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User: NoData

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Comments · 458

  1. Re:True that on The Duct Tape Programmer · · Score: 1

    Your comment and reply further in the thread are spot-on and brilliant. Thank you.

  2. Other person originates the SMS?. on Free SMS On IPhone 3G Via AOL IM Client · · Score: 1

    I kinda knew about this, but I'm still not clear on something: How can I use this trick when another party *originates* an SMS to me? This technique catches their replies to an SMS I start via IM, but doesn't help if someone sends me an SMS in the first place. Anyone know a trick for that?

  3. Re:William Sleator on Sci-Fi Books For Pre-Teens? · · Score: 1

    I was a big fan of William Sleator's when I was a kid. Unlike many of the books being suggested, Sleator's books are ACTUALLY for pre-teens, making them fun while at the same time exploring various mind-bending sci-fi paradoxes. Additionally, the central characters of his books are almost always regular, everyday kids who discover bizarre extra-natural phenomena or devices in this world (time machines, portals to parallel universes, etc.). I found this made the stories relatable and compelling. In addition to Interstellar Pig, I recommend the Green Futures of Tycho and Singularity.

  4. Yes necessarily on Smart Rubber Promises Self-Mending Products · · Score: 2, Informative

    Carbon-carbon bonds are highly covalent and exceptionally strong. Ionic bonds are weaker and hydrogen bonds are weaker still. So, yes, necessarily this rubber is weaker. It's not the fact that it has less variety of bonding, it's the fact the sort of bonding it's left with is weak (comparatively).

  5. Re:Odd on Smart Rubber Promises Self-Mending Products · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes.

    The article mentions that this rubber is weaker than most to begin with for just that reason.

  6. Re:I've read about this before. on Ex AT&T Tech Says NSA Monitors All Web Traffic · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also, good interview with Mark Klein on NPR's All Things Considered.
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16088947&ft=1&f=1
    One thing he mentions: The NSA likely has installations like this maybe a dozen of locations around the country.

  7. Re:What? on Norway Liberal Party Wants Legal File Sharing · · Score: 1

    Except I'd rather the authors I like not have to write in their spare time and on lunch breaks. I'd rather they get paid to write, and then have more time to write their books.


    If you feel strongly about it, perhaps you should consider patronage. It's a model that supported generations of artists before the advent of modern copyright.

    Really, the modern music/publishing businesses are twisted forms of patronages. Arstists/authors receive advances from publishers/distributors who recoup their losses by profiteering on the sales of low-marginal-cost duplicates, the rights to which they feverishly guard (as we have seen). The artists lose ownership of their creative product in the bargain, and generally get the shaft in compensation as well.

    How about a system where other, more benevolently interested parties (like philanthropists, governments, civic groups, non-profits, or even corporations!) sponsor artistic work? This happens already (especially in the visual and performance arts which are less easily duplicable), but maybe it should be the norm not the exception.
  8. Re:Variety Confirms It on Variety Declares VHS Dead · · Score: 0, Troll

    No troll like an old troll. Kudos.

  9. Re:Everyone has so far completely missed the point on Verifiable Elections Via Cryptography · · Score: 1

    If by consistent within ballot you mean, for example, Republican is always the third choice listed (let's say), then that degrades the security of the ballot. If someone knows the position of even one Republican candidate on your ballot, then they can deduce the remainder of the ballot (at least as far as Republicans are concerned--so they know, by looking at your receipt, when you did or did not vote Republican).

    But, it remains the case that even with an internally consistent ballot you will have selections such as...

    Choice List:

    Democrat Candidate
    Libertarian Candidate
    Republican Candidate
    Socialist Candidate

    Response List:
    Libertarian Republican Democrat Socialist

    By nature of the design, there must be a disconnect between the ordering of the choices and the ordering of the responses. This is one of the obscuring factors. Even if this odd mapping is kept consistent within ballot, it is inherently effortful and non-intuitive and certainly will produce errors. So, the system can guarantee votes were "counted-as-cast" but votes are a lot less likely to be "cast-as-intended."

  10. Re:Everyone has so far completely missed the point on Verifiable Elections Via Cryptography · · Score: 1

    You're right. However, this system has a more basic issue: A generalized variant of the "Stroop" effect as we call it in psychology. People excpect consistency. This system relies on randomization of both "letter" assignment (A. or B. to choice 1 or 2) and randomization of side (A or B is on left or right). This is a clusterfuck in the making. People expect the first choice to correspond to the leftmost option, and that the first choice will be choice A. Always. Furthermore, on a ballot, people expect item to item consistency. If Democrats are first, they need to be first the whole way down. I know it takes just a little attention and control to flexibly and correctly deal with a randomized ballot, but people will unquestionably botch this badly. It will make 2000's "butterfly" ballot look trivial in comparison. It's an ingenious system Chaum has devised...but it needs to really be thought about how to present this to allow people's "automatic" mapping between option and response to be the expected ones.

  11. Re:Way overrated on Mahir To Borat, I Sue You! · · Score: 1

    In my country they say, ehh, man who have no senses of humors must have very small...ehh, how you say, chram.

  12. Re:My internet there is a problem on Mahir To Borat, I Sue You! · · Score: 1

    Nice! I very much like!

    High Five!

  13. Sony or the Legal System? on Lik-Sang Is Out Of Business · · Score: 1


    Should the blame here rest mainly with Sony, and other corporations who exploit their deep pockets to manipulate the legal system for their mercenary tactics--or should we blame the bollocksed legal systems (in this case, Britain's) that allow them to do so?

  14. Re:Sounds Good, except on Magnetic Ring Could Launch Satellites, Weapons · · Score: 5, Informative
    I know there's a relationship between bird migration and magnetic fields, too, as a lot of them blindly smack into the brick walls at a local MRI center.


    Cute, but you gotta be kidding. I work with a 3T research MRI magnetic. Both the machine and the facility are heavily shielded, and the field drop-off is very steep. While the isocenter of the bore is at 3 Tesla (30,000 Gauss), the 5 Gauss line is only a few meters (about 5 in the axial direction, 3 in the radial direction) from the isocenter. By comparison, a kitchen magnet is maybe 100-250 Gauss.
  15. Re:and while we're at it... on Rethinking IM Privacy For Kids · · Score: 1


    Hmm your post reminded me of this relevant story in Sunday's NYTimes:

    So The Talmud Is A Parenting Guide?

    I'm sure it was timed to coincide with the Jewish High Holidays, but the article's point is less about raising kids Jewish and more about how this one woman's interpretation of Talmudic parenting advice basically says to love and care for kids carefully, but give them enough rope to make their own mistakes, feel their own way, so that that by adulthood they are not too insulated to deal with the real world. The article talks about the imbalance between extraordinary modern pressures to succeed at school, coupled with (or compensated by)extraordinary modern coddling at home--and how, purportedly, this woman's Talmudic insights address both.

    Anyone like myself who WAS actually raised by a fairly stereotypical Jewish mom will immediately see that despite what the author claims the Talmud says about giving kids "autonomy", "independence", and "freedom from smothering", these are certainly NOT part of the "traditional" Jewish upbringing. ;)

  16. Re:Thanks, now I have to go to goatse on PC World's 25 Worst Web Sites · · Score: 1
    As far as I can tell, hosanna1.com is a site for born again afghan dogs


    HAHA! That was hilarious and apt.

    You know, it's a bit daunting and breathtaking to me that this little POS site, put together by some simple, god-fearing Kentucky rubes, has attracted the gaze and http requests of the mighty Slashdot community. Those poor schlubs are probably looking at their web logs and jumping for joy ("Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!") at all the attention they've suddenly garnered. Little do they know...

    BTW, hosanna1.com hosts several other depressing Afghan related sites. This one ("Cobra Originals") features very bad Afghan inspired art. Like this piece, titled "Running Afghan Hound", though clearly it should be more suitably titled "Petrified Turd of Lord Neptune."

    Aaaaand, my derision is spent.
  17. Re:difference between "not private" and "announced on Facebook Changes Provoke Uproar Among Users · · Score: 1

    Even for public information, there is a difference between announcing status and announcing changes in status. One is a snapshot of the state of the person's information, the other provides a temporal dimension where one can track or notice when changes in state occurred. Facebook users may have no problem announcing the former("yes, I'm single") vs. the latter ("..single as of last night when my gf dumped me").

    In any case, Facebook should immediately make this an opt-in feature, with control over which "deltas" of state you are willing to disseminate. Good social networking is all about personal control.

  18. i heart slashdot on The Segway, Five Years Later · · Score: 5, Funny

    Only here would a caveat about drunken Segway jousting be modded "informative."

  19. Re:is this the right place for this question? on How Much Does Your Work Depend on the Internet? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is this the right place? I was thinking is this the right decade for this question. If I was going to be a snide Slashdotter (and I am, in fact, about to be) I'd say hey, 1996 called. It wants its Ask Slashdot back.

  20. Re:I think it will start a bad presidence. on Wiretap Ruling Threatens Telecoms · · Score: 1
    "Attacking the USA" is not in and upon itself illegal, as it has nothing to do with governmental, constitutional, intrantional, human rights etc. Its we kill you or you kill us. No lawyers, no debate, no indictments, no innocent till proven guilty -- just who can impose their will on the other.

    Sure its not fair, but its just the way it is, and whether you like it our not, the US Government MUST act accordingly, because our enemies will NOT give us any such consideration.


    thrasymachus? is that you?

    i think you will find, actually, that there are accepted codes, both national and international, as to how one may justly engage an enemy of the state. it is not a no-man's land of "might makes right." ironically, it is in fact this idea of, you know, "rule of law" which separates "us" from "them." careful you don't ally yourself too readily with "their" kind of methods and rationales.
  21. Oregonian Entertainment on Firefox Crop Circles Prove Intelligent Alien Life · · Score: 4, Funny

    I guess that's how you amuse yourself when you live in Idaho's Portugal.

  22. Re:It's not a double standard. on Site Says 'Go Away!'; Federal Court Says No · · Score: 2, Funny

    This isn't a double standard by any means. It's what many call the "American standard".

    Apropos, American Standard is also a popular brand of toilet. So no matter which you're talking about, it's all shit.

    Thank you, here all week, tip your waitress, try the veal, etc.

  23. DUP...oh wait, nevermind. on Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I thought that this was a dupe, but then I realized it's the same tactics, different agency. Just our lovely administration "staying the course" on being "good stewards" of the environment.

  24. Re:Majestic? on Playing The Escape · · Score: 1

    YES. That's it. Thank you and all the other better-memoried responders in the thread.

  25. That reminds me!! on Playing The Escape · · Score: 1

    Speaking of "The Game" the movie, does anyone remember this muched hyped about "real life" game that was ACTUALLY pitched in the mid-late 90s? It was like half RPG for the computer, half "real life" drama, where supposedly you'd get dramatic phone calls, messages, etc. I remember the organizers were very cagey and mysterious about what it would involve and how deeply it would "infiltrate" your life, but I certainly don't remember any fall-out or follow-up or if it actually happened? I can't for the life of me remember what was called or I'd just google for it.