(p - 1) / (t + 2)^1.5

My family were all sworn to secrecy as they had agreed to keep the mystery up - I went to the same college and had to play dumb, even though the authorities had a good idea of who had done it.

We revisited the college recently and sneaked up the tower to go over some of the more obscure details.

I have actually played a couple of fairly major jokes in my time, but this page isn't the place to talk about them.

t_s basically serves as "gravity" to make older posts fall down the page. Why Dec 8, 2005? Maybe that's when they launched. Anyway, what t_s does in the function is equate a 10-fold increase in points with being submitted 12.5 hours (that's 45,000 secs) later. So a 1-hour-old post would have to improve its vote differential 10x over the next 12.5 hours to maintain it's rating to compensate for elapsed time. If a post's vote differential increases more than 10x in 12.5 hours, its rating goes up.

As for where the numbers come from, I'm pretty sure they're tuned by trial-and-error. It's really hard to predict voting patterns beforehand (ie how fast should items "fall" from the main page?)

The log function is there because your first 10 upvotes should have more weight than the 101st to 110th upvotes. The way the formula is written (and assuming 0 downvotes), your first 10 upvotes have the same weight as the next 100 upvotes, which have the same weight as the next 1000, etc. Again, the base of the logarithm is somewhat arbitrary, and can be tuned by trial and error.

And needless to say, if you have more downvotes than upvotes, your rating is negative. That's about it.

(note: I'm just reading the page and interpreting the algorithm - I don't have any special insight into how they chose these particular constants)

Edit: Time since Dec 8, 2005 is an elegant way of doing it. My first (crude) thought would've been to use "time since posting" to determine gravity, but that requires keeping track of what time it is now. This method is completely independent of the current time. So nicely done.

;)

I simply said that in my experience, it's been great fun... It's up to you though. Don't have kids.. Don't buy a house. Go travelling. Just don't get to 80 and wish you had done things differently.

As for the fake posts, we're patching those bugs up as we speak!

The extra happiness that comes from being wealthy does not come from more leisure.

If you honestly want to be "green" you can make changes to your personal behaviour (such as using CFLs, recycled packaging etc.) and not rely on some company to hold your hand and make you feel like you're making a difference for a little extra cash.

I personally tend to lose respect for companies that try to upsell their "green" options, much in the same way I am dubious of extended warranties.

I also hope you realise that even if they were to offer a "green" option it probably wouldn't mean they're going to stick a windmill on top of their colo, they'd just use your extra cash to offset the environmental cost of the electricity you used, much in the same way you can.

Don't get me wrong, I a happy Slichost customer and have made efforts to recycle and use public transport for the environment's sake since I was a child, but this recent rash of "green" buzzwording really ires me as it seems to be used in a most insincere and vapid manner, instead of people actually taking a rational, pragmatic approach to environmental efficiency.

Society pays quite a lot towards the cost of children as well (depending on where you are). For example here roughly 10% of income is taxed to pay for universal healthcare, of which a large chunk goes to subsidised and free care for children. If society is picking up part of the bills it should get part of the credit.

(And I don't play Halo, nor am I single. I'm not even that young. Ad hominem is the lowest form of argument.)

Personal experience says being a parent is one of the coolest and most enjoyable things you can do with your life.

You could also say that "being in a relationship makes people less happy" - quite likely true if you pick out the right statistics.

Islam is not a race.

> Past the third generation, minorities stop being minorities. They become culturally indistinguishable from the overall society

Where are you from? This has not been the case with Muslims in Europe at large.

> Do you see the point? In 50 years, all this "ZOMG Muslims!" mania is going to look equally dumb. If all that scary stuff didn't kill us, what are a few muslims going to accomplish?

How much do you know about Islam and its history? Islam and the Western culture are fundamentally incompatible.