Because half of the country is a potential disaster area.
It's bad enough when your town gets taken out by a tornado/wildfire/flash flood---then some folks on the Internet have to call you an idiot for choosing to live in the midwest/west coast/Mississippi river valley.
Programming is a bit like creative writing: you have to actually do it a lot, and everything else is just guidance, important but secondary to the act of writing as the chief source of learning.
My experience with several CS curricula is that the best one clobbered the students with many and difficult programming assignments, producing deadly ninja graduates. Others focused on theory and concepts, and produced students who could just barely complete an assignment by their senior year.
I have gradually decided that the focus on theory, and viewing an education as something that you acquire passively from teachers (and a better education from better teachers,) has made many CS curricula as useful as four years of powerpoint lectures about how to juggle.
This was indeed a bug; we fixed it after several people pointed out the mistake.
Interestingly, this demonstrates the effectiveness of "many eyes" in an open source project, even if the contest demonstrates the limitations of informal source inspection.
Re:What do you mean by unknown?
on
Happy Pi Day
·
· Score: 4, Informative
We spend approximately 21% of our budget on National Defense. Nearly half the budget is lost to entitlements.
Well, I wouldn't say "lost." I don't look at the US Interstate Highway system and think, "dang, look at all that lost defense money."
We spend an amazing amount on education but efforts to improve it are thwarted by Teacher Union's, Special Interest Groups, and Politicians.
If Teachers' Unions are so good at thwarting the US educational system, you'd think they would have the power to occasionally give themselves a raise.
Or teach Internet people to use apostrophes correctly, so we could have some left over to fix all of our DONT WALK signs.
A lot of people are asking, "who goes to YouTube for medical advice?" I think what's really happening is that people search YouTube for other things, and a propaganda video shows up in the search listings.
I have several times done a search there and got a "9/11 truth" or Holocaust denial video showing up on the first page, either by a fluke of text matching, or by overt tag abuse.
Youtube is a pretty decent vehicle for spreading conspiracy theories and other anti-science ideological movements.
3. The posts with content contain many unsubstatiated statements proclaimed as fact all discussed in an exasperated matter in a hardly subtle attempt to garner emotional support from people they don't know.
3.14. Posts of obvious falsehoods or urban legends, followed by helpful comments from readers linking to Snopes...
...followed in turn by a long response by the blogger praising the many-eyes editorial power of the blogosphere and how this example shows that "citizen journalism" is so much superior than the mainstream media. Because on the Internet, publishing utter BS and then getting caught just proves the overall system works.
So you have the "loophole" that a contract won't be signed unless both parties agree to its terms. Therefore one party could in theory stall indefinitely. And from this you conclude that the challenge is fake?
How about this: do you have any evidence that the JREF actually does this to their applicants? All I see here is the argument that they could stall in theory, and they have an incentive to not lose money (tho it isn't Randi's money being wagered here.) That's not a lot to go on.
Xcott
The functionality argument could always be made for the iPod as well.
The iPod lacked features that could long be found in competing MP3 jukeboxes, and yet it was a commercial success. In fact, some of its comparative deficiencies are the same that were listed here for the iPhone. Yet consumers didn't reject it for the things it couldn't do.
I think a big part of Apple's target market are people who want to have the cool gadget like an MP3 player or a smart phone, but who don't already have so much experience with them so as to expect specific features. I mean, who's the bigger market, people who already own Blackberrys, or people who have regular phones and are sick of not remembering how to set up a 3-way call, or which unlabeled button turns on speakerphone?
Ha ha ha, I meant John Gilmore.
This is Murphy's law of the Internet: if I slam someone for getting his facts wrong, something stupid will worm its way into my own post. Sorry, Mr. Gilmore.
Schneier's blog, which you cite, has a link to a fellow who tried to fly without ID and failed. It was impossible to do what you describe, because the security people simply refused to believe him.
Obviously this isn't as easy or possible as you let on.
I should add: when I first heard of Dan Gilmore's attempt to do this I was astonished, and I can imagine lots of people thinking, "is he serious?" But just 10-20 years ago there would be nothing unusual about what Mr. Gilmore is trying to do. I think this shows how far we've gone as a society in accepting the security measures as normal.
No no no. The effect on the potential market does not refer to devaluation caused by criticizing or lampooning a work. It refers to the loss of real or potential revenue caused by the copying itself, e.g. copying a CD or a computer game.
For example, parody is commonly fair use, even though a powerful parody can seriously damage the market for the original work. That damage is not caused by the copying itself, however.
Although there is no solid formula for fair use, these excerpts almost certainly qualify.
Back then, when I pressed "record" on a tape recorder or the shutter button on a camera, it did what I wanted instantaneously.
None of this goddamn 2-second delay, or booting into the OS for 30 seconds to figure out how to record from the microphone.
Nowadays I am reluctant to buy any technology unless it does the basic things that technology used to do for me in the 1970s. There's no way I'd go back, of course, but I think one of the great failures of consumer electronics today is that much of it is incapable of basic features 30 years back---largely as a matter of priorities and crappy user interface design.
However, according to the FAQ, you can submit solutions in other languages
The FAQ does not say this, and I certainly won't feel any obligation to install different compilers and interpreters because somebody submitted code in SML/NJ (or one of the other, inferior functional languages. Smiley.)
The FAQ says that we'll accept C++, which is about as close as we get to being inclusive.
Well, ask yourself how the Obfuscated C Code contest "helps the community." To some extent, it's just a contest, and not meant to bring about world peace.
On the other hand, I think it does teach us a thing or two about what to look for when reviewing code. I know I've learned a lot about sneaky coding practices since it started. I learned C in the 1980s and thought I was pretty knowledgeable by now, but I actually didn't know about ASCII trigraphs until last year.
X
This is going to sound stupid, but why didn't this guy just tell his listeners about it, using his podcast? Before taking any action to cut those users off, so they'd have no idea where to go, he could just make several announcements, and maybe ask listeners to report if they are getting any sort of ads or such.
We're always alluding to this business model of giving away razors but making money off replacement blades.
But, does that business model actually work? I mean, for razors?
I mean, when I go to the store to get more blades, I always forget what specific type of handle I have.
It's not something I really spend the effort to commit to memory.
So I just don't buy new cartridges, putting it off until next time.
Or, I just buy the disposable safety razors instead, which are cheaper anyway.
Having to remember the type of handle or track down the specific model is enough of a pain to remind me
that it's silly to spend all that money on a 3-bladed replacement cartridge.
If you actually bother to use decent shaving cream and hot water, a cheapo safety razor does the job just as well.
Come to think of it, it's not a giant sacrifice for Schick to give away the handle anyway. It's a damn piece of
injection-molded plastic. Nor is it unusual for a consumer to have 5 different handles, so it's not like they're
locking you in.
Surely the strategy makes more sense in the tech sector, where you really can lock someone in to a platform.
But I find it odd that we're always analogizing this to a business strategy outside the tech sector that just
doesn't sound particularly effective.
I see your point, but is it a good idea for people to analogize software to guns?
If you want to convince laypeople that a debugger is a perfectly benign piece of software that is of no danger to anyone, you would probably want to avoid saying, "see, it's like a gun...."
I support the consitutional right to bear arms. But if someone told me that an obscure item I don't understand is "like a gun," I would draw certain false conclusions about its purpose and safety. I would disagree with its banning but understand why some people in law enforcement would be motivated to restrict it.
If on the other hand you told me that this obscure item is "like a safe" or "like a crowbar" or "like a microscope," I would instead see that the only people who would want to ban it are either unclear on the concept or authoritarian beyond the limits of sanity.
They may have dared if they didn't understand what was going on.
Occasionally an otherwise good company will go after an innocent person they mistook for a hacker. It is sometimes very hard for people in charge to enough technical perspective to distinguish good guys from bad guys. And there are widely varying views of who the good guys are.
8 years ago, an employee of a watermarking company entered a forum for watermark researchers and called us all thieves. He was very angry that people were developing benchmarking tools (like the now widely-used StirMark) that basically stress-test watermarks. To his eyes, this was like a den of safecrackers, and he told us that soon a law (the DMCA) would make our work illegal.
FWIW, the company in question did not share his view, and went to some lengths to make amends for this loose canon. But, in other organizations, the loose canon can be at the top rather than some coder. The MPAA had Jack Valenti, for example, who didn't even consider this stuff "science."
Slashdot Mirror
One of the best tutorials and references for Tcl is the Wikibook on Tcl programming.
Indeed, it's one of the best programming texts I've seen in any language.
Because half of the country is a potential disaster area.
It's bad enough when your town gets taken out by a tornado/wildfire/flash flood---then some folks on the Internet have to call you an idiot for choosing to live in the midwest/west coast/Mississippi river valley.
It's how much the students actually do.
Programming is a bit like creative writing: you have to actually do it a lot, and everything else is just guidance, important but secondary to the act of writing as the chief source of learning.
My experience with several CS curricula is that the best one clobbered the students with many and difficult programming assignments, producing deadly ninja graduates. Others focused on theory and concepts, and produced students who could just barely complete an assignment by their senior year.
I have gradually decided that the focus on theory, and viewing an education as something that you acquire passively from teachers (and a better education from better teachers,) has made many CS curricula as useful as four years of powerpoint lectures about how to juggle.
We have a separate tab for the 2007 winners; it's the first one on the left.
I recommend you give it a read; the entries are all very clever.
Hi,
Ask yourself what SWAP(a[j],a[k]) does when j==k.
This was indeed a bug; we fixed it after several people pointed out the mistake.
Interestingly, this demonstrates the effectiveness of "many eyes" in an open source project, even if the contest demonstrates the limitations of informal source inspection.
We spend approximately 21% of our budget on National Defense. Nearly half the budget is lost to entitlements.
Well, I wouldn't say "lost." I don't look at the US Interstate Highway system and think, "dang, look at all that lost defense money."
We spend an amazing amount on education but efforts to improve it are thwarted by Teacher Union's, Special Interest Groups, and Politicians. If Teachers' Unions are so good at thwarting the US educational system, you'd think they would have the power to occasionally give themselves a raise.
Or teach Internet people to use apostrophes correctly, so we could have some left over to fix all of our DONT WALK signs.
A lot of people are asking, "who goes to YouTube for medical advice?" I think
what's really happening is that people search YouTube for other things, and a
propaganda video shows up in the search listings.
I have several times done a search there and got a "9/11 truth" or Holocaust
denial video showing up on the first page, either by a fluke of text matching,
or by overt tag abuse.
Youtube is a pretty decent vehicle for spreading conspiracy theories and other
anti-science ideological movements.
3. The posts with content contain many unsubstatiated statements proclaimed as fact all discussed in an exasperated matter in a hardly subtle attempt to garner emotional support from people they don't know.
3.14. Posts of obvious falsehoods or urban legends, followed by helpful comments from readers linking to Snopes...
...followed in turn by a long response by the blogger praising the many-eyes editorial power of the blogosphere and how this example shows that "citizen journalism" is so much superior than the mainstream media. Because on the Internet, publishing utter BS and then getting caught just proves the overall system works.
And, if you write a program to make your documents printable, they'll have you arrested by the FBI.
So you have the "loophole" that a contract won't be signed unless both parties agree to its terms. Therefore one party could in theory stall indefinitely. And from this you conclude that the challenge is fake? How about this: do you have any evidence that the JREF actually does this to their applicants? All I see here is the argument that they could stall in theory, and they have an incentive to not lose money (tho it isn't Randi's money being wagered here.) That's not a lot to go on. Xcott
The functionality argument could always be made for the iPod as well. The iPod lacked features that could long be found in competing MP3 jukeboxes, and yet it was a commercial success. In fact, some of its comparative deficiencies are the same that were listed here for the iPhone. Yet consumers didn't reject it for the things it couldn't do. I think a big part of Apple's target market are people who want to have the cool gadget like an MP3 player or a smart phone, but who don't already have so much experience with them so as to expect specific features. I mean, who's the bigger market, people who already own Blackberrys, or people who have regular phones and are sick of not remembering how to set up a 3-way call, or which unlabeled button turns on speakerphone?
Ha ha ha, I meant John Gilmore. This is Murphy's law of the Internet: if I slam someone for getting his facts wrong, something stupid will worm its way into my own post. Sorry, Mr. Gilmore.
Schneier's blog, which you cite, has a link to a fellow who tried to fly without ID and failed. It was impossible to do what you describe, because the security people simply refused to believe him.
Obviously this isn't as easy or possible as you let on.
I should add: when I first heard of Dan Gilmore's attempt to do this I was astonished, and I can imagine lots of people thinking, "is he serious?" But just 10-20 years ago there would be nothing unusual about what Mr. Gilmore is trying to do. I think this shows how far we've gone as a society in accepting the security measures as normal.
--X
No no no. The effect on the potential market does not refer to devaluation caused by criticizing or lampooning a work. It refers to the loss of real or potential revenue caused by the copying itself, e.g. copying a CD or a computer game.
For example, parody is commonly fair use, even though a powerful parody can seriously damage the market for the original work. That damage is not caused by the copying itself, however.
Although there is no solid formula for fair use, these excerpts almost certainly qualify.
Back then, when I pressed "record" on a tape recorder or the shutter button on a camera, it did what I wanted instantaneously.
None of this goddamn 2-second delay, or booting into the OS for 30 seconds to figure out how to record from the microphone.
Nowadays I am reluctant to buy any technology unless it does the basic things that technology used to do for me in the 1970s. There's no way I'd go back, of course, but I think one of the great failures of consumer electronics today is that much of it is incapable of basic features 30 years back---largely as a matter of priorities and crappy user interface design.
Xcott
The FAQ does not say this, and I certainly won't feel any obligation to install different compilers and interpreters because somebody submitted code in SML/NJ (or one of the other, inferior functional languages. Smiley.)
The FAQ says that we'll accept C++, which is about as close as we get to being inclusive.
X
No, the program reads from stdin and writes to stdout. Its function is basically the equivalent of that Unix command string on the main page.
X
On the other hand, I think it does teach us a thing or two about what to look for when reviewing code. I know I've learned a lot about sneaky coding practices since it started. I learned C in the 1980s and thought I was pretty knowledgeable by now, but I actually didn't know about ASCII trigraphs until last year. X
According to Wikipedia, the millionth article was written by Thomas Edison in 1691, after he invented the first commercially successful parachute. X
Xcott
But, does that business model actually work? I mean, for razors?
I mean, when I go to the store to get more blades, I always forget what specific type of handle I have. It's not something I really spend the effort to commit to memory. So I just don't buy new cartridges, putting it off until next time.
Or, I just buy the disposable safety razors instead, which are cheaper anyway. Having to remember the type of handle or track down the specific model is enough of a pain to remind me that it's silly to spend all that money on a 3-bladed replacement cartridge. If you actually bother to use decent shaving cream and hot water, a cheapo safety razor does the job just as well.
Come to think of it, it's not a giant sacrifice for Schick to give away the handle anyway. It's a damn piece of injection-molded plastic. Nor is it unusual for a consumer to have 5 different handles, so it's not like they're locking you in.
Surely the strategy makes more sense in the tech sector, where you really can lock someone in to a platform. But I find it odd that we're always analogizing this to a business strategy outside the tech sector that just doesn't sound particularly effective.
Xcott
If you want to convince laypeople that a debugger is a perfectly benign piece of software that is of no danger to anyone, you would probably want to avoid saying, "see, it's like a gun...."
I support the consitutional right to bear arms. But if someone told me that an obscure item I don't understand is "like a gun," I would draw certain false conclusions about its purpose and safety. I would disagree with its banning but understand why some people in law enforcement would be motivated to restrict it.
If on the other hand you told me that this obscure item is "like a safe" or "like a crowbar" or "like a microscope," I would instead see that the only people who would want to ban it are either unclear on the concept or authoritarian beyond the limits of sanity.
Xcott
Occasionally an otherwise good company will go after an innocent person they mistook for a hacker. It is sometimes very hard for people in charge to enough technical perspective to distinguish good guys from bad guys. And there are widely varying views of who the good guys are.
8 years ago, an employee of a watermarking company entered a forum for watermark researchers and called us all thieves. He was very angry that people were developing benchmarking tools (like the now widely-used StirMark) that basically stress-test watermarks. To his eyes, this was like a den of safecrackers, and he told us that soon a law (the DMCA) would make our work illegal.
FWIW, the company in question did not share his view, and went to some lengths to make amends for this loose canon. But, in other organizations, the loose canon can be at the top rather than some coder. The MPAA had Jack Valenti, for example, who didn't even consider this stuff "science."
Xcott