I know its fiction and all, but the guy kills people while stealing their heritage. He is not a hero. If it weren't for the soundtrack, you couldn't tell him from Predator. Certainly not by ethics or motivation.
the term was in use circa WWII to denote automatic weapons firing cartridges more powerful than pistol ammunition (used in submachine guns), but less powerful than a typical rifle bullet. The rationale is that most infantry combat took place at shorter range than what made a regular rifle necessary, and it's difficult to fire an automatic rifle using the more powerful cartridges.
Germany had a couple in WWII, the Russians had one too, I think. The U.S. went with the M14 (looks a lot like the M1, but has a detachable magazine and automatic fire) for a while, which was an automatic rifle by this definition. Then the M16.
We've had a real problem with some brazen fsking thieves. They have pulled some shit right out of lame caper flicks. Property theft isn't a high police priority so we're pretty stuck. We SHOULD be crushing the perps under cement rollers, but instead we're just trying thicker cables to anchor.
We have around 25 units and share a T1 over 10baseT. It's fine for now. But I would have gone Cat6 if I'd spec'd the job. Condo rental property depreciates over 27.5 years. That means the IRS expect the building to still stand in 30 years. You might wish you had put Cat6 in. Fiber isn't that expensive to add while you are at it (labor will be the big expense).
Since condos don't move around, I think wire will have a signalling advantage over wireless for the forseable future. If the laptops INSIDE the condos move around, let them go WAP, but link upstream over landline.
This sounds like a much simpler, sensible situation than DSL to each condo. Cat 5 is cheap, cat 6 is not expensive.
One caveat with Stephenson - "Big U" is an interesting attempt to satarize a behemoth of a university, probably his first book. He hadn't developed his amazing chops yet. I worship the man, but I think he'd agree this is not worth the time.
Zodiac was pretty good. Strong narrative, some good characters. You can see the emergence of some geek-friendly themes. It lacks the absolute truckloads of storytelling talent he lavishes on subsequent books, but for many writers this would be their best book ever.
Snow Crash was AMAZING. Has the aforementioned truckloads. Very funny, surprising consistency all the way through. Nothing sacrificed for a laugh, but many of them fit. And a fine backdrop of whimsical neurolinguistic mysticism driving it. Great characters. Absolutely great. Each is hip - or wants to be - in a different way. It's male dominated, but there is a very strong female character that feels real, like the author has actually met a female in person. Even minor characters are fully fleshed out in a few deft strokes.
Diamond Age - AMAZING Very good at pulling heartstrings, fascinating look at nanotach. More of a "realistic" feel than Snow Crash. (Neither good nor bad in itself, but some readers might find S.C. too enjoyable/easy)
Cryptonomicon - awesome. Staggering. (Especially if you have to carry it a long way) This is a more complex narrative, with two sets of characters in two time periods. Amazingly, they fit together and not just at a tangent point. It is rich with historical insight, and it has tons of stuff for those who get a hard-on for computer security.
On a side note - I may have spotted him at Norwescon this weekend. Not really sure. I happened to be raving about him at the time and may have invoked him.
About half the time he writes about a total piece of shit I'd never see anyway, and some of the time he sends me to something I would have missed.
It's a little different from the Joe Bob Briggs schtick. I find the writing better, and because he actually digs good movies he is more than a 1-trick pony like Briggs.
It has always been sound business practice to help the Bushes politically. Donate to Jeb - first in line as a contractor when the Florida State gov't starts unwisely privatizing services. (More money spent, less service given = unwise in my book) Donate to W., you get to manage the University of Texas (they had a university? who knew?) investment portfolio for your own benefit. Churn and burn, in total secrecy. Rather a contrast to the well-managed, successful and open process that was in place before W's executive order. If Clinton had 1% the corruption of the Bushes, he'd have been drawn and quartered. If Bill had deserted, like W, he'd have done prison time.
Republicans get a free pass. Dems get no credit. That's why a draft dodging chickenhawk like Delay can criticize Kerry's patriotism, and a draft-dodging chickenhawk like Saxby can criticize Cleland (decorated, horribly injured war vet) for opposing Bush on the Homeland Security Dept, which Bush himself opposed until he read a poll and which remains a fucked up idea.
Actually, there is a broad trend toward underservicing poor areas and replacing them with legal loan sharks. Local branch banks close down and in goes a payday loan outfit, often owned by the bank or it's parent corp.
They have had terrible counsel. Remember - they LOST the anti-trust case. The judge was a bit unprofessional by using his out-loud voice in calling MS a bunch of lying weasels - which they are. Gates lost the case with his horrible deposition, and had they had decent representation the lawyers would have taken a break, kicked his ass, and told him to answer the fucking questions. Presenting rigged demos is another no-no.
You are correct that they have hired expensive legal talent. They have not hired good legal talent. Nor is their PR firm (Waggoner Erdstrom?) helping the cause getting caught with astroturf campaigns repeatedly. MS, like many big firms, bases its service contracts on ego-handjobs.
Conservative whacko nitwits explode them. Have you seen what W did to the budget? Remember Reagan?
The policy of giveaway tax breaks to starve government because of ideology is irresponsible. It's not governance, it's the opposite. If they ever had the courage to balance the tax cuts with spending cuts, they'd be out on their asses. But they know they can create a mess for others to deal with because everyone likes free money and its easy to separate a tax cut from its consequences.
I think that you are right to demand the ability to respond - first posts are hard to get, we need more opportunities. It's just weird to see your comment on liberals and budgets.
P.T. Barnum had the answer to your question: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People."
Maybe Salon overestimated it?
He really is a big fat idiot. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai l/-/0440 508649/qid=1046071505/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-249716 2-7268161?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Good for him. Assault, last time I checked, was still illegal. By HS you should know the basics of civil behavior. I write this as a former bully (turned pacifist by 5th grade turned counter-bully by 8th).
If you want to commit fun crimes, show a little guts: use drugs.
You've never seen a case of over-zealous blocking? You aren't trying. www.peacefire.org/censoreware/ will show plenty of valid sites blocked for each of the major players. Every single one, either by keyword blocking or a URL block list. For the most part, the companies that push this are unethical goons. There may be an exception, but the technology is still just broken anyway.
There is also a major problem with letting some unaccountable commercial entity determine what information is available. Those encrypted url lists are appalling.
I agree it's a nice read, and he definitely plugs his company. I don't see it as an infomercial, though. It's rigorously argued.
It's intended for management types (though their lips will get tired by the end of it) but crypto-geeks and other propeller heads are about the only ones properly interested in the topic. If you find yourself running into blank looks when you try to explain that security is a "process, not a product" this might help.
Incidentally, the author contributed the deck of cards crypto system in "Cryptonomicon" Serious geek points for that!
There's another organization similar to the BSA (ISA? Not sure) that DOES use a an outside lawyer. However, the lawyer might be paid a percentage only, and that out of the percentage the ISA gets. In that case you wouldn't be doing much harm.
Not sure whether the BSA legal team is strictly in-house or not. As a pseudo-tech company they probably get many publications for the pointy-haired boss audience, and have followed the advice to outsource everything but the outsourcing department.
They can't afford to be. Clinton had ONE underling convicted of underreporting payments to a mistress. Reagan had dozens, Bush I likewise, and though there have been no convictions yet, Bush II's is the most corrupt admin since Harding.
I don't buy the security by obscurity argument, but it is an argument. I just find the track records MUCH better for OS.
Under OS, all the bad guys have the schematic for all the locks in the kingdom. But all the good guys do, as well, and lets them improve the locks.
Shared Source gives a small subset good guys a look at the schematics, but prevents them from improving the locks for themselves or anyone else. The most you can accomplish is working as an unpaid and probably ignored QA engineer for an unethical corporation. In fact, you are paying THEM for the priviledge. (Debugging OS code makes you a participant in a larger community of volunteers - a very different vibe.) It all but guarantees that the SS code will leak to essentially all bad guys, who will either not honor NDAs or aren't bound by them in the first place. It also appears to taint any OS developers who look at it, so their presence in an OS project threatens it with litigation entanglements.
So - OS gives all access, SS gives bad guys access and restricts the freedom not just of code, but developers. As Dilbert says, "I gotta get me some of that!"
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, flamebait but funny. I give funny mods higher preference than the deduction for flame for this reason.
I know its fiction and all, but the guy kills people while stealing their heritage. He is not a hero. If it weren't for the soundtrack, you couldn't tell him from Predator. Certainly not by ethics or motivation.
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, either.
Got some shares in a can't-miss gold mine (or was it silver?) I can let you have, cheap!
the term was in use circa WWII to denote automatic weapons firing cartridges more powerful than pistol ammunition (used in submachine guns), but less powerful than a typical rifle bullet. The rationale is that most infantry combat took place at shorter range than what made a regular rifle necessary, and it's difficult to fire an automatic rifle using the more powerful cartridges.
Germany had a couple in WWII, the Russians had one too, I think. The U.S. went with the M14 (looks a lot like the M1, but has a detachable magazine and automatic fire) for a while, which was an automatic rifle by this definition. Then the M16.
We've had a real problem with some brazen fsking thieves. They have pulled some shit right out of lame caper flicks. Property theft isn't a high police priority so we're pretty stuck. We SHOULD be crushing the perps under cement rollers, but instead we're just trying thicker cables to anchor.
We have around 25 units and share a T1 over 10baseT. It's fine for now. But I would have gone Cat6 if I'd spec'd the job. Condo rental property depreciates over 27.5 years. That means the IRS expect the building to still stand in 30 years. You might wish you had put Cat6 in. Fiber isn't that expensive to add while you are at it (labor will be the big expense).
Since condos don't move around, I think wire will have a signalling advantage over wireless for the forseable future. If the laptops INSIDE the condos move around, let them go WAP, but link upstream over landline.
This sounds like a much simpler, sensible situation than DSL to each condo. Cat 5 is cheap, cat 6 is not expensive.
One caveat with Stephenson - "Big U" is an interesting attempt to satarize a behemoth of a university, probably his first book. He hadn't developed his amazing chops yet. I worship the man, but I think he'd agree this is not worth the time.
Zodiac was pretty good. Strong narrative, some good characters. You can see the emergence of some geek-friendly themes. It lacks the absolute truckloads of storytelling talent he lavishes on subsequent books, but for many writers this would be their best book ever.
Snow Crash was AMAZING. Has the aforementioned truckloads. Very funny, surprising consistency all the way through. Nothing sacrificed for a laugh, but many of them fit. And a fine backdrop of whimsical neurolinguistic mysticism driving it. Great characters. Absolutely great. Each is hip - or wants to be - in a different way. It's male dominated, but there is a very strong female character that feels real, like the author has actually met a female in person. Even minor characters are fully fleshed out in a few deft strokes.
Diamond Age - AMAZING Very good at pulling heartstrings, fascinating look at nanotach. More of a "realistic" feel than Snow Crash. (Neither good nor bad in itself, but some readers might find S.C. too enjoyable/easy)
Cryptonomicon - awesome. Staggering. (Especially if you have to carry it a long way) This is a more complex narrative, with two sets of characters in two time periods. Amazingly, they fit together and not just at a tangent point. It is rich with historical insight, and it has tons of stuff for those who get a hard-on for computer security.
On a side note - I may have spotted him at Norwescon this weekend. Not really sure. I happened to be raving about him at the time and may have invoked him.
Ow! That's worse than a goatse link!
Filthy's the man for me.
http://bigempire.com/filthy/
About half the time he writes about a total piece of shit I'd never see anyway, and some of the time he sends me to something I would have missed.
It's a little different from the Joe Bob Briggs schtick. I find the writing better, and because he actually digs good movies he is more than a 1-trick pony like Briggs.
It has always been sound business practice to help the Bushes politically. Donate to Jeb - first in line as a contractor when the Florida State gov't starts unwisely privatizing services. (More money spent, less service given = unwise in my book) Donate to W., you get to manage the University of Texas (they had a university? who knew?) investment portfolio for your own benefit. Churn and burn, in total secrecy. Rather a contrast to the well-managed, successful and open process that was in place before W's executive order. If Clinton had 1% the corruption of the Bushes, he'd have been drawn and quartered. If Bill had deserted, like W, he'd have done prison time.
Republicans get a free pass. Dems get no credit. That's why a draft dodging chickenhawk like Delay can criticize Kerry's patriotism, and a draft-dodging chickenhawk like Saxby can criticize Cleland (decorated, horribly injured war vet) for opposing Bush on the Homeland Security Dept, which Bush himself opposed until he read a poll and which remains a fucked up idea.
That was break time, dude.
Actually, there is a broad trend toward underservicing poor areas and replacing them with legal loan sharks. Local branch banks close down and in goes a payday loan outfit, often owned by the bank or it's parent corp.
They have had terrible counsel. Remember - they LOST the anti-trust case. The judge was a bit unprofessional by using his out-loud voice in calling MS a bunch of lying weasels - which they are. Gates lost the case with his horrible deposition, and had they had decent representation the lawyers would have taken a break, kicked his ass, and told him to answer the fucking questions. Presenting rigged demos is another no-no.
You are correct that they have hired expensive legal talent. They have not hired good legal talent. Nor is their PR firm (Waggoner Erdstrom?) helping the cause getting caught with astroturf campaigns repeatedly. MS, like many big firms, bases its service contracts on ego-handjobs.
Conservative whacko nitwits explode them. Have you seen what W did to the budget? Remember Reagan?
The policy of giveaway tax breaks to starve government because of ideology is irresponsible. It's not governance, it's the opposite. If they ever had the courage to balance the tax cuts with spending cuts, they'd be out on their asses. But they know they can create a mess for others to deal with because everyone likes free money and its easy to separate a tax cut from its consequences.
I think that you are right to demand the ability to respond - first posts are hard to get, we need more opportunities. It's just weird to see your comment on liberals and budgets.
P.T. Barnum had the answer to your question: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People."
i l/-/0440 508649/qid=1046071505/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-249716 2-7268161?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Maybe Salon overestimated it?
He really is a big fat idiot.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/deta
I've been rereading the series. Probably received a suggestion to do so via subliminal html tags here on /.
Good for him. Assault, last time I checked, was still illegal. By HS you should know the basics of civil behavior. I write this as a former bully (turned pacifist by 5th grade turned counter-bully by 8th).
If you want to commit fun crimes, show a little guts: use drugs.
You left out the inevitable!
f) he's off the case!
You've never seen a case of over-zealous blocking? You aren't trying. www.peacefire.org/censoreware/ will show plenty of valid sites blocked for each of the major players. Every single one, either by keyword blocking or a URL block list. For the most part, the companies that push this are unethical goons. There may be an exception, but the technology is still just broken anyway.
There is also a major problem with letting some unaccountable commercial entity determine what information is available. Those encrypted url lists are appalling.
I agree it's a nice read, and he definitely plugs his company. I don't see it as an infomercial, though. It's rigorously argued.
It's intended for management types (though their lips will get tired by the end of it) but crypto-geeks and other propeller heads are about the only ones properly interested in the topic. If you find yourself running into blank looks when you try to explain that security is a "process, not a product" this might help.
Incidentally, the author contributed the deck of cards crypto system in "Cryptonomicon" Serious geek points for that!
Getting group membership to work properly has been a bit of a chore, but group permissions on the file shares works nicely.
I don't really see a value in having an NT 4.0 bdc taking orders from the samba pdc - just convert them both!
There's another organization similar to the BSA (ISA? Not sure) that DOES use a an outside lawyer. However, the lawyer might be paid a percentage only, and that out of the percentage the ISA gets. In that case you wouldn't be doing much harm.
Not sure whether the BSA legal team is strictly in-house or not. As a pseudo-tech company they probably get many publications for the pointy-haired boss audience, and have followed the advice to outsource everything but the outsourcing department.
They can't afford to be. Clinton had ONE underling convicted of underreporting payments to a mistress. Reagan had dozens, Bush I likewise, and though there have been no convictions yet, Bush II's is the most corrupt admin since Harding.
I don't buy the security by obscurity argument, but it is an argument. I just find the track records MUCH better for OS.
Under OS, all the bad guys have the schematic for all the locks in the kingdom. But all the good guys do, as well, and lets them improve the locks.
Shared Source gives a small subset good guys a look at the schematics, but prevents them from improving the locks for themselves or anyone else. The most you can accomplish is working as an unpaid and probably ignored QA engineer for an unethical corporation. In fact, you are paying THEM for the priviledge. (Debugging OS code makes you a participant in a larger community of volunteers - a very different vibe.) It all but guarantees that the SS code will leak to essentially all bad guys, who will either not honor NDAs or aren't bound by them in the first place. It also appears to taint any OS developers who look at it, so their presence in an OS project threatens it with litigation entanglements.
So - OS gives all access, SS gives bad guys access and restricts the freedom not just of code, but developers. As Dilbert says, "I gotta get me some of that!"