Anybody who is morally-straight and nazi-ish enough to develop this stuff couldn't possibly test it on the real thing, because it would violate their beliefs.
Why not? The people who ran the Spanish Inquisition seemed to have a detailed working knowledge of witchcraft and other (supposed) heresies, without violating their beliefs.
And since humans are closely related to other mammals, I guess we can't have opposible thumbs.
You may not have noticed the word "probably" in my post above. You are correct in stating that closely related organism can evolve in different ways. However, I believe (in evolutionary terms) it's a lot easier to turn a finger into a thumb than to spontaneously grow a second heart. (Biologists, please correct me if I'm wrong.) I won't say that it's impossible, though.
I would think it would be harder to hold their neck straight out rather than up.
If I remember my sauropod biology correctly, these critters had a system of tendons acting as kind of a brace on the lower neck. Also, the long tail acted as a kind of counterbalance, so that the effort needed to hold their heads horizontally was minimal.
Now, what was the point of having long necks if they weren't going to hold them high? No idea. I think Robert Bakker once suggested that some sauropods could use their tails as defensive weapons, so maybe the point of having longs necks was actually to counterbalance the tail.
Finally, depending on whom you talk to (grammar?), dinosaurs were pretty close to either birds or reptiles in biology, so they probably didn't have extra hearts.
The idea behind the 666 mark is that there is something about accepting the "mark" that explicity means that you reject your religion in taking it.
IANATheologian, but the number 666 has an interesting etymology. The number 7 is used several times in the Bible as a symbol of completeness. ("How many times should I forgive my brother?" "Seventy times seven.") In the early parts of Revalation, God is associated several times with the number 7, so in a sense, it's a "holy" number, at least for the duration of the book.
Now God is sometimes referred to (by Christians, anyway) as the Trinity: Father, Son, Spirit. So you could make a case for 777 being a holy number. Since 6 is one less than 7, it carries a sort of "less-than-holy" connotation. Therefore, the number 666 is vaguely blasphemous.
At least, that's what I remember from Sunday school. I have a history of being way, way off.
You know, when I previewed this post, the anchor was properly contained (i.e. it stopped at the ".)"). It looks like either (a) Slash stripped my "</A>", or (b) I'm going blind. Anyone had any similar experiences?
Good question. Answer: the tr/// operator doesn't interpolate its arguments. So "tr/$from/$to/" just takes "$" to "$", "f" to "t", and "r" to "o". I tried it your way at first, and was very confused for a while. The perlop(1) man page cleared things up.
Look, this is a capitalist system. If the product doesn't work, people will stop buying it. That's how things get fixed.
For the sake of example, imagine an automobile which, when struck in just such a way, explodes. Now suppose that it's illegal for any consumer watchdog groups to say, "These cars will explode if such-and-such happens." You are correct in asserting that sales of these cars would probably eventually slow down or even stop. However, almost certainly there would be some lives lost in the process.
Suppose now that it becomes illegal to publish exploits. You have an analogous situation where consumers stand to be damaged, perhaps not in a physical manner, but in terms of money, time, reputation, etc.
I hope this analogy is clear. I'm hopped up on cough medicine right now.
How many people walk around the record store looking for new stuff? I would think hardly no-one, since everyone there is going to find something they've allready heard or an artist they allready follow.
We exist, but we're pretty rare.
Seriously, though, I do exactly that on a semi-regular basis. Here's the typical procedure I follow:
Browse around the record store.
Find something that looks intriguing.
Write down the artist/title.
Napster.
If I like it, I go back the next day and buy the CD. Otherwise I delete the files.
I realize this is a reasonably involved procedure, but I've found some really, really great bands this way. (For example, the Old 97's... it's hard to get good country music in Boston.)
Re:Throw-away accounts won't save you
on
Anonymity
·
· Score: 1
So you're advocating security-through-obscurity, then? That's certainly contrary to prevailing slashdot wisdom.
True enough, but that's not what's being talked about here. Rather than claiming perfect security, Cire LePueh/Johnath are describing an effective deterrent. (I think... I have a history of wildly missing the point.)
For example, I have recently been looking for a metal lock-box in which to put my financial records. All the boxes I've found so far are big "super-boxes", fireproof, waterproof, combination-locaked, immobile. This is far to fancy for me, as I'm not really looking to prevent them from being destroyed or stolen. I just want to keep my friends from snooping around my records. All I want is a small metal box that locks. That way, when my friends find it, they can try to pull it open with their hands, or try to jimmy the lock, or play kickball with it for a while. As long as the lock lasts longer than their attention spans, it has acted as a sufficiently good deterrent.
Now, if someone really wants those records, they can just swipe the box and attack it with a Sawzall. But I'm not really concerned about that.
Similarly, enough "anonymous" layers of protection will act as a sufficiently good deterrent for most casual snoopers, although they'd be useless against a Terminator-level spook.
The more I hear about domain name-related problems like this, the more I'm convinced that a single database of "official" domain names is just a bad idea. Several people on/. have suggested a scheme of competing domain name databases, with users choosing which service they wish to subscribe to. (Sorry about the grammar.)
Network Solutions is either (a) purposely overstepping their bounds here, or (b) incompetent. Whichever the case, the problem would be solved by competing databases; people could simply avoid using Network Solutions's db.
Of course, you can make your own "database" by simply editing your/etc/hosts file, but I think it would quickly become unwieldy. Unless you write a utility to manage it...
People get used to the luxuries [X] and start to regard them as necessities.
About a year ago at this time, I made a statement, in front of several witnessess...
"The only reason I use X at all is so I can have an Emacs with more than 24 lines."
(This actually led to an interesting argument over text-mode fonts, but that's beside the point.) I was completely serious. I didn't have Linux on my PC yet, I was just using it on my laptop, and X was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary for anything I wanted to do, not to mention the fact that it's incredibly slow to load when I'm using battery power (on airplanes, etc.). But then I found an X application that I couldn't live without.
kcribbage
Yes, the reason I ever started using X regularly was just so that I could play kcribbage. It's like some sort of... fiend in control of my brain. *sigh* I wish I was obsessed with a cool game.
For the same reason that GNU Emacs and XEmacs today co-exist with no half-GNU half-X (jeez, this analogy sucks) Emacs roaming the land... both evolved from a common ancestor which is now extinct. Not every species gets to survive.
I found this comment particularly interesting, because last night I found myself discussing Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama with a couple of friends. The book describes two methods of surviving meteorite, uh, attacks: anti-meteor defense systems and colonalization. I would imagine that, technologically, we're closer to having the former, but colonization is the far more important problem, since that will ultimately affect our survival as a species.
On the other hand, the universe itself will become uninhabitable in, what, a few dozen billion years? Help me out, cosmologists.
Once, the company I worked for was swallowed whole by its largest competitor. The main effect that this had was to generate a seemingly endless number of company-wide meetings. My friends and I played a game where we took notepads to the meetings and wrote down all the words that were used, which we'd never heard before except from Dilbert. It was fun for a while, but after I filled up my first sheet of paper, it was just sad.
If anyone here reads Nukees, they may remember that the current storyline revolves around one of the characters patenting energy use. (And then unleashing a horrific army of lawyers... brrrr.)
It's been a while since physics class for me too, but IIRC, gravity decreases as the square of distance. So with 27 times the mass, but 3 times the distance (to the center of the planet), you'd weigh 27/(3*3)=3 times as much.
A while ago, when I was living with a couple of friends and using Sprint, MCI was pestering us constantly. We used to get at least one call per night from them, sometimes more. Asking them politely to stop calling us did nothing.
One day my roommate got fed up. The next time MCI called, he explained to them, "I do not want to switch to MCI. I will never switch to MCI. If MCI were the last long-distance company on earth, I would write all my messages down on paper and send them by pony express."
They stopped calling after that. I don't know exactly what the moral of this little experience is.
Point taken, although I still believe that rate is a bit high. The USDoJ website states
If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 persons (5.1%) will serve time in a prison during their lifetime. - http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm
But I'm going to have to agree with you that incarceration rates are ludicrous. I found this table (also from the USDoJ website) to be particularly chilling.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not? The people who ran the Spanish Inquisition seemed to have a detailed working knowledge of witchcraft and other (supposed) heresies, without violating their beliefs.
But then, you weren't expecting that, were you?
You may not have noticed the word "probably" in my post above. You are correct in stating that closely related organism can evolve in different ways. However, I believe (in evolutionary terms) it's a lot easier to turn a finger into a thumb than to spontaneously grow a second heart. (Biologists, please correct me if I'm wrong.) I won't say that it's impossible, though.
If I remember my sauropod biology correctly, these critters had a system of tendons acting as kind of a brace on the lower neck. Also, the long tail acted as a kind of counterbalance, so that the effort needed to hold their heads horizontally was minimal.
Now, what was the point of having long necks if they weren't going to hold them high? No idea. I think Robert Bakker once suggested that some sauropods could use their tails as defensive weapons, so maybe the point of having longs necks was actually to counterbalance the tail.
Finally, depending on whom you talk to (grammar?), dinosaurs were pretty close to either birds or reptiles in biology, so they probably didn't have extra hearts.
IANATheologian, but the number 666 has an interesting etymology. The number 7 is used several times in the Bible as a symbol of completeness. ("How many times should I forgive my brother?" "Seventy times seven.") In the early parts of Revalation, God is associated several times with the number 7, so in a sense, it's a "holy" number, at least for the duration of the book.
Now God is sometimes referred to (by Christians, anyway) as the Trinity: Father, Son, Spirit. So you could make a case for 777 being a holy number. Since 6 is one less than 7, it carries a sort of "less-than-holy" connotation. Therefore, the number 666 is vaguely blasphemous.
At least, that's what I remember from Sunday school. I have a history of being way, way off.
You know, when I previewed this post, the anchor was properly contained (i.e. it stopped at the ".)"). It looks like either (a) Slash stripped my "</A>", or (b) I'm going blind. Anyone had any similar experiences?
Noooooooo! Stay far away from him. It's Sinistar!
Run, coward, run!
(From http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F11.html.)
Homer: [gasps] Look at these low, low prices on famous brand-name electronics!
Bart: Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs.
Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.
Good question. Answer: the tr/// operator doesn't interpolate its arguments. So "tr/$from/$to/" just takes "$" to "$", "f" to "t", and "r" to "o". I tried it your way at first, and was very confused for a while. The perlop(1) man page cleared things up.
Alright, I'll bite.
$from = "a-z A-Z1-90~\\`!\@#\$\%^\&*()_\\-+={[}]:;\\\"\\',<.>?\ \/|";
$to = "~\\`!\@#\$\%^\&*()_\\-+={[}]:;\\\"\\'<, |.?\\/1-90a-ln-zA-H" . chr(241) . "I-Z~";
while (<>) { eval "tr/$from/$to/"; print }
Notice how both "a" and "|" get mapped to "~", and nothing gets mapped to "m" or ">". Interesting... I think I'm missing one or two more, as well.
(I wish Slash let me use <PRE>. This formatting sucks.)
For the sake of example, imagine an automobile which, when struck in just such a way, explodes. Now suppose that it's illegal for any consumer watchdog groups to say, "These cars will explode if such-and-such happens." You are correct in asserting that sales of these cars would probably eventually slow down or even stop. However, almost certainly there would be some lives lost in the process.
Suppose now that it becomes illegal to publish exploits. You have an analogous situation where consumers stand to be damaged, perhaps not in a physical manner, but in terms of money, time, reputation, etc.
I hope this analogy is clear. I'm hopped up on cough medicine right now.
We exist, but we're pretty rare.
Seriously, though, I do exactly that on a semi-regular basis. Here's the typical procedure I follow:
I realize this is a reasonably involved procedure, but I've found some really, really great bands this way. (For example, the Old 97's... it's hard to get good country music in Boston.)
True enough, but that's not what's being talked about here. Rather than claiming perfect security, Cire LePueh/Johnath are describing an effective deterrent. (I think... I have a history of wildly missing the point.)
For example, I have recently been looking for a metal lock-box in which to put my financial records. All the boxes I've found so far are big "super-boxes", fireproof, waterproof, combination-locaked, immobile. This is far to fancy for me, as I'm not really looking to prevent them from being destroyed or stolen. I just want to keep my friends from snooping around my records. All I want is a small metal box that locks. That way, when my friends find it, they can try to pull it open with their hands, or try to jimmy the lock, or play kickball with it for a while. As long as the lock lasts longer than their attention spans, it has acted as a sufficiently good deterrent.
Now, if someone really wants those records, they can just swipe the box and attack it with a Sawzall. But I'm not really concerned about that.
Similarly, enough "anonymous" layers of protection will act as a sufficiently good deterrent for most casual snoopers, although they'd be useless against a Terminator-level spook.
The more I hear about domain name-related problems like this, the more I'm convinced that a single database of "official" domain names is just a bad idea. Several people on /. have suggested a scheme of competing domain name databases, with users choosing which service they wish to subscribe to. (Sorry about the grammar.)
Network Solutions is either (a) purposely overstepping their bounds here, or (b) incompetent. Whichever the case, the problem would be solved by competing databases; people could simply avoid using Network Solutions's db.
Of course, you can make your own "database" by simply editing your /etc/hosts file, but I think it would quickly become unwieldy. Unless you write a utility to manage it...
Well. I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend.
About a year ago at this time, I made a statement, in front of several witnessess...
(This actually led to an interesting argument over text-mode fonts, but that's beside the point.) I was completely serious. I didn't have Linux on my PC yet, I was just using it on my laptop, and X was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary for anything I wanted to do, not to mention the fact that it's incredibly slow to load when I'm using battery power (on airplanes, etc.). But then I found an X application that I couldn't live without.
kcribbage
Yes, the reason I ever started using X regularly was just so that I could play kcribbage. It's like some sort of... fiend in control of my brain. *sigh* I wish I was obsessed with a cool game.
For the same reason that GNU Emacs and XEmacs today co-exist with no half-GNU half-X (jeez, this analogy sucks) Emacs roaming the land... both evolved from a common ancestor which is now extinct. Not every species gets to survive.
Doh. I didn't read Verteiron's comment ; before posting this. My bad. -1, Redundant.
I found this comment particularly interesting, because last night I found myself discussing Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama with a couple of friends. The book describes two methods of surviving meteorite, uh, attacks: anti-meteor defense systems and colonalization. I would imagine that, technologically, we're closer to having the former, but colonization is the far more important problem, since that will ultimately affect our survival as a species.
On the other hand, the universe itself will become uninhabitable in, what, a few dozen billion years? Help me out, cosmologists.
*COUGH* fossil record *COUGH*
This is ever-so-slightly OT but...
Once, the company I worked for was swallowed whole by its largest competitor. The main effect that this had was to generate a seemingly endless number of company-wide meetings. My friends and I played a game where we took notepads to the meetings and wrote down all the words that were used, which we'd never heard before except from Dilbert. It was fun for a while, but after I filled up my first sheet of paper, it was just sad.
If anyone here reads Nukees, they may remember that the current storyline revolves around one of the characters patenting energy use. (And then unleashing a horrific army of lawyers... brrrr.)
It's been a while since physics class for me too, but IIRC, gravity decreases as the square of distance. So with 27 times the mass, but 3 times the distance (to the center of the planet), you'd weigh 27/(3*3)=3 times as much.
A while ago, when I was living with a couple of friends and using Sprint, MCI was pestering us constantly. We used to get at least one call per night from them, sometimes more. Asking them politely to stop calling us did nothing.
One day my roommate got fed up. The next time MCI called, he explained to them, "I do not want to switch to MCI. I will never switch to MCI. If MCI were the last long-distance company on earth, I would write all my messages down on paper and send them by pony express."
They stopped calling after that. I don't know exactly what the moral of this little experience is.
Point taken, although I still believe that rate is a bit high. The USDoJ website states
But I'm going to have to agree with you that incarceration rates are ludicrous. I found this table (also from the USDoJ website) to be particularly chilling.
Can you please quote your source for this statistic? I find it a little difficult to believe. Thanks.
Bridge on the River Kwai and Scrooge.