Very smart move to pass this off as a pseudonymn because it will make it less likely that the next contributor will feel a need to assert fake credentials. If it doesn't matter to Jimmy Wales and if you will eventually get found out then there is no reason at all to take the risk of lying.
I started with SunOS so the shift to Solaris broke a lot of my code. The only codebase of mine that has been truly stable is in Common LISP and that is because I avoided a lot of the Symbolics specializations. But as a class I find that *NIX runs the gnu tools which still work whatever OS I'm on unless it is Windows (Cygwin is Ok but...sigh...the underlying Windows shortcomings still show through), or a commercial *NIX that is no longer supported (Thinking Machines code is now useless too...sigh...got some of that). My stuff coded to X works fine on Linux so the API is not that different.
System administration across distros is a pain - you are right there. And if I use a library that is new or only available for a distro then I am sure to also see my intellectual investment look less than shiny.
I'll look for that article, I'm sure it will be interesting.
I feel sorry for the person that picks an OS dependent on a corporation for its existence. When there is only one "Sun" to nourish your OS "ecology" it is much more likely to wither away - eventually. I picked an popular open source OS for this very reason. RedHat may die but it will take a unprecedented disaster to also kill off Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware (especially Slackware), SUSE Linux, etc.. My intellectual investment is safest with Linux.
I've been here and here is the answer that worked for me.
Write a letter contesting the bill, stating your reasons, clearly indicate a means of redress (i.e. a written letter detailing the type of data they don't have time to produce but a reasonable person would accept as necessary for them to make their case), and then change the account number of the credit card they may be charging and close your account they are debiting (banks will transfer your history making this a way of changing your account number). This is what will happen - they will bill you, they will dun you, they will sell your name to bill collectors who will threaten you with finely crafted threatening letters and phone calls calculated to get under your skin. Despite all this ultimately you will not pay a cent because there are a lot of other fish in the sea and just as it is too expensive for you to sue the same applies to them.
When you are dunned it is actually good news because dunning firms have fewer resources and usually follow a script; emphasis on usually. When you get a dunning letter print out a form letter you have prepared and mail it back within 30 days requiring proof of the debt and disputing the payment. For dunning calls use caller ID and skip the phone calls you can't identify - let them leave a message. Get good at checking and returning messages so people understand leaving messages works.
Check your credit history occassionally and write a letter to a credit reporting agency indicating any errors (e.g. an entry for a bill for which you are, in fact, not liable). These errors will be removed for a few months - then send another letter. Keep it up for a few years and you are done.
Yes, it takes years for this to wash out of the system, because you are dealing with a machine that calculates marginal returns and acts accordingly. Just don't be a jerk while you are doing this. Stay polite and civil and they won't get angry enough to make an example of you.
If it ever does come to court you will have lots of documents showing you tried to resolve the matter in good faith but they were unresponsive to your reasonable requests (i.e. the letter I mention in the first sentence and all the letters you wrote subsequently).
Remember "the nail that stands up is hammered flat." Don't attract attention to yourself or you will get burned with this approach.
And remember this is my story so your results will definitely differ. Best of luck!
A negative trust evaluation can't be evaded by changing the domain name of a site. Domains have value simply because they have links to them on important pages and sites (a form of reputation). It is of course possible to move content but then the value of the in-links is lost. Only way the domain name is irrelevant is if the links to the domain are mutable and can be altered to follow a new (trust-neutral), domain.
With the right implementation both negative and positive community filtering should work.
This was a Technology Review debate-in-print between Lessig and Epstein. To appreciate Lessig's argument you really need to follow Lessig's article with a reading of Epstein's answer and then Lessig's rebuttal.
Slashdot reported on a MS patenting the "Body Bus" back on Jun 23, 2004. Looks like the big boys are dividing up the "body bus" standard amongst themselves.
Useful quote from the review '...it's now so easy (and reliable) to use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for reading doc, ppt, and xls files, that I'm beginning to fear that those programs -- which I was getting so good at doing without - - might no longer be relegated to the status of "options of last resort".'
Breaking the MS Office to Windows OS tie-in will seriously undermine the MS monopoly.
Lets see... Microsoft locks out competiting OSes via hardware protection and isn't a monopoly? No way they'll pull this off w/out being sued, er, successfully sued.
BTW, when was the last time HP produced a successful PC? That's right - never. MS is mating with an albatross. Go for it Bill!
One look at the popularity of Kazaa, etc. and it seems clear that peer to peer is the near future.
I believe the Internet will continue to add interconnections much lower in the spanning tree. This extension will be driven by the needs and performance gains offered by shared: processing, storage, and file retrieval.
Perhaps the connectivity will be supplied by ad hoc private networks using: wireless radio, free-space laser communication, or something we haven't seen yet (10 years is a long time).
I'm thinking we'll have a New GNU Thing bringing us a cooperative, free, "open," network. Call it GNU-space. Just power up your node, connect to two or more peers, and start routing traffic and adding your own.
Good encryption output approximates a pseudo-random number sequence. Just encrypt the image stream. Then embed the encrypted image into the picture and the result should be indistinguishable from noise.
Tell me how to beat that without having to: approximate the last bit, strip it, and run hundreds of hours of cryptanalysis on the approximate data.
You didn't listen carefully at your high school biology lessons. Successful parasites do not kill their host, since this is counterproductive. The most successful even help their host and then it is called symbiosis. The bacteria living in your intestines are a good example of this -- without them you'd get into trouble fast.
Parasites that kill their hosts and do it quickly are at evolutionary disadvantage -- they tend to die out together with whatever part of their host population they got to.
This may have been the thinking approximately 10-15 years ago. However it failed to explain the persistence of infectious diseases, like choelera, which do indeed kill their hosts with regularity.
I'm sorry I don't have the reference but there was a study of wasps in Central America, about 10 years ago, that broke this wide open. What was found was a strain of parasites on these wasps that, where the wasps where highly social, tended to evolved extreme virulence with high mortality for the hosts. Where the wasps were less social the parasites seemed less virulent and mortality was lower.
The social contact of these wasps was found to also transmit the parasite and constituted the primary transmission vector. The experiment that followed the study showed that virulence of the parasite corresponded to higher transmission rates between wasp hosts. Among social wasps those parasites that evolved high virulence tended to acquire more hosts and so dominated the population of parasites. I should note that elevated parasitic virulence demanded greater resources from the supporting wasp with concomitant increased wasp mortility.
Where the social contact was reduced among wasps it was found that the parasite that allowed the host to live with the highest likelihood to the next social contact sufficient to provide transmission were selected for.
The conclusion is that the environment and the associated effectiveness of the tranmission vector determined the tendency to evolve a more or less virulent parasite or disease.
This observation has since been born out to some degree with other supporting correlations, notably, with AIDS throughout Africa (Sci. Amer w/in last 6 months). Where use of prostitutes or other forms of multiple-partner sexual activity is more common the titer of virus in the blood for HIV is highest and the converse where the members of the population tend to limit their sexual activity.
A friend of mine worked for a DC lobby org much frequented by digerati interested in public policy. Her recounting of E.Dyson's visit protrayed a prima donna that was difficult to work with.
I was surprised Esther got the ICANN appointment given the personal experience recounted by my friend. At the time I thought perhaps Esther had had a bad day in DC. Now it appears more likely someone(s) didn't meet Esther and/or understand the job before making this placement.
Too bad because ICANN is an important tool in hammering out a great many of the agreements-by-convention that keep the "net" running.
Slashdot Mirror
Very smart move to pass this off as a pseudonymn because it will make it less likely that the next contributor will feel a need to assert fake credentials. If it doesn't matter to Jimmy Wales and if you will eventually get found out then there is no reason at all to take the risk of lying.
Thanks for the advice - yes I mean it.
I started with SunOS so the shift to Solaris broke a lot of my code. The only codebase of mine that has been truly stable is in Common LISP and that is because I avoided a lot of the Symbolics specializations. But as a class I find that *NIX runs the gnu tools which still work whatever OS I'm on unless it is Windows (Cygwin is Ok but...sigh...the underlying Windows shortcomings still show through), or a commercial *NIX that is no longer supported (Thinking Machines code is now useless too...sigh...got some of that). My stuff coded to X works fine on Linux so the API is not that different.
System administration across distros is a pain - you are right there. And if I use a library that is new or only available for a distro then I am sure to also see my intellectual investment look less than shiny.
I'll look for that article, I'm sure it will be interesting.
-Richard
1. BSD moved to open source. I think the open source energy has supported BSD well beyond Sun's involvement.
2. I do feel sorry for the VM/CMS folks. Does that world interest you?
3. EMACS is the dominant OS that outlasts them all. Emacs will be around until the sun collapses.
-Richard
You're really answering the fellow that was mourning IRIX. He seemed to feel the loss was more significant than merely a move between UNIX variants.
-Richard
Time will tell which lasts longer. But I think the trend is clear.
-Richard
I feel sorry for the person that picks an OS dependent on a corporation for its existence. When there is only one "Sun" to nourish your OS "ecology" it is much more likely to wither away - eventually. I picked an popular open source OS for this very reason. RedHat may die but it will take a unprecedented disaster to also kill off Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware (especially Slackware), SUSE Linux, etc.. My intellectual investment is safest with Linux.
Choose wisely,
Richard
I've been here and here is the answer that worked for me.
Write a letter contesting the bill, stating your reasons, clearly indicate a means of redress (i.e. a written letter detailing the type of data they don't have time to produce but a reasonable person would accept as necessary for them to make their case), and then change the account number of the credit card they may be charging and close your account they are debiting (banks will transfer your history making this a way of changing your account number). This is what will happen - they will bill you, they will dun you, they will sell your name to bill collectors who will threaten you with finely crafted threatening letters and phone calls calculated to get under your skin. Despite all this ultimately you will not pay a cent because there are a lot of other fish in the sea and just as it is too expensive for you to sue the same applies to them.
When you are dunned it is actually good news because dunning firms have fewer resources and usually follow a script; emphasis on usually. When you get a dunning letter print out a form letter you have prepared and mail it back within 30 days requiring proof of the debt and disputing the payment. For dunning calls use caller ID and skip the phone calls you can't identify - let them leave a message. Get good at checking and returning messages so people understand leaving messages works.
Check your credit history occassionally and write a letter to a credit reporting agency indicating any errors (e.g. an entry for a bill for which you are, in fact, not liable). These errors will be removed for a few months - then send another letter. Keep it up for a few years and you are done.
Yes, it takes years for this to wash out of the system, because you are dealing with a machine that calculates marginal returns and acts accordingly. Just don't be a jerk while you are doing this. Stay polite and civil and they won't get angry enough to make an example of you.
If it ever does come to court you will have lots of documents showing you tried to resolve the matter in good faith but they were unresponsive to your reasonable requests (i.e. the letter I mention in the first sentence and all the letters you wrote subsequently).
Remember "the nail that stands up is hammered flat." Don't attract attention to yourself or you will get burned with this approach.
And remember this is my story so your results will definitely differ. Best of luck!
A negative trust evaluation can't be evaded by changing the domain name of a site. Domains have value simply because they have links to them on important pages and sites (a form of reputation). It is of course possible to move content but then the value of the in-links is lost. Only way the domain name is irrelevant is if the links to the domain are mutable and can be altered to follow a new (trust-neutral), domain.
With the right implementation both negative and positive community filtering should work.
Best,
Richard
This was a Technology Review debate-in-print between Lessig and Epstein. To appreciate Lessig's argument you really need to follow Lessig's article with a reading of Epstein's answer and then Lessig's rebuttal.
Enjoy,
Richard
Slashdot reported on a MS patenting the "Body Bus" back on Jun 23, 2004. Looks like the big boys are dividing up the "body bus" standard amongst themselves.
-Richard
Useful quote from the review '...it's now so easy (and reliable) to use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for reading doc, ppt, and xls files, that I'm beginning to fear that those programs -- which I was getting so good at doing without - - might no longer be relegated to the status of "options of last resort".'
Breaking the MS Office to Windows OS tie-in will seriously undermine the MS monopoly.
Lets see ... Microsoft locks out competiting OSes via hardware protection and isn't a monopoly? No way they'll pull this off w/out being sued, er, successfully sued.
BTW, when was the last time HP produced a successful PC? That's right - never. MS is mating with an albatross. Go for it Bill!
One look at the popularity of Kazaa, etc. and it seems clear that peer to peer is the near future.
I believe the Internet will continue to add interconnections much lower in the spanning tree. This extension will be driven by the needs and performance gains offered by shared: processing, storage, and file retrieval.
Perhaps the connectivity will be supplied by ad hoc private networks using: wireless radio, free-space laser communication, or something we haven't seen yet (10 years is a long time).
I'm thinking we'll have a New GNU Thing bringing us a cooperative, free, "open," network. Call it GNU-space. Just power up your node, connect to two or more peers, and start routing traffic and adding your own.
Get your apartment in a tall building now.
Good encryption output approximates a pseudo-random number sequence. Just encrypt the image stream. Then embed the encrypted image into the picture and the result should be indistinguishable from noise.
Tell me how to beat that without having to: approximate the last bit, strip it, and run hundreds of hours of cryptanalysis on the approximate data.
-RCHF
You didn't listen carefully at your high school biology lessons. Successful parasites do not kill their host, since this is counterproductive. The most successful even help their host and then it is called symbiosis. The bacteria living in your intestines are a good example of this -- without them you'd get into trouble fast.
Parasites that kill their hosts and do it quickly are at evolutionary disadvantage -- they tend to die out together with whatever part of their host population they got to.
This may have been the thinking approximately 10-15 years ago. However it failed to explain the persistence of infectious diseases, like choelera, which do indeed kill their hosts with regularity.
I'm sorry I don't have the reference but there was a study of wasps in Central America, about 10 years ago, that broke this wide open. What was found was a strain of parasites on these wasps that, where the wasps where highly social, tended to evolved extreme virulence with high mortality for the hosts. Where the wasps were less social the parasites seemed less virulent and mortality was lower.
The social contact of these wasps was found to also transmit the parasite and constituted the primary transmission vector. The experiment that followed the study showed that virulence of the parasite corresponded to higher transmission rates between wasp hosts. Among social wasps those parasites that evolved high virulence tended to acquire more hosts and so dominated the population of parasites. I should note that elevated parasitic virulence demanded greater resources from the supporting wasp with concomitant increased wasp mortility.
Where the social contact was reduced among wasps it was found that the parasite that allowed the host to live with the highest likelihood to the next social contact sufficient to provide transmission were selected for.
The conclusion is that the environment and the associated effectiveness of the tranmission vector determined the tendency to evolve a more or less virulent parasite or disease.
This observation has since been born out to some degree with other supporting correlations, notably, with AIDS throughout Africa (Sci. Amer w/in last 6 months). Where use of prostitutes or other forms of multiple-partner sexual activity is more common the titer of virus in the blood for HIV is highest and the converse where the members of the population tend to limit their sexual activity.
Best regards,
Richard Freytag
I was surprised Esther got the ICANN appointment given the personal experience recounted by my friend. At the time I thought perhaps Esther had had a bad day in DC. Now it appears more likely someone(s) didn't meet Esther and/or understand the job before making this placement.
Too bad because ICANN is an important tool in hammering out a great many of the agreements-by-convention that keep the "net" running.