There is an anthropologist by the name of Mary Douglas who developed a theory of why certain animals were not Kosher. The theory is from sturctural anthropology, which holds that behavior is best explained by a mental model that people hold, that isn't necessarily logical.
Here, the mental model is based on Genesis. God created the world by seperating opposites: light from dark, earth from sky, land from water. ( Opposites and synthesis are important in stuctural anthropology analises). He then set about creating categories of wildlife: birds of the sky, fish of the sea, animals of the land. They had specific features that denoted their categories. Everything God made was "according to its kind".
The idea of Kosher is maintaining the seperations that God originally set up during creation -- not mixing different types of thread, etc. Leviticus 19:19: "'Keep my decrees.
" 'Do not mate different kinds of animals.
" 'Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
" 'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." I believe one translation of the Hewbrew word 'holy' is 'seperate' or 'set apart'.
So, to get down to animals. The animals were created by their 'kind', and they have hallmarks that denote them. So birds of the air have wings, and they fly. Flightless birds, such as penguins and ostriches, aren't really birds of the air, so they aren't kosher. Fish of the sea swim about, so things such as snails and clams without scales and fins aren't really fish of the sea, so they aren't kosher. There are two kinds of animals, wild and domestic. The hallmarks of domestic animals are that they have cloven hooves, and they chew their cud, so pigs and camels are out. If you look in Leviticus, all of the things are not kosher are called 'abominations'. They are monstrosities, freaks that don't fit into their respective categories.
I did talk to *one* Rabbi and he didn't buy this theory because it denied that the laws were a result of divine revelation. I would guess that he also wouldn't buy the 'health' theory because of the same reason.
I do not deny it probably isn't healthy to eat pigs and shellfish in the Middle East. However, I don't think that was a conscious reason they didn't eat them -- that may have helped the survival of the Jews, but that's putting the cart before the horse. They didn't eat pigs because they were monsters, freaks, that lived with people but didn't have hoofs and chew their cud. God created the animals 'according to their kind', and Leviticus spefically calls these things 'abominations'. They are freaks that don't fit in.
The health theory of the laws of Leviticus don't really explain why camels or hawks aren't kosher. It really only works for pigs and shellfish.
I would also say that this theory works better is because is holds for animals that Jews later enountered and deemed unkosher, such as penguins and ostriches (birds of the air that don't fly, or fish of the sea without fins and scales, etc).
"So because it never happened to you, it never happens?"
No.
Because it's something that's never happened to me, it's not 'housecleaning that the developers expect users to do', it's something f*cked up on perhaps *one* users' computer.
I would bet that more of the people who are using Linux are on the Autistic Spectrum. A few of the 'symptoms' or qualities of such people include
"Odd or monotonous prosody of speech" and "Overly formal and pedantic language".
So my bet is yes, there will be a difference based on OS.
"I'm actually surprised they let it get as high as they did over the summer, but I guess there is only so much you can do against speculation."
Getting away from a petroleum economy is a process that will take years, not a few weeks. In order to use non-petroleum fuels, you need 1) production, 2) delivery infrastructure and 3) consumption structure (i.e. ethanol cars, hydrogen home water-heaters).
Because each of those three factors depend on the other two factors in order to be profitable, this change will only come about as a slow spiral of support, starting out small and slowly growing.
We are still totally dependent on petroleum. The petro companies will continue to make money on short-term volatility. We will only start to change to a non-petroleum economy when the general public percieves that it is *certain* that petroluem will only get more scarce in the future. Then, they might consider buying a flex fuel vehicle next year, provided they have seen enough E85 pumps at the gas station on their way hom from work.
Of course the military has a plan for invading Canada. You are right -- they have a plan for everything, just like every other military in the world. But Bush isn't giving instructions to the military via public speeches. He isn't reassuring the people of the US.
Bush' speech is addressed to the world. When he gets up and gives a speech to the press, his audience is the world's governments. When he explicitly says that the US is going to develop military capability to deny other countries' freedom in space, that is a defacto threat. "Don't get any ideas, or will blow your shit out of the sky".
The world governments are all well aware that the US has a military plan for every eventuality. They don't need to be reminded of it. When Bush comes out and explicitly says it in a speech about what the US is going to do in space, he is making a threat.
Don't be naive. Bush is declaring that the US controls space.
If you are hacking on a system, and you don't want people to know about it, why wouldn't you send your ssl traffic over port 80 or port 443, disguising it along with the legitimate https and SMTP traffic? Also, why wouldn't you rename your ssl binaries something like httpd or apache?
Or, why wouldn't you re-compile the apache already on the compromised system to also act as an ssl host on well-known email ports? The sources are available, you know.
You only have to have *one* instance of such camouflaging to totally foil your backtracing attempt. And, if the host is severely compromised, your are likely to trace it back to some less clever hacker who is using the same system, but not covering his tracks as well, who you will then think is the person you are after.
These types of technqiues are outlined in John Markoff's _Takedown_, where he describes how he captured Kevin Mitnick.
1. a group of Chinese hackers, directly employed be the Chinese government (military, intelligence, whatever) is targetting US Dept. of Commerce for specific information.
2. Another group of hackers, possibly Chinese themselves, but unaffiliated with the Chinese government, is targetting US Dept. of Commerce for specific information, and is making it look like the Chinese are doing
Back-hacking, as you describe, is theoretically possible, but in practice, this stretches credulity. First of all, for you to pinpoint the source, you have to assume that all hosts back to the source are vulnerable to your counter-hack. Secondly, you have to have completely isolated all connections in and out of each computer. A computer could be running an ssh session over some other well-known port, such as SMTP, using a service that *is* ssh but not called *ssh* in the system. I'm not certain if you could determine what an encrypted service *actually* is by some analysis of the traffic.
The fact that the box is secure and running BSD or Linux is a red herring. This was standard hacking practice before the internet was infested with thousands of unsecured Windows boxes. Back in the Good Old Days, when administrators were computer scientists, you stood a good chance of getting caught if you hacked into a box without further securing it. Nowadays the philosophy is just to be lost in all the random spam, zombie networks, and script kiddies who are using this unsecured windows boxes.
Secondly, if you overlook even *one* connection, you could have wound up totally fooling yourself. Remember, you have to be real clever. You could have traced the connection back 50 hops, 5 times around the world, to a Chinese computer. You think that this is a source. However, you missed the one connection this computer has going back to Pakistan. But now you have convinced yourself that you are at the source. There is a psychological effect of the human mind that thinks the more you work, the closer to the end you must be. But in this scenario, you can't know in advance how far you are from the source -- it could be 5 hops, it could be 500. You internal "The work is almost done" meter will actually hurt your job. Then, when you think "Eureka!" -- you've found the source, no -- stop, think again, keep looking. Back-hack *all* upstream connections (sure). Only then can you know that you are at the source.
I think the only argument or bit of evidence that would conclusively point to the Chinese government would be their shopping list dovetailing with a known official Chinese wish-list. Hacking into the US government and making it look like the Chinese are doing it is just the perfect cover for whatever group is actually doing the hacking. If they are just kind of browsing or snooping, then it could be anybody.
"attacks have been conclusively back-traced to China."
How could one do this?
...you usually get one of two kinds of hosts: you get a wildly unpatched Windows box that's being used as a bot, or you get a decently-secured (usually linux or *BSD) system that is doing some rather specific things to a specific target.
Isn't the first thing that a hacker does when they get their hands on a decent box is apply all security patches so that *another* hacker cannot get into it? What's the point of co-opting a wide-open Windows box that anyone else on the net can use?
You're telling me that because it's a secured linux or BSD box doing specific things to specific hosts, instead of a promiscious zombie squirting spam everywhere, therefore it *must* be Chinese military, rather than random hacker from anywhere in the world (including China)?
How do you know it isn't a random hacker ssh'ing in (via a series of proxies, anonymous or compromised) to a host that they have secured for their own personal use?
"U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered a halt to the wiretap program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2001, but both sides in the lawsuit agreed to delay that action until a Sept. 7 hearing."
It just depends on how truly independent the judiciary is. The US government is not a monolithic, top-down entity, like the the armed forces. Even federal agencies are often at odds with one another -- refusing to co-operate, suing each other, etc.
Also, the people who are appointed to federal judgeships are typically political wonks, a sort of political geek, who have strong views on government, the rule of law, etc. They may be in favor of a strong executive, or they may literally view themselves on the front lines of an ongoing battle of tyranny vs. human rights.
Think of your most obstinate, my-way-or-the-highway, i-know-more-than-everyone, autism-spectrum system administrator. This is your federal judge. They aren't taking orders from anybody. They will listen to the arguments both sides make, and then rule on the law.
Of course, the judge has no power (read: force, as in army or police; stong men with guns), the most they can do is call someone in comptempt of court, *if* someone brings that case before them.
That's true. The math and engineering departments are considered so rigorous that maintaining a high GPA in and of itself is considered 'honors' performance. However, in the 'soft' social sciences and Liberal Arts, we have special 'honors' classes that are tougher than the regular classes.
"Every time I see this argument, they leave out every mention of the fact that the wire taps happen when there's a known terrorist on the end of the line.
Every time."
How could you possibly know that? How could you possibly know that?
Are the men who run these programs infallible? They never make a mistake?
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist #51
The dog certainly must solve the problem at some level, whether it's using calculus, geometry, optimization, or whatever. The dog moving to intercept the ball must make 'decisions' about when and where to move, how fast, etc. If the dog doesn't actively move, it would just slow down to a stop, following the laws of physics.
Unless you believe that there is another way of knowing where the ball is going to land, other than math, the dog's brain must be using *some* kind of math at *some* level, in order to move its body to get to where the ball is.
So no one is saying that the stone 'knows' calculus, or that it 'knows' anything at all -- it has no brain, let alone a nervous system. But the dog has a brain and it moves in ways that can't be predicted by simple physics.
Do you think it's possible that your brain is slightly different than most peoples', and you might have a natural 'knack' for math that most people don't have?
Conversely, let me ask this: have you encountered a subject in school that was so opaque, arbitrary and ridiculous that you thought that the people involved in it must be fooling a lot of people into thinking that this was a serious academic subject, instead of a bunch of hoakum? That they must just be making it up, because it really didn't make any sense at all?
Different people have different brains. Some people just can't do math after a certain level. A lot of stuck-up geeks will tell you it's just that you haven't learned the lower level math well enough -- that may not be true. They probably have a brain that is well-suited for doing math, and they think that everyone must be just like them, that math is easy, and anyone who says otherwise is lazy or doesn't care.
I consider myself to be a geek. I have always had a nerdy, intellectual personality. However, I had math difficulties since day one, starting with addition.
In high school, we had a geometry class. There were hardly any numbers in it, just images, compasses, and protractors. A lot of our assignments were proofs. I got an 'A' in the class. I remember one assignment in particular at the beginning of the class. There was a figure that was a bunch of triangles, and we just had to count how many different triangles we could find. Most kids got 12-15, but me and a few other kids who were good at art counted into the late 20s. There were actually 32 in the figure. The next year was Algebra II, and I got a C.:( My point in saying this is that my 'math' mind works visually. I had no problem doing geometric proofs as long as we were looking at figures and drawing. However, when it comes to reading 'number sentences' with abstract symbols, and solving equations, I'm sunk.
Another area of geekiness is reading and language. I taught myself to read before school started. I never had a problem with reading or writing assignments -- I typically did them the night before, skimming. That got me a magna cum laude degree in the honors program at Ohio state (in the honors program, you could only take classes that were designated 'honors' -- less than 30 students, taught by a professor, or a graduate level class. ) I took my math at a local community college and transferred in so as not to ruin my GPA;) I have a BA in Anthropology and Religious Studies.
I'm pretty good with computers, but companies aren't very interested in a computer guy without a BS. I am doing alright with my LAMP job, but I will probably go back to school and get a masters in linguistics. I took a few classes and found it fascinating. I did really well with the grammar parts, such as diagramming sentences. From linguistics, I can use this as a launching pad into other areas that I am interested in, such as artificial intelligence or speech recognition. I couldn't get into those areas through CIS.
I guess my long winded point of all of this is just because you might not be good at certain types of math, doesn't mean that you aren't smart or aren't a true geek;) You might see it worthwhile to try to get good at those maths, or, you might just find something that is more suitable to your natural abilities.
This is a good start, but I think the explanation runs a bit deeper than this. It did likely start as a typo, since the 'p' key is next to the 'o' key. But the reason it was adopted is that it is a common practice in 133t5p34k to canonize typos that are physiologically easier to type. This is true for 1337isms such as 'teh'.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an anthropologist by the name of Mary Douglas who developed a theory of why certain animals were not Kosher. The theory is from sturctural anthropology, which holds that behavior is best explained by a mental model that people hold, that isn't necessarily logical.
Here, the mental model is based on Genesis. God created the world by seperating opposites: light from dark, earth from sky, land from water. ( Opposites and synthesis are important in stuctural anthropology analises). He then set about creating categories of wildlife: birds of the sky, fish of the sea, animals of the land. They had specific features that denoted their categories. Everything God made was "according to its kind".
The idea of Kosher is maintaining the seperations that God originally set up during creation -- not mixing different types of thread, etc. Leviticus 19:19: "'Keep my decrees. " 'Do not mate different kinds of animals. " 'Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. " 'Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." I believe one translation of the Hewbrew word 'holy' is 'seperate' or 'set apart'.
So, to get down to animals. The animals were created by their 'kind', and they have hallmarks that denote them. So birds of the air have wings, and they fly. Flightless birds, such as penguins and ostriches, aren't really birds of the air, so they aren't kosher. Fish of the sea swim about, so things such as snails and clams without scales and fins aren't really fish of the sea, so they aren't kosher. There are two kinds of animals, wild and domestic. The hallmarks of domestic animals are that they have cloven hooves, and they chew their cud, so pigs and camels are out. If you look in Leviticus, all of the things are not kosher are called 'abominations'. They are monstrosities, freaks that don't fit into their respective categories.
I did talk to *one* Rabbi and he didn't buy this theory because it denied that the laws were a result of divine revelation. I would guess that he also wouldn't buy the 'health' theory because of the same reason.
I do not deny it probably isn't healthy to eat pigs and shellfish in the Middle East. However, I don't think that was a conscious reason they didn't eat them -- that may have helped the survival of the Jews, but that's putting the cart before the horse. They didn't eat pigs because they were monsters, freaks, that lived with people but didn't have hoofs and chew their cud. God created the animals 'according to their kind', and Leviticus spefically calls these things 'abominations'. They are freaks that don't fit in.
The health theory of the laws of Leviticus don't really explain why camels or hawks aren't kosher. It really only works for pigs and shellfish. I would also say that this theory works better is because is holds for animals that Jews later enountered and deemed unkosher, such as penguins and ostriches (birds of the air that don't fly, or fish of the sea without fins and scales, etc).
Nice! Hey Mods, tag this one up, too, will you?
Yeah, I meant the comment to be funny; I'm flabergasted that it was modded insightful.
Yeah, you versus 1.2 billion party loyalists. Good luck.
"So because it never happened to you, it never happens?"
No.
Because it's something that's never happened to me, it's not 'housecleaning that the developers expect users to do', it's something f*cked up on perhaps *one* users' computer.
"...The World Will End On October 18, 2006, So Repent Now Or Perish."
Oh SHIT!
I gotta get my house in ORDER!
I would bet that more of the people who are using Linux are on the Autistic Spectrum. A few of the 'symptoms' or qualities of such people include "Odd or monotonous prosody of speech" and "Overly formal and pedantic language".
So my bet is yes, there will be a difference based on OS.
"I'm actually surprised they let it get as high as they did over the summer, but I guess there is only so much you can do against speculation."
Getting away from a petroleum economy is a process that will take years, not a few weeks. In order to use non-petroleum fuels, you need 1) production, 2) delivery infrastructure and 3) consumption structure (i.e. ethanol cars, hydrogen home water-heaters).
Because each of those three factors depend on the other two factors in order to be profitable, this change will only come about as a slow spiral of support, starting out small and slowly growing.
We are still totally dependent on petroleum. The petro companies will continue to make money on short-term volatility. We will only start to change to a non-petroleum economy when the general public percieves that it is *certain* that petroluem will only get more scarce in the future. Then, they might consider buying a flex fuel vehicle next year, provided they have seen enough E85 pumps at the gas station on their way hom from work.
F.S.U. is the second-largest exporter, just after Saudi Arabia. Who are they?
This needs to be examined in the larger context.
Of course the military has a plan for invading Canada. You are right -- they have a plan for everything, just like every other military in the world. But Bush isn't giving instructions to the military via public speeches. He isn't reassuring the people of the US.
Bush' speech is addressed to the world. When he gets up and gives a speech to the press, his audience is the world's governments. When he explicitly says that the US is going to develop military capability to deny other countries' freedom in space, that is a defacto threat. "Don't get any ideas, or will blow your shit out of the sky".
The world governments are all well aware that the US has a military plan for every eventuality. They don't need to be reminded of it. When Bush comes out and explicitly says it in a speech about what the US is going to do in space, he is making a threat.
Don't be naive. Bush is declaring that the US controls space.
If you are hacking on a system, and you don't want people to know about it, why wouldn't you send your ssl traffic over port 80 or port 443, disguising it along with the legitimate https and SMTP traffic? Also, why wouldn't you rename your ssl binaries something like httpd or apache?
Or, why wouldn't you re-compile the apache already on the compromised system to also act as an ssl host on well-known email ports? The sources are available, you know.
You only have to have *one* instance of such camouflaging to totally foil your backtracing attempt. And, if the host is severely compromised, your are likely to trace it back to some less clever hacker who is using the same system, but not covering his tracks as well, who you will then think is the person you are after.
These types of technqiues are outlined in John Markoff's _Takedown_, where he describes how he captured Kevin Mitnick.
Let's take two competing models.
1. a group of Chinese hackers, directly employed be the Chinese government (military, intelligence, whatever) is targetting US Dept. of Commerce for specific information.
2. Another group of hackers, possibly Chinese themselves, but unaffiliated with the Chinese government, is targetting US Dept. of Commerce for specific information, and is making it look like the Chinese are doing
Back-hacking, as you describe, is theoretically possible, but in practice, this stretches credulity. First of all, for you to pinpoint the source, you have to assume that all hosts back to the source are vulnerable to your counter-hack. Secondly, you have to have completely isolated all connections in and out of each computer. A computer could be running an ssh session over some other well-known port, such as SMTP, using a service that *is* ssh but not called *ssh* in the system. I'm not certain if you could determine what an encrypted service *actually* is by some analysis of the traffic.
The fact that the box is secure and running BSD or Linux is a red herring. This was standard hacking practice before the internet was infested with thousands of unsecured Windows boxes. Back in the Good Old Days, when administrators were computer scientists, you stood a good chance of getting caught if you hacked into a box without further securing it. Nowadays the philosophy is just to be lost in all the random spam, zombie networks, and script kiddies who are using this unsecured windows boxes.
Secondly, if you overlook even *one* connection, you could have wound up totally fooling yourself. Remember, you have to be real clever. You could have traced the connection back 50 hops, 5 times around the world, to a Chinese computer. You think that this is a source. However, you missed the one connection this computer has going back to Pakistan. But now you have convinced yourself that you are at the source. There is a psychological effect of the human mind that thinks the more you work, the closer to the end you must be. But in this scenario, you can't know in advance how far you are from the source -- it could be 5 hops, it could be 500. You internal "The work is almost done" meter will actually hurt your job. Then, when you think "Eureka!" -- you've found the source, no -- stop, think again, keep looking. Back-hack *all* upstream connections (sure). Only then can you know that you are at the source.
I think the only argument or bit of evidence that would conclusively point to the Chinese government would be their shopping list dovetailing with a known official Chinese wish-list. Hacking into the US government and making it look like the Chinese are doing it is just the perfect cover for whatever group is actually doing the hacking. If they are just kind of browsing or snooping, then it could be anybody.
"attacks have been conclusively back-traced to China."
...you usually get one of two kinds of hosts: you get a wildly unpatched Windows box that's being used as a bot, or you get a decently-secured (usually linux or *BSD) system that is doing some rather specific things to a specific target.
How could one do this?
Isn't the first thing that a hacker does when they get their hands on a decent box is apply all security patches so that *another* hacker cannot get into it? What's the point of co-opting a wide-open Windows box that anyone else on the net can use?
You're telling me that because it's a secured linux or BSD box doing specific things to specific hosts, instead of a promiscious zombie squirting spam everywhere, therefore it *must* be Chinese military, rather than random hacker from anywhere in the world (including China)?
How do you know it isn't a random hacker ssh'ing in (via a series of proxies, anonymous or compromised) to a host that they have secured for their own personal use?
"U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered a halt to the wiretap program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2001, but both sides in the lawsuit agreed to delay that action until a Sept. 7 hearing."
Sept. 7th of what year?
It just depends on how truly independent the judiciary is. The US government is not a monolithic, top-down entity, like the the armed forces. Even federal agencies are often at odds with one another -- refusing to co-operate, suing each other, etc.
Also, the people who are appointed to federal judgeships are typically political wonks, a sort of political geek, who have strong views on government, the rule of law, etc. They may be in favor of a strong executive, or they may literally view themselves on the front lines of an ongoing battle of tyranny vs. human rights.
Think of your most obstinate, my-way-or-the-highway, i-know-more-than-everyone, autism-spectrum system administrator. This is your federal judge. They aren't taking orders from anybody. They will listen to the arguments both sides make, and then rule on the law.
Of course, the judge has no power (read: force, as in army or police; stong men with guns), the most they can do is call someone in comptempt of court, *if* someone brings that case before them.
Maybe he thinks that they're all part of the same organization?
Aren't these VC ventures usually a team of investors?
I wish I could mod this "DoublePlusFunny"!
Funny++
: )
That's true. The math and engineering departments are considered so rigorous that maintaining a high GPA in and of itself is considered 'honors' performance. However, in the 'soft' social sciences and Liberal Arts, we have special 'honors' classes that are tougher than the regular classes.
"Every time I see this argument, they leave out every mention of the fact that the wire taps happen when there's a known terrorist on the end of the line.
Every time. "
How could you possibly know that? How could you possibly know that?
Are the men who run these programs infallible? They never make a mistake?
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."
- James Madison, Federalist #51
Seriously, no joke, Great Britain now has shouting telescreens.
Long Live Big Brother!
The dog certainly must solve the problem at some level, whether it's using calculus, geometry, optimization, or whatever. The dog moving to intercept the ball must make 'decisions' about when and where to move, how fast, etc. If the dog doesn't actively move, it would just slow down to a stop, following the laws of physics.
Unless you believe that there is another way of knowing where the ball is going to land, other than math, the dog's brain must be using *some* kind of math at *some* level, in order to move its body to get to where the ball is.
So no one is saying that the stone 'knows' calculus, or that it 'knows' anything at all -- it has no brain, let alone a nervous system. But the dog has a brain and it moves in ways that can't be predicted by simple physics.
Do you think it's possible that your brain is slightly different than most peoples', and you might have a natural 'knack' for math that most people don't have?
Conversely, let me ask this: have you encountered a subject in school that was so opaque, arbitrary and ridiculous that you thought that the people involved in it must be fooling a lot of people into thinking that this was a serious academic subject, instead of a bunch of hoakum? That they must just be making it up, because it really didn't make any sense at all?
Different people have different brains. Some people just can't do math after a certain level. A lot of stuck-up geeks will tell you it's just that you haven't learned the lower level math well enough -- that may not be true. They probably have a brain that is well-suited for doing math, and they think that everyone must be just like them, that math is easy, and anyone who says otherwise is lazy or doesn't care.
:( My point in saying this is that my 'math' mind works visually. I had no problem doing geometric proofs as long as we were looking at figures and drawing. However, when it comes to reading 'number sentences' with abstract symbols, and solving equations, I'm sunk.
;) I have a BA in Anthropology and Religious Studies.
;) You might see it worthwhile to try to get good at those maths, or, you might just find something that is more suitable to your natural abilities.
I consider myself to be a geek. I have always had a nerdy, intellectual personality. However, I had math difficulties since day one, starting with addition.
In high school, we had a geometry class. There were hardly any numbers in it, just images, compasses, and protractors. A lot of our assignments were proofs. I got an 'A' in the class. I remember one assignment in particular at the beginning of the class. There was a figure that was a bunch of triangles, and we just had to count how many different triangles we could find. Most kids got 12-15, but me and a few other kids who were good at art counted into the late 20s. There were actually 32 in the figure. The next year was Algebra II, and I got a C.
Another area of geekiness is reading and language. I taught myself to read before school started. I never had a problem with reading or writing assignments -- I typically did them the night before, skimming. That got me a magna cum laude degree in the honors program at Ohio state (in the honors program, you could only take classes that were designated 'honors' -- less than 30 students, taught by a professor, or a graduate level class. ) I took my math at a local community college and transferred in so as not to ruin my GPA
I'm pretty good with computers, but companies aren't very interested in a computer guy without a BS. I am doing alright with my LAMP job, but I will probably go back to school and get a masters in linguistics. I took a few classes and found it fascinating. I did really well with the grammar parts, such as diagramming sentences. From linguistics, I can use this as a launching pad into other areas that I am interested in, such as artificial intelligence or speech recognition. I couldn't get into those areas through CIS.
I guess my long winded point of all of this is just because you might not be good at certain types of math, doesn't mean that you aren't smart or aren't a true geek
This is a good start, but I think the explanation runs a bit deeper than this. It did likely start as a typo, since the 'p' key is next to the 'o' key. But the reason it was adopted is that it is a common practice in 133t5p34k to canonize typos that are physiologically easier to type. This is true for 1337isms such as 'teh'.