously we can't take inventory of every sub-atomic particle, so scientists guess. At least, that's what I'd do I suppose.
There is no physical boundary to our solar system, we just made one up in our heads to differentiate between "in here" and "out there".
again, it's not so much about physical lines as it is about theoretical lines. With our solar system, I guess I'd use the oort cloud as a limit.
if all else failed, I suppose I'd define it as the farthest-out orbiting object.
It's just a big empty. Nothing. There's no "flat plain" of space. There's nothing stopping you from flying perpendicular to the orbits of our planets and taking a long distance picture.
a "flat plain of space" is referring to gravitational(and time?) distortions. gravity wells are a great example of this. it shows gravity become stronger as it gets closer to the object. You are correct about the perpendicular movement tho... SOmething you *do* have to consider is that more or less, everything in the solar system follows the same plain... a lot of systems are like that. the milky way is like that as well.
Blackhole's do _not_ lead down a funnel.
This I'd argue, is a matter of perspective. obviously there IS no funnel, you are correct, however, if you were getting sucked down one, in those brief moments before you die, it might look or feel like you're getting sucked down a funnel. Think with your eyes, not your brain. the photons around you aren't going to becoming at you from all angles- only from above. the the sides, nothingness, below you, death. you get pulled towards death while looking up, the remaining photons hitting you from all angles lessening, making it appear that the"opening" above you is getting smaller. I wish I could describe this sensation better with words, but I can't.
They reduce to a singularity, a point in space where upon one element may occupy the same space - and presumably time as well - as another element. It's a freaking dot that weighs an infinite amount, not a vacuum cleaner.
And what would be the difference? think of it as a vacuum cleaner with a spherical mouth and a really good trash compactor built in. whatever floats your boat to understand that the gravity is very strong, and pulls stuff in.
Maybe it's because I haven't studied astrophysics or advanced quantum theory, but it just seems to me that a lot of the time when a scientist says the universe is shaped like a soccer ball, or a donut, or a freaking celtic knot, he really has no idea.
it requires a very spacial mind(no pun intended) to see things like this. play with this for a while. I remember a friend of mine telling me about a book or something where a circle meets a sphere, and tries to describe to a 2d object what a 3d world is like...adventures in flatland perhaps? it's sorta like that...
It's space, nothing, a huge empty. If it's shaped like anything than what the hell is outside?
This really depends on if *all matter* came from one singularity or multiple.... for all we know, the universe could be part of a larger megaverse where no two universes are close enough to even detect each other. wouldn't that be a trip?
signed,
-IANAAP(I am not an astro-physicist)
morgajel.
p.s. yes I hate capital letters.
p.p.s. and I can't spell either.
roads were just a guess: I'm from michigan, and our roads are crap. I figured with the winters they get, it would be similar.
A bit misleading- John actually wrote the core engine, I wrote the gui wrapper for it. and yes virginia, I'm a whore(karma or otherwise):)
3 7215.shtml ?tid=103&tid=126&tid=163&tid=98&tid=99
I D=6&MenuI D=7
-----
This message is in direct response to this article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/10/01/22
Linux is the absolute opposite of waste in government. As I type this,
I sit at a Linux workstation, sending mail through a Linux mailserver.
I have an email client, a web browser, instant messenger and an office
suite. Not only that, but about $600 worth of educational software I
plan to share with my kids when I have have some.
Cost of this software: $0. Not because of piracy- because the creators
of the software choose to give it away for free. I should know- I am
also an open source developer.
Each Massachusetts computer using linux is $200+ that is not shipped out
of state to a large corporate sinkhole. This money can be spent on
important things like rebuilding roads and schools. If however you feel
that the schools are over fiananced, I'm afraid there is little I can do
to convice you otherwise.
Shame on you for speaking on a subject you know little of. Perhaps you
should check news.google.com. Count the positive number of Linux
articles in comparison to negative articles on other operating systems.
Keep a tally over the course of a month.
As I mentioned before, I am an open source developer. I, along with my
friend john, wrote the program GatGui.
http://morgajel.com/index.php?GPMID=5&PM
GatGui is a cancer research tool. It helps identify which genes are
most likely to be involved with certain forms of cancer. John and I
give this program away for free. Why? Because damnit, PEOPLE NEED IT.
It's not about the money, it's about helping people. Before you deride
my effort, I should mention that GAT (previous version of GatGui) is
being used by the Van Andel Institute for cancer research.
I suppose my program is evil and wasteful now, as well, huh?
My point is that you shouldn't complain about a product BEFORE you know
what it is about. Do not let corporate sponsors, or those that are
sponsored by them, make your decisions. If someone is Microsoft
Certified, chances are they will support the decision to stay with
Microsoft. Don't let ignorance blind you.
I apologize for typos- I was up late trying to find the cure for cancer.
-Jesse Morgan
...that would explain the name:)
/me ducks
done.
"Just doing my part here and voicing my opinion.
get rid of DRM on the motherboard, or you lose the business of everyone I build computers for.
Hardware level DRM is not a good Idea.
sincerely,
- an irritated Computer Science Graduate"
Don't abuse it. if you want to go kazaa-ing, go somewhere else. remember- when people are nice, and you abuse their trust, they tend not to be nice anymore.
Try to keep it to a dull roar, or use something encrypted at least. If you make it blatently obvious that you're doing any sort of mp3 swaping, the BSA and RIAA will rain the holy shitstorm of litigation on the school.
make sure if you use it, you write a letter of praise or something to the dean or head of IT praising their decision to make it open to the public.
*sigh* kids these days.
in order to get the most out of your machine, you have to know what to do. there is one thing any pc user can do to speed up their machine- Butter your RAM- yes, butter your RAM.
The lubrication helps the bits move faster, as well as keeps the PC cool.
There's also the added bonus that the smoke genie( that little guy who lives in your PC) will come up to the surface for a bite to eat. This can triple the speed of your computer if you can coax him to the surface... You have to be careful tho- if you put too much butter on there, the smoke genie can grease the bars of his cage with it and escape!
I've never quite been able to get the proportions right and have ended up frying every machine I tried it on- but for a while it was running fast!
Doesn't the guy who purchased the car usually ASK to have lojack installed?
Bad Example. Toyota doesn't install LoJack in all of the cars they have "Just in case" one is stolen.
that's not the way it works.
years of distrust and being lied to.
same here- I'm in grandville and felt the power dim for a few seconds, and go back up.
I know that hartland and kalamazoo were hit as well.
oh, and it seems the parts around lansing are somewhere in between.
a friend in hartland mi lost power at her house, but the applebees where she works down the street is still getting power.
I'm in grand rapids, and around 4pm all the fans in the apartment slowed down for about 30 seconds, then sped back up. The UPS made some clicking noises.
In Kalamazoo, they lost power. that's a good hour and a half to the south from where I am, so I feel lucky that we have power. I don't know how much of Michigan has power, but according to the reports the southeast doesn't.
have you ever been in a nursing home? seriously, I don't know if it's just the US, but old people are often treated an refuse.
Personally I don't think it's right, but I know a lot of people who just don't care/ don't have the patience, can't afford to take care of them, etc. What I'm curious about is will the aging process continue till we're 290 years old and falling apart? will the aging process as a whole just slow down? when my great grandkids are 50, will they look and feel like I did when I was 20?
There's a difference between slowing the aging process and extending it. There are concequences for both.
I think there'd be plenty of social issues to deal with first before we take a stab at being immortal.
don't worry if it's cubs will go hungry.
This is a life and death battle. If you don't fight, there's a slim chance that some moron judge will side the wrong way.
SCO has the audacity to attack linux, and hence, Free Software. How many GCC developers run linux? How many of us do?
I'm completely looking forward to the linux revolution that's creeping in. This is our chance to prove how strong free sofware really is. We can't seem meek, because if we do, and just barely squeak by SCO, microsoft or someone else with a bag of cash is gonna crush us. We gotta give everything we got.
It's sorta like a prison movie. Either kick someone's ass the first day or become someone's bitch.
We need to pull out all the stops. No survivors. lay them of them to the man. cut up their credit cards. Throw the board of directors in the electric chair. If we hold back, there will be dire concequences.
Unfortunately all of my software is pretty simple, and there's no way of removing support for SCO since there's none to begin with.
Yes, This will hurt SCO users, but then again, they can always complain to SCO and notice that SCO doesn't give a damn about them. Perhaps they'll consider moving to another platform.
doubtful- I get the feeling this is SCO's blaze of glory before dying out.... I really can't see them recovering from this in any way.
Business make money by pleasing customers, not muscling them into paying. All their doing is pissing people off.
most of the younger generation (myself included) have never had much experience with any unix, only linux. it's what we can run at home on a spare box. It's cheap and easy. When we finally get up the ladder in companies that are actually RUNNINIG SCO products, we're gonna be trying our hardest to get it replace with something- ANYTHING.
come to think of it, what I'd like to see would be IBM offer a "SCO tradein".... trade your licence of unixware or whatever for an AIX or Redhat license with X days of support.
or as one of my gaming buddys said
"mmmm, plunder and womens..."
I've seen this scheme before, and I was just curious....
when you reassign a machine to a different job, say, from fileserver at a small company to webserver at a small company, what happens when more than 50 people connect in the case of a slashdotting?
do you have to go and buy a new license to license it "by processor" or what?
same here- but I have my fiancee issue the rewards:)
....so I guess my advice... is to go pay a hooker to sit in your room and help you study(if you don't have a girlfriend yourself).
sometimes it works out really well- because she picks up bits and pieces of CS stuff, I pass my tests, and I have fun the entire time.
Since Grand Valley has such a piss poor computer to CS major ratio, most of my friends and I were forced to buy laptops to do our homework between classes(classes are sometimes scheduled with an hours or two between two 400 level classes, leaving 30-40 students hanging around a lab with 12 computers). Fortunatey they finally decided that the Computer Science building might be a good one to add wireless access to, so we all had bought wireless cards.
One of our classes, Programming Languages was taught by a very irritating professor who taught little more than hatred for her. Of course, since some of us had laptops and wireless access.
One of my few memories I took away from that class was when we gave our IRC channel a play by play of how horrible the lecture was, at some point almost bringing epiliptic seizures by flipping through 30 slides at a time. The Lectures were boring, plagerized, and mostly without merit- but we had wireless access and huddled in the safety of our IRC channel.
We often made it a game to try and make the others laugh out loud. Those were some of the greatest memories my time at college.
After recalling all of these fond memories, I decided to go back through my xchat logs and find all of the conversations had from 3pm to 4 pm from Feburay to April. I'll be nice and post some of them so you can see what was talked about. These chats are not complete, and may be edited.
shabbs, morgajel/grog, ogg/darkimage, mors/gronk, had laptops in the class and bill and Gen_G sat next to them. everyone else was usually in the lab, talking to us in the channel.
http://draccus.homelinux.net/cs343chat.log
how many times can you rhyme "viagra" and "natural breast enhancements"
The game does sound cool tho.... It would be a game in itself just feeding it different crap.
As one of the coders who has provided snippets for them, I gotta say that I the gpl licence works just fine. the purpose is to TEACH you how to do it, not just copy paste and be done with it. The gpl has a handy little clause that says you can rewrite the code and call it your own.
If you like my code, the only thing I ask is that you figure out what what it does before using it. If you understand it, you don't have to copy/paste it and can just write your own.
I think that gpl is perfect for this site because the snippets are small, and easy to rewrite. It's perfect for me because in order to rewrite it, you have to understand it, which is why I posted the snippets in the first place- to help people learn.
Good job sheenmaster, but you really gotta get a different handle:)
if you want to check out other projects I've worked on, check out morgajel.com
whoops, my bad- I was looking for the simpleton bold letters.
/results.dat to /secret/results1.dat.
A agree with you tho- it'll be hard to prove who you are without tying your identity to a vote. I don't trust the current/any politicians to say "here is our closed source voting system. all you do is put all of your personal info in here, and we promise not to check and see who you voted for. Promise."
Funny story I have to go along with that, rather long but it's on topic and quite interesting.
My college tried doing something similar for student senate. They hired an art major who used frontpage to write a form. It included inputting your student ID(SSN), your name, your birthdate(for confirmation), and everyone you voted for on the ballot.
Of course, no one bothered to think that perhaps the data should be stored somewhere safe. Instead, it was stored in a flat file that was web accessable. A friend of mine who shall remain nameless was bored and decided to trace through the html.... 20 seconds later, he asked if anyone in the lab had voted online. a couple of people raised their hands. He then said, "hey Chris, is your SSN 123-23-1234?"
The demonstration was complete. There were about 700k of text in the file, over 900 names, SSN's and votes by 11am(half an hour after we found it.)
We had of course went and told everyone we could find that was in any position of power to kill the page and move the file offline.
Around noon, the file was removed, but the voting page was still up. Se looked into the code to find that they had changed the name of the frole from
I looked at the list as it grew larger, noticing more and more of my non-geek friends showing up on the list. We even went so far as to have Beavis vote, and then watched as he was added to the text file.
We reported it again, and by 2pm, they finally "stopped" the online elections.
Some of the people in the lab were less that impressed by that point. One individual who I've only seen once in that lab and never again, printed out the list. He then went and stapled 5 pages to each door in the Computer Science building. That prompted more of an investigation than anything else.
The funny part was that the people who counted the votes were the ones who were currently in office. Not only that, but one of the guys, the student senate president, had voted over 50 times for himself and his fellow encumbents.
Of course they blew over it in the school paper with a crap apology. I think one new person was elected that year.
Of course, no one would touch that story with a 10 foot pole- not slashdot, not the local news papers, not the local tv stations.
Moral of the story: my voter apathy prevented me from getting my identity stolen. Remember to be apathetic towards the voting process.
Anyways, my point is this was one example of a horriffic abuse of online voting, and I whole-heartedly agree that it's not ready. Not yet.
what exactly is SERVE? is it a website? a program? an authentication scheme? I browsed over the article looking for that, and didn't see it.
So why is Windows a requirement- client side software? if so, why does it matter what browser you use? it's obviously not a vb app that calls IE, because they say it works with netscape 6+ as well.
If it's browser independent(straight html) then it should work on any system. I don't think netscape uses vbscript, so I don't think that would be a hinderance either.
Perhaps they just listed windows because they didn't want people with an old Tandy or 386 trying it. Perhaps they didn't mean to offend the linux and Mac users, they were just ignorant of their existence.
If someone is bored, they could try contacting the creators of this project and see if they could get mozilla and opera added to that list of broswers, as well as linux.
Actually, perhaps the mozilla team could petition to have themselves added to the list if they meet all of the requirements. It would be good publicity to say "yes, we're government certified to handle your votes, and we have a better track record than IE. try us."
you should still know how to change a flat, add oil and wiper fluid, and know where the gas tank is.
hell, even I know that stuff.
computers should be like as cars, your right. you need to know basic maintinence and care and know that if you don't, it's gonna get messed up real quick. if the oil light comes on, stop the car immediately. know that you shouldn't pour sugar in your gas tank or drive into trees. know basic stuff. don't ever open, reply to or send spam- just delete it. update your virus software often. fairly straight forward stuff.
Perhaps someone should make a list of basic do's and don't with your computer and post it somewhere. actually, I think I might do that later.