Maybe now they can find the missing 2.3 trillion dollars...
Actually it isn't missing, but an accidental faux pas. The 2.3 trillion dollars was converted to fourth-world currency, where each dollar equated to a grain of sand.
After storming the beaches of Normandy, a modest amount of that was lost.
In the present day, it is very easy for the U.S. to lose those grains of sand in areas where it is difficult to discern the existing grains from those dollars that were converted.
Then again, they're so busy reporting on Kidman and Urban's desires for a normal wedding, Anna Nicole Smith's inheritance rival dying, and Reese Witherspoon suing someone over a false pregnancy story...
Sheesh... all of that stuff is "dirty laundry". This article tends to show less concern for that but more concerned over where the money made from 'dirty laundry' is 'laundered'.
Rumor has it though, that the next issue of every competing tabloid will shed some light on that ruse.
The "Big Blue Marble" we call earth has been running at magnitudes of 'flops' for ages. Perhaps if they didn't install that evolution software, the aliens would not have stopped avoiding that planet that kept blue screening.
Yes, they do, but it would still be better than sending them into the web with the naive notion that people are good and honest.
That's the interesting part. "Good and honest" seem to be a subjective notion. However, not many people (I'm referring to parents here) seem to take a stand and note that their little some-teen year-old child is actually out there advertising themselves for the rest of the world.
It only took a particular incident for me to block myspace.com (or any reference to it) from my router. Any responsible parent with teenage daughters would probably learn this lesson soon.
...actually putting in things like "blackmail", "extortion" and "sexual favors" on the notes line of my checks are finally being tallied through the use of OCR on those bank check images.
I'm going to have to start using "presidential donation", "educational subsidy" and "technological research". That way, I can not only stay off the radar, but perhaps get a tax deduction as well.
Many years ago, I attended a summer camp. In fact, it was a "Christian" summer camp. It seemed ok for the most part, until the 'competion' phase where all the campers put in teams had to put "clothes" onto the animals in the barn (seriously).
I still have nightmares of that young calf voiding its bowels after no less than four children tried to stretch over her backside. The same was true of every other goat and barnyard animal that was accosted by several children trying to "dress them up" in garments of varying usage.
Summer camp left some very bizarre memories with me, on the other hand, I did learn how to churn butter. Too bad I don't remember the details on how to do that.:(
Mid-terms and final exams are always good catalysts for future ulcers. However, if you're always prepared and up on the material, then it is difficult to see how you could become upset unless you landed in a class where a good number of other students are blowing the curve just as much as you are.
When I was in college, I made 100% in all of my programming classes (literally, homework, tests, mid-terms and exams), while I struggled in subjects like electromagnetics and combinatorics. Conversely, some of my classmates were just 'naturals' at mathematics but could not seem to grasp programming languages. (Although, I could see it at the math level since most of their sentences were put together with one-letter words and lots of punctuation.)
Are you finding yourself in this type of situation? Perhaps you are finding yourself in a subject that you don't feel you are 100% comfortable?
Don't sweat it, do your best. Think about the times in the future when you're going to dream about going back to High School and acing everything or perhaps dreaming about the times you were at college and you found out that you had signed up for two courses you never went to, "drop day" just passed and there was a mid-term the next day.
At least I'm not still dreaming about being naked at school... I got laughed out of all of those.:)
"Teach kids how to misdirect, develop an alias, and spot patterns indicating a predatory nature."
Lawyer: Your honor, my client was the victim of a child predator!
Judge: But sir, your client is well over twenty-one years of age.
Lawyer: Yes your honor, but she preyed on my client!
(Jury mulls about a bit....)
Lawyer: Your honor, my client here is the victim. The 'real' predator here is the person that preyed on his weakness.
Judge: What weakness might that be?
Lawyer: He succumbed to his desires of being slathered with chocolate jello-o pudding by an eighty year old woman. He maintains that this sixteen year old was not who she pretended to be.
The way you present it is very understandable. I suppose a good analogy, at least from a "coders" perspective, is that you don't really understand why using a particular programming language construct is slower unless you understand how the compiler translates it, how the microprocessor interprets those instructions, the operating temperature of the CPU, etc, etc.
It seems that quite a bit of theory builds upon past knowledge which still manages to 'stick', even though we tend to lose knowledge of the 'fundamentals' in the process. It would be interesting, however, to see a lot of that theoretical 'math' put to work in the physical world; or, at the very least, explained simply to those who are capable of giving that math physical manifestation.
I think that dimensions should be imagined like an Isocahedron, twenty different facets. About 50% of them are positive planes, 25% of them are negative and the remaining 25% are too vague to make a decision either way.
...but also turned out to be a disaster for productivity at work recently. Two developers engaged in a battle of semantics as to whether or not M-theory was actually string theory or a unification of same. Almost an hour later, people had a concern that someone may end up being stabbed in the face; the argument, however, was cut short later when a concerned manager dealt with the high-strung arm-chair physicists.
Two hours later, the local protagonist "pulled their strings" sublimely bringing up the subject in the midst of those two persons and subsequently, another shouting match ensued. At one point, the intellectual conversation had almost degraded into a volley of "momma" jokes. By the end of the day, neither developer realized how close they were to being "strung up" by the rest of the team.
The initial prototype (named 'Maxthon') is the first in this new line of robotic dogs (which, oddly enough, resembles the "Shinese" breed). 'Max' is supposedly using his new language to circumvent Chinese censhorship.
I wonder if some of the 'mispellings' that may have been introduced into these patents have anything to do with 'source code' that may have been submitted as part of the patent process.
From what I've seen in the past, some code had been outsourced to others where 'spelling', wasn't important with regards to the grammar of the language in which the program was developed, but in the 'comments' of the code, it was important to a future developer that might need to work with it.
Now, I've also seen some cases where 'elements' in code were just mispelled; didn't affect the way the program executed, but irritated my 'sensibilities'. I find it odd to 'Initilize' things often. Attempting to 'correct' this portion of code is a one day project at best which might offend someone.
Having worked for attorneys in the past, I knew how important it was, not even in case law to ensure that wording was perfected, but even in professional correspondence.
I recall several instances where after transcribing a taped letter, verbatim (with my own spellings of the words transcribed, of course) that the attorney would read, cross out lines, add words, change statements, etc., until the letter that was transcribed was absolutely different from what was put on audio tape.
Then, when the 'final' product was rendered to the 'printed word', it was reviewed once again and had usually two or more changes, usually re-arranging a statement or adding some other synonym.
As one other Slashdotter respondent noted, it would be nice if everyone had learned to "clean up after themselves"; however, in this case, I think it is more of some person hoping that hindsight is "20/20". (I wonder if someone is going to actually patent 'hindsight'.)
It's interesting to see that someone is taking a 'janitorial' point of view on this mess. Not sure what can of worms it could open up potentially, but in the end, we usually end up paying for our mistakes.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. It certainly makes sense (but I must profess, from a programmer's point of view) how the API could 'misinterpret' a particular value in a sequence of bytes to be one of rendering the data that follows from being an application drawn image into a file into some sort of fantasical notion that Microsoft was out to take over the world.
I suppose you have to chalk that up to someone who is more so versed in 'hardware' than they are in software itself.
Yeah, get married, have a couple of kids... and watch them remember you like a Memorex tape. But don't try to get into their heads, they don't leave too many clues behind.
If you're persistent enough though, find the patterns.
Of course, you wanted to make sure that the read head of the drive did not spin rite into the platter did you? After all, it only took just a tiny amount of current to pull those magnets closer.
Maybe it's time those designing these circuits got pulled into the limelight.
It's amazing that a compiler can compile itself; however, did a person not have to write that code; did they not have to invoke that compiler? Do they not have to correct their own logic when it fails?
"Trusting Trust" can also be applied to one's children. Perhaps programming isn't just limited to typing on keyboards and clicking on mice.
Reading the article, and then listening to the podcast was something not enlightening, but more so irritating, yet also somewhat inspiring. Only the consipiracy theorist could provoke such thought... but I digress.
First of all, I like how they compare the Windows Metafile as any other "Device Context", like the conventional 'display' or 'printer'. Yes, there were days that some applications 'drew' onto files so that they could be reliably duplicated on the remote side to which they were sent. I'm sure this was a most valued feature for anyone who developed any type of 'Fax' software back in the 90's. Draw to a file, send over the wire, etc.
Should a callback be received if writing to the file was cancelled? Yes indeed. After all, who wants their fax machines cluttered with useless partial faxes that were cancelled midstream. (The fax machines already had a bad habit of doing that over bad lines at times and thermal paper wasn't cheap!)
Now, is there a conspiracy to use the '1' in the file format to make a callback as this person claims? Well, I seriously doubt it was a conspiracy; however, I could definitely imagine that a "real programmer" during the time that this development was going on, might have put a 'shortcut' in the code in order to 'debug' the chunk of a file quickly in order to make sure that things were working (as far as callbacks go) without going through all the motions. Perhaps this code was left in inadvertently or was continuously used for testing; I seriously doubt it was some 'wormhole' in space-time to take over "all the computers of the past."
I would like to see the person making this claim use his debugger to reverse engineer the assembly which made the call into his application in order to determine the logical paths used to decide what the code did or did not do based on his file modifications. Who knows, there may be exploits abound for any OS or application (especially linking loaders) that aren't careful about examining each and every bit, and in the right order on the right day at the right time. That even goes for CPUs that are executing instructions.
Is Microsoft trying to take over the world? Nah, it's probably Google. I bet they have first dibs on the Quantum chip too.
I tend to think that trying to legislate that video games are 'violent' is going to open up as much a "can of worms" as passing legislation that would make abortion 'murder'.
Video games, from the days we were destroying 'aliens' in games like "Space Invaders", or enemy helicopters in old school games like "*M.A.S.H*", destroying living organisms in the game of "Centipede" or what have you, would be the kind of arguments that all lawyers would love to make money on contesting cases against the Plaintiffs who *might* have indulged into those games at a younger age.
I tend to think that violent games, while they may provide ideas of the 'real' or 'imaginary' world others have seen, they still do not define the person that experiences them. That is usually the reward/punishment system that is supposed to be provided. Their reward was probably the game system on which they were given to play the game, but where did the 'punishment' come in? Perhaps the parents should be aware to that.
If the game industry is actually supposed to be the source of punishment as well, maybe a game system that refuses to turn on for a specific amount of time after a player did something "too violent" would be in order, but I'm not sure I see that happening in the near future.
Parents need to realize that the television and the game console is not a babysitter; their children need to be raised by responsible parents.
It's so funny you mention Oregon. My father (rest his soul) was a chemical engineer who used to live in Oregon (along with myself and brothers). I recall many days of summer or off-days from school either picking cherries, plums, grapes or spending a Saturday in our plaid shirts and boots, with a clean paint bucket in hand and a pair of pruning shears trimming a huge maze through a fresh patch of blackberries.
My father loved to make wine, it was one of his *many* hobbies; he never sold anything he made that I knew of (although he's given a lot away), but he allowed us children to mash up the fruit that he used for the fermentation. My memory may be failing me, but I could have sworn he used "Planter's Yeast" in his recipes. He always had these big containers with special 'corks' attached to a tiny water container that kept track of the bubbles. After a bit of time (of bubble watching), he would siphon the fluid (minus the sediment) into bottles and cork them to store for later consumption. A very responsible drinker, he would usually have a glass to sip on before bedtime.
I suppose one might consider "enjoying the fruits of their own labor" once they take a sip of their own wine; but what determines what is fine?
It's even more interesting to note that sometimes the 'judicial review' cannot even get anything right. Consider the case of the woman recently (who seems somewhat imbalanced) that had a judge issue a restraining order against David Letterman, of which he later rescinded. Now that is one rather interesting SNAFU. But then again, it does prove that perhaps his interest (or disinterest) in David Letterman allows him to be more subjective.
However, more on topic is the proverbial "can of worms" that could be opened up by passing such a law that declares a 'video game' to be a cause of violence. I imagine once such a law was passed, every attentive lawyers' ears would be pricked to capture any lawsuits that might unfold from any "naturalists" views that "Centipede" was a violent game in that it promoted the death of nature; or yet, perhaps if there were a day that we, as a human race, met any benign 'Aliens', that perhaps they would sue the entire human race for a game like "Space Invaders" that taught people how to shoot down all of their ships, when all they were trying to do was set down and say "Welcome People of Earth!"
There are too many video games of the past that could be consider *violent* on many different views and fronts, that it would be a judicial nightmare that will clog up our courts with absolutely idiotic frivolous lawsuits on how a person's twisted imagination (which will still exist in the absence of technological advances that portray them) affected society in such a manner that it ruined our way of life.
Perhaps if the game contained all the elements of picking up a torch and a pitchfork, spreading rumors around town, then selecting a 'witch' for which to burn down their property, take them to the river for a interrogative 'dunking' and finally burning them at the stake, we might actually have a game that would be acceptable to the litigious crowd.
I think that video games give people more freedom than they have in the real world, trying to restrict them in the virtual world (even if exposed to the real world) really chaps my buns. I do have to wonder at times, is it really the 'video game' that causes violence or is it a lack of a system of 'punishment' absent of that of 'reward' for those who play them? Only the parents truly know the answer to that question. Perhaps it is worth pondering.
Slashdot Mirror
After storming the beaches of Normandy, a modest amount of that was lost.
In the present day, it is very easy for the U.S. to lose those grains of sand in areas where it is difficult to discern the existing grains from those dollars that were converted.
Sheesh... all of that stuff is "dirty laundry". This article tends to show less concern for that but more concerned over where the money made from 'dirty laundry' is 'laundered'.
Rumor has it though, that the next issue of every competing tabloid will shed some light on that ruse.
The "Big Blue Marble" we call earth has been running at magnitudes of 'flops' for ages. Perhaps if they didn't install that evolution software, the aliens would not have stopped avoiding that planet that kept blue screening.
That's the interesting part. "Good and honest" seem to be a subjective notion. However, not many people (I'm referring to parents here) seem to take a stand and note that their little some-teen year-old child is actually out there advertising themselves for the rest of the world.
It only took a particular incident for me to block myspace.com (or any reference to it) from my router. Any responsible parent with teenage daughters would probably learn this lesson soon.
...actually putting in things like "blackmail", "extortion" and "sexual favors" on the notes line of my checks are finally being tallied through the use of OCR on those bank check images.
I'm going to have to start using "presidential donation", "educational subsidy" and "technological research". That way, I can not only stay off the radar, but perhaps get a tax deduction as well.
Many years ago, I attended a summer camp. In fact, it was a "Christian" summer camp. It seemed ok for the most part, until the 'competion' phase where all the campers put in teams had to put "clothes" onto the animals in the barn (seriously).
:(
I still have nightmares of that young calf voiding its bowels after no less than four children tried to stretch over her backside. The same was true of every other goat and barnyard animal that was accosted by several children trying to "dress them up" in garments of varying usage.
Summer camp left some very bizarre memories with me, on the other hand, I did learn how to churn butter. Too bad I don't remember the details on how to do that.
It's pretty obvious that you learned this in Psych class. It's also a stock answer for those who want to gather clientele early in their career...
Mid-terms and final exams are always good catalysts for future ulcers. However, if you're always prepared and up on the material, then it is difficult to see how you could become upset unless you landed in a class where a good number of other students are blowing the curve just as much as you are.
:)
When I was in college, I made 100% in all of my programming classes (literally, homework, tests, mid-terms and exams), while I struggled in subjects like electromagnetics and combinatorics. Conversely, some of my classmates were just 'naturals' at mathematics but could not seem to grasp programming languages. (Although, I could see it at the math level since most of their sentences were put together with one-letter words and lots of punctuation.)
Are you finding yourself in this type of situation? Perhaps you are finding yourself in a subject that you don't feel you are 100% comfortable?
Don't sweat it, do your best. Think about the times in the future when you're going to dream about going back to High School and acing everything or perhaps dreaming about the times you were at college and you found out that you had signed up for two courses you never went to, "drop day" just passed and there was a mid-term the next day.
At least I'm not still dreaming about being naked at school... I got laughed out of all of those.
Lawyer: Your honor, my client was the victim of a child predator!
Judge: But sir, your client is well over twenty-one years of age.
Lawyer: Yes your honor, but she preyed on my client!
(Jury mulls about a bit....)
Lawyer: Your honor, my client here is the victim. The 'real' predator here is the person that preyed on his weakness.
Judge: What weakness might that be?
Lawyer: He succumbed to his desires of being slathered with chocolate jello-o pudding by an eighty year old woman. He maintains that this sixteen year old was not who she pretended to be.
Judge: But there was intent.....
End Note: Don't predators learn to spot patterns?
The way you present it is very understandable. I suppose a good analogy, at least from a "coders" perspective, is that you don't really understand why using a particular programming language construct is slower unless you understand how the compiler translates it, how the microprocessor interprets those instructions, the operating temperature of the CPU, etc, etc.
It seems that quite a bit of theory builds upon past knowledge which still manages to 'stick', even though we tend to lose knowledge of the 'fundamentals' in the process. It would be interesting, however, to see a lot of that theoretical 'math' put to work in the physical world; or, at the very least, explained simply to those who are capable of giving that math physical manifestation.
I think that dimensions should be imagined like an Isocahedron, twenty different facets. About 50% of them are positive planes, 25% of them are negative and the remaining 25% are too vague to make a decision either way.
The only problem with this theory is that all dimensions tend to be shaken up quite a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8_ball
...but also turned out to be a disaster for productivity at work recently. Two developers engaged in a battle of semantics as to whether or not M-theory was actually string theory or a unification of same. Almost an hour later, people had a concern that someone may end up being stabbed in the face; the argument, however, was cut short later when a concerned manager dealt with the high-strung arm-chair physicists.
Two hours later, the local protagonist "pulled their strings" sublimely bringing up the subject in the midst of those two persons and subsequently, another shouting match ensued. At one point, the intellectual conversation had almost degraded into a volley of "momma" jokes. By the end of the day, neither developer realized how close they were to being "strung up" by the rest of the team.
The initial prototype (named 'Maxthon') is the first in this new line of robotic dogs (which, oddly enough, resembles the "Shinese" breed). 'Max' is supposedly using his new language to circumvent Chinese censhorship.
From what I've seen in the past, some code had been outsourced to others where 'spelling', wasn't important with regards to the grammar of the language in which the program was developed, but in the 'comments' of the code, it was important to a future developer that might need to work with it.
Now, I've also seen some cases where 'elements' in code were just mispelled; didn't affect the way the program executed, but irritated my 'sensibilities'. I find it odd to 'Initilize' things often. Attempting to 'correct' this portion of code is a one day project at best which might offend someone.
I recall several instances where after transcribing a taped letter, verbatim (with my own spellings of the words transcribed, of course) that the attorney would read, cross out lines, add words, change statements, etc., until the letter that was transcribed was absolutely different from what was put on audio tape.
Then, when the 'final' product was rendered to the 'printed word', it was reviewed once again and had usually two or more changes, usually re-arranging a statement or adding some other synonym.
As one other Slashdotter respondent noted, it would be nice if everyone had learned to "clean up after themselves"; however, in this case, I think it is more of some person hoping that hindsight is "20/20". (I wonder if someone is going to actually patent 'hindsight'.)
It's interesting to see that someone is taking a 'janitorial' point of view on this mess. Not sure what can of worms it could open up potentially, but in the end, we usually end up paying for our mistakes.
I suppose you have to chalk that up to someone who is more so versed in 'hardware' than they are in software itself.
If you're persistent enough though, find the patterns.
Maybe it's time those designing these circuits got pulled into the limelight.
"Trusting Trust" can also be applied to one's children. Perhaps programming isn't just limited to typing on keyboards and clicking on mice.
First of all, I like how they compare the Windows Metafile as any other "Device Context", like the conventional 'display' or 'printer'. Yes, there were days that some applications 'drew' onto files so that they could be reliably duplicated on the remote side to which they were sent. I'm sure this was a most valued feature for anyone who developed any type of 'Fax' software back in the 90's. Draw to a file, send over the wire, etc.
Should a callback be received if writing to the file was cancelled? Yes indeed. After all, who wants their fax machines cluttered with useless partial faxes that were cancelled midstream. (The fax machines already had a bad habit of doing that over bad lines at times and thermal paper wasn't cheap!)
Now, is there a conspiracy to use the '1' in the file format to make a callback as this person claims? Well, I seriously doubt it was a conspiracy; however, I could definitely imagine that a "real programmer" during the time that this development was going on, might have put a 'shortcut' in the code in order to 'debug' the chunk of a file quickly in order to make sure that things were working (as far as callbacks go) without going through all the motions. Perhaps this code was left in inadvertently or was continuously used for testing; I seriously doubt it was some 'wormhole' in space-time to take over "all the computers of the past."
I would like to see the person making this claim use his debugger to reverse engineer the assembly which made the call into his application in order to determine the logical paths used to decide what the code did or did not do based on his file modifications. Who knows, there may be exploits abound for any OS or application (especially linking loaders) that aren't careful about examining each and every bit, and in the right order on the right day at the right time. That even goes for CPUs that are executing instructions.
Is Microsoft trying to take over the world? Nah, it's probably Google. I bet they have first dibs on the Quantum chip too.
Video games, from the days we were destroying 'aliens' in games like "Space Invaders", or enemy helicopters in old school games like "*M.A.S.H*", destroying living organisms in the game of "Centipede" or what have you, would be the kind of arguments that all lawyers would love to make money on contesting cases against the Plaintiffs who *might* have indulged into those games at a younger age.
I tend to think that violent games, while they may provide ideas of the 'real' or 'imaginary' world others have seen, they still do not define the person that experiences them. That is usually the reward/punishment system that is supposed to be provided. Their reward was probably the game system on which they were given to play the game, but where did the 'punishment' come in? Perhaps the parents should be aware to that.
If the game industry is actually supposed to be the source of punishment as well, maybe a game system that refuses to turn on for a specific amount of time after a player did something "too violent" would be in order, but I'm not sure I see that happening in the near future.
Parents need to realize that the television and the game console is not a babysitter; their children need to be raised by responsible parents.
My father loved to make wine, it was one of his *many* hobbies; he never sold anything he made that I knew of (although he's given a lot away), but he allowed us children to mash up the fruit that he used for the fermentation. My memory may be failing me, but I could have sworn he used "Planter's Yeast" in his recipes. He always had these big containers with special 'corks' attached to a tiny water container that kept track of the bubbles. After a bit of time (of bubble watching), he would siphon the fluid (minus the sediment) into bottles and cork them to store for later consumption. A very responsible drinker, he would usually have a glass to sip on before bedtime.
I suppose one might consider "enjoying the fruits of their own labor" once they take a sip of their own wine; but what determines what is fine?
However, more on topic is the proverbial "can of worms" that could be opened up by passing such a law that declares a 'video game' to be a cause of violence. I imagine once such a law was passed, every attentive lawyers' ears would be pricked to capture any lawsuits that might unfold from any "naturalists" views that "Centipede" was a violent game in that it promoted the death of nature; or yet, perhaps if there were a day that we, as a human race, met any benign 'Aliens', that perhaps they would sue the entire human race for a game like "Space Invaders" that taught people how to shoot down all of their ships, when all they were trying to do was set down and say "Welcome People of Earth!"
There are too many video games of the past that could be consider *violent* on many different views and fronts, that it would be a judicial nightmare that will clog up our courts with absolutely idiotic frivolous lawsuits on how a person's twisted imagination (which will still exist in the absence of technological advances that portray them) affected society in such a manner that it ruined our way of life.
Perhaps if the game contained all the elements of picking up a torch and a pitchfork, spreading rumors around town, then selecting a 'witch' for which to burn down their property, take them to the river for a interrogative 'dunking' and finally burning them at the stake, we might actually have a game that would be acceptable to the litigious crowd.
I think that video games give people more freedom than they have in the real world, trying to restrict them in the virtual world (even if exposed to the real world) really chaps my buns. I do have to wonder at times, is it really the 'video game' that causes violence or is it a lack of a system of 'punishment' absent of that of 'reward' for those who play them? Only the parents truly know the answer to that question. Perhaps it is worth pondering.