off topic and general discussian thread

There are things that people would like to talk about that are not worth their own thread, so I think we should have a thread to bring these things up. So this thread could test topics to see if it might foster a discussion that might grow into its own thread. Also discussions branch off of threads that are off topic to that thread and need a place to go, so this thread is for that.

wouldn't this be a better fit for /r/?

>>5693 maybe, Im open to ideas but these arent random discussions, they are all programming discussions that people interested in programming would want to read and not search /r/ for

>>5694 Gotcha. I guess i'll start (although it's a little OT): Has anyone had any success running an unscrupulous pirate streaming site for fun and/or profit? E.g. make "animestreams4u.tv" or something and include some javascript to rapidly load ads into an invisible frame. I like the idea of fuarrrking over both google and spammy advertisers, and these things are in such a legal gray area at the moment that the worst that can really happen to you is getting your adwords account suspended (afaik.. correct me if I'm wrong). More generally, if you had a traffic source, you could use embedded javascript to perform basically the same tasks you'd normally use a proper botnet for, but with less legal risk (i.e. TOS violation instead of hacking charges). I'm just curious and looking for best practices. Everything.. work of fiction... only a fool.. etc, etc.

>>5696 Why not just openly using a-ads.com ?

>>5697 because i don't actually want to display ads. i just want to use people's browsers for covert click fraud. i've seen these kinds of schemes in the wild, i just wanted to see if anyone had first-hand information.

>>5696 How is presenting ads screwing anyone over

>>5698 Oh, didn't refresh Sending clicks from user's computers without their permission is also extremely scummy, probably more so than providing an ads service imo

>>5701 oh yeah, no argument there

>>5701 >>5702 ..but who cares. anybody worth protecting blocks javascript anyway.

>>5698 ads are cancer and you should feel bad

I have this constant feeling that old school computation was better than what we have today. The most interesting papers I've read to this date have been published before 2000. They have a completely different tone; I feel enlightened after reading them. Is it just me? Why does it feel like computer papers in the 80s have more impact than the ones I'm reading today? It seems the last century was the time period of greatest development in computer technology: novel hardware architectures, theory of databases, parsing algorithms, programming languages, artificial intelligence, expert systems... A huge, huge list of stuff. Feels like all this got swept under the rug and everything became about web pages.

>>5774 As much as I have huge respect for Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, the C programming language and unix operating system are responsible for putting computer science in the dark ages and killing off all great operating system and programming language research. And its not that there is anything particularly bad about C or unix, but both the language and operating system simplify things so that they allow uneducated people to get work done. AT&T was prevented by law to sell any of their software so they were forced to in effect open source unix (before any open source licenses existed). So unix code was given to universities and a generation of CS students were trained to use it. Its only now we are hitting the wall on what C-like languages and unix-like operating systems can do and now people are starting to unearth old research.

>>5774 I feel the same way. And scientific papers were better in the 19th and 20th century, and natural sciences and philosophy in the late 18th. It's no joke. I think Western civilization might actually be decaying. I blame consumerism and the modern banking system. We're a profit based society and everything that is not profitable becomes an afterthought.

>>5776 I agree. C and company ended up killing lots of really cool hardware architectures as well. After x86 it's as if everybody suddenly decided what a computer was and it was set in stone. When I was a less informed person, I'd hear of these old "legacy" computers and automatically assume they were inferior to what we have today. I was simply not aware of how much our ancestors had achieved. They had things like orthogonal persistence, virtualization, online reconfiguration, multiprocessing, distributed computing, message passing, object orientation... Whatever I could think of, people had already done it. The history of computing is just so rich. I wish there was some kind of timeline annotated with important systems and papers to explore. >>5778 >And scientific papers were better in the 19th and 20th century, and natural sciences and philosophy in the late 18th. I just keep wondering why. What changed? When I read a really good old paper, there's some kind of clarity to them, some kind of deep truth that their authors easily convey through the text. When I read today's papers I get the feeling the author wanted it to be as obfuscated as possible. It's not just papers either. Some older textbooks are inexplicably more detailed than newer editions of the same textbook. It's as if people started taking out content that people "don't need" or something of the sort. I'm so fascinated by this I started collecting old papers that were especially meaningful to me. In case this subject becomes too specialized for this thread: what if we started a thread to share them? > I think Western civilization might actually be decaying I've been reading a blog titled "confessions of a college professor". According to the author, who claims to be a college professor, western schools are becoming a scam due to student loans. Dumbing down of courses and rampant cheating and plagiarism but worst of all schools filled with people who don't care and just want a job. Could this at least partly explain the sharp drop in impact new science and publications are having on the world?

>>5781 https://pastebin.com/PiHAH7pc For some reason the board is calling me a spammer?(Don't link to an external message in this manner.)

>>5786 It does that a lot if your post is short and has a link. Nobody knows exactly how it works though

>>5781 >I've been reading a blog titled "confessions of a college professor". According to the author, who claims to be a college professor, western schools are becoming a scam due to student loans. Dumbing down of courses and rampant cheating and plagiarism but worst of all schools filled with people who don't care and just want a job. Could this at least partly explain the sharp drop in impact new science and publications are having on the world? No, because the same thing also happens in countries without tuition fees.

>>5786 >>5795 I think it's specifically mentioning pol. Unless I can post this, which would disprove my theory.

>>5786 Sorry about linking to a post in a pastebin. I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't let me post it directly. Anyone knows about the spam filter? Also, look at the surname it gave me 0.o

>>5812 you can send a text file with your post