It's really hard to say what makes a good hackathon. But, you can judge your success easily enough. If within two or three days, the FBI, CIA, ATF, ICE, and other government agencies kick everyone's doors in, and confiscates everything that everyone owns prior to flying everyone to Guantanamo, you KNOW you had one hell of a hackathon!

"If there's a hackathon heaven . . . "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEemZ6-LZc

Oh! You poor fool! Those weren't typos at all. THOSE ARE THE NEW FORMULA!! Oh, poor, poor fool - you'll NEVER be able to analyze algorithms properly now, because you're using the old formulas! [/sarcasm]

Standards?

1 watch newspapers for high profile deaths
2 show up at funeral
3 stage shockingly objectionable protest
4 be assaulted and/or insulted
5 file suit against grieving relatives for violation of civil rights

It's hard to see that WBC has any standards, or that those nonexistent standards might be any higher than the Prenda lawyers. I'd like to see someone like Judge Wright get hold of the WBC bunch.

A ship changes with hardware changes, and with crew changes. Removing as few as one crew members can change the character of a ship drastically. Likewise, the addition of one or more crew members. You may change a lot of minor physical parts of the ship, and not notice any real change. But changing a major structural member is almost certain to change her handling characteristics. You cannot duplicate a ship's keel precisely, no matter how hard you try.

Automobiles are mass produced, and you might think that two identical cars coming off the same assembly line on the same day would be indistinguishable. But - try to find two identical cars whose handling and performance characteristics are identical. It's not likely to happen.

The input/output from the antenna is patentable, and presumably it was patented. The bus that transfers the i/o from the antenna to the processor is patentable, and again, it was patented.

The software that manipulates those i/o numbers is the algorithm under discussion - and should not be patentable.

Let's suppose that loading a machine with a different set of softwares actually did "create" a new machine.

In that case, each new implementation would be the user's creation. That's right - it's the end user's unique creation, not that of some programmer halfway around the world who coded the individual program.

Or, if not the end user (in a corporate setting) then it would be the creation of the corporation's IT department. Copyrightable and patentable, I would guess. Set the machine up to your very precise specifications, register your creation, and NO ONE can use that same setup unless they license it from you!

Or, we could all fall back twenty and punt, with the admission that this "new machine" business is absurd.

Or, maybe the Paks want to provoke a war?

http://www.aninews.in/newsdetail2/story112519/growing-intolerance-in-pak-occupied-kashmir.html

There's a lot going on, and I'm nowhere close to pulling it all together. Gotta keep in mind that the Taliban runs half of the country, but instead of Pakistan fighting the Taliban, they're instigating confrontations with India. Strange . . .

I've got an idea to fire back at them. Require all takedown notices to be reviewed by a human person before being submitted. Then in exchange, Google will promise to have a human review each takedown notice on THEIR end as well. If Google finds a violation - they take it down. If they don't find a violation - the people who sent the complaint are billed for Google's review time!!

Somehow - I find it hard to take any drug using nutcase seriously. Bath salts? Hmmm, yeah, alright.

"If there is one thing society can learn from the soap opera now engulfing tech zillionaire John McAfee, it is that rectal shelving is the best way to take the psychoactive drug MDPV, marketed and known colloquially as bath salts. “Measure your dose,” McAfee wrote on a psychonaut forum two years ago, under his Stuffmonger handle. “Apply a small amount of saliva to the middle finger, press it against the dose, insert. Doesn't really hurt as much as it sounds. We're in an arena (drugs/libido), that I navigate as well as anyone on the planet here. If you take my advice about this (may sound gross to some), you will be well rewarded.”"

http://www.vice.com/read/john-mcafee-bath-salts-belize-murder-fugitive-gregory-faull

Forgive me, but psychoactive suppositories?

You can't be frigging serious. Really, you can't be. Precision? Do you even understand what the word means? And, "clumsy numbers"? You're auditioning for Seinfeld or something, right?

WORKER: I would like to discuss a raise to my salary
BOSS: Hell, boy, didn't you see that damned bus sitting in the parking lot when you came in? You and I are both going to be looking for work in two to four weeks. Go look in the conference room, and see our replacements.

I don't read that as indicating any percentage of false positives. The operator was simply looking for something specific, within a definite area. He KNEW that certain items had been deposited within strictly defined areas. Because this item was found outside of those areas, he wasn't interested enough to investigate. Apparently he recorded and reported the "hit" because days later when another "hit" was made, it was investigated.

In effect, "They've found something, but I don't think it's what we're looking for."

I block third party cookies. What happens when I land on a page that uses Disqus? I have to coax the browser to log me in to Disqus. And - that is just the way I want things to be. Disqus doesn't need to know where I browse, or what I'm reading, unless and until I CHOOSE to summon Disqus.

Children, if you're going to dabble in the arcane arts, you must learn to control those demons - or you will find that the demons control YOU!

Amen, Brother!

I may have the slimmest chances of fighting the terrorists. There is no fighting a dozen snooping neighbors who anonymously drop a dime on your ass every time you do ANYTHING "unusual".

"Sheriff, he's singing in the shower! His voice is AWFUL! No one would sing in the shower with a voice like that. I think he's signaling someone. OF COURSE he's a terrorist - her terrifies ME!!"

What - instead of a secret decoder ring, there will be a secret decoder red book? Cool!