So when China asks slashdot how best to catch people circumventing their firewall, how would they do it? They might pretend to be a western touron visiting their fair nation and asking some innocent questions about firewall circumvention. If any of these methods are effective, they are likely to cease being effective now that they are widely published. Either way, the anonymity of the poster prevents direct help and indicates perhaps a clever approach to hardening the firewall.

A trade every 20 minutes would generate an obscene amount of transaction cost. These are the costs associated with stock trading and any successful Trader/Manager team would seek to minimize these things and create a strategy that maximizes gain for the least amount of trades. Given this system is trading so frequently it would seem to assume zero transaction cost. Quite

I would also think that any more than a few of these trading bots would create a market impact that would nullify the advantage eventually.

Its also kind of weird to invest based on information that is not reliable, or not stemming from the fundamentals of a stocks earning potential. Creating portfolios based on glamour, popularity or essentially inefficiency is a disaster waiting to happen. These gimmiks will work until a catastrophe happens, but by then so much more is committed than is was ever prudent and the damage is done. Investing based on artifacts or involving anything you don't understand with your own 2 hemispheres means that you as an individual are being manipulated and you are investing for irrational reasons.

Unless this technique can be balanced or controlled in a risk management context, or understood at a low level to behave in parallel with existing market benchmarks, then only the penultimate fool would see this as responsible investing and not patent gambling and recreation with your surplus funds.

While I see the expectation of any product to magically increase in value over time as fundamentally insane, there are securities that can offer utility in markets. If this kind of information is really that valuable to a majority then it will eventually be securitized. If this is something that only a minority can exploit and is not private information, some Tony Soprano somewhere in the world will call it illegal. And thats the other reason not to bother - because none of the markets are truly open and will never be truly efficient while goverments are waiting to intervene. Maybe there is opportunity in the many small irrationalities of the human mind since the market participants are almost all human. What else could this information harvesting be capturing besides some departure from fundamental consideration? If the fundamentals are considered and reflected in the price, then any other change is short term and technical, to be nullified.

I should watch what I say lest I bump up Apple stock!

I thought the answer was slashdot? Bad content can be filtered, and there is an overwhelming amount of garbage. Its the garbage you want, with a filter. Its slashdot, the better internet.

heh mars

Agreed, I really enjoyed that one! :) With that primer, anyone care to finish it off?

The Alien Chicks with the glossy lips were hot!

But yeah, loved that magazine and especially the short stories. Not very reliable science stuff but overall a very optimistic and stylish mag that back then was a nice counterpoint to Heavy Metal which was less rooted in reality.

But both had Hot Alien Chicks! :)

There is an economy, but the players are all using layers upon layers of aliases. Inevitable is a fresh mask on carnivore and this is merely one of them. How could you possibly trust a service NOT to report a ZDE? Find one, submit and see if it shows up in other scanners or see if there are reports of anyone out there using it. The service could be a front for carnivore, a front for a virus broker, or a front for a majority vendor. The simple rule is this: if there is money to be made and this is the only principle protecting the submission, it is INEVITABLE that someone else will offer more. And if the price per submission is affordable, and the functions advertized then its certainly not underground but engaging in some simple advertizing.

Most hackers have heard of honeypots...

Remember, NASA is the Amtrak of space and they need to advertize objectives and constantly engage in consistent public communications to indicate money isn't being wasted. NASA does not generate revenue so take your pick- boy scouts in space doing favors, amtrak etc. Its a gov service that in principle is no different than how the US collects taxes, fights wars or delivers mail. Imagine the postal guys up there trying to turn a torx with fat frigid fingers in zero g. Or maybe some people from DMV to staff the mission control center. Sounds ridiculous, but the difference is merely training and certification. Why have postal guys or volunteers wage warfare? The gov becomes a service provider like any other, only as the default, a really bad one.

The channel first of all doesn't always work. When there is some video it is a placeholder for activity. There is hardly any editing and summarization unless it supports something the agency needs to advertize. Its after all -

-PROPAGANDA FROM SPACE-

Will you actually learn anything new from the video feed? I highly doubt it. Its a hose for space branding and a tit to keep TV culture complacent and uncritical.

Should SpaceTV be entertaining? Should the news be entertaining? Maybe engaging and relevant is a better expectation. And NASA has always had problems in the relevancy department.

But then there is the reality that space is actually not the interesting. After all, its just -

-S P A C E-

Once money wealth and freedom is possible for individuals up there, it will get interesting because then there will be individual superobjective in that context. There is none currently - its like watching the FBI surveil child porn. Protecting the nation - RIGHT - the only reason usenet still exists is so the FBI can swap pix.

NASA definitely has zero g sex tapes - think we can tune into that? Or how about a webcam session in space where the gals face is all puffy from no gravity.

What you get to see on NASA TV is what little they can air that does not make them look like fools. Where is FBI TV or CIA TV? Nowhere because it would only document their mistakes, incompetence and panic.

Space shit on TV all got started with JFK and NASA is still entirely dependent on donations, public opinion and PITY. They don't produce anything and have never made a strong case for why people need to be in space that doesn't ultimately come from fear of other people.

Its actually a cool job. And this is before you get burnt so enjoy it and the optimism your question contains.

In a small company anything that plugs in means you are a bitch. Get some fucking standards, boy. Don't touch the cellphones, pdas and certainly anything that is not company property.

This is your problem and close out everything else and read this.

You must accomplish something. Not the stuff on the lists, something you can take with you otherwise you are wasting your time. All these change orders whether from a skirt or tie can do is fuck you and prevent you from accomplishing projects. This causes a very typical asocialization and detachment of IT people though with a simple extension of context, it can be remedied. Its not worth finding out the hard way like most people do after getting screwed that everyone involved needs a plan and needs structure. Your evaluations will be SHIT at the end of the year and will continue to be SHIT not because you are not valuable trustworthy or smart, but the big picture things never get done or maybe its the proposals. All the change orders and short term requests that you at the terminus can't manage - this is the futility of your question - will keep you from accomplishing anything.

Adding software to ENHANCE THE ENCODING OF YOUR OBLIGATIONS is the LAST thing you want right now in this flexible environment. Its fun to be useful and some personality types need it like smoking a cigarette. And others will exploit this till your ears produce hairs.

What you need to do is figure out how to get a raise or how to get a much better job and for this you need cred. Being a bitch will never move you forward. The list of things you succeed and fail at in your job - this should come from your supervisor, or you make them together. If they are not agreed upon, that is disadvantaged position. At review you are wide open to get hit with demerits and if you don't have all that and more to prove what the f^%$ random stuff you have been doing, you get talked out of a raise.

So the issue is not what goes on the list - if you are smart you will put everything on the list, but who has control and what momentum you can build with your accomplishments.

Some additional advice is to either work through a supervisor who mediates work requests, or always have a team setup to plan long term objectives. Doing something long term for one person can cause consistent collisions. And make sure all your work and role is throughly advertized to every person in the organization. If they don't do it, then bring it up in every conversation. If someone tells you not to, alarms go off and you are designed to get screwed. For example, being hired in the middle of a system civil war.

You individually, morally, have to be ready to accept big responsibilities and set aside being a bitch. And if you will make that shift and take on riskier projects that require more investment and 'ownership' of the project then be damn well sure there is a reward involved.

The question of how you manage that stuff is not in a tool, it should come from your ego. Don't get involved with small time shit unless she is really cute, or it is really worth your while. Be studied, have prepared responses to common questions and have some dignity. Its not an accident you know answers to questions and have talent to solve problems.

It might seem cute at first that anyone in the office can bring you a problem. But can you bring a problem to anyone else? Why is that? The degree of bitch in your equilibrium with these order generators is inversely proportional to your individual gain. It means you don't exist yet because your bitch to everyone means you are spread out in the social space and proximal and equidistant to everyone. Your objective as a sapient and sentient being is always to improve your standing in this network. So your first move is to create some space and occupy that space and make the path to you assymmetric. How? Pick your topology. First come first served? Make an entry in a logbook? First him then her? Does rank matter? It does in an 'agency'.

How devious are you? As a salaried person, if you make a system than funnels all requests and backs them up into next year you might as well evolve into pizza the hut because who even cares? You can pay rent, buy pizza and play WOW.

If you are devious you could talk the firm, agency, institution into not being your boss, but they being your client. Kind of a switcheroo and then they don't have to pay benefits or anything and each request gets payed an hourly rate until its completed. Then you the wolf, must play this game like chess in advance and give them concessions all for the purpose of setting a decent rate. Then rail them. Clean their clock so to speak. You can now make money in the middle of the night if you want to. Be efficient and work that log clean and give them heart palpitations when they get the invoice and make them go DAMN. You better believe they get their shit in order before they enter a request because now, as they should, they do so with complete comprehension of the price, which is now almost efficient.

I think its awesome because google has a track record of doing and succeeding as opposed to doing and failing. Though that is entirely my viewpoint. Not everything they do works, but quite often it does and sometimes very well. I also don't think they have money out the wazoo. A few of the individuals perhaps, but google itself is expensive. The cost in energy per search is absolutely not an imaginary figure and it is directly exposed to the cost of energy as available in the municipalities they operate in like the Dalles, and the energy market itself which in the NW is up to I think a fifth non-oil generated, though more expensive. That cost per search is itself only one example of cost, and cloud computing in the now and future is hazy on who pays for the thermodynamics and heat of all those transactions. On the board is a mindset dominated by energy surplus which prevents any decision from necessity. But the marketplace for search hopefully will optimize despite the surplus, in pursuit of wealth or advantage perhaps. In absence of complete energy scarcity, there is nothing else to prevent searches...being as expensive as possible, except for the competition between multiple parties. Here the pursuit of wealth and success is essential and like individual liberty, the exact wind behind the back of system self optimization. But what about every other cloud service? What do you call all that smoke and the little tokes, you can't call them searches. But it all involves as it stands the mediation of essentially a SPACE HEATER. The kind of shit that keeps your ass from not being a block of ice in a shed in the winter watching skiiers go by and sometimes bite it hard at the end of the ramp. If you are lucky. I had one get all the way around once and head down the mountain. It was a dense pentameter that day. If these computers will not someday be space heaters, but computers that work ideally at very cold temperatures then we should support forward thinking and above all the activity of experimentation. Cheers Hartmut, D-Wave and Google!

Hi, there are some excellent introductory lectures as an introduction to quantum computing here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I56UugZ_8DI

Given by Hartmut Neven with a guest appearance from D-Wave on day 2. Watch all of the them including day 3!

Fascinating topic, though quickly delivered and worth further study and above all experimentation.

It awesome that google supports work like this.

If the interviewer asked Mr. Murdoch, so what do you think HTML stands for; what would he say? Does he know what HTML stands for? The reason I ask is that I suspect he does not know the words the acronym represents. In fact based on this, I am not sure he understands what the internet is and the fact that not only are there pages, but there are links. In fact the links and relationships between information is to be considered just as 'valuable' as the information itself. Without those relationships, without the fragmentation all you have left is propaganda. Switching to Bing won't be any different, just an older asshole that yells into his speakerphone.

Fundamentally I think older people see the internet as a communication channel like a pipe, instead of a shared network. I think older people imagine something like a PSTN but with fancier features, Murdoch included. Although Google is mentioned here as some kind of adversary and drain of revenue, the rationale to block any search engine from content, is fundamentally an act to block people from content. Murdoch is against the internet.

From a thanksgiving discussion I described the continuing decline of M$ coming down to hubris, and a simple choice they made a long time ago; to be in business or to help people. Murdoch is simply in business and could give a shit about helping people. The things happening around you whether near or far is bait for advertising for the newscorp. The middlemen are indifferent and occassionally haphazard with the content so long as revenue is coming in. Rather than change, or improve the quality of their delivery there is a chance to scapegoat and rally some shared hate amongst all those who share the same folly. Its kind of like looking across a population of mixed ethnicity in a political race and asking yourself, which ones can we massacre that would make everyone else happy? Of course this only works if everyone is ignorant of your efforts to single out the 'demon', so they don't see who the real demon is.

This is a last ditch effort and they see and feel the decline coming. If they take their content off search engines, it violates fundamentally the mission of a news agency which is to reflect the world in a timely fashion without bias. Maybe they would rather setup their own prodigy or compuserve or AOL network that they own and can control.

The future of media is with individuals and aggregators and the internet is the nervous system that connects them.

China is not fond of, and is also very opportunistic with the internet. Their reasons for blocking and filtering the internet are the same as Murdoch's. Murdoch made the choice a long time ago to be in business first and help people second. That obviously came with some profit.

The news is not his any more than the world is. If Murdoch pulls his agencies from the google index, it will be a perfect expression of bias that has existed in his content all along. Others that follow suit are propagandists who would rather hiss in a closet than speak in the world.

Overall I see more of a domestic than space mindset and it is cultivating the favors it needs to survive instead of really being competitive and aggressive about being in space.

The people at NASA are all personally heroes, but I can see them taking on a higher role and purpose. It just seems undignified for NASA to be involved with such extreme cases. Honorable in so many ways but darn it, a shame.

I can't imagine anyone from NASA would even be reading these posts. There are so many of them and even my own words are examples of extreme ignorance!

The social side of space I imagine contains some matter/antimatter like combinations that I have only recently considered. Like some party systems boiling down to the tar of 2 choices I think there are people who are either thumbs up or down on space. And like many things in my surroundings the one I choose is in the minority with billions on the opposing side. Like hamburgers, people who voted for stupidity, people who pay for stupidity, people who listen to stupidity. There is this experience of marginalization we come across these days because of the internet and the flux and over abundance of information and profiles - the exposure to other peoples' information and representations. I think there is way too much science fiction about space for many people to be realistic and this shows there is interest in the markets and anthropologically where we might see ourselves heading. But really?

Watching NASA TV is pretty easy, but its not my favorite channel. I could imagine a reality show based in space for contractors who make it out there to study yes, but produce. Engage, process, defend. New information, new places and new stories. The cloak and dagger baggage of secrets, disclosure and the shroud of the military is dark and sad like the middle ages. Its not about kingdoms, nations, agency and enmity but about life and people.

I'll do my part and broadcast for a few weeks that movie 2012 is just pretend and while it brings up some interesting questions such as how you might behave under those conditions and totally give up in despair it is hollywood rubbish and no matter how many people say a disclaimer is not needed let us remind that full theatrical resolution rendering of content in realtime is almost currently possible on a single video card. A disclaimer could warn of the use of perfect CGI to easily supercede the audience sense of pretend. A crime against reality has always existed and it is understood well in the animal kingdom. When reality is veiled, shunted, warped distorted when a clear and self presenting form is possible, then it is justified for a social institution to intervene and without this adaptation the information age is without optimization.

I really don't think NASA should find these questions acceptable. There are good questions and there are bad questions. Scientists ask good questions, hollywood producers do not. NASA has no business answering questions designed by hollywood. They should fashion their own questions and get answers.