the venona decrypts were fascinating but there are several reasons i disagree with your interpretation (which has been repeated by many others)
1. the actual decryption took decades, and was not finished until the 70s or 80s, so during the actual mccarthy period of the late 40s early 50s, many of the contents of the crypts were not known.
2. alot of the decryption was of poor quality
3. alot of it used various code names
4. the biggest problem of all, is that you are decryption messages from KGB(NKVD)field agents back and forth to headquarters. the Soviet Union was built on a system of faking your reports and your production numbers, no matter what your field, in order to meet quotas and keep from getting executed. they couldnt even get a reliable census going in the 1930s because politics worked its way into every bureaucracy of the country. to believe the venona decryptions at face value, you have to believe KGB(NKVD) agents statements to moscow at face value, which to me seems like a horrible way to research history.
5. alot of them are 'proven' by cross referencing them with the statements of elizabeth bentley or others. what was her source? the same agents who were writing the cables back to moscow.
the venona has a lot of fascinating information in it and shows a lot of soviet inlfuence in ameirca, but alot of those 'leads' were fucking bullshit.
you can just look at the 'Silvermaster Files' for information, take Bela Gold for example. they put his wife under surveillance. what intelligence do they get? she went shopping. she met with other suspects for an hour here, an hour there. she went shopping. she got pregnant. case closed. Thats the 'damning evidence' somebody wanted to use in a courtroom.
since in America the courts are somewhat independent (unlike, say, the soviet union) the government dropped these cases. Venona couldnt be used in courtrooms not simply because it was 'classified', but because it was unreliable garbage.
then take alger his and whittaker chambers. they decided the laws were not good enough to prosecute him, so they broadened them. what did that leave us with? the Espionage Act subparagraph (e) , which is now being used against whistleblowers like Thomas Drake...
and of course the Emergency Detention Act, completely unconstitutional and cancelled by Nixon when he became president. Think about that. it was too draconian for Nixon.
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I'm Jim James. Next on Talk Town, we will have people on from both sides of the issue to discuss it. get your calls in! and now we pause for this break.
And we're back at Talk Town. the topic today is decora: unimaginative hack? we have EJ Jones from the Washington Center for Economic Progress, and Stavai Smith from the Institute for Freedom and Governance. Thank you both for being here.
- Thank you -- Thank you
EJ why dont you go first. Is decora a worthless, mindless hack, filling up the internet with repetitive, pointless garbage?
- Jim, I think we really need to look critically, going forward, as to what the organizations and academics who have studied this issue have to say about it, because they are really the ones who will have to do the heavy lifting when it comes time to implement these policies.
Stavai, your response?
-- Well, Jim, what we have seen in the past, is that these systems have really brought about a need for more oversight and more intervention, because typically what you see in an environment of low interest rates is a move by policy makers to shift the burden from the rate payers to the bond holders. Typically that only happens when w
I'm sorry but we are out of time. I'd like to say thank you to my guests. EJ Jones from the Washington Center for Economic Progress, and Stavai Smith from the Institute for Freedom and Governance. Today we have been discussing decora: worthless hack, or enemy of the state? Thank you both for being here.
- Thank you. It's a pleasure -- Thank you, Jim I always enjoy doing your show
Well, I always enjoy having you. Next week. Anonymous Cowards: are they all morbidly obese cat hoarders, wallowing in piles of old newspapers and feces until one day they are found dead by the landlord? My guests will be Noam Chomsky of MIT and Stephens Jameson from the Initiative for Coalitions and Repercussions.
Slashdot Mirror
the venona decrypts were fascinating but there are several reasons i disagree with your interpretation (which has been repeated by many others)
1. the actual decryption took decades, and was not finished until the 70s or 80s, so during the actual mccarthy period of the late 40s early 50s, many of the contents of the crypts were not known.
2. alot of the decryption was of poor quality
3. alot of it used various code names
4. the biggest problem of all, is that you are decryption messages from KGB(NKVD)field agents back and forth to headquarters. the Soviet Union was built on a system of faking your reports and your production numbers, no matter what your field, in order to meet quotas and keep from getting executed. they couldnt even get a reliable census going in the 1930s because politics worked its way into every bureaucracy of the country. to believe the venona decryptions at face value, you have to believe KGB(NKVD) agents statements to moscow at face value, which to me seems like a horrible way to research history.
5. alot of them are 'proven' by cross referencing them with the statements of elizabeth bentley or others. what was her source? the same agents who were writing the cables back to moscow.
the venona has a lot of fascinating information in it and shows a lot of soviet inlfuence in ameirca, but alot of those 'leads' were fucking bullshit.
you can just look at the 'Silvermaster Files' for information, take Bela Gold for example. they put his wife under surveillance. what intelligence do they get? she went shopping. she met with other suspects for an hour here, an hour there. she went shopping. she got pregnant. case closed. Thats the 'damning evidence' somebody wanted to use in a courtroom.
since in America the courts are somewhat independent (unlike, say, the soviet union) the government dropped these cases. Venona couldnt be used in courtrooms not simply because it was 'classified', but because it was unreliable garbage.
then take alger his and whittaker chambers. they decided the laws were not good enough to prosecute him, so they broadened them. what did that leave us with? the Espionage Act subparagraph (e) , which is now being used against whistleblowers like Thomas Drake...
and of course the Emergency Detention Act, completely unconstitutional and cancelled by Nixon when he became president. Think about that. it was too draconian for Nixon.
there would be no space program.
(apology to Mel Brooks)
there is so much garbage being funded by 'homeland security' but we cant get basic science research done.
if more insiders spoke out maybe something could get changed.
and tell everyone you can spy on terrorists with it, it would have prevented 9/11, etc etc etc.
then it would get funded in a heartbeat.
i have heard that this is how eisenhower managed to get the interstate highway system built
a few weeks ago.
it was about how some people got 18 months in prison for industrial espionage... what were they spying on?
the size and shape of the ipad 2. they were going to make cases for it, before it was released.
im glad the chinese communist party caught these horrific criminals and put them in jail.
he was sentenced to prison (in part) for running a website about the poisoned baby milk scandal.
its not hard to explain why that happened. there was no boredom involved.
consider her two books, "Stalin's Cows" and "Purge"
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Clean Oil - It's So Clean, You Can Drink It
considering that a large number of those astronomers were avid muslims and used their calculations to help plan religious ceremonies.
its like saying that indian astronomy survived 'despite hinduism'. alot of those guys were priests.
was absolutely thrilled that the soviets invaded afghanistan. it would give them a 'vietnam' (never ending proxy war).
although most of these posts on slashdot have left out Pakistan (especially the ISI) and India
How to keep DOS from crashing... don't run any TSRs!
imagine if you had a solar cell printer on thingiverse!
i knew all those unicode folks were right back in the 90s.
who cares if you smash japanese, chinese, and korean into one gigantic encoding? im sure they will all still adopt it!
10 years later, sure, some people still use GB Big5
just a few stragglers obviously!
I'm Jim James. Next on Talk Town, we will have people on from both sides of the issue to discuss it. get your calls in! and now we pause for this break.
And we're back at Talk Town. the topic today is decora: unimaginative hack? we have EJ Jones from the Washington Center for Economic Progress, and Stavai Smith from the Institute for Freedom and Governance. Thank you both for being here.
- Thank you
-- Thank you
EJ why dont you go first. Is decora a worthless, mindless hack, filling up the internet with repetitive, pointless garbage?
- Jim, I think we really need to look critically, going forward, as to what the organizations and academics who have studied this issue have to say about it, because they are really the ones who will have to do the heavy lifting when it comes time to implement these policies.
Stavai, your response?
-- Well, Jim, what we have seen in the past, is that these systems have really brought about a need for more oversight and more intervention, because typically what you see in an environment of low interest rates is a move by policy makers to shift the burden from the rate payers to the bond holders. Typically that only happens when w
I'm sorry but we are out of time. I'd like to say thank you to my guests. EJ Jones from the Washington Center for Economic Progress, and Stavai Smith from the Institute for Freedom and Governance. Today we have been discussing decora: worthless hack, or enemy of the state? Thank you both for being here.
- Thank you. It's a pleasure
-- Thank you, Jim I always enjoy doing your show
Well, I always enjoy having you. Next week. Anonymous Cowards: are they all morbidly obese cat hoarders, wallowing in piles of old newspapers and feces until one day they are found dead by the landlord? My guests will be Noam Chomsky of MIT and Stephens Jameson from the Initiative for Coalitions and Repercussions.
This, is NPR. National Public Radio.
that when a prostitute is murdered, someone has to have been the murderer.
critics point out that sometimes people are murdered without anyone actually murdering them.
(i.e. my elaboration is that headlines and news stories can be really, really wrong)
Scorpia?
Sierra magazine?
King's Quest?
i.e. xerox felt it was theft.
maybe apple disagreed.
that doesnt mean they didnt steal anything!
especially when you put it up against Apple Inc's modern notions of what constitutes theft, and property, and how likely they are to sue people.
no no. he died in the 1400s... hrm.
well, i'm afraid to admit. you have stumped me, sir. good show! jolly good.
good points Elbereth.
i remember Chuck Yeagers Flight Trainer,
and Bard's Tale,
and a couple others we could never afford.
I believe Deluxe Paint was even EA, was it not?
ahhh for the good old days.
its a good question, think about the last time you saw larry ellison.
now think about the last time you saw a murdered prostitute.
coincidence?
because more likely than not, some of your code violates someones patents, and they could sue your company.
you thought that R&D was a positive, but now you could go bankrupt!
better to not invent anything at all.
yay capitalism.
its a legitimate question.
think about the last time you saw robmalda.
now think about the last time someone got murdered with an axe.
coincidence?
you see, it all goes back to Woodrow Wilson...
i heard that a consortium of microsoft, apple, and intel decided to patent the third dimension, since nobody had ever thought of it before about 2009.