It's kinda like a turkey in the rain. It gets hit on the head by a drop of water and looks up. As it looks up water drops run down its nasal passages. It continues this strange curiosity til it drowns.
As someone who worked on farms where they raised turkeys I had never noticed large heaps of dead turkey carcasses when it rained. But perhaps this happens with wild turkeys which would make survival in the wild a short experience. So I looked it up.
In Schmidt's piece, he used the word 'journalism' once:
I believe it also requires a change of tone in the debate, a recognition that we all have to work together to fulfill the promise of journalism in the digital age.
Don't ever kid yourself that journalism will die. It's certainly changing but the thing that might die is the old model of power structures and funding around journalism. Journalists will still do reporting and writing for a monetary sum. The channels where that money comes from are rapidly changing ('rapidly' is relative to how historically slow change has been in this world). This friction is creating the death throes of (most) companies involved as money makers in the traditional channels.
It's change, it's probably for the better (as Schmidt notes) but one thing's for sure: it's unavoidable. Adapt or die.
One more thing:
Eric Schmidt has an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ (ironic, that)
Never forget that Murdoch still sells eyeballs--at all costs. If it meant betraying a political party or betraying his core values or even displaying another side of the debate, he's here for one thing: money. What we see in the op-ed piece is actually one of the few positive effects of Murdoch's greed. I offer him my rare applause if he had anything to do with this being printed in the WSJ although I'm certain the WSJ printed it to generate revenue and he merely approved of it.
Stately, plump eldavojohn came down from the stairhead to his mom's basement, bearing a bowl of frito lays on which a slim jim and a twizzler lay crossed. A yellowed mooninites shirt, unwashed, was sustained gently behind him on the mild air duct gust. He sat down at his computer monitor and read the Slashdot response to his post:
—Good post.
Halted, he peered down the glowing LCD monitor and read further:
—Is this a parody of some text that I don't recognize?
Solemnly he leaned forward and set his fingers to the keyboard...
Obligatory Google is awesome thread of the week....
Google has become so awesome that even the best and brightest aren't good enough to work there. The Google campus is vacant and empty, everyone gone home after being let go for failing to be awesome enough. And yet, money magically keeps rolling in... to whom though? Nobody.
This was apparent in the latest recruitment meeting at my alma mater where a Google server was given 30 minutes to recruit an auditorium full of computer science majors. Well, the Microsoft, HP, Oracle, etc reps gave long speeches and only gave the Google server five minutes to give its speech. It rolled down one end of the stage and leaned over the crowd, silent. It rolled down the other end of the stage and leaned over the crowd, silent. It spent the next few minutes in a monolithic standstill while the whole room waited on bated breath, edge of their seats, dying to know what awesome numbers were being computed and crunched inside the career giver.
The server turned around and shot a laser out at the curtain behind it... burning in binary these words, "I scanned everyone's DNA in this room and decided it was not worth my time as only 0.1483 of you are worthy of working for Google."
Let me tell you, I have never seen a recruitment booth so full of applicants.
Writing documentation is hard work and is boring. It is also thankless.
Amen. But, believe it or not there are people out there looking to assist open source by doing tech/doc writing for it. The comments in that thread have some really good resources if anyone out there is in total despair or is curious how they can help out open source documentation. I probably should have linked to that in the summary but my submissions have been way too link heavy lately.
Since you're not a botanist (nor am I) how do you know what garlic looked like 600 years ago?
Well, here's an illustration from the 15th century. Notice any bulbous feature that is lacking in the Voynich sketch? Notice they don't even bother to depict the root system in the 15th century sketch unlike the Voynich. My point was, not a single one of those plants relayed the distinguishing features you would obvious take care to note on the plant--all she offers is the leaf of stachys that has a hilarious tuber below it in the Voynich sketch but nothing in her botanical book! An obvious stretch of the imagination is the rose bush with no roses.
When corn was first cultivated, it looked like what we call "baby corn" today. It wasn't until centuries of selection and cross-breeding that we got the much larger corn that everyone knows.
I'm not sure where you found information that plants have changed dramatically in a few hundred years. While it's true that they have changed dramatically over thousands of years and since the advent of agriculture, 600 years is not the same as 6,000 years. While you're kind of right that thousands of years changed plants, I assure you that most if not all of today's plants look the same as they did 600 years ago.
perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words.
Then why does she only offer up a single page of plants as decoded anagrams? What about the other ~199 pages? What about the pages of block text?
More importantly, why does the Voynich Manuscript flip between things derived from plants like gallic acid, oil and then return to naming the plants? Furthermore, I call the labeling of the plants to be absolute complete bullshit. Yes, I said it. I'm not a botanist but I grew up on a farm and I know many of these plants very well and I can't tell any distinguishing characteristics apart from the drawings. This is what a garlic plant looks like. Not like this. I mean, come on! Did Edith Sherwood ever stop to think that maybe -- similar to numerology in The Bible -- she'd be able to make words out of any strange text regardless of its true origin?
Here's a real gem:
This brief sentence indicated that the use of anagrams should be investigated. This was further supported by reading Wikipedia’s report that anagrams were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and that some 17th century astronomers, while engaged in verification of their discoveries, used anagrams to hide their ideas.
You found that on Wikipedia? Call Yale University, you've decoded it. Citing Wikipedia for a fact while analyzing centuries old manuscripts? Why you bother to put PhD after you name bewilders me.
This is the game that will be played with the Voynich Manuscript. Every so often people will claim to have 'decoded it' by offering up a small part of the manuscript which very imaginative minds have pulled together 10+ very very flimsy clues that point to some individual. The fact that there are so many coincidences will add weight to it being the real explanation. But it oddly won't work for 99% of the manuscript. Now if the manuscript is ever decoded, a hell of a lot more than two pages is going to make sense. In fact, when someone figures it out, 99% of the manuscript will make sense.
If you want my theory, we're dealing with an unknown autistic artist's work. Someone lost in a period of time where autism was misunderstood and they are forever lost to anonymity except they'll get the last laugh because we'll never understand what message they were trying to get to us. And some of us might go mad spending hours and hours and hours trying to figure this out with no luck.
As the submitter, yeah I have to admit it kind of was. This is a really unique opportunity for a case against CoS because normally the cases come from outsiders.
Lindstein was eight years old and says he was forced to work for 16 years. He was removed from school at age 12. Now, if you were removed from school at age 12, you probably aren't very well suited for a high paying job. So you have someone who's lost much of their youth to Scientology and has the motivation to see this suit through to the end.
You see, when you sue or slander Scientology, you might not realize what you're getting yourself into. People end up doing jail for posting verbal attacks on Scientology online. To quote the late L. Ron Hubbard on his policy:
This is the correct procedure: Spot who is attacking us. Start investigating them promptly for felonies or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies. Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them. Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.
* "Attacks on Scientology" (25 February 1966)
That's what you're dealing with. That's what Lindstein has in his future. He probably knows it, his lawyer probably knows it. But he will soon be subjected to character assassination, harassment of just barely legal amounts, indirect threats and the same for any family he may have.
So yeah, I'm a pleasantly surprised that such an opportune individual has stepped forward to speak and let us know what Scientology is. Because in so many other cases, the individual has been silenced one way or another. And scientology has refined it's processes to force its members quiet and they have the resources and legal representation to make magic happen in the courts.
I hope Lindstein is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I wish him the best of luck in the courtroom and for justice to be brought against those who forced him into labor and stripped him of his right to knowledge.
And what are they even having them do in these camps, build the theta monitors?
From the Infinite Complacency Link:
At 12, he was “deemed finished with schooling” and Golden Era Productions, an unincorporated division of Church of Scientology International (CSI) hired him as a messenger and errand boy.
But in 1997, at the age of 15, he was demoted to the post of dishwasher. “He worked 16-hour days cleaning pots, pans and the dining facilities,” says the lawsuit.
And soon afterwards, he was assigned to do construction at the base near Hemet, California.
So the answer to your question is messenger, dish washer then construction worker. I mean, why use all the money you take from your followers to hire people to do this work when you can force the followers to do it for less or even free? L Ron Hubbard's Get Rich Quick Scam is yet another valid title for Scientology.
A word of caution: Congressman King has been known to make inflammatory and unpopular statements.
Word of caution my ass. Every congressman says dopey things that someone finds inflammatory and unpopular. Why is it pointed out here so specifically? How about leaving the bullshit sniping behind when posting the summaries there, kdawson?
I take full responsibility for that statement and the YouTube links. kdawson's actions were only the inaction of removing it in the editorial process (I'm sure I'll be made fun of for using that phrase about Slashdot). Anyway, the point I was trying to make was simply to be cautious... because he's a politician, not because he's affiliated with some party. Any politician that gets up there at some point (the Michael Jackson video especially) and says crap for the sake of generating attention and looking hilariously patriotic should only be taken half serious when they make a statement like this one.
Furthermore, I'm not going to be surprised if this story deflates into nothing like this thread alleges. He knows Wikileaks is outside of his jurisdiction so now is his chance to make some very very potent statements about national security but -- gosh darn it all -- in the end it turns out his hands are tied but he tried, oh lord how he tried to protect national security and his constituents. I don't care what party you lay claim to, he's very savvy to international politics and graduated from law school so he knows damn well that this is a waste of time. I would sooner place money on this being just a show for the cameras than I would that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
I hope you now realize that my statement of caution and links was really in your best interest. Do you also realize that in order to prove your statement of "Every congressman says dopey things that someone finds inflammatory and unpopular" lays the burden of proof in your hands to find similar statements for every single congressman ever in any country? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying I wish more politicians were held accountable indefinitely for their words and actions until they've rectified it.
Well, Wikileaks has survived attacks (even physical attacks). And the important distinguishing factor between TPB and Wikileaks is that Wikileaks is providing documents the public wants to know about... they may be copyrighted and protected but they contain newsworthiness. In the United States (before the DMCA), that used to be enough to protect people trying to get the word out. Not anymore. But if another country chooses to uphold that sort of common logic about what should be protected to benefit the public than you're not going to have a TPB repeat.
And they can pull the domain, which is registered via US company Dynadot, LLC (and don't even get me started on ICANN)
This is true and would break a lot of links. However, http://88.80.13.160/ would still work and -- more importantly -- revoking their URL would not only validate Wikileaks but also call forth the internet effect we call the Streisand Effect. This would probably be a godsend to the popularity of Wikileaks. Nothing builds street cred or grabs attention like religions, governments and service providers trying to knock you down repeatedly. If those people are trying to stop you from disseminating information, you must be doing something right if not interesting.
It wouldn't be a surprise if the whole thing was just a hoax. Like the other article says:
Arrington, who is not a journalist (and has never professed to be one), regularly talks to financial guys, with close ties to virtually every major technology company. He's also plugged into these same companies at even higher levels. Oh, and he also invests in companies he writes about. At times, this can make his information incredibly prescient and also highly self-serving. The problem is, no one can tell the difference.
And a few days before launch and dies for such a stupid reason? Please.
Then what were we seeing in the videos on Youtube? Really expensive tablet PCs? They couldn't get that down to $200? I'm just confused as to what his motivation would be... I think inflating your stock with a fake product and then dumping all the stock you have before it crashes would look hilariously like insider trading. So what's going on? What do they mean by "plugged into these same companies at even higher levels"?
In his 'rant' he's also calling these people out on infringing on his (and other people's) IP if they launch... which are pretty heavy claims. I kind of get the feeling this isn't a hoax and there will be serious fallout one way or the other if they don't iron things out between each other. IP suit if it launches and fruitless R&D and production money if it doesn't.
We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavorIf he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.
Translation:
I'd like to cash in on Arrington's hard work. Does he have some sort of puppeteer's slot in his ass or lower back where we could shove our arm during launches? Or is he run by remote control? Does he come with instructions or... how does this 'Arrington thing' work exactly? Please toss him the offer of looking like Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public but being my subservient bitch behind the curtains and being forever financially crippled. If he requests vasaline, we may be able to find some funding somewhere but we're not making any promises. There are sharks and there are sheep...
Honestly, I applaud Arrington's levelheaded response. I believe mine would have consisted of nothing more than "WTF?" and an image.
Aside from all that, I'm sad because I really was excited to see what came out of this and would have been interested after the price dropped a bit. I mean, depending on battery life, you'd have to be nuts to get a Kindle over this.
That I should read about this story with an AT&T advertisement next to it done up in Adobe Flash 10 when the exact same thing can be achieved in a few lines of HTML. Seriously, it's an all black background with four lines of white text at h2 and h3... then an AT&T logo in the bottom and maybe an icon for the button to "learn more." And the article is wondering if advertisers are slowing down the web?
Give the UI back to the user and leave the flashing marquee tags in Las Vegas. The only reason you would use a swf is to achieve some display interaction/functionality not suitable for HTML+CSS+Javascript. This is common sense yet you willing host ads that urinate on common sense. If you want me to read an article on your site, you don't want moving flashing things annoying my eyes while I try to read text so why serve up only a technology (as all ads on Slashdot seem to be) that is designed just for that? Ah, of course, it's your biggest revenue stream. Well then, I guess I'll just dig in and prepare for the cycle to perpetuate ad infinitum. And these two guys can chat all they want about it but there's no solution; it's never going to end because it's Just the Way Things Are.
Secondly, there are *many* more offline groups that are more closely related to street gangs in structure and practices than guilds, and no one seems too alarmist about that.
Huh, I didn't get a real feeling of alarmist views from this article but I could not get access to the paper. Was there something in there calling out for the dissolution of such WoW guilds because they resemble gangs/terrorists? I thought the point was that they could better study and predict gangs and terrorist organizations by looking at the formation, nature and qualities of online guilds? If that's so, maybe this isn't such a bad research area and maybe Blizzard and the like should open up certain sets of data?
I was a bit skeptical of the 'terrorist' claims (as I am whenever I hear that word) and it's probably just fishing for VC or funding. But the real place I could see this helping the world is briefly mentioned in the article: Central and South American authorities have localized places that are ruled by gangs. I've heard gang violence in Caracas is epic and it would benefit everyone to stop that from spreading. I've also heard that El Salvadorean gangs are a real problem... not sure though. From a US Nationalistic perspective, even Mexico would be nice to clean up too so the need-to-build-a-fence xenophobes shut their wordholes.
And does anyone else find it academically strange that this came from a bunch of grad students in Physics?!?!?
Well, that professor runs Complexity and Biological Physics which strives for life sciences applications of physics. Now, it may sound odd but I would imagine physicists are some of the best modelers of complex systems (like atomic and chemical reactions) and honestly might be the best suited for attempting to model actors in a very large system. I don't know, looking at Dr. Johnson's papers, he's all over the road. Either he's a really well diversified physicist or he's seeking for a new field to be a big fish in. I would give him the benefit of the doubt seeing as how he's continually being published (better than most professors).
Runescape, as far as MMO's go, is as secure as it can possibly be.
AP - Quebec - Another teen corpse missing fingers and eyes was found Saturday in the vicinity of Quebec's biggest internet cafe.
"We are starting to see a lot of this," said Officer Bergeron, "now that Runescape has increased security. People watch who logs into Runescape with their retna scans and fingerprint devices... at the cafe and then they lay in wait outside. When the person comes out, they beat them until they give up the password and then they take the other two things they need."
Jagex, makers of Runescape, did not return calls to their offices.
This marks the twentieth vicious slaying for Runescape items and virtual currency. An anonymous patron of the cafe said, "We've all been there. I mean, my good friend has twice the cash I do in game and I'm not denying it--I've had thoughts about how simple and quick it would be to asphyxiate him and then remove his eyeball with a pen or melon baller... and you really just need one index finger for the fingerprints. And then just log in with his retna and finger kept fresh in my refrigerator. I wouldn't be a weirdo about it, I've seen those shady guys with the eye/finger keychains. It's so simple and all you're doing is stealing some stuff off their account... I'm honestly shocked more gamers aren't doing it."
The recent victim's mother said she knew that her son was involved with Runescape but that she wasn't aware of the risks associated with such a game. After identifying the eyeless corpse of her son, she spoke out against online gaming and implored regulators to think of the children and put a stop to all online gaming. She ended her statement with "Before parents make that first $6 payment for their kids... they should realize what they are condemning them to."
It's not exactly the same as hacking someone's email account though, because if you do that you can potentially get hold of peoples bank/ebay etc accounts. I don't give a rat's arse about this or that game, and I'm a little annoyed about the idea of tax payer's money being wasted on non-crimes such as this.
Well, I assume Runescape is paid for on a monthly payment and you're actually 'renting' something that the makers of Runescape technically own (if they have a ToS similar to WoW). We discussed this in August about whether or not virtual property should be under the same law as regular property.
And really, you should be happy that your tax dollars are paying for this. The closest analogy I can think of is if you rented a moving truck and someone stole it from in front of your house and then anonymously returned it to the store at the end of your rental period. Now, you didn't get to move any of your stuff yet you were still charged for the truck. Basically you've entered into an agreement to use someone business's property in exchange for money and now a third party has not only obstructed that but prevented you from receiving use/enjoyment from your purchase. On a case by case basis, maybe not a big enough deal for $13 (or whatever Runescapes monthly payment is). On a mass scale (like this), call the authorities. The sad thing is that the emotional attachment and feelings of ownership that humans attach to accounts, items and characters are more than likely overlooked. And there's not a lot you can do about that, the law sticks to protecting things that are real and definite and measurable like your monthly payment.
Now, if Runescape was a free game and there was no credit card information at risk then I would agree that the authorities should let the players appeal to the Runescape company to increase protection of their accounts.
Quite Anecdotal to me. The Antarctic has 90% of the earth's ice anyway. The eastern half of Antarctica is 4x the size of the western half, and is cooling/growing.
Normal cycles, should not be made into an international crisis.
I've never studied climatology or even oceanography but if you're going to make such statements, I hope you have the credentials to back it up and tell me without any doubt what a 'normal cycle' constitutes.
... require extraordinary evidence.
The global-warmists, or climate change proponents need to pony-up some real evidence for all the wild, alarmist claims about doomsday they've been making for the past 20 years... not just anecdotal bunk like misc. ice sleets falling off Antarctica, etc.
I agree with your subject statement but I disagree with that very last part. Apparently the West antarctic ice sheet was the part with "ice sheets falling off it" while the East side remained relatively stable. That's recently changed. I don't think this proves anything but I admit it's alarming to me that we might just be sitting on our hands while Antarctica breaks apart. Hell, we're already opening up shipping lanes through the north pole. It's true, I am just another internet moron but I would really prefer we don't have to find out what results from Antarctica breaking apart or melting. At this point, I'm open to suggestions and theories... although for any of them to be unquestionably valid, I refer to your first statement.
No one seemed to refute our decision to stop using CFCs. We all seemed to agree as a planet that they were bad. And so on and so forth you can look back historically at man negatively altering his environment to varying degrees. I think more than sufficient evidence has been provided to prove that we need to get a better grip on what emissions and carbon proliferation mean for the Earth and -- most importantly -- us. I'm a small government kind of guy but if that means more government funding being dumped into unbiased investigations than so be it. I don't want Earth to end up like Easter Island.
What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it.... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body.
So you're saying it'd be pretty painless? You could revolutionize flawed processes we have in the United States by providing an alternative that may have a more expensive start up cost but would solve budget problems by providing needed services for both our prison system and science research at the same time. I mean if we ignore the ethical problems with televised executions, the costs of an LHC could be mitigated by commercial segments...
Unexplainable transfers of cash into your account from $MUSLIM_STATE? Terrorist operative.
Bought floor tile from a man with the same surname as a well-known Taliban leader? Suspected terrorist.
etc.
I mean, I'm all for national security and sharing information but what is so lacking about the EU's ability to make and investigate the above claims?
Emails from Crazy People
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Don't Design Angry
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· Score: 2, Informative
I must confess, I have wasted hours reading Emails from Crazy People. It's one of those addictive blog sites like Texts from Last Night or Failblog. Anyway, I think this article deserves to be submitted to Emails from Crazy People. Anyways, for those of you that enjoyed the little exchange betwixt Simon & David, Emails from Crazy People is for you.
When it comes to Google and other aggregators, newspapers face a sort of prisoners' dilemma. If one of them escapes, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. But if all of them stay, none of them will ever get enough traffic to make sufficient money. So they all stay in the prison, occasionally yelling insults at their jailer through the bars on the door.
So... the original prisoner's dilemma (if I recally my AI coursework) was basically comes down to two or more prisoner's arrested as suspects in a crime. They are immediately separated into different interrogation rooms. The police officers use every trick they can to get any of the prisoners to lay claim to committing the crime and receive a plea bargain if they testify against the other suspects. If no one caves, then everyone walks. Now, the important thing to note here is that if one suspect caves and the other n-1 suspects don't, then that suspect receives a sub-optimal reward of a lighter sentence while those that did not own up to the crime receive very harsh penalties. And so you have a dilemma... did one of your crew rat you out already? Should you take the guaranteed three months in prison versus a potential ten years?
The important thing is that one rogue actor could ruin it for everyone.
So the analogy seems to imply that newspapers have taken a suboptimal goal (being in jail)... but the most important problem is that no one knows if the current situation is a suboptimal goal or optimal goal. And no one's going to find out until they leave Google. If a single newspaper leaves Google, they ruin it for themselves (unlike the prisoner's dilemma) and no one else. In fact, the others might even benefit from that.
What this is a closer analogy to is the MLB strike you may (or may not care about) remember. Basically the baseball players didn't think they were making enough bank so they went on strike. If anyone of them said, "Screw it, I'm leaving the league, I'm going to literally take my bat and ball and go elsewhere," then they would have been broke. But the whole league went on strike, they could have formed a new league, they could have went to a different league, they could have entered talks with the European league to open leagues in the US, etc.
The newspapers should continue to court Microsoft and play the two search leaders off against each other. Also, I'm no robots.txt expert but I think there is a disallow from certain domains syntax they can use to block Google, Microsoft or white list one of the two. Another strategy might be to go on strike and have all newspapers request to be removed from Google for one week. Let the system break down and then enter negotiations with the giant.
One thing is pretty clear, they must unionize/unify and act as a single entity in either leaving or negotiating. And I don't really see that happening. They might be able to negotiate between Microsoft and Google on a case by case basis but Google is still too much larger than Bing to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
It's kinda like a turkey in the rain. It gets hit on the head by a drop of water and looks up. As it looks up water drops run down its nasal passages. It continues this strange curiosity til it drowns.
As someone who worked on farms where they raised turkeys I had never noticed large heaps of dead turkey carcasses when it rained. But perhaps this happens with wild turkeys which would make survival in the wild a short experience. So I looked it up.
Of course this anecdote is hilariously false.
The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism
In Schmidt's piece, he used the word 'journalism' once:
I believe it also requires a change of tone in the debate, a recognition that we all have to work together to fulfill the promise of journalism in the digital age.
Don't ever kid yourself that journalism will die. It's certainly changing but the thing that might die is the old model of power structures and funding around journalism. Journalists will still do reporting and writing for a monetary sum. The channels where that money comes from are rapidly changing ('rapidly' is relative to how historically slow change has been in this world). This friction is creating the death throes of (most) companies involved as money makers in the traditional channels.
It's change, it's probably for the better (as Schmidt notes) but one thing's for sure: it's unavoidable. Adapt or die.
One more thing:
Eric Schmidt has an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ (ironic, that)
Never forget that Murdoch still sells eyeballs--at all costs. If it meant betraying a political party or betraying his core values or even displaying another side of the debate, he's here for one thing: money. What we see in the op-ed piece is actually one of the few positive effects of Murdoch's greed. I offer him my rare applause if he had anything to do with this being printed in the WSJ although I'm certain the WSJ printed it to generate revenue and he merely approved of it.
Stately, plump eldavojohn came down from the stairhead to his mom's basement, bearing a bowl of frito lays on which a slim jim and a twizzler lay crossed. A yellowed mooninites shirt, unwashed, was sustained gently behind him on the mild air duct gust. He sat down at his computer monitor and read the Slashdot response to his post:
...
—Good post.
Halted, he peered down the glowing LCD monitor and read further:
—Is this a parody of some text that I don't recognize?
Solemnly he leaned forward and set his fingers to the keyboard
Obligatory Google is awesome thread of the week....
Google has become so awesome that even the best and brightest aren't good enough to work there. The Google campus is vacant and empty, everyone gone home after being let go for failing to be awesome enough. And yet, money magically keeps rolling in ... to whom though? Nobody.
... burning in binary these words, "I scanned everyone's DNA in this room and decided it was not worth my time as only 0.1483 of you are worthy of working for Google."
This was apparent in the latest recruitment meeting at my alma mater where a Google server was given 30 minutes to recruit an auditorium full of computer science majors. Well, the Microsoft, HP, Oracle, etc reps gave long speeches and only gave the Google server five minutes to give its speech. It rolled down one end of the stage and leaned over the crowd, silent. It rolled down the other end of the stage and leaned over the crowd, silent. It spent the next few minutes in a monolithic standstill while the whole room waited on bated breath, edge of their seats, dying to know what awesome numbers were being computed and crunched inside the career giver.
The server turned around and shot a laser out at the curtain behind it
Let me tell you, I have never seen a recruitment booth so full of applicants.
If he doesn't have all the best gear then I wouldn't say he has beaten it yet. But that is quite an achievement what he has done.
Here's his gear and stats and achievements and PvP and all that. I wish I knew his /played though.
Writing documentation is hard work and is boring. It is also thankless.
Amen. But, believe it or not there are people out there looking to assist open source by doing tech/doc writing for it. The comments in that thread have some really good resources if anyone out there is in total despair or is curious how they can help out open source documentation. I probably should have linked to that in the summary but my submissions have been way too link heavy lately.
Since you're not a botanist (nor am I) how do you know what garlic looked like 600 years ago?
Well, here's an illustration from the 15th century. Notice any bulbous feature that is lacking in the Voynich sketch? Notice they don't even bother to depict the root system in the 15th century sketch unlike the Voynich. My point was, not a single one of those plants relayed the distinguishing features you would obvious take care to note on the plant--all she offers is the leaf of stachys that has a hilarious tuber below it in the Voynich sketch but nothing in her botanical book! An obvious stretch of the imagination is the rose bush with no roses.
When corn was first cultivated, it looked like what we call "baby corn" today. It wasn't until centuries of selection and cross-breeding that we got the much larger corn that everyone knows.
I'm not sure where you found information that plants have changed dramatically in a few hundred years. While it's true that they have changed dramatically over thousands of years and since the advent of agriculture, 600 years is not the same as 6,000 years. While you're kind of right that thousands of years changed plants, I assure you that most if not all of today's plants look the same as they did 600 years ago.
perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words.
Then why does she only offer up a single page of plants as decoded anagrams? What about the other ~199 pages? What about the pages of block text?
More importantly, why does the Voynich Manuscript flip between things derived from plants like gallic acid, oil and then return to naming the plants? Furthermore, I call the labeling of the plants to be absolute complete bullshit. Yes, I said it. I'm not a botanist but I grew up on a farm and I know many of these plants very well and I can't tell any distinguishing characteristics apart from the drawings. This is what a garlic plant looks like. Not like this. I mean, come on! Did Edith Sherwood ever stop to think that maybe -- similar to numerology in The Bible -- she'd be able to make words out of any strange text regardless of its true origin?
Here's a real gem:
This brief sentence indicated that the use of anagrams should be investigated. This was further supported by reading Wikipedia’s report that anagrams were popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and that some 17th century astronomers, while engaged in verification of their discoveries, used anagrams to hide their ideas.
You found that on Wikipedia? Call Yale University, you've decoded it. Citing Wikipedia for a fact while analyzing centuries old manuscripts? Why you bother to put PhD after you name bewilders me.
This is the game that will be played with the Voynich Manuscript. Every so often people will claim to have 'decoded it' by offering up a small part of the manuscript which very imaginative minds have pulled together 10+ very very flimsy clues that point to some individual. The fact that there are so many coincidences will add weight to it being the real explanation. But it oddly won't work for 99% of the manuscript. Now if the manuscript is ever decoded, a hell of a lot more than two pages is going to make sense. In fact, when someone figures it out, 99% of the manuscript will make sense.
If you want my theory, we're dealing with an unknown autistic artist's work. Someone lost in a period of time where autism was misunderstood and they are forever lost to anonymity except they'll get the last laugh because we'll never understand what message they were trying to get to us. And some of us might go mad spending hours and hours and hours trying to figure this out with no luck.
Was this a surprise to anyone?
As the submitter, yeah I have to admit it kind of was. This is a really unique opportunity for a case against CoS because normally the cases come from outsiders.
Lindstein was eight years old and says he was forced to work for 16 years. He was removed from school at age 12. Now, if you were removed from school at age 12, you probably aren't very well suited for a high paying job. So you have someone who's lost much of their youth to Scientology and has the motivation to see this suit through to the end.
You see, when you sue or slander Scientology, you might not realize what you're getting yourself into. People end up doing jail for posting verbal attacks on Scientology online. To quote the late L. Ron Hubbard on his policy:
This is the correct procedure: Spot who is attacking us. Start investigating them promptly for felonies or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies. Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them. Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way. * "Attacks on Scientology" (25 February 1966)
That's what you're dealing with. That's what Lindstein has in his future. He probably knows it, his lawyer probably knows it. But he will soon be subjected to character assassination, harassment of just barely legal amounts, indirect threats and the same for any family he may have.
So yeah, I'm a pleasantly surprised that such an opportune individual has stepped forward to speak and let us know what Scientology is. Because in so many other cases, the individual has been silenced one way or another. And scientology has refined it's processes to force its members quiet and they have the resources and legal representation to make magic happen in the courts.
I hope Lindstein is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I wish him the best of luck in the courtroom and for justice to be brought against those who forced him into labor and stripped him of his right to knowledge.
And what are they even having them do in these camps, build the theta monitors?
From the Infinite Complacency Link:
At 12, he was “deemed finished with schooling” and Golden Era Productions, an unincorporated division of Church of Scientology International (CSI) hired him as a messenger and errand boy.
But in 1997, at the age of 15, he was demoted to the post of dishwasher. “He worked 16-hour days cleaning pots, pans and the dining facilities,” says the lawsuit.
And soon afterwards, he was assigned to do construction at the base near Hemet, California.
So the answer to your question is messenger, dish washer then construction worker. I mean, why use all the money you take from your followers to hire people to do this work when you can force the followers to do it for less or even free? L Ron Hubbard's Get Rich Quick Scam is yet another valid title for Scientology.
A word of caution: Congressman King has been known to make inflammatory and unpopular statements.
Word of caution my ass. Every congressman says dopey things that someone finds inflammatory and unpopular. Why is it pointed out here so specifically? How about leaving the bullshit sniping behind when posting the summaries there, kdawson?
I take full responsibility for that statement and the YouTube links. kdawson's actions were only the inaction of removing it in the editorial process (I'm sure I'll be made fun of for using that phrase about Slashdot). Anyway, the point I was trying to make was simply to be cautious ... because he's a politician, not because he's affiliated with some party. Any politician that gets up there at some point (the Michael Jackson video especially) and says crap for the sake of generating attention and looking hilariously patriotic should only be taken half serious when they make a statement like this one.
Furthermore, I'm not going to be surprised if this story deflates into nothing like this thread alleges. He knows Wikileaks is outside of his jurisdiction so now is his chance to make some very very potent statements about national security but -- gosh darn it all -- in the end it turns out his hands are tied but he tried, oh lord how he tried to protect national security and his constituents. I don't care what party you lay claim to, he's very savvy to international politics and graduated from law school so he knows damn well that this is a waste of time. I would sooner place money on this being just a show for the cameras than I would that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
I hope you now realize that my statement of caution and links was really in your best interest. Do you also realize that in order to prove your statement of "Every congressman says dopey things that someone finds inflammatory and unpopular" lays the burden of proof in your hands to find similar statements for every single congressman ever in any country? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying I wish more politicians were held accountable indefinitely for their words and actions until they've rectified it.
Mr Atkinson will only have to pay his part of the $15.15m fine if he enters the US.
I guess all we can do is pray for extradition?
Yeah that worked so good for TPB.
Well, Wikileaks has survived attacks (even physical attacks). And the important distinguishing factor between TPB and Wikileaks is that Wikileaks is providing documents the public wants to know about ... they may be copyrighted and protected but they contain newsworthiness. In the United States (before the DMCA), that used to be enough to protect people trying to get the word out. Not anymore. But if another country chooses to uphold that sort of common logic about what should be protected to benefit the public than you're not going to have a TPB repeat.
And they can pull the domain, which is registered via US company Dynadot, LLC (and don't even get me started on ICANN)
This is true and would break a lot of links. However, http://88.80.13.160/ would still work and -- more importantly -- revoking their URL would not only validate Wikileaks but also call forth the internet effect we call the Streisand Effect. This would probably be a godsend to the popularity of Wikileaks. Nothing builds street cred or grabs attention like religions, governments and service providers trying to knock you down repeatedly. If those people are trying to stop you from disseminating information, you must be doing something right if not interesting.
It wouldn't be a surprise if the whole thing was just a hoax. Like the other article says:
Arrington, who is not a journalist (and has never professed to be one), regularly talks to financial guys, with close ties to virtually every major technology company. He's also plugged into these same companies at even higher levels. Oh, and he also invests in companies he writes about. At times, this can make his information incredibly prescient and also highly self-serving. The problem is, no one can tell the difference.
And a few days before launch and dies for such a stupid reason? Please.
Then what were we seeing in the videos on Youtube? Really expensive tablet PCs? They couldn't get that down to $200? I'm just confused as to what his motivation would be ... I think inflating your stock with a fake product and then dumping all the stock you have before it crashes would look hilariously like insider trading. So what's going on? What do they mean by "plugged into these same companies at even higher levels"?
... which are pretty heavy claims. I kind of get the feeling this isn't a hoax and there will be serious fallout one way or the other if they don't iron things out between each other. IP suit if it launches and fruitless R&D and production money if it doesn't.
In his 'rant' he's also calling these people out on infringing on his (and other people's) IP if they launch
We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavorIf he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.
Translation:
I'd like to cash in on Arrington's hard work. Does he have some sort of puppeteer's slot in his ass or lower back where we could shove our arm during launches? Or is he run by remote control? Does he come with instructions or ... how does this 'Arrington thing' work exactly? Please toss him the offer of looking like Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public but being my subservient bitch behind the curtains and being forever financially crippled. If he requests vasaline, we may be able to find some funding somewhere but we're not making any promises. There are sharks and there are sheep ...
Honestly, I applaud Arrington's levelheaded response. I believe mine would have consisted of nothing more than "WTF?" and an image.
Aside from all that, I'm sad because I really was excited to see what came out of this and would have been interested after the price dropped a bit. I mean, depending on battery life, you'd have to be nuts to get a Kindle over this.
That I should read about this story with an AT&T advertisement next to it done up in Adobe Flash 10 when the exact same thing can be achieved in a few lines of HTML. Seriously, it's an all black background with four lines of white text at h2 and h3 ... then an AT&T logo in the bottom and maybe an icon for the button to "learn more." And the article is wondering if advertisers are slowing down the web?
Give the UI back to the user and leave the flashing marquee tags in Las Vegas. The only reason you would use a swf is to achieve some display interaction/functionality not suitable for HTML+CSS+Javascript. This is common sense yet you willing host ads that urinate on common sense. If you want me to read an article on your site, you don't want moving flashing things annoying my eyes while I try to read text so why serve up only a technology (as all ads on Slashdot seem to be) that is designed just for that? Ah, of course, it's your biggest revenue stream. Well then, I guess I'll just dig in and prepare for the cycle to perpetuate ad infinitum. And these two guys can chat all they want about it but there's no solution; it's never going to end because it's Just the Way Things Are.
Secondly, there are *many* more offline groups that are more closely related to street gangs in structure and practices than guilds, and no one seems too alarmist about that.
Huh, I didn't get a real feeling of alarmist views from this article but I could not get access to the paper. Was there something in there calling out for the dissolution of such WoW guilds because they resemble gangs/terrorists? I thought the point was that they could better study and predict gangs and terrorist organizations by looking at the formation, nature and qualities of online guilds? If that's so, maybe this isn't such a bad research area and maybe Blizzard and the like should open up certain sets of data?
... not sure though. From a US Nationalistic perspective, even Mexico would be nice to clean up too so the need-to-build-a-fence xenophobes shut their wordholes.
I was a bit skeptical of the 'terrorist' claims (as I am whenever I hear that word) and it's probably just fishing for VC or funding. But the real place I could see this helping the world is briefly mentioned in the article: Central and South American authorities have localized places that are ruled by gangs. I've heard gang violence in Caracas is epic and it would benefit everyone to stop that from spreading. I've also heard that El Salvadorean gangs are a real problem
And does anyone else find it academically strange that this came from a bunch of grad students in Physics?!?!?
Well, that professor runs Complexity and Biological Physics which strives for life sciences applications of physics. Now, it may sound odd but I would imagine physicists are some of the best modelers of complex systems (like atomic and chemical reactions) and honestly might be the best suited for attempting to model actors in a very large system. I don't know, looking at Dr. Johnson's papers, he's all over the road. Either he's a really well diversified physicist or he's seeking for a new field to be a big fish in. I would give him the benefit of the doubt seeing as how he's continually being published (better than most professors).
Runescape, as far as MMO's go, is as secure as it can possibly be.
AP - Quebec - Another teen corpse missing fingers and eyes was found Saturday in the vicinity of Quebec's biggest internet cafe.
... at the cafe and then they lay in wait outside. When the person comes out, they beat them until they give up the password and then they take the other two things they need."
... and you really just need one index finger for the fingerprints. And then just log in with his retna and finger kept fresh in my refrigerator. I wouldn't be a weirdo about it, I've seen those shady guys with the eye/finger keychains. It's so simple and all you're doing is stealing some stuff off their account ... I'm honestly shocked more gamers aren't doing it."
... they should realize what they are condemning them to."
"We are starting to see a lot of this," said Officer Bergeron, "now that Runescape has increased security. People watch who logs into Runescape with their retna scans and fingerprint devices
Jagex, makers of Runescape, did not return calls to their offices.
This marks the twentieth vicious slaying for Runescape items and virtual currency. An anonymous patron of the cafe said, "We've all been there. I mean, my good friend has twice the cash I do in game and I'm not denying it--I've had thoughts about how simple and quick it would be to asphyxiate him and then remove his eyeball with a pen or melon baller
The recent victim's mother said she knew that her son was involved with Runescape but that she wasn't aware of the risks associated with such a game. After identifying the eyeless corpse of her son, she spoke out against online gaming and implored regulators to think of the children and put a stop to all online gaming. She ended her statement with "Before parents make that first $6 payment for their kids
It's not exactly the same as hacking someone's email account though, because if you do that you can potentially get hold of peoples bank/ebay etc accounts. I don't give a rat's arse about this or that game, and I'm a little annoyed about the idea of tax payer's money being wasted on non-crimes such as this.
Well, I assume Runescape is paid for on a monthly payment and you're actually 'renting' something that the makers of Runescape technically own (if they have a ToS similar to WoW). We discussed this in August about whether or not virtual property should be under the same law as regular property.
And really, you should be happy that your tax dollars are paying for this. The closest analogy I can think of is if you rented a moving truck and someone stole it from in front of your house and then anonymously returned it to the store at the end of your rental period. Now, you didn't get to move any of your stuff yet you were still charged for the truck. Basically you've entered into an agreement to use someone business's property in exchange for money and now a third party has not only obstructed that but prevented you from receiving use/enjoyment from your purchase. On a case by case basis, maybe not a big enough deal for $13 (or whatever Runescapes monthly payment is). On a mass scale (like this), call the authorities. The sad thing is that the emotional attachment and feelings of ownership that humans attach to accounts, items and characters are more than likely overlooked. And there's not a lot you can do about that, the law sticks to protecting things that are real and definite and measurable like your monthly payment.
Now, if Runescape was a free game and there was no credit card information at risk then I would agree that the authorities should let the players appeal to the Runescape company to increase protection of their accounts.
Quite Anecdotal to me. The Antarctic has 90% of the earth's ice anyway. The eastern half of Antarctica is 4x the size of the western half, and is cooling/growing.
You may want to update the facts that you were trained to regurgitate.
Normal cycles, should not be made into an international crisis.
I've never studied climatology or even oceanography but if you're going to make such statements, I hope you have the credentials to back it up and tell me without any doubt what a 'normal cycle' constitutes.
... require extraordinary evidence. The global-warmists, or climate change proponents need to pony-up some real evidence for all the wild, alarmist claims about doomsday they've been making for the past 20 years... not just anecdotal bunk like misc. ice sleets falling off Antarctica, etc.
I agree with your subject statement but I disagree with that very last part. Apparently the West antarctic ice sheet was the part with "ice sheets falling off it" while the East side remained relatively stable. That's recently changed. I don't think this proves anything but I admit it's alarming to me that we might just be sitting on our hands while Antarctica breaks apart. Hell, we're already opening up shipping lanes through the north pole. It's true, I am just another internet moron but I would really prefer we don't have to find out what results from Antarctica breaking apart or melting. At this point, I'm open to suggestions and theories ... although for any of them to be unquestionably valid, I refer to your first statement.
No one seemed to refute our decision to stop using CFCs. We all seemed to agree as a planet that they were bad. And so on and so forth you can look back historically at man negatively altering his environment to varying degrees. I think more than sufficient evidence has been provided to prove that we need to get a better grip on what emissions and carbon proliferation mean for the Earth and -- most importantly -- us. I'm a small government kind of guy but if that means more government funding being dumped into unbiased investigations than so be it. I don't want Earth to end up like Easter Island.
What would happen if you were standing in front of the beam? You would die. It would be a pretty spectacular death, and you wouldn't know a lot about it. ... It would be the equivalent of having 87kg of TNT dumped into your body.
So you're saying it'd be pretty painless? You could revolutionize flawed processes we have in the United States by providing an alternative that may have a more expensive start up cost but would solve budget problems by providing needed services for both our prison system and science research at the same time. I mean if we ignore the ethical problems with televised executions, the costs of an LHC could be mitigated by commercial segments ...
Wired money to Turkey? Terrorist.
Unexplainable transfers of cash into your account from $MUSLIM_STATE? Terrorist operative.
Bought floor tile from a man with the same surname as a well-known Taliban leader? Suspected terrorist.
etc.
I mean, I'm all for national security and sharing information but what is so lacking about the EU's ability to make and investigate the above claims?
I must confess, I have wasted hours reading Emails from Crazy People. It's one of those addictive blog sites like Texts from Last Night or Failblog. Anyway, I think this article deserves to be submitted to Emails from Crazy People. Anyways, for those of you that enjoyed the little exchange betwixt Simon & David, Emails from Crazy People is for you.
When it comes to Google and other aggregators, newspapers face a sort of prisoners' dilemma. If one of them escapes, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. But if all of them stay, none of them will ever get enough traffic to make sufficient money. So they all stay in the prison, occasionally yelling insults at their jailer through the bars on the door.
So ... the original prisoner's dilemma (if I recally my AI coursework) was basically comes down to two or more prisoner's arrested as suspects in a crime. They are immediately separated into different interrogation rooms. The police officers use every trick they can to get any of the prisoners to lay claim to committing the crime and receive a plea bargain if they testify against the other suspects. If no one caves, then everyone walks. Now, the important thing to note here is that if one suspect caves and the other n-1 suspects don't, then that suspect receives a sub-optimal reward of a lighter sentence while those that did not own up to the crime receive very harsh penalties. And so you have a dilemma ... did one of your crew rat you out already? Should you take the guaranteed three months in prison versus a potential ten years?
... but the most important problem is that no one knows if the current situation is a suboptimal goal or optimal goal. And no one's going to find out until they leave Google. If a single newspaper leaves Google, they ruin it for themselves (unlike the prisoner's dilemma) and no one else. In fact, the others might even benefit from that.
The important thing is that one rogue actor could ruin it for everyone.
So the analogy seems to imply that newspapers have taken a suboptimal goal (being in jail)
What this is a closer analogy to is the MLB strike you may (or may not care about) remember. Basically the baseball players didn't think they were making enough bank so they went on strike. If anyone of them said, "Screw it, I'm leaving the league, I'm going to literally take my bat and ball and go elsewhere," then they would have been broke. But the whole league went on strike, they could have formed a new league, they could have went to a different league, they could have entered talks with the European league to open leagues in the US, etc.
The newspapers should continue to court Microsoft and play the two search leaders off against each other. Also, I'm no robots.txt expert but I think there is a disallow from certain domains syntax they can use to block Google, Microsoft or white list one of the two. Another strategy might be to go on strike and have all newspapers request to be removed from Google for one week. Let the system break down and then enter negotiations with the giant.
One thing is pretty clear, they must unionize/unify and act as a single entity in either leaving or negotiating. And I don't really see that happening. They might be able to negotiate between Microsoft and Google on a case by case basis but Google is still too much larger than Bing to do that.