One step at a time. Perfect the technology required to live in the orbit and building something bigger, such as the moon base or a trip to Mars (which by necessity would involve setting up a base), will be so much easier both economically and politically.
The politicians won't take the risk of sending people to the moon or Mars if they can't be reasonbly sure that these guys will be coming back too and do not die horribly in the space as the whole world watches.
Submitting 64-bit bug-fixes to Linux kernel and applications, by the way, is an easy way to contribute back to the OS community. With the upcoming 64-bit Intel and AMD processors in the horizon, the more applications are made 64-bit clean and kernel bugs get fixed, the more advantage OS community will have over the closed operating systems.
You don't have to give up your current setup. Just buy some inexpensive left-over Alpha and try compiling software on it. If it doesn't compile, fix it and release the patch to community. In time this will benefit everybody.
What I really like about the Alpha is that you can compile a bootloader from any linux kernel source (well, almost) and flash it in the flashrom. ARC console doesn't recognize your new SCSI-card and you can't boot using it? No problem. Just compile a bootloader using a recent kernel source with the right driver, flash it into the rom and there you go. As an added bonus, your machine will now boot faster, too.
I've bought an Alpha (500 MHz 21164 on 164LX) and have no complaints. I told myself I'm buying it to do my computational physics code developement (ab initio molecular dynamics; might GPL it when it's ready enough) at home so I don't waste project's CPU time, but now that I think about it, the coolness factor played a major part, too...
I've lost the count of times I have had to reply to an e-mail: "Please e-mail me, don't send me any Word documents. I don't use Windows or Office and therefore I can't read your documents."
I can't understand people who type a few simple sentences like "Let's meet there at 3 P.M." into a Word document and e-mail it as an attachment.
still lack are features that have been standard in commercial UNIX for years
I don't doubt you, but I'd like to know what these features are. As far as I know (I'm a physicist, not a professional CS guy) Linux and *BSD are lacking mainly in scalability but what else is there?
Geek 1: "Wow! Back then people could actually access the E-content(tm) by using self built computers and unlicensed network components! Even anonymously without the mandatory E-id!"
Geek 2: "Yeah, but it wouldn't work anymore. There are just too many, nasty people in the net. The New Electronic Order was imposed for our own good, you know."
Are you saying you'd rather have a science, a supposed truth, based on a fundamentally insecure foundation?
Well, if you believe the mathematicians there is no logical system that could be proven to be free of contradictions. Now, if you want to use any logical system to describe physical phenomena, you're always on an insecure foundation.
Besides, Physics relies on inductive reasoning which doesn't hold up at all.
The scale has everything to do with it. Natural sciences fundamentally rely on experimental evidence. That means, you have to use parts of the Nature to probe the other part you're interested in. The smaller things you're trying to look at, the smaller and more delicate a probe you need so that you don't disturb whatever it is you're investigating.
A graviton is to the gravitational field what a photon is to an electromagnetic field or a phonon to vibrations in solid materials.
All these fields can be described by classical field equations or quantum mechanically (if I remember right) through second quantization. It's a question of thinking fields either as continous (macroscopic; waves) or discrete (microscopic; "particles").
couldn't even begin to translate the real world into logical statements
So you'd rather have no science at all, because you feel that any logical framework used would be faulty?
Again, a clear sign that something, somewhere is screwed up so completely
Or, the microscopic world is so different from the everyday macroscopic world where we live in, that we lack proper language to describe extremely small (or large) phenomena.
Take the term "spin", for instance.In the case of electron, it is a familiar word used to label a weird, truly non-classical property of an electron. It most definitely does not imply that electron is somehow revolving around its axis!
Other examples are the colours and strangeness of elementary particles.
Those guys were all self made men, not the prefab pseudo intellectual "elite" we see nowadays.
Surely they had some kind of degrees.
In my experience, the most obnoxious members of the "pseudo intellectual elite" you describe, consist of twenty-something males who just got their B.Sc.'s (most likely satisfying the bare minimum requirements) and are yet to realize that the degree provides them only the necessary bits of formal training that allow them to easily learn more.
They also fail to understand that knowing a bit more about their own, narrow field than a layman doesn't mean that they're suddenly jack-of-all-trades who know everything about everything.
However, it works both ways too. Sometimes people without formal education in science propose something silly and mistake reasonable criticism of their ideas as "bashing from the nasty establishment brainwashed egomaniacs with degrees". Formal education system is there for a reason. It gets you quickly up to date on the subject, fills in gaps in your basic knowledge and provides at least some way (I'm not saying it's fair or not) of quantifying your skills. The most silly layman theories are borne out of a simple failure to get to know the basics before going to the bleeding edge.
I'm getting my PhD degree in Physics next year, but it doesn't make me an expert in mechanical engineering or electronics. Even though I know the physics behind the both, I'm practically useless when it comes to milling metal into a specific shape or building a small signal amplifier. If I have to do metalworks or build electronics, I'll rather ask expert's (self made or not) help. At the same time, however, I would not pay much attention to a mechanical engineer who claims that quantum physics is bollocks. Why? Because most likely I know more about quantum physics than he does. It's not arrogance or elitism. It's a reasonable assumption unless he proves me otherwise.
I like what Scott Adams said about idiots: we're all idiots when doing something for which we have no education or experience.
Geniuses are spawned out of the cold blue air, not created in some school.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean a university graduate cannot be a genius. Take Richard P. Feynman, for instance.
I haven't worn a watch since my high school days, which is now about 10 years ago, and I'm doing just fine.
Too bad I had to learn to use a calendar, though. I didn't really forget appointments or deadlines, but not writing them down gave me the leeway to postpone action until the very last minute. Result: poorly planned meetings and messy reports.
I would -- unless it would mean living in an ice cave and trying to survive solid methane storms and fighting boredom by playing with Perky Pat dolls and drugs (damn, what was that P.K. Dick's book? The Three Stigmata [of something]).
I've always dreamt of getting a chance to at least orbit the Earth in my lifetime (I'm 27 now), but seeing how slowly the space exploration and space flight commercialisation is going, it looks increasingly improbable. I'll probably have to stick to lesser goals, like getting a ride in a real fighter jet (MiG-29 or F-14/15/18).
I agree with your post, but would like to comment on this bit:
I am not a brit and not that important.
The point is never whether one is important or not to the authorities. If conducting surveillance on everyone would be effortless enough, like it soon will be, you can bet it would be done. More and more examples are emerging of "preventive" acts of crime fighting where the guilt is assumed. Take mandatory drug tests at work and schools, for instance. Spying on the population would be quite a logical step, when you think that: eavesdropping criminals is an effective way of preventing crime and most of the crimes are commited by our own citizens therefore let us eavesdrop on citizens.
The public would never accept it, you say? Well, let's see. There are people, as you can see even from this thread, who are quite willing to give away their rights for being safe. One poster said that as long as the government is not commiting mass murders, people should accept new restrictions on their lives. If the public already has this kind of mentality, all you have to do then is to convince the public that the crime, for instance, is getting out of hand, and that drastic measures are needed:
"Yes, it is unfortunate that we have to read everybody's e-mail and prohibit cryptography in order to be able to stump out crime, but it's all for your own good. That's the only way we can guarantee your safety. Everything else we might learn will be kept strictly confidental, of course" (delivered by a slimy, patronising voice with a posh accent)
If security in the net is to be effected by the use of cryptography and robust authentication then he's plain wrong. As it is, these algorithms need to be reviewed and attacked by as many people as possible and keeping them secret is not going to help a bit.
I agree that this new proposed system does not really pose a threat to privacy in the net (unless you're a skript kiddie). However,
They're not complaining about the postmark on their snail mail
Just as it is questionable to say that the traditional means of bootlegging music (copying a tape to friends for instance) are similar to Napster, you really shouldn't compare e-mail with snail mail/phone privacy either. Once again it's a question of scale: what you can and cannot do with reasonable amount of effort. In the meat world it's much more difficult to keep track of person's mail and whereabouts and that's why extensive and continuous surveillance has been conducted only on people who are already under suspicion. However, in the net it is much more easy to track a person and -- more importantly -- to do exhaustive searches for suspicious (whatever that happens to mean at the time) correspondence. To my mind this would correspond in real world terms to the authorities opening and reading snail mail at random in order to look for evidence of crime.
Re:encryption, people, encryption!
on
Inside Echelon
·
· Score: 1
Congratulations. This was an excellent summary and deserves to be moderated up.
Re:encryption, people, encryption!
on
Inside Echelon
·
· Score: 1
Yes, I'm sure it does. My point was that installing and using public key cryptography to encrypt one's e-mails is still far too complicated to become popular enough to the point of being a standard procedure.
Quite frankly, I don't know how to make it easier either.
Re:encryption, people, encryption!
on
Inside Echelon
·
· Score: 1
We have PGP, PGPi, and myriads of other secure email methods. why are people not using them?
I agree. The reason is that they are still cumbersome to use even if you know your way around computers. If the knowledge of the majority of people on the net is limited to using MS Outlook and InstallShield, you'll never get them to use PGP plugins and keyservers.
Slashdot Mirror
The politicians won't take the risk of sending people to the moon or Mars if they can't be reasonbly sure that these guys will be coming back too and do not die horribly in the space as the whole world watches.
Well, it worked on my 164LX board quite well.
Submitting 64-bit bug-fixes to Linux kernel and applications, by the way, is an easy way to contribute back to the OS community. With the upcoming 64-bit Intel and AMD processors in the horizon, the more applications are made 64-bit clean and kernel bugs get fixed, the more advantage OS community will have over the closed operating systems.
You don't have to give up your current setup. Just buy some inexpensive left-over Alpha and try compiling software on it. If it doesn't compile, fix it and release the patch to community. In time this will benefit everybody.
What I really like about the Alpha is that you can compile a bootloader from any linux kernel source (well, almost) and flash it in the flashrom. ARC console doesn't recognize your new SCSI-card and you can't boot using it? No problem. Just compile a bootloader using a recent kernel source with the right driver, flash it into the rom and there you go. As an added bonus, your machine will now boot faster, too.
I've bought an Alpha (500 MHz 21164 on 164LX) and have no complaints. I told myself I'm buying it to do my computational physics code developement (ab initio molecular dynamics; might GPL it when it's ready enough) at home so I don't waste project's CPU time, but now that I think about it, the coolness factor played a major part, too...
"Through the metal detector, right?"
"No sir, just lie down here and you'll be through the x-ray machine in no time..."
I've lost the count of times I have had to reply to an e-mail: "Please e-mail me, don't send me any Word documents. I don't use Windows or Office and therefore I can't read your documents."
I can't understand people who type a few simple sentences like "Let's meet there at 3 P.M." into a Word document and e-mail it as an attachment.
I don't doubt you, but I'd like to know what these features are. As far as I know (I'm a physicist, not a professional CS guy) Linux and *BSD are lacking mainly in scalability but what else is there?
Geek 2: "Yeah, but it wouldn't work anymore. There are just too many, nasty people in the net. The New Electronic Order was imposed for our own good, you know."
I think we're going to live to see this abomination unless the corporate juggernaut is stopped here and now -- worldwide.
These news from the frontline seem to be getting worse and worse by time.
Right. It's slashdotted already. Does anyone have a copy?
Well, if you believe the mathematicians there is no logical system that could be proven to be free of contradictions. Now, if you want to use any logical system to describe physical phenomena, you're always on an insecure foundation.
Besides, Physics relies on inductive reasoning which doesn't hold up at all.
The scale has everything to do with it. Natural sciences fundamentally rely on experimental evidence. That means, you have to use parts of the Nature to probe the other part you're interested in. The smaller things you're trying to look at, the smaller and more delicate a probe you need so that you don't disturb whatever it is you're investigating.
All these fields can be described by classical field equations or quantum mechanically (if I remember right) through second quantization. It's a question of thinking fields either as continous (macroscopic; waves) or discrete (microscopic; "particles").
So you'd rather have no science at all, because you feel that any logical framework used would be faulty?
Again, a clear sign that something, somewhere is screwed up so completely
Or, the microscopic world is so different from the everyday macroscopic world where we live in, that we lack proper language to describe extremely small (or large) phenomena.
Take the term "spin", for instance.In the case of electron, it is a familiar word used to label a weird, truly non-classical property of an electron. It most definitely does not imply that electron is somehow revolving around its axis!
Other examples are the colours and strangeness of elementary particles.
Surely they had some kind of degrees.
In my experience, the most obnoxious members of the "pseudo intellectual elite" you describe, consist of twenty-something males who just got their B.Sc.'s (most likely satisfying the bare minimum requirements) and are yet to realize that the degree provides them only the necessary bits of formal training that allow them to easily learn more.
They also fail to understand that knowing a bit more about their own, narrow field than a layman doesn't mean that they're suddenly jack-of-all-trades who know everything about everything.
However, it works both ways too. Sometimes people without formal education in science propose something silly and mistake reasonable criticism of their ideas as "bashing from the nasty establishment brainwashed egomaniacs with degrees". Formal education system is there for a reason. It gets you quickly up to date on the subject, fills in gaps in your basic knowledge and provides at least some way (I'm not saying it's fair or not) of quantifying your skills. The most silly layman theories are borne out of a simple failure to get to know the basics before going to the bleeding edge.
I'm getting my PhD degree in Physics next year, but it doesn't make me an expert in mechanical engineering or electronics. Even though I know the physics behind the both, I'm practically useless when it comes to milling metal into a specific shape or building a small signal amplifier. If I have to do metalworks or build electronics, I'll rather ask expert's (self made or not) help. At the same time, however, I would not pay much attention to a mechanical engineer who claims that quantum physics is bollocks. Why? Because most likely I know more about quantum physics than he does. It's not arrogance or elitism. It's a reasonable assumption unless he proves me otherwise.
I like what Scott Adams said about idiots: we're all idiots when doing something for which we have no education or experience.
Geniuses are spawned out of the cold blue air, not created in some school.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean a university graduate cannot be a genius. Take Richard P. Feynman, for instance.
I haven't worn a watch since my high school days, which is now about 10 years ago, and I'm doing just fine.
Too bad I had to learn to use a calendar, though. I didn't really forget appointments or deadlines, but not writing them down gave me the leeway to postpone action until the very last minute. Result: poorly planned meetings and messy reports.
I would -- unless it would mean living in an ice cave and trying to survive solid methane storms and fighting boredom by playing with Perky Pat dolls and drugs (damn, what was that P.K. Dick's book? The Three Stigmata [of something]).
I've always dreamt of getting a chance to at least orbit the Earth in my lifetime (I'm 27 now), but seeing how slowly the space exploration and space flight commercialisation is going, it looks increasingly improbable. I'll probably have to stick to lesser goals, like getting a ride in a real fighter jet (MiG-29 or F-14/15/18).
Heretic! It's because of you that people all aroun d the world have difficulties in reading your miserable papers!
I am not a brit and not that important.
The point is never whether one is important or not to the authorities. If conducting surveillance on everyone would be effortless enough, like it soon will be, you can bet it would be done. More and more examples are emerging of "preventive" acts of crime fighting where the guilt is assumed. Take mandatory drug tests at work and schools, for instance. Spying on the population would be quite a logical step, when you think that: eavesdropping criminals is an effective way of preventing crime and most of the crimes are commited by our own citizens therefore let us eavesdrop on citizens.
The public would never accept it, you say? Well, let's see. There are people, as you can see even from this thread, who are quite willing to give away their rights for being safe. One poster said that as long as the government is not commiting mass murders, people should accept new restrictions on their lives. If the public already has this kind of mentality, all you have to do then is to convince the public that the crime, for instance, is getting out of hand, and that drastic measures are needed:
"Yes, it is unfortunate that we have to read everybody's e-mail and prohibit cryptography in order to be able to stump out crime, but it's all for your own good. That's the only way we can guarantee your safety. Everything else we might learn will be kept strictly confidental, of course" (delivered by a slimy, patronising voice with a posh accent)
If security in the net is to be effected by the use of cryptography and robust authentication then he's plain wrong. As it is, these algorithms need to be reviewed and attacked by as many people as possible and keeping them secret is not going to help a bit.
They're not complaining about the postmark on their snail mail
Just as it is questionable to say that the traditional means of bootlegging music (copying a tape to friends for instance) are similar to Napster, you really shouldn't compare e-mail with snail mail/phone privacy either. Once again it's a question of scale: what you can and cannot do with reasonable amount of effort. In the meat world it's much more difficult to keep track of person's mail and whereabouts and that's why extensive and continuous surveillance has been conducted only on people who are already under suspicion. However, in the net it is much more easy to track a person and -- more importantly -- to do exhaustive searches for suspicious (whatever that happens to mean at the time) correspondence. To my mind this would correspond in real world terms to the authorities opening and reading snail mail at random in order to look for evidence of crime.
Congratulations. This was an excellent summary and deserves to be moderated up.
Quite frankly, I don't know how to make it easier either.
I agree. The reason is that they are still cumbersome to use even if you know your way around computers. If the knowledge of the majority of people on the net is limited to using MS Outlook and InstallShield, you'll never get them to use PGP plugins and keyservers.