worth some corporate raiders' time to finance a huge takeover and pay for it out of that pool of money
Do you think the owners of Google are stupid?
If Google has a large pile of cash, the negotiation floor for buying Google or taking it public is its cash on hand. (assuming they don't have any huge liabilities)
I have been searching for a device/linux software package that will "route" my internet traffic through either one of my 2 broadband (cable and DSL) connections intelligently.
This is steganography with the original image hidden in the steganography as well. Hence the term, "reversible data hiding." That way, not only does the current image hold the data you are sending, but you get a copy of the original image (before steganography) as well.
The fact that every poster so far hasn't seen this fact, is a disturbing reminder of what the average poster on slashdot has become.
does anyone have any suggestions as to where to go next?
Re:And why does the Linux matter?!
on
Penguin Airlines
·
· Score: 2
They've named their business and based much of their marketing on the fact that they use a particular computer operating system. This reads more like a tech-company pitch, not an airline pitch.
Linux is great and all, but I'd feel a little more comfortable knowing that the people behind the scenes are experts in something else, like, I don't know . . . FUCKING AIRPLANES?!
Mod parent up. Didn't we already learn our lesson when the.com bubble burst?
If a feature length film was shown on an IMAX screen, the studios and IMAX were probably looking the other way.
IMAX and the Hollywood studios don't want some hack to display regular film onto an IMAX sized screen. Its going to look bad, period. Even if you go to a multiplex that has a "very large screen" (General Cinema's Green Monster Screen in Boston, MA comes to mind) movies look like crap on it. Jittery and grainy.
However, IMAX and the Hollywood studios are waking up to the fact of revenue potential from full feature length films being shown on IMAX sized screens. Of course this must be done according to IMAX's brand level of quality. IMAX DMR represents the initiative to do get this done. The first feature length hollywood film to be shown with this technology will be Apollo 13. So if you think you have seen a movie with this technology and it wasn't Apollo 13 pre-screen and you were a member of the public when you saw it, then you are deluding yourself.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast represented an earlier "beta" generation of this technology. So if you saw that you get some idea.
Text of a press release follows:
Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and IMAX Corporation bring Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience to IMAX screens worldwide.
Apollo 13 tells the dramatic true story of the heroic actions needed to bring a three-astronaut crew safely back to Earth after the Apollo 13 space mission suffered catastrophic mechanical problems en route to the Moon. Made with NASA's collaboratioin, the highly-suspenseful film is scientifically and historically accurate. Apollo 13 features strong performances from the ensemble cast, led by Oscar®-winning actor Tom Hanks, and brilliant direction by Ron Howard, another Oscar winner. Apollo 13 will be digitally re-mastered into IMAX's 15/70 format using the revolutionary IMAX DMRTM technology.
Of course this still stinks compared to what's in Europe were you can often just pay one price per month and use it as much as you want and the only thing that can run out is the battery.
What are you smoking? Per minute charges for telecommunications services in Europe is par for the course. You may be thinking how if someone calls your cellphone (in Europe) they pay an elevated charge (above the normal landline to landline cost) to cover the costs of calling your mobile phone. So in many cases if you have people calling you they bear the extra costs for calling a mobile phone, so you can talk all day because only the person who initiates the call pays while the person who recieves the call does not.
Who provides unlimited mobile calling (outbound) for one flat monthly fee to the public? I'd be willing to bet noone.
"atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa [mensa.org] member. I have no toleranse for stupidity."
Intuition BEATS atrowe over the head with his Mensa card.
I have no TOLERANCE for your spelling errors in your sig.
I digress
"Our society is already far too full of bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary or unenforcable laws."
There is no bureaucratic red tape surrounding these laws. Send SPAM and you are liable to be sued. Explain to me exactly what red tape this law creates. No new goverment agencys, no red tape, no additional paperwork. nothing. All these laws do is internalize the costs of spamming to the spammer, much like anti-pollution laws do.
"Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon"
Anonymous Coward BEATS atrowe over the head with the Constitution of the United States.
and with the ceremony completed...
Hey card carrying mensa dude - The United States was founded with legislated free speech as core to our values. Maybe you have heard of the first amendment? Or perhaps you just live in China?
I too attended the conference
on
H2K2 Wrapup
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I finally bit the bullet, and attended H2K2. The speeches for anyone interested in these areas were altogether pretty much unimpressive for two reasons. First, the good reason, most of the speakers are very good at disseminating information over the internet - so if you had previous interest in any of these areas, and actively read the internet none of the information was not extraordinarily new. For example, the 802.11b presentation by dragorn, porkchop, and StAtic Fusion, was no more than a simple demonstration of various passive and active sniffers and a light overview of 802.11b technology.
So the first point is a good thing, information is available over the internet - no big suprises or insights available at the conference - however, someone looking for a casual introduction to many of these issues would of found the conference very interesting.
Second, and the bad part, most of the speakers were HORRIBLE god-awful nails on blackboard poor public speakers. There were a few gems, but thank god for the barely usable 802.11b network in the main track speakers room. Of course this comes from lack of experience, lack of often having an audience like this assemble, and lack of preparation. Some of these people should seriously look into how to "hack" an audience. For an example of a particularly bad one, is the speech on "The New FBI and How It Can Hurt You" by Mike Levine. This guy took one hour rambling about the dangers of the FBI and could barely get his point across, without needless rambling. He wasted the whole hour talking about the system where the DEA gives money to criminal informants in drug cases is horrible corrupt and dangerous - once even it almost resulted in his untimely demise. Not even one consideration from this guy as to what he was there for. For proof, amazingly he has a radio show on listener supported radio station WBAI in NY (where Emmanuel Goldstien, who I speculate has a large part in organizing the conference also has a radio show) with links to audio available here : Expert Witness Radio
Overall, I think your average/. reader would be unimpressed. But the people were cool and eccentric, and it was a fun time nevertheless.
As a side point I spent the whole weekend logging on and off of my AOL IM account and telneting to a linux box in the clear - just to see what would happen. So far, nothing.
Re:Spielberg annoys to the end
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 2
and worst of all, the constant need to explain every minor plot twist three times because Spielberg assumes (correctly?) that his audience is really quite stupid.
Karma or no karma I am going to have to second that.
So you say it won't shut down the "professional" spammer. As that is implied in my original arguement, I agree.
However, I contend further, it wont stop the "amateur" spammers either. All of the amateurs use some spam application that they probably have little idea of how it works, they just know that it does. Spam applications will be upgraded to defeat vipul's razor if it ever becomes popular. I will agree that it does add some extra computing cycles, but I think with a random word subsitution algorithm that relies on probability that the email won't be flagged as spam on the basis of existing signatures could be trivially implemented in linear time.
So to conclude if vipul's razor becomes popular, amateur spam application will contain simple algorithms to defeat it in close to linear time. Vipul's popularity will be its own undoing.
Vipul's razor uses something they call "Nilsimsa" fuzzy signatures.
The signatures are used to determine how "close" the email that your are testing is in content to known spam. The source code of this hashing algorithm is publically available.
If this network ever became a real problem for spammers, they will simply use word substitution algorithms or any other number of simple methods to change the email until the nilsimsa's signatures are not close enough to flag the email as spam.
This was the problem with Vipul's razor version 1.0, which was discussed on slashdot, and this remains the problem in Vipul's razor 2.0
I am saying that it is outside a system admins role to censor access to the internet - especially in a academic institution, and that decision should only be made by those in the administration or "upper management."
Never at any time, did I imply people should not do things because they weren't in their job description. I outlined an argument as to why it would be inappropriate for the sys admin to act in this matter. This argument never included things like dont work hard, or blame things on others, or dont do things that aren't recorded verbatim in your job description.
What is it about systems administration that makes people all high and mighty all of a sudden.
There are reasons that this administrator can't arbitrarily set policies or change things according to his own whim. Now, if his job was to set up initial access to the internet, perhaps it would of been more appropriate (but not completely) in so far as a exercising certain level of discretion in how the connection to the internet is structured (proxies/firewalls/etc/).
However, the system is in a steady state, and this administrator has no basis to change it. Its (in all likelyhood) not this administrator's job to manage legal liability or even determine if p2p applications are an appropriate use.
Just as teachers can't change their curriculms as they see fit, without some oversight by the administration - administrator's have no right to make these kinds of decisions based on "what they feel is best."
The administrator however is completely within the realm of what is right and proper to make an observation, (p2p is consuming all our resources), and share it with those people that are in a position to change policy. If you really feel p2p is this horrible, find some users who are affected by it (complain they can't use or their use is substantially affected by p2p traffic.) Bottom line is, if upper management doesn't care, you shouldn't either. Run the network with a hands off approach, much like slashdot does with its comments section. If there are technical problems fix them, if there are ethical problems save the decision making to the people whose responsibility it is to make these decisions.
Re:Already approaching from the wrong direction
on
64kbps @ 40,000 ft.
·
· Score: 2
The old analog phones interfered with the "fly-by-wire" communication with the tail of the plane.
I always wondered how a device transmitting with only 400mw of power "interferes with the plane's systems, but the 10-150 Watt transmission radio's that the pilots use themselves do not. Further, what about the 10,000 Watt antennas that they fly over?
If you look at the image of the letter you will see that they blocked out the address, but not the postnet barcode.
To my eyes the POSTNET barcode looks like this to me : (where t represents a tall bar and s a short one)
t ttsss sstst sstts stsst tssst ssstt ssstt sstst ststs sstst ststs tssts t
This decodes into 0 2 3 4 7 1 1 2 5 2 5 8.
which is ZIP+4+2: 02347-1125-25 Checksum 8
The way the POSTNET checksum value is given by (10-((Summation of all digits) Mod 10)). The total of our digits 02347112525 = 32... (10-(32 mod 10)) = 8. The checksum is valid and our decoding is probably successful.
Next step... head to the usps website to find that 02347 is in Lakeville, MA. Mind you, a ZIP+4+2 code in most cases is a unique address. However, the USPS is not going to make this easy for us.
Lets try our friend Google instead... searching for 02347-1125 give us the personal web site of Steve Douillette.
But how can we be sure that this is the letter Mr. Douillette recieved and diligently forwarded to godaddy to warn other customers? I wonder where Steve registered his domain name steve-d.com.
If you want to be anonymous, please be careful with what you post online.
Technically, it would be possible to create hashes for different pieces of the message, which can be combined in one single "signature" to detect potential matches. It would be more complicated for the catalogue server to execute searches, and the answers won't always be absolute (e.g. partial match).
You would have to define in advance what a "piece" of a message would consist of. Then the spammer simply puts the extra space, unique charachter, etc. in each "piece" of the message. Then, curiously, morzel is still receiving spams despite his/her modified spam blocking approach.
The central problem is whatever heuristic they use to define what a spam is, it has to be predefined and well known. This would imply the spammer would have knowledge of said heuristic and would be able to form his emails in such configuration as to avoid detection.
An AC has replied to your post as well suggesting a incomprehensible replacement which at one point says doing preprocessing on both the spam and the mail Ok, buddy and you are going to force the spammers to properly preprocess their mail so that it will get blocked by the mail server filter......right.
If you can force people to do preprocessing a much better (and comprehensible) solution is Hash cash Wherein you force each client to precompute a special value that is costly-enough in terms of CPU cycles to deter spamming. This value can be instantly verified by your client, mailserver, etc. and the email will be summarily dropped if the value is not of the costly-variety. Even if this value had to be checked by the recievers client itself, if a significant aamount of clients were configured not to display the email until the value was verified incentives for sending spam would drop. (hopefully to the point where the effort to send the spam outweighs the return to the spammer)
Razor catalogs spam by hashing the entire text of the message. Later potential spam is "detected" by hashing entire texts of messages to see if the hash matches any of the existing hashes in the spam catalog.
To get around this all a spammer has to do is change/add at least one charachter to each spam. This would make all the hashes unique and no spams would be detected.
From the pictures from the companies web site, it seems that the cycle is a unit separate from the chair you are sitting on that sits on the the floor with pedals sticking out. How you can apply force to the pedals without the unit sliding around, or from the angle you are sitting at - really be able to "workout" with the unit is hard for me to imagine.
To really be able to get a mediocre workout from an exercise cycle it must be solidly constructed and the "chair" and pedals must be one integrated unit. Think about how much abuse a controller takes just from your own fingers, this "cycle" just doesn't look like it could handle the kind of abuse a fragfest can generate.
I wish I had mod points because this is one of the most insightful/concise comments I have read on slashdot. I work in finance for one of the largest banks in the world, we make/arrange loans in the hundreds to billions of dollar range. Much of these hinge off what technology the suits are buying into.
Maybe you would like to see a picture of the author No? What about his wife Maxi..... or is it Lisa? If the first article wasn't deviod of any information, maybe you would like to read another penned by the same man. Of course the author has already changed his homepage to reflect the fact that his article was posted on slashdot.
As for Hastings Research : maybe you would like to see a sample of some of their other quality research. When have you ever heard a white paper draw a metaphor between market conditions and a glass being half full? But seriously they do have a six foot magnetic whiteboard to "prototype" their research. (they don't put rookies in center field either.) If you need to know they also provide a list of profitable web sites. (Look to the bottom of the page for their judicious use of "keywords" to help prop up their standing in search engine results.)
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think the owners of Google are stupid?
If Google has a large pile of cash, the negotiation floor for buying Google or taking it public is its cash on hand. (assuming they don't have any huge liabilities)
I have been searching for a device/linux software package that will "route" my internet traffic through either one of my 2 broadband (cable and DSL) connections intelligently.
Does anyone know of any solutions?
As of Sept 30, 2002 Yahoo had :
$319,319,000 Cash and Cash Equivalents
$936,534,000 Total Current Assets
$276,035,000 Accounts Payable
$420,386,000 Total Current Liabilities
The fact that every poster so far hasn't seen this fact, is a disturbing reminder of what the average poster on slashdot has become.
does anyone have any suggestions as to where to go next?
Linux is great and all, but I'd feel a little more comfortable knowing that the people behind the scenes are experts in something else, like, I don't know . . . FUCKING AIRPLANES?!
Mod parent up. Didn't we already learn our lesson when the
If a feature length film was shown on an IMAX screen, the studios and IMAX were probably looking the other way.
:
IMAX and the Hollywood studios don't want some hack to display regular film onto an IMAX sized screen. Its going to look bad, period. Even if you go to a multiplex that has a "very large screen" (General Cinema's Green Monster Screen in Boston, MA comes to mind) movies look like crap on it. Jittery and grainy.
However, IMAX and the Hollywood studios are waking up to the fact of revenue potential from full feature length films being shown on IMAX sized screens. Of course this must be done according to IMAX's brand level of quality. IMAX DMR represents the initiative to do get this done. The first feature length hollywood film to be shown with this technology will be Apollo 13. So if you think you have seen a movie with this technology and it wasn't Apollo 13 pre-screen and you were a member of the public when you saw it, then you are deluding yourself.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast represented an earlier "beta" generation of this technology. So if you saw that you get some idea.
Text of a press release follows
Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment and IMAX Corporation bring Apollo 13: The IMAX Experience to IMAX screens worldwide.
Apollo 13 tells the dramatic true story of the heroic actions needed to bring a three-astronaut crew safely back to Earth after the Apollo 13 space mission suffered catastrophic mechanical problems en route to the Moon. Made with NASA's collaboratioin, the highly-suspenseful film is scientifically and historically accurate. Apollo 13 features strong performances from the ensemble cast, led by Oscar®-winning actor Tom Hanks, and brilliant direction by Ron Howard, another Oscar winner. Apollo 13 will be digitally re-mastered into IMAX's 15/70 format using the revolutionary IMAX DMRTM technology.
What are you smoking? Per minute charges for telecommunications services in Europe is par for the course. You may be thinking how if someone calls your cellphone (in Europe) they pay an elevated charge (above the normal landline to landline cost) to cover the costs of calling your mobile phone. So in many cases if you have people calling you they bear the extra costs for calling a mobile phone, so you can talk all day because only the person who initiates the call pays while the person who recieves the call does not.
Who provides unlimited mobile calling (outbound) for one flat monthly fee to the public? I'd be willing to bet noone.
"atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa [mensa.org] member. I have no toleranse for stupidity."
Intuition BEATS atrowe over the head with his Mensa card.
I have no TOLERANCE for your spelling errors in your sig. I digress
"Our society is already far too full of bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary or unenforcable laws."
There is no bureaucratic red tape surrounding these laws. Send SPAM and you are liable to be sued. Explain to me exactly what red tape this law creates. No new goverment agencys, no red tape, no additional paperwork. nothing. All these laws do is internalize the costs of spamming to the spammer, much like anti-pollution laws do.
"Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon"
Anonymous Coward BEATS atrowe over the head with the Constitution of the United States.
and with the ceremony completed...
Hey card carrying mensa dude - The United States was founded with legislated free speech as core to our values. Maybe you have heard of the first amendment? Or perhaps you just live in China?
I finally bit the bullet, and attended H2K2. The speeches for anyone interested in these areas were altogether pretty much unimpressive for two reasons. First, the good reason, most of the speakers are very good at disseminating information over the internet - so if you had previous interest in any of these areas, and actively read the internet none of the information was not extraordinarily new. For example, the 802.11b presentation by dragorn, porkchop, and StAtic Fusion, was no more than a simple demonstration of various passive and active sniffers and a light overview of 802.11b technology.
/. reader would be unimpressed. But the people were cool and eccentric, and it was a fun time nevertheless.
So the first point is a good thing, information is available over the internet - no big suprises or insights available at the conference - however, someone looking for a casual introduction to many of these issues would of found the conference very interesting.
Second, and the bad part, most of the speakers were HORRIBLE god-awful nails on blackboard poor public speakers. There were a few gems, but thank god for the barely usable 802.11b network in the main track speakers room. Of course this comes from lack of experience, lack of often having an audience like this assemble, and lack of preparation. Some of these people should seriously look into how to "hack" an audience. For an example of a particularly bad one, is the speech on "The New FBI and How It Can Hurt You" by Mike Levine. This guy took one hour rambling about the dangers of the FBI and could barely get his point across, without needless rambling. He wasted the whole hour talking about the system where the DEA gives money to criminal informants in drug cases is horrible corrupt and dangerous - once even it almost resulted in his untimely demise. Not even one consideration from this guy as to what he was there for. For proof, amazingly he has a radio show on listener supported radio station WBAI in NY (where Emmanuel Goldstien, who I speculate has a large part in organizing the conference also has a radio show) with links to audio available here : Expert Witness Radio
Overall, I think your average
As a side point I spent the whole weekend logging on and off of my AOL IM account and telneting to a linux box in the clear - just to see what would happen. So far, nothing.
and worst of all, the constant need to explain every minor plot twist three times because Spielberg assumes (correctly?) that his audience is really quite stupid.
Karma or no karma I am going to have to second that.
However, I contend further, it wont stop the "amateur" spammers either. All of the amateurs use some spam application that they probably have little idea of how it works, they just know that it does. Spam applications will be upgraded to defeat vipul's razor if it ever becomes popular. I will agree that it does add some extra computing cycles, but I think with a random word subsitution algorithm that relies on probability that the email won't be flagged as spam on the basis of existing signatures could be trivially implemented in linear time.
So to conclude if vipul's razor becomes popular, amateur spam application will contain simple algorithms to defeat it in close to linear time. Vipul's popularity will be its own undoing.
The signatures are used to determine how "close" the email that your are testing is in content to known spam. The source code of this hashing algorithm is publically available.
If this network ever became a real problem for spammers, they will simply use word substitution algorithms or any other number of simple methods to change the email until the nilsimsa's signatures are not close enough to flag the email as spam.
This was the problem with Vipul's razor version 1.0, which was discussed on slashdot, and this remains the problem in Vipul's razor 2.0
I second the recommendation for :
PHP and MySQL Web Development
is a major section of the internet dark?
Your argument does not apply to this situation.
My quote was taken horribly out of context.
If you want a summary quote, heres one.
I am saying that it is outside a system admins role to censor access to the internet - especially in a academic institution, and that decision should only be made by those in the administration or "upper management."
Never at any time, did I imply people should not do things because they weren't in their job description. I outlined an argument as to why it would be inappropriate for the sys admin to act in this matter. This argument never included things like dont work hard, or blame things on others, or dont do things that aren't recorded verbatim in your job description.
What is it about systems administration that makes people all high and mighty all of a sudden.
There are reasons that this administrator can't arbitrarily set policies or change things according to his own whim. Now, if his job was to set up initial access to the internet, perhaps it would of been more appropriate (but not completely) in so far as a exercising certain level of discretion in how the connection to the internet is structured (proxies/firewalls/etc/).
However, the system is in a steady state, and this administrator has no basis to change it. Its (in all likelyhood) not this administrator's job to manage legal liability or even determine if p2p applications are an appropriate use.
Just as teachers can't change their curriculms as they see fit, without some oversight by the administration - administrator's have no right to make these kinds of decisions based on "what they feel is best."
The administrator however is completely within the realm of what is right and proper to make an observation, (p2p is consuming all our resources), and share it with those people that are in a position to change policy. If you really feel p2p is this horrible, find some users who are affected by it (complain they can't use or their use is substantially affected by p2p traffic.) Bottom line is, if upper management doesn't care, you shouldn't either. Run the network with a hands off approach, much like slashdot does with its comments section. If there are technical problems fix them, if there are ethical problems save the decision making to the people whose responsibility it is to make these decisions.
The old analog phones interfered with the "fly-by-wire" communication with the tail of the plane.
I always wondered how a device transmitting with only 400mw of power "interferes with the plane's systems, but the 10-150 Watt transmission radio's that the pilots use themselves do not. Further, what about the 10,000 Watt antennas that they fly over?
If you look at the image of the letter you will see that they blocked out the address, but not the postnet barcode.
To my eyes the POSTNET barcode looks like this to me : (where t represents a tall bar and s a short one)
t ttsss sstst sstts stsst tssst ssstt ssstt sstst ststs sstst ststs tssts t
This decodes into 0 2 3 4 7 1 1 2 5 2 5 8.
which is ZIP+4+2: 02347-1125-25 Checksum 8
The way the POSTNET checksum value is given by (10-((Summation of all digits) Mod 10)). The total of our digits 02347112525 = 32... (10-(32 mod 10)) = 8. The checksum is valid and our decoding is probably successful.
Next step... head to the usps website to find that 02347 is in Lakeville, MA. Mind you, a ZIP+4+2 code in most cases is a unique address. However, the USPS is not going to make this easy for us.
Lets try our friend Google instead... searching for 02347-1125 give us the personal web site of Steve Douillette.
But how can we be sure that this is the letter Mr. Douillette recieved and diligently forwarded to godaddy to warn other customers? I wonder where Steve registered his domain name steve-d.com.
If you want to be anonymous, please be careful with what you post online.
Technically, it would be possible to create hashes for different pieces of the message, which can be combined in one single "signature" to detect potential matches. It would be more complicated for the catalogue server to execute searches, and the answers won't always be absolute (e.g. partial match).
You would have to define in advance what a "piece" of a message would consist of. Then the spammer simply puts the extra space, unique charachter, etc. in each "piece" of the message. Then, curiously, morzel is still receiving spams despite his/her modified spam blocking approach.
The central problem is whatever heuristic they use to define what a spam is, it has to be predefined and well known. This would imply the spammer would have knowledge of said heuristic and would be able to form his emails in such configuration as to avoid detection.
An AC has replied to your post as well suggesting a incomprehensible replacement which at one point says doing preprocessing on both the spam and the mail Ok, buddy and you are going to force the spammers to properly preprocess their mail so that it will get blocked by the mail server filter......right.
If you can force people to do preprocessing a much better (and comprehensible) solution is
Hash cash Wherein you force each client to precompute a special value that is costly-enough in terms of CPU cycles to deter spamming. This value can be instantly verified by your client, mailserver, etc. and the email will be summarily dropped if the value is not of the costly-variety. Even if this value had to be checked by the recievers client itself, if a significant aamount of clients were configured not to display the email until the value was verified incentives for sending spam would drop. (hopefully to the point where the effort to send the spam outweighs the return to the spammer)
Razor catalogs spam by hashing the entire text of the message. Later potential spam is "detected" by hashing entire texts of messages to see if the hash matches any of the existing hashes in the spam catalog.
To get around this all a spammer has to do is change/add at least one charachter to each spam. This would make all the hashes unique and no spams would be detected.
What is wrong with ebay?
I find for more expensive items it is a good way to find some contacts. (rather than actually executing the sale)
Well, I think it would be pretty hard for someone to devise a scenario where :
a. some beings have reached the point (technologically, biologically, or otherwise) where they can recieve our message.
b. they "notice" our message as not standard electromagnetic emissions
c. they do not know anything about math
I think A or B implies not C.
From the pictures from the companies web site, it seems that the cycle is a unit separate from the chair you are sitting on that sits on the the floor with pedals sticking out. How you can apply force to the pedals without the unit sliding around, or from the angle you are sitting at - really be able to "workout" with the unit is hard for me to imagine.
To really be able to get a mediocre workout from an exercise cycle it must be solidly constructed and the "chair" and pedals must be one integrated unit. Think about how much abuse a controller takes just from your own fingers, this "cycle" just doesn't look like it could handle the kind of abuse a fragfest can generate.
I wish I had mod points because this is one of the most insightful/concise comments I have read on slashdot. I work in finance for one of the largest banks in the world, we make/arrange loans in the hundreds to billions of dollar range. Much of these hinge off what technology the suits are buying into.
As for Hastings Research : maybe you would like to see a sample of some of their other quality research. When have you ever heard a white paper draw a metaphor between market conditions and a glass being half full? But seriously they do have a six foot magnetic whiteboard to "prototype" their research. (they don't put rookies in center field either.) If you need to know they also provide a list of profitable web sites. (Look to the bottom of the page for their judicious use of "keywords" to help prop up their standing in search engine results.)
This is the worst article ever on slashdot.