These lasers are used to irridate the outer hell of a spherical metal shell...
I read that yesterday, and thought, "wow, that's a wonderfully visceral description!" To create an Hellishly hot outer layer in order to create a truly Infernal level of heating and compression inside.
Looking again today, I guess it was supposed to be "outer hull" or "outer shell". But I still like the image of using lasers to irradiate the hell out of something.
Or here, for that matter. But seriously, when I started running Opera at work a couple of years ago, people would see me using something other than IE and they'd just shake their heads. Why would anyone want to use a "non-standard" browser?
Yesterday, I had to download some MS software, and my co-worker still laughed a bit when I had to copy the URL out of Opera to IE. But there's definitely more respect now... especially since the Data Security folks just sent a company-wide email telling us to high-tail it to windowsupdate.com... again...
... turning it into a tiny (and thus safe) hydrogen bomb.
Cute link for the "tiny, safe hydrogen bomb"! Or perhaps they mean that the image is actual size? Cool -- the New Millenium version of an old favorite.
I *wish* I could stay off Windows. But no, the company is looking at plunging even deeper into the Redmond Matrix with dot-Net.
I just installed the.NET development environment, and was greeted with this restriction in the EULA:
3.2 Distribution Requirements and License Limitations?General Requirements. If you choose to exercise your rights under Section 3.1, any redistribution by you is subject to your compliance with this Section 3.2; some of the Redistributable Code has additional limited use rights described in Section 3.3.
3.2.1 If you choose to redistribute Sample Code, Redistributable Code, VC Redistributables, or Server Redistributables (defined in Section 4.2.3) (collectively, the ?Redistributables?), you agree:
b. That the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;
Oh, great... even if I were to find a way to make my code work outside Windows, I would be prohibited from distributing the otherwise freely-distributable runtime modules!
In fact, the runtimes can't be distributed with any program licensed under the GPL, if I'm interpreting this paragraph correctly:
3.2.2 If you use the Redistributables or any portion thereof, then, in addition to your compliance with the applicable distribution requirements described for the Redistributables, the following also applies. Your license rights to the Redistributables are conditioned upon your not (a) creating derivative works of the Redistributables in any manner that would cause the Redistributables in whole or in part to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License; or (b) distributing the Redistributables (or derivative works thereof) in any manner that would cause the Redistributables to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License. An ?Excluded License? is any license that requires as a condition of use, modification, and/or distribution of software subject to the Excluded License, that such software or other software combined and/or distributed with such software be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge.
Apparently, I can't write a program and give it away with the redistributables. In theory, I could write a program and give it away without the runtimes, and depend on Microsoft's largesse, hoping they continue to make the runtimes available.
"I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life." whoa get a life! How about trying to use it to feed children?
Yeah, 'cause a typical CF card contains 100% of the US RDA of High-Impact Plastic! Not to mention 62.5% of the RDA for Silicon, plus important trace elements like copper wiring and gold plating!
Pretty good rundown on quick-and-dirty odds. One minor error in the "Flush Twice" section, though: 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/8 = 12.5% It should be 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/16 = 6.25%
I was going crazy wondering why my experience seemed to bear out my erroneous calculation! But when I updated the page, I noticed that I'd done some "more correcter" math later:
10/47 * 9/46 = 90/2162 = 4.1%
The calculations below that point use the 4.1% number, instead of the 12.5% number, so the final point value remained 3. But it makes more sense now. Thanks!
I don't doubt you are right, but I can't think well of the tactic or the goal. As long as the content producers keep doing stuff like this, they are going to be perceived as evil.
You don't s*** on your customers, in other words.
Busting the customers of the pirates would be evil, as you described. But I'm all for busting the pirates themselves, both the guy at the flea market and the guy in the theater. Both of them know what they're doing is wrong. Unlike the legal grey area of P2P, these people's goal is to make cash money, not to set information free. They're stealing.
A guy sharing files from his computer may have erased *potential* sales -- I have trouble calling that "theft". But a guy selling DVDs from the back of his pickup is erasing *actual* sales -- which sounds like "theft" to me.
Can you say "waste of time and money"? Who is going to choose a camcorder copy of a film over actually seeing it?
There's a huge flea market in the no-mans-land between Dallas and Grand Prairie, Texas, where you can buy just about anything you want. A friend of my daughter brought over "Freaky Friday" and "Freddy vs. Jason" the week they hit theaters -- she told me her mom bought them there. The image was grainy, the soundtrack muted, and of course there were no DVD extras -- you put it in and it started playing.
The problem, in this case at least, isn't us geeks. Our bittorrents and mp3s and such are an entirely different issue. The camcorder copies go straight to the underground economy, sold off the back of a truck at a flea market where if you don't habla el lingo, you'd better watch yourself. And the folks buying these goods often don't know the difference between pirated and legal: they're just buying it, just like they'll buy fake Nike shoes at the next stall.
That's the problem they're trying to solve. They're not trying to bust geeks, they're trying to bust criminals who will sell pirated copies of movies for hard cash.
By the way, my daughter and her friend both got informed, in detail, about what piracy is. My daughter now tells her friends "No, you can't borrow my CD to burn a copy, 'cause my dad won't let me." That's good enough for now.
Foo:You have to play the game a quarter million (250,000) times, and then you get to take pictures of naked Iraqis six times. That pretty much puts the 6 or so assholes in perspective out of the 250,000 men and women serving overseas. Bar:You make it sound like the entire problem is just a few assholes. Guess again. The problem is systemic and goes all the way to the top (or at least near the top).
Oh, I get it now.
After you play a quarter-million times, a systems admin comes in and takes pictures of naked Iraqis. Your player just holds the leash.
Easy enough mistake to make.
(Not to minimise the actual issues. I'm damned proud of my cousin who just came back from Tikrit, and I'm fighting mad at his Commander in Thief for sending him in the first place.)
However, if your site is about Luxury cars or expensive network equipment, you will most likely much more money per clickthrough. As I mentioned in another post, I get $1 to $7 per clickthrough, however, I'm lucky if I get one or two clickthroughs per day. The demand just isn't that high for stuff like that. Now if I was running pr0n banners on a site that served pr0n, I'd probably get a ton more clickthroughs, but probably a fraction of a cent for each one.
There's the rub... the price Google pays depends entirely on the amount Google can charge. The AdSense ads on my Dixie Chicks page bring in 4-6 cents a click, because they're for CD sales -- not a high-margin business.
Compare that with a single 41c click on an ad on my Video Poker page! If I had something useful to say about Viagra or Credit Repair, I bet I could get even more per click. But I haven't yet figured out how to work those subjects in to my Dixie Chicks site yet.
But I've *never* gotten a $1 clickthrough... much less a $7! Looks like I need to create a "Dixie Chicks NetScreen" page... as soon as I figure out WTF NetScreen is.
Reading the article, it was fun to substitute "Junk DNA" with "-1, Troll posts". The concept is similar: troll postings serve no useful purpose, but they do modify the discussions in subtle ways. Referring to any particularly offensive link as "goat-related" is one of the obvious examples.
Since I'm bored today, I'll try my hand at rewriting the Reuters article.
Slashdotters Find New Type of Moderation in Troll Postings
LONDON (Reuters) - Troll posts may not be so useless after all.
Slashdotters coined the term to describe the textual wasteland within the Slashdot database, or book of posts, which consists of long uncharted stretches of text for which there is no known function.
But researchers from Hard Vard Medical School in Jamaica said on Wednesday that within troll postings in the Science database they have discovered a new class of post.
Unlike other posts, the new one does not produce an Insightful or Interesting comment to carry out its function. But when it is browsed at -1, it moderates a neighboring post.
"This doesn't explain all troll posting. It gives a potential use for some troll posting," Professor Red Finster, who headed the research team, said in a made-up Slashdot posting.
"I cannot think of another regulatory post such as this one," he added.
There are about 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 posts in the Slashdot database. Much of the database consists of troll postings which scientists are trying to decipher to determine the causes and potential treatments for boring, inane discussions.
The new troll called GOAT1 blocks the function of the adjacent posting in the Science database. Finster and his team, who reported their finding in the science journal UnNature-al, believe other trolls could work in the same way and in other databases including the main database.
"We found one example of a type of troll posting that hasn't been found before that might alert investigators to look for it in other offtopic discussions," Finster said.
"This type of moderation may occur in other cases throughout the message board kingdom," he added.
The new troll works by making Frustration, a cousin of Interest, which causes down-moderation or turning off the adjacent post.
"When people are looking to understand the regulation of posts from whatever database -- main, games, Apple, science -- they cannot just look for messages that are acting there. It might be that it is simply the act of moderating that is causing regulation," said Finster.
The Moderation alphabet consists of several moderations -- Flamebait and Troll to Insightful and Informative -- which carry instructions for making all databases. The sum of the moderations carries the score. Each set of moderations corresponds to a single comment score, which join up in many different combinations to make discussions.
"We want to understand the psychology behind the regulation (of the postings). It is a previously unidentified type of moderation and if we could understand how it is controlled, we will learn more about Slashdot moderation," said Finster.
What is the security impication of putting my entire credit line on my keychain? I've already got my entire credit line in my wallet....
I guess you're right... it's not that much tougher to slide a stolen credit card (swipe a swiped card?) through the slot, than it is to wave a Speedpass over a sensor. Makes me think again about that wallet full of cards... thank goodness they're already maxxed out.:)
And yes, I really did use Cut then Paste instead of copy - I don't think I was ever aware of Control+Insert until far to late for my fingers!
That's funny... I'll do Shift+Del and Shift+Ins, too, when I really want to make sure I'm copying the right thing! It's so easy, too, 'cause you don't actually release the Shift key. I don't know if there's even a standard way to say Shift+Del/then/Ins !
So you think it's our DOS heritage showing through, huh. These kids nowadays, with their fancy "window" systems...
I know it's cliche, but I still get stuck in line behind people who don't understand the basics of the ATM machine interface. Inserting (or swiping) the card throws them off. Grocery store POS systems, never consistent between chains, present even more hurdles. I've seen "Pay at the Pump" customers drive off because they just don't understand the instructions.
You want to give these folks RSA dongles? They don't even see the security implications of putting their entire credit line on their keychain with not even a PIN for validation.
The two problems are simple: People here won't understand it, and they won't care.
Why this works in Europe is beyond me, but I'm sure there are plenty of cliche anti-American rants to help explain it.
Maybe too late in the discussion thread to get an answer, but am I the only person left who uses Control+Insert to copy text, and Shift+Insert to paste it?
And then there's also Shift+Delete to CUT text.
I'm sure Shift+(direction) to highlight text is well known, and Shift+Ctl+(direction) to jump words. Plus Shift+Home for beginning of line, Shift+Ctl+Home for top of doc, and ditto with the End key. And don't forget PgUp/PgDn.
Each of these key combinations, which are as automatic to me as touch typing, occasionally don't work in the small collection of Linux apps I've used so far. At least I know now that I'm not alone!
I was planning on arriving a few days early and maybe seeing if I could get involved, even in a tiny way. If not, I could always soak up the environment.
I bet you have a better chance of volunteering for something than any of us non-flight-geeks could, if only because you speak the lingo. Hope you post a note in your journal [when you get back | from your laptop]. (and I hope I think to look...)
I'm seriously thinking about flying my Long-EZ (another Rutan design) to Mojave to see the magic. This is going to be so cool.
Might better plan ahead. From the FAQ:
Q: Can we fly our own airplanes in? A: Due to expected congestion, the airport will be closed to transient aircraft starting several days before the event.
That said, though, I'd probably take a day off work to see it with the kids, if I lived within 300 miles. As it is, 1500 miles each way is a bit much for a long-weekend road trip. I'll have to wait for the Texas folks to try it.
Many thanks for the excellent advice about my poker page. I'll make some modifications as soon as I get a chance (especially fixing my multiplication of 1/4 * 1/4), but others will take a while to integrate (like subtracting all probabilities from 1).
Right after submitting my comment, I threw a Google AdSense banner on the poker pages to see what would happen. In a clear violation of the AdSense TOS, I'll share the results with you:
Noticeable slashdotting, rapidly diminishing (though not to zero). The most interesting part of the stats is that only three out of 2,000 Slashdotters clicked on the ads for online casinos and odds generators -- and I suspect those three hits were folks who clicked out of sympathy. Unfortunately, the low hit rate means I can't give a Slashdot subscription to the best page improvement tip.:(
But I'd love to know who gave me 41 cents with a single click on Saturday! I'd like to thank him... and talk to him about a bridge I'd like to sell.
w00t! That Wikipedia page is the first one I ever created from scratch. I saw a sig on Slashdot, did some Googling to figure it out, and having recently discovered Wikipedia, decided to try it. Seeing it come full circle is pretty cool.
Re:Data from Startrek TNG played poker
on
Geeks and Poker?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Coincidence? I don't think so.
My favorite poker-related episode was the one (one of the ones) in which the Enterprise gets caught in a temporal loop. Data, more than the others, experiences deja vu, to the extent that they realize (after several dozen iterations) that they're about to have a destructive, time-ripping encounter with a ship from the past piloted by a late 20th century sitcom star.
They eventually find a way for Data (big D) to transmit a small amount of data (little D) to his past self. The data Data sends to Data is the number "3" (IIRC), which shows up in every poker hand Data deals. He realizes that the odd coincidence corresponds to the last thing his previous self saw before being destroyed -- Riker's command pips. He follows Rikers instructions (which had been countermanded by Picard) and the crews of both ships finally emerge from (yet another) temporal distortion.
I've never understoood the appeal of standing in front of a video poker terminal*, feeding in cash and pushing the little buttons, when I know that the odds are against me. But I have spent many unproductive hours with handheld poker games, and was inspired to come up with a system to lose less often. At the risk of slashdotting my new host, here's my geeky take on How to Lose Less at Video Poker.
It got mixed reviews a year or so ago when the topic came up in a previous Slashdot story, but it still seems to hold up for me -- at least, when there's no real money involved. The main criticism, IIRC, was that my method is very conservative, reducing the chances of a Big Win. Since I'm not the type to plug fifty bucks into a machine in hopes of a Big Win, I'm still happy with the method as it stands, but I'm receptive to comments.
I was hoping to try it out on a trip to Oklahoma, but when I stopped in the so-called Indian Casino in Okmulgee, I found nothing but a bingo parlor (with touch-screen monitors in place of ink daubers) and a couple hundred video 8-liners. Not one real video poker machine to try my luck. I'll have to hit the truck stop in Louisiana again... last time I was there, I played two 25c hands, lost one, won 50c on the other, and cashed out.
* Spending several hours plugging quarters into Pac-Man, however, is another thing entirely.
I guess this proves that we south-side folks aren't the only ones whose judiciary occasionally suffers from recto-cranial inversion, as shown by these two statements from Monsanto's own press release:
Monsanto originally pursued this case in the Federal Court of Canada because Mr. Schmeiser knowingly infringed Monsanto's patents on Roundup Ready technology by planting 1,030 acres of Roundup Ready canola without paying the required license fee for using the technology.
Ok, you say he purposely planted a strain of seed whose sole claim to fame is that Monsanto's herbicides don't kill it. But then:
However, the Supreme Court determined there was insufficient evidence that Mr. Schmeiser intentionally made use of the benefits provided by Monsanto's technology by spraying his crop with Roundup.
What? The guy planted this bastardized seed, supposedly on purpose, then didn't do the one thing that the seed is good for -- spraying with poison?
No wonder Monsanto sued. They're pi^h^h upset that he didn't buy the matching 55-gallon drums of Roundup. They couldn't have cared less if the guy used the patented seed -- they'd probably give it away for free if they could force the recipients to use their also-patented herbicide.
I'm waiting for someone to swipe some of these Frankenseeds and create Roundup-resistant dandelions. That'll teach 'em!
Ford loved working on films 1 and 2--he invented "parsecs" for that famous line. It was film 3 you can tell he wanted no part of...
Shh! If Lucas finds out that Han Solo uttered an incorrect measure of time and/or distance, he'll change it. To something like "She can make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs [dubbed, flat voice] per Galactic standard cycle.
So, with better special effects available, more money, and existing material as your base - you think they'll really go back to the 70s quality/style?
I think you've fallen into Lucas' lava pit -- the idea that all possible technology must be leveraged to the breaking point to make a good movie. He was on the cutting edge of special effects in the '70s, and wants to stay on the edge. He seems to think that his technical feats were the reason for the original trilogy's success.
But special effects are the background. They're the set, the chair the actor leans against. The story is where the movie lives or dies. The success of the "Spider-Man" movie isn't because of the way Peter Parker can swing between buildings in defiance of physics -- if that were the case, then "Daredevil" would have fared equally well.
I hope that a future director can use the special effects in moderation, use the material as inspiration, and use the money to pay off Lucas. With those out of the way, the story can be told. "See it again... for the first time" will finally be more than a cheezy marketing slogan.
Slashdot Mirror
These lasers are used to irridate the outer hell of a spherical metal shell...
I read that yesterday, and thought, "wow, that's a wonderfully visceral description!" To create an Hellishly hot outer layer in order to create a truly Infernal level of heating and compression inside.
Looking again today, I guess it was supposed to be "outer hull" or "outer shell". But I still like the image of using lasers to irradiate the hell out of something.
You can download a fix for this here.
Or here, for that matter. But seriously, when I started running Opera at work a couple of years ago, people would see me using something other than IE and they'd just shake their heads. Why would anyone want to use a "non-standard" browser?
Yesterday, I had to download some MS software, and my co-worker still laughed a bit when I had to copy the URL out of Opera to IE. But there's definitely more respect now... especially since the Data Security folks just sent a company-wide email telling us to high-tail it to windowsupdate.com... again...
... turning it into a tiny (and thus safe) hydrogen bomb.
Cute link for the "tiny, safe hydrogen bomb"! Or perhaps they mean that the image is actual size? Cool -- the New Millenium version of an old favorite.
I *wish* I could stay off Windows. But no, the company is looking at plunging even deeper into the Redmond Matrix with dot-Net.
.NET development environment, and was greeted with this restriction in the EULA:
I just installed the
3.2 Distribution Requirements and License Limitations?General Requirements. If you choose to exercise your rights under Section 3.1, any redistribution by you is subject to your compliance with this Section 3.2; some of the Redistributable Code has additional limited use rights described in Section 3.3.
3.2.1 If you choose to redistribute Sample Code, Redistributable Code, VC Redistributables, or Server Redistributables (defined in Section 4.2.3) (collectively, the ?Redistributables?), you agree:
b. That the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;
Oh, great... even if I were to find a way to make my code work outside Windows, I would be prohibited from distributing the otherwise freely-distributable runtime modules!
In fact, the runtimes can't be distributed with any program licensed under the GPL, if I'm interpreting this paragraph correctly:
3.2.2 If you use the Redistributables or any portion thereof, then, in addition to your compliance with the applicable distribution requirements described for the Redistributables, the following also applies. Your license rights to the Redistributables are conditioned upon your not (a) creating derivative works of the Redistributables in any manner that would cause the Redistributables in whole or in part to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License; or (b) distributing the Redistributables (or derivative works thereof) in any manner that would cause the Redistributables to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License. An ?Excluded License? is any license that requires as a condition of use, modification, and/or distribution of software subject to the Excluded License, that such software or other software combined and/or distributed with such software be (i) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (ii) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (iii) redistributable at no charge.
Apparently, I can't write a program and give it away with the redistributables. In theory, I could write a program and give it away without the runtimes, and depend on Microsoft's largesse, hoping they continue to make the runtimes available.
I know, I'm whining. Wah!
"I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life."
whoa get a life!
How about trying to use it to feed children?
Yeah, 'cause a typical CF card contains 100% of the US RDA of High-Impact Plastic! Not to mention 62.5% of the RDA for Silicon, plus important trace elements like copper wiring and gold plating!
Pretty good rundown on quick-and-dirty odds. One minor error in the "Flush Twice" section, though:
1/4 * 1/4 = 1/8 = 12.5%
It should be 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/16 = 6.25%
I was going crazy wondering why my experience seemed to bear out my erroneous calculation! But when I updated the page, I noticed that I'd done some "more correcter" math later:
10/47 * 9/46 = 90/2162 = 4.1%
The calculations below that point use the 4.1% number, instead of the 12.5% number, so the final point value remained 3. But it makes more sense now. Thanks!
I don't doubt you are right, but I can't think well of the tactic or the goal. As long as the content producers keep doing stuff like this, they are going to be perceived as evil.
You don't s*** on your customers, in other words.
Busting the customers of the pirates would be evil, as you described. But I'm all for busting the pirates themselves, both the guy at the flea market and the guy in the theater. Both of them know what they're doing is wrong. Unlike the legal grey area of P2P, these people's goal is to make cash money, not to set information free. They're stealing.
A guy sharing files from his computer may have erased *potential* sales -- I have trouble calling that "theft". But a guy selling DVDs from the back of his pickup is erasing *actual* sales -- which sounds like "theft" to me.
Can you say "waste of time and money"? Who is going to choose a camcorder copy of a film over actually seeing it?
There's a huge flea market in the no-mans-land between Dallas and Grand Prairie, Texas, where you can buy just about anything you want. A friend of my daughter brought over "Freaky Friday" and "Freddy vs. Jason" the week they hit theaters -- she told me her mom bought them there. The image was grainy, the soundtrack muted, and of course there were no DVD extras -- you put it in and it started playing.
The problem, in this case at least, isn't us geeks. Our bittorrents and mp3s and such are an entirely different issue. The camcorder copies go straight to the underground economy, sold off the back of a truck at a flea market where if you don't habla el lingo, you'd better watch yourself. And the folks buying these goods often don't know the difference between pirated and legal: they're just buying it, just like they'll buy fake Nike shoes at the next stall.
That's the problem they're trying to solve. They're not trying to bust geeks, they're trying to bust criminals who will sell pirated copies of movies for hard cash.
By the way, my daughter and her friend both got informed, in detail, about what piracy is. My daughter now tells her friends "No, you can't borrow my CD to burn a copy, 'cause my dad won't let me." That's good enough for now.
Foo: You have to play the game a quarter million (250,000) times, and then you get to take pictures of naked Iraqis six times. That pretty much puts the 6 or so assholes in perspective out of the 250,000 men and women serving overseas.
Bar: You make it sound like the entire problem is just a few assholes. Guess again. The problem is systemic and goes all the way to the top (or at least near the top).
Oh, I get it now.
After you play a quarter-million times, a systems admin comes in and takes pictures of naked Iraqis. Your player just holds the leash.
Easy enough mistake to make.
(Not to minimise the actual issues. I'm damned proud of my cousin who just came back from Tikrit, and I'm fighting mad at his Commander in Thief for sending him in the first place.)
However, if your site is about Luxury cars or expensive network equipment, you will most likely much more money per clickthrough. As I mentioned in another post, I get $1 to $7 per clickthrough, however, I'm lucky if I get one or two clickthroughs per day. The demand just isn't that high for stuff like that. Now if I was running pr0n banners on a site that served pr0n, I'd probably get a ton more clickthroughs, but probably a fraction of a cent for each one.
There's the rub... the price Google pays depends entirely on the amount Google can charge. The AdSense ads on my Dixie Chicks page bring in 4-6 cents a click, because they're for CD sales -- not a high-margin business.
Compare that with a single 41c click on an ad on my Video Poker page! If I had something useful to say about Viagra or Credit Repair, I bet I could get even more per click. But I haven't yet figured out how to work those subjects in to my Dixie Chicks site yet.
But I've *never* gotten a $1 clickthrough... much less a $7! Looks like I need to create a "Dixie Chicks NetScreen" page... as soon as I figure out WTF NetScreen is.
Reading the article, it was fun to substitute "Junk DNA" with "-1, Troll posts". The concept is similar: troll postings serve no useful purpose, but they do modify the discussions in subtle ways. Referring to any particularly offensive link as "goat-related" is one of the obvious examples.
Since I'm bored today, I'll try my hand at rewriting the Reuters article.
Slashdotters Find New Type of Moderation in Troll Postings
LONDON (Reuters) - Troll posts may not be so useless after all.
Slashdotters coined the term to describe the textual wasteland within the Slashdot database, or book of posts, which consists of long uncharted stretches of text for which there is no known function.
But researchers from Hard Vard Medical School in Jamaica said on Wednesday that within troll postings in the Science database they have discovered a new class of post.
Unlike other posts, the new one does not produce an Insightful or Interesting comment to carry out its function. But when it is browsed at -1, it moderates a neighboring post.
"This doesn't explain all troll posting. It gives a potential use for some troll posting," Professor Red Finster, who headed the research team, said in a made-up Slashdot posting.
"I cannot think of another regulatory post such as this one," he added.
There are about 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 posts in the Slashdot database. Much of the database consists of troll postings which scientists are trying to decipher to determine the causes and potential treatments for boring, inane discussions.
The new troll called GOAT1 blocks the function of the adjacent posting in the Science database. Finster and his team, who reported their finding in the science journal UnNature-al, believe other trolls could work in the same way and in other databases including the main database.
"We found one example of a type of troll posting that hasn't been found before that might alert investigators to look for it in other offtopic discussions," Finster said.
"This type of moderation may occur in other cases throughout the message board kingdom," he added.
The new troll works by making Frustration, a cousin of Interest, which causes down-moderation or turning off the adjacent post.
"When people are looking to understand the regulation of posts from whatever database -- main, games, Apple, science -- they cannot just look for messages that are acting there. It might be that it is simply the act of moderating that is causing regulation," said Finster.
The Moderation alphabet consists of several moderations -- Flamebait and Troll to Insightful and Informative -- which carry instructions for making all databases. The sum of the moderations carries the score. Each set of moderations corresponds to a single comment score, which join up in many different combinations to make discussions.
"We want to understand the psychology behind the regulation (of the postings). It is a previously unidentified type of moderation and if we could understand how it is controlled, we will learn more about Slashdot moderation," said Finster.
What is the security impication of putting my entire credit line on my keychain? I've already got my entire credit line in my wallet....
:)
I guess you're right... it's not that much tougher to slide a stolen credit card (swipe a swiped card?) through the slot, than it is to wave a Speedpass over a sensor. Makes me think again about that wallet full of cards... thank goodness they're already maxxed out.
Shift+Del, Shift+Insert for Copy
And yes, I really did use Cut then Paste instead of copy - I don't think I was ever aware of Control+Insert until far to late for my fingers!
That's funny... I'll do Shift+Del and Shift+Ins, too, when I really want to make sure I'm copying the right thing! It's so easy, too, 'cause you don't actually release the Shift key. I don't know if there's even a standard way to say Shift+Del/then/Ins !
So you think it's our DOS heritage showing through, huh. These kids nowadays, with their fancy "window" systems...
I know it's cliche, but I still get stuck in line behind people who don't understand the basics of the ATM machine interface. Inserting (or swiping) the card throws them off. Grocery store POS systems, never consistent between chains, present even more hurdles. I've seen "Pay at the Pump" customers drive off because they just don't understand the instructions.
You want to give these folks RSA dongles? They don't even see the security implications of putting their entire credit line on their keychain with not even a PIN for validation.
The two problems are simple: People here won't understand it, and they won't care.
Why this works in Europe is beyond me, but I'm sure there are plenty of cliche anti-American rants to help explain it.
Maybe too late in the discussion thread to get an answer, but am I the only person left who uses Control+Insert to copy text, and Shift+Insert to paste it?
And then there's also Shift+Delete to CUT text.
I'm sure Shift+(direction) to highlight text is well known, and Shift+Ctl+(direction) to jump words. Plus Shift+Home for beginning of line, Shift+Ctl+Home for top of doc, and ditto with the End key. And don't forget PgUp/PgDn.
Each of these key combinations, which are as automatic to me as touch typing, occasionally don't work in the small collection of Linux apps I've used so far. At least I know now that I'm not alone!
I was planning on arriving a few days early and maybe seeing if I could get involved, even in a tiny way. If not, I could always soak up the environment.
I bet you have a better chance of volunteering for something than any of us non-flight-geeks could, if only because you speak the lingo. Hope you post a note in your journal [when you get back | from your laptop]. (and I hope I think to look...)
I'm seriously thinking about flying my Long-EZ (another Rutan design) to Mojave to see the magic. This is going to be so cool.
Might better plan ahead. From the FAQ:
Q: Can we fly our own airplanes in?
A: Due to expected congestion, the airport will be closed to transient aircraft starting several days before the event.
That said, though, I'd probably take a day off work to see it with the kids, if I lived within 300 miles. As it is, 1500 miles each way is a bit much for a long-weekend road trip. I'll have to wait for the Texas folks to try it.
Right after submitting my comment, I threw a Google AdSense banner on the poker pages to see what would happen. In a clear violation of the AdSense TOS, I'll share the results with you:Noticeable slashdotting, rapidly diminishing (though not to zero). The most interesting part of the stats is that only three out of 2,000 Slashdotters clicked on the ads for online casinos and odds generators -- and I suspect those three hits were folks who clicked out of sympathy. Unfortunately, the low hit rate means I can't give a Slashdot subscription to the best page improvement tip.
But I'd love to know who gave me 41 cents with a single click on Saturday! I'd like to thank him... and talk to him about a bridge I'd like to sell.
w00t! That Wikipedia page is the first one I ever created from scratch. I saw a sig on Slashdot, did some Googling to figure it out, and having recently discovered Wikipedia, decided to try it. Seeing it come full circle is pretty cool.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
My favorite poker-related episode was the one (one of the ones) in which the Enterprise gets caught in a temporal loop. Data, more than the others, experiences deja vu, to the extent that they realize (after several dozen iterations) that they're about to have a destructive, time-ripping encounter with a ship from the past piloted by a late 20th century sitcom star.
They eventually find a way for Data (big D) to transmit a small amount of data (little D) to his past self. The data Data sends to Data is the number "3" (IIRC), which shows up in every poker hand Data deals. He realizes that the odd coincidence corresponds to the last thing his previous self saw before being destroyed -- Riker's command pips. He follows Rikers instructions (which had been countermanded by Picard) and the crews of both ships finally emerge from (yet another) temporal distortion.
All off the top of my head. I am such a geek.
I've never understoood the appeal of standing in front of a video poker terminal*, feeding in cash and pushing the little buttons, when I know that the odds are against me. But I have spent many unproductive hours with handheld poker games, and was inspired to come up with a system to lose less often. At the risk of slashdotting my new host, here's my geeky take on How to Lose Less at Video Poker.
It got mixed reviews a year or so ago when the topic came up in a previous Slashdot story, but it still seems to hold up for me -- at least, when there's no real money involved. The main criticism, IIRC, was that my method is very conservative, reducing the chances of a Big Win. Since I'm not the type to plug fifty bucks into a machine in hopes of a Big Win, I'm still happy with the method as it stands, but I'm receptive to comments.
I was hoping to try it out on a trip to Oklahoma, but when I stopped in the so-called Indian Casino in Okmulgee, I found nothing but a bingo parlor (with touch-screen monitors in place of ink daubers) and a couple hundred video 8-liners. Not one real video poker machine to try my luck. I'll have to hit the truck stop in Louisiana again... last time I was there, I played two 25c hands, lost one, won 50c on the other, and cashed out.
* Spending several hours plugging quarters into Pac-Man, however, is another thing entirely.
I guess this proves that we south-side folks aren't the only ones whose judiciary occasionally suffers from recto-cranial inversion, as shown by these two statements from Monsanto's own press release:
Monsanto originally pursued this case in the Federal Court of Canada because Mr. Schmeiser knowingly infringed Monsanto's patents on Roundup Ready technology by planting 1,030 acres of Roundup Ready canola without paying the required license fee for using the technology.
Ok, you say he purposely planted a strain of seed whose sole claim to fame is that Monsanto's herbicides don't kill it. But then:
However, the Supreme Court determined there was insufficient evidence that Mr. Schmeiser intentionally made use of the benefits provided by Monsanto's technology by spraying his crop with Roundup.
What? The guy planted this bastardized seed, supposedly on purpose, then didn't do the one thing that the seed is good for -- spraying with poison?
No wonder Monsanto sued. They're pi^h^h upset that he didn't buy the matching 55-gallon drums of Roundup. They couldn't have cared less if the guy used the patented seed -- they'd probably give it away for free if they could force the recipients to use their also-patented herbicide.
I'm waiting for someone to swipe some of these Frankenseeds and create Roundup-resistant dandelions. That'll teach 'em!
Ford loved working on films 1 and 2--he invented "parsecs" for that famous line. It was film 3 you can tell he wanted no part of...
Shh! If Lucas finds out that Han Solo uttered an incorrect measure of time and/or distance, he'll change it. To something like "She can make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs [dubbed, flat voice] per Galactic standard cycle.
Mod as funny, but remember: worse things have happened!
Ah, but who took the kids to the movie? Who bought them the plastic lightsabers? The Jar-Jar dolls?
IMHO, buying a Jar Jar doll^W action figure for your kids should be cause for investigation by the local Child Protective Services department.
Unless you're going to burn it in effigy. Then, it's just a case for the local Fire department.
So, with better special effects available, more money, and existing material as your base - you think they'll really go back to the 70s quality/style?
I think you've fallen into Lucas' lava pit -- the idea that all possible technology must be leveraged to the breaking point to make a good movie. He was on the cutting edge of special effects in the '70s, and wants to stay on the edge. He seems to think that his technical feats were the reason for the original trilogy's success.
But special effects are the background. They're the set, the chair the actor leans against. The story is where the movie lives or dies. The success of the "Spider-Man" movie isn't because of the way Peter Parker can swing between buildings in defiance of physics -- if that were the case, then "Daredevil" would have fared equally well.
I hope that a future director can use the special effects in moderation, use the material as inspiration, and use the money to pay off Lucas. With those out of the way, the story can be told. "See it again... for the first time" will finally be more than a cheezy marketing slogan.