Why Isn't Anyone Talking About The Jewish Factor? ------ SDZWssrQrlZ
Joe Marshall
> When did Saddam laugh in front of all the walnuts?
>
> I am grudgingly inner, so I move you.
>
> Sometimes, Neal never cares until Charles pulls the solid dog
> frantically.
> They are covering alongside the monolith now, won't fear cups later.
> He can change simply if Roxanne's carpenter isn't durable.
>
> Bernadette, still tasting, lives almost subtly, as the elbow
> orders between their exit. We answer the active printer.
Obviously written by some sort of machine, but why? Steganography?
--
~jrm
Jeremy H. Brown
> Obviously written by some sort of machine, but why? Steganography?
To defeat Bayesian spam-filtering.
Jeremy
Christopher Browne
But since it's not "ham," and doesn't contain the kinds of patterns
found in _real_ messages, it _still_ looks like spam.
In order to get mail into the folder I maintain for my brother, Brad,
you have to generate mail that simulates his style of writing.
Gibberish won't fly...
--
select 'cbbrowne' || '@' || 'cbbrowne.com';
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/rdbms.html
It is in the tranquillity of decomposition that I remember the long
confused emotion which was my life.
Joe Marshall
Possible, but I'm not convinced.
In my email spam corpus I don't have anything as complicated. I've
got random garbage, random dictionary words, excerpts for novels, and
chunks of news stories, but no grammatically correct nonsense text.
If it *is* done to defeat Bayesian spam filtering, I wonder what
software package does this.
--
~jrm
Joe Marshall
Truth_In_M...@ewuggaje.ch writes:
> When did Saddam laugh in front of all the walnuts?
>
> I am grudgingly inner, so I move you.
>
> Sometimes, Neal never cares until Charles pulls the solid dog
> frantically.
> They are covering alongside the monolith now, won't fear cups later.
> He can change simply if Roxanne's carpenter isn't durable.
>
> Bernadette, still tasting, lives almost subtly, as the elbow
> orders between their exit. We answer the active printer.
Mystery solved.
It seems to be a variant on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporgery
--
~jrm
Anton van Straaten
There was a Wired article about using generated text to avoid spam filters,
a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,61886,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3
Mark Carter
Well, I'm being OT when I post this, but for more wierdness, see
http://www.timecube.com/
a site dedicated to "NATURE'S HARMONIC SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE"
This site has been around for some time - it's a complete mystery to
me why someone would bother. I see that there's a reference to the
Matrix has been added - so somebody appears to be updating it from
time-to-time.
There's some wierd phrases in it that you can use for a lifetime, like
"Greenwich Time is a Lie", and "evil word fiction".
Bonkers stuff.
Joe Marshall
> Well, I'm being OT when I post this, but for more wierdness, see
> http://www.timecube.com/
> a site dedicated to "NATURE'S HARMONIC SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE"
>
> This site has been around for some time - it's a complete mystery to
> me why someone would bother. I see that there's a reference to the
> Matrix has been added - so somebody appears to be updating it from
> time-to-time.
It amazes me that people that have so little grasp of reality have
enough brain cells to construct a web page.
One of my favorites is
http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/vic-contents.html
It all seems coherent at first glance, but if you really start trying
to make any sense out of it, you'll get lost within pages and pages of
`documentation' that lead nowhere.
> Bonkers stuff.
Remember:
Ignoring Time Cube is Evil.
-1 x -1 = +1 is stupid and evil.
--
~jrm
Mark Carter
I just couldn't resist firing off one more post, so here goes ...
The TimeCube seems to generate a lot of hits on Google (5,290 to be
precise) - so its wackiness appears to be attracting a lot of
attention. Admittedly, the second item on the list is an actual
company that does Excel data filtration; but perhaps we can ignore it
as an abnormal aberration.
It's difficult to say if people actually believe what they're saying,
or if deep down they know that what they're saying is a load of
codswallop. One just can't help shake off the thought that it's all a
bit of a wind-up. *Surely* they can't be serious??
There's a parady of the TimeCube (TimeCube the Role Playing Game) over
at
http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/timecube.html
which some may find to be an amusing diversion from real work.
I used to think that the voices that schizophrenics hear were just an
illusion that they could easily see through if they just thought about
it properly; but apparently these people really do hear voices just
like it was spoken by someone else in the room.
> It amazes me that people that have so little grasp of reality have
> enough brain cells to construct a web page.
>
> One of my favorites is
> http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/vic-contents.html
It's especially difficult to believe that this wackjob could turn his
hand to programming - a discipline which is the quintessence of clear
thinking.
> It all seems coherent at first glance, but if you really start trying
> to make any sense out of it, you'll get lost within pages and pages of
> `documentation' that lead nowhere.
I love it: a man-machine interface not built on the metaphor of the
desktop - but on crop circles. It's a crazy idea ... but it might just
work!
To quote either Ambrose Bierce or someone else, "One man's religion is
another man's belly-laugh."
... I got that from
http://www.go2net.com/useless/useless/wacko.html
which I found on Google's Society > Subcultures > Cyberculture > Net
Legends page:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Subcultures/Cyberculture/Net_Legends/
If I may be permitted a small plug, I had also written a small page
about squaring the circle over at my website:
http://www.markcarter.me.uk/pi.html
Long story short: you can square the circle, unless you're a crank.
Harald Korneliussen
> It amazes me that people that have so little grasp of reality have
> enough brain cells to construct a web page.
Gene Ray is not stupid. He's just stark, raving mad. He admits to
being diagnosed with schizophrenia on his web site, but in his eyes it
just proves that his mind transcedes mere human minds, since he has
created four full days in a single earth rotation etc. etc.
That said, his web site isn't exactly pretty :-)
People troll him and even invite him to speak at universities. I think
that's cruel. I think that they instead should try to convince him to
take his medication. Schizophrenia happened to John Nash, it happened
to Tom Harrell, it could happen to anyone, I guess.
Mario S. Mommer
scall...@mailexpire.com (Harald Korneliussen) writes:
> People troll him and even invite him to speak at universities. I
> think that's cruel.
I agree.
> I think that they instead should try to convince him to take his
> medication. Schizophrenia happened to John Nash, it happened to Tom
> Harrell, it could happen to anyone, I guess.
There is a pretty good article about Schizophrenia in the January
issue of Scientific American. Scary stuff.
Regards,
Mario.
Joe Marshall
> Gene Ray is not stupid. He's just stark, raving mad. I think that's
> cruel. I think that they instead should try to convince him to take
> his medication. Schizophrenia happened to John Nash, it happened to
> Tom Harrell, it could happen to anyone, I guess.
You are right. We shouldn't ridicule the mentally ill.
However, we need not take them seriously, either. There are many
cranks, crackpots, weirdos, loonies, and nutcases out there that are
perfectly sane, but gullible, indoctrinated, misinformed, stubborn,
disaffected, or too lazy to apply common sense. It's perfectly
reasonable to poke fun at them. You don't need to have a clinical
condition to be a kook (although it helps). I think it is possible to
laugh at the kooky ideas without making fun of the suffering of the
mentally ill.
I mean no ill will toward Gene Ray, and I hope he is able to live a
rewarding and fruitful life in spite of his mental illness.
The Time Cube, on the other hand, is ridiculous.
--
~jrm
Mark Carter
> that's cruel.
I was reading on the V.I.C website recommended by Joe that the guy had
actually been in a car accident; so maybe that would explain a few
things.
> I think that they instead should try to convince him to
> take his medication. Schizophrenia happened to John Nash, it happened
> to Tom Harrell, it could happen to anyone, I guess.
A few months ago there was a Horizon documentary on the BBC about
hidden messages in the bible. The method most commonly used is to
search for "skip codes" - i.e. joining every n'th letter in the bible
to see if it forms a message; usually aided by a computer. The
documentary explained that one adherent of the theory was an eminent
statistician. Horizon seems to be dumbing down its standards of late,
so it is difficult to know if their claim that he was an eminent
statistician is well-founded.
Assuming that their assertion is true, however, it's amazing how one
could be both an accomplished scientist and subscribe to crank
theories at the same time.
Looking at crank websites, it is interesting to note that there are
often mispellings and syntactic oddities. Here's an example penned by
James Sabben in 1848 which I pulled off of my own website: "The
original conception, its natural harmony, and the result, to my own
mind is a demonstrative truth, which I presume it right to make known,
though perhaps at the hazard of unpleasant if not uncourteous
remarks." I don't actually know if Sabben was schizophrenic or not;
but it has the kind of "crank way of saying things" that I'm referring
to.
Mark Carter
> rewarding and fruitful life in spite of his mental illness.
>
> The Time Cube, on the other hand, is ridiculous.
Yes, ridicule a man's ideas, hopes and dreams; not the man himself.
It reminds me of a quip that I saw on a newsgroup thread that seemed
to be causing frustration to its participants: "Remember, there are no
stupid questions, only stupid people".
Harald Korneliussen
> assertion is true, however, it's amazing how one
> could be both an accomplished scientist and subscribe to crank
> theories at the same time.
scientist in other fields, but not in statistics if he believes in
bible codes...
There are many examples of intelligent and accomplished men suddenly
endorsing weird theories outside their fields. I can only think of
Thor Heyerdahl right now, and he wasn't all that accomplished, but
perhaps you recall some of the others?
To get this back on topic: functional languages are seen as a rather
crazy idea by many people. Do you think it will ever break into the
mainstream?
Joe Marshall
>> I mean no ill will toward Gene Ray, and I hope he is able to live a
>> rewarding and fruitful life in spite of his mental illness.
>>
>> The Time Cube, on the other hand, is ridiculous.
>
> Yes, ridicule a man's ideas, hopes and dreams; not the man himself.
Exactly. He ridicules mine. He may have the excuse of mental
illness, but that isn't an exemption from producing stupid ideas.
I already know I'm an asshole.
> It reminds me of a quip that I saw on a newsgroup thread that seemed
> to be causing frustration to its participants: "Remember, there are no
> stupid questions, only stupid people".
"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do
stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?"
- Scott Adams
"Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most
outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling
everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could
stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind
was full to bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I'll
show them. I had a lobotomy in the end. Friend of mine had one.
Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb?
Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase.
It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin
explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive
you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a
lobotomy. Now he's well again." --- J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris),
Repo Man
--
~jrm
Michele Simionato
> enough brain cells to construct a web page.
>
> One of my favorites is
> http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/vic-contents.html
>
> It all seems coherent at first glance, but if you really start trying
> to make any sense out of it, you'll get lost within pages and pages of
> `documentation' that lead nowhere.
>
> > Bonkers stuff.
>
Speaking from experience, it is incredible how many cranks "harass"
Physics departments, both via e-mail, regular mail and even (unfortunately)
coming in person to talk with some "real" physicist and show him their
outstanding last theory. Typically they want to prove that Einstein's
relativity is wrong, or they build an unified theory of matter and energy,
or any similar kind of complete non-sense.
I feel sad for these persons, which quite clearly love (what they think is)
science, which spend years reading popular science books and thinking about
they utterly absurd theories, and yet completely fail to understand what
scientific thinking is. Yet in my experience scientific thinking (i.e.
"don't believe what you don't understand, and doubt even about what you
think you understand") is restricted to a very little minority of population,
maybe one person over ten. Otherwise, how could you justify the fact that
Bush is the president of the U.S. (or Berlusconi the president of Italy) ? ;)
Michele Simionato
P.S. BTW, Tim Rue is (unfortunately) well known in the Python newsgroup,
since he wanted to implement V.I.C. in Python, but never managed to get
the language (nor he was able to express what he wanted to do in any
intelligible way). Actually he PSU (Python Software Underground) rumors
that the Ruebot is nothing else than a failed attempt of clonation of the
Timbot Tim Peters ...
Mark Carter
> endorsing weird theories outside their fields. I can only think of
> Thor Heyerdahl right now, and he wasn't all that accomplished, but
> perhaps you recall some of the others?
Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize for his contribution to chemistry. If
I understand rightly, he then got interested in gyroscopes, but spun
out of control (if you'll forgive the pun) by claiming that gyroscopes
can have some kind of levitating effect. I think that he was then
really ridiculed. There are many experts in gyroscopics who must have
known a ton more than Pauling about the topic. The mechanics of
gyroscopes would be well known to them. It seems unlikely that they
could have missed such an obvious effect, if it existed.
> To get this back on topic: functional languages are seen as a rather
> crazy idea by many people. Do you think it will ever break into the
> mainstream?
I'm actually very very new to Scheme. It's the sort of thing I dip
into, and then quickly out of, from time to time. My latest effort is
to try to come up with an issue tracker written in PLT Scheme. Issues
can be represented in a tree structure, which Scheme is naturally
suited for. What I like is the fact that I can save and retrieve data
in files quite easily. The data that gets saved is also hackable -
it's just an s-expr in ASCII.
Because I want to be able to save and retrieve data, and allow
interactivity with the user, it means that my code has a lot of state;
which you functional guys don't like much. So maybe I'm not really
learning to do things the purist Scheme way. Still, if you need state,
you need state.
Programming in Scheme is slow going; and I think it helps me to ignore
macros, continuations, and the whole functional bag of tricks until I
learn some of the basics a bit better.
My company mandates the use of Visual Basic, which I consider to be a
big steaming electronic turd of a language. If I'm writing personal
utility software, I'll probably do it in Python. I *know* that I can
achieve a good result in Python - and usually quite quickly. Someone
once said that after you use python, you probably wont want to use any
other language. And I think he's got a point.
On the other hand, I'm quite interested in programming concepts, and
Scheme seems to be the language for big boys. So I'm gradually trying
to learn it.
Some people have claimed, though, that the best language to program in
is "the one that you want to".
Pythonistas seem to be much more willing to share their code, and
engage in collaborative efforts than Schemers. This is also true for
Perl. I wonder why that is. Python is bursting at the seams with
modules, and there are frequent software offerings on
comp.lang.python.announce. Yet these kinds of announcements are rare
on Scheme and Lisp newsgroups.
Maybe Scheme could score well in the provision of libraries. Python is
an interpreted language; which makes it awkward to distribute software
for people who don't have Python. Admittedly there is py2exe, but you
have to include just about a whole wodge of gunk just to get a simple
piece of software to run. A bit like trying to deploy Microsoft
software; only obviously not quite so bad (*nothing* is ever *that*
bad). Distributing binaries is frowned upon in python - because one
could easily distribute the source code. But I'm not convinced. I
think that there is a valid case for delivering a single, nice compact
dll, which any developer can use with any language that they want.
Michele Simionato
> Someone
> once said that after you use python, you probably wont want to use any
> other language. And I think he's got a point.
Uhm ... I wouldn't buy that. There are still crazy people who would
prefer Perl over Python ;)
More seriously, there are always reasons why you may want to program
in a language other than Python, a part from the obvious one, i.e. speed.
For instance, I started looking at Scheme after some experience in writing
state machines and code walkers in Python: the code was just not nice
enough for my taste, whereas Scheme seems to be made for this kind of jobs.
> Maybe Scheme could score well in the provision of libraries. Python is
> an interpreted language; which makes it awkward to distribute software
> for people who don't have Python. Admittedly there is py2exe, but you
> have to include just about a whole wodge of gunk just to get a simple
> piece of software to run. A bit like trying to deploy Microsoft
> software; only obviously not quite so bad (*nothing* is ever *that*
> bad). Distributing binaries is frowned upon in python - because one
> could easily distribute the source code. But I'm not convinced. I
> think that there is a valid case for delivering a single, nice compact
> dll, which any developer can use with any language that they want.
I am not sure that to deliver an executable in Scheme is much simpler
than to deliver an executable in Python. Still, I claim my ignorance
on the subject and I would welcome some input on this (not that I must
deliver an executable, just curious).
Michele Simionato
Harald Korneliussen
> I understand rightly, he then got interested in gyroscopes, but spun
> out of control (if you'll forgive the pun) by claiming that gyroscopes
> can have some kind of levitating effect. I think that he was then
> really ridiculed. There are many experts in gyroscopics who must have
> known a ton more than Pauling about the topic. The mechanics of
> gyroscopes would be well known to them. It seems unlikely that they
> could have missed such an obvious effect, if it existed.
Yeah, he also had some very strange ideas about vitamins, as I recall.
> Pythonistas seem to be much more willing to share their code, and
> engage in collaborative efforts than Schemers. This is also true for
> Perl. I wonder why that is. Python is bursting at the seams with
> modules, and there are frequent software offerings on
> comp.lang.python.announce. Yet these kinds of announcements are rare
> on Scheme and Lisp newsgroups.
I have looked at this too. Right now it seems there are more
announcements in comp.lang.ada than here. I think I have an
explanation for this:
Of the scheme software I've downloaded, most has required tweaking to
work on my scheme of choice (mzscheme). That's one thing. Another, far
more important thing to my eyes, is that programs are written in very,
very different styles. Scheme is suitable for functional, imperative,
declarative, message-parsing and/or object-oriented styles, plus a
couple of dozen that aren't invented yet. On top of that you get
personal idiosyncrasies like all programmers have, so if a scheme
program nevertheless is easy to read, it's probably because the author
happens to use the same styles as you.
(The lack of standard libraries is also a problem, although most
non-trivial programs I've downloaded use slib.)
So perhaps scheme's flexibility is it's greatest problem?
It may be that the lack of announcements have to do with interest: Ada
advocates are interested in anything that mentions Ada (because it's
so rare :-) but scheme enthusiasts are often computer science
academics, who may not be interested in every little application that
uses scheme as an extension language. Looking at freshmeat, I see
quite many scheme projects that have had releases already this year,
so this may be more probable.
Anton van Straaten
> Because I want to be able to save and retrieve data, and allow
> interactivity with the user, it means that my code has a lot of state;
> which you functional guys don't like much. So maybe I'm not really
> learning to do things the purist Scheme way. Still, if you need state,
> you need state.
The kind of system you've described doesn't require you to ignore functional
concepts. The job of such systems (or most systems for that matter) is to
retrieve some data, transform or add to it, and save it. The transformation
part, between the input and the output, can easily be as purely functional
as you want it to be - and that's your system's code, so that's what counts.
The fact that the overall system, including the data files, involves
mutating state, isn't all that important.
> Programming in Scheme is slow going; and I think it helps me to ignore
> macros, continuations, and the whole functional bag of tricks until I
> learn some of the basics a bit better.
You're right about macros and continuations - at least, I took that attitude
when I learned Scheme, and it worked well for me. The functional side,
though, is something that's worth paying attention to early on, because
there are real benefits not only to the features of functional programming,
but to the modes of thinking that it encourages. With a knowledge of
functional concepts, you'll design better systems. Books like HTDP and SICP
should help with that. Also, if you get too used to writing code in Scheme
in the imperative ways you're used to, you may find it more difficult to
change that later on.
> My company mandates the use of Visual Basic, which I consider
> to be a big steaming electronic turd of a language.
Well, that's a little harsh... no, wait, you're right. ;)
> Pythonistas seem to be much more willing to share their code, and
> engage in collaborative efforts than Schemers. This is also true for
> Perl. I wonder why that is.
I don't think that's true at all. There's plenty of free Scheme code out
there. But you're noticing the effect of the relative sizes of the
communities, plus the fact that there are many dialects of Scheme, so
sharing code between them is not as easy as it is with languages that have a
single reference implementation. Related to this, there's no central
repository of Scheme code.
> Python is bursting at the seams with modules, and there are frequent
> software offerings on comp.lang.python.announce. Yet these kinds of
> announcements are rare on Scheme and Lisp newsgroups.
Again, a function of community size, and the applications that people are
using the language for.
Anton
Avi Norowitz
> > People troll him and even invite him to speak at universities. I think
> > that's cruel.
>
> I was reading on the V.I.C website recommended by Joe that the guy had
> actually been in a car accident; so maybe that would explain a few
> things.
>
> > I think that they instead should try to convince him to
> > take his medication. Schizophrenia happened to John Nash, it happened
> > to Tom Harrell, it could happen to anyone, I guess.
>
> A few months ago there was a Horizon documentary on the BBC about
> hidden messages in the bible. The method most commonly used is to
> search for "skip codes" - i.e. joining every n'th letter in the bible
> to see if it forms a message; usually aided by a computer. The
> documentary explained that one adherent of the theory was an eminent
> statistician. Horizon seems to be dumbing down its standards of late,
> so it is difficult to know if their claim that he was an eminent
> statistician is well-founded.
I assume you are talking about Eliyahu Rips. He is a respected
mathematician who specializes in group theory and supports the
"scientific" version of the Bible Codes, but does not support Michael
Drosnin's Bible Codes [1]. However, Rips and possibly Daniel Michelson
are the only two mathematicians that currently still support the Bible
Codes [2]. In contrast, 55 other mathematicians "have themselves
examined the evidence and found [the Bible Codes] entirely
unconvincing" [3].
>
> Assuming that their assertion is true, however, it's amazing how one
> could be both an accomplished scientist and subscribe to crank
> theories at the same time.
>
> Looking at crank websites, it is interesting to note that there are
> often mispellings and syntactic oddities. Here's an example penned by
> James Sabben in 1848 which I pulled off of my own website: "The
> original conception, its natural harmony, and the result, to my own
> mind is a demonstrative truth, which I presume it right to make known,
> though perhaps at the hazard of unpleasant if not uncourteous
> remarks." I don't actually know if Sabben was schizophrenic or not;
> but it has the kind of "crank way of saying things" that I'm referring
> to.
[1] http://www.aish.com/seminars/discovery/Codes/drosninrips.htm
[2] http://www.wopr.com/biblecodes/TheCase.htm
[3] http://www.math.caltech.edu/code/petition.html