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I use randomly generated passwords which I store in a Notepadcrypt file. That way I can have complex passwords for everything but I only ever have to remember the one password for Notepadcrypt.

Given that I have to use about 500 passwords it's also the only sane way to keep track of anything !

Works great for me :)

Use an encrypting text editor such as notepadcrypt.

Write all your username password combinations into a single file protected with a single pass phrase (it's up to you to use a secure, memorable, strong one). When you need to use one of the combinations open the file, copy & paste credentials into the login form etc.

if using notepadcrpyt then it can run from a portable install so you can carry a USB key with the program and your encrypted passwords file. As log as you use a good passphrase it's reasonably safe. It's a Windows executable but I'm sure variations could be knocked up for *Nix, Mac etc. (it's bascially just a notepad app which saves text using AES encryption)

There is no way I will use any sort of single sign in mechanism such as Open ID as I don't want my identity to be a fixed thing. The day that you are required to sign in to the internet is the day I will stop using it. I want a different user name for each resource I use.

It also seems that organisations are incapable of have anything less than a different user name and password requirement for each resource so I'm not even going to attempt to remember them all.

I've been using variations on this technique for years (used to use my own custom encrypting notepad app) and haven't had a problem (so far)

Oh and don't forget to write down your master passphrase on a piece of paper and keep it somewhere safe (obscured with lots of surrounding random text)

The Apple Deathwatch is back!!!

* Assembly

* C

* Lisp

Are there any commercially successful OSs written in C++ yet?

(revealing my ignorance and posting flamebait, all in one)

Ahh, the old "I want to be able to eat my cake and have it too" argument.

When you pay for a CD, whether used or new, you are effectively paying for a license to listen to the music according to many sources discussing music copyrights such as this one. However, it is also noted that selling a CD that you have purchased is also illegal under copyright law so that means that used CD stores and their customers are violating copyright.

In any event, having paid for a license to listen to the music, if you rip the songs and throw the disc in the trash or make a Christmas Tree out of it, you can still listen to the music.

How ironic that they released the LispM sources under a BSD-like license instead of GPL.

Here is an essay written a while ago (1986 or so) by Richard M Stallman (RMS), telling his side of the story about the MIT AI Lab, and the Lisp Machine Wars.

Many other sides of the story, less extreme than from RMS's viewpoint, are covered here and here and here and here and of course here.

Machine Room Folk Dance, Thursday at 8pm. Come Celebrate the Joy of Programming, with the World's Most Unbureaucratic Computers. (There were only five of us dancing, but we had a good time.)

[...] The Lab Betrayed

There is still an institution named the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and I still work there, but its old virtues are gone. It was dealt a murderous blow by a spin-off company, and this has changed its nature fundamentally and (I believe) permanently.

For years only we at the AI lab, and a few other labs, appreciated the best in software. When we spoke of the virtues of Lisp, other programmers laughed at us, though with little knowledge of what they were talking about. We ignored them and went on with our work. They said we were in an ivory tower.

Then parts of the "real world" realized that we had been right all along about Lisp. Great commercial interest in Lisp appeared. This was the beginning of the end.

The AI lab had just developed a computer called the Lisp machine, a personal computer with a large virtual address space so that it could run very large Lisp programs. Now people wanted the machine to be produced commercially so that everyone else could have them. The inventor of the Lisp machine, arch-hacker Richard Greenblatt, made plans for an unconventional "hacker company" which would grow slowly but steadily, not use hype, and be less gluttonous and ruthless than your standard American corporation. His goal was to provide an alternative way of supporting hackers and hacking, and to provide the world with Lisp machines and good software, rather than simply to maximize profits. This meant doing without most outside investment, since investors would insist on conventional methods. This company is Lisp Machines, Incorporated, generally called LMI.

Other people on the Lisp machine project believed this would not work, and criticized Greenblatt's lack of business experience. In response, Greenblatt brought in his friend Noftsker, who had left the lab for industry some years before. Noftsker was considered experienced in business. He quickly demonstrated the correctness of this impression with a most businesslike stab in the back: he and the other hackers dropped Greenblatt to form another company. Their plan was to seek large amounts of investment, grow as rapidly as possible, make a big splash, and the devil take anybody or anything drowned in it. Though the hackers would only get a small fraction of the fortunes the company planned to make, even that much would make them rich! They didn't even have to work any harder. They just had to stop cooperating with others as they had used to.

This resulted in two competing Lisp machine companies, Greenblatt's LMI and Noftsker's Symbolics (generally called "Slime" or "Bolix" around the AI lab). All the hackers of the AI lab were associated with one or the other, except me, because even LMI involved moral compromises I didn't want to make. For example, Greenblatt is against proprietary operating system software but approves of proprietary applications software; I don't want to refuse to share either kind of program.

I strongly suspect that the destruct

How ironic that they released the LispM sources under a BSD-like license instead of GPL.

Here is an essay written a while ago (1986 or so) by Richard M Stallman (RMS), telling his side of the story about the MIT AI Lab, and the Lisp Machine Wars.

Many other sides of the story, less extreme than from RMS's viewpoint, are covered here and here and here and here and of course here.

Machine Room Folk Dance, Thursday at 8pm. Come Celebrate the Joy of Programming, with the World's Most Unbureaucratic Computers. (There were only five of us dancing, but we had a good time.)

[...] The Lab Betrayed

There is still an institution named the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and I still work there, but its old virtues are gone. It was dealt a murderous blow by a spin-off company, and this has changed its nature fundamentally and (I believe) permanently.

For years only we at the AI lab, and a few other labs, appreciated the best in software. When we spoke of the virtues of Lisp, other programmers laughed at us, though with little knowledge of what they were talking about. We ignored them and went on with our work. They said we were in an ivory tower.

Then parts of the "real world" realized that we had been right all along about Lisp. Great commercial interest in Lisp appeared. This was the beginning of the end.

The AI lab had just developed a computer called the Lisp machine, a personal computer with a large virtual address space so that it could run very large Lisp programs. Now people wanted the machine to be produced commercially so that everyone else could have them. The inventor of the Lisp machine, arch-hacker Richard Greenblatt, made plans for an unconventional "hacker company" which would grow slowly but steadily, not use hype, and be less gluttonous and ruthless than your standard American corporation. His goal was to provide an alternative way of supporting hackers and hacking, and to provide the world with Lisp machines and good software, rather than simply to maximize profits. This meant doing without most outside investment, since investors would insist on conventional methods. This company is Lisp Machines, Incorporated, generally called LMI.

Other people on the Lisp machine project believed this would not work, and criticized Greenblatt's lack of business experience. In response, Greenblatt brought in his friend Noftsker, who had left the lab for industry some years before. Noftsker was considered experienced in business. He quickly demonstrated the correctness of this impression with a most businesslike stab in the back: he and the other hackers dropped Greenblatt to form another company. Their plan was to seek large amounts of investment, grow as rapidly as possible, make a big splash, and the devil take anybody or anything drowned in it. Though the hackers would only get a small fraction of the fortunes the company planned to make, even that much would make them rich! They didn't even have to work any harder. They just had to stop cooperating with others as they had used to.

This resulted in two competing Lisp machine companies, Greenblatt's LMI and Noftsker's Symbolics (generally called "Slime" or "Bolix" around the AI lab). All the hackers of the AI lab were associated with one or the other, except me, because even LMI involved moral compromises I didn't want to make. For example, Greenblatt is against proprietary operating system software but approves of proprietary applications software; I don't want to refuse to share either kind of program.

I strongly suspect that the destruct

The PERQ

Lisp machines from LMI and Symbolics

The Lisa was not the first commercial GUI machine, though it probably does hold the title for the first commercial machine under $10K.

A good summary of the two main branches of lisp machine history is here. I personally first saw both a PERQ and a CADR at IJCAI 81.

For a while there were CPUs specifically designed to run LISP, aka AI . Symbolics was one of the better knowns one.

It failed in bankrupcy. My vague understanding was that the designing dedicated LISP processors was hard and slow and with little resources they could not keep up. Essentially the Symbolics computers ran LIPS pretty quickly given the MHZ but SUN and Intel kept moving up the MHZ faster than Symbolics could keep up. In the end there were not speed advantage to a dedicated LISP machine, just an increase in price. Economics might change eventually. Who knows.

death watch

Apple is dying for the 38th time. One well-informed chap is still counting.

Dave Dyer wrote a photoshop plugin called LensDoc for this purpose for Andromeda Software. I haven't personally used it, but the sample results look pretty nice, and the guy definitely knows what he's doing. Check out some of his other stuff as well.

Dave Dyer wrote a photoshop plugin called LensDoc for this purpose for Andromeda Software. I haven't personally used it, but the sample results look pretty nice, and the guy definitely knows what he's doing. Check out some of his other stuff as well.

unsolicited commercial snail mail is a problem I would like to see addressed. Especially AOL CD-ROMs and other similar non paper things.

Don't take away my AOL cds! What would I use for drink coasters? Or small mirrors? Or putty scrapers? Or wind chimes? Or...

Back when they could still fit all that bloat on a floppy, I saw it as a public service so we'd never have to buy blank disks. Then they changed to CDs (which happened to coincide with when they began including MSIE) and I just figured I had to adapt to the new resource.

Well now I've almost become dependant on regular shipments of AOL CDs. I've got wobbly tables that were fixed by slipping a disc under one leg. The filter in my air conditioning was broken until I jammed one of those CDs in there. And that's not to mention how much AOL has done to promote the arts!

So please, whatever you do, don't make AOL stop sending me those CDs!