Pong is considered a metaphor of modern society's struggle with nuclear waste.
In the game, the waste is represented by a tiny dot with the major political players tossing it back and forth until one slips up, thereby accepting the waste within their district. Defeat comes to the player that proves they are unable to protect their constituants, with 21 being the threshold required to lose re-election.
You didn't really think it was a simple game of table tennis, did you?:)
First: considering that this site is supposed to be "News for Nerds" what news did the article provide? At a minimum it generated a forum to request further, more detailed information.
Second: Not unlike countless others, you misread one of my posts. I honestly can't see where I asked for theory. I am looking for how hard it was to solve this problem.
Wasn't that the point of the challenge? To quote the website: "to encourage research into computational number theory and the practical difficulty of factoring large integers."
So, with one of the problems solved, how difficult was it? 100 workstations and 3 months doesn't tell us much. Were all 100 working 100% on their given tasks for the full 3 months? Is it really 3 months, or was that number generously rounded up? How fast are the 100 machines? How do those 100 compare to the same number used to solve a previous value a few years ago? That last one is probably the most important question, because you can't compare between challenges without some honest reference. And 100 is just an approximation - this announcement is just too vague!
As an example, something similar to this would have satisfied me. Please note that for that project, the delay between the date of submission and their detailed announcement is 1.5 months.
Please put a leash on your hubris. I do. Perhaps you read frustration, and the expression of it, as arrogance. I've had difficulty finding such details, which is why I asked for assistance on the matter.
Although not quite what I was requesting, thanks for the links. It appears that Google has already provided a couple of them to me in the past. I've found this article to be an excellent primer - provides some history on (and some basics in) the effort of integer factorization. Most importantly it's not nearly as intimidating as the vast majority of publications I've encountered on the subject.
My summary: they used about 100 workstations and it took 3 months. General credits to those involved.
That's it. Oh yeah, and a quote.
My interest is in how an individual's effort would have compared to their's. 100 machines is a little too vague - and is only really useful in the initial sieving process anyway. The last stage hasn't been implemented in a distributed fashion yet, so it can only be done on one.
Perhaps an estimate that can be roughly referenced by other computers. Does anyone have a link to this info or a better article (preferably in english)?
Maybe I'm asking for too much. Or maybe it'll be another four and a half months before we see any real detail.
Internet traffic is/should not be subject to any law except for the laws governing the sending/receiving points for it.
Let's look at a related topic: the transportation of controlled/banned physical substances.
Your idea follows that the source/destination are the only areas with legal jurisdiction. This ignores the fact that the material in transport has the opportunity to end its journey anywhere along the way. For this reason some nations began denying airspace for US bombers loaded with nuclear bombs in the 1950s (after one such bomber crashed in the ocean).
Let's post some juicy excerpts from the book as/. stories and see how may geeks panic and run for the hills. please read comments for any yro.slashdot article. In fact, the term "Big Brother" is quite popular there.
Nice, but in the future, use ALL CAPS (either the whole thing or special words like INFINIUM and PHANTOM) and start with "Greetings and good season to you" or something weird like that.
The 'future' setting in television shows is always just a plot device to handle controversial modern issues without getting shot down by the network censors (the 'standards and practices' department). Kinda like how M*A*S*H aired during Vietnam while the show was set during Korea.
Television would probably have to go off the air anyway by December 2006 without government decree. They simply have run out of things to show. I disagree. pron seems to be doing well, and the basic concept is over 100 years old. And where did Dec06 come from?
The whole thing stopped making sense when he complains of only getting 17 spams in one day.
The article then states, "He's the kind of person spammers love: a serial buyer."
If he were the kind of person spammers love, then why am I getting many times more spam and I've never bought anything via SPAM? I'm still just a potential sell, while he's the guaranteed one.
By your own admission, this was a smart individual pulling the prank.
All people make mistakes, especially if mislead. The proper approach would be to revisit the surprising information at a later date and check a source you trust. It's easy to be taken off guard, you just have to sleep on it sometimes.
A 14-year old troll is now reveling in a lot of attention.
From the article: But when the station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy of the composer's work. The station is also performing a copy of the recording artist's work. It's one thing to air a recording of "Happy Birthday" by the local children's choir; it's quite another to air a recording of it by the Rolling Stones or Lyle Lovett.
This paragraph doesn't make sense. The local children's choir, the Rolling Stones and Lyle Lovett would all qualify as recording artists, in this case. How are the latter "quite another" thing?
The implication seems to be that the children's choir is expected to be stepped on. That's depressing.
That's not what I meant, although it is an interesting idea. Spammimic uses the already low SNR. My joke was a call to lower the SNR even further by creating more SPAM.
If the summary you provide is assumed, then SPAM may be benefitial (to those who dislike monitoring) in that it significantly reduces the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby making it harder to monitor the desired network traffic.
So SPAM away, all you conspiracy junkies - for the good of the Internet!:)
According to the manual: "A perfect score is 114,000 points (reached by collecting all treasures. without losing any points by falling down holes or tripping on logs)." Getting over 100k would mean very close to a perfect score - which is a tough challenge for any/all games, not just Pitfall.
One of the problems with Pitfall was that it was single player and wasn't as entertaining for spectators. Perhaps Pitfall was interesting to watch wrt the relatively decent graphics, but Tetris (in the right hands) is an example of a simple single player being somewhat spectator-friendly. One of my friends is an expert at it and scares the hell out of everyone watching. The difficulty level will plateau at some point (I think level 20) so he can continue forever. Seeing level 60 isn't as disturbing as witnessing the constant flawless placements. He also manages to blink his eyes!
I recently told him that he's "faster than the Matrix". Funny thing about that - we also called him "Neo" years before the movie was a concept. Whatever, I seemed to be rambling now - a bit sleep deprived today.
I'm sure that better examples exist. Anyway, programmers often write confusing stuff too.
"Much of the law is deliberately written to be confusing so only lawyers can decipher it". Likewise, a lot of code is written so that only the original programmers can debug it.
Actually, legislation and programming look very similar when you look at their consulting sub-industries.
All right. I can see how people outside the lead industry can be experts in the field, but that doesn't make them unbiased.
I find it impossible to have any opinion or report produced by a person to be unbiased. There are numerous reasons that a person can be labeled biased without financial motive.
During the researcher's tenure in developing their expertise, they would come to lean one way or another on various issues.
I'll play Devil's Advocate here. Perhaps those outside the industry have an axe to grinde because they were never let in. Or maybe they believe that lead is the root cause for all of society's ills. Or maybe they can profit by replacing lead in various products. These people would not be from the lead industry, but would have expertise in the field and would be unquestionably biased.
Assuming that no opinion could be unbiased, the best a manager could do is hear from 'both' sides.
Having people that were involved with various industries is benefitial in various panels. Perhaps not for the CDC, but if everyone in such a panel has the same opinion, then what's the point of having a panel?
The trend towards homogeneous panels/councils/etc in administrations is the real problem. Not that some individuals may be lobbyists, but that they are from the same lobby.
In the first weeks of the SCO mess, most interested people stepped back and took the issue seriously. Why? Because, being directly involved with the subject, SCO should know best what they're talking about.
As I stated, my previous comment was a generalization and was a response to the summary. The feeling I got from that last line made me think of the title 'expert', and where experts get their qualifications. The fact that the article said "...individuals with ties to the lead industry.", made me suspect FUD. What better way to dismiss the qualifications of those two?
And your response is no better! By your reasoning, research into the effects of lead on human physiology would be a waste of time, since it doesn't take an expert to figure it out. If human physiology is that easy: tell us the cure for cancer. Didn't think so...
I happen to think that the current administration does inappropriate things, this being among them. But I noticed FUD, and reflected on the author's approach.
What I got from that statement was the following dilemma: Those with ties to the lead industry should have more intimate knowledge of lead, but that limited intimacy also makes them dependent upon the future of that industry. This dependency makes it easy to apply FUD to anything they say.
The question then becomes, who do you trust more? Someone who doesn't necessarily know the topic as well but has nothing to lose/gain or someone who probably knows the topic quite well but has something to lose/gain.
The above is really just a generalization applicable to any industry. Of course, I should eventually RTFA.
Counterfeiting is like any other business, looking at costs vs reward.
Probably the best deterrant against couterfeiting is when currency is worth less than the materials/processes used. Then the decision reduces to either that the state loses money through making money or loses value through counterfeiting.
This is applicable when the couterfeiter cannot skip multiple steps as when US $1 bills are made to look like $100 bills. In such cases, making each denomination unique is key. Unfortunately, this is impractical to alter in short order.
Slashdot Mirror
Pong is considered a metaphor of modern society's struggle with nuclear waste.
:)
In the game, the waste is represented by a tiny dot with the major political players tossing it back and forth until one slips up, thereby accepting the waste within their district. Defeat comes to the player that proves they are unable to protect their constituants, with 21 being the threshold required to lose re-election.
You didn't really think it was a simple game of table tennis, did you?
First: considering that this site is supposed to be "News for Nerds" what news did the article provide? At a minimum it generated a forum to request further, more detailed information.
Second: Not unlike countless others, you misread one of my posts. I honestly can't see where I asked for theory. I am looking for how hard it was to solve this problem.
Wasn't that the point of the challenge? To quote the website: "to encourage research into computational number theory and the practical difficulty of factoring large integers."
So, with one of the problems solved, how difficult was it? 100 workstations and 3 months doesn't tell us much. Were all 100 working 100% on their given tasks for the full 3 months? Is it really 3 months, or was that number generously rounded up? How fast are the 100 machines? How do those 100 compare to the same number used to solve a previous value a few years ago? That last one is probably the most important question, because you can't compare between challenges without some honest reference.
And 100 is just an approximation - this announcement is just too vague!
As an example, something similar to this would have satisfied me. Please note that for that project, the delay between the date of submission and their detailed announcement is 1.5 months.
Please put a leash on your hubris.
I do. Perhaps you read frustration, and the expression of it, as arrogance. I've had difficulty finding such details, which is why I asked for assistance on the matter.
Although not quite what I was requesting, thanks for the links. It appears that Google has already provided a couple of them to me in the past. I've found this article to be an excellent primer - provides some history on (and some basics in) the effort of integer factorization. Most importantly it's not nearly as intimidating as the vast majority of publications I've encountered on the subject.
There is very little info to the article.
My summary: they used about 100 workstations and it took 3 months. General credits to those involved.
That's it. Oh yeah, and a quote.
My interest is in how an individual's effort would have compared to their's. 100 machines is a little too vague - and is only really useful in the initial sieving process anyway. The last stage hasn't been implemented in a distributed fashion yet, so it can only be done on one.
Perhaps an estimate that can be roughly referenced by other computers. Does anyone have a link to this info or a better article (preferably in english)?
Maybe I'm asking for too much. Or maybe it'll be another four and a half months before we see any real detail.
I'm sure the alchemists ... stumbled upon many interesting things.
Phosphorus probably blew their minds: mix bones in boiling urine and you get a flamable white powder. What could that equation mean to them?
because Diebold is a leading producer of banking ATMs.
From here:
Diebold controls roughly two-thirds of the North American ATM market, and trails only rival NCR (NYSE: NCR) in global sales.
Is there a big red button in the server room, labeled "BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF SLASHDOT" or something?
They simply turned the switch to 'more magic'.
(A reference)
is **********.
Now, where's my chocolate?
Internet traffic is/should not be subject to any law except for the laws governing the sending/receiving points for it.
Let's look at a related topic: the transportation of controlled/banned physical substances.
Your idea follows that the source/destination are the only areas with legal jurisdiction. This ignores the fact that the material in transport has the opportunity to end its journey anywhere along the way. For this reason some nations began denying airspace for US bombers loaded with nuclear bombs in the 1950s (after one such bomber crashed in the ocean).
Seeing as how I've had the misfortune of buying software that didn't work (reimbursement still pending):
Who do I approach if the purchase warrants a return?
I came across a kid whose name was ______ McLeet.
Well, I'm more impressed that the kid's first name is "______".
Let's post some juicy excerpts from the book as /. stories and see how may geeks panic and run for the hills.
please read comments for any yro.slashdot article. In fact, the term "Big Brother" is quite popular there.
Nice, but in the future, use ALL CAPS (either the whole thing or special words like INFINIUM and PHANTOM) and start with "Greetings and good season to you" or something weird like that.
The 'future' setting in television shows is always just a plot device to handle controversial modern issues without getting shot down by the network censors (the 'standards and practices' department).
Kinda like how M*A*S*H aired during Vietnam while the show was set during Korea.
Television would probably have to go off the air anyway by December 2006 without government decree. They simply have run out of things to show.
I disagree. pron seems to be doing well, and the basic concept is over 100 years old. And where did Dec06 come from?
The whole thing stopped making sense when he complains of only getting 17 spams in one day.
The article then states, "He's the kind of person spammers love: a serial buyer."
If he were the kind of person spammers love, then why am I getting many times more spam and I've never bought anything via SPAM? I'm still just a potential sell, while he's the guaranteed one.
I call BS.
By your own admission, this was a smart individual pulling the prank.
All people make mistakes, especially if mislead. The proper approach would be to revisit the surprising information at a later date and check a source you trust.
It's easy to be taken off guard, you just have to sleep on it sometimes.
A 14-year old troll is now reveling in a lot of attention.
From the article: But when the station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy of the composer's work. The station is also performing a copy of the recording artist's work. It's one thing to air a recording of "Happy Birthday" by the local children's choir; it's quite another to air a recording of it by the Rolling Stones or Lyle Lovett.
This paragraph doesn't make sense. The local children's choir, the Rolling Stones and Lyle Lovett would all qualify as recording artists, in this case. How are the latter "quite another" thing?
The implication seems to be that the children's choir is expected to be stepped on. That's depressing.
they should shorten it like they did for commercial and government.
Oh, wait...
That's not what I meant, although it is an interesting idea.
Spammimic uses the already low SNR.
My joke was a call to lower the SNR even further by creating more SPAM.
If the summary you provide is assumed, then SPAM may be benefitial (to those who dislike monitoring) in that it significantly reduces the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby making it harder to monitor the desired network traffic.
:)
So SPAM away, all you conspiracy junkies - for the good of the Internet!
According to the manual: "A perfect score is 114,000 points (reached by collecting all treasures. without losing any points by falling down holes or tripping on logs)." Getting over 100k would mean very close to a perfect score - which is a tough challenge for any/all games, not just Pitfall.
One of the problems with Pitfall was that it was single player and wasn't as entertaining for spectators. Perhaps Pitfall was interesting to watch wrt the relatively decent graphics, but Tetris (in the right hands) is an example of a simple single player being somewhat spectator-friendly. One of my friends is an expert at it and scares the hell out of everyone watching. The difficulty level will plateau at some point (I think level 20) so he can continue forever. Seeing level 60 isn't as disturbing as witnessing the constant flawless placements. He also manages to blink his eyes!
I recently told him that he's "faster than the Matrix". Funny thing about that - we also called him "Neo" years before the movie was a concept. Whatever, I seemed to be rambling now - a bit sleep deprived today.
printf("\nS%c%cp%3s %co%1s",105,'m',"le,",0x6e,"?");
I'm sure that better examples exist. Anyway, programmers often write confusing stuff too.
"Much of the law is deliberately written to be confusing so only lawyers can decipher it".
Likewise, a lot of code is written so that only the original programmers can debug it.
Actually, legislation and programming look very similar when you look at their consulting sub-industries.
All right. I can see how people outside the lead industry can be experts in the field, but that doesn't make them unbiased.
I find it impossible to have any opinion or report produced by a person to be unbiased. There are numerous reasons that a person can be labeled biased without financial motive.
During the researcher's tenure in developing their expertise, they would come to lean one way or another on various issues.
I'll play Devil's Advocate here. Perhaps those outside the industry have an axe to grinde because they were never let in. Or maybe they believe that lead is the root cause for all of society's ills. Or maybe they can profit by replacing lead in various products. These people would not be from the lead industry, but would have expertise in the field and would be unquestionably biased.
Assuming that no opinion could be unbiased, the best a manager could do is hear from 'both' sides.
Having people that were involved with various industries is benefitial in various panels. Perhaps not for the CDC, but if everyone in such a panel has the same opinion, then what's the point of having a panel?
The trend towards homogeneous panels/councils/etc in administrations is the real problem. Not that some individuals may be lobbyists, but that they are from the same lobby.
Who should know more about SCO code?
and I'm not trying to be funny.
In the first weeks of the SCO mess, most interested people stepped back and took the issue seriously. Why? Because, being directly involved with the subject, SCO should know best what they're talking about.
As I stated, my previous comment was a generalization and was a response to the summary. The feeling I got from that last line made me think of the title 'expert', and where experts get their qualifications. The fact that the article said "...individuals with ties to the lead industry.", made me suspect FUD. What better way to dismiss the qualifications of those two?
And your response is no better! By your reasoning, research into the effects of lead on human physiology would be a waste of time, since it doesn't take an expert to figure it out. If human physiology is that easy: tell us the cure for cancer. Didn't think so...
I happen to think that the current administration does inappropriate things, this being among them. But I noticed FUD, and reflected on the author's approach.
What I got from that statement was the following dilemma: Those with ties to the lead industry should have more intimate knowledge of lead, but that limited intimacy also makes them dependent upon the future of that industry. This dependency makes it easy to apply FUD to anything they say.
The question then becomes, who do you trust more? Someone who doesn't necessarily know the topic as well but has nothing to lose/gain or someone who probably knows the topic quite well but has something to lose/gain.
The above is really just a generalization applicable to any industry. Of course, I should eventually RTFA.
Counterfeiting is like any other business, looking at costs vs reward.
Probably the best deterrant against couterfeiting is when currency is worth less than the materials/processes used. Then the decision reduces to either that the state loses money through making money or loses value through counterfeiting.
This is applicable when the couterfeiter cannot skip multiple steps as when US $1 bills are made to look like $100 bills. In such cases, making each denomination unique is key. Unfortunately, this is impractical to alter in short order.