What a douche!

If you want to be the Daily Show, just go apply for a correspondent position on the Daily Show! Asshat.

@VoodooV
hmmmm.../taps fingers.
i dont think we are making any progress.
mainly because i dont know if you are directing your commentary towards me or the video itself.

understand i am not trying to impose my opinion on you as sacrosanct.
that is not my intent.
but i also think glossing over these events with generalities that we both are aware of serves nothing for the discussion.

i teach history and governments.

i am also highly distrustful of governments or to be more accurate:power/authority.

so lets change this up a bit.
let me ask you on how YOU perceive the current state of affairs.

1.do you feel,as some other people do,that this data dragnet by the NSA is a fake scandal? that is just hyped partisan politics and the government is only doing what is always has done?
and if so.why?

2.in regards to the estimated 125 million correspondence confiscated,along with the AP reporters emails and phone records.do you feel the US government is justified is mining such information? that the "war on terror" knows no boundaries and the government must be forever vigilant in collecting such information.

3.if you agree that the US government has the right to spy on its citizens then how do you feel about the fourth amendment and how it pertains to "reasonable search and seizure"? would this not be in direct conflict with that amendment and is dealing with its own citizens as 'suspicious"?

4.do you agree with the governments counter-argument that a.what they are doing is legal and b.if your not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about.

i understand you are trying to give a more even-handed and more reasonable perspective concerning this but i truly want to understand how a differing opinion views all this.
my goal is to understand.

because i have been watching this unfold and the more that comes out the more it chills my blood.
historically these things always go in a particular direction and it is not pretty.
power wishes only to retain its power.

That just isn't true. @bareboards2 did in fact write to me to get to know me better, and I replied in kind. I wrote a very detailed letter and talked about my life to which I don't remember whether it was replied to or not..but it was either at our first or second correspondence that bareboards didn't bother to even write back. Maybe bareboards didn't see it..I don't know, but the way it is being portrayed here is false. People see me through the lens of caricature because of their ideas about Christians in general that stem from the atheist hive mind.

... ... looks like the 'Member Privileges' page needs to be updated, then.

Pretty misleading:

*promote¹,² - float a post at the top of the corresponding listing

Ok. So let's scroll down and refer to 1 and 2.

1. may be performed by any member on their own post
2. requires 1 Power Point to use

:-l

I love Conan, but when it comes to the comedy speech at the Correspondent's Dinner, no one can beat Colbert when Bush was president. That shit was HI-LARIOUS.

True but the Atheist also holds the "belief" that there is not GOD. So which belief is more correct? For me to get into a biblical debate with you and the atheist sift community would be pointless. It's like the saying you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. So this makes me search the web for other ways to argue the point. Here is 1 of them.

Mathematically speaking evolution falls flat on it face..
Lifted from site: http://www.freewebs.com/proofofgod/whataretheodds.htm



Suppose you take ten pennies and mark them from 1 to 10. Put them in your pocket and give them a good shake. Now try to draw them out in sequence from 1 to 10, putting each coin back in your pocket after each draw.

Your chance of drawing number 1 is 1 to 10.
Your chance of drawing 1 & 2 in succession is 1 in 100.
Your chance of drawing 1, 2 & 3 in succession would be one in a thousand.
Your chance of drawing 1, 2, 3 & 4 in succession would be one in 10,000.

And so on, until your chance of drawing from number 1 to number 10 in succession would reach the unbelievable figure of one chance in 10 billion. The object in dealing with so simple a problem is to show how enormously figures multiply against chance.

Sir Fred Hoyle similarly dismisses the notion that life could have started by random processes:

Imagine a blindfolded person trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. The chance against achieving perfect colour matching is about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. These odds are roughly the same as those against just one of our body's 200,000 proteins having evolved randomly, by chance.

Now, just imagine, if life as we know it had come into existence by a stroke of chance, how much time would it have taken? To quote the biophysicist, Frank Allen:

Proteins are the essential constituents of all living cells, and they consist of the five elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, with possibly 40,000 atoms in the ponderous molecule. As there are 92 chemical elements in nature, all distributed at random, the chance that these five elements may come together to form the molecule, the quantity of matter that must be continually shaken up, and the length of time necessary to finish the task, can all be calculated. A Swiss mathematician, Charles Eugene Guye, has made the computation and finds that the odds against such an occurrence are 10^160, that is 10 multiplied by itself 160 times, a number far too large to be expressed in words. The amount of matter to be shaken together to produce a single molecule of protein would be millions of times greater than the whole universe. For it to occur on the earth alone would require many, almost endless billions (10^243) of years.

Proteins are made from long chains called amino-acids. The way those are put together matters enormously. If in the wrong way, they will not sustain life and may be poisons. Professor J.B. Leathes (England) has calculated that the links in the chain of quite a simple protein could be put together in millions of ways (10^48). It is impossible for all these chances to have coincided to build one molecule of protein.

But proteins, as chemicals, are without life. It is only when the mysterious life comes into them that they live. Only the infinite mind of God could have foreseen that such a molecule could be the abode of life, could have constructed it, and made it live.

Science, in attempt to calculate the age of the whole universe, has placed the figure at 50 billion years. Even such a prolonged duration is too short for the necessary proteinous molecule to have come into existence in a random fashion. When one applies the laws of chance to the probability of an event occurring in nature, such as the formation of a single protein molecule from the elements, even if we allow three billion years for the age of the Earth or more, there isn't enough time for the event to occur.

There are several ways in which the age of the Earth may be calculated from the point in time which at which it solidified. The best of all these methods is based on the physical changes in radioactive elements. Because of the steady emission or decay of their electric particles, they are gradually transformed into radio-inactive elements, the transformation of uranium into lead being of special interest to us. It has been established that this rate of transformation remains constant irrespective of extremely high temperatures or intense pressures. In this way we can calculate for how long the process of uranium disintegration has been at work beneath any given rock by examining the lead formed from it. And since uranium has existed beneath the layers of rock on the Earth's surface right from the time of its solidification, we can calculate from its disintegration rate the exact point in time the rock solidified.

In his book, Human Destiny, Le Comte Du nuoy has made an excellent, detailed analysis of this problem:

It is impossible because of the tremendous complexity of the question to lay down the basis for a calculation which would enable one to establish the probability of the spontaneous appearance of life on Earth.

The volume of the substance necessary for such a probability to take place is beyond all imagination. It would that of a sphere with a radius so great that light would take 10^82 years to cover this distance. The volume is incomparably greater than that of the whole universe including the farthest galaxies, whose light takes only 2x10^6 (two million) years to reach us. In brief, we would have to imagine a volume more than one sextillion, sextillion, sextillion times greater than the Einsteinian universe.

The probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by the action of chance and normal thermic agitation remains practically nill. Indeed, if we suppose 500 trillion shakings per second (5x10^14), which corresponds to the order of magnitude of light frequency (wave lengths comprised between 0.4 and 0.8 microns), we find that the time needed to form, on an average, one such molecule (degree of dissymmetry 0.9) in a material volume equal to that of our terrestrial globe (Earth) is about 10^243 billions of years (1 followed by 243 zeros)

But we must not forget that the Earth has only existed for two billion years and that life appeared about one billion years ago, as soon as the Earth had cooled.

Life itself is not even in question but merely one of the substances which constitute living beings. Now, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. We would need much greater figures to "explain" the appearance of a series of similar molecules, the improbability increasing considerably, as we have seen for each new molecule (compound probability), and for each series of identical throws.

If the probability of appearance of a living cell could be expressed mathematically the previous figures would seem negligible. The problem was deliberately simplified in order to increase the probabilities.

Events which, even when we admit very numerous experiments, reactions or shakings per second, need an almost-infinitely longer time than the estimated duration of the Earth in order to have one chance, on an average to manifest themselves can, it would seem, be considered as impossible in the human sense.

It is totally impossible to account scientifically for all phenomena pertaining to life, its development and progressive evolution, and that, unless the foundations of modern science are overthrown, they are unexplainable.

We are faced by a hiatus in our knowledge. There is a gap between living and non-living matter which we have not been able to bridge.

The laws of chance cannot take into account or explain the fact that the properties of a cell are born out of the coordination of complexity and not out of the chaotic complexity of a mixture of gases. This transmissible, hereditary, continuous coordination entirely escapes our laws of chance.

Rare fluctuations do not explain qualitative facts; they only enable us to conceive that they are not impossible qualitatively.

Evolution is mathematically impossible

It would be impossible for chance to produce enough beneficial mutations—and just the right ones—to accomplish anything worthwhile.

"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 10^50. Such a number, if written out, would read 480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000."
"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10^50 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence."
I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong (1984), p. 205.

Ivan Saric, Senior Adriatic Correspondent.

Ivan, tell us about your Croatian NUTS!

Hopefully it'll never come to that. Not because I dislike English as a general rule, but any language where the words you write only bear a passing semblance to how they're actually said out loud isn't a good, practical basis for a world language. What I mean is that almost every letter that's used in the English language can be pronounced in several different ways depending on what the surrounding letters are, or even written the same but depending on how you pronounce them can mean different things (heteronyms like for example bass the fish and bass the instrument/frequency). Then there are silent letters and all sorts of weird combinations of sounds.

The best basis for a proper world language would include at least a writing system where for one thing each letter in the alphabet directly corresponds to a specific sound and is always pronounced the same way (e.g. Japanese hiragana and katakana for example, or the Finnish alphabet), but also takes into consideration stuff like being syntactically unambiguous, the counting system being geared towards working as smoothly as possible with the SI-system, among other things.

English isn't that great of a language from a usability standpoint at the end of the day, the only thing it really has going for itself is that it's popular, but so is Chinese...

Nah - was thinking more about countries and cultures - in Norway (and Denmark, for that matter), the local f-words are much more common and "acceptable" than the english ones in the english culture. One single "f-bomb" is enough for several to mark a video as NSFW - in Scandinavia the corresponding swear words wouldn't make anyone bat an eyelid..

from the YT description:

The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.

Maybe it's in the "uncanny valley" of CGI trailers where it almost COULD be gameplay, thus it's more frustrating. The WoW trailers are so completely unrelated from the actual gameplay that it doesn't even make me think of the gameplay.

I'd like to think that some more dramatic scale variations are possible with mousewheel zoom. Heck, even if visual scale doesn't change so much, economic and gameplay scale COULD. What if a battlecruiser took 3000 minerals, 1500 gas, 30 pop, and had a corresponding level of ass kicking?

I was seeing that very last bit as "Dammit enough of you. You get the HELL in the house!". Otherwise he wouldn't have brought it all the way back across the road.

Spouse's cat, most likely. Unspayed and cranky. Hates him. Continually stares and growls at him. Shreds his slippers. Chews the corners of his briefcase after pissing on it. Tries to get underfoot when he's carrying in an armful of groceries. Yowls at nothing at 3AM. Dreams of putting a yarn tripline at the top of the stairs. Poops next to the litterbox whenever the spouse is away. Hides his car keys next to the radiator in hopes that the car remote starter will melt. Has been secretly training in a correspondence course in opposable thumbs so it can knife him to death in his sleep.

Yeah.

Edit: Oh boy, wall of text crits for 10k.

His explanation was rather short and somewhat misleading. Maybe they thought a proper explanation would have been too dry or too lengthy to be of any interest for a sufficient number of their viewers.

tl:dr

If all rotor settings are indicated to be correct, a feedback loop within the circuit indicated a subset of correct connections on the plugboard, even if the initially assumed connection turned out to be wrong. It didn't show all connections, but enough to run it through a modified Enigma to determine if it's a false positive or in fact the correct setting. If it was correct, the rest could be done by hand.

----------------------- Long version -----------------------

Apologies in advance. We had to recreate parts of the Bombe as a simulation, but a) it's been a while and b) it was in German. I'll try to explain the concept behind it, hopefully without screwing it up entirely.

The combination of clear message and code snippet (2:25) is called a crib. This can be used to create a graph, wherein letters are the vertices and connections together with their numerical positions are the edges.

For example, at position 1, "A" corresponds to "W". So you'd create an edge between "A" and "W" and mark that edge as "1". At position 4, "B" corresponds to "T", so there's the edge marked as "4". All edges are bidirectional, the transformation at a specific position can go either way.

Once your graph is finished, you check for loops. These are essential. Without loops, you're boned. In this case, one loop can be found at positions 2,3,5 in form of "T->E->Q->T".

Here the Bombe comes into play. It uses scramblers, each combining all three rotors plus reflector of an enigma into one segment. This way, one Enigma setting is functionally equal to a single scrambler.

Now you can use those scramblers to create an electrical circuit that corresponds to your graph -- scrambler = edge. All scramblers are set to the same initial configuration. The first scramber remains at in the inital configuration, while the second and third get configurations in relation to their edge's numerical value. Configuration in this case means the value of their internal three rotors, so there are 26*26*26 possible settings within each scrambler.

It's basically a sequence of three encryptions.

Example: in our little TEQ triangle, the first scrambler (TE, 2) gets a random starting position. The second scrambler (QE, 5) gets turned three notches, the third scrambler (QT, 3) gets turned one notch. The initial configuration might be wrong, but only the relation between the scramblers matters. A wrong result simply tells you to turn all scramblers another notch, until you get it right.

You have a possibly correct setting when the output matches the input. Specifically, a voltage is applied to the wire of letter "T", leading into the first scrambler. And on a test register attached to the last scrambler, the wire of letter "T" should have a voltage on it as well. If the setting is incorrect, a different letter will light up. Similarly, all incorrect inputs for this particular setup will always light up a different letter at the the end, never the same (thanks to the reflector). If output equals input, you're golden. And if several loops are used, all with the same input/output letter, each of their outputs must equal the input.

To reduce the number of false positives, you need as many connected loops within the crib as possible.

So far, that's an Enigma without a plugboard. To account for that, they introduced feedback loops into the circuit. In our small scale case, the output of the third scrambler would be coupled back into the input of the first scrambler. The number of loops determines the number of possible outcomes with each specific setting. All of these are fed back into the first scrambler of each loop.

The plugboard, however, changed the input into the system of rotors. Instead of a "T" in our example, it might be a "Z", if those two letters were connected on the board.

A random hypothesis is made and fed into the machine. If the scramblers are set incorrectly, a different letter comes out at the end of each loop and is in return fed back into the first scramblers. Result: (almost) everything lights up. If you start with a good graph, everything will light up.

-----
A key element for this was the "diagonal board", which represented a) all possible connections on the plugboard and b) the bidirectional nature of those connections (AB = BA). Maybe it can be explained without pictures, but I sure as hell can't, so "a grid of all possible connections between scramblers and letters + forced reciprocity" will have to suffice.
-----

If, however, the setting was correct, a wrong hypothesis for the input connection merely meant that everything except the right connections was lit up.

Let's say the fix point of the loops in our graph is the letter "T". We assume that it's connected to the letter "Z" on the plugboard. A voltage is applied to "Z" on the test register, and thereby inserted into the circuit at the first scrambler. Loop #1 applies voltage to the letter "A" on the test register, #2 lights up "B", #3 lights up "F". These three outputs are now fed back into the first scrambler, so now the scrambler has voltage on ZABF, which in return lights up ZABF+GEK on the test register.
This goes on until everything except "U" is lit up on the test register. That means three things: a) the settings are correct, b) the hypothesis is wrong, c) "T" is connected to "U".

Reasons:
a) if the settings were incorrect, the entire register would be alive
b) if the hypothesis was correct, only the letter "Z" would be alive on the register
c) due to the feedback loop, the only way for the output to be "U" is if the input was also "U", and the reciprocity within the system makes it impossible for any other input to generate the output "U". Since "T" was the fix point for our loops, "T" is connected to "U".

Similarly, if the initial hypothesis is correct, everything on the test register except "U" stays dead.

The diagonal board provides registers for every single letter and allows the user to pick one as a test register. During operation, all the other registers serve as visual representations of the deductions based on the initial hypothesis. So you actually get to see more than just the initial connection, all based on the same concept.

For all that you guys care I'll add this: I'm far happier, and feel far safer here in the UK knowing that there aren't weapons everywhere. Police here don't carry guns as standard practice.

Unfortunately I can't quickly find exactly corresponding figures for the UK and America, but this article on wikipedia shows the US had over 10 deaths per 100,000 citizens in 2009, and the UK had 0.25 deaths per 100,000 citizens in 2011.

Come on people, do you really think having more guns around makes you safer? The figures show you're 40 times more likely to be killed by a gun in America than in the UK.

"*promote1,2 - float a post at the top of the corresponding listing; renew queue time for queued/discarded videos"

1 may be performed by any member on their own post
2 requires 1 Power Point to use

Not sure why you're bringing up note 3, since it doesn't appear to apply, and note 1 doesn't say anything close to what you say it does.

If you look at my (limited) sift history, you can see that I USED to be able to promote my own posts... oh well.