Studies have shown (sorry for the lack of links) that talking on a hands free cell phone while driving is just as risky as talking on a normal cell phone while driving. Think about it-- you only need 1 hand to steer the car anyway (or else 1 armed people couldn't get drivers licenses).
The conclusions of these studies was that cell phones took away from the drivers' concentration, which slowed reaction time in the same way alcohol slows reaction time. And in the same way shaving in the car slows reaction time, I suppose...
If you really need to both shave and drive but can't find time for both, why not just wake up 5 minutes earlier?
Werent pysicists saying in the early 1900s that we'd "just about" figured out all of physics? That physics research was done? Haven't we heard the same thing about mathematics? It's completed except for a "few outstanding problems".
The only issue is... The solution to those problems opens whole new areas in their field. Science isn't a gradual progression of greater knowledge. Science is a punctuated string of "eureka!"s, spaced apart by periods of dull silence.
Why should computer science research be any different?
Think of programming languages as a form of expression. Some languages make it easier to express certain types of ideas than others. I'm sure everyone here has heard of the "30 different words for snow" in eskimo. Russian has similar motifs for concepts like oppression, I believe.
Programming languages work like that too. Perl and Python are opposite sides of the same coin. The perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." I don't know if Python has a motto, but it should be "There's a best way of doing it." Perl is designed for quickly digging in and doing work. Python is designed for "higher", more structured design. Why else do you think Python forces indentation? It's certainly not for Guido's comfort.
In other words, Perl is like vernacular english and Python is like high english. Both are useful in different ways and different contexts for expressing different ideas.
If I was terribly frightened of psycho axe murderers and refused to believe I could ever encounter one because they terrify me, that would be irrational. But I've also seen no evidence that makes me consider a psycho axe murderer is behind me either. That's disbelieving on logical grounds. If I thought I could see someone in the reflection of my monitor towering over me with an axe, but I said, "That's probably not an axe murdered, I must be dreaming," then that would be ignoring evidence and also irrational.
You're saying, "I don't see any evidence that God exists." That's one explanation. Another explanation would be that you don't want to believe a God exists. This may or may not involve ignoring alleged evidence of God's existance.
As much as we all want to think we're completely unbiased, everyone's opinions are heavily influenced by what they _want_ to believe. You're not an exception, and neither am I. Generally, people have a subconcious ideal they want to believe and seek proof to justify it. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong. But the reason for belief in important ideals is usually constrained by emotions. There's really too much data to analyse things from every angle-- why not just analyse from the angle we care about?
Take a look at the primary arguments for and against the existance of God. For each of them, there's an emotional fear attached with the belief:
Statement: If God existed, He'd stop all the suffering in the world, so God can't exist. Fear: I fear suffering.
Statement: Everything in the world can be explained without God, so God doesn't need to exist. Fear: I fear the unknown.
Statement: The world exists, so God must have created it. Fear: I fear loneliness.
Statement: I had something uncomprehendable happen in my life, so God must have made it happen. Fear: I fear understanding. (Usually because it deflates emotions.)
If anyone knows how work around our inherent biases and fears, I'd be glad to know. But perhaps the first step is admitting why you want to believe what you do, external from the evidence on either side.
Not to quibble, but is that "Agnostic"-- I don't know if God exists, or "Apathetic"-- I don't care of God exists? More than anything, Apathy is the religion of our time. But most people don't really care.;)
I think you're confusing two concepts. The Big Bang theory talks about _how_ the universe came into being. Creation talks about _who made_ the universe come into being. They can both be true, both be false, or one could be true and the other false. The claims are independant.
Let me give a simple example.
Story A: I hold a ball in my hand. I open my hand and the ball mysteriously falls to the ground.
Story B: A ball was held in place by mysterious forces. At once, the forces disappeared and the ball reacted according to the law of gravity, accelerating towards the large mass below it.
Story A is akin to saying, "God created the Universe." It gives a few details, but no specifics.
Story B is akin to saying, "The Universe was created by a Big Bang". It gives scientific details, but doesn't talk about what, if anything, ordained that to happen.
With due respect, however I believe both sides are fairly irrational on the subject. Research into Evolution and the Big Bang was primary motivated by the desire to create a system where God was not a necessity, so people would not need to acknowledge the existance of a God.
On the other hand, most creationists ignore major pieces of evidence. Even though the fossil record is incredibly patchy, some evidence such as Dinosaur bones really doesn't fit into most views of the Genesis creation story. And yet dinosaurs clearly existed on earth at some point in the past. Ignoring those bones is just as irrational as disbelieving the existance of God because you don't want to believe, not because you have real proof.
-Ted
The real story of Quicksilver
on
Sim Plague
·
· Score: 5
I thought everyone forgot all about that. It was new years eve 1993 on Furry, actually. And it did more than just attach itself to a person's description. It infect the room they were in if possible, so anyone walking into the room got infected. It infected the links between rooms, objects, and even actions on objects. (So if you create an object with a link to a program and run that command to run your program, the virus infected that command as well. Every time you ran it, you would be re-infected.) There were also plans to abuse something called _listen, which executes a program whenever a person _receives_ a message. So a person could get infected just by _hearing_ something. But the programmer didn't have enough permissions, which is probably a good thing.
Another thing the virus did was overlay each person's ability to communicate. The virus had its own special versions of the basic "say", "pose", "spoof", "write", and "whisper". (It could only create these through a big in the MUCK code on Furry, I'll note.) The payoff of the command was that after midnight (ie. one New Years), all infected users would have their communications silenced and rerouted to a special log file. Actually, the messages got printed out to the user's screen so that it _looked_ like everyone could hear them, but in fact they couldn't.
This "fun" went on for a good half hour until one of the administrators figured out what was going on because of a bug in the modified page program. (Note to coders: *always* test your code before you install it in public.) Eventually they just reinstalled an older DB to clean out the virus.
Incidently, they people perpetrating this took the log file, flamed it, and then posted it to usenet. In retrospect, that was a bad idea, but you do stupid stuff when you're 15...
If you're curious about the aftermath, a lot of clueless users on Furry complained to the programmer's sysadmin. Of course, the clueless users blew everything out of proportion, not understanding what really went on. When word finally got back to the programmer, apparently he had written an "internet worm, capable of copying itself between different servers on the internet." I only wish I was that good of a coder! Apparently the FBI got involved for a short time, until they realized that the Furry server was located in Canada, so any felonous charges would have to be tried in an international court. Once the feds finally realized it was just some stupid prank with no lasting harm, the programmer never heard a thing from them again.
Anyway, the guy lost his internet access, which was through a university. He spent the 9 months of downtime (before getting another account) working on a program to let people play several variants of Poker on MUCKs. Ironally, this program is still popular on Furry to this day. Consider it one last bit of both apology and spite.
But that was a long time ago, and I was a different person then.
What's the best way of filtering SPAM mail if you _don't_ have access to the server? Which mail reader programs have the most advanced filtering options? Any general tips for spam filtering? And if I need to "RTFM", which manual should I read?:)
First, this post is clearly biased and NOT a good interview question. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing on moral grounds, but your accusative nature is unlikely to make him change his opinion.
That aside...
#1: Trying to create Artificial Intelligence is not exercising powers reserved for God and God alone. God commands Adam in Eve in the book of Genesis to "be fruitful and multiply". This is creating people in the image of Adam and Eve (and also in the image of God), and yet was commanded by God. So this power is clearly not for God alone.
#2: Idolatry is anything that supercedes God in your life. Do you care more about your wife than God? Then your wife is your idol. Or do you care more about the internet than God? Then the Internet is your idol. But making something and idolizing it above God are two unrelated actions.
(And for what it's worth, I'm a Christian too, but I believe that God's word and commands are rational, logical, and understandable, even if they sometimes require faith.)
That said, the average joe MS user is far more interested in faster bandwidth. Most of that computer time is spent online (chat rooms, net games, pr0n, etc.) Joe doesn't care about 1Ghz, except perhaps as "my processor is faster than yours".
So who has a budget for these things and actually wants them if not the technical incompetants? High end servers? Would rather have a fatter pipe. These processors are only useful for high end work stations. Maybe you care, but most of us don't use or need that.
Of course, I wish my processor was faster than yours...:)
The Dune movie failed purely on bad directing. I believe it was directed by the same guy who did "Twin Peaks" and "Lost Highway", although his name escapes me. While those two are cult classics, they're _not_ intended for mainsteam consumption, not even mainstream Sci-Fi lovers.
Consider the dubious solution to the perspective in the book. If you remember, Dune had many sections where you'd read the character's thoughts, and this helped understand the character's movitations. But this doesn't work in a movie setting, so the director did the thoughts as "voice overs". It ended up as a bad directing choice.
So hopefully the producers will learn from their mistakes.
You know you're really right about Slashdot feeling like home. It's weird, but I even appreciate the trolls and "hot grits". It may be the dark underbelly of Slashdot, but part of what gives Slashdot its character are the trolls, the karma farmars/whores, and moderation debates. This place wouldn't be the same without it.
In High School and college I did a lot of RP Mudding. And while I didn't spend much time on FurryMUCK, I knew some people who did. For those of you who don't know, FurryMUCK is an anthropomorphic mud-- everyone role plays a character as an animal. Furry eventually became the red light district of MUDs, and that's all I have to say about the place.
Anyway, I knew more than one real life women who had alternate male characters on the MUD simply because they were sick of getting hit on. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. So that 14 year old lesbian school girl is probably some twice divorced 35 year old guy named earl. The real question is, "Who's playing the 35 year old guy named earl and what's her phone number?":)
The article implying the NSA is up to the DoS attacks is interesting, given all of the recent control the government is trying to take. Public support would definitly help that.
But lets take a different look at it. They haven't found the perpetrators yet. What does that mean?
#1. These criminals are very skilled and have significant resources (they pulled off the DoS job) #2. These criminals are not into fame and have quite a bit of self control (they haven't even hinted at who they are) #3. Whatever goal the criminals have, the goal is furthered better if we do _not_ know what it is (there is no clue why this happened)
How many groups of people are there that are this skilled?
- A few hacker groups - A few academics - A few government groups - A few commercial groups
That's it. That's our search space. #2 should cross out the hacker and academic groups. Fame doesn't enter the picture when you work for the NSA or IBM, but it certainly plays a role for academics (publish or perish) and hackers (fame: the currency of the open source movement).
So what government or commercial group would benefeit the most from these attacks? And how is that goal furthered by the fact that people don't know what it is? That implies that if people knew what the goal was, the goal would not be accomplished. This is a godelian contradiction! (eg. "This sentence is false".) Therefore the goal must deal with affecting public knowledge, if public knowledge would destroy the goal.
Lets summarize what we have so far. Either a government or commercial group is putting on massive DoS attacks in an effort to shape public opinion. The question is what opinion do they want to shape? That's easy! The knee-jerk reaction is what they're aiming for. Some group wants the world populous to fear hacker groups. The obvious outcome of this will be more laws and regulations.
Who will benefeit from this? Certainly not commercial groups! Extra laws and regulations end up being more lost profits. That only leaves government groups, which in this case is the NSA.
Therefore: The NSA is putting on these DoS attacks so that the american populous will call for anti-hacking laws, which in turn gives the government more power.
I think that was fairly logically tight. Let me know if you see any holes in this argument. (But at least this was a deductive argument, not just a circumstancial argument like the other article.)
I don't think John Carmack dislikes story games. Remember that he played Ultima a lot in the past, and all ultimas have pretty detailed plots. He's just saying that if you have a good story but bad gameplay, your game still sucks. And if you have a bad story and good gameplay, you still have a good game. Naturally, you want both a good plot and good gameplay.
Personally, I think the game that has come closest to this idea is "Thief: The Dark Project". The story is gripping, but never got in the way of the gameplay. Playing that game was quite an experience. (And I can't wait for Thief 2!)
Are you sure you aren't thinking about John Romero? Romero is far more proud than John Carmack is. And Carmack is the better coder. I guess that's the difference between loving publicity and loving programming...
What you have to understand about John Carmack is that programming is his religion, and he won't let anything else get in the way of it. Programming is the most important priority in his life.
I think this is the reason I admire him without wanting to _be_ him. There are parts of my life which are more important than programming, and I'd give up programming for them if necessary.
This may seem weird, but a friend of mine has an uncanny sense of magnetic north. We can drive on a freeway clover leaf and in the middle of it, just out of nowhere, ask "which way is north" and watch her point in the right direction without looking outside of the car. We've even tried totally mixing her up so she doesn't know where she's facing, but she can always point straight north. One of the oddest things I've seen in my life.
-Ted
Can we put this in the Hall of Fame?
on
Geeks in Suits
·
· Score: 2
Man, that's hilarious! Is there any way we can enshrine this? It would be a shame to forget about it just a few days later.
Yeah. Essentially if Intel tries to undercut Transmeta, all Transmeta has to do is market their chip to an even smaller application. The Transmeta chip really does have a competetive advantage: it's much cooler. All Transmeta has to do is find the market that Intel can't support in the first place.
Incidently, just because a large behemoth of a company _can_ do something monopolistic doesn't mean it will do it well. Look at the bumbling antics of microsoft against perceived future threats. And Transmeta is a very real threat against Intel in the present!
Anyone can write bad code in any language. It takes good programmers to write good code. But it also takes a good language, and perl is one such language.
The problem with many languages such as LISP is that it's so _difficult_ to write good code! Perl is such a gem because it tries very hard to make your life easy. Of course, some people still do things the wrong way. It's not an issue of the language. It's a problem with the programmer.
Although I do admit that Python is an equally good language.
-Ted
This is a minimalist article
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 4
This article. This article is. This article is minimalist. This article is very minimalist The minimalist article is. The minimalist article is repetitive. The minimalist article is not repetitive. The minimalist article appears repetitive. The minimalist article topics appear repetitive The minimalist article topics repetitively appear. The minimalist article topics repetitively change. Topics repetitively change minimaly. Topics change minimaly.
Now look at that text and compare it to Tom's article. He says the same thing over and over-- ALMOST. This is the zen of writing. At the end, he's brought up a totally different point than what he started with, except for one common theme. In my example, the theme is "minimal". In his article, the theme is "Zen".
Here's a brief summary for those who don't want to read the article.
Starting idea: Zen interfacing is good. Ending idea: Bad use of input devices stops Zen.
I'm pretty sure it's just rumor. If they were actually close enough to start constructing the chip itself, they'd have a patent for that. Once all the patents are in order I'll start considering the truth of these rumors.
A corollary seems to be that Communism works whenever the marginal cost if extra goods are low. Probably the biggest flaw in Marx's reasoning was that the working class would act selflessly towards other workers and only oppose "the capitalist regime." Marx missed the point that greed motivates the workers in the first place. Linux works under a communist system of development precisely because it requires no resources to create extra copies beyond the initial investment.
Strangely enough, it's the greed based motivation of capitalism that makes the development model work. If a developer really _wants_ a feature, they'll put it in for themselves. Sure they're helping others, but first and foremost they're helping themselves. Open Source development helps developers help themselves. In some sense, Open Source development is the best mix of capitalism and communism. People have both the motivation to improve the product (capitalist) and the resources required to do so (communist).
In a shocking display of ingenuity, the United States Patent Office actually patented a non-trivial concept.
Said an anonymous inside source, "We don't know what happened. We thought the patent was for some software algorithm that had been discovered two decades ago. I thought I saw internet somewhere on the proposal, but it's just not there. We really screwed this one up and from now on it's only damage control. I just hope everyone realizes this is a one time only thing. We're working hard to make sure this won't happen again."
Slashdot Mirror
Studies have shown (sorry for the lack of links) that talking on a hands free cell phone while driving is just as risky as talking on a normal cell phone while driving. Think about it-- you only need 1 hand to steer the car anyway (or else 1 armed people couldn't get drivers licenses).
The conclusions of these studies was that cell phones took away from the drivers' concentration, which slowed reaction time in the same way alcohol slows reaction time. And in the same way shaving in the car slows reaction time, I suppose...
If you really need to both shave and drive but can't find time for both, why not just wake up 5 minutes earlier?
-Ted
Werent pysicists saying in the early 1900s that we'd "just about" figured out all of physics? That physics research was done? Haven't we heard the same thing about mathematics? It's completed except for a "few outstanding problems".
The only issue is... The solution to those problems opens whole new areas in their field. Science isn't a gradual progression of greater knowledge. Science is a punctuated string of "eureka!"s, spaced apart by periods of dull silence.
Why should computer science research be any different?
-Ted
Think of programming languages as a form of expression. Some languages make it easier to express certain types of ideas than others. I'm sure everyone here has heard of the "30 different words for snow" in eskimo. Russian has similar motifs for concepts like oppression, I believe.
Programming languages work like that too. Perl and Python are opposite sides of the same coin. The perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." I don't know if Python has a motto, but it should be "There's a best way of doing it." Perl is designed for quickly digging in and doing work. Python is designed for "higher", more structured design. Why else do you think Python forces indentation? It's certainly not for Guido's comfort.
In other words, Perl is like vernacular english and Python is like high english. Both are useful in different ways and different contexts for expressing different ideas.
-Ted
If I was terribly frightened of psycho axe murderers and refused to believe I could ever encounter one because they terrify me, that would be irrational. But I've also seen no evidence that makes me consider a psycho axe murderer is behind me either. That's disbelieving on logical grounds. If I thought I could see someone in the reflection of my monitor towering over me with an axe, but I said, "That's probably not an axe murdered, I must be dreaming," then that would be ignoring evidence and also irrational.
You're saying, "I don't see any evidence that God exists." That's one explanation. Another explanation would be that you don't want to believe a God exists. This may or may not involve ignoring alleged evidence of God's existance.
As much as we all want to think we're completely unbiased, everyone's opinions are heavily influenced by what they _want_ to believe. You're not an exception, and neither am I. Generally, people have a subconcious ideal they want to believe and seek proof to justify it. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong. But the reason for belief in important ideals is usually constrained by emotions. There's really too much data to analyse things from every angle-- why not just analyse from the angle we care about?
Take a look at the primary arguments for and against the existance of God. For each of them, there's an emotional fear attached with the belief:
Statement: If God existed, He'd stop all the suffering in the world, so God can't exist.
Fear: I fear suffering.
Statement: Everything in the world can be explained without God, so God doesn't need to exist.
Fear: I fear the unknown.
Statement: The world exists, so God must have created it.
Fear: I fear loneliness.
Statement: I had something uncomprehendable happen in my life, so God must have made it happen.
Fear: I fear understanding. (Usually because it deflates emotions.)
If anyone knows how work around our inherent biases and fears, I'd be glad to know. But perhaps the first step is admitting why you want to believe what you do, external from the evidence on either side.
-Ted
Not to quibble, but is that "Agnostic"-- I don't know if God exists, or "Apathetic"-- I don't care of God exists? More than anything, Apathy is the religion of our time. But most people don't really care. ;)
-Ted
I think you're confusing two concepts. The Big Bang theory talks about _how_ the universe came into being. Creation talks about _who made_ the universe come into being. They can both be true, both be false, or one could be true and the other false. The claims are independant.
Let me give a simple example.
Story A: I hold a ball in my hand. I open my hand and the ball mysteriously falls to the ground.
Story B: A ball was held in place by mysterious forces. At once, the forces disappeared and the ball reacted according to the law of gravity, accelerating towards the large mass below it.
Story A is akin to saying, "God created the Universe." It gives a few details, but no specifics.
Story B is akin to saying, "The Universe was created by a Big Bang". It gives scientific details, but doesn't talk about what, if anything, ordained that to happen.
With due respect, however I believe both sides are fairly irrational on the subject. Research into Evolution and the Big Bang was primary motivated by the desire to create a system where God was not a necessity, so people would not need to acknowledge the existance of a God.
On the other hand, most creationists ignore major pieces of evidence. Even though the fossil record is incredibly patchy, some evidence such as Dinosaur bones really doesn't fit into most views of the Genesis creation story. And yet dinosaurs clearly existed on earth at some point in the past. Ignoring those bones is just as irrational as disbelieving the existance of God because you don't want to believe, not because you have real proof.
-Ted
I thought everyone forgot all about that. It was new years eve 1993 on Furry, actually. And it did more than just attach itself to a person's description. It infect the room they were in if possible, so anyone walking into the room got infected. It infected the links between rooms, objects, and even actions on objects. (So if you create an object with a link to a program and run that command to run your program, the virus infected that command as well. Every time you ran it, you would be re-infected.) There were also plans to abuse something called _listen, which executes a program whenever a person _receives_ a message. So a person could get infected just by _hearing_ something. But the programmer didn't have enough permissions, which is probably a good thing.
Another thing the virus did was overlay each person's ability to communicate. The virus had its own special versions of the basic "say", "pose", "spoof", "write", and "whisper". (It could only create these through a big in the MUCK code on Furry, I'll note.) The payoff of the command was that after midnight (ie. one New Years), all infected users would have their communications silenced and rerouted to a special log file. Actually, the messages got printed out to the user's screen so that it _looked_ like everyone could hear them, but in fact they couldn't.
This "fun" went on for a good half hour until one of the administrators figured out what was going on because of a bug in the modified page program. (Note to coders: *always* test your code before you install it in public.) Eventually they just reinstalled an older DB to clean out the virus.
Incidently, they people perpetrating this took the log file, flamed it, and then posted it to usenet. In retrospect, that was a bad idea, but you do stupid stuff when you're 15...
If you're curious about the aftermath, a lot of clueless users on Furry complained to the programmer's sysadmin. Of course, the clueless users blew everything out of proportion, not understanding what really went on. When word finally got back to the programmer, apparently he had written an "internet worm, capable of copying itself between different servers on the internet." I only wish I was that good of a coder! Apparently the FBI got involved for a short time, until they realized that the Furry server was located in Canada, so any felonous charges would have to be tried in an international court. Once the feds finally realized it was just some stupid prank with no lasting harm, the programmer never heard a thing from them again.
Anyway, the guy lost his internet access, which was through a university. He spent the 9 months of downtime (before getting another account) working on a program to let people play several variants of Poker on MUCKs. Ironally, this program is still popular on Furry to this day. Consider it one last bit of both apology and spite.
But that was a long time ago, and I was a different person then.
-Ted
What's the best way of filtering SPAM mail if you _don't_ have access to the server? Which mail reader programs have the most advanced filtering options? Any general tips for spam filtering? And if I need to "RTFM", which manual should I read? :)
-Ted
First, this post is clearly biased and NOT a good interview question. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing on moral grounds, but your accusative nature is unlikely to make him change his opinion.
That aside...
#1: Trying to create Artificial Intelligence is not exercising powers reserved for God and God alone. God commands Adam in Eve in the book of Genesis to "be fruitful and multiply". This is creating people in the image of Adam and Eve (and also in the image of God), and yet was commanded by God. So this power is clearly not for God alone.
#2: Idolatry is anything that supercedes God in your life. Do you care more about your wife than God? Then your wife is your idol. Or do you care more about the internet than God? Then the Internet is your idol. But making something and idolizing it above God are two unrelated actions.
(And for what it's worth, I'm a Christian too, but I believe that God's word and commands are rational, logical, and understandable, even if they sometimes require faith.)
-Ted
That said, the average joe MS user is far more interested in faster bandwidth. Most of that computer time is spent online (chat rooms, net games, pr0n, etc.) Joe doesn't care about 1Ghz, except perhaps as "my processor is faster than yours".
:)
So who has a budget for these things and actually wants them if not the technical incompetants? High end servers? Would rather have a fatter pipe. These processors are only useful for high end work stations. Maybe you care, but most of us don't use or need that.
Of course, I wish my processor was faster than yours...
-Ted
The Dune movie failed purely on bad directing. I believe it was directed by the same guy who did "Twin Peaks" and "Lost Highway", although his name escapes me. While those two are cult classics, they're _not_ intended for mainsteam consumption, not even mainstream Sci-Fi lovers.
Consider the dubious solution to the perspective in the book. If you remember, Dune had many sections where you'd read the character's thoughts, and this helped understand the character's movitations. But this doesn't work in a movie setting, so the director did the thoughts as "voice overs". It ended up as a bad directing choice.
So hopefully the producers will learn from their mistakes.
-Ted
You know you're really right about Slashdot feeling like home. It's weird, but I even appreciate the trolls and "hot grits". It may be the dark underbelly of Slashdot, but part of what gives Slashdot its character are the trolls, the karma farmars/whores, and moderation debates. This place wouldn't be the same without it.
-Ted
In High School and college I did a lot of RP Mudding. And while I didn't spend much time on FurryMUCK, I knew some people who did. For those of you who don't know, FurryMUCK is an anthropomorphic mud-- everyone role plays a character as an animal. Furry eventually became the red light district of MUDs, and that's all I have to say about the place.
:)
Anyway, I knew more than one real life women who had alternate male characters on the MUD simply because they were sick of getting hit on. On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. So that 14 year old lesbian school girl is probably some twice divorced 35 year old guy named earl. The real question is, "Who's playing the 35 year old guy named earl and what's her phone number?"
-Ted
The article implying the NSA is up to the DoS attacks is interesting, given all of the recent control the government is trying to take. Public support would definitly help that.
But lets take a different look at it. They haven't found the perpetrators yet. What does that mean?
#1. These criminals are very skilled and have significant resources (they pulled off the DoS job)
#2. These criminals are not into fame and have quite a bit of self control (they haven't even hinted at who they are)
#3. Whatever goal the criminals have, the goal is furthered better if we do _not_ know what it is (there is no clue why this happened)
How many groups of people are there that are this skilled?
- A few hacker groups
- A few academics
- A few government groups
- A few commercial groups
That's it. That's our search space. #2 should cross out the hacker and academic groups. Fame doesn't enter the picture when you work for the NSA or IBM, but it certainly plays a role for academics (publish or perish) and hackers (fame: the currency of the open source movement).
So what government or commercial group would benefeit the most from these attacks? And how is that goal furthered by the fact that people don't know what it is? That implies that if people knew what the goal was, the goal would not be accomplished. This is a godelian contradiction! (eg. "This sentence is false".) Therefore the goal must deal with affecting public knowledge, if public knowledge would destroy the goal.
Lets summarize what we have so far. Either a government or commercial group is putting on massive DoS attacks in an effort to shape public opinion. The question is what opinion do they want to shape? That's easy! The knee-jerk reaction is what they're aiming for. Some group wants the world populous to fear hacker groups. The obvious outcome of this will be more laws and regulations.
Who will benefeit from this? Certainly not commercial groups! Extra laws and regulations end up being more lost profits. That only leaves government groups, which in this case is the NSA.
Therefore: The NSA is putting on these DoS attacks so that the american populous will call for anti-hacking laws, which in turn gives the government more power.
I think that was fairly logically tight. Let me know if you see any holes in this argument. (But at least this was a deductive argument, not just a circumstancial argument like the other article.)
-Ted
I don't think John Carmack dislikes story games. Remember that he played Ultima a lot in the past, and all ultimas have pretty detailed plots. He's just saying that if you have a good story but bad gameplay, your game still sucks. And if you have a bad story and good gameplay, you still have a good game. Naturally, you want both a good plot and good gameplay.
Personally, I think the game that has come closest to this idea is "Thief: The Dark Project". The story is gripping, but never got in the way of the gameplay. Playing that game was quite an experience. (And I can't wait for Thief 2!)
-Ted
Are you sure you aren't thinking about John Romero? Romero is far more proud than John Carmack is. And Carmack is the better coder. I guess that's the difference between loving publicity and loving programming...
-Ted
What you have to understand about John Carmack is that programming is his religion, and he won't let anything else get in the way of it. Programming is the most important priority in his life.
I think this is the reason I admire him without wanting to _be_ him. There are parts of my life which are more important than programming, and I'd give up programming for them if necessary.
-Ted
This may seem weird, but a friend of mine has an uncanny sense of magnetic north. We can drive on a freeway clover leaf and in the middle of it, just out of nowhere, ask "which way is north" and watch her point in the right direction without looking outside of the car. We've even tried totally mixing her up so she doesn't know where she's facing, but she can always point straight north. One of the oddest things I've seen in my life.
-Ted
Man, that's hilarious! Is there any way we can enshrine this? It would be a shame to forget about it just a few days later.
-Ted
Yeah. Essentially if Intel tries to undercut Transmeta, all Transmeta has to do is market their chip to an even smaller application. The Transmeta chip really does have a competetive advantage: it's much cooler. All Transmeta has to do is find the market that Intel can't support in the first place.
Incidently, just because a large behemoth of a company _can_ do something monopolistic doesn't mean it will do it well. Look at the bumbling antics of microsoft against perceived future threats. And Transmeta is a very real threat against Intel in the present!
-Ted
Anyone can write bad code in any language. It takes good programmers to write good code. But it also takes a good language, and perl is one such language.
The problem with many languages such as LISP is that it's so _difficult_ to write good code! Perl is such a gem because it tries very hard to make your life easy. Of course, some people still do things the wrong way. It's not an issue of the language. It's a problem with the programmer.
Although I do admit that Python is an equally good language.
-Ted
This article.
This article is.
This article is minimalist.
This article is very minimalist
The minimalist article is.
The minimalist article is repetitive.
The minimalist article is not repetitive.
The minimalist article appears repetitive.
The minimalist article topics appear repetitive
The minimalist article topics repetitively appear.
The minimalist article topics repetitively change.
Topics repetitively change minimaly.
Topics change minimaly.
Now look at that text and compare it to Tom's article. He says the same thing over and over-- ALMOST. This is the zen of writing. At the end, he's brought up a totally different point than what he started with, except for one common theme. In my example, the theme is "minimal". In his article, the theme is "Zen".
Here's a brief summary for those who don't want to read the article.
Starting idea: Zen interfacing is good.
Ending idea: Bad use of input devices stops Zen.
Hope this helps.
-Ted
I'm pretty sure it's just rumor. If they were actually close enough to start constructing the chip itself, they'd have a patent for that. Once all the patents are in order I'll start considering the truth of these rumors.
A corollary seems to be that Communism works whenever the marginal cost if extra goods are low. Probably the biggest flaw in Marx's reasoning was that the working class would act selflessly towards other workers and only oppose "the capitalist regime." Marx missed the point that greed motivates the workers in the first place. Linux works under a communist system of development precisely because it requires no resources to create extra copies beyond the initial investment.
Strangely enough, it's the greed based motivation of capitalism that makes the development model work. If a developer really _wants_ a feature, they'll put it in for themselves. Sure they're helping others, but first and foremost they're helping themselves. Open Source development helps developers help themselves. In some sense, Open Source development is the best mix of capitalism and communism. People have both the motivation to improve the product (capitalist) and the resources required to do so (communist).
-Ted
In a shocking display of ingenuity, the United States Patent Office actually patented a non-trivial concept.
Said an anonymous inside source, "We don't know what happened. We thought the patent was for some software algorithm that had been discovered two decades ago. I thought I saw internet somewhere on the proposal, but it's just not there. We really screwed this one up and from now on it's only damage control. I just hope everyone realizes this is a one time only thing. We're working hard to make sure this won't happen again."
Film at eleven.