Except the US didn't really have a gun culture when the revolution occurred. After the Civil War is when we got our first real taste of guns, because the Union had bought so many and supplied them to its troops (the first arms modern dealers). This is also the first time the US had widespread banditry, from the war veterans with guns and time but no economic opportunity.
Maybe if you read a book instead of American Rifleman once in a while you'd know this. And please don't equate gun ownership with free software. That pisses me off.
I am so tired of this absurd argument by gun nuts that citizens with pistols, rifles, and shotguns can successfully defend themselves against a government gone bad.
The argument, however, is true. If every block of a city is defended by a modest supply of small arms, the city is unconquerable. Destroyable, perhaps, but unconquerable. If there are enough defenders with guns, and the government-gone-bad doesn't have the will to exterminate the city, the revolution is successful.
Not necessarily. When Earnest gets run over by his pickup truck, I can see that I'm supposed to find him getting flattened humorous. That doesn't mean that I don't get it - which implies that I don't understand the humor - it simply means I don't think it's funny.
If only ISP's would refuse to route packets with spoofed source IP addresses.
Consider: for xDSL you typically have a static IP, for cable a DHCP allocation, and for dialup a PPP allocation. If the ISP would refuse to send IP packets that didn't have the source IP address they issued their customers, the problem would effectively go away.
This is not even technically hard, but there's no money in it. The tragedy of the commons, and all that. Your fucking sheep pooping all over my lawn.:(
Unless some big ISP's start filtering like this, and force their peers to do the same, they're going to eventually get ordered to do it, the same way that car companies have been forced to add safety features (bumpers, brake lights, seat belts, high rear light, air bags). Good thing I'm not Libertarian, and I can actually say that it might be a good thing for the government to do something to help the people for a change.
Consider that double jeopardy is also unconstitutional yet somehow O.J. was tried twice for the same crime - once under "civil charges". (No comment on his guilt or innocence, but it is dubious.)
Consider that those convicted of crimes are often given additional punishments not on the books when the crime was committed, the exact definition of an Ex Post Facto law. Not too much outcry has been raised, as these are typically things like notifying local officals if a convicted child molester moves into town.
Don't count on the Constitution to save your ass, even if it is clear and explicit. If you're willing to use your imagination, you can even debate the meaning of the word "is" (thanks Bill Clinton!).
Firstly, he's a Brit. They have a sense of humour which is sometimes very subtle and is usually based on 'irony'...
Or rather, they think the have a sense of humor. Speaking as someone who works with a lot of English people constantly making jokes which they probably think I don't get, which however simply aren't funny.
Sure, they gave us Monty Python, but they also gave us Benny Hill.
Huh? When I lived in the US, I practiced "civil obedience" when it came to speed limits: I never broke the speed limit (not strictly true - I broke it exactly once in 4 years, because I was late for a class).
I can assure you that nobody, and I mean nobody else obeyed the speed limits. In fact, it would be quite dangerous if they did. It made everybody nervous that I drove so slow, and in fact most of my friends considered me a hazard due to the fact that I followed the law.
Next time you're in a car with somebody who claims "I don't speed" look at their speedometer and be sure to point out to them every time they exceed the speed limit (15 miles per hour in a school zone, 25 miles per hour in town, etc). What they really mean is "I drive a reasonable speed", which is quite a different thing altogether.
I never saw a speed limit changed because of my driving, either.
It is particularly entertaining when reading Babelfish translations from German out loud - people are usually 'it'.
This is because in German, all nouns are male, female, or neuter, at random. The pronouns follow the noun, so you'd say stupid things like: "I picked up my knife, but she was too dull to cut the steak. Then I grabbed my spoon and used him for the soup. Finally, I used my fork and had a bit of potatoes with it." It would be very difficult to know which pronoun was associated with which noun!
It wouldn't matter. My understanding is that Arabic (like Hebrew, ironically) has only 4 vowels, and they are not written in normal usage. That is, you wrt vrthng lk ths.
The American college changed drastically after WWII, when it was flooded by men taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. These men were different from the prior students in that they were older,
and that they did not come from an upper class background. They knew that this was a special opportunity, and they were intent on taking advantage of it. The idea of college was emphatically not to "expand your horizons" for these men.
From the beginning of the 20th century until this time, college was primarily a place for rich young men to play football and join fraternities until they were old enough to take the position their fathers had set up for them. There was no pretense of well-roundedness from either the faculty or students in this environment either, although many of the faculty didn't really care for their students, except for the rare few who were "grinds", that went to class and actually studied.
Before this, college was more about learning Latin and Greek than anything else, on the theory that learning hard languages improved memory.:)
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the origin of the "well-rounded" student was probably from the 1960's or 1970's. In any event, I'm pretty sure the 1950's image you present is wrong. If you're interested you may want to try this link.
Sorry, since the entire company gets the credit (and more importantly, the ownership and PROFIT), the entire company must take the blame.
I blame Bill Gates for Microsoft's crappy code, because he's the richest man in the world due to it. Likewise, since our corporate structures are fundamentally feudal (pyramid with nobility at the top), the management of the company need to take responsibility for the actions of their employees.
After all, that boss surely gets paid more than the one coder who screwed up. And the dozens that didn't.
It may seem trivial problem, but it is actually very hard to solve in practice. The C string API is simply poorly designed -- it is way too easy to mess up. It's not a matter negligence, people are human and make mistakes; thinking good programmers are exempt is pure hubris.
And beyond the problems with the C API, buffer overflows or other related memory problems are possible if a coder makes any mistakes concerning pointer arithmetic, array sizes, printf()-style formatting, sign mismatch on arithmetic, etc, etc.
The fact is that C is just not a good language for writing secure applications (or indeed, most any applications, IMHO).
Nevertheless, until a mature alternative is available (probably Java, although it is only a marginal improvement), secure applications must be written in C, because while C does not provide you any help in terms of reliability or security, it is at least possible to insure that your application is safe if you are willing to expend the effort in design and follow the current best common practices for writing secure applications.
Please do use chroot(), setuid(), and drop permissions though.;)
I also have a NetGear router, the RT311. The main advantages of the router over a PC are:
1. Small
2. Low-power
3. Quiet (no fan)
The advantage over other routers (that I see):
4. Serial port (no plaintext passwords over the LAN)
It has syslog support, so you can use a Linux box for log monitoring or other IDS stuff. The big disadvantage is I can't run the distributed.net client on it.:)
Maybe there's something wrong with a country where the only way to know what's right or wrong is to ask a lawyer (by which we all mean "pay large sums of money to a laywer").
Not surprising since the laws are made by lawyers.
Back when I lived in the US, I wrote my four federal representatives (one congressman, two senators, and the President) occasionally. My congressman (or someone on his staff) actually read them, the senators and President sent form letters saying "got your note" but clearly did not read them.
I get e-mail every day from folks I don't know. Mostly folks asking for support for my FTP server, but also from people looking for people with my name, asking for advice on things that they may have seen me post in mailing lists on, and so on.
Oh well, I guess you listened your mommy told you not to talk to strangers.
Is it just me, or was that last comment just a little too clever for its own good? All because I am irrational doesn't mean that I am incapable of some rational thought.
Consider the discussion we're having. One of us is being irrational (you, in this case).;) But that doesn't mean that you're incapable of rational thought, just that you're judgement in this case is clouded by how you want the world to work rather than how it really does work. Likewise for the poor, their judgement will be clouded by unfounded hope, as sold to them by unscrupulous vendors (as indeed, it is today).
Perhaps I should not have been so absolutist myself. I hate to sound Ayn Rand-ian here, but what do we mean by "rational" here, anyway? I maintain that everybody acts irrationally at times. I also maintain that for groups of people (heck, for certain individuals as well), that this is not a random, unpredictable behaviour. This predictability is what allows us to make laws for the betterment of all, not some supposed rationality that does not exist. We can be irrational, perhaps even most of the time, and still create useful laws if we accept that.
I wonder if the counterpoint to this post will get moderated up as well?:P
Why yes, that's exactly what I said. Poor people cannot make any financial decisions.
*sigh*
Free markets are great for some things. But they aren't the pancea that conservatives (and Libretarians) seem to think they are. The auto industry is possibly an example where the free market has not done such a bad job - but remember that safe, fuel-efficient cars are NOT a result of the free market, but rather of Evil Government Intervention.
Can you accept the possibility that sometimes markets result in a situation where you have less freedom than otherwise (the author of the article admits as much)? Can you even consider the possibility that you may be willing to have a system not based on a free market to INCREASE your available options?
The free market is a perfect example of autonomous systems using the hill climbing algorithm to maximize their local gain. The problem is that this is a dumb algorithm, and can result in an EXTREMELY non-optimal overall situation. Some things are better done without the calculation of "how much does this matter to me alone" that captialism forces on every individual in society. It's a great way to run a donut stand, but not a great way to run a civilization.
Getting back to my original point, is that people are NOT rational. I myself am certainly not. If I was, I wouldn't have stayed up until 02:30 last night even though I have to work today (oops). And groups of people are irrational in predictable ways. Again, how else would you explain the blue-haired ladies in Las Vegas spending their Social Security checks on slot machines? Denying this is just plain stupid for an individual, but for a society it is dangerous to its members, and possibly fatal to the society itself.
Given that people are irrational, and that specific groups act in specific ways, why is it demeaning to suggest that we set policy based on this fact? I think that it is not.
The poor may be rational, but they're still human. Why else would they throw money away on gambling in higher numbers than any other portion of society? Why else would they be the target of drug dealers (by which I mean cigarette and beer companies)? Why else would they get sucked into furniture rental schemes, having paychecks cashed for fees, unnecessary insurance, and so on.
As Jesus said, "The poor you have with you always." Likewise, some people will always prey on their hopelessness. Large companies, with professional advertisers, slick easy-money offers, and so on, will always abuse them at every opportunity. The fear that this is just Yet Another Way to screw the poor is not unfounded.
But since they don't have any money to influence the politics involved, there's not much chance of them fighting a proposal like this. It's just those "Liberal elitists" not in touch with the glorious benefits of free markets standing in the way.
Personally I think that David Brin is right, and there won't be privacy as we know it in the future. But my wife already knows what kind of pr0n I like, so I'm not too worried...;)
I disagree. Has anyone but me actually tried to audit any of his code?
IT IS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO READ!
Not what I look for in code. His opinion is, "If you are an expert you can figure it out." Which is true. I can also extract the Java source from a.class file, but wouldn't it be nice to just have an easy-to-follow, commented source file?
Sure, it is probably safe, but how could you tell?
Slashdot Mirror
Except the US didn't really have a gun culture when the revolution occurred. After the Civil War is when we got our first real taste of guns, because the Union had bought so many and supplied them to its troops (the first arms modern dealers). This is also the first time the US had widespread banditry, from the war veterans with guns and time but no economic opportunity.
Maybe if you read a book instead of American Rifleman once in a while you'd know this. And please don't equate gun ownership with free software. That pisses me off.
Like Chechnya? Now only a pile of rubble. :(
Not necessarily. When Earnest gets run over by his pickup truck, I can see that I'm supposed to find him getting flattened humorous. That doesn't mean that I don't get it - which implies that I don't understand the humor - it simply means I don't think it's funny.
If only ISP's would refuse to route packets with spoofed source IP addresses.
:(
Consider: for xDSL you typically have a static IP, for cable a DHCP allocation, and for dialup a PPP allocation. If the ISP would refuse to send IP packets that didn't have the source IP address they issued their customers, the problem would effectively go away.
This is not even technically hard, but there's no money in it. The tragedy of the commons, and all that. Your fucking sheep pooping all over my lawn.
Unless some big ISP's start filtering like this, and force their peers to do the same, they're going to eventually get ordered to do it, the same way that car companies have been forced to add safety features (bumpers, brake lights, seat belts, high rear light, air bags). Good thing I'm not Libertarian, and I can actually say that it might be a good thing for the government to do something to help the people for a change.
Indeed.
Consider that double jeopardy is also unconstitutional yet somehow O.J. was tried twice for the same crime - once under "civil charges". (No comment on his guilt or innocence, but it is dubious.)
Consider that those convicted of crimes are often given additional punishments not on the books when the crime was committed, the exact definition of an Ex Post Facto law. Not too much outcry has been raised, as these are typically things like notifying local officals if a convicted child molester moves into town.
Don't count on the Constitution to save your ass, even if it is clear and explicit. If you're willing to use your imagination, you can even debate the meaning of the word "is" (thanks Bill Clinton!).
Firstly, he's a Brit. They have a sense of humour which is sometimes very subtle and is usually based on 'irony' ...
Or rather, they think the have a sense of humor. Speaking as someone who works with a lot of English people constantly making jokes which they probably think I don't get, which however simply aren't funny.
Sure, they gave us Monty Python, but they also gave us Benny Hill.
Huh? When I lived in the US, I practiced "civil obedience" when it came to speed limits: I never broke the speed limit (not strictly true - I broke it exactly once in 4 years, because I was late for a class).
I can assure you that nobody, and I mean nobody else obeyed the speed limits. In fact, it would be quite dangerous if they did. It made everybody nervous that I drove so slow, and in fact most of my friends considered me a hazard due to the fact that I followed the law.
Next time you're in a car with somebody who claims "I don't speed" look at their speedometer and be sure to point out to them every time they exceed the speed limit (15 miles per hour in a school zone, 25 miles per hour in town, etc). What they really mean is "I drive a reasonable speed", which is quite a different thing altogether.
I never saw a speed limit changed because of my driving, either.
It is particularly entertaining when reading Babelfish translations from German out loud - people are usually 'it'.
This is because in German, all nouns are male, female, or neuter, at random. The pronouns follow the noun, so you'd say stupid things like: "I picked up my knife, but she was too dull to cut the steak. Then I grabbed my spoon and used him for the soup. Finally, I used my fork and had a bit of potatoes with it." It would be very difficult to know which pronoun was associated with which noun!
Unless the author's plane makes an emergency landing in the US. Then it's all over, as FBI agents storm the plane and bring the evil-doer to justice.
God bless America, hopefully Bush can keep those jealous of our freedoms in jail.
It wouldn't matter. My understanding is that Arabic (like Hebrew, ironically) has only 4 vowels, and they are not written in normal usage. That is, you wrt vrthng lk ths.
:)
I don't know Arabic, but that's what I hear.
True, true. But in Afghanistan they execute people almost as often as in Texas, so that's hardly an excuse.
The American college changed drastically after WWII, when it was flooded by men taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. These men were different from the prior students in that they were older,
:)
and that they did not come from an upper class background. They knew that this was a special opportunity, and they were intent on taking advantage of it. The idea of college was emphatically not to "expand your horizons" for these men.
From the beginning of the 20th century until this time, college was primarily a place for rich young men to play football and join fraternities until they were old enough to take the position their fathers had set up for them. There was no pretense of well-roundedness from either the faculty or students in this environment either, although many of the faculty didn't really care for their students, except for the rare few who were "grinds", that went to class and actually studied.
Before this, college was more about learning Latin and Greek than anything else, on the theory that learning hard languages improved memory.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the origin of the "well-rounded" student was probably from the 1960's or 1970's. In any event, I'm pretty sure the 1950's image you present is wrong. If you're interested you may want to try this link.
Sorry, since the entire company gets the credit (and more importantly, the ownership and PROFIT), the entire company must take the blame.
I blame Bill Gates for Microsoft's crappy code, because he's the richest man in the world due to it. Likewise, since our corporate structures are fundamentally feudal (pyramid with nobility at the top), the management of the company need to take responsibility for the actions of their employees.
After all, that boss surely gets paid more than the one coder who screwed up. And the dozens that didn't.
Good point. In my mind, this only drives home the point that "Intellectual Property" is the biggest, most unfortunate oxymoron of our age.
We all believe that my thoughts are not your property, but maybe it's time to recognize that they may not be mine, either.
Yeah, but your heap is still fair game. Immunix isn't as good a solution as a well-designed secure distro, like Trustix.
And beyond the problems with the C API, buffer overflows or other related memory problems are possible if a coder makes any mistakes concerning pointer arithmetic, array sizes, printf()-style formatting, sign mismatch on arithmetic, etc, etc.
The fact is that C is just not a good language for writing secure applications (or indeed, most any applications, IMHO).
Nevertheless, until a mature alternative is available (probably Java, although it is only a marginal improvement), secure applications must be written in C, because while C does not provide you any help in terms of reliability or security, it is at least possible to insure that your application is safe if you are willing to expend the effort in design and follow the current best common practices for writing secure applications.
Please do use chroot(), setuid(), and drop permissions though. ;)
I also have a NetGear router, the RT311. The main advantages of the router over a PC are:
:)
1. Small
2. Low-power
3. Quiet (no fan)
The advantage over other routers (that I see):
4. Serial port (no plaintext passwords over the LAN)
It has syslog support, so you can use a Linux box for log monitoring or other IDS stuff. The big disadvantage is I can't run the distributed.net client on it.
Maybe there's something wrong with a country where the only way to know what's right or wrong is to ask a lawyer (by which we all mean "pay large sums of money to a laywer").
Not surprising since the laws are made by lawyers.
Back when I lived in the US, I wrote my four federal representatives (one congressman, two senators, and the President) occasionally. My congressman (or someone on his staff) actually read them, the senators and President sent form letters saying "got your note" but clearly did not read them.
You don't read mail from people you don't know?
Huh?
I get e-mail every day from folks I don't know. Mostly folks asking for support for my FTP server, but also from people looking for people with my name, asking for advice on things that they may have seen me post in mailing lists on, and so on.
Oh well, I guess you listened your mommy told you not to talk to strangers.
Consider the discussion we're having. One of us is being irrational (you, in this case). ;) But that doesn't mean that you're incapable of rational thought, just that you're judgement in this case is clouded by how you want the world to work rather than how it really does work. Likewise for the poor, their judgement will be clouded by unfounded hope, as sold to them by unscrupulous vendors (as indeed, it is today).
Perhaps I should not have been so absolutist myself. I hate to sound Ayn Rand-ian here, but what do we mean by "rational" here, anyway? I maintain that everybody acts irrationally at times. I also maintain that for groups of people (heck, for certain individuals as well), that this is not a random, unpredictable behaviour. This predictability is what allows us to make laws for the betterment of all, not some supposed rationality that does not exist. We can be irrational, perhaps even most of the time, and still create useful laws if we accept that.
I wonder if the counterpoint to this post will get moderated up as well? :P
Why yes, that's exactly what I said. Poor people cannot make any financial decisions.
*sigh*
Free markets are great for some things. But they aren't the pancea that conservatives (and Libretarians) seem to think they are. The auto industry is possibly an example where the free market has not done such a bad job - but remember that safe, fuel-efficient cars are NOT a result of the free market, but rather of Evil Government Intervention.
Can you accept the possibility that sometimes markets result in a situation where you have less freedom than otherwise (the author of the article admits as much)? Can you even consider the possibility that you may be willing to have a system not based on a free market to INCREASE your available options?
The free market is a perfect example of autonomous systems using the hill climbing algorithm to maximize their local gain. The problem is that this is a dumb algorithm, and can result in an EXTREMELY non-optimal overall situation. Some things are better done without the calculation of "how much does this matter to me alone" that captialism forces on every individual in society. It's a great way to run a donut stand, but not a great way to run a civilization.
Getting back to my original point, is that people are NOT rational. I myself am certainly not. If I was, I wouldn't have stayed up until 02:30 last night even though I have to work today (oops). And groups of people are irrational in predictable ways. Again, how else would you explain the blue-haired ladies in Las Vegas spending their Social Security checks on slot machines? Denying this is just plain stupid for an individual, but for a society it is dangerous to its members, and possibly fatal to the society itself.
Given that people are irrational, and that specific groups act in specific ways, why is it demeaning to suggest that we set policy based on this fact? I think that it is not.
The poor may be rational, but they're still human. Why else would they throw money away on gambling in higher numbers than any other portion of society? Why else would they be the target of drug dealers (by which I mean cigarette and beer companies)? Why else would they get sucked into furniture rental schemes, having paychecks cashed for fees, unnecessary insurance, and so on.
;)
As Jesus said, "The poor you have with you always." Likewise, some people will always prey on their hopelessness. Large companies, with professional advertisers, slick easy-money offers, and so on, will always abuse them at every opportunity. The fear that this is just Yet Another Way to screw the poor is not unfounded.
But since they don't have any money to influence the politics involved, there's not much chance of them fighting a proposal like this. It's just those "Liberal elitists" not in touch with the glorious benefits of free markets standing in the way.
Personally I think that David Brin is right, and there won't be privacy as we know it in the future. But my wife already knows what kind of pr0n I like, so I'm not too worried...
IT IS COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO READ!
Not what I look for in code. His opinion is, "If you are an expert you can figure it out." Which is true. I can also extract the Java source from a .class file, but wouldn't it be nice to just have an easy-to-follow, commented source file?
Sure, it is probably safe, but how could you tell?
I don't know where you're buying your computers from, but they shouldn't cost $2000.