Recent Posts

4901

Living Room / Re: 3D Printing Under Attack

« Last post by 40hz on October 12, 2012, 02:02 PM »

The arc might be different than you think.

-TaoPhoenix (October 12, 2012, 10:16 AM)

We'll see...

Never underestimate the power of corrupt government coupled with a zealous and creative legal system. (You'll find a lot of speculative fiction for that too!)

@Tao - Thx for bringing up that old term. (We must be of similar age.) I haven't said "speculative fiction" in years. But there was a time when I much preferred it over the more restrictive "science" fiction label. Still do now that I think about it. Hmm...gonna start using it again I think.

First time I heard the term was at college during a debate (at a party!) over what you'd classify Kieth Roberts marvelous story Pavane as. (It was fun to smart and in college back then!) Some said sci-fi - others said not sci-fi. Then someone suggested the term "speculative fiction" and everybody agreed and decided that was the missing classification that deserved to be more widely used.

4902

Living Room / Re: How Many Planets Are There?

« Last post by 40hz on October 12, 2012, 01:41 PM »

I say 9.

That's my story - and I'm sticking with it!

So there!

4903

Living Room / Re: Do Not Track

« Last post by 40hz on October 12, 2012, 01:37 PM »

It gets worse although we shouldn't be surprised. Here's one of today's lead articles from OSNews:

Apple tracks iOS browsing behaviour by default
posted by Thom Holwerda on Fri 12th Oct 2012 11:35 UTC


Surprise, surprise - Apple, by default, tracks web browsing behaviour and location to better serve you ads. You have to specifically opt out of this tracking per individual iOS device that you own. Now we know why Apple has no problem with turning on 'Do Not Track' and not accepting tracking cookies by default: it has no effect on them whatsoever, because iOS 6 has its own independent user tracking mechanisms. Unlike what the Apple pundits claim, it's got nothing to do with respect for user privacy at all. Well paint me red and call me a girl scout: company selling ads tracks user behaviour. Shocker, huh?

 

4904

Living Room / Re: 3D Printing Under Attack

« Last post by 40hz on October 12, 2012, 08:04 AM »

It was inevitable - and the outcome is predictable.

4905

Living Room / Re: Do Not Track

« Last post by 40hz on October 12, 2012, 07:46 AM »

 



-----------------------------

Note: I couldn't help but notice something very interesting...

Uncle Sam can be seen as either leaning to the left-  or the right - depending on which side you're standing on...

How American!

4906

Living Room / Re: An Odd DoS Attack

« Last post by 40hz on October 12, 2012, 06:39 AM »

^Yup.  One automated system baiting other automated systems. Core War comes to Wall Street.  Don't you just love hedge funds?  

Of course the exchanges could stop this nonsense fairly easily by instituting a minimum time per transaction of something like 3 seconds. Or requiring all orders be locked for a minimum of 10 seconds before allowing them to be canceled.

But that would cut onto the exchange's transaction fee revenue stream. So there will probably need to be the threat of the Feds imposing some new rules before the exchanges decide to 'voluntarily' set up some restrictions on so-called fast trades.

Nice to know considering that if you, as an individual investor, did something similar, you'd likely get your trading  account closed by your brokerage house since they take a very dim view of transaction cancellations. Which is doubly interesting since the laws governing securities trading have the establishment of a "level playing field" for all investors as their primary goal. (The necessity of requiring a level playing field was one of the first lessons learned following the first US stock market crash.)

4907

Living Room / Re: How to tell if the Universe is a computer simulation

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 03:56 PM »

Since vision seems to be our most convincing sense

-superboyac (October 11, 2012, 01:20 PM)

ROFLMAO ... that was a joke ... right?

-Carol Haynes (October 11, 2012, 03:25 PM)

No funnier than being 'convinced' by any of the other four "official" senses, the two or three alleged "extra" senses, quantum mechanics, economics, or what passes for monetary "theory."
 

4908

Living Room / Re: How to tell if the Universe is a computer simulation

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 03:49 PM »

    There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
   
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The story so far:

    In the beginning the Universe was created.
    This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Thank you Douglas Adams.

4909

Living Room / Re: How to tell if the Universe is a computer simulation

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 01:09 PM »

We are all just ideas spontaneously emerging and fading in the mind of Steven Jobs.

Oh me!...oh my!...AUM!

Shanti!

4910

Living Room / Re: How to tell if the Universe is a computer simulation

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 12:47 PM »

Interesting. Although positing something is a simulation implies that there is something else hosting it (i.e. reality?) that is not.



Looks like we've looped right back to square one with that. Curses! It's turtles again!

BTW: Check out the 1999 movie The Thirteenth Floor for a really good treatment of this same topic.

-----------------------------------

It's really quite simple Professor. It's an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, and the circumference nowhere. So the further into it you go, the bigger it gets.”

4911

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 12:37 PM »

And worse, kids are taught that tracking people is "ok" and that people that don't want to be tracked are "difficult" or "bad". *cough* operant conditioning *cough*

-Renegade (October 11, 2012, 09:15 AM)

This is probably more a question for 40hz, but you said it. (Um...) If the object is to get people to dislike/distrust/avoid/turn on people that resist their tracking mechanisms ... Wouldn't that be avoidance conditioning?

-Stoic Joker (October 11, 2012, 11:51 AM)

I love horseshoes and hand grenades.

http://psychology.wi...oidance_conditioning

-Renegade (October 11, 2012, 11:57 AM)

Hm... So one is a subsection of the other ... Lovely.

-Stoic Joker (October 11, 2012, 12:19 PM)

I prefer hand grenades and nukes myself.

4912

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 12:34 PM »

And worse, kids are taught that tracking people is "ok" and that people that don't want to be tracked are "difficult" or "bad". *cough* operant conditioning *cough*

-Renegade (October 11, 2012, 09:15 AM)

This is probably more a question for 40hz, but you said it. (Um...) If the object is to get people to dislike/distrust/avoid/turn on people that resist their tracking mechanisms ... Wouldn't that be avoidance conditioning?

-Stoic Joker (October 11, 2012, 11:51 AM)

You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to...

I'm no expert by any stretch. (I'd have to get my GF in on this for that.)

Here's wiki's definition which matches what sketchy understanding I have from my college days (when Skinner was in vogue bigtime btw):

Operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning) is a form of learning in which an individual's behavior is modified by its consequences; the behavior may change in form, frequency, or strength.

Operant conditioning is a term that was coined by B.F Skinner in 1937[1] Operant conditioning is distinguished from classical conditioning (or respondent conditioning) in that operant conditioning deals with the modification of "voluntary behavior" or operant behavior.

Operant behavior operates on the environment and is maintained by its consequences, while classical conditioning deals with the conditioning of reflexive (reflex) behaviors which are elicited by antecedent conditions. Behaviors conditioned via a classical conditioning procedure are not maintained by consequences.[2]

I also was thinking that, as opposed to being encouraged to turn on people who didn't cooperate, they were more being conditioned to accept that old lie the polygraph voodoo priests use in their sales pitch. That's the line that goes something like: "An honest person is always willing to prove their honesty and integrity. And that's because the only people who have reason to be afraid of polygraph tests are the liars. "

Sorta stands the old constitutional notion of "considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" on its head.

In this case the kids are being conditioned to accept monitoring as normal and necessary - which in turn is maintained by the separate consequences of accepting (you get) and refusing (you don't get) to do so.

FWIW outside of pure "positive reinforcement" I think some avoidance conditioning is routinely incorporated into most forms of behavioral modification. Almost all the conditioning techniques I've seen use both the carrot and the stick. That's a very powerful double reinforcement in that you get the inducement to avoid pain coupled with the incentive to gain pleasure.

Works really well too since many people can only be hurt or punished up to a point before they really dig their heels in. But if you do the good cop/bad cop approach - you can usually find a precise pain/pleasure tipping point for most people. (And for those few whom you can't...well...you can always just have them taken out and shot. Voila! Problem solved!)

Sad that it's now become an almost perfect science isn't it?  

4913

Living Room / Re: How to tell if the Universe is a computer simulation

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 11:08 AM »

^Every time they ask that seemingly simple question it ends up being turtles all the way down. 

4914

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 09:26 AM »

^The US operant conditioning...oh...sorry...public education system has already had significant "success" as many employers are now learning when dealing with their next-gen hires.  

4915

Living Room / Re: Reader's Corner - The Library of Utopia

« Last post by 40hz on October 11, 2012, 09:10 AM »

re: Open Library - it is an excellent resource. But new users need to be aware that (unlike Project Gutenberg) many titles that are listed on their website are not available for electronic or online reading. Additionally, many titles (mostly modern) that are listed and available electronically are also read-protected and only available to NLS/DAISY key holders.

As the FAQ explains:

If this is a library, why can I only read some of the books?

Unfortunately, most books remain unavailable in electronic form. For those books, we have only a record. Open Library is a long-term project to provide a complete catalog of all books and, incrementally, as many of those books as possible in freely available electronic form.

Nothing wrong with that IMO. But it's something you need to understand or risk being disappointed when you visit OL.

4916

Living Room / Re: Major ISPs to implement "Six strike" rule

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 10:19 PM »

"So it goes," as Kurt once said.

-40hz (October 10, 2012, 11:10 AM)

As in Kurt Vonnegut. I believe that was in the Dangerous Visions anthology. Much more starts to get NSFW.

-TaoPhoenix (October 10, 2012, 11:30 AM)

It was Kurt Vonnegut - but it was the ongoing refrain he used in Slaughterhouse Five.

For those who don't know, Dangerous Visions was Harlan Ellison's controversial sci-fi short story anthology series.  

Vonnegut appeared in the second collection (released in 1972 under the title Again, Dangerous Visions) Kurt's contribution was a piece called The Big Space F***. In this story he used "and so on" as his refrain. Not one of his better efforts IMHO. It's very 70s. But so it goes.

Full text here if anybody feels like reading it. It's short.


------------------

@Tao - I'm impressed! Relatively few people know that Vonnegut appeared in a Dark Visions collection.   I take it you're a sci-fi buff?

4917

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 06:36 PM »

^Look at Linux pr0n then.

4918

Living Room / Re: Why Can't Germans Say 'Squirrel' ?

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 03:23 PM »

Ich sage "Elch und Eichhoernchen."

4919

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 03:00 PM »

Thankfully I have no memories that vivid from my childhood...as I've successfully managed to block all of them. To the best of my current - which I strive to keep on a sliding scale - recollection I was indeed born somewhere between the approximate age of 35...and yesterday.

-Stoic Joker (October 10, 2012, 02:08 PM)

Lucky you. I can mentally replay my entire life in sharp detail - and with a high degree of factual accuracy. (Talk about useless reams of data! Who in their right mind would ever waste memory space mentally storing the seating charts and menus of every holiday dinner, party, or social function they ever attended?)

Oh well, at least if my life ever flashes before my eyes it'll be feature length and possibly give me a few more minutes of breathing than most people probably get.

4920

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 02:56 PM »

it could be wrapped in a piece of paper and jammed deeply in a uniform pants pocket

-40hz (October 10, 2012, 01:18 PM)

Is that a sandwich in your pocket or are you just pleased to see Sister?

-cranioscopical (October 10, 2012, 02:43 PM)

Better to have a pickle in your pocket than walk around all day with a chip in your shoulder I guess.

4921

Living Room / Re: RFID Tracking IDs in Schools - Non-compliance = Exclusion

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 01:18 PM »

Local school here requires finger prints to use the lunch service (and they take both thumbs - just in case you lose one!).

-Carol Haynes (October 10, 2012, 10:03 AM)

Lunch?

Well, considering how "pizza" and "ketchup" are vegetables in some schools now, I have a hard time seeing any compelling reason to let your kids eat a school lunch. Brown bagging it gets around that problem, and is bound to be healthier for the kid.

-Renegade (October 10, 2012, 10:13 AM)

Unless you had the infamous "Catholic School Brown Bag Lunch" I got almost every day when I went to school. The 'school nurse' sent out a letter before the start of each school year with a "nutritious" lunch recommendation on it - and my mother wasn't one to dispute what the school nurse suggested. She and most of the other mothers appreciated how it was the exact same letter that got sent every year. That made it one less thing to worry about or fuss over once school started as far as our moms were concerned.

The Catholic School Lunch consisted of a some sort of cold cut (protein!), served on insipid corporate white "bread" (a good starch!) with a dab of yellow mustard or mayo (to prevent choking!) and a leaf or two of lettuce (for vegetables!) - neatly sliced in half (not diagonally!) and wrapped in wax paper.

This "luscious" sandwich went into a #2 brown paper bag along with an apple. (Keeps the doctor away dontcha' know?) Your name and grade written on the front completed the package and facilitated identifying your lunch later on in the day. (Lunches got put in the cubby above your coat. Food was never to be placed inside a school desk at my school.)

Beverage was supplied by the school and consisted of a half pint wax carton of whole milk donated to the school by a parishioner who owned a local dairy. The only break in this weekday routine was on Friday when you'd get PB/PBJ or tuna/egg salad - because "good" Catholics didn't eat meat on Fridays back then. (Note: none of this food was ever stored in a refrigerated place. My school wasn't air conditioned. Heck...we didn't even have fans in our classrooms. So...this is a healthy lunch right?)



Oh yes...you also had to actually eat your lunch. All of it. The Dominican nuns we had saw to that. They'd check what you were throwing out. You'd be punished for refusing to eat or not finishing everything your mom sent you in with. (Most of us got pretty adept at mashing half a sandwich into a small enough flattened ball that it could be wrapped in a piece of paper and jammed deeply in a uniform pants pocket without attracting too much notice from the desk in the front of the room. Worked fine until 7th grade when Sister Theresa Gerard (an uber-Penguin if there ever was one) started having us line up single file to throw our trash out - and made "the boys" turn our pockets inside out after we did.

***

I have not eaten a single mouthful of cold cuts since I graduated 8th grade. Nor am I overly fond of apples or most species of white bread. And I don't put anything in brown paper bags if I can possibly avoid it.  For obvious reasons.

So from my perspective, almost any school lunch program looks pretty good to my eyes. But that's because I was so traumatized by brown bag lunches when I was but an innocent and helpless child!

4922

Living Room / Re: Major ISPs to implement "Six strike" rule

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 12:29 PM »

The copyright only goes away when it expires under statute - which (in the USA) is generally the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years. Or when something gets put into public domain, in which case it 'expires' immediately.

-40hz (October 10, 2012, 10:26 AM)

I thought it was "How old is Mickey Mouse? Add 50 years to that."

-Renegade (October 10, 2012, 10:41 AM)

Nope. That was just for Micky Mouse by special Congressional action.

Actually, it's the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act that upped 'corporate authorship' copyright protections from 75 to 120 years after creation - or 95 years after first publication, whichever is older.

It also upped authorship by real human beings from "author's life+50" years to "author's life+70 years."

Unlike similar extension legislation passed in the EU, the US act did not revive copyrights that had already expired at the time the act became law.

Trivia: the bill was introduced by former pop singer turned congressman Sonny Bono. Looks like what he said was true: "I got you Babe!"

4923

Living Room / Re: Why Can't Germans Say 'Squirrel' ?

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 12:10 PM »

^I'll have to see if I can get my GF to get a sound clip. I've never heard the lady in question say that phrase. But I have talked to her outside of work (she gets along great with my GF) and I must admit that even with the Russian and Lithuanian side of my family background I have trouble understanding some of what she says. Think Cate Blanchette as Irina Spalko in the last Indiana Jones installment:



Indiana Jones: You're not from around here, are you?
Agent Irina Spalko: [taking off her glasses] Where is it you would imagine I am from, Dr. Jones?
Indiana Jones: Well, the way you're sinking your teeth into those wubble-u's, I should think maybe Eastern Ukraine.

4924

Living Room / Re: Major ISPs to implement "Six strike" rule

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 11:50 AM »

Even if the guy with the cat photo isn't a complete jerk at first, he may not remain so once an enterprising IP attorney starts filling his head with visions of easy millions to be made by becoming one...if you'll just sign here please.

-40hz (October 10, 2012, 11:10 AM)

...And that's why it should be legal to shoot them.

-Stoic Joker (October 10, 2012, 11:39 AM)

Works for me.

4925

Living Room / Re: An Odd DoS Attack

« Last post by 40hz on October 10, 2012, 11:37 AM »

Okay... I'm just having a bit of trouble with the "massive" 4% part. Sure on a tech news site 4% of what size pipe would be reflexively factored ... But this is the financial section of NBC news.  

-Stoic Joker (October 10, 2012, 08:47 AM)

And it was 4% from a single source.

So, imagine whoever does that sets up a few more accounts... How many would a spammer have? A few hundred to start anyways.

You then go from 4% with 1 account, to something like 400 accounts making up about 94% of all transactions.

THEN bandwidth and all that gets funky fried chicken time with heart-stopping gravy butter-balls of doom.

-Renegade (October 10, 2012, 09:19 AM)

But the orders in question wouldn't come in from a bunch of individuals. Those would only hit a licensed brokerage house trade desk. And you can't just willy-nilly set up accounts with them. You need financial references and a verifiable tax ID. And the brokerage systems themselves watch the activities in those accounts very carefully for games or anomalies. You also need a balance in you account (i.e. cash) - or access to credit in the form of a margin account - to even place an order. You can't just go in and say "I want 100,000 shares of Apple" and expect to see that order reach the exchange unless you have the money in your account to pay for it. All trying to place an order for a trade above what you're good for will get you is a warning if you're lucky, or the suspension (or termination) of your account if you tried to pull something really jive. You'll only get one or (maybe) two warnings at best before a brokerage will close your account.

It's the brokerage house orders actually hitting the exchange's system that they're talking about. That means it's brokerage to exchange orders which could affect the processing latency of the entire exchange - not just an individual brokerage house's system. Which is why you'd need to have access to the exchange order desk from a member brokerage in order to have that effect.

And you can't do that secretly - or by setting up 400 individual accounts. The exchange knows exactly who has access to their systems, along with knowing precisely when, where, and how such access is granted. So barring some high-level outside hacking team (likely covert or otherwise government "sponsored" to have the talent and resources needed) it's only one of the licensed traders that could have caused a flood of order/cancellations such as were reported.

And apparently they already know who it was. So all that remains is determining if it were an honest mistake, a technical glitch - or something more serious.

It will all come out in the end. And new system checks and safeguards will be put in place as a result.

Beyond it being newsworthy due to the fact it happed at all, I don't think there will end up being much "inside story" to report when the dust finally settles. Expect a wrist slap and possibly a fine at most.