No, this is a clever test. It is aimed at a certain type of slashdot readers: the readers in the following groups: - Americans. Or at least: they who are used to using a "." as a seperator. I.e.: "1/2=0.5" Beware: there are those who would write the above as "1/2=0,5"! - Non Americans, of the 'not enough geek' type. They wouldn't fall for the '0,5' thing, but would balk at a sentence 'about 10,0000 in one million'. Beware: those in the stock market (non US) would say that 10,0000 in one million is not very precise: better is of course 10,00000 in one million. I mean: 10,0000 is really between 9,9999 and 10,0001 which is not really precise. - Those who think that the world is NOT directed by mathematics. Indeed, these people would disbelieve a number of 10,0000 in one million (but would believe something like 12,9078).
All-in-all, as I read my own thoughts: it cannot be but a lure to try to trap those slashdotreaders who are in the stock-exchange outside of the USA, and who ARE of the opinion that all riscs in the stock exchange can be put in a mathematical formulae.
This off course in the best slashdot tradition: 1. Identify a specific group of slashdot readers 2.... 3.... 4. Profit! (They just haven't yet come to steps 2 and 3)
We are sorry, no appeal is possible. You see, in order to verify that your website - cnn.com - is actually 'safe', we would have to visit it.
However, as the black list is of the 'no opting out' type, we are unable to do so, as temporarely removing it from the black list is not an option: think of the children!
Kind regards, your government.
Well, with firefox and greasemonkey scripts, it is already possible to 'hide' the spam link. In other words: to make it so that the spam link doesn't "light up" when you've got mail.
Surely, for the average slashdot user, it shouldn't be impossible to adopt this script so that the link doesn't appear at all?
(Or maybey, who knows: there are enough greasemonkey scripts out there, such a script already exists?).
So as long as you control the computer from which your 5 year old accesses her/his email, this should be no problem?
Impossible?
Perhaps not.
It is really a question of using the famous (it is here in the Netherlands) 'four-eye principle'.
Just as you would for humans (one doing it, the other one observing), you could do this for computers as well.
Consider for instance two different types of computer systems, preferable from (many) different companies, that would make it easier/more foolproof perhaps:
the first shows name to the voter in an LCD screen, i.e. is your standard voting machine.
The second computer is connected to a camera observing the LCD screen. With a (open source/verifiable)quasi-random (random seed!) generator it would determine to check - for instance - the 1st, 3rd, 8th, 17 etc vote.
How? By getting the official 'vote' from the first computer, and comparing it to the corresponding (OCR technology) vote according to the videa.
Seal the video (tampering later is provable), make sure each vote is indeed 'given' to the other computer etc etc.
I would guess 'cheating' the video is much more difficult than cheating 'the electrons', certainly if the video image would be of some low quality, standard webcam, not mounted to secure so lapses would be shown etc etc, perhaps a moving clock in the picture, whatever.
Just an idea though...
Comments?
No need to worry.
Any slashdotters on the jury would immediately swear:"No, sir, I did not ILLEGALLY download MP3's."
(And they would be right too;-0).
No! Microsoft probably knows that those people considering one of several "free/open" source licences would not believe anything Microsoft says at face value. So by making developers believe that Microsoft is "against" GPLv3, it is in fact promoting it...
On the other hand, I cannot think of any reason why Microsoft would want to promote GPLv3, but then, who knows?
You aren't serious, are you?
This would mean that slashdot itself is prior art? That would be a first*?
Or that we would have to wait for a third submission of this story, to be able to defeat the (application still in progress) triple-linked list patent?
* Well, actually, it wouldn't. Slashdot has been suggested as prior art in at least two occasions that I remember. But, what the heck, your post is still hilarious.
Re:7 centuries isn't feasible for humans
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
or a travel of seven centuries
How many human societies have survived 7 centuries unchanged?
Heck, just look at how much language has changed in the last century...
Or imagine trying to talk to someone from the 1300s...
Besides, how would you select the crew and avoid any more "diaper rash" candidates?
You are so right. It is very difficult to get the right mix of creatures on the arc..
But I am glad I can finally tell you here in public: this spaceship had already been made(!!). And not yesterday, no, billions of years ago. To make sure the spaceship was self preserving, a breed of bacteria was places upon it; Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest ensured that the ensuing population of the spaceship would flourish.
Oh, and the spaceship is called earth.
Oh dear, another Slashdotter who doesn't know his literature.
A true Slashdotter, believing everything he (or she???) reads at slashdot, would immediately know that in a recent slashdot article (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/ 01/2049239) an article was mentioned (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id= 116&art_id=qw1170340561317B216) in which this quote was made:
"It is a machine mechanism that is going to take molecular machines a step forward to the realisation of the future world of nanotechnology. Things that seem like a Harry Potter film now are going to be a reality."
So, obviously the tagging of thís story as "SciFi" is indeed wrong, as it should by "SciFu" (Science Future);-0
(Yes, this is a joke, pun intended!)
While I myself never used them (punch cards, I mean; I have used floppy's;-0), there was a certain benefit. At the university where I got my degree there was a professor who had quite some experience with punch-cards.
Not sure if there were 7 steps (see parent), but it took several runs to compile & run your program. And as these runs were scheduled, a problem ment 'another day'. The result? This professor now wrote FORTRAN programs on his Atari (yes, this was the previous century), compiled and run his programs... FAULTLESS!
Never before (or after) have I seen someone writing complex pieces of software without requiring (pre-)compiling and/or linking several times due to some small error in the code.
One might say that punch-cards made pretty good code-writers!
Finally, the four-step-to-fortune question is raised.
So here it is: 1. Sue IBM 2. Buy large amounts of stock in IBM, (or better, futures), and buy large amount of stock in the lawyer firm that IBM uses 3. Make sure proceedings take ages and ages. 4. Sell futures, just after losing the case in court: profit!
Off course the geek reply would be to make a patch - somewhere - available, in which the "non-christians" win Or, even better, where the "opposition" could convert as well. Or, even better, where the names of non-christians and christians was reversed?
Seriously though, this seems to be on the same scale as those hedious games in which neo-nazi's kill jews... My guess is, though, that this game will be short lived: who wants to play a game in which only one side (the "non Carpatia" side) can win?
Well, (bulletproof and flamesuit ON) isn't that the same guy who postulated that there was an "pidgeon - till" force somewhere, because, well, experiments "proved" that if you shifted the till a bit, the pidgeon's "knew"?
And isn't this the guy behind morphogenetic field-theorie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field) , which states that if person A in say, Japan, thinks about something, the chances that right afterwards someone else in say, Portugal, thinks the same thing "because thinking about it has just become easier"? And who postulates that our Sun probbly has a mind of her (?its?his?) own, as, well, it COULD be true?
This might be true. Then again, perhaps Einstein was right ("I don't know which weapons will be used in the third world war, but the fourth will be fought with stones and sticks"). In that case the human race will survive through eating rodents*.
* There are those among us who thinks that rodents will be the next "dominant" species of this planet, that is, right after we humans give up this place.
Well, anything coming from a University MUST be good, musn't it? Anyone remembering cold-fusion? Researchers came from a Utah University... (Agreed, they were chemists working on a physics subject, but still... they came from "a university").
Slashdot Mirror
No, this is a clever test.
It is aimed at a certain type of slashdot readers:
the readers in the following groups:
- Americans. Or at least: they who are used to using a "." as a seperator. I.e.: "1/2=0.5"
Beware: there are those who would write the above as "1/2=0,5"!
- Non Americans, of the 'not enough geek' type.
They wouldn't fall for the '0,5' thing, but would balk at a sentence 'about 10,0000 in one million'.
Beware: those in the stock market (non US) would say that 10,0000 in one million is not very precise: better is of course 10,00000 in one million. I mean: 10,0000 is really between 9,9999 and 10,0001 which is not really precise.
- Those who think that the world is NOT directed by mathematics. Indeed, these people would disbelieve a number of 10,0000 in one million (but would believe something like 12,9078).
All-in-all, as I read my own thoughts: it cannot be but a lure to try to trap those slashdotreaders who are in the stock-exchange outside of the USA, and who ARE of the opinion that all riscs in the stock exchange can be put in a mathematical formulae.
This off course in the best slashdot tradition: ... ...
1. Identify a specific group of slashdot readers
2.
3.
4. Profit!
(They just haven't yet come to steps 2 and 3)
We are sorry, no appeal is possible. You see, in order to verify that your website - cnn.com - is actually 'safe', we would have to visit it. However, as the black list is of the 'no opting out' type, we are unable to do so, as temporarely removing it from the black list is not an option: think of the children! Kind regards, your government.
Well, with firefox and greasemonkey scripts, it is already possible to 'hide' the spam link. In other words: to make it so that the spam link doesn't "light up" when you've got mail. Surely, for the average slashdot user, it shouldn't be impossible to adopt this script so that the link doesn't appear at all? (Or maybey, who knows: there are enough greasemonkey scripts out there, such a script already exists?). So as long as you control the computer from which your 5 year old accesses her/his email, this should be no problem?
Impossible? Perhaps not. It is really a question of using the famous (it is here in the Netherlands) 'four-eye principle'. Just as you would for humans (one doing it, the other one observing), you could do this for computers as well. Consider for instance two different types of computer systems, preferable from (many) different companies, that would make it easier/more foolproof perhaps: the first shows name to the voter in an LCD screen, i.e. is your standard voting machine. The second computer is connected to a camera observing the LCD screen. With a (open source/verifiable)quasi-random (random seed!) generator it would determine to check - for instance - the 1st, 3rd, 8th, 17 etc vote. How? By getting the official 'vote' from the first computer, and comparing it to the corresponding (OCR technology) vote according to the videa. Seal the video (tampering later is provable), make sure each vote is indeed 'given' to the other computer etc etc. I would guess 'cheating' the video is much more difficult than cheating 'the electrons', certainly if the video image would be of some low quality, standard webcam, not mounted to secure so lapses would be shown etc etc, perhaps a moving clock in the picture, whatever. Just an idea though... Comments?
Ok, so how about tagging stories like this as "RIAA(=SWEU)"? In fact, I'll just try it right after finishing this comment.
No need to worry. Any slashdotters on the jury would immediately swear:"No, sir, I did not ILLEGALLY download MP3's." (And they would be right too;-0).
Ah... The good old days, when people from the patent office actually did things that made sense...
It's physics, Jim, but not as we know it.
No!
Microsoft probably knows that those people considering one of several "free/open" source licences would not believe anything Microsoft says at face value.
So by making developers believe that Microsoft is "against" GPLv3, it is in fact promoting it...
On the other hand, I cannot think of any reason why Microsoft would want to promote GPLv3, but then, who knows?
Greetings, Roel
How else would this be (near) first post ;-0
You aren't serious, are you?
This would mean that slashdot itself is prior art? That would be a first*?
Or that we would have to wait for a third submission of this story,
to be able to defeat the (application still in progress) triple-linked list patent?
* Well, actually, it wouldn't. Slashdot has been suggested as prior art in at least two occasions that I remember. But, what the heck, your post is still hilarious.
How many human societies have survived 7 centuries unchanged?
Heck, just look at how much language has changed in the last century ...
Or imagine trying to talk to someone from the 1300s ...
Besides, how would you select the crew and avoid any more "diaper rash" candidates?
You are so right. It is very difficult to get the right mix of creatures on the arc..But I am glad I can finally tell you here in public: this spaceship had already been made(!!). And not yesterday, no, billions of years ago. To make sure the spaceship was self preserving, a breed of bacteria was places upon it; Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest ensured that the ensuing population of the spaceship would flourish.
Oh, and the spaceship is called earth.
[And yes, this is meant as a joke]
Oh dear, another Slashdotter who doesn't know his literature. A true Slashdotter, believing everything he (or she???) reads at slashdot, would immediately know that in a recent slashdot article (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/ 01/2049239) an article was mentioned (http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id= 116&art_id=qw1170340561317B216) in which this quote was made: ;-0
"It is a machine mechanism that is going to take molecular machines a step forward to the realisation of the future world of nanotechnology. Things that seem like a Harry Potter film now are going to be a reality."
So, obviously the tagging of thís story as "SciFi" is indeed wrong, as it should by "SciFu" (Science Future)
(Yes, this is a joke, pun intended!)
While I myself never used them (punch cards, I mean; I have used floppy's;-0), there was a certain benefit.
At the university where I got my degree there was a professor who had quite some experience with punch-cards.
Not sure if there were 7 steps (see parent), but it took several runs to compile & run your program. And as these runs were scheduled, a problem ment 'another day'.
The result? This professor now wrote FORTRAN programs on his Atari (yes, this was the previous century), compiled and run his programs... FAULTLESS!
Never before (or after) have I seen someone writing complex pieces of software without requiring (pre-)compiling and/or linking several times due to some small error in the code.
One might say that punch-cards made pretty good code-writers!
Dear Sir,
I am sorry to inform you that the debt owed to you, a total of
0,02$,
cannot be payed.
This is due to some unforseen circumstances beyond our control: it turned out that other claims have been judged higher priority*.
Kind regards,
trustee SCO.
* I am sure you can understand that we had to pay the gentlemen also known as 'Darl' first.
Ah!
Finally, the four-step-to-fortune question is raised.
So here it is:
1. Sue IBM
2. Buy large amounts of stock in IBM, (or better, futures), and buy large amount of stock in the lawyer firm that IBM uses
3. Make sure proceedings take ages and ages.
4. Sell futures, just after losing the case in court: profit!
Off course the geek reply would be to make a patch - somewhere - available, in which the "non-christians" win
Or, even better, where the "opposition" could convert as well.
Or, even better, where the names of non-christians and christians was reversed?
Seriously though, this seems to be on the same scale as those hedious games in which neo-nazi's kill jews...
My guess is, though, that this game will be short lived: who wants to play a game in which only one side (the "non Carpatia" side) can win?
Hi there, I just sent you some dollar bills through snailmail... What? You shredded them?
So that's what the Microsoft/Novell deal was all about ;-0
(http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,2 0733515%5E27318%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15321,00.html)
Roel
No such negative thoughts ;-0
Pitty it doesn't make it through Feynman's criterium, though [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater and http://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/8-1/bauer.htm]
Some of the problems with 'virtual firewalls' can be solved through real firewalls on ... virtual machines
(i.e. Sieve at http://sievefirewall.sourceforge.net/ or at http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/24 5)
Well, (bulletproof and flamesuit ON) isn't that the same guy who postulated that there was an "pidgeon - till" force somewhere, because, well, experiments "proved" that if you shifted the till a bit, the pidgeon's "knew"?
) , which states that if person A in say, Japan, thinks about something, the chances that right afterwards someone else in say, Portugal, thinks the same thing "because thinking about it has just become easier"? And who postulates that our Sun probbly has a mind of her (?its?his?) own, as, well, it COULD be true?
And isn't this the guy behind morphogenetic field-theorie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field
Ah yes, you mean THAT Rupert Sheldrake?
Ok, I'll just skip reading his essay then.
Roel
This might be true. Then again, perhaps Einstein was right
("I don't know which weapons will be used in the third world war, but the fourth will be fought with stones and sticks").
In that case the human race will survive through eating rodents*.
* There are those among us who thinks that rodents will be the next "dominant" species of this planet, that is, right after we humans give up this place.
Well, anything coming from a University MUST be good, musn't it?
Anyone remembering cold-fusion? Researchers came from a Utah University...
(Agreed, they were chemists working on a physics subject, but still... they came from "a university").