For each monkey, preferences for at least nine different M&M colors were assessed.
Where can I get nine different colors of M&M's?
Don't tell me Wal*Mart. I hate that store. I used to consider it on par with Biggs, Meijer, Kroger, Target, etc. But once I checked out Kroger, I can tell you that there's no comparison!
I got to test this system. The real cool part is that when you draw the picture, the system obfuscates it with an asterisk. My picture contains a hunter and a numeral "2". When I draw the picture, I can see it, but everyone else sees asterisks.
So if there are two companies selling identical products for identical money, and one is making 75% markup, while the other is making 15% markup, you'd rather buy from the less efficient supplier? That's foolish!
No way in hell would I use Google Patent Search for any serious searches when doing real patent work. That's like handing your ideas over to them! They wouldn't monitor popular patent searches to get ideas, now, would they?
If Microsoft was smart, they'd complete the migration of Windows to OLPC. Then they'd charge a premium price for it (say $595, including Microsoft Works or Office).
Then they'd fund an underground source (think of how they funded SCO) to develop an easy one-click port from OLPC Linux to Windows, keeping all valuable user files in tact.
Then the underground source would accidentally leak it on the P2P networks, and the rouge pirate underprivileged kids would think they are "sticking it to the man" and getting something real valuable (Windows + Office), when in reality Ballmer is just training a whole new set of young people that they cannot live without Windows.
I just tried checking a random domain on the networksolutions whois. ( 21laforest.com ) It's available so I'll check it a month from now to see if its snatched.
ha ha! Not a very controlled experiment.
find an available name
post it on slashdot
check a month later to see if it's taken.
There are enough ass-tunnels out there (like me) who'd pay $8.95 just to screw up your experiment!
MySQL leading the way? I don't think so. Take a close look at their client licensing.
The one who led the way toward a free database was HP, with their Image product, and later, their SQL version. Image had been free (as in beer) as early as 1975, which is one of the reasons HP gained so much mini-computer market share: Cheap Value-Added-Resellers and Software shops could package their custom software with a database for a reasonable price.
Win over the developers with cheap price and good tools (ahem, Facebook, Yahoo, Google). Same strategy is repeated year after year. Standing on stage yelling "Developers! Developers! Developers!" doesn't cut it.
My list keeps growing... On Linux distro's that I'll never install or support.
You're looking at this all wrong! Download TurboLinux. Install it at all your customers (on some old 486 machine in the storage closet). Then tell them that they may violate any Microsoft patents that they want.
"Microsoft pledged not to sue Turbolinux's users for patent infringement."
I suspect that per-mile, airlines are far safer. Per trip, I'm not so sure. The average flight may be 400 miles. The average car trip maybe 4?
There are some great posts in this discussion, which help to question the Airline's claim that air travel is so safe. I won't repeat the arguments, but they were quite enjoyable to read.
I think it's pretty safe, but I also like to play devil's advocate. And follow the money, too - keep in mind that the airline industry is the one touting the safety record, which should cause you to doubt it at least a little.
airlines are still the safest way to travel by a large margin. Over the past 20 years, your odds of dying in a commerical airline accident were about 1 in 5 million per flight (multiply by number of flights you take in life for net risk). Your odds of dying on the road are about 1 in 50 (net risk).
You compare odds of dying in commercial airline (1 in 5 million) and odds of dying on the road (1 in 50 "net risk").
As one responder already said, your math is bad - you don't multiply by the number of flights, in independent trials. You exponentiate.
I want to help you compare apples to apples:
Assume you take 4 road trips per day (commute to and from work, commute to and from lunch), 365 days per year, for 70 years of travel. Times 50 (to account for the 1 in 50 that you mention), we are up to 5.11 Million. This does not count other times that you "cross the street" or "walk along a road", since you said "dying on the road".
Tell me again how your stats prove that flying is the safest way to travel by a large margin! 1 in 5.11 million seems better than 1 in 5 million! And even if my math lost precision, "a large margin" seems a little far fetched. Help me out here.
Interesting that this is a USPTO issue (Patent Office).
I think more frightening is how one can use the data, once it's "discovered" on a P2P network.
Imagine if there were a company with a collection of what people are searching for, generally, plus patent-specific searches. And imagine that company, while professing that they will do no evil, notices that there's a whole lot of patent searches coming from a certain domain or IP-address (say a competitor like Microsoft) for some technology key words.
What a great tip-off to search the P2P networks (and the web) for hints which are actually shared.
This is a perfect example of the Streisand effect. Note how much attention gets drawn to the two or three paragraphs (or pages?) that were redacted. Through censorship, something that's not of interest to very many people suddenly becomes much more interesting!
In case you missed this discussion back on October 2, Carnegie Mellon has a service which helps to better digitize these books. It's called Recaptcha, and it uses otherwise wasted human cycles to convert text that was hard for computers to OCR.
I like flying into Cincinnati. They have that shop just off the main terminal that you can get all your clothes and a piece of luggage to carry it in. Sure, the clothes are slightly used, but all are clean and in great shape.
I pack my underwear and toiletries, and don't bring a single stitch of clothing, other than what's on my back. I'll stop at the shop and pick up a few USED dress shirts, a few casual shirts, pants, sometimes a suit. Everything's organized, in style and well marked. It takes me far less time to pick up my clothes than it would to pack at home, check my luggage, pick up my luggage, etc.
I leave a credit card imprint for the deposit on the clothes. When I return them, I usually get my full deposit back, less the cleaning and usage fee, which is far less than a typical laundry and dry cleaning bill.
OK, I made this service up, but doesn't it sound like it would appeal to some class of traveler?
Ah, someone got "Mod-ulated"! "Informative", gotta love it. Some Mod needs to turn in their Geek card...
ELLIE
Mathematics is the only truly
universal language, Senator. We
think this may be a beacon -- an
announcement to get our attention.
DRUMLIN
If it's attention you want I'd say
you've got it.
Just one thing: Why Vega?
Everyone's looked at Vega for years
with no results, and now, yesterday,
they start broadcasting primes.
...
LUNACHARSKY
A second layer, nested within the
main signal; possibly... a picture?
Product of three primes...
KITZ
(joining them)
What.
LUNACHARSKY... definitely three dimensions,
either a hologram or a two-
dimensional picture that moves in
time; a movie.
DRUMLIN
(dryly)
Hope there's a cartoon.
KITZ
How is that possible? How could all
that information be encoded in --
KENT
Well, sir, some bits of the signal
are bits that tell us how to
interpret the other bits.
Technically speaking.
JURYRIGGED 35-INCH MONITOR
Strings of zeros and ones fill the screen as the group
assembles around it.
ELLIE
Enlarge.
Willie types. Ellie moves closer, studying it.
Intuitively:
ELLIE
Try plotting values in a three
dimensional coordinate system.
A pattern begins to emerge.
DRUMLIN
Throw a gray scale on it; standard
interpolation.
ELLIE
Rotate 90 degrees counterclock wise.
Willie enters commands. All are mesmerized by the shadows
taking form on the screen.
ELLIE
It has to be an image. Stack it up,
string-breaks every 60th character.
On the screen a distinct black and white moving image
forms; grays define it even further. The group is
transfixed. Kitz whispers to an aide who makes a call in
a hand radio.
KENT
Um... I've got an auxiliary sideband
channel here. I think it's audio.
An otherworldly RUMBLING GLISSANDO of sounds joins the
image, sliding up and down the spectrum... and then the
faint SWELLING MUSIC is heard. Ellie reaches over Willie
and type more commands. The picture rotates, rectifies,
focuses --
KITZ
What in the hell...?
DRUMLIN
It's a hoax. I knew it!
KENT
Um, excuse me, but would someone
mind telling me what the hell is
going on?
Other reactions range from astonishment to nervous
laughter. Ellie and Peter stare in utter amazement.
ON SCREEN
A grainy black and white image of a massive reviewing
stand adorned with an immense Art Deco eagle.
Clutched in the eagle's concrete talons is a swastika.
Adolph Hitler salutes a rhythmically chanting crowd.
The deep baritone voice of an ANNOUNCER, scratchy but
unmistakably GERMAN, BOOMS through the room. The dark
absurdity of the moment plays over Ellie's face; helpless:
ELLIE
Anybody know German?
Kent tilts his head, closes his eyes.
KENT
The Fuhrer... welcomes the world to
the German Fatherland... for the
opening of the 1936 Olympic Games.
Hitler's face fills the screen. The crowd roars its
approval.
...
Ellie hurries into the control room -- then stops dead.
POV - MAIN MONITOR
The incredibly complex geometric pattern we see flashing
on the screen will be referred to as hieroglyphics -- but
they are like no hieroglyphics ever seen before;
chillingly otherworldly, they are the first visual
artifact of an alien civilization. The scientists stand
stunned and silent.
BACK TO SCENE
ELLIE
What...
LUNACHARSKY
(softly)
In ancient times when parchment was
in short supply people would write
over old writing... it was called a
palimpsest.
ELLIE
A third lay
There are about 800 programs that do steganography. The best implementation that I have seen so far works like this:
First the program takes the target JPG (which you want to be very large), and treats it as random noise. Simply a field of random zeros and ones. Then, within that vast field, the program selects a pattern or frequency to place variations in the noise pattern.
The variations in the noise pattern act as a beacon - sort of a signal that the payload is coming. Common variations include mathematical pulses at predictable intervals - say something that would easily be recognizable by a 5th-grader, like say a pattern of prime numbers.
Then it layers in a second layer, nested within the main signal. Some bits are bits to tell how to interpret the other bits. Use a gray scale with standard interpolation. Rotate the second layer 90 degrees. Make sure there's a string break every 60 characters, and add an auxiliary sideband channel. Make sure that the second layer is zoomed in sufficiently, and using a less popular protocol language, so that upon first glance it's not easily recognizable.
Here's the magical part: It then adds in a third layer. Sort of like in ancient times when parchment was in short supply people would write over old writing... it was called a palimpsest. Here you can catalog over 10,000 "frames" of data, which can communicate any message that you want.
Yeah, and there's a whole group of criminals that don't have it quite figured out. Like the ones who hid the new Radiohead album inside a photo of two naked pre-teens.
Research Shows Image-Based Threat on the Rise
New Purdue University research shows steganography, long considered a minor threat, may be on the rise
OCTOBER 18, 2007 | 6:00 PM
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Senior Editor, Dark Reading
Until recently, steganography, the stealth technique of hiding text or images within image files, has mostly been considered too complex -- and conspicuous -- to be much of a threat. But some forensics experts now worry that the bad guys are starting to use the tactic more frequently, especially in child pornography and identity theft trafficking.
There are an estimated 800 or so steganographytools available online, many of them free and with user-friendly graphical user interfaces and point-and-click features. This broad availability making steganography more accessible and easier to use for hiding and moving stolen or illicit payloads, experts say.
Security experts to date have mostly dismissed steganography as a mainstream threat, relegating it to the domain of spooks and the feds. Their skepticism has been well-founded: The few studies that have searched for images hiding steganographic messages have come up empty-handed.
He wasn't pushing any religion. He was arguing a point and giving sources to back it up.
Since religion is defined as "a specific fundamental set of beliefs", and he was citing something that he believes in, which he perceived that I did not believe, and using book references to back it up, I stand by my statement. I was trying to make a point.
Actually I love knowledge and broadening my horizons, even reading things that are 180-degrees from my thinking. I find that quite mentally stimulating.
I've failed to make my point with you - sorry. Let me try again:
Bible-thumpers often turn people off with thir methods: "if you would just read my book, you'd believe the way I do". And my point is that this same logic applies in reverse. He was telling me what book to read to be swayed to his belief, and it can be just as offensive.
Personally, I am not offended by Bible-thumpers or atheists or historians or Slashdotters who want to cite references. But it appears to me that many people ARE (specifically offended by Bible-thumpers and their equivalent)! And these same offended people often try to enlighten others by referencing books or websites, which espouse their beliefs (in atheism or humanitarianism or competing religions, or history, or whatever). And I feel it's hypocritical to try to stifle someone else's methods of spreading their beliefs, while using the same methods to push your beliefs.
That hypocrisy was what I was trying to highlight with my previous post. Be tolerant of other people's beliefs, and recognize that your citing of references can be as offensive as you perceive their "Bible references" to be (or whatever religious book someone chooses to reference that offends you).
Maybe you didn't catch that theme throughout the whole thread, which is probably why my post, when read stand-alone, caused you to respond as you did.
You're looking at it all wrong. This is total consistency.
The original 18th century New England Patriots were considered criminals. They broke all sorts of laws, including tax evasion and treason!
The PATRIOT act continued that trend. And now there's NFL Camera cheating and privacy invasion.
That's not irony.
Irony is the condition my Tom Brady jersey is in - it was wrinkly after last week's game, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't tell me Wal*Mart. I hate that store. I used to consider it on par with Biggs, Meijer, Kroger, Target, etc. But once I checked out Kroger, I can tell you that there's no comparison!
It seems like 69 year olds have had profiles on MySpace since the second day it was live!
I got to test this system. The real cool part is that when you draw the picture, the system obfuscates it with an asterisk. My picture contains a hunter and a numeral "2". When I draw the picture, I can see it, but everyone else sees asterisks.
This isn't the Cincinnati Newspaper!
No need to travel to a new place. Simply travel back in time 100 million years.
So if there are two companies selling identical products for identical money, and one is making 75% markup, while the other is making 15% markup, you'd rather buy from the less efficient supplier? That's foolish!
No way in hell would I use Google Patent Search for any serious searches when doing real patent work. That's like handing your ideas over to them! They wouldn't monitor popular patent searches to get ideas, now, would they?
Then they'd fund an underground source (think of how they funded SCO) to develop an easy one-click port from OLPC Linux to Windows, keeping all valuable user files in tact.
Then the underground source would accidentally leak it on the P2P networks, and the rouge pirate underprivileged kids would think they are "sticking it to the man" and getting something real valuable (Windows + Office), when in reality Ballmer is just training a whole new set of young people that they cannot live without Windows.
Shhh don't mention this strategy to them!
"Ass-tunnel" - spread it (so to speak)!
- find an available name
- post it on slashdot
- check a month later to see if it's taken.
There are enough ass-tunnels out there (like me) who'd pay $8.95 just to screw up your experiment!The one who led the way toward a free database was HP, with their Image product, and later, their SQL version. Image had been free (as in beer) as early as 1975, which is one of the reasons HP gained so much mini-computer market share: Cheap Value-Added-Resellers and Software shops could package their custom software with a database for a reasonable price.
Win over the developers with cheap price and good tools (ahem, Facebook, Yahoo, Google). Same strategy is repeated year after year. Standing on stage yelling "Developers! Developers! Developers!" doesn't cut it.
"Microsoft pledged not to sue Turbolinux's users for patent infringement."
(I should mention that I ANAL thing...)
Clearly the law that banned leaded gasoline caused people to have more legal abortions.
I love the correlation = causation fallacy. (in agreement, by the way. Just adding to your point.)
There are some great posts in this discussion, which help to question the Airline's claim that air travel is so safe. I won't repeat the arguments, but they were quite enjoyable to read.
I think it's pretty safe, but I also like to play devil's advocate. And follow the money, too - keep in mind that the airline industry is the one touting the safety record, which should cause you to doubt it at least a little.
As one responder already said, your math is bad - you don't multiply by the number of flights, in independent trials. You exponentiate.
I want to help you compare apples to apples:
Assume you take 4 road trips per day (commute to and from work, commute to and from lunch), 365 days per year, for 70 years of travel. Times 50 (to account for the 1 in 50 that you mention), we are up to 5.11 Million. This does not count other times that you "cross the street" or "walk along a road", since you said "dying on the road".
Tell me again how your stats prove that flying is the safest way to travel by a large margin! 1 in 5.11 million seems better than 1 in 5 million! And even if my math lost precision, "a large margin" seems a little far fetched. Help me out here.
I think more frightening is how one can use the data, once it's "discovered" on a P2P network.
Imagine if there were a company with a collection of what people are searching for, generally, plus patent-specific searches. And imagine that company, while professing that they will do no evil, notices that there's a whole lot of patent searches coming from a certain domain or IP-address (say a competitor like Microsoft) for some technology key words.
What a great tip-off to search the P2P networks (and the web) for hints which are actually shared.
This is a perfect example of the Streisand effect. Note how much attention gets drawn to the two or three paragraphs (or pages?) that were redacted. Through censorship, something that's not of interest to very many people suddenly becomes much more interesting!
In case you missed this discussion back on October 2, Carnegie Mellon has a service which helps to better digitize these books. It's called Recaptcha, and it uses otherwise wasted human cycles to convert text that was hard for computers to OCR.
I pack my underwear and toiletries, and don't bring a single stitch of clothing, other than what's on my back. I'll stop at the shop and pick up a few USED dress shirts, a few casual shirts, pants, sometimes a suit. Everything's organized, in style and well marked. It takes me far less time to pick up my clothes than it would to pack at home, check my luggage, pick up my luggage, etc.
I leave a credit card imprint for the deposit on the clothes. When I return them, I usually get my full deposit back, less the cleaning and usage fee, which is far less than a typical laundry and dry cleaning bill.
OK, I made this service up, but doesn't it sound like it would appeal to some class of traveler?
First the program takes the target JPG (which you want to be very large), and treats it as random noise. Simply a field of random zeros and ones. Then, within that vast field, the program selects a pattern or frequency to place variations in the noise pattern.
The variations in the noise pattern act as a beacon - sort of a signal that the payload is coming. Common variations include mathematical pulses at predictable intervals - say something that would easily be recognizable by a 5th-grader, like say a pattern of prime numbers.
Then it layers in a second layer, nested within the main signal. Some bits are bits to tell how to interpret the other bits. Use a gray scale with standard interpolation. Rotate the second layer 90 degrees. Make sure there's a string break every 60 characters, and add an auxiliary sideband channel. Make sure that the second layer is zoomed in sufficiently, and using a less popular protocol language, so that upon first glance it's not easily recognizable.
Here's the magical part: It then adds in a third layer. Sort of like in ancient times when parchment was in short supply people would write over old writing... it was called a palimpsest. Here you can catalog over 10,000 "frames" of data, which can communicate any message that you want.
Further details on this method can be found here.
Yeah, and there's a whole group of criminals that don't have it quite figured out. Like the ones who hid the new Radiohead album inside a photo of two naked pre-teens.
New Purdue University research shows steganography, long considered a minor threat, may be on the rise
OCTOBER 18, 2007 | 6:00 PM
By Kelly Jackson Higgins Senior Editor, Dark Reading
Until recently, steganography, the stealth technique of hiding text or images within image files, has mostly been considered too complex -- and conspicuous -- to be much of a threat. But some forensics experts now worry that the bad guys are starting to use the tactic more frequently, especially in child pornography and identity theft trafficking.
There are an estimated 800 or so steganography tools available online, many of them free and with user-friendly graphical user interfaces and point-and-click features. This broad availability making steganography more accessible and easier to use for hiding and moving stolen or illicit payloads, experts say.
Security experts to date have mostly dismissed steganography as a mainstream threat, relegating it to the domain of spooks and the feds. Their skepticism has been well-founded: The few studies that have searched for images hiding steganographic messages have come up empty-handed.
Actually I love knowledge and broadening my horizons, even reading things that are 180-degrees from my thinking. I find that quite mentally stimulating.
I've failed to make my point with you - sorry. Let me try again:
Bible-thumpers often turn people off with thir methods: "if you would just read my book, you'd believe the way I do". And my point is that this same logic applies in reverse. He was telling me what book to read to be swayed to his belief, and it can be just as offensive.
Personally, I am not offended by Bible-thumpers or atheists or historians or Slashdotters who want to cite references. But it appears to me that many people ARE (specifically offended by Bible-thumpers and their equivalent)! And these same offended people often try to enlighten others by referencing books or websites, which espouse their beliefs (in atheism or humanitarianism or competing religions, or history, or whatever). And I feel it's hypocritical to try to stifle someone else's methods of spreading their beliefs, while using the same methods to push your beliefs.
That hypocrisy was what I was trying to highlight with my previous post. Be tolerant of other people's beliefs, and recognize that your citing of references can be as offensive as you perceive their "Bible references" to be (or whatever religious book someone chooses to reference that offends you).
Maybe you didn't catch that theme throughout the whole thread, which is probably why my post, when read stand-alone, caused you to respond as you did.
The original 18th century New England Patriots were considered criminals. They broke all sorts of laws, including tax evasion and treason!
The PATRIOT act continued that trend. And now there's NFL Camera cheating and privacy invasion.
That's not irony.
Irony is the condition my Tom Brady jersey is in - it was wrinkly after last week's game, though.