I knew that getting this username before anyone else would one day pay dividends!
Username/name of star are inspired by the Isaac Asimov novel "Nemesis" by the way.
While marking work as a tutor at my university, I was lucky enough to be marking with somebody who has written a thesis on the subject.
The good thing about elliptic curve methods for cryptology is that they have a completely different "hard" function to our current cryptographic methods. Instead of using discrete logarithms, elliptic curves use the fact that you need to know three things to be able to get a curve. Two points in space and formula that describes the curve in reference to these points.
The most important thing about these standards being made official is not that they are unbreakable. It is that there is an alternative cryptographic method out there, that should quantum computers be invented tomorrow, we would still have an effective method of cryptography. (Quantum computers will be very good at solving discrete logarithms)
But when I first read this I thought "How could you possibly make a ocmputer out of a model railroad", followed almost instantly by the idea of using each trip around the railroad as the trigger that acts as a clock cycle.
Very very slow, of course, but still - a way to make a computer out of a model railroad....:(
There is a very simple way of avoiding Moore's law requirements for ever increasing password lengths. Put a delay between attempts on the server. If it takes a second to respond to each password attempt, it doesn't matter how many planets of computers you have linked up trying to crack the password, there will be a limit to how many attempts can be made in, say, a month. The suspicious logging in habits should be noticed by then...
This sort of thing is not really new. Look up Doctrine of the Affections to see a similar idea that was popular in the 1600s.
Personally, I believe the idea to be difficult to prove at best. The reason certain notes and chord progressions 'speak' to you has a mathematical foundation. Certain notes in tonal music have certain frequencies that overlap and produce a 'pleasant' sound. The reason atonal music does not sound good is purely based on mathematics! It would be difficult to say the same about spoken language as there is no mathematics involved at all.
Of courses, back in the day, the Church prefered certain chord progressions based on this math, but justified it that certain "Perfect chords" were closer to god (thus perfect). This has had a huge impact on music and is still strongly in effect today.
Well seeings how I think I was one of the only people to be able to load it up before it went down, here is what was on the site. This is pretty much it (very simple interface), the only thing you can't see here are "Send Now" and "blank sign" buttons and a dark blue background.
Leave a Scrolling Message for Mark You can leave a message on the scrolling message board for Mark, or see the log of messages already left.
This will replace the existing message of:
[Tue 02:55 24.5.54.115] It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Below are some simple commands you can use. Insert the command text where you want the command result to be. Hey folks, this isn't XHTML. If you want to use a tag, please make sure it's in all caps or it doesn't work.
Graphic Blocks There are 26 reprogramable graphic blocks. <BA> Telephone <BB> Glasses <BC> Tap <BD> Rocket <BE> Monster <BF> Key <BG> Shirt <BH> Helicopter <BI> Car <BJ> Tank <BK> House <BL> Teapot <BM> Knife & Fork <BN> Duck <BO> Motorcycle <BP> Bicycle <BQ> Crown <BR> Sweet Heart <BS> Arrow Right <BT> Arrow Left <BU> Arrow Down-Left <BV> Arrow Up-Left <BW> Mug of Beer <BX> Chair <BY> High-heeled Shoes
Colors There are 26 color modes. <CA> Dim Red <CB> Red <CC> Bright Red <CD> Orange <CE> Bright Orange <CF> Light Yellow <CG> Yellow <CH> Bright Yellow <CI> Lime <CJ> Dim Lime <CK> Bright Lime <CL> Bright Green <CM> Green <CN> Dim Green <CO> Yellow/Green/Red <CP> Rainbow (Default) <CQ> Red/Green 3D <CR> Red/Yellow 3D <CS> Green/Red 3D <CT> Green/Yellow 3D <CU> Green on Red <CV> Red on Green <CW> Orange on Green 3D <CX> Lime on Red 3D <CY> Green on Red 3D <CZ> Red on Green 3D
Note: Some of these color combinations look so bad that they should require a permit.
Character Sizes <SA> Normal (Default) <SE> Flashing Normal <SB> Bold (Wide) <SF> Flashing Bold (Wide) <SC> Italic <SG> Flashing Italic <SD> Bold Italic (Wide) <SH> Flashing Bold Italic (Wide)
Display Functions <FA> AUTO Random color & presentation <FB> OPEN <-- Open from Center --> <FC> COVER <-- Covers Text --> <FD> APPEAR Instantly replaces text <FE> CYCLING Rolling Colors <FF> CLOSE <-- Blank screen right to left <FG> CLOSE --> Blank screen left to right <FH> CLOSE --><-- Blank screen outter to center <FI> SCROLL UP Scroll up from bottom <FJ> SCROLL DOWN Scroll down from top <FK> OVERLAP Two layers slide together to form text <FL> STACKING Falling dots form text <FM> COMIC 1 PacMan <FN> COMIC 2 Random creature walking <FP> PAUSE Short delay of motion <FQ> SLEEP Blank screen until the next timer activates <FR> RANDOM Random dots appear forming text <FS> SHIFT <-- Roll message right to left (Default) <FT> TIME/DATE Show time and date, no choice of formatting <FU> MAGIC Change text color each time <FV> THANK YOU Cursive "Thank you" <FW> WELCOME Cursive "Welcome" <FX> SPEED 1 <FY> SPEED 2 Jittery
You're lucky goatse is no more. What would your mother say if she decided to see what internet site was so important for you to enshrine on a LED board?
And while there I saw a chalkboard outside a cornerstore with a joke on it:
A foreigner was at a sheep farm watching them shear the wool off the sheep. Knowing a better way he said "Here, let me show you how to shear your sheep"
The Kiwi replied "I'm not shearing with anybody!"
Never let it be said that Kiwi's don't know how to laugh at themselves! (and for this instance we'll forgive them their rediculous accents;))
What a stupid comment. How could a Bayesian filter (human trained) be more accurate than a human? Has AI had some quantum leap overnight that I didn't hear about? It is a fault in logic, pure and simple.
Unless of course, they are talking about identifying spam at the subject header part. But even that is mucking with the statistics. A filter will 'read' the content of an email and judge a spam percentage on that, which is information a human doesn't have without opening an email.
Stupid.
Of course, RTFA could explain this for me but I'm not new here....
I am in no way claiming that this is the case, but just hear me out regardless. I do love a conspiracy theory.
Fact: Bush wants to build a missile defence system Fact: Missile defence system is very expensive. Fact: Missile defence system is very controversial (at least internationally) Fact: You need pretty high-tech rockets to reach the Moon/Mars.
Could it be that this is Bush's way of getting this technology in a more palatable form and maybe even hiding some of the "cost" of the Star Wars system at the same time?
I don't care if it's overhyped or not, it's enough for me to get up off my behind and get out and enjoy the world.
I'm privileged enough to come from a 1st world country where it is still possible to escape the city lights and see the stars properly - which is something I reckon the vast majority of slashdotters would not have experienced.
When I read about a celestial event on/. I actually take note. That Leonid shower I got inspired at 10:30 at night rang up my friends and we got together, drove for an hour and a bit into the country and were about the only people in the southern hemisphere to see the damn things due to a VERY localised and short-lived break in the clouds. It was magical and everybody present will never forget it.
The next meteor shower I went to the same place and, well, didn't see anything. But that didn't matter, because the majority of my friends were there for the leonid shower and were gaining an interest in just being outdoors and seeing the stars.
This time around, sure, it may just be a red dot in the sky, but it's the biggest this dot has been for the last 73 000 years, and well, sometimes that's just the little motivation we need to be convinced to leave our comfortable labs for an evening which will be enjoyed by all present. Except for my friend who, while watching the Matrix Reloaded, was just adding some finishing touches to his program on his laptop during the opening action scene. He'll spoil my night vision.
So in conclusion, I for one am happy for this hype and will be taking my $2 telescope out with me for a night to remember.
While we're nowhere near the 1 computer for every student mark (something like 1 for every TWENTY) we do have quite a good infrastructure set up for those who are 1337 enough to know it exists.
* We have our own irc server, which is meant to be used for only Uni related topics but somehow falls short of that
* The uni has a newsgroup server and most subjects (at least that I do) have a newsgroup which the lecturer/tutors check regularly and answers questions
* Each lecturer/tutor has an email address that they can be contacted on for answering questions of any type. That is to say questions like "If I were to be sick on Tuesday, how would it affect me" as opposed to "wanna date ROFL"
The downside of all this is that we no longer get assignments printed out and handed to us in class, we have to go to the course website (oh yeah, each course has a website) and download the PDFs and print it out ourselves. Some of them take up MANY pages.
We also have a place where we can submit our assignments/projects electronically which saves BIG BUCKS on printing costs. For the students that is, the cost is usually passed onto the school which prints them out because it's easier to read for the lecturers/tutors. (bit of a double edged sword that one)
All university administration is handled via computer - ie signing up for classes/tutes etc. which is fantastic when it's working.
I guess a lot of that goes outside the scope of the question, but hey, at least it opens up some branches which you might not have thought of and want to explore further.
First up, hooray for me I managed to get to the site before it got slashdotted.
Ok, now that I'm done with that, am I the only one that's dubious as to whether this is real or not? Admittedly I've only inspected the videos and not checked out the rest of the site, but it looks to me as though a lot of those moves can be programmed in and "acted" out by the object.
The best example of this is the handshake. Notice how the hand is not even in the right position to SHAKE a hand until near the end when the hand rotates 90 odd degrees (so it looks like a hand that could possibly be shaken) and then the human hand moves in nice and slowly. Any old dolt can shake a fake hand, I'll bet the robot hand doesn't give half as firm of a handshake as my little brother.:)
It even looks as though the robot shakes the hand one more time than the human expects.
I'm sure that they've made leaps and bounds into robotic hands, but I can't help but suspect that they're playing it up for more than it's worth.
One thing that might have made that situation ironic is if she had then shut her hand in the window and couldn't call for help, because to fit the $20 bill in her pocket (instead of the till) she had to remove her cell phone which was now out of reach.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew that getting this username before anyone else would one day pay dividends! Username/name of star are inspired by the Isaac Asimov novel "Nemesis" by the way.
Tempafrost?
While marking work as a tutor at my university, I was lucky enough to be marking with somebody who has written a thesis on the subject.
The good thing about elliptic curve methods for cryptology is that they have a completely different "hard" function to our current cryptographic methods. Instead of using discrete logarithms, elliptic curves use the fact that you need to know three things to be able to get a curve. Two points in space and formula that describes the curve in reference to these points.
The most important thing about these standards being made official is not that they are unbreakable. It is that there is an alternative cryptographic method out there, that should quantum computers be invented tomorrow, we would still have an effective method of cryptography. (Quantum computers will be very good at solving discrete logarithms)
Shouldn't this news be under programming instead of software? The image for programming is a jigsaw getting solved!
But when I first read this I thought "How could you possibly make a ocmputer out of a model railroad", followed almost instantly by the idea of using each trip around the railroad as the trigger that acts as a clock cycle.
... :(
Very very slow, of course, but still - a way to make a computer out of a model railroad.
"The next manager wrote me up for insubordination when he found out that I was documenting his actions when he explicitly told me not too."
If a manager asked that of me, I'd ask for it in writing.
There is a very simple way of avoiding Moore's law requirements for ever increasing password lengths. Put a delay between attempts on the server. If it takes a second to respond to each password attempt, it doesn't matter how many planets of computers you have linked up trying to crack the password, there will be a limit to how many attempts can be made in, say, a month. The suspicious logging in habits should be noticed by then...
It takes two to tango.
This sort of thing is not really new. Look up Doctrine of the Affections to see a similar idea that was popular in the 1600s. Personally, I believe the idea to be difficult to prove at best. The reason certain notes and chord progressions 'speak' to you has a mathematical foundation. Certain notes in tonal music have certain frequencies that overlap and produce a 'pleasant' sound. The reason atonal music does not sound good is purely based on mathematics! It would be difficult to say the same about spoken language as there is no mathematics involved at all. Of courses, back in the day, the Church prefered certain chord progressions based on this math, but justified it that certain "Perfect chords" were closer to god (thus perfect). This has had a huge impact on music and is still strongly in effect today.
Well seeings how I think I was one of the only people to be able to load it up before it went down, here is what was on the site. This is pretty much it (very simple interface), the only thing you can't see here are "Send Now" and "blank sign" buttons and a dark blue background.
Leave a Scrolling Message for Mark
You can leave a message on the scrolling message board for Mark, or see the log of messages already left.
This will replace the existing message of:
[Tue 02:55 24.5.54.115]
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Below are some simple commands you can use. Insert the command text where you want the command result to be. Hey folks, this isn't XHTML. If you want to use a tag, please make sure it's in all caps or it doesn't work.
Graphic Blocks
There are 26 reprogramable graphic blocks.
<BA> Telephone <BB> Glasses <BC> Tap <BD> Rocket <BE> Monster
<BF> Key <BG> Shirt <BH> Helicopter <BI> Car <BJ> Tank
<BK> House <BL> Teapot <BM> Knife & Fork <BN> Duck <BO> Motorcycle
<BP> Bicycle <BQ> Crown <BR> Sweet Heart <BS> Arrow Right <BT> Arrow Left
<BU> Arrow Down-Left <BV> Arrow Up-Left <BW> Mug of Beer <BX> Chair <BY> High-heeled Shoes
Colors
There are 26 color modes.
<CA> Dim Red <CB> Red <CC> Bright Red
<CD> Orange <CE> Bright Orange <CF> Light Yellow
<CG> Yellow <CH> Bright Yellow <CI> Lime
<CJ> Dim Lime <CK> Bright Lime <CL> Bright Green
<CM> Green <CN> Dim Green <CO> Yellow/Green/Red
<CP> Rainbow (Default) <CQ> Red/Green 3D <CR> Red/Yellow 3D
<CS> Green/Red 3D <CT> Green/Yellow 3D <CU> Green on Red
<CV> Red on Green <CW> Orange on Green 3D <CX> Lime on Red 3D
<CY> Green on Red 3D <CZ> Red on Green 3D
Note:
Some of these color combinations look so bad that they should require a permit.
Character Sizes
<SA> Normal (Default) <SE> Flashing Normal
<SB> Bold (Wide) <SF> Flashing Bold (Wide)
<SC> Italic <SG> Flashing Italic
<SD> Bold Italic (Wide) <SH> Flashing Bold Italic (Wide)
Display Functions
<FA> AUTO
Random color & presentation <FB> OPEN
<-- Open from Center --> <FC> COVER
<-- Covers Text --> <FD> APPEAR
Instantly replaces text <FE> CYCLING
Rolling Colors
<FF> CLOSE <--
Blank screen right to left <FG> CLOSE -->
Blank screen left to right <FH> CLOSE --><--
Blank screen outter to center <FI> SCROLL UP
Scroll up from bottom <FJ> SCROLL DOWN
Scroll down from top
<FK> OVERLAP
Two layers slide together to form text <FL> STACKING
Falling dots form text <FM> COMIC 1
PacMan <FN> COMIC 2
Random creature walking
<FP> PAUSE
Short delay of motion <FQ> SLEEP
Blank screen until the next timer activates <FR> RANDOM
Random dots appear forming text <FS> SHIFT <--
Roll message right to left (Default) <FT> TIME/DATE
Show time and date, no choice of formatting
<FU> MAGIC
Change text color each time <FV> THANK YOU
Cursive "Thank you" <FW> WELCOME
Cursive "Welcome" <FX> SPEED 1 <FY> SPEED 2
Jittery
You're lucky goatse is no more. What would your mother say if she decided to see what internet site was so important for you to enshrine on a LED board?
I'm going to come back to this comment in 10 years and see if it's still funny. Like space, computer specs are relative to time. :)
It can't be easy to aim for something when travelling at Mach 7!
What town are you from?!?
I want to know what town could possibly be desperate enough to drink brain juice!
If this means I get "Vote for Bush" popups in Australia I'm going to be very upset.
I'd prefer a 12" penis any day!
And while there I saw a chalkboard outside a cornerstore with a joke on it:
;))
A foreigner was at a sheep farm watching them shear the wool off the sheep. Knowing a better way he said "Here, let me show you how to shear your sheep"
The Kiwi replied "I'm not shearing with anybody!"
Never let it be said that Kiwi's don't know how to laugh at themselves! (and for this instance we'll forgive them their rediculous accents
What a stupid comment. How could a Bayesian filter (human trained) be more accurate than a human? Has AI had some quantum leap overnight that I didn't hear about? It is a fault in logic, pure and simple.
...
Unless of course, they are talking about identifying spam at the subject header part. But even that is mucking with the statistics. A filter will 'read' the content of an email and judge a spam percentage on that, which is information a human doesn't have without opening an email.
Stupid.
Of course, RTFA could explain this for me but I'm not new here.
Profit!
I know you're posting from the land downunder, but there's still no excuse for the backwards smilie!
I am in no way claiming that this is the case, but just hear me out regardless. I do love a conspiracy theory.
Fact: Bush wants to build a missile defence system
Fact: Missile defence system is very expensive.
Fact: Missile defence system is very controversial (at least internationally)
Fact: You need pretty high-tech rockets to reach the Moon/Mars.
Could it be that this is Bush's way of getting this technology in a more palatable form and maybe even hiding some of the "cost" of the Star Wars system at the same time?
"Now we probably wouldn't be here talking about all this stuff if it weren't for him"
This comment is spot on - had Linus not been born we would likely NEVER have discussed his birthday.
I don't care if it's overhyped or not, it's enough for me to get up off my behind and get out and enjoy the world.
/. I actually take note. That Leonid shower I got inspired at 10:30 at night rang up my friends and we got together, drove for an hour and a bit into the country and were about the only people in the southern hemisphere to see the damn things due to a VERY localised and short-lived break in the clouds. It was magical and everybody present will never forget it.
I'm privileged enough to come from a 1st world country where it is still possible to escape the city lights and see the stars properly - which is something I reckon the vast majority of slashdotters would not have experienced.
When I read about a celestial event on
The next meteor shower I went to the same place and, well, didn't see anything. But that didn't matter, because the majority of my friends were there for the leonid shower and were gaining an interest in just being outdoors and seeing the stars.
This time around, sure, it may just be a red dot in the sky, but it's the biggest this dot has been for the last 73 000 years, and well, sometimes that's just the little motivation we need to be convinced to leave our comfortable labs for an evening which will be enjoyed by all present. Except for my friend who, while watching the Matrix Reloaded, was just adding some finishing touches to his program on his laptop during the opening action scene. He'll spoil my night vision.
So in conclusion, I for one am happy for this hype and will be taking my $2 telescope out with me for a night to remember.
The only thing ironic about Alanis Morissette's song is that it isn't.
While we're nowhere near the 1 computer for every student mark (something like 1 for every TWENTY) we do have quite a good infrastructure set up for those who are 1337 enough to know it exists.
* We have our own irc server, which is meant to be used for only Uni related topics but somehow falls short of that
* The uni has a newsgroup server and most subjects (at least that I do) have a newsgroup which the lecturer/tutors check regularly and answers questions
* Each lecturer/tutor has an email address that they can be contacted on for answering questions of any type. That is to say questions like "If I were to be sick on Tuesday, how would it affect me" as opposed to "wanna date ROFL"
The downside of all this is that we no longer get assignments printed out and handed to us in class, we have to go to the course website (oh yeah, each course has a website) and download the PDFs and print it out ourselves. Some of them take up MANY pages.
We also have a place where we can submit our assignments/projects electronically which saves BIG BUCKS on printing costs. For the students that is, the cost is usually passed onto the school which prints them out because it's easier to read for the lecturers/tutors. (bit of a double edged sword that one)
All university administration is handled via computer - ie signing up for classes/tutes etc. which is fantastic when it's working.
I guess a lot of that goes outside the scope of the question, but hey, at least it opens up some branches which you might not have thought of and want to explore further.
First up, hooray for me I managed to get to the site before it got slashdotted.
:)
Ok, now that I'm done with that, am I the only one that's dubious as to whether this is real or not? Admittedly I've only inspected the videos and not checked out the rest of the site, but it looks to me as though a lot of those moves can be programmed in and "acted" out by the object.
The best example of this is the handshake. Notice how the hand is not even in the right position to SHAKE a hand until near the end when the hand rotates 90 odd degrees (so it looks like a hand that could possibly be shaken) and then the human hand moves in nice and slowly. Any old dolt can shake a fake hand, I'll bet the robot hand doesn't give half as firm of a handshake as my little brother.
It even looks as though the robot shakes the hand one more time than the human expects.
I'm sure that they've made leaps and bounds into robotic hands, but I can't help but suspect that they're playing it up for more than it's worth.
I'm sorry, but that's not ironic.
One thing that might have made that situation ironic is if she had then shut her hand in the window and couldn't call for help, because to fit the $20 bill in her pocket (instead of the till) she had to remove her cell phone which was now out of reach.
That would be ironic AND poetically just.
2.5 people per square kiliometer.