Hello,

There is one slight error in your very good writeup on how binaural beats works. What you described, playing two notes on two different sound producers (in this case tuning forks), causes an actual, physical, "beat". The sound waves interfere or combine with one another in physical space, and a new sound wave (or a composite of the two, same difference) is created and propogated through air, the medium of sound.

The binaural beats mentioned here work a little differently, in that a recording is played, and it must be listened through headphones. One ear hears a certain pitch or frequency, the other ear hears a different pitch or frequency. The difference here is that neither ear "hears" a beat, the beat is created entirely in the brain of the listener. I am not a neurobiologist so I cannot explain the exact mechanism, but it appears it has something to do with how the brain processes sound and attempts to internally combine the two different sounds into a single perception/experience for the consciousness.

I checked out some binaural beat programs once. Basicly just sine wave (or fancier) generators that let you pick the frequency for the left output and right output. If I listed on one ear only using headphones, I hear a single frequency. If I listen to both ears, I hear the two frequencies, AND I perceive a beat in addition to that, that only exists in my brain. Its at the very least neat. At the very most I didn't notice any particular effects on myself, and didn't get addicted or anything to it.

The claim or assumption of the binaural beats people is that the low frequency beats can be used to simulate in the brain the delta waves or alpha waves or whatever waves are associated with deep sleep, or relaxation, or whatever. Again I am not a neurobiologist, so I can't say if this does anything.

Playing two tuning forks together or tuning a guitar is pretty neat to me too.

Yes. If you do a google search for CVE-1297 (going from memory here, the CVE number might be off (CVE's are the numbering scheme used by the Mitre organization. One of the things they do is publish details on exploits/vulnerabilities as they happen, and security people use them as a reference point)) zero day you will find some analysis that was done on a pdf found in the wild.

I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic or not. In the event that you are not being sarcastic, allow me to elaborate on your points.

It was not. Usually Dune 2 by Westwood Studios gets credit for this. Warcraft 1 did have some innovations, but both of those games are really horrible if you try to play them now.

Thats innovation isn't it?

Ok, now here is one where the innovation, or at least the execution, cannot be overstated enough. There weren't just three factions each basically the same with slightly different units and maybe a faction specific unit and building or two. Starcraft had three entirely different factions, with almost entirely different build mechanics, and definitely with entirely different feels and strategies that work. They also managed to balance the factions fairly well, after many balance patches (they never quit making balance changes until it got to be just right). People are still playing it now, 10 years later. In Korea it has become something of a sport (leagues, teams, televised games, etc) and over here it is gaining momentum, and has been since I got into it two years ago. Oh, and the best players in the world don't play on the Battle.net server, they play on a server called ICUP

Maybe not as much innovation. It took balls though to not just rehash SC or Warcraft 2. Blizzard's main competition was the Command and Conquer series of rts games, and those got rehashed and made into so many sequels that I didn't even know C&C 4 came out a week or a month or something ago, and didn't care either. Also, WC3's map editor is quite robust and has spawned many interesting games, including something called DoTA, which in itself is becoming a new genre of competitive multiplayer gaming

Probably, yeah.

...Which were totally original creations and didn't borrow and extend from anything that existed prior...

Why do you automatically doubt that? There is a video that you can probably find on youtube if not somewhere else, it is actually quite well known. (I am at work and do not have access to youtube). You can see a wikipedia article on the man at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c

It is apparently inconceivable to you that the mind can be conquered and made subservient to the **fill in the word for whatever would go here, common ones are soul, spirit, consciousness, "I"** and that a person could do that. Well, there are religious/spiritual practices and traditions that have been around for a very long time whose goal it is to bring people to states like this. Perhaps the followers become mindless zombies, perhaps they attain a sort of enlightenment, but to assume that the man was on serious drugs is an ignorant statement.

"If you have a scientific study from a neutral course that concluded that pot leads to physical dependence I'd love to see it."

I would like to note that the 4 articles you link are to studies that show connections to mental disorders, and have nothing to do with physical dependence.

Please, lets stay on the subject. The assertion is that Marijuana, Cannabis, THC, etc are not PHYSICALLY addictive, and that there is no scientific evidence to counter that assertion. In my own studies, it appears to be true, and peoples perceptions of marijuana are based less on fact and more on a subtle and not so subtle manipulation of the public opinion, by people that are basicly liars.

Marijuana. Marijuana caused health conditions have claimed the lives of zero people, ever. It sounds like bullshit I know, but then I looked it up, and found no medical evidence that marijuana has ever been positively linked to health problems, as well as no record of a marijuana smoker dying from a condition caused by marijuana. It does tend to make one fat and lazy though.

Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and one or two others were the only ones accepting accounts from US peoples the last I checked.

It is actually a little bit more complicated than that. I learned and played no limit holdem online for about two months, and the dynamics of the game are really intense, really deep, and really complicated. A bot that won every winning hand it was dealt would be easily spotted. Maybe not by the players that aren't that good, but those players generally play at the low stakes table, thus defeating the bot's earnings potential. It is undoubtedly in the interest of the poker site operators to find and eliminate all cheaters, and maintain their good reputation and cash flow, which comes from having people logged in, playing games, as much as possible. If poker site X is cheating, then I will go to poker site Y, which is no different except their table graphics are a little different, and the buttons to bet fold or call are in different spots on my screen.

Of course, at the present time, only a limited number of online poker sites offer accounts to people residing in the US, presumably because of the laws the US has in place. Meaning if you sign up for an account with one, you cannot cash out to a US bank account. You would have to have a foreign bank account or work with a friend, and then we get into the issue of money laundering and even bigger crimes and punishments.

You have obviously not done any gambling online. A large percentage, perhaps even the majority of online gambling, is poker. When you go to an online poker site, you are not playing against the house/online gambling site. You are playing against other players, and the gambling site gets its money by charging a fee, a percentage of the buy in in a tournament or a percentage of the pot.

Of course there is no 100% guarantee that the online gambling site is not putting an employee that can see the cards in on a table, but that would really net them so little money in comparison to hosting 100's or even thousands of tables simultaneously, and getting their little fee from each of them. Not the mention the damage to their reputation if it were discovered (there is great competition amongst online poker sites.)

Someone involved in any aspect of computer security, which can contain any of the following: penetration testing of systems to determine their vulnerabilites, network monitoring and analysis/intrusion detection, malware analysis, research into new exploits, analysis of botnet infrastructures and so on on the defensive side, and for the offensive side it is scanning target computer systems and networks, enumerating, exploiting, and pwning, either as a script kiddie with tools or as a more real hacker, creating your own tools for the particular system.

International law. They (the FBI) already goes after people operating the C2C servers inside the borders of this country (the USA). Most people don't know it when their computer is infected with a botnet, depending on the botnet.

I think that is the idea of this whole thing actually.

It is hard to find the ringleaders, and then even if the USA did, they would likely be in Russia, and Russia may not accept our evidence. (Begin rumors without citation) There are some that think the Russian government unofficially supports the RBN, as long as their activities do no mess with Russian interests.(/rumors)

Military action is never a good first option, or second, third or fourth option for that matter. There are serious consequences for violating a sovereign nation with an act of war, unless they are really weak and poor and have no friends.

If there is evidence that countries are beefing up their own cyber warfare capabilities, then it sorta the explicit and implicit responsibility of a government to its people to protect them. You don't see any countries in the world that can afford a military without one do you? Unless they can get it way with it some other way (think Switzerland of countries that are not allowed a sizable military as a condition of their surrender in a previous war by the winning country(ies).)

Welcome to the future. Its like Robot Jox but without the robots and just the software.

I still cringe that I forced myself to read all the way through the second sequel he wrote, because I had to know what happens.

What happened? Nerd rage, as I threw away the first book I've ever thrown away in my life. Its poo. It's worse than poo, poo has redeeming value as fertilizer and a place for flies to spawn their maggot babies. All the Brian Herbert milk-my-father's-work-so-I-don't-have-to Dune books (of which there are too too many) Are cut off. They no longer exist in my personal reality.

Yo dawg, I heard you like watching movies, so we made a computer powerful enough for you to watch a movie in hi-def, while you watch a movie in hi-def.

Off topic but Evangelion was the shit!