Gak, I forgott to add you might also arrange to see if they'll at least give you some medical history so you can know if there is anything inheritable you might be susceptable to even if they'd rather not establish any sort of contact.
Men only contribute half of the nuclear dna. You've got a lot of dna OUTSIDE the nucleas that came from your mother.
IANA Biologist/geneticist/other-related-field, but as I understand it the non-nuclear dna is pretty important as well.
One possibility would be to set up some sort of 'blind' contact.
Hire some neutral 3rd party(lawyer,PI,etc.) to find out who they are and let them know you're willing to establish contact if they want (via the 3rd party first time at least) but if not then the third party doesn't tell you anything or them anything.
The third party knows who everyone is, but niegther you nor they know unless both agree.
I could swear I've heard of at least one service that helps track down adoptee's genetic parents willing to set it up like this.
Of course how much this would cost I have NO idea.
Mycroft
Re:Some other tidbits from my poor memory...
on
Pixar For Sale?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ever see the old cartoon with Fogghorn Legghorn where he tries to marry the rich widdower, but has to ipress her 'genius' son?
The genuis son character looks alot like the main char in chicken little.
Yep, but in both cases the potential complications are seriously magnified. If drunk driving is bad imagine a sloshed gyrocopter pilot trying to park in modern parking spaces between a Hummer and an suv:)
That is one possible re-inforcing vector, at least it seems so to me, but then I'm not a eigther.
I read and interesting article (sci-am, not shure, dead tree version of some magazine) discussing the evolutionary reason for monogamy and 'cheating'.
The main point seemed to be that a stratagy of encouraging monogamy in your partner while avoiding it yourself was the 'ideal' solution to maximizing passing on your genes. The rational was different for each gender, but the result was the same. Being monogamus with your partner(or at least apearing so) became a desireable enough trait to significantly offset the advantages of being otherwise.
Not necessarily a dead end, it does have some benifits whithin a species towards giving one subset an advantage over another.
Aslo as another poster points out monogamy is not restricted to humans.
Two (hetro, but not as much so as in the recent past) is the most easily stabilized relationship, and the most common. Just as most people when offered a ride a to the store expect a car or just possibly a motorcylce and not a hovercraft or gyrocopter.
The reasons for this are partially 'human nature' and partially social which is in turn based on 'human nature'.
Just curious, when did you pick your nick. I chose mine in 1984 (spring IIRC) after reading "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (R.A. Heinlein).
I get rather anoyed myself when I can't use it somewhere, my original acount here is under it, but forgott the pw and had changed e-mail several months before it ever became an issue.
I find it quite anoying because I figure the person who 'stole' it is fairly likely to not even have been alive at the time I started using it on the local bbs's and nicks were called handles.
So to answer one of Taco's questions, I'm VERY attached to this handle I've been using for over half my life. I'm as much Mycroft as I am Kasey (not my leagle birth name eigther, but that's a long story for another time).
And Now that I think of it, a friend has been using Ironfang for a good long time now as well and lots of people know him no other way, if you see that name it's likely him and likely on one online game or another.
You know it suddenly struck me that my digital identy is old enough to drink.
Somewhere in your user prefferences is are options you can check to be notified of replies to your posts and moderations and meta mods to your mods and so on.
You'll also find a setting to determine how/. sends these notices to you (e-mail, when you log-in, etc.)
It may not be on the 'preferences' pages specifically, but on of the various options pages you have.
Since modding someone funny gives them no/. karma some have started using interesting or insightfull in it's place to better reward humor and this might explain the mod.
Also whenever I meta mod and find I need to check the 'context' MOST of the time I'm MM-ing a post several weeks old, only once or twice has the article been still open for posting.
That last bit said I still rarely see meta mods on my moderation anymore, though at one time I could expect to see about 20% of my mods meta'd, and within a month or two.
On a purely visual level symetry seems to have a high corelation, there are others as well, such as larger (but not grotesqe!) eyes.
There was a book a while back (I think/. had a mention of it) called (IIRC) "The Mathematics of Sex" that delved into this a bit. The lady who wrote the book happens to be rather atractive herself and has a 4yr degree in mathematics.
I've found body language to be fairly significant in my experience.
Ahhh apparently it's to old,/. decided to close it as to old
It's definately got the formatting and line breaks all screwed up (unless it firefox, why the hell is it wrapping half way through sentences less that 1/2 way across the page?!?), compared to how it was a year ago when I posted that. I can see why you found it hard to read even discounting my mispelling and bad punctuation, etc.
Mycroft
PS I've replaced what was there with the version you cleaned up so it apears open for comments now.
I wasn't really commenting on encrypted data recovery, that as well as the higher density being used in more modern drive is indeed lowering the direct relavance of his work. However many people are still using somewhat older drives and no encryption worthy of the name, and for them a simple write or three of random data might not be so effective.
Of course with prices today I see little point in selling off old HD's. I suspect many used drives on sale these days are 'left-overs' being sold in some shops from where a customer brings in a computer asks them to upgrade the HD, especially older computers with only one ide port. And of course the few (sad) people who upgrade and then insist that 5gig hd they bought for $300 new should be still worth near that.
As far a swap goes, there are arguments for having it even if you do have gigs of ram, the thought that swap is useless with large ram is very debateable. The trick is to have a way to keep plaintext out of it, I believe there are some Linux distros, or at least kernal/fs patches, to do this.
Going back to crypto I am not aware that windows ever got that right, I seem to recall some idiot design that made recovering the key trivial, so a known good 3rd party software would be advised here unless they finally patched all the problems (they did partially patch the one that effectively reduced keylengths to 32bit IIRC). Windows is what most people are still using, heck many are still using win9x and I have an uncle who refuses to go beyond win3.11 (sadly it was in part a visit to him playing on his c64 that got me really going with computers).
Unfortunately a few passes with random data is not as effective against a sophisticated recovery effort as is often assumed.
Now if it's just some random joe with an undelete program he got for $19.99 at the local shop then a single pass is often enough, more sophisticated software only tools might get past a few, but with hardware equipment (probably not used often below the fbi/ pro foresnics places) you might want to do something a bit more secure.
With good knowledge of how the data is actually stored on the disk you can figure out patterns that tend to degausse the bits being wiped and help eleminate the residual images left by the micro imperfection in head positioning (which are shrinking to almost nothing these days) and simular effects a trully sophisticated data recovery effort might use.
Peter Gutman put out a paper about this that can be read at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_ del.html that explains it better.
Though with remapping and newer recording techniques things change and software only erasure becomes more and more problematic. At the highest levels of secrecy I believe most governments require over-kill levels of outright hardware destruction.
"Now, if it ever came to be that there were only one CPU manufacturer, the game would change. The lone manufacturer might under-clock some parts to spread pricing options."
It doesn't have to drop to one for this to happen, given that it doese and there are certainly more than one.
As yeilds go up on a particular process line a higher and higher percentage of chips per run are capable of running full out, yet the market spread on who will pay what for how much stays fairly constant. Thus even if a particular line of chips (athalons or PIVs or whatever) has over 90% of it's ouput capable of handling max or near max the number of people wanting high-end and willing to pay $800+ stays roughly the same as does the percentage just fine with a $120 dollar part.
Now eigther they fail to cater to one segment (what do you mean I can't get a cpu under $800, I'm only willing to spend $150 max) or the other that might feel cheated if everyone can afford a 5biggahertz for $200, or they underate some chips and sell them cheaper while leaving others at full speed and price. The latter makes them much more money.
The problem with overclocking is that you can't tell if you've got a top notch chip that is marked below the top end because it's not quite good enough, or because they needed an extra 1000 in the 'slower' bin to make the most money untill you crank it up and see if it works or sorta works or just plain lets the magic smoke out.
Some enjoy the challenge and risk (must enjoy it, sometimes thier uber-coolers cost more than the high end chips they're trying to match), some just play it safe or buy a high end chip to start with.
Be very carefull with extended warrenties in some places however. In many cases they exclude 'neglect and abuse' determined at thier 'sole discression' or simular.
The result is if you drop said laptop, or the little one poors milk all over it, it's 'neglact and abuse', as is just about any other 'failure' to keep said item in perfect condition.
If you MUST get an 'extended warrenty' (actually an insurance policy and regulated as such in many places) make shure it's of the 'no fault' kind where they don't care why it's broke, they just fix/replace it.
Well I have no clue who originally made my speakers, so perhaps they're some 'high end' brand rebadged, but that just points out how insane the markup is on the high end models.
I've listened to quite a few brands at various outlets including klipsch and frankly most are at best in the ballpark of these speakers for sound quality, and yes I'm including the klipsch speakers I've listened to.
Frankly the tech is so basic and old there really is no reason for most speakers to cost what they do other than most people just don't realize how cheap they are to make.
Based on what I've got I wouldn't pay more than $50-$75 for a full set of speakers, especially for a computer. Because if $6.00 speakers are of the quality I have then at human perceptual limits the cost shouldn't be 20-40x as much.
The problem I have with this is only partial, but if it's 30 years old why shouldn't the price of decent go down.
In computers what cost a few hundred thousand is now in the bargin bin.
I said partial because on some things you do tend to hit a min price for materials and some other things, but by now the R&D on how speakers work should be mostly paid for, amoung other things.
If there were new breakthroughs being made then yes I could see high prices, but I suspec the main reason they still cost so much is because audiophiles will still pay unreasonable amounts for anything above average and they know it.
I'm NOT going to pay $500+ plus for a set of speakers. Especially when I've got two pair $6 (that's $6 per pair!) of generic oem speaker that do at least as good (excluding bass, no sub) as most $120 speaker sets sold for pc's. The only place where they suck is the volume pot is wearing out and they crackle a bit when I turn the knob. They're about 4 years old though.
"... on the other hand, there's nothing fundamentally stopping Pizza Hut from reaching orbit either..."
Well actually they did sorta. At least they paid the Russians some huge fee to paint thier logo on one of the rockets Russia sent to the space station.
I seem to recall there was a/. article on it.
Actually this sounds more like greed than stupidity (though stupidity does figure in) or poor communication.
A LOT of 'x is so stupid why didn't ask/listen to y' stories is from assumption, innocent ignorance (note I said ignorance not stupidity) and failure to communicate.
If you're the expert on something remember what take as obvious may not be so to the layman. When you are the layman make shure to ask questions and remind the expert you're not so knowledgeable in his field (you can get alot of co-operation if you feed thier ego a bit and leave yours at home).
The worst is when you're the expert in PART of something and rely on other experts for thier part. HERE communication without excessive ego (a little pride in YOUR expertise is good to much is bad) is essential.
I work in two customer oriented field where customer ignorance can cause a bad scene if handled poorly, you have to find ways to let them in on enough for thier own brains to see it, whithout being condescending/patronising or giving them Way To Much Info (I have to really watch that latter sometimes).
They DON'T more or less give you the soda, they do make a proffit off it. It's just that it's so cheap to make the resturaunt can then make HUGE proffit of it.
A syrup bag-in-a-box is around $35 IIRC, this is five gallons mixed approx 1 part syrup to 5 parts carbonated water. That means a $35 bib will get you about 30 GALLONS of fountain soda. Now you pay about $1 to $1.50 for a 32oz soda. That's $120 to $180 per bib. If you got 4 refills then thier at break even. Given how few people drink 1.25 gallons of soda at a resturant you can see why free refills free.
And that $35 bib probably cost less than $20 for pepsi/coke/other to make and ship.
At one point Pepsi was the parent corp of KFC Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. In the mid to late 90's (97 IIRC) those three were spun off as Tricon Global with Pepsi holding a significant chunk of Tricon stock and of course a nice (for Pepsi) contract to suply them with softdrinks. About two years ago Tricon aquired Long John silvers and A&W Rootbeer stands and changed names to Yum! Foods (YUM was and remained thier stock ticker id).
Most if not all (likely all) those names are of course trademarks.
One of the reasons many other Fast Food chains sell Coke is because they didn't want to be buying thier drinks from the competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Gak, I forgott to add you might also arrange to see if they'll at least give you some medical history so you can know if there is anything inheritable you might be susceptable to even if they'd rather not establish any sort of contact.
Mycroft
Men only contribute half of the nuclear dna. You've got a lot of dna OUTSIDE the nucleas that came from your mother.
IANA Biologist/geneticist/other-related-field, but as I understand it the non-nuclear dna is pretty important as well.
Mycroft
One possibility would be to set up some sort of 'blind' contact.
Hire some neutral 3rd party(lawyer,PI,etc.) to find out who they are and let them know you're willing to establish contact if they want (via the 3rd party first time at least) but if not then the third party doesn't tell you anything or them anything.
The third party knows who everyone is, but niegther you nor they know unless both agree.
I could swear I've heard of at least one service that helps track down adoptee's genetic parents willing to set it up like this.
Of course how much this would cost I have NO idea.
Mycroft
Ever see the old cartoon with Fogghorn Legghorn where he tries to marry the rich widdower, but has to ipress her 'genius' son?
The genuis son character looks alot like the main char in chicken little.
Mycroft
Yep, but in both cases the potential complications are seriously magnified.
If drunk driving is bad imagine a sloshed gyrocopter pilot trying to park in modern parking spaces between a Hummer and an suv:)
Mycroft
That is one possible re-inforcing vector, at least it seems so to me, but then I'm not a eigther.
I read and interesting article (sci-am, not shure, dead tree version of some magazine) discussing the evolutionary reason for monogamy and 'cheating'.
The main point seemed to be that a stratagy of encouraging monogamy in your partner while avoiding it yourself was the 'ideal' solution to maximizing passing on your genes. The rational was different for each gender, but the result was the same. Being monogamus with your partner(or at least apearing so) became a desireable enough trait to significantly offset the advantages of being otherwise.
Mycroft
Not necessarily a dead end, it does have some benifits whithin a species towards giving one subset an advantage over another.
Aslo as another poster points out monogamy is not restricted to humans.
Mycroft
Two (hetro, but not as much so as in the recent past) is the most easily stabilized relationship, and the most common. Just as most people when offered a ride a to the store expect a car or just possibly a motorcylce and not a hovercraft or gyrocopter.
The reasons for this are partially 'human nature' and partially social which is in turn based on 'human nature'.
Mycroft
Just curious, when did you pick your nick. I chose mine in 1984 (spring IIRC) after reading "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" (R.A. Heinlein).
I get rather anoyed myself when I can't use it somewhere, my original acount here is under it, but forgott the pw and had changed e-mail several months before it ever became an issue.
I find it quite anoying because I figure the person who 'stole' it is fairly likely to not even have been alive at the time I started using it on the local bbs's and nicks were called handles.
So to answer one of Taco's questions, I'm VERY attached to this handle I've been using for over half my life. I'm as much Mycroft as I am Kasey (not my leagle birth name eigther, but that's a long story for another time).
And Now that I think of it, a friend has been using Ironfang for a good long time now as well and lots of people know him no other way, if you see that name it's likely him and likely on one online game or another.
You know it suddenly struck me that my digital identy is old enough to drink.
Mycroft (
Somewhere in your user prefferences is are options you can check to be notified of replies to your posts and moderations and meta mods to your mods and so on. /. sends these notices to you (e-mail, when you log-in, etc.)
You'll also find a setting to determine how
It may not be on the 'preferences' pages specifically, but on of the various options pages you have.
Mycroft
Since modding someone funny gives them no /. karma some have started using interesting or insightfull in it's place to better reward humor and this might explain the mod.
Also whenever I meta mod and find I need to check the 'context' MOST of the time I'm MM-ing a post several weeks old, only once or twice has the article been still open for posting.
That last bit said I still rarely see meta mods on my moderation anymore, though at one time I could expect to see about 20% of my mods meta'd, and within a month or two.
Mycroft
On a purely visual level symetry seems to have a high corelation, there are others as well, such as larger (but not grotesqe!) eyes. /. had a mention of it) called (IIRC) "The Mathematics of Sex" that delved into this a bit. The lady who wrote the book happens to be rather atractive herself and has a 4yr degree in mathematics.
There was a book a while back (I think
I've found body language to be fairly significant in my experience.
Mycroft
Ahhh apparently it's to old, /. decided to close it as to old
It's definately got the formatting and line breaks all screwed up (unless it firefox, why the hell is it wrapping half way through sentences less that 1/2 way across the page?!?), compared to how it was a year ago when I posted that. I can see why you found it hard to read even discounting my mispelling and bad punctuation, etc.
Mycroft
PS I've replaced what was there with the version you cleaned up so it apears open for comments now.
I wasn't really commenting on encrypted data recovery, that as well as the higher density being used in more modern drive is indeed lowering the direct relavance of his work. However many people are still using somewhat older drives and no encryption worthy of the name, and for them a simple write or three of random data might not be so effective.
Of course with prices today I see little point in selling off old HD's. I suspect many used drives on sale these days are 'left-overs' being sold in some shops from where a customer brings in a computer asks them to upgrade the HD, especially older computers with only one ide port. And of course the few (sad) people who upgrade and then insist that 5gig hd they bought for $300 new should be still worth near that.
As far a swap goes, there are arguments for having it even if you do have gigs of ram, the thought that swap is useless with large ram is very debateable. The trick is to have a way to keep plaintext out of it, I believe there are some Linux distros, or at least kernal/fs patches, to do this.
Going back to crypto I am not aware that windows ever got that right, I seem to recall some idiot design that made recovering the key trivial, so a known good 3rd party software would be advised here unless they finally patched all the problems (they did partially patch the one that effectively reduced keylengths to 32bit IIRC). Windows is what most people are still using, heck many are still using win9x and I have an uncle who refuses to go beyond win3.11 (sadly it was in part a visit to him playing on his c64 that got me really going with computers).
Mycroft
Unfortunately a few passes with random data is not as effective against a sophisticated recovery effort as is often assumed._ del.html
Now if it's just some random joe with an undelete program he got for $19.99 at the local shop then a single pass is often enough, more sophisticated software only tools might get past a few, but with hardware equipment (probably not used often below the fbi/ pro foresnics places) you might want to do something a bit more secure.
With good knowledge of how the data is actually stored on the disk you can figure out patterns that tend to degausse the bits being wiped and help eleminate the residual images left by the micro imperfection in head positioning (which are shrinking to almost nothing these days) and simular effects a trully sophisticated data recovery effort might use.
Peter Gutman put out a paper about this that can be read at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure
that explains it better.
Though with remapping and newer recording techniques things change and software only erasure becomes more and more problematic. At the highest levels of secrecy I believe most governments require over-kill levels of outright hardware destruction.
Mycroft
Besides a modern bergenholm(sp?) drive would be more efficeint anyway.
Doesen't have quick the nausea problem when free eigther.
Mcyroft
"Now, if it ever came to be that there were only one CPU manufacturer, the game would change. The lone manufacturer might under-clock some parts to spread pricing options."
It doesn't have to drop to one for this to happen, given that it doese and there are certainly more than one.
As yeilds go up on a particular process line a higher and higher percentage of chips per run are capable of running full out, yet the market spread on who will pay what for how much stays fairly constant. Thus even if a particular line of chips (athalons or PIVs or whatever) has over 90% of it's ouput capable of handling max or near max the number of people wanting high-end and willing to pay $800+ stays roughly the same as does the percentage just fine with a $120 dollar part.
Now eigther they fail to cater to one segment (what do you mean I can't get a cpu under $800, I'm only willing to spend $150 max) or the other that might feel cheated if everyone can afford a 5biggahertz for $200, or they underate some chips and sell them cheaper while leaving others at full speed and price. The latter makes them much more money.
The problem with overclocking is that you can't tell if you've got a top notch chip that is marked below the top end because it's not quite good enough, or because they needed an extra 1000 in the 'slower' bin to make the most money untill you crank it up and see if it works or sorta works or just plain lets the magic smoke out.
Some enjoy the challenge and risk (must enjoy it, sometimes thier uber-coolers cost more than the high end chips they're trying to match), some just play it safe or buy a high end chip to start with.
Mycroft
Except for one thing, an 'extended warranty' is actually insurance in many cases, and is often regulated as insurance.
Mycroft
Be very carefull with extended warrenties in some places however. In many cases they exclude 'neglect and abuse' determined at thier 'sole discression' or simular.
The result is if you drop said laptop, or the little one poors milk all over it, it's 'neglact and abuse', as is just about any other 'failure' to keep said item in perfect condition.
If you MUST get an 'extended warrenty' (actually an insurance policy and regulated as such in many places) make shure it's of the 'no fault' kind where they don't care why it's broke, they just fix/replace it.
Mycroft
Well I have no clue who originally made my speakers, so perhaps they're some 'high end' brand rebadged, but that just points out how insane the markup is on the high end models.
I've listened to quite a few brands at various outlets including klipsch and frankly most are at best in the ballpark of these speakers for sound quality, and yes I'm including the klipsch speakers I've listened to.
Frankly the tech is so basic and old there really is no reason for most speakers to cost what they do other than most people just don't realize how cheap they are to make.
Based on what I've got I wouldn't pay more than $50-$75 for a full set of speakers, especially for a computer. Because if $6.00 speakers are of the quality I have then at human perceptual limits the cost shouldn't be 20-40x as much.
Mycroft
The problem I have with this is only partial, but if it's 30 years old why shouldn't the price of decent go down.
In computers what cost a few hundred thousand is now in the bargin bin.
I said partial because on some things you do tend to hit a min price for materials and some other things, but by now the R&D on how speakers work should be mostly paid for, amoung other things.
If there were new breakthroughs being made then yes I could see high prices, but I suspec the main reason they still cost so much is because audiophiles will still pay unreasonable amounts for anything above average and they know it.
I'm NOT going to pay $500+ plus for a set of speakers. Especially when I've got two pair $6 (that's $6 per pair!) of generic oem speaker that do at least as good (excluding bass, no sub) as most $120 speaker sets sold for pc's. The only place where they suck is the volume pot is wearing out and they crackle a bit when I turn the knob. They're about 4 years old though.
Mycroft
"... on the other hand, there's nothing fundamentally stopping Pizza Hut from reaching orbit either..."
/. article on it.
Well actually they did sorta. At least they paid the Russians some huge fee to paint thier logo on one of the rockets Russia sent to the space station.
I seem to recall there was a
Mycroft
Actually this sounds more like greed than stupidity (though stupidity does figure in) or poor communication.
A LOT of 'x is so stupid why didn't ask/listen to y' stories is from assumption, innocent ignorance (note I said ignorance not stupidity) and failure to communicate.
If you're the expert on something remember what take as obvious may not be so to the layman. When you are the layman make shure to ask questions and remind the expert you're not so knowledgeable in his field (you can get alot of co-operation if you feed thier ego a bit and leave yours at home).
The worst is when you're the expert in PART of something and rely on other experts for thier part. HERE communication without excessive ego (a little pride in YOUR expertise is good to much is bad) is essential.
I work in two customer oriented field where customer ignorance can cause a bad scene if handled poorly, you have to find ways to let them in on enough for thier own brains to see it, whithout being condescending/patronising or giving them Way To Much Info (I have to really watch that latter sometimes).
Mycroft
They DON'T more or less give you the soda, they do make a proffit off it. It's just that it's so cheap to make the resturaunt can then make HUGE proffit of it.
A syrup bag-in-a-box is around $35 IIRC, this is five gallons mixed approx 1 part syrup to 5 parts carbonated water. That means a $35 bib will get you about 30 GALLONS of fountain soda. Now you pay about $1 to $1.50 for a 32oz soda. That's $120 to $180 per bib. If you got 4 refills then thier at break even. Given how few people drink 1.25 gallons of soda at a resturant you can see why free refills free.
And that $35 bib probably cost less than $20 for pepsi/coke/other to make and ship.
Mycroft
At one point Pepsi was the parent corp of KFC Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. In the mid to late 90's (97 IIRC) those three were spun off as Tricon Global with Pepsi holding a significant chunk of Tricon stock and of course a nice (for Pepsi) contract to suply them with softdrinks. About two years ago Tricon aquired Long John silvers and A&W Rootbeer stands and changed names to Yum! Foods (YUM was and remained thier stock ticker id).
Most if not all (likely all) those names are of course trademarks.
One of the reasons many other Fast Food chains sell Coke is because they didn't want to be buying thier drinks from the competition.
Mycroft