The RFC correctly identifies that it would be impossible to create a perfect system.
Like anything else is perfect..com isn't always commercial..org isn't always non-profit. But there's a helpful categorisation there.
Instead of 2^300 categories even just 2 (adult and not-adult) may be helpful for those who choose to use it.
The objection that people may be persecuted for accessing the 'adult' section is a straw-man. It's not hard to identify where people are browsing now.
The one serious objection is persecuting people who don't voluntarily move to the.adult arena. I think this is being painted as more of a threat than it is, but maybe my tin-hat needs polishing.
I agree with Amphibian. But I do want to add that Stable is looking MUCH better with 5068 (best performance I've seen in 14 months) and 5070 is just out. Once large portions of the network upgrade (many are currently running 5065 and lower), I'm hopeful for many good things.
As far as I can see ANKOS (A new Kind of Science) boils down to:
1. Cellular automata (CA) can produce suprising, complex results, and
2. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them (voila! - the universe)
Seriously. I'll feed the troll. Let's look at yesterday. I received 6,697 items of spam. Does the "delete" button do it for me? Let's say I can judge whether or not it's spam and press the delete button in 2 seconds (I think it takes me much longer, but let's be generous).
That's 3 hours 47 minutes. Yeah, I'd say the "delete" button doesn't just do it for me.
So junk mail is not that pressing an issue to you? Would you like to process mine? Pick out the 38 legitimate emails I did get yesterday.
And to get back on to[pic - the idea doesn't come from AOL - they're probably just the largest ISP to pick up implementing the draft idea.
Nice try, but on reading his bibliography, it doesn't look like he was publishing while I was reading this story at High school "lo these two decades past".
But thanks for the suggestion. I will check him out, if I ever develop a life and learn to read again %-
Bayesian filtering isn't about identifying words as spam. It IS about what words occur regularly in email you like to receive, and which words occur regularly in email you don't like to receive. It is NOT about setting a word weight on individual words. As Paul Graham points out, the filters can learn surprising choices of words that are highly indicative of spam or non-spam. Although it doesn't have to be about spam. My mother-in-law likes to send me bad jokes and bad poetry, and I've trained my filter to block out those sorts of messages.:-)
So _of course_ your little test example looks like spam - beceause it isn't typical of the sort of mail we like to receive. The only interesting test would be to run it against someone who had trained filters against email that included regualr news updates in their mailbox. And to be fair your test should include message headers.
Now I don't know why bombers is so indicative that a mail message isn't spam, but I don't need to know. It works because it learns from what I accept and what I reject.
I once read this short SF story...and don't bother asking for title or author. It was what I'd consider Hard SF and was probably in an anthology....
The plot as I recall from lo these two decades past was something like this:
Our hero is being (brutally) interrogated by the enemy. The bad interrogator goes to strike our hero - who has the training/skills (genetic engeineering) to pull back just enough to stop the blow from hurting, but makes the decision not to, so he doesn't give away his enhanced powers.
His captors take him away to be locked up until he is more cooperative...and administer a drug which eliminates his short term memory....every few minutes his short term memory is wiped clean...ha ha thinks his captors - he is no risk now. Just before the drug is administered our hero thinks up a little checklist - the last thing he will remember - something like : stop...look around...think...
It turns out he meant to be captured all along because his job is to rescue the important person (boffin) held in the complex...he escapes his cell....interesting point is his memory gets wiped just as he is getting in to the air duct and he's not sure if he's coming or going...decides on the basis of the scresw position I think...
Find the boffin, makes his escape, series of memory wipes in the process...has a memory wipe as he is running towards a plane to escape in with the boffin over his shoulder, being shot at, and thinks it's pretty obvious what's happening now!
Finally takes off and back to safety...after a few hours flight he realises he's had no memory wipes recently so the drug has worn off....an escape and a resuce and he can't remember how he did it.
Ta da! The end.
Now I'd be impressed (but not surprised) if someone is able to identify this (and/or correct my more excessive errors)
Network Associate's (McAfee) Webshield product has already failed on the 1,000,000,000 second test. (In decimal - not a power of 2).
This SMTP server stores the time to next retry sending a message but only the last 9 digits. So come mid 2001 Webshield would no longer retry sending a mail if the first attempt didn't work. Because it concluded it had been about 30 years since it last tried and it should give up about now.
There is a hot fix available, but this insidious problem only manifests itself if there is a problem at the receiving end so few people know they should upgrade and blame the recipient for mail that bounces immediately. Network Associates still provide software unpatched - hot fixes are only to be applied if you report he specific problem to be fixed.
If you use tempfailing (greylisting) as I do, then this immediately stuffs up any Webshield user trying to communciate with you because they will not retry after being given a temporary failure SMTP error code.
So if this example is anything to go by, then yeah, there'll be recent, modern commercial software that will fail (perhaps in non-obvious ways), with no fix available until after the event.
Paper recounts are not unreliable. That was not the problem in the last election in the United States.
Paper recounts can be slow and tedious (relatively speaking) but will done under independent scruitineers AND observers from all parties with a vested interest in the best outcome for themselves (which cancels out, meaning everyone is watching to make sure no one else cheats). Often paper recounts are done twice (to verify the answer) - with actual paper ballots you can count them as often as required. In practice if you've got two machine tallies that agree (or disagree) and then do a paper recount and it agrees (or agrees with one or all three disagree) you can look at which is closest and whether it makes a difference to the result. So someone picks up two ballots by mistake leaving you with a 1 vote error (in total and for one candidate). We'd expect a 1 vote discrepancy from the machines. Since the votes are physically placed in piles according to the votes cast, it is easy to flick through and check that all the votes in one pile belong to the same candidate. If 1 vote makes a difference we can count again.
The problem in America was two-fold:
a) some of the ballots were illegally laid out according to Flordia state law (the butterfly ballot). This may have led some people to cast their vote for someone other than they intended. It's worth noting that all parties saw and approve the ballots before the election, and the same ballot layout was used in previous elections.
b) they physical ballots in some places is made by a paper punch - in some cases the square of paper for a candidate hadn't been fully removed. In other cases an indentation had been made (weak wrists? or an elderly and infirm voter? changed their mind? or too many pieces of cardboard jammed in behind the punch?) And during each recount more and more cardboard pieces would fall out.:-(
Neither of these is an issue with touch screens and computer printed ballots.
I'm just saying separate the voting machine from the counting machine - have them check on each other - and keep a printed record you can go back to if the machines disagree (or someone doesn't trust both machines)
The proposal allows a VOTER to verify that their vote was properly cast and recorded.
There is no protection for a candidate.
With physical ballots, a candidate can ask for a recount of those ballots.
As far as I can see, under this proposed system, you either accept the word of the computer, or you try and round up the anonymous (out-of-district or out of state) voters and ask them to please check their ballots.
Snowball I can vote with impunity. Indeed I can add as many votes to the machine record as I want - I can have the machine churning out thousands of votes per hour, shred both copies, and just make sure the legitimate votes are also included in the tally.
The proposal address completeness (all votes are recorded), accuracy (the votes are correctly recorded, or can be verified as having been so) BUT only by the voter - NOT the candidate who has to trust the machine or hope a voter picks up a fault.
Validity (only proper votes are cast) is not addressed. Unless I'm missing something.
All of this is granted. But I doubt that Dante would envision a body corporate in the depths of Hell, and I'm not sure that a body corporate would suffer that much. Not to mention that such institutions are pracitcally immortal.
So I'm interested: let's shove home personal responsibility. To which level do the actual actors/agents of SCO go?
Will revoke licenses for food...
their CEO?
their Directors?
their PR people? (issuing these press releases)
their marketing people?
their venture captialist backers?
their lawyers?
I can't believe anyone can claim the GPL seeks to supplant US copyright law. Have they read the GPL? Grossly incompetent, unread, or scheming conniving weasels? What place in Dante's inferno for them?
Abstract: Direct human influences on climate have been detected at local scales, such as urban temperature increases and precipitation enhancement, and at global scales,. A possible indication of an anthropogenic effect on regional climate is by identification of equivalent weekly cycles in climate and pollution variables. Weekly cycles have been observed in both global surface temperature and local pollution data sets. Here we describe statistical analyses that reveal weekly cycles in three independent regional-scale coastal Atlantic data sets: lower-troposphere pollution, precipitation and tropical cyclones. Three atmospheric monitoring stations record minimum concentrations of ozone and carbon monoxide early in the week, while highest concentrations are observed later in the week. This air-pollution cycle corresponds to observed weekly variability in regional rainfall and tropical cyclones. Specifically, satellite-based precipitation estimates indicate that near-coastal ocean areas receive significantly more precipitation at weekends than on weekdays. Near-coastal tropical cyclones have, on average, significantly weaker surface winds, higher surface pressure and higher frequency at weekends. Although our statistical findings limit the identification of cause-effect relationships, we advance the hypothesis that the thermal influence of pollution-derived aerosols on storms may drive these weekly climate cycles.
"Maw! Maw! Quick. Look at the size of this 'un. Hook, line and sinker"
"Now, now Wayne, you know it's no fair to go fishing in that thar barrel."
"Aw but Maw. It was justa throw-away line with a bit of a hook in it...and look at the size of it...it's as big as...as big as...as big as an ASTEROID!"
The BSD syslog Protocol already has a scale that can be adapated with a little tweaking. And then we can have notification relayed to a plethora of Syslog consoles that can take appropriate action (backup, shutdown, pager, send T101 back in time to stop it, etc).
So we have:
0 Emergency: system is unusable
1 Alert: action must be taken immediately
2 Critical: Critical conditions
3 Error: Error conditions
4 Warning: Warning conditions
5 Notice: normal but significant condition
6 Informational: Informational messages
7 Debug: debug-level messages
which with a little tweaking becomes
0 Emergency: planet is unusable
1 Alert: action must be taken immediately
2 Critical: Critical conditions
3 Danger: Danger Will Robison!
4 Warning: This is too close
5 Notice: This one is a bit close
6 Informational: Here's the orbit
7 Debug: Still figuring out the orbit
The only downside I see is that it is the BSD syslog protocol, and I understand that BSD is dead...
The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
Slashdot Mirror
The RFC correctly identifies that it would be impossible to create a perfect system.
Like anything else is perfect. .com isn't always commercial. .org isn't always non-profit. But there's a helpful categorisation there.
Instead of 2^300 categories even just 2 (adult and not-adult) may be helpful for those who choose to use it.
The objection that people may be persecuted for accessing the 'adult' section is a straw-man. It's not hard to identify where people are browsing now.
The one serious objection is persecuting people who don't voluntarily move to the .adult arena. I think this is being painted as more of a threat than it is, but maybe my tin-hat needs polishing.
Just ask any parent.
Ask your own parents... Another fine mess you've got us into, dear
Yes, yes you were all happy when the GOTO was considered harmful. But it didn't stop there. Oh no. I warned you, I did.
And now see where it's led? Sex considered harmful!
Bring back the GOTO before it is too late!
For those wanting to look at Freenet without installing a node, see this list of public gateways.
And I'm planning to add my gateway to that list. Try the others first. Better bandwidth and more storage.
Bookmark those gateways though, and come back in a few weeks when the major improvements have beein implemented across the majority of nodes.
As far as I can see ANKOS (A new Kind of Science) boils down to: 1. Cellular automata (CA) can produce suprising, complex results, and 2. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them (voila! - the universe)
According to rule 78,434,343,434,424,373,449,745,895,345,345,443,189 I knew you were going to say that.
That's 3 hours 47 minutes. Yeah, I'd say the "delete" button doesn't just do it for me.
So junk mail is not that pressing an issue to you? Would you like to process mine? Pick out the 38 legitimate emails I did get yesterday.
And to get back on to[pic - the idea doesn't come from AOL - they're probably just the largest ISP to pick up implementing the draft idea.
Until I change these bits thusly.
Now, off we go to resuce the Beagle! Special thanks to MovieOS for making this possible.
But thanks for the suggestion. I will check him out, if I ever develop a life and learn to read again %-
First as the probe comes in, we should broasdcast something like:
Follow that up with a little Vivalid rather than that Bleargh (which would be the main cause of the conflict).
Then follow up with a Mars-shattering antimatter kaboom!
Walk. Don't run. We come in peace.
So _of course_ your little test example looks like spam - beceause it isn't typical of the sort of mail we like to receive. The only interesting test would be to run it against someone who had trained filters against email that included regualr news updates in their mailbox. And to be fair your test should include message headers.
For the record, my filter said:
?checkifspam(clipboard.gettext)
officials 0.9833033
wonders 0.9611204
foreigner 0.983839
laws 0.9890665
situation 0.9873894
retailers 0.9656804
spam 5.677395E-02
suicide 0.9611204
bombers 7.848433E-02
killed 0.9860842
barely 0.9883556
missed 3.467899E-02
raising 0.9745976
use 7.059172E-02
mountains 0.9611204
Spam ratings:0.999999999999971 0.635251210624242
True
Now I don't know why bombers is so indicative that a mail message isn't spam, but I don't need to know. It works because it learns from what I accept and what I reject.
The plot as I recall from lo these two decades past was something like this:
Our hero is being (brutally) interrogated by the enemy. The bad interrogator goes to strike our hero - who has the training/skills (genetic engeineering) to pull back just enough to stop the blow from hurting, but makes the decision not to, so he doesn't give away his enhanced powers.
His captors take him away to be locked up until he is more cooperative...and administer a drug which eliminates his short term memory....every few minutes his short term memory is wiped clean...ha ha thinks his captors - he is no risk now. Just before the drug is administered our hero thinks up a little checklist - the last thing he will remember - something like : stop...look around...think...
It turns out he meant to be captured all along because his job is to rescue the important person (boffin) held in the complex...he escapes his cell....interesting point is his memory gets wiped just as he is getting in to the air duct and he's not sure if he's coming or going...decides on the basis of the scresw position I think...
Find the boffin, makes his escape, series of memory wipes in the process...has a memory wipe as he is running towards a plane to escape in with the boffin over his shoulder, being shot at, and thinks it's pretty obvious what's happening now!
Finally takes off and back to safety...after a few hours flight he realises he's had no memory wipes recently so the drug has worn off....an escape and a resuce and he can't remember how he did it.
Ta da! The end.
Now I'd be impressed (but not surprised) if someone is able to identify this (and/or correct my more excessive errors)
This SMTP server stores the time to next retry sending a message but only the last 9 digits. So come mid 2001 Webshield would no longer retry sending a mail if the first attempt didn't work. Because it concluded it had been about 30 years since it last tried and it should give up about now.
There is a hot fix available, but this insidious problem only manifests itself if there is a problem at the receiving end so few people know they should upgrade and blame the recipient for mail that bounces immediately. Network Associates still provide software unpatched - hot fixes are only to be applied if you report he specific problem to be fixed.
If you use tempfailing (greylisting) as I do, then this immediately stuffs up any Webshield user trying to communciate with you because they will not retry after being given a temporary failure SMTP error code.
So if this example is anything to go by, then yeah, there'll be recent, modern commercial software that will fail (perhaps in non-obvious ways), with no fix available until after the event.
It's like the computer pulls itself up by it's own boot straps.
Paper recounts can be slow and tedious (relatively speaking) but will done under independent scruitineers AND observers from all parties with a vested interest in the best outcome for themselves (which cancels out, meaning everyone is watching to make sure no one else cheats). Often paper recounts are done twice (to verify the answer) - with actual paper ballots you can count them as often as required. In practice if you've got two machine tallies that agree (or disagree) and then do a paper recount and it agrees (or agrees with one or all three disagree) you can look at which is closest and whether it makes a difference to the result. So someone picks up two ballots by mistake leaving you with a 1 vote error (in total and for one candidate). We'd expect a 1 vote discrepancy from the machines. Since the votes are physically placed in piles according to the votes cast, it is easy to flick through and check that all the votes in one pile belong to the same candidate. If 1 vote makes a difference we can count again.
The problem in America was two-fold:
a) some of the ballots were illegally laid out according to Flordia state law (the butterfly ballot). This may have led some people to cast their vote for someone other than they intended. It's worth noting that all parties saw and approve the ballots before the election, and the same ballot layout was used in previous elections.
b) they physical ballots in some places is made by a paper punch - in some cases the square of paper for a candidate hadn't been fully removed. In other cases an indentation had been made (weak wrists? or an elderly and infirm voter? changed their mind? or too many pieces of cardboard jammed in behind the punch?) And during each recount more and more cardboard pieces would fall out. :-(
Neither of these is an issue with touch screens and computer printed ballots.
I'm just saying separate the voting machine from the counting machine - have them check on each other - and keep a printed record you can go back to if the machines disagree (or someone doesn't trust both machines)
The proposal allows a VOTER to verify that their vote was properly cast and recorded.
There is no protection for a candidate.
With physical ballots, a candidate can ask for a recount of those ballots.
As far as I can see, under this proposed system, you either accept the word of the computer, or you try and round up the anonymous (out-of-district or out of state) voters and ask them to please check their ballots.
Snowball I can vote with impunity. Indeed I can add as many votes to the machine record as I want - I can have the machine churning out thousands of votes per hour, shred both copies, and just make sure the legitimate votes are also included in the tally.
The proposal address completeness (all votes are recorded), accuracy (the votes are correctly recorded, or can be verified as having been so) BUT only by the voter - NOT the candidate who has to trust the machine or hope a voter picks up a fault.
Validity (only proper votes are cast) is not addressed. Unless I'm missing something.
Touchscreen records your ballot, prints it out for you to check, AND KEEPS COUNT ITSELF.
You feed your paper ballot into a scanning machine that keeps count. And post your paper ballot in a ballot box.
The touchscreen ballot generator and the scanner are produced by two entirely separate companies. Public specifications on the interface.
Now if the two machines disagree about the ballot count you do a paper recount (and find out which vendor stuffed up, and don't use them again).
Note to self: Remember not to fall asleep at the keyboard.
0. SCO
1. {Reserved}
2. [Please reply to fill in the blanks]
.
.
.
139325. waynemcdougall
Well tornadoes only in this version, and their accuarcy was always a little off, but the source code is available.
So I'm interested: let's shove home personal responsibility. To which level do the actual actors/agents of SCO go?
Will revoke licenses for food...
their CEO?
their Directors?
their PR people? (issuing these press releases)
their marketing people?
their venture captialist backers?
their lawyers?
I can't believe anyone can claim the GPL seeks to supplant US copyright law. Have they read the GPL? Grossly incompetent, unread, or scheming conniving weasels? What place in Dante's inferno for them?
Popular press take on it
Abstract:
Direct human influences on climate have been detected at local scales, such as urban temperature increases and precipitation enhancement, and at global scales,. A possible indication of an anthropogenic effect on regional climate is by identification of equivalent weekly cycles in climate and pollution variables. Weekly cycles have been observed in both global surface temperature and local pollution data sets. Here we describe statistical analyses that reveal weekly cycles in three independent regional-scale coastal Atlantic data sets: lower-troposphere pollution, precipitation and tropical cyclones. Three atmospheric monitoring stations record minimum concentrations of ozone and carbon monoxide early in the week, while highest concentrations are observed later in the week. This air-pollution cycle corresponds to observed weekly variability in regional rainfall and tropical cyclones. Specifically, satellite-based precipitation estimates indicate that near-coastal ocean areas receive significantly more precipitation at weekends than on weekdays. Near-coastal tropical cyclones have, on average, significantly weaker surface winds, higher surface pressure and higher frequency at weekends. Although our statistical findings limit the identification of cause-effect relationships, we advance the hypothesis that the thermal influence of pollution-derived aerosols on storms may drive these weekly climate cycles.
"Now, now Wayne, you know it's no fair to go fishing in that thar barrel."
"Aw but Maw. It was justa throw-away line with a bit of a hook in it...and look at the size of it...it's as big as...as big as...as big as an ASTEROID!"
The BSD syslog Protocol already has a scale that can be adapated with a little tweaking. And then we can have notification relayed to a plethora of Syslog consoles that can take appropriate action (backup, shutdown, pager, send T101 back in time to stop it, etc). So we have:
which with a little tweaking becomesThe only downside I see is that it is the BSD syslog protocol, and I understand that BSD is dead...