There is a joke in there somewhere, I just know it.
I don't get it either. This is not some fancy trick that requires great intellect. It is 2 by 4's and lights. My roomate in college had something far more impressive. Using various christmas tree lights, on different timers, he stapled them into the ceiling. Turn on one set, you got boobs to look at while relaxing on the bed. Turn on another, and you got the perfect mood to any Jimmy Buffet song. It was a work of art.
And we got much more use from those lights than these kids will get from theirs. There are only so many hours in a day you can dance. But we, me and my roomate, we were drunk all the time.
I dunno, maybe I expect too much from MIT. I figured if they were building something, it would be really cool, using the latest technology or using older technology in ways nobody imagined. They should go back to lock picking. At least that sounds impressive. Disco is not.
And if that student at MIT ever becomes my boss, Woe to him. The intellect myth has been busted.
I was a senior in high school who had a copy of that infamous volume, at a poor time to be caught with it '73. I was lucky in that I had loaned it to a friend the day before the FBI searched my locker. Yes The FBI, In civics class we all got to fill out civil service forms which were sent in for processing, mine got me investigated. One of the questions on the form asked something along this line - do you belong to or support any organization or group that advocated the overthrow of the United States Government by violent or other means? I answered yes the democratic national party (Nixon was in office and my SSN was getting close on the draft boards posted every Friday). That answer got me investigated for almost 6 months, what a waste of tax dollars but that is our government in action here in the US.
I wonder what they could have done to you if they found the book in your locker. Would it have been enough to get you in trouble? Or is it freedom of thought, your right to read whatever you want?? I have been seeing a trend of less freedom, at least it feels like a trend. But you said this was '73. I was reading in the papers some elementary school kids got arrested because one painted a picture of classmates getting shot. I guess after columbine, that's the way it is.
I just had a funny thought. You know most of the stuff in the cookbook is BS, that won't work, or that will explode injuring the person trying to mix chemicals together. Wouldn't it be something if the government wrote the cookbook, then distributed it.
I suppose we could make a REALLY good predictive model of when astronomical objects are likely to do this - and predict the arrival of a gamma ray burst in time to do something about it. But what could we possibly do?
It takes a good few inches of lead (or a good few feet of concrete, dirt, whatever) to significantly attenuate gamma rays - and if the ones were are talking about were powerful enough to get through the full depth of the earth's oceans and still kill things when they got there - then you'd need to wrap the earth in a few feet of lead - or hide down some amazingly deep mine-shafts.
So, my ray-ban sunglasses won't help, I'll be SOL?
In all likelyhood, we'd just sit back and let our great, great, great grandchildren deal with the problem.
This is why we need more space exploration funding. We might learn of ways to deal with these problems. Who knows, maybe it'll be like star trek, and we'll have a huge space ship with a deflector dish. I know, that is science fiction, but people's thoughts are tied into their environment. Send someone to live on mars for a year, and they will come back filled with ideas based on the gravity, atmosphere, physics of that planet. They will have to find ways to deal with heat/cold, gasses, ect. Maybe from those exercizes we'll learn something we can't concieve of on earth.
I read a great book my Kaku called Hyperspace where he argues we don't live in 4 dimensions (x,y,z, and time) but in 10, and that our perception is faulty. Maybe the rays are acting in a dimension we don't know about. They say light is both a particle and a wave. They say you can't tell where an electron is and how fast it is going.
Ahh... I need to take a break. I am getting too worked up.
Blowing up an asteroid with an a-bomb may make sense in Hollywood, but doesn't work in real life. The B612 Foundation has a more practical solution -- but not sexy enough to attract funding.
Greg Egan has a simple solution to the neutron bombardment problem -- convert everybody into software. I think he underestimates the technical issues...
I have an idea too, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. I would like to see small space stations on different plantes in our solar system. Maybe start with the moon, it is close enough. Make a small, intact, self-supporting ecosystem in an enclosed area, maybe under the surface to control temprature and the dust. Develop cheaper methods of getting from the earth to the base on the moon. Then slowly start working to the next closest planet. Build a research center there, taking what we have learned from the moon and applying it to the new base. Start regular space flights from the earth to this plantiary base. Maybe build a second base on the same planet. Learn from it. Move on to a farther away planet. If a base on the planet can't be consturcted, maybe build a space station that orbits that planet. Soon, we will have research stations on all the planets.
I know I am getting away from the science, but I can imagine the adventure. And having space stations orbiting other planets, as well as research stations on planets will accelerate space travel, we will have monthly or weekly departures and returns. And communications will improve. The reports from Pluto will make it back beacuse we will have space stations on other planets to "bounce" the message back home.
They say in physics that everything is relative. Perhaps having "eyes" on different planets will provide a different perspective for viewing the universe. And we will learn about physics in different environments. Maybe we'll even learn how gravity works or have different ideas pop up just because of the change of scenery. The popular story is Newton was sitting under an apple tree when the apple fell, hitting him on his head, and he discovered gravity. Maybe that would not have happened on a planet with lower gravity, maybe it would have been a different revelation.
I hope we speed up research and exploration. I have so many questions I would like anwsered in my lifetime.
Gamma ray bursts are thought to be caused either when two neutron stars collide or when giant stars collapse into black holes at the end of their lives.
overzealous cops have a new feeding ground. yay! OMFG He's got a notebook on the train, get him! he's a terrorist! yay nyc has is moving to the new millenia.
In Chicago, they have train cops that walk up and down the train cars. They are big intimidating looking motherfuckers. One day, not a very cold day, but I knew it would cool off that night, I was taking the train into chicago. Not very many people were on the 2pm train and I had a sweater with me, rolled up with a cd-player in the middle (I did not want it to fall). My sweater is next to the window seat, I am in the isle seat. I am reading the Chicago Sun Times, half asleep to the rest of the world, when I feel this mass bumping into my shoulder. It was a cop, standing fully tall and erect, his chest pushed out, just staring at me through his dark sun glasses. The body part bumping into me was his fucking groin. After looking at him for a minute, trying to think of something to say, he asks "I saw you stick your hand in the sweater, what are you hiding". Son of a bitch! I anwserd "It's an air displacement device designed to deliever an acousitic payload". HAHAHA! Stupid fucking me. The police officer put his hand on his gun. I noticed little beads of sweat start to form on his forehead. I went to unroll the sweater, when I realized he might take that as an agressive move. So I let him stand there the next 5 minutes, bumping his groin into my shoulder. It finally dawned on me there was a guy sitting 10 seats down from me with an indian or pakistani apperance. I asked the cop "hey, that guy has a bag next to him and there is a funny smell", so for the remainder of the ride, it was the light brown guy who had a cock pressed up against him. Too bad the cop could not tell the difference between the smell of bomb making materials and a guy who ate curry at lunch. I am just glad they did not bring out the horny police dogs. The last thing I would have wanted to do was burry my head under a seat while the dog kept me "under control" for the half hour ride.
I don't even want to think about someone hacking the subways. What a nightmarish hell that'd be for passengers. Almost could be a terrorist target: get the trains stopped or something, put men on board who were waiting in the tunnels at predefined positions... thats one hell of a lot of hostages.
I am seeing a trend that cities are doing. They are installing tons of camera's, in the 1000's range. I think Chicago now has over 3000 camera's the police can use. I got a ticket in the mail a few weeks ago, it was a camera attached to a radar gun. They are removing people, and adding technology. Technology can't think, it can just do what it's programmed to do. And you are right, if terrorists knock out these systems, or hack them, then what? They will be watching us, controling our trains, and controling our electricity. Maybe law enforecement is making a honey pot, I dunno.
But I doubt terrorists would hack the system to hijack a train. They would just program them to run into each other at high speed. Terrorists don't care about stopping one train, they want to make people afraid to use the trains at all.
There is some psychological comfort of having a conductor. A conductor would force terrorists to come on the train, because if he saw an oncomming train on the same track, he could stop his train. It would take a boat load of osama's to hijack the train I would be on. Then the train passengers could get revenge for 9/11. But it would take one hacker to reprogram the train route and what tracks it uses.
and everything was fine til I got to this sentance:
Trains on this line no longer have conductors on board
I dunno about the rest of you, but I want a conductor on the train. Things like having a human look outside the train to make sure nobody is about to get on when the doors close, having someone on the train in case of an emergancy, having someone on the train that is a detterent to crime (just imagine, would a would-be rapist be more or less likely to rape a woman if a conductor was walking up and down the cars).
And part of me feels bad for the guy losing the job, the conductor.
Continue reading the news story:
To have a truly integrated system, the city would have to continue buying all its equipment from Siemens AG, effectively giving it a monopoly.
This also raises a red flag. One company that will in effect control the whole parts system? How can we know we won't get hosed with the price?
Even if they do autimate, lets keep the conductor. Someone who knows how the train runs. Someone who can over-ride the computers if needed. Every vessel needs her captin.
And SPAM is different from junk snail-mail how? (BTW, anyone have any idea as to why bulk E-mail postage costs less than regular snail mail postage?)
The main difference is if I want to send you something through the mail, I have to put a stamp on it and pay money to ship it. If I want to spam you, I can write a virus and get 1000 machines to pump out the spam. I can do it so it does not cost me anything but my time.
Plus, with the postal service, there are 1000's of laws in place. If I send you an offer through the mail designed to rip you off, that is a federal offense. You can't use the US Postal Service for illegal activities, if you do you get caught.
Remember the movie The Firm? They did not convict the lawyers for tax evasion or any other crime. They convicted them for mail fraud. And if you let the worst spammers know that each and every time they send a message that is spam, each instance will incur a penalty, that might stop them.
It is not 4 different definitions of spam, it is 4 elements that make up a definition. If any 1 element is missing, then it would not be considered spam for purposes of law enforcement. What I am getting at is what are all the elements that make up spam, so that if any 1 element is missing, it is not a criminal offense.
Spam is a form of communication. You can't have spam without some kind of communication (I would like a definition that inclused the telemarketers and all the shit I get in the mail). That is element 1. Spam is unwanted. It would not be spam to recieve something you requested. Spam comes from a hidden source, so you can't track who sent it. That would protect honest buisnesses from having their emails classified as spam. Maybe CompUSA sends me a 10% off coupon for a sale next month that I never asked for and did not want. But I know who they are, I have somewhere to complain, and if the abuse the emails, someone to sue. And the last part is you use your bandwith, or have some cost. Maybe another element of spam is one source sends out many copies of the same mail.
Also, if you reply, the spammer will know your address is active and send more crap.
I don't undertsand this. On one hand, you have the police saying they can't track spammers. Spammers use drones, they remain hidden, they hide their tracks. On the other hand, if you unsubscribe, they know your email is a real one, and you get more spam. That tells me whoever runs the unsubscribe service is in cahoots with the spammer and is just as guilty. They have to know where to send their lists? Just track them as part of the war on spam.
I would hate to have to explain all my actions to my ISP. Espically with the way media is driving the internet nowadays. 200MB is way too small of a limit.
Now, you can monitor how many e-mails are sent by a host. That would be a better way. At least there could be a filter on the "to:" line. If that list includes over say, 1000+ users, consistantly, then at least there could be some flags raised.
That is a good point. With my daily bandwith threshold test, I was thinking that if someone is uploading a very, very large daily avarage of bandwith, it might be a red flag. But if you can count the number of emails sent, that is even better.
I am wondering. Is there any way to force email to only run on 1 port, without any proxies, that all routers can then reject any other mail originating from any other port??
That also reminds me of another idea floating around. Charge $0.01 per email, or some very small amount of money, so that it does not harm the avarage computer user, but will eat up all the profits of a spammer.
Spam is like porn: hard to define but you know what it when you see it. That can be hard to program I would think. But, who knows.
No, Spam is easy to define, it is any unwanted emails. Name elements that make spam:
1) It is a form of communication
2) The communication is unwanted
3) The source of the communication is hidden
4) In recieving the communication, you use your bandwith or incur a cost
Legislate against spam. As long as spam is legal, or the penalties against it are too low, or it is too easy to do, people will continue to try and make a quick buck.
Also, force all ISP's to monitor how much bandwith a source has. If you get too much usage per day, say 200 megabytes or more, then that person has to explain why they need that much bandwith. If someone gets the RIAA on board, with their lobbyists, that should pass very quickly.
Also, force all email to have some element which identifies the source. Not just a header that can be forged, but something that can't be hacked. And if a source can not be found, but it is selling a product an identifiable site, charge that site just as if they were the ones sending the spam.
I wonder what the legal ramifications are if someone uses google to break into a website? Or is google has a cache of a website that does not want a cache to exist?? For example, google has since done away with it, but when news.google went public, you could get a cache to any newspaper you wanted, even if the newspaper required a subscription. I wonder what would happen if google stuck to their guns, said we are keeping all content cached, and the newspapers sued. Who would win?
Since there is so much potential for abuse, I wonder if soon government will "wiretap" google, waiting for certain kinds of searches and then zeroing in the person who did the search. For example, what if some teen in highschool did a search for "anarchist cookbook". Would that be enough to have the police go talk with him, or watch him, or get a search warrent? What if they then find gasoline, and *gasp* styrofome cups in his garadge?? Can they charge him with conspiracy to make napalm? Or worse, what if I want a chem lab in my basement, do I have a right to it, to conduct my own research?
It would be like what the city of chicago is going. First they banned all guns in the city. Then they sued the gun manufacturers whenever a gun was used for a crime in their city limits. The City of Chicago argues "hey, we banned it, and you keep selling it to people who do illegal things in chicago, you have no safegaurds".
I wonder if there is a search engine out there that is opt-in only, does not link to spam or places that don't sell stuff but only link to places that sell (deceptivly I might add too). Maybe some search engine where users can moderate returns, like we do at slashdot. When you search for "baseball", with each hit you get to moderate how good of a search return it is. I have alot of ideas. Maybe I should not post them here, maybe I should talk to a patent lawyer first.
They have enough engineers, they'll probably build one from scratch using an Apple IIe computer and pictures from magazines. And she'll take a shower with them, but the engineers will be too embarassed to take off their undewear in the shower.
Come to think of it, now it all makes sense. That is why they are trying to recreate life in the bio labs, all the early earth atmosphere tests. They want some pussy.
Damn crazy Cal Tech kids. What is next, filling a house with popcorn using solar rays??
rofl...Berkley is the best public school in the nation. Yeah, they rested on their laurels...
By what rankings? They don't even come close to the University of Pen. I am too tired to spell the full name. You would be suprised where Berkeley ranks, I don't think it is above the University of Florida or University of Virginia.
I don't think Berkeley is the best public state school in California, that would probably be UCLA.
Heck, while we are at it, lets add Indiana University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan to the list of public universities that are more competitive than Berkeley.
See, the problem with this is, MIT has a reputation (deserved or not) as being better than Caltech. Caltech can do this to MIT, and people go "Hah hah, how clever." But, if MIT were to do this to Caltech, people would say "What stupid arrogant assholes, why don't they stay in Cambridge and stop bragging about their superiority at other schools."
I am not affiliated with any school. When I applied for colleges in the early 90's, I did not apply to either, although I did my research. MIT has been declining the past 20 years. Cal Tech is making a name for itself.
The only news out of MIT that I have read the past 2 years is kids getting drunk and dying. The news out of Cal Tech is they are playing with lasers and doing cool stuff.
MIT is at risk of becomming obsolete. 50 years ago Berkeley was a stud school. Today it is nothing special, no better than the University of Michigan or University of Texas. Berkeley rested on their laurels, and that is what MIT is doing.
Being that caltech is so much better than MIT you would think that they could find a good spell checker...
To: All Admissions Staff
From: Director of Admissions
In order to continue fundraising, we have to admit 40% legacies that are shit for brains. They can't read or write, but their fathers have us on an allowance, and we want the money. Plus, without legacies, there would be nobody there to say "You got me again, you silly nerd!". The other 60% will be merit admission, with 30% comming from India. Please be mindful that engish is their second language, and some of them might feel more at home taking baths in the Boston River. The other 30% are American Chinese students. Unlike the other 70%, they know american grammer and spelling.
But feel good, at least we are not Harvard. There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Travel 4k+ miles to put balloons up and put on a laser show? When I was in college all we ever did was get drunk and have sex, I am glad I never turned in my app to CalTech.
Yeah, but the prospect of getting laid by a fellow nerd girl, that is much better than banging some loose sorority girl who puts as much thought into riding a guy as washing the dishes. Just going throught the motions. Now imagine a nerd girl, laughing through her nose when you tell her a joke, getting goosebumps when you touch her, one that has never been penetrated before. That is why the Cal Tech guys traveld 4,000+ miles to MIT. And anyone who knows anything about getting Nerd girls, knows there is a competition at the end that usually ends with synthasizer music and a robot dance.
MIT = Revenge of the Nerds
Cal Tech = Real Genius
Take your pick. Dance with bugger grabbing a moo-moo's ass, or have someone put a micro-speaker in your tooth and tell you "this is god, stop playing with yourself".
Nobody who is anyone has been at MIT in ages. I think the last smarty pants there was Richard Feynman and all he did was help make the nuclear bomb.
I remember meeting a kid from Cal-Tech, and to this day his impression remains with me. I have never met such a mix of intellect with insanity. He was working for the summer at Northwestern University, and I spent a couple days at his rented house (which a friend of mine from high school was renting with his girlfriend, there were 6 people living in this old house). Anyways, this guy had a pet spider, but not any spider, a black widow. And one night he wanted to cook for all of us. He boiled a big pot of water, Dropped in a head of chopped lettice, and two slices of american cheese. He then served it to us with so much pride. Later that night I broke out a huge jug of Vodka and a half gallon of OJ. We were making screwdrivers that were nearly see-through. After his first glass, he started crying about how he's never been with a woman. By his second glass, he was singing in chineese. He could not finish his third glass, he fell asleep on the floor right there. So the next morning we wake up, and I look in his fishtank, and the black widow is gone. I ask him what happened, and he said he felt bad for it and let it lose the night before. I asked where, and he said "I don't remember, maybe in your room" FUCK! I left that day, and never returned.
And it looks like that is the film where they got their prank ideas from, the laser lights. Too bad they did not have the frozen ice that turns directly to gas... maybe... or kaboom. I couldn't finish the equations last night so I don't know how volatile it is.
Do you claim that a 2x2.5GHz PowerPC 970 running OSX is half as fast as a $1500 Wintel machine? I've used both. Each is a nice machine. The OSX machine -- in my objective and qualitative user opinion, is not half as fast. You can take your rhetoric about "megahertz myth myth" and go sit down with the likes of Cyrix and AMD. When you finish, you can go pick up a computer architecture book (I recomment Hennesy and Patterson) and hopefully understand what they told you.
Truth be told, I am by no means a true programmer or power user anymore, it is not my vocation anymore, I got burned out by it. But I do know user speed, when you click on something how long it takes to complete the task. And I might want to run a web server, to replace my dual cpu PIII one day. Tomcat + JSP + too many users logged in at the same time to a web application = one very slow machine.
I would be interested in your opinion about something. Comparing the following two machines, can you tell me how the MAC would compare with speed? I don't do video editing, and that seems to be the niche that MAC's have.
Apple Mac G5 with only 1 processor, 1.8 Ghz and only 512k L2 cache. It comes with 256 megs and a 80 gig hard drive. It is $1499. It is worth noting it has a 64 meg video card, the Dell has integrated video, but a card can be added. And the Apple has DVD-RW, the Dell has just a CD-Rom. There is also another Apple, a dual G5 with the same specs but it is $1999 (I take it that G5 processor is worth $500).
Which is the better machine? Which one is quicker? Even if I wanted to do video editing (which I don't, but who knows, one day I might).
I looked everywhere at Dell to find a $200 PC. I could not find one. I looked at the refurbished PCs and I could not find one for $200.00. In fact the shipping on a refurbished PC from dell was $99.00 minimum.
Could you please provide a link to where you found a $200.00 dell.
They have a new sale every 4-5 days or so. The ~$200 PC was there, but not at this second. It will be back again.
Keep checking this page until the price gets to a sweet spot. Right now they swapped out the $200 price range for a processor upgrade (from celron 2.4ghz to P4 2.8ghz). That might not be worth the $100 in price difference. I dunno. I just know I have seen this machine in the $200 range, the SC series:
I went back to do a double take, and found this too, although I never looked at their home pc's, I stick with their servers. I know the quality of the servers, but not of the home desktop (2400), although it comes with Windows and has a 17" monitor for $299.
The trick with Dell is to check their small buisness website often. They sneak deals in there for 3 or 4 or 5 days, then switch offers. One week you might have a deal $200-$250, the next week you might miss that $100 rebate but get a processor upgrade, the next week they might take away the processor upgrade and double the RAM and hard drive storage. It changes all the time. I've seen some crazy offers there, AND free shipping. If you get lucky, you'll get the $200 with a second bonus like a processor upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a joke in there somewhere, I just know it.
I don't get it either. This is not some fancy trick that requires great intellect. It is 2 by 4's and lights. My roomate in college had something far more impressive. Using various christmas tree lights, on different timers, he stapled them into the ceiling. Turn on one set, you got boobs to look at while relaxing on the bed. Turn on another, and you got the perfect mood to any Jimmy Buffet song. It was a work of art.
And we got much more use from those lights than these kids will get from theirs. There are only so many hours in a day you can dance. But we, me and my roomate, we were drunk all the time.
I dunno, maybe I expect too much from MIT. I figured if they were building something, it would be really cool, using the latest technology or using older technology in ways nobody imagined. They should go back to lock picking. At least that sounds impressive. Disco is not.
And if that student at MIT ever becomes my boss, Woe to him. The intellect myth has been busted.
I wonder what they could have done to you if they found the book in your locker. Would it have been enough to get you in trouble? Or is it freedom of thought, your right to read whatever you want?? I have been seeing a trend of less freedom, at least it feels like a trend. But you said this was '73. I was reading in the papers some elementary school kids got arrested because one painted a picture of classmates getting shot. I guess after columbine, that's the way it is.
I just had a funny thought. You know most of the stuff in the cookbook is BS, that won't work, or that will explode injuring the person trying to mix chemicals together. Wouldn't it be something if the government wrote the cookbook, then distributed it.
It takes a good few inches of lead (or a good few feet of concrete, dirt, whatever) to significantly attenuate gamma rays - and if the ones were are talking about were powerful enough to get through the full depth of the earth's oceans and still kill things when they got there - then you'd need to wrap the earth in a few feet of lead - or hide down some amazingly deep mine-shafts.
So, my ray-ban sunglasses won't help, I'll be SOL?
In all likelyhood, we'd just sit back and let our great, great, great grandchildren deal with the problem.
This is why we need more space exploration funding. We might learn of ways to deal with these problems. Who knows, maybe it'll be like star trek, and we'll have a huge space ship with a deflector dish. I know, that is science fiction, but people's thoughts are tied into their environment. Send someone to live on mars for a year, and they will come back filled with ideas based on the gravity, atmosphere, physics of that planet. They will have to find ways to deal with heat/cold, gasses, ect. Maybe from those exercizes we'll learn something we can't concieve of on earth.
I read a great book my Kaku called Hyperspace where he argues we don't live in 4 dimensions (x,y,z, and time) but in 10, and that our perception is faulty. Maybe the rays are acting in a dimension we don't know about. They say light is both a particle and a wave. They say you can't tell where an electron is and how fast it is going.
Ahh... I need to take a break. I am getting too worked up.
Greg Egan has a simple solution to the neutron bombardment problem -- convert everybody into software. I think he underestimates the technical issues...
I have an idea too, but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. I would like to see small space stations on different plantes in our solar system. Maybe start with the moon, it is close enough. Make a small, intact, self-supporting ecosystem in an enclosed area, maybe under the surface to control temprature and the dust. Develop cheaper methods of getting from the earth to the base on the moon. Then slowly start working to the next closest planet. Build a research center there, taking what we have learned from the moon and applying it to the new base. Start regular space flights from the earth to this plantiary base. Maybe build a second base on the same planet. Learn from it. Move on to a farther away planet. If a base on the planet can't be consturcted, maybe build a space station that orbits that planet. Soon, we will have research stations on all the planets.
I know I am getting away from the science, but I can imagine the adventure. And having space stations orbiting other planets, as well as research stations on planets will accelerate space travel, we will have monthly or weekly departures and returns. And communications will improve. The reports from Pluto will make it back beacuse we will have space stations on other planets to "bounce" the message back home.
They say in physics that everything is relative. Perhaps having "eyes" on different planets will provide a different perspective for viewing the universe. And we will learn about physics in different environments. Maybe we'll even learn how gravity works or have different ideas pop up just because of the change of scenery. The popular story is Newton was sitting under an apple tree when the apple fell, hitting him on his head, and he discovered gravity. Maybe that would not have happened on a planet with lower gravity, maybe it would have been a different revelation.
I hope we speed up research and exploration. I have so many questions I would like anwsered in my lifetime.
From the article:
Gamma ray bursts are thought to be caused either when two neutron stars collide or when giant stars collapse into black holes at the end of their lives.
Then you get this:
Black holes do not exist
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr112005 /snt108532005410.asp
So which one is it? Do black holes exist, or do they not?
In Chicago, they have train cops that walk up and down the train cars. They are big intimidating looking motherfuckers. One day, not a very cold day, but I knew it would cool off that night, I was taking the train into chicago. Not very many people were on the 2pm train and I had a sweater with me, rolled up with a cd-player in the middle (I did not want it to fall). My sweater is next to the window seat, I am in the isle seat. I am reading the Chicago Sun Times, half asleep to the rest of the world, when I feel this mass bumping into my shoulder. It was a cop, standing fully tall and erect, his chest pushed out, just staring at me through his dark sun glasses. The body part bumping into me was his fucking groin. After looking at him for a minute, trying to think of something to say, he asks "I saw you stick your hand in the sweater, what are you hiding". Son of a bitch! I anwserd "It's an air displacement device designed to deliever an acousitic payload". HAHAHA! Stupid fucking me. The police officer put his hand on his gun. I noticed little beads of sweat start to form on his forehead. I went to unroll the sweater, when I realized he might take that as an agressive move. So I let him stand there the next 5 minutes, bumping his groin into my shoulder. It finally dawned on me there was a guy sitting 10 seats down from me with an indian or pakistani apperance. I asked the cop "hey, that guy has a bag next to him and there is a funny smell", so for the remainder of the ride, it was the light brown guy who had a cock pressed up against him. Too bad the cop could not tell the difference between the smell of bomb making materials and a guy who ate curry at lunch. I am just glad they did not bring out the horny police dogs. The last thing I would have wanted to do was burry my head under a seat while the dog kept me "under control" for the half hour ride.
I am seeing a trend that cities are doing. They are installing tons of camera's, in the 1000's range. I think Chicago now has over 3000 camera's the police can use. I got a ticket in the mail a few weeks ago, it was a camera attached to a radar gun. They are removing people, and adding technology. Technology can't think, it can just do what it's programmed to do. And you are right, if terrorists knock out these systems, or hack them, then what? They will be watching us, controling our trains, and controling our electricity. Maybe law enforecement is making a honey pot, I dunno.
But I doubt terrorists would hack the system to hijack a train. They would just program them to run into each other at high speed. Terrorists don't care about stopping one train, they want to make people afraid to use the trains at all.
There is some psychological comfort of having a conductor. A conductor would force terrorists to come on the train, because if he saw an oncomming train on the same track, he could stop his train. It would take a boat load of osama's to hijack the train I would be on. Then the train passengers could get revenge for 9/11. But it would take one hacker to reprogram the train route and what tracks it uses.
Trains on this line no longer have conductors on board
I dunno about the rest of you, but I want a conductor on the train. Things like having a human look outside the train to make sure nobody is about to get on when the doors close, having someone on the train in case of an emergancy, having someone on the train that is a detterent to crime (just imagine, would a would-be rapist be more or less likely to rape a woman if a conductor was walking up and down the cars).
And part of me feels bad for the guy losing the job, the conductor.
Continue reading the news story:
To have a truly integrated system, the city would have to continue buying all its equipment from Siemens AG, effectively giving it a monopoly.
This also raises a red flag. One company that will in effect control the whole parts system? How can we know we won't get hosed with the price?
Even if they do autimate, lets keep the conductor. Someone who knows how the train runs. Someone who can over-ride the computers if needed. Every vessel needs her captin.
Plus, with the postal service, there are 1000's of laws in place. If I send you an offer through the mail designed to rip you off, that is a federal offense. You can't use the US Postal Service for illegal activities, if you do you get caught.
Remember the movie The Firm? They did not convict the lawyers for tax evasion or any other crime. They convicted them for mail fraud. And if you let the worst spammers know that each and every time they send a message that is spam, each instance will incur a penalty, that might stop them.
Spam is a form of communication. You can't have spam without some kind of communication (I would like a definition that inclused the telemarketers and all the shit I get in the mail). That is element 1. Spam is unwanted. It would not be spam to recieve something you requested. Spam comes from a hidden source, so you can't track who sent it. That would protect honest buisnesses from having their emails classified as spam. Maybe CompUSA sends me a 10% off coupon for a sale next month that I never asked for and did not want. But I know who they are, I have somewhere to complain, and if the abuse the emails, someone to sue. And the last part is you use your bandwith, or have some cost. Maybe another element of spam is one source sends out many copies of the same mail.
I don't undertsand this. On one hand, you have the police saying they can't track spammers. Spammers use drones, they remain hidden, they hide their tracks. On the other hand, if you unsubscribe, they know your email is a real one, and you get more spam. That tells me whoever runs the unsubscribe service is in cahoots with the spammer and is just as guilty. They have to know where to send their lists? Just track them as part of the war on spam.
Now, you can monitor how many e-mails are sent by a host. That would be a better way. At least there could be a filter on the "to:" line. If that list includes over say, 1000+ users, consistantly, then at least there could be some flags raised.
That is a good point. With my daily bandwith threshold test, I was thinking that if someone is uploading a very, very large daily avarage of bandwith, it might be a red flag. But if you can count the number of emails sent, that is even better.
I am wondering. Is there any way to force email to only run on 1 port, without any proxies, that all routers can then reject any other mail originating from any other port??
That also reminds me of another idea floating around. Charge $0.01 per email, or some very small amount of money, so that it does not harm the avarage computer user, but will eat up all the profits of a spammer.
No, Spam is easy to define, it is any unwanted emails. Name elements that make spam:
1) It is a form of communication
2) The communication is unwanted
3) The source of the communication is hidden
4) In recieving the communication, you use your bandwith or incur a cost
Also, force all ISP's to monitor how much bandwith a source has. If you get too much usage per day, say 200 megabytes or more, then that person has to explain why they need that much bandwith. If someone gets the RIAA on board, with their lobbyists, that should pass very quickly.
Also, force all email to have some element which identifies the source. Not just a header that can be forged, but something that can't be hacked. And if a source can not be found, but it is selling a product an identifiable site, charge that site just as if they were the ones sending the spam.
Since there is so much potential for abuse, I wonder if soon government will "wiretap" google, waiting for certain kinds of searches and then zeroing in the person who did the search. For example, what if some teen in highschool did a search for "anarchist cookbook". Would that be enough to have the police go talk with him, or watch him, or get a search warrent? What if they then find gasoline, and *gasp* styrofome cups in his garadge?? Can they charge him with conspiracy to make napalm? Or worse, what if I want a chem lab in my basement, do I have a right to it, to conduct my own research?
It would be like what the city of chicago is going. First they banned all guns in the city. Then they sued the gun manufacturers whenever a gun was used for a crime in their city limits. The City of Chicago argues "hey, we banned it, and you keep selling it to people who do illegal things in chicago, you have no safegaurds".
I wonder if there is a search engine out there that is opt-in only, does not link to spam or places that don't sell stuff but only link to places that sell (deceptivly I might add too). Maybe some search engine where users can moderate returns, like we do at slashdot. When you search for "baseball", with each hit you get to moderate how good of a search return it is. I have alot of ideas. Maybe I should not post them here, maybe I should talk to a patent lawyer first.
ah man, now all those passwords are dead.
They have enough engineers, they'll probably build one from scratch using an Apple IIe computer and pictures from magazines. And she'll take a shower with them, but the engineers will be too embarassed to take off their undewear in the shower.
Come to think of it, now it all makes sense. That is why they are trying to recreate life in the bio labs, all the early earth atmosphere tests. They want some pussy.
Damn crazy Cal Tech kids. What is next, filling a house with popcorn using solar rays??
By what rankings? They don't even come close to the University of Pen. I am too tired to spell the full name. You would be suprised where Berkeley ranks, I don't think it is above the University of Florida or University of Virginia.
I don't think Berkeley is the best public state school in California, that would probably be UCLA.
Heck, while we are at it, lets add Indiana University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan to the list of public universities that are more competitive than Berkeley.
I am not affiliated with any school. When I applied for colleges in the early 90's, I did not apply to either, although I did my research. MIT has been declining the past 20 years. Cal Tech is making a name for itself.
The only news out of MIT that I have read the past 2 years is kids getting drunk and dying. The news out of Cal Tech is they are playing with lasers and doing cool stuff.
MIT is at risk of becomming obsolete. 50 years ago Berkeley was a stud school. Today it is nothing special, no better than the University of Michigan or University of Texas. Berkeley rested on their laurels, and that is what MIT is doing.
To: All Admissions Staff
From: Director of Admissions
In order to continue fundraising, we have to admit 40% legacies that are shit for brains. They can't read or write, but their fathers have us on an allowance, and we want the money. Plus, without legacies, there would be nobody there to say "You got me again, you silly nerd!". The other 60% will be merit admission, with 30% comming from India. Please be mindful that engish is their second language, and some of them might feel more at home taking baths in the Boston River. The other 30% are American Chinese students. Unlike the other 70%, they know american grammer and spelling.
But feel good, at least we are not Harvard. There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Yeah, but the prospect of getting laid by a fellow nerd girl, that is much better than banging some loose sorority girl who puts as much thought into riding a guy as washing the dishes. Just going throught the motions. Now imagine a nerd girl, laughing through her nose when you tell her a joke, getting goosebumps when you touch her, one that has never been penetrated before. That is why the Cal Tech guys traveld 4,000+ miles to MIT. And anyone who knows anything about getting Nerd girls, knows there is a competition at the end that usually ends with synthasizer music and a robot dance.
MIT = Revenge of the Nerds
Cal Tech = Real Genius
Take your pick. Dance with bugger grabbing a moo-moo's ass, or have someone put a micro-speaker in your tooth and tell you "this is god, stop playing with yourself".
Ahhh... the highjinks of college life.
I remember meeting a kid from Cal-Tech, and to this day his impression remains with me. I have never met such a mix of intellect with insanity. He was working for the summer at Northwestern University, and I spent a couple days at his rented house (which a friend of mine from high school was renting with his girlfriend, there were 6 people living in this old house). Anyways, this guy had a pet spider, but not any spider, a black widow. And one night he wanted to cook for all of us. He boiled a big pot of water, Dropped in a head of chopped lettice, and two slices of american cheese. He then served it to us with so much pride. Later that night I broke out a huge jug of Vodka and a half gallon of OJ. We were making screwdrivers that were nearly see-through. After his first glass, he started crying about how he's never been with a woman. By his second glass, he was singing in chineese. He could not finish his third glass, he fell asleep on the floor right there. So the next morning we wake up, and I look in his fishtank, and the black widow is gone. I ask him what happened, and he said he felt bad for it and let it lose the night before. I asked where, and he said "I don't remember, maybe in your room" FUCK! I left that day, and never returned.
And it looks like that is the film where they got their prank ideas from, the laser lights. Too bad they did not have the frozen ice that turns directly to gas... maybe... or kaboom. I couldn't finish the equations last night so I don't know how volatile it is.
Truth be told, I am by no means a true programmer or power user anymore, it is not my vocation anymore, I got burned out by it. But I do know user speed, when you click on something how long it takes to complete the task. And I might want to run a web server, to replace my dual cpu PIII one day. Tomcat + JSP + too many users logged in at the same time to a web application = one very slow machine.
I would be interested in your opinion about something. Comparing the following two machines, can you tell me how the MAC would compare with speed? I don't do video editing, and that seems to be the niche that MAC's have.
Here are the machines:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=pe1800sapp&s=bsd
The first machine has two Intel 2.8ghz Xeon processors with 1meg Cache, 1 gigabyte of RAM, 80 gig hard drive. It is $1060.
Or:
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtm l?product_id=0182141
Apple Mac G5 with only 1 processor, 1.8 Ghz and only 512k L2 cache. It comes with 256 megs and a 80 gig hard drive. It is $1499. It is worth noting it has a 64 meg video card, the Dell has integrated video, but a card can be added. And the Apple has DVD-RW, the Dell has just a CD-Rom. There is also another Apple, a dual G5 with the same specs but it is $1999 (I take it that G5 processor is worth $500).
Which is the better machine? Which one is quicker? Even if I wanted to do video editing (which I don't, but who knows, one day I might).
Could you please provide a link to where you found a $200.00 dell.
They have a new sale every 4-5 days or so. The ~$200 PC was there, but not at this second. It will be back again.
Keep checking this page until the price gets to a sweet spot. Right now they swapped out the $200 price range for a processor upgrade (from celron 2.4ghz to P4 2.8ghz). That might not be worth the $100 in price difference. I dunno. I just know I have seen this machine in the $200 range, the SC series:
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category. aspx/servers?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
I went back to do a double take, and found this too, although I never looked at their home pc's, I stick with their servers. I know the quality of the servers, but not of the home desktop (2400), although it comes with Windows and has a 17" monitor for $299.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features. aspx/low_price_dimen?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
The trick with Dell is to check their small buisness website often. They sneak deals in there for 3 or 4 or 5 days, then switch offers. One week you might have a deal $200-$250, the next week you might miss that $100 rebate but get a processor upgrade, the next week they might take away the processor upgrade and double the RAM and hard drive storage. It changes all the time. I've seen some crazy offers there, AND free shipping. If you get lucky, you'll get the $200 with a second bonus like a processor upgrade.