I haven't read a fresh copy of 2600 in a very long time, but in picking up a random copy off the shelf (Fall 1998) there is an article on page 15 called 'Back Orifice Tutorial.' The article went on to describe basic social engineering skills and methodology for operating this software. There were are also several other articles of interest such as 'Screwing with Moviefone' and 'Screwing with Radio Shack & Compaq' in the particular issue, all of which seemed like they were aimed at script kiddies. As you mentioned, there are articles about undocumented functions of electronics and old school technical breakdowns, but by and large those articles probably aren't what were driving 2600 sales numbers. (After all, Emmanuel Goldstein did get name dropped by Cereal Killer in Hackers, and there was never a cooler movie than Hackers)

As far as the typical definition of hacker, things change, then CISCO makes it course material so that the next generation believes it.

It's not about the cheap aspect of it so much as about being prudent in taking the occasional high risk via lottery and keeping most of my assets in more conservative holdings.

If you're not setting the Annuitized jackpot as the benchmark, there have been at least 6 instances where the jackpot was over $200 million with the cash option according to wikipedia. You're also not taking into account multiple drawings per week over a given number of weeks. The lottery didn't hit $200+ million on Tuesday and go away the next Friday. Maybe I don't have 180 single instances over 15 years where it was 200+ million, but even if we lowered it to the chance of winning $100 million, or $10 million, it is still not something to scoff at for $180.

You're right, I did not factor in a split in prize $, but I'm still feeling $1.7 million for $180.

Not wrong, I'm just accounting for the spread of $180 between 10 companies and the costs associated for buying from each of those 10 companies separately as opposed to a singular investiture. If you bought your stock at the lowest price in '97 and had nothing in fees you might hit $8k. No fees in 97? Nah...

I thought it was general investment advice, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered mentioning that I didn't think it was stupid to spend a few dollars on Mega Millions when the jackpot was high. As I was washing dishes yesterday I concluded that aside from the aforementioned dissent about high risk investments, I don't otherwise disagree with you. It was all about this:

My point is that those who occasionally play the lottery in the hopes of winning obscene amounts of $$$ aren't 'throwing' their money away, and that the lottery is fiscally sound for the occasional high risk investment without the overhead of fees. If Apple had a Direct Stock Purchase plan or something similar, than investing $25 a month or whatever would be simple for most users, but it's not that simple. Picking up a lottery ticket at the grocer/gas station/news stand? Simple.

Having spent and lost $6 on Mega Millions so far this year, I don't feel like it's been a waste so much as an equal opportunity, non rigged (probably, less dangerous than insider trading anyways, and zero dependencies aside from splitting with other winners), chance to make gobs of money off what is essentially throw-away penny stocks acquired without fees, only I don't have to wait more than 2-3 days to see how things turned out before I win/lose.

Much better? How does spending $1 on a random lottery ticket once or twice a month on the chance that I win $100+ million whenever the lottery peaks prove to be a poor choice? Even if I spend $12 a year, that is still more equitable in the dreams of achieving a beyond lucrative return than the purchase of (insert high risk stock here) + fees.

The stock splits shouldn't be considered as abnormally large or beneficial, especially to anybody who didn't have a large number of shares. The last split in 2005 was at $44 and isn't properly comparable to a split when the value is of several hundred dollars. It took almost 3 years for the value double from that point, so realistically unless you had lots of money to throw around in the first place, Apple was not an overly smart bet for the casual investor back in 1997.

You would've had odds somewhere around 1 in 5-6k that you would've won the lottery if you spent a total of $180 in $1 increments on lottery tickets whenever the jackpot was over $200 million. That is significantly less than the fees you would've paid investing (varying by your broker/how you purchase), and is negligible in impact to your overall portfolio for a 15 year time span.

Understanding that it is High Risk investment, and being generous and saying that an investor got in and purchased $180 in stock divided amongst Apple and those 9 other failed companies you mentioned, an investor may have made up to $3k, which if you were diversified as you mentioned and lost out everywhere else, being generous again might leave you at ~$2k.
That's not bad for having picked Apple, but their rise in value is a) not typical for even well performing high risk ventures and b) not so overly amazing in that 15 years for the casual investor that I would've passed up a 1 in 6k chance of winning $200+ million. Were I to up the amount of tickets I bought, it would take awhile in comparative stock purchases before Apple ever matched the 1 million mark, whereas my odds of winning a lot of money, much less the jackpot, would've improved significantly. All the while I wouldn't be paying fees, having to monitor my other diversified stocks to see how they were trending, or if the companies were still in business.

Telling people to throw money at High risk investments instead of the lottery isn't necessarily any smarter fiscally, and in either case should only be done with a small portion of an investment portfolio, if at all.

I read this article back in December in Time which said that had you redirected your lottery spending to stocks over the 10 years ending December 2010, your annualized return would have amounted to -1.54%, according to Standard & Poor's.



As for Apple, that is a horrible example for investors as they've nearly lost all their money at several points. Jobs took their dividend away (though that appears to be coming back) because he was so worried about cash reserves, and were it not for people going crazy over the iPhone & iPad, Apple wouldn't have seen this fiscal turnaround in the last 10 years. At the time, investing in 1997 would've been a horrible idea for most users, and most of their current value has been from market growth since late 2010.

Being realistic, instead of listening to anybody that doesn't have the prosperity that comes from massive investments (Warren Buffet), people should go buy 'The Intelligent Investor', maybe get a subscription to Barron's, and watch the market for a year to figure out what is going on...while buying the occasional lottery ticket.

It's not even a matter of not supporting your local organic farmer.

There are a lot of seed providers out there who partially source their product from GM seed. A few people buy seeds and plant in their yard, cross pollinating other yards over time and so forth until it spreads down the road a few miles to your local farmer. You can spend $50 buying local at the farmers market each week and still go home and stick it to them because you had a few plants of your own on the side.

Here's a nice little page I found awhile back on the subject. It has lists comprised of GMO free purveyors as well as those that utilize GM seed at least partially in sales somewhere on the planet. Of course, even if an individual goes the length of buying non modified seed, they're just as susceptible to x-pollination as the commercial farmers are. The GM seed doesn't even need to be from the same crop. It's all well and good till you find your Squash seeds from last year were the result of pollination by your neighbors GM Zucchini.

Comments make it easier to differentiate changes for the purposes of maintaining the integrity of the author's source code for GPL. They might get in the way of you reading code quickly, but at least you could identify non-native material.

Mmmmm, obligatory Pratchett.

Yeah, so? Have you never used photoshop before? Never edited/designed an icon? Mucked about with fonts?
As I've already referenced Kanzi, we'll stick with him for a moment. Yes, it is a simple matter to develop software that would work on a structurally fortified iPad. Hell, you could probably port it from existing software. Naturally more lexigraphs would need to be developed as each generation learned and adapted to a larger vocabulary, much as Kanzi did better than his mother at learning.

As partially depicted by the video, and listed on several sites you can easily google, Kanzi understands a good bit of English, over 3000 words. He can also identify several hundred lexigraphs and understands complex sentence structure and embedded clauses. Granted, that is currently tantamount to the understanding of a 5-6yr old, but just because someone/something doesn't grasp your language, do you dismiss them as unworthy of regard and deny them the option of being taught despite their underlying intelligence? I should hope not. In the face of that, anything that doesn't work towards attempting to continue to overcome that barrier sounds like bigotry or egotism to me.

Kanzi learned lexigrams and speech better than his mother did. He also learned some American Sign Language from Koko. Generational improvements in learning/adaption have happened and are currently happening. There's nothing ambiguous about stating that B learned better than A did, while also learning something from C when there is quantitative and qualitative proof.

I don't recall stating 'Votes for Apes!' specifically, but there is nothing ambiguous about anything I've said concerning a desire to see evolutionary progress. I'm all for it. I mentioned that Apes shouldn't have to come up the hard way. Your breakdown of that as an undefined position doesn't address my intent. Whether anybody else likes it or not, universities and private researchers all over the world are helping to teach great apes. This should continue as apes need not wander aimlessly for thousands of years like humanity did before eating some charred meat (or whatever happened to change our structural thinking) before magically grow smarter over a few dozen generations till they're building microprocessors. Given the sprawl of humanity that isn't even an evolutionary option for them given strictly delimited preserves and environments where they are only marginally protected.
Given these factors, I don't believe that reinventing the wheel is a necessary hurdle. I think that any capable body can live an enriched life by striving for understanding in any scenario. As there have been several high profile incidents of apes proving capable, I think devoting time and effort towards ape education is entirely worthwhile. Screw the SETI work and all the people chasing after aliens and sending out golden records on probes, we've got sentient life we can't fully communicate with right here.

Your position has been applied to many racist and sexist entitlements since the dawn of man. Have fun with that.

I'm serious enough that I'd vote for a 1 cent county tax to give more money to the local primate center down the street from my house (Yerkes NPRC) and vote against taxes aimed at giving money to the children/schools in Dekalb County. Too bad life and policy doesn't behave that way where I live, but I digress.

Allegedly Kanzi understands hundreds of lexigraphs, as well several thousand English words including complex sentences and embedded clauses. While some nay-sayers (often supported only by their religious dogma) still choose to believe that ape thought process and responses are merely tricks, Kanzi and other great apes over the last 40 years have demonstrated in numerous instances that they are thinking complex thoughts, expressing themselves cogently via the language "we've" taught them. In some cases it has been as simple as expressing the fact that they want to play with a particular toy, only to show regret through lexigraphs and signage at a later point in time that the play time they were told was going to happen was overlooked.

I don't profess to understand the minutiae that follows the progression of learning in non humans, but anyone who has ever even paid the slightest bit of attention to their own pets at home can relate to the fact animals aren't dumb. I've seen dogs that can identify over 200 independent items, fetch beer from the fridge, and many other simple tasks. Given the similar brain structure and opposable thumbs, if you put great apes into a safe, and more enriched learning environment than humanity had as we've evolved to this point, it is not entirely unreasonable to expect that adaption can occur.

Of course that would devolve into a whole new set of problems as we tried to get people in other countries to stop hunting apes for bush meat, secret remedies, sport and what have you. New debates would spring up regarding whether they qualified for the same rights and protections as humans, whether keeping apes in zoos is slavery, etc.

I'm not saying that I'm praying for the day we can communicate with horseshoe crabs, gila monsters and amoeba, but given our successes in the last 40 years in working with various apes I think we would be remiss if we didn't put more focus on trying to develop educational methods geared towards communication and structured learning.

P.S. - Let's end racism while we're at it. It's a win-win.

Just because these particular Orangutans haven't learned (or might not have the capacity) how to properly utilize an iPad in the way that humanity has, doesn't mean that given the opportunity and the funding of such research in regards to apes that such walls can't eventually be torn down.

It is a relatively simple process to program apps and change the icons of apps to lexigrams geared towards apes, and I find the idea of giving apes like Kanzi, as well as other apes that have worked extensively with primatologists, exposure to such technology as worthy enough to hold sufficient merit.

Much like learning a foreign language, if we teach all these exposed and inclined apes the same 'words' it isn't a huge leap to believe that in a few generations it could manifest itself as something that is passed on within the confines of each society of apes from generation to generation.

Even across species Kanzi the Bonobo picked up some ASL from watching videos of Koko the Gorilla. With a little determination on our part, this could be the start of something much greater.

Humans came up the hard way, but that doesn't mean that apes have to go that route.

Did you just dictate that post via a Siri-like program? You shouldn't have typed that with a standard keyboard.

Individual reasons for doing anything should not be predicated solely on the original intent of the creator, else you lose the chance to hack your life your way.

Catch a sore throat on the weekend as someone with an issue with their immune system when your regular care provider is unavailable, I think I'd go to the hospital too. Likewise if I was aged and fell, causing a swelling of the ankle. The injury could potentially be life threatening.

Just because we're young and durable doesn't mean that there aren't a good number of others who have genuine health concerns that seem trivial to us.

I'm sorry to have inadvertently maligned you when I checked the story a second time and verified that your stated inaccuracies weren't present.
As for reading the comments as the obvious 1st thing to do before accusing you of trolling, I think that my own actions of checking the article first to verify that you were correct/incorrect makes more sense as far as logical order. After all, the article is time stamped 5 hours prior to your posting here with no mention of an edit/update outside of the comments. Generally it makes more sense to verify the absence of evidence than sifting through a potential mountain of comments on every article that I might peruse to see if the author was corrected on his spelling by someone. Second to verifying a lack of errors I should've looked at your recent posts to determine if they were of quality or in the same vein as a troll. Actually reading the comments on a well constructed article to determine if there had been spelling inaccuracies? Much lower priority.

And for everyone else following this discourse, the errors that previously existed within the OP article were made on a Macbook air, not the add-on keyboard for the ipad.

None of the errors pointed out by xaxa actually exist. You got trolled.

It's a shame this troll worked on so many people...

You've succeeded in getting a Score:5 by posting erroneous information about alleged inaccuracies. Everything you posted is actually correct in the article and all these people here have fallen for you accusing them of not reading the article, because they didn't double check you since you were so self righteous. Way to raise the bar.