I've talked to some Canadians and the majority of them are very paranoid about an invasion by the United States. Given our track record, I cannot totally blame them, although I recognize that it's pretty irrational from a political standpoint. I've also heard that Canada has some sort of contingency plan to get the help of the Chinese or Russians if we were to invade.
It's obvious to you and me that the idea of an American invasion is ridiculous but Canada has their tin-foil intelligence agencies just like we do.
I always felt like NetHack was sort of a virtual community. There were many denizens who weren't really people, but rather trolls and monsters and whatnot, but in a rudimentary sort of way it seems to fit the criteria for a virtual world.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nethack/
The older power3 chips (350 mhz) can compete with an intel 2.0 ghz chipset for our computations. However because alot of our stuff is very poorly written it caches to disk all of the time and the overall build of the rs6000 machines (and their more current versions) was best at managing the heavy throughput from the disk to fast memory. When we finally got our stuff to use a full 64 bit addressing system and we were able to use all of the fast memory that advantage vaporized for the rs6000 machines. Now the stuff we have on the intel machines runs circles around the very expensive power computers we have. The clock speed *was* in fact the "limiting reagent" in the computations when we used the large fast memory that 64 bits allowed us to use.
I'll just add to my previous comment that it was once widely believed that long wave radio signals propagate the longest distance, then for a while that idea was less well believed. But currently most ham radio guys will tell you that in fact this is the case (that long wave radio signals are less attenuated and are better for long distance communication.)
the main reason they still use short wave is the that some of "short wave" isn't so short... the frequencies that they use are the ones that carry long distances so that the origin of broadcast can be very far away from the agent. Also, the devices required to listen to particular frequencies can be made very small so that agents in difficult places can hide the devices. Finally and most importantly, the broadcast voice of the coded messages is distinctly American. Maybe another country could use the voice with an American accent but I don't see why it would be necessary. I think that the agency has faith in the quality of the method used to code the message. Voice messages were used throughout WWII without any enemy getting anywhere near breaking the codes.
Computer data requires equipment to receive and decode, even if it just a laptop. Short wave requires only a receiver that can be made almost arbitrarily small and can therefore be ditched or hidden in an emergency.
I'm not sure what you are talking about; but yes I understand your cynicism over what I reported. It does seem unlikely but what I reported is accurate. The NPR story is how I figured out where the messages might be coming from.
If you have a cheap short wave radio, even a "radio shack" one, you can pick up voice audio coded messages to spies that the CIA sends to agents. You will only find them by pure chance, but I have managed to find them and record them but I would say that for every 6 or 8 months of listening to short wave radio I will hear only 1 of these broadcasts. It's usually the same female voice. It's great fun when you find one, you feel like you hit the lottery.
There was some speculation that various 'political entities' were paying people small amounts to go on the yahoo news boards and perpetuate this or that agenda. I find it unlikely, but I wonder if anyone knows anything more about that. One thing that people haven't mentioned here is that the flame wars on yahoo news discussion boards were extremely entertaining and probably more intense than anything i've seen on usenet because of the short delay in the time it would take for a message to post.
And the offtopic discussions were not surprising because there is only so much you can say about something like uncountable civilian deaths in Iraq and the like.
The funny thing is that I really wanted to use windows. Their development tools are good but I cannot use them because they just don't support the languages we use which are fortran, perl and shell scripting.
Slashdot Mirror
somone should mod this comment up. It's been the best comment on this "ask slashdot."
I've talked to some Canadians and the majority of them are very paranoid about an invasion by the United States. Given our track record, I cannot totally blame them, although I recognize that it's pretty irrational from a political standpoint. I've also heard that Canada has some sort of contingency plan to get the help of the Chinese or Russians if we were to invade.
It's obvious to you and me that the idea of an American invasion is ridiculous but Canada has their tin-foil intelligence agencies just like we do.
There was a gimmicky sign left by the pillars of creation:
If you lived in the Eagle Nebula, you'd be destroyed by now.
I thought Bran Castle was just the grown up version of Count Chocula cereal!
I don't understand the phrase "fiber to the home."
I always felt like NetHack was sort of a virtual community. There were many denizens who weren't really people, but rather trolls and monsters and whatnot, but in a rudimentary sort of way it seems to fit the criteria for a virtual world. http://sourceforge.net/projects/nethack/
The older power3 chips (350 mhz) can compete with an intel 2.0 ghz chipset for our computations. However because alot of our stuff is very poorly written it caches to disk all of the time and the overall build of the rs6000 machines (and their more current versions) was best at managing the heavy throughput from the disk to fast memory. When we finally got our stuff to use a full 64 bit addressing system and we were able to use all of the fast memory that advantage vaporized for the rs6000 machines. Now the stuff we have on the intel machines runs circles around the very expensive power computers we have. The clock speed *was* in fact the "limiting reagent" in the computations when we used the large fast memory that 64 bits allowed us to use.
err
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
Remember this?
How can you have any meat if you don't eat your pudding?
Jimmy Hoffa.
I'll just add to my previous comment that it was once widely believed that long wave radio signals propagate the longest distance, then for a while that idea was less well believed. But currently most ham radio guys will tell you that in fact this is the case (that long wave radio signals are less attenuated and are better for long distance communication.)
the main reason they still use short wave is the that some of "short wave" isn't so short... the frequencies that they use are the ones that carry long distances so that the origin of broadcast can be very far away from the agent. Also, the devices required to listen to particular frequencies can be made very small so that agents in difficult places can hide the devices. Finally and most importantly, the broadcast voice of the coded messages is distinctly American. Maybe another country could use the voice with an American accent but I don't see why it would be necessary. I think that the agency has faith in the quality of the method used to code the message. Voice messages were used throughout WWII without any enemy getting anywhere near breaking the codes.
Computer data requires equipment to receive and decode, even if it just a laptop. Short wave requires only a receiver that can be made almost arbitrarily small and can therefore be ditched or hidden in an emergency.
Ham radio builders and ham radio operators are very numerous and short wave will always be their domain.
http://www.arrl.org/
I'm not sure what you are talking about; but yes I understand your cynicism over what I reported. It does seem unlikely but what I reported is accurate. The NPR story is how I figured out where the messages might be coming from.
If you have a cheap short wave radio, even a "radio shack" one, you can pick up voice audio coded messages to spies that the CIA sends to agents. You will only find them by pure chance, but I have managed to find them and record them but I would say that for every 6 or 8 months of listening to short wave radio I will hear only 1 of these broadcasts. It's usually the same female voice. It's great fun when you find one, you feel like you hit the lottery.
I'm guessing the write up in Nature will be brief. It may, in fact, be as short as this: OH SHIT.
There was some speculation that various 'political entities' were paying people small amounts to go on the yahoo news boards and perpetuate this or that agenda. I find it unlikely, but I wonder if anyone knows anything more about that.
One thing that people haven't mentioned here is that the flame wars on yahoo news discussion boards were extremely entertaining and probably more intense than anything i've seen on usenet because of the short delay in the time it would take for a message to post.
And the offtopic discussions were not surprising because there is only so much you can say about something like uncountable civilian deaths in Iraq and the like.
In a related case from Texas, a judge ruled not against deep linking, but against deep thinking.
The funny thing is that I really wanted to use windows. Their development tools are good but I cannot use them because they just don't support the languages we use which are fortran, perl and shell scripting.
lol
Didn't think of it that way.
oh, my mom uses windows. I guess she's in the target slashdot audience.
I have 8 co-workers and not one of them uses windows. It just isn't relevant. Why would you think that I'm not being serious?
mod parent up