Guy goes to prison. First night, all the prisoners are in their cells for lights out, when the silence is broken by someone one calling out "23!" And everyone laughs. A few minutes later the silence is broken again by a voice calling out "37!" And gain everyone laughs.
Guy pokes his cellmate, "What's that about?" "Oh, that's the lifers. They've been here so long, told the same jokes so many times, they just call them out by number."
Guy ponders this for a momment and decides to test the waters. He calls out "18!"
Silence. Not a single laugh. Cellmate shakes his head, "some guys just can't tell a joke."
I remember when I got a job doing tech support and the preliminary interviewer asked me a question: "I'm thinking of a product in a grocery store, find out what it is in less than 15 questions."
Um...I hope your first questions was something along the lines of, "What is the product in a grocery store you are thinking of?"
The theory behind the detector is actually fairly straightforward. The reaction occurs in a magnetic field. You get one sort of response from positively charged particles. You get the opposite response from negatively charged particles.
When you get no response, that's your particle with no charge.
But how do you explain all those color paintings from that time?
The pigments in the paint were colorized along with the rest of the world. Of course, the artists in those days couldn't see what colors the paint would become. Ever wonder why all those old paintings have Jesus look European?
For the first time, though, this group will be composed of people who have grown up with technology.
Because of course, technology is a recent discovery. Fire was only discovered is the early 1920s, and as recently as the 1950s most Americans lived in caves and ate dirt.
Oh, and the world was black and white back then, too. When everything got colorized, old pictures and movies stayed the same, because they were color pictures of the black and white world.
OK, I am obviously getting pounded with comments on "fact #2," so maybe I misspoke. There were some people who never believed from the start that Iraq had and WMDs, but they were ignoring a LOT of evidence, and were probably already in the camp that was going to oppose any military action (especially under this president) no matter what the evidence stated. What I suppose I meant to say was that the intel community, the world, and almost everyone in congress (Democrat and Republican), largely believed that Iraq had WMDs.
You're getting pounded because your "facts" are doo-doo. It is more accurate to say, some people willed themselves to believe Iraq had WMDs, but they were ignoring MORE evidence that they did not. The intel community and most who had access to all the information thought Saddam did NOT have active chemical, biological, nuclear weapons programs. Those that "largely believed that Iraq had WMDs" were only told less than half of the story and did not have the facts necessary for an accurate conclusion.
On top that, even if I grant you "fact #2," so what?? Yes, Saddam was a bad man. Yes, in the long the people in Iraq have at least a shot at a better life without Saddam in change. But the President of the United States' primary responsibility is to the people of the United States! Any WMD Saddam had were a threat to the Iraqi people, were a threat to Iraq's neighbors, but were not a direct threat to the USA.
I'm not an isolationist. I think we (the USA) should be willing to help people around the world. I think it is in our best interest to have a world where more people live under stable democracies/republics, and less people live under stable dictatorships. But our #1 responsibility has to be to ourselves, and as we saw on 9/11 direct threats to the USA do exist. Iraq was not one of those direct threats.
But why does this matter? Isn't this just finger-pointing and Monday-morning quarter-backing? No, this does matter. Iraq is a bigger mess than it was 4 years ago, and the threats to the USA are greater than they were 4 years ago. If you want to reverse that trend, so might want to know a little bit about how we got where we are. Let me put it this way, when you apply for a job, do you decline to provide a resume of your past work because that would just be finger-pointing?
There's a job to be done. Let's look at the resume of the guy in currently in charge of that job. Bush--failed to prevent 9/11 in the first place. Bush--willfully ignored evidence to the contrary after unilaterally deciding Iraq had WMD and was a direct threat to the USA. Bush--puts political considerations above the lives of the fine men and women serving in the USA military. (Admits he had lost faith in Rumsfeld prior to but waited until after the Nov. election to replace him.) Bush--with the USA military active in two overseas conflicts, emboldens enemies to step up attacks against the USA. ("Bring it on.") Bush--has a consistent disregard for facts that, at best, borders on pathological. ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." "Mission accomplished." et al.)
One fact remains: we are there now, and having George Bush in charge does NOTHING to fix that. I'm not arguing about why we are there. Maybe Bush has some daddy complex that made him want to finish off Saddam in a way his father didn't. Maybe all the hold-overs from the first Bush administration felt they had unfinished business. Maybe it was just for the oil. Doesn't really matter; doesn't change what needs to be done now.
Stricly looking ahead, focusing on the best path forward from where we are right now, there can be no argument, the bus in going in the wrong direction, and that will not change until we change the guy behind the wheel.
Why not just stick to this original definition? If it "wanders" among the stationary celestial lights and casts light visible to the naked eye, it's a planet.
Why not? First, everything in the sky "wanders," perhaps not at a rate comparable to the motion of the planets, but for whatever arbitrary set of objects you call "stationary celestial lights" everything else moves.
Second, your definition would rename everything we think of as a planet to non-planet, and rename stars, galaxies, and other objects planets. Venus, Mars, et al. do not cast light. They reflect light.
Third, your definition is too subjective. Venus and Mars would be planets, Pluto would not simply due to its distance from Earth. And by definition, no body orbiting a star other than our Sun could be a planet since it would not be visible to the naked eye.
I think the mods were aiming for 'Funny' not 'Insightful.'
The difference between The Hobbit and LoTR is that the former is primarily a kid's book.
WTF? THe Hobbit is kids' book. JRRT's kids, in fact. There's no 'primarily' about it. For a bunch of geeks and nerds, I'm surprised so many of you fail to grok what Tolkien was doing with these books.
1. The Hobbit is a fairy tale. It grew out of bedtime stories Tolkien told his kids. It's supposed to be easy to digest--you know, for kids!
2. To the rocket scientist above who complained the LoTR books have too much geographic description, do you also complain when cook books spend too much time describing food? LoTR is a travelogue. The various travels in the plot are just devices on which to hang exposition on the geography, history, cultures of Middle Earth.
3. The Silmarillion is a text book. Do you think it's insightful or interesting to post about how boring you found your high school history books? I don't. And I don't fancy folks who feel the need to post the same about The Silmarillion. You're not adding anything to the conversation. The only difference between The Silmarillion and your high school history books is, one is completely fiction and the other is just mostly fiction.
If you were hiring MS grads outside the game industry for visualization work, am I worth more to you with the more specialized program or would you be more interested in me if I had more exposure? Within the gaming industry, how much does a specialized degree compel a company to hire a recent grad?"
How about going back to suck on your momma's teet for a few more years until you're ready to make your own decisions?
Nothing wrong with asking advice, but you're not asking which path might match your interests. You're asking which piece of paper might look better to some hypothetical employer at some point in the future.
Let me find my crystal ball...oh yeah! I don't have one! Neither does anyone else here. So no one can answer your question. You think one field is hot, so everyone who doesn't know what to major in goes to that field. Then when you graduate there's a glut and you're S.O.L.
How about you say, these are my interest, these are the types of classes I want to take. Is there a degree program to match those?
If there's any hope of avoiding the troll mods, here is the answer to your question. Best degree to help you get hired? MBA and learn Chinese.
This stemming from an incident in the 80s(?) where a test train with a "driver" with no actual control over the train didn't stop when entering a terminal and kissed concrete, killing the crew.
If you read Dilbert, you've read this. Salesmen over-promise, support under-delivers, blah blah blah. Oh, and if you have systems from more than one vendor, each vendor will blame the other.
Seriously, Scott Adams from 1999 called. He wants his clichés back.
What is the option for people when they go to the polls, who want to opt out of electronically submitting their vote? How does one go about objecting to the whole system and yet still have their vote cast?
Casting your vote is easy. Having your vote counted is hard.
One way is through a snail-mailed absentee vote. That's paper.
Another way is to have your voting eligibility in question. Have a name similar to that of a convicted felon? Doesn't really matter--those ineligible voter lists are less reliable than the no fly lists the TSA use when they pull toddlers out of the security line and strip search blue-haired grandmothers. Anyway, in that case you should be offered a paper ballot, so you can register your vote. That ballot isn't counted unless you can verify your eligibility later.
A third way is to just ask. I know some districts--and I would hope most to all--offer paper ballots on demand to those like yourself who would like to opt out of the electronic voting.
Problem is, generally none of the above is counted unless the result of the 'regular' vote is close and number of other ballots is enough to make a difference. The computer says Quimby by 5000 votes? Guess I can take these 4000 paper ballots and line the hamster cage.
Of course if Quimby is ahead by 5000, then those 4000 ballots wouldn't make a difference one way or the other. If that doesn't bother you, there ya go. If that does bother you--in any election there comes a point where candidate A is ahead by x votes and there are only x-1 ballots left to count. Does that mean we just stop counting? If it dose bother you that your vote might not even get a facade of being counted, well, there ya go.
Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the list of requirements for a "perfect" electronic voting machine is quite long and somewhat conflicted. Anonyminity and verification comes to mind.
Is it being proposed we put voting booths on every street corner like ATMs? Are you saying because it's difficult to design a stand-alone voting machine, it is equally difficult to design any voting machine?
How 'bout this, we come up with a voting machine that allows 1: the voter designate a preference, 2: the machine to record that preference, and 3: the machine to later report that preference. That's it. Any verification required only applies to 1, 2, and 3.
What about anonymity? Don't need it. Or rather, the voting machine doesn't need any identifying information on the voter, and so doesn't need any mechanism for proper handling of that information. That's what poll workers are for. Leave the voting to the voting machines, and the poll management to the poll workers.
Let the poll workers make sure someone is voting in the right district, hasn't voted already, etc. Once the voter gets to registering an actual vote, all that jazz should already be done. Face it, if you can't trust the poll workers--whether due to corruption or incompetence--then the whole cause is lost, and no voting machine in the world is going to help.
Let me check column A, let me verify that I've checked column A, record that I've checked column A, report that I've checked column A, don't report checks that were not made by actual voters. The security and reliability requirement for such a machine may be long and complicated, but conflicted? Where's the conflict?
We know the hive mind that is/. can't grok the difference between copyright, trademark, and patents, but I'd think the difference between uploading and downloading wouldn't be out of reach.
Oh well.
And before you reply, "but BitTorrent...," two points: 1) are there any torrent clients that do not allow the user to control uploading? And 2) if there are, so?
In the words of the parent poster, "Downloading != Sharing"
the random message spam and the text-pulled-from-gutenburg spam and the image spam is flying right past the bayes filter
Of course this is just one data point, but my experience is just the opposite. SpamBayes has no problem with image spam. I presume it looks at the entire message, including headers, so it knows a picture from friend@isp.com with whom I have a history of correspondence is good, and a picture from spammer@ips.com from whom I've never received an email is bad.
Same can be said for random message, gutenburg, and any other type of spam. Perhaps my circle of regular correspondence is small enough that the bayes filter is effectively a whitelist/graylist--see a familiar address in "from", and it's not spam; see a new address, and it likely is spam. However it does it, it does it.
My points are this: 1) I still don't buy the 'bayes filters have been defeated' argument, and more to the point, 2) I think we can agree the proposition by the submitter, that we are all at the mercy of spammers and so must instantly notice any change in tactics or frequency, is certainly FUD.
I'm talking about at the inbox level. I know there are other issues with spam--issues with spam filling up the tubes, issues with server/mta utilization--but the average user, even the average/. user, interacts with spam at the inbox. There are enough tools that are user friendly, that don't require extensive user education, that just plain work, that if you're seeing a significant amount of spam in your inbox, then my guess is you just aren't trying.
Several posts in this thread are making the same claim, that Bayesian filtering has been solved by the spammers. Is there any support for these claims?
I use SpamBayes with Outlook and find it about 99 and 44/100 % effective. Actually better than that--I've found in addition to separating the spam from the ham, it does a pretty good job of identifying spam-like ham.
For example, machine-generated news letters from airline frequent flier clubs and the like. These aren't pure ham--they're not composed by a real person and do usually contain a lot of marketing speak, but they're not pure spam--they're likely to contain useful information such as my current balance of accrued frequent flier miles. SpamBayes consistently puts such emails in my 'spam suspect' folder. Perfect--it's not something I want to automatically delete as spam, but not something I necessarily need to see in my inbox with personal correspondence.
So, am I just lucky that these Bayesian-defeating spammers have passed me by? Or is the "Bayesian filtering has failed" claim FUD?
Everyone must have noticed a surge in spam recently, particularly for stock pump 'n' dump scams.
One option is SpamBayes. After a little training with the regular spam I was receiving, very few false negatives and I haven't seen a false positive in months.
I just went thru[sic] a bunch of resumes this morning. I am surprised that that many people are actually out there submittign[sic] resumes with gaps in their employment and other obvious bad things on their resumes.
So people with gaps in employment history should lie about it?
Slashdot Mirror
I heard it a little different...
Guy goes to prison. First night, all the prisoners are in their cells for lights out, when the silence is broken by someone one calling out "23!" And everyone laughs. A few minutes later the silence is broken again by a voice calling out "37!" And gain everyone laughs.
Guy pokes his cellmate, "What's that about?" "Oh, that's the lifers. They've been here so long, told the same jokes so many times, they just call them out by number."
Guy ponders this for a momment and decides to test the waters. He calls out "18!"
Silence. Not a single laugh. Cellmate shakes his head, "some guys just can't tell a joke."
Some people say it sucks...others say it blows.
Yes it is.
The theory behind the detector is actually fairly straightforward. The reaction occurs in a magnetic field. You get one sort of response from positively charged particles. You get the opposite response from negatively charged particles.
When you get no response, that's your particle with no charge.
The pigments in the paint were colorized along with the rest of the world. Of course, the artists in those days couldn't see what colors the paint would become. Ever wonder why all those old paintings have Jesus look European?
Because of course, technology is a recent discovery. Fire was only discovered is the early 1920s, and as recently as the 1950s most Americans lived in caves and ate dirt.
Oh, and the world was black and white back then, too. When everything got colorized, old pictures and movies stayed the same, because they were color pictures of the black and white world.
You're getting pounded because your "facts" are doo-doo. It is more accurate to say, some people willed themselves to believe Iraq had WMDs, but they were ignoring MORE evidence that they did not. The intel community and most who had access to all the information thought Saddam did NOT have active chemical, biological, nuclear weapons programs. Those that "largely believed that Iraq had WMDs" were only told less than half of the story and did not have the facts necessary for an accurate conclusion.
On top that, even if I grant you "fact #2," so what?? Yes, Saddam was a bad man. Yes, in the long the people in Iraq have at least a shot at a better life without Saddam in change. But the President of the United States' primary responsibility is to the people of the United States! Any WMD Saddam had were a threat to the Iraqi people, were a threat to Iraq's neighbors, but were not a direct threat to the USA.
I'm not an isolationist. I think we (the USA) should be willing to help people around the world. I think it is in our best interest to have a world where more people live under stable democracies/republics, and less people live under stable dictatorships. But our #1 responsibility has to be to ourselves, and as we saw on 9/11 direct threats to the USA do exist. Iraq was not one of those direct threats.
But why does this matter? Isn't this just finger-pointing and Monday-morning quarter-backing? No, this does matter. Iraq is a bigger mess than it was 4 years ago, and the threats to the USA are greater than they were 4 years ago. If you want to reverse that trend, so might want to know a little bit about how we got where we are. Let me put it this way, when you apply for a job, do you decline to provide a resume of your past work because that would just be finger-pointing?
There's a job to be done. Let's look at the resume of the guy in currently in charge of that job. Bush--failed to prevent 9/11 in the first place. Bush--willfully ignored evidence to the contrary after unilaterally deciding Iraq had WMD and was a direct threat to the USA. Bush--puts political considerations above the lives of the fine men and women serving in the USA military. (Admits he had lost faith in Rumsfeld prior to but waited until after the Nov. election to replace him.) Bush--with the USA military active in two overseas conflicts, emboldens enemies to step up attacks against the USA. ("Bring it on.") Bush--has a consistent disregard for facts that, at best, borders on pathological. ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." "Mission accomplished." et al.)
One fact remains: we are there now, and having George Bush in charge does NOTHING to fix that. I'm not arguing about why we are there. Maybe Bush has some daddy complex that made him want to finish off Saddam in a way his father didn't. Maybe all the hold-overs from the first Bush administration felt they had unfinished business. Maybe it was just for the oil. Doesn't really matter; doesn't change what needs to be done now.
Stricly looking ahead, focusing on the best path forward from where we are right now, there can be no argument, the bus in going in the wrong direction, and that will not change until we change the guy behind the wheel.
Why not? First, everything in the sky "wanders," perhaps not at a rate comparable to the motion of the planets, but for whatever arbitrary set of objects you call "stationary celestial lights" everything else moves.
Second, your definition would rename everything we think of as a planet to non-planet, and rename stars, galaxies, and other objects planets. Venus, Mars, et al. do not cast light. They reflect light.
Third, your definition is too subjective. Venus and Mars would be planets, Pluto would not simply due to its distance from Earth. And by definition, no body orbiting a star other than our Sun could be a planet since it would not be visible to the naked eye.
I think the mods were aiming for 'Funny' not 'Insightful.'
WTF? THe Hobbit is kids' book. JRRT's kids, in fact. There's no 'primarily' about it. For a bunch of geeks and nerds, I'm surprised so many of you fail to grok what Tolkien was doing with these books.
1. The Hobbit is a fairy tale. It grew out of bedtime stories Tolkien told his kids. It's supposed to be easy to digest--you know, for kids!
2. To the rocket scientist above who complained the LoTR books have too much geographic description, do you also complain when cook books spend too much time describing food? LoTR is a travelogue. The various travels in the plot are just devices on which to hang exposition on the geography, history, cultures of Middle Earth.
3. The Silmarillion is a text book. Do you think it's insightful or interesting to post about how boring you found your high school history books? I don't. And I don't fancy folks who feel the need to post the same about The Silmarillion. You're not adding anything to the conversation. The only difference between The Silmarillion and your high school history books is, one is completely fiction and the other is just mostly fiction.
How about going back to suck on your momma's teet for a few more years until you're ready to make your own decisions?
Nothing wrong with asking advice, but you're not asking which path might match your interests. You're asking which piece of paper might look better to some hypothetical employer at some point in the future.
Let me find my crystal ball...oh yeah! I don't have one! Neither does anyone else here. So no one can answer your question. You think one field is hot, so everyone who doesn't know what to major in goes to that field. Then when you graduate there's a glut and you're S.O.L.
How about you say, these are my interest, these are the types of classes I want to take. Is there a degree program to match those?
If there's any hope of avoiding the troll mods, here is the answer to your question. Best degree to help you get hired? MBA and learn Chinese.
Well, with no crew, this wouldn't be an issue.
Post all you like about good XP is, I just don't see any reason to upgrade my Windows 2000 boxes. Do I really want WGA anyway?
But don't bother to RTFA.
If you read Dilbert, you've read this. Salesmen over-promise, support under-delivers, blah blah blah. Oh, and if you have systems from more than one vendor, each vendor will blame the other.
Seriously, Scott Adams from 1999 called. He wants his clichés back.
Just give me more videos of cute chicks playing tennis on wii.com
Casting your vote is easy. Having your vote counted is hard.
One way is through a snail-mailed absentee vote. That's paper.
Another way is to have your voting eligibility in question. Have a name similar to that of a convicted felon? Doesn't really matter--those ineligible voter lists are less reliable than the no fly lists the TSA use when they pull toddlers out of the security line and strip search blue-haired grandmothers. Anyway, in that case you should be offered a paper ballot, so you can register your vote. That ballot isn't counted unless you can verify your eligibility later.
A third way is to just ask. I know some districts--and I would hope most to all--offer paper ballots on demand to those like yourself who would like to opt out of the electronic voting.
Problem is, generally none of the above is counted unless the result of the 'regular' vote is close and number of other ballots is enough to make a difference. The computer says Quimby by 5000 votes? Guess I can take these 4000 paper ballots and line the hamster cage.
Of course if Quimby is ahead by 5000, then those 4000 ballots wouldn't make a difference one way or the other. If that doesn't bother you, there ya go. If that does bother you--in any election there comes a point where candidate A is ahead by x votes and there are only x-1 ballots left to count. Does that mean we just stop counting? If it dose bother you that your vote might not even get a facade of being counted, well, there ya go.
Probably the best idea I've ever read on /. Get Buffet or Gates to check the couch cushions--that'll get ya a few million to get started right there.
Is it being proposed we put voting booths on every street corner like ATMs? Are you saying because it's difficult to design a stand-alone voting machine, it is equally difficult to design any voting machine?
How 'bout this, we come up with a voting machine that allows 1: the voter designate a preference, 2: the machine to record that preference, and 3: the machine to later report that preference. That's it. Any verification required only applies to 1, 2, and 3.
What about anonymity? Don't need it. Or rather, the voting machine doesn't need any identifying information on the voter, and so doesn't need any mechanism for proper handling of that information. That's what poll workers are for. Leave the voting to the voting machines, and the poll management to the poll workers.
Let the poll workers make sure someone is voting in the right district, hasn't voted already, etc. Once the voter gets to registering an actual vote, all that jazz should already be done. Face it, if you can't trust the poll workers--whether due to corruption or incompetence--then the whole cause is lost, and no voting machine in the world is going to help.
Let me check column A, let me verify that I've checked column A, record that I've checked column A, report that I've checked column A, don't report checks that were not made by actual voters. The security and reliability requirement for such a machine may be long and complicated, but conflicted? Where's the conflict?
So anyone who didn't vote for the winner has been disenfranchised?
We know the hive mind that is /. can't grok the difference between copyright, trademark, and patents, but I'd think the difference between uploading and downloading wouldn't be out of reach.
Oh well.
And before you reply, "but BitTorrent...," two points: 1) are there any torrent clients that do not allow the user to control uploading? And 2) if there are, so?
In the words of the parent poster, "Downloading != Sharing"
So when does the disaster happen?
Of course this is just one data point, but my experience is just the opposite. SpamBayes has no problem with image spam. I presume it looks at the entire message, including headers, so it knows a picture from friend@isp.com with whom I have a history of correspondence is good, and a picture from spammer@ips.com from whom I've never received an email is bad.
Same can be said for random message, gutenburg, and any other type of spam. Perhaps my circle of regular correspondence is small enough that the bayes filter is effectively a whitelist/graylist--see a familiar address in "from", and it's not spam; see a new address, and it likely is spam. However it does it, it does it.
My points are this: 1) I still don't buy the 'bayes filters have been defeated' argument, and more to the point, 2) I think we can agree the proposition by the submitter, that we are all at the mercy of spammers and so must instantly notice any change in tactics or frequency, is certainly FUD.
I'm talking about at the inbox level. I know there are other issues with spam--issues with spam filling up the tubes, issues with server/mta utilization--but the average user, even the average /. user, interacts with spam at the inbox. There are enough tools that are user friendly, that don't require extensive user education, that just plain work, that if you're seeing a significant amount of spam in your inbox, then my guess is you just aren't trying.
Several posts in this thread are making the same claim, that Bayesian filtering has been solved by the spammers. Is there any support for these claims?
I use SpamBayes with Outlook and find it about 99 and 44/100 % effective. Actually better than that--I've found in addition to separating the spam from the ham, it does a pretty good job of identifying spam-like ham.
For example, machine-generated news letters from airline frequent flier clubs and the like. These aren't pure ham--they're not composed by a real person and do usually contain a lot of marketing speak, but they're not pure spam--they're likely to contain useful information such as my current balance of accrued frequent flier miles. SpamBayes consistently puts such emails in my 'spam suspect' folder. Perfect--it's not something I want to automatically delete as spam, but not something I necessarily need to see in my inbox with personal correspondence.
So, am I just lucky that these Bayesian-defeating spammers have passed me by? Or is the "Bayesian filtering has failed" claim FUD?
+1 haven't noticed more spam.
One option is SpamBayes. After a little training with the regular spam I was receiving, very few false negatives and I haven't seen a false positive in months.
Not affiliated, just a satisfied customer.
So people with gaps in employment history should lie about it?