One thing I've found with the incoming workers is that there is a great skill disparity. While I see many boatloads of them arriving and jumping into cubicles, they go through loads of training to get anywhere near being productive; that's a cost in the time of a regular engineer(s) being away from their own projects and the time that the new hire is not producing. Another I see is that I myself am asked to travel to international offices to take care of things that my international peers do not have the expertise to take care of; travel is not cheap. They certainly are cheaper labor in the short term, but there are other costs besides salary to look at that will make them seem not quite so cheap as you first thought.
With some sort of ssh-type login subscription control and encrypted pipes, usenet servers could very well serve for distributing files on a veeeery wide basis. It's been a while since I've touched INN or CNEWS, so I don't know if that sort of thing has been worked into the old favorite protocols, but some like Sendmail are starting to move towards providing for closed encrypted networks. Of course, this could be used for both good and bad, so it's probably going to cause a ruckus and some people dopey enough to let someone not deeply in their web of trust access to whatever information (files? music? movies? pics?) is stored there are likely to make it short-lived.
In another article today (here) we were discussing how it's no one's business what I exchange with other people. The problem with the work environment is that because you are being compensated for your time, you are expected to dedicate that time to work being done for the company/organization rather than web surfing for non-work related things, chatting with friends, and tweaking your desktop. However, with some sort of file encryption and pipe encryption you could communicate with being snooped on. The only issue there is that someone could block the ports, so common ports like 80 should be used to perform the protocol. Of course, this is a tool and could be used for both good and bad, so likely it would cause a ruckus. VPNs of a more private sort are in the future for file sharing, so those that start it up are going to be the next Internet money makers.
Exactly! I'm not sure whether PGP's web of trust or something like the Thawte cert web of trust would be best. Both seem to provide the same service in almost the same way, but they both have drawbacks. I'm currently doing an evaluation of the two to decide which to use and neither one seems to be a hands down choice. The drawback with FreeS/WAN is that it allows unprepared connections, where a scheme like this requires that the connections be limited and thus prepared. I can see this evolving into something that would easily be cracked by undercover cops just like any other secret group; no matter how tight you are, someone always fscks it up. In addition, a machine that is compromised would end up having a list of authorized systems, which ends up incriminating them. Very sticky: on one hand you need anonymity and on the other you need to authenticate them.
We should be using something like FreeS/WAN to make secure connections between computers and trade files or as the site says "allow
systems to connect through secure tunnels without prearrangement". It's no one's damn business what I send to anyone I'm working with. Right now FreeS/WAN is only available for Linux, but I'm sure it can be coaxed into working for Cygwin and other platforms.
That combined with some file encryption makes the systems secure from brain to brain. Why have the file encryption as well? Because the pipe encryption hides *what* you are doing with the encrypted file, but once it's on a machine it's exposed again. Of course that means the people wanting your info have to go to more extreme measures to get the info, but you can take the pain, right?
If we can perceive it in any tiny way, it is somehow real. Everything that you perceive is really just an image held by neurons in your brain and not the real thing anyway, so it's all the same. Now, about those things we believe but cannot perceive...
I think we've gotten so use to the rapid, rabid pace of innovation over the past decade that we expect it is a necessary part of good business. Certainly, any company that is stripped of the ability to innovate these days is given a death sentence, but consider that the alternative is a death sentence for the industry in general if companies like MS are allowed to rule without fear of the law. If an action against an antitrust entity is undertaken, however, it must still be done by the law and not by the government trampling on anything we hold dear because that doesn't make them any better than Microsoft.
Does anyone remember the days before Windows 95 where Linux was just emerging and PC software sucked in general because updates were few and far between and no one produced anything that was standardized or barely compatible? Given the opportunity, with or without Microsoft, the computer industry will screw it up again all on their own, churning out software that sucked. I'm not saying Microsoft actively shores up the industry; it's more likely that their bulk takes up space in the industry that would be otherwise held by a million sucky small companies unable to employ everyone that MS does and unable to support partner companies (including supply houses) that employ all their employees and so on. I have faith that the open source community would survive a disappearance of Microsoft, but how many of us would still be able to afford food is another question.
Welcome to the incompatibility that now reigns in the world of Windows CE. Will that be SH3, SH4, MIPS, ARM, etc with your Palm? Do they plan to emulate the older chips to get the older software to run? That would definitely make the point of moving to the new processor moot.
If artists don't see a dime, we'll have to start flipping dimes into the hats of starving artists all over the world much more often.
Seriously, though, there isn't much incentive for people to pursue music if there is no return. On the other hand that might just leave the people that are really into the music and worth listening to. Anyway, stop listening to so much tripe and stick to the stuff you really like. If you really love that music, you'd pay for it, otherwise you're just faking.
I hereby am claiming all rights to rot26. In fact, I demand that everyone cease and desist all use of rot26 encoded web sites and software immediately. Lets look up places to start enforcing this in the phone book... right at the first letter... A... Oh, look! Adobe!
But you are right. It is not so different. We consider decryption devices to be socially (or at least economically) destablizing. I for one am opposed to that sort of thing here.
Note that you have not been put before a firing squad for opposing that sort of thing. BTW, what decryption devices are considered socially or economically destabilizing? We use a VPN connection between International sites, and all that helps us do is produce more and be socially productive.
The good part of China having cyber cafes was that the people could get information out to the rest of the world quickly. Now that they are closed down, it is one less channel for people to report to the world about what atrocities are happening. In that sense it is important because those people have lost a voice, not as though they legally (according to their country) had that voice to begin with.
We'll have to rely on people escaping across the Himalayas or being lucky enough to leave that nation to learn about those sort of things from now on if they all go away.
Cellphones and internet cafes have become rampant in China. The chineese government already admits that they cannot control the cellphone boom, and SMS messaging. The internet cafes provide an easy way for any chineese citizen to get online, and there are many ways around the state filter boxes, so many in fact that it is practically impossible to stop people from finding and using proxy-servers available all over the country.
Cripes! That's it! Better than Radio Liberty! We compile a list of pagers and SMS capable devices in use in China and begin sending messages into the email addresses corresponding to them on a frequent basis. It can be a great way of spreading information freely! That or their government will move in and kill all the pager and cellphone users in one fell swoop.
People might not know about it if they don't hear it over and over. Consider that each time someone hears it, they may become more and more against that sort of thing and move towards becoming that internal or external force. It's a process and does not happen overnight just because you and I saw it was something that should be dealt with. It takes longer for the word to spread so that everyone is as disgusted with the situation as we are. I guarantee you it will take a few years more before anything much more is done.
On the positive side, maybe a democratic China will be hosting the Olympics in 2008.
I can just see the tanks now, rolling through the Olympic village, squishing the athletes as they run for their lives because the Chinese mistook morning calisthenics for Falun Gong meditation. IBM's usual Olympic webcasts will instead be broken into hourly by government sponsored Chinese hackers so that websurfers world wide are treated to that spectacular shot of the goatse.cx guy. In a masterful display of revisionism, Olympic commentary will refer to all events as Chinese wins and victories over US hegemony, no matter what the real outcome was; anyone who does not tow that state line comes home broken with a broken spirit and mind courtesy of the PLA. Lastly, a plane load full of athletes is shot down over Japan as the Chinese complain that because they once had soldiers standing on those shores at some point in history that the plane had invaded their airspace.
What is it they say about tigers and their stripes? 2008 will be very interesting. Personally, I expect the Chinese to do something really dumb between now and then to cause boycotts of the games.
I have no problem with this if the Russians are just scooting him up in one of their Soyuz capsules. They have plenty of those rockets and they need the $$$.
Just wondering, though, if back in the days of the Wright brothers whether there was a hoopla about tourists going up in the skies. These days that makes up a very large portion of the aviation industry. We can expect the same of the space industry once launches past earth orbit become routine.
We take it as a loss and move on to try again. $4 million can be raised again and could be raised many times over for the amount of money spent on many other space related projects.
Something like solar sails, which can have an immediate return when demonstrated as a proof of concept, should have higher priority over things like missions to Mars, which can not only benefit from the solar sails, but which also provide a return much later. Giving it that type of priority, it could be ready in a couple of months.
In 400 years someone will be sitting on Mars sipping wine in a city and not even remember that a solar sail project in 2001 failed.
You can get an epods one for around $200, hack it back to plain Windows CE, and add a 802.11b hub and card for cheaper than that! $2000 is an insane price to ask, so I assume this company will either have to discontinue the line before it gets too far out the door, or drag the Rio and RioCar down with it as it dies trying.
The Internet is unfortunately full of applets that suck. What I meant by Javascript not going anywhere was that it is an example of something has been standard and you don't see it disappearing because there is no war over it...it was just accepted. Bad choice for an example, I should have chosen something without the word Java in it so that you guys wouldn't have been reminded of the newbie "is Javascript the same as Java" questions.
All Sun needs is an auto update tool that gets run every month or week to let you now when a new version is out. Every other little tray icon application does something like that, so no reason Sun can't include a little something that does the same.
On the other hand, you have Java apps that might work with 1.1 and not with 1.4. Having end users casually perform upgrades may not be something developers want, which could cause more headaches than its worth. Updating the JRE could be left to individual developers and as long as its in a common place (C:\jdk, C:\jre, etc) they won't need to duplicate work.
I have no problem with this. Java on the web sucks for the most part. For corporate applications where you have to use Java, the latest JRE or JDK comes bundled anyway so nothing is lost there. All you have to do is include the JRE in the next version of Netscape, Mozilla, AIM or RealPlayer, which everyone installs anyway and everything is back to the status quo.
Even if it fades away on the desktop, Java is still useful in the backend on the server side, so it will live on as many other old languages have, being fruitful and all. How many Internet users out there really keep an eye on whether the servers driving their favorite Internet application are written in Java, C, or Cobol anyway? They just want to surf over to it and use it.
At any rate, this is the fault of Sun for not standardizing it as they should have. We don't see Javascript (or whatever its called these days) going anywhere.
Ring! Ring! Reality here! I hardly think taking down the whitehouse.gov web site is taking down the government. Of course, I wouldn't mind taking something like this and starting to aim it at some IP addresses in China.
Doubtful that it's that easy. Plus there's that whole going to war thing that involves citizens participating. Being a citizen of only one country sort of reduces the chances of my being involved.
There are already plenty like what we read in the Cryptonomicon. The only problem is, someone has to be brave enough to jump in. You'll be sure and let me know if these are worth pursuing. They sound too much like the spam I've been getting lately.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing I've found with the incoming workers is that there is a great skill disparity. While I see many boatloads of them arriving and jumping into cubicles, they go through loads of training to get anywhere near being productive; that's a cost in the time of a regular engineer(s) being away from their own projects and the time that the new hire is not producing. Another I see is that I myself am asked to travel to international offices to take care of things that my international peers do not have the expertise to take care of; travel is not cheap. They certainly are cheaper labor in the short term, but there are other costs besides salary to look at that will make them seem not quite so cheap as you first thought.
With some sort of ssh-type login subscription control and encrypted pipes, usenet servers could very well serve for distributing files on a veeeery wide basis. It's been a while since I've touched INN or CNEWS, so I don't know if that sort of thing has been worked into the old favorite protocols, but some like Sendmail are starting to move towards providing for closed encrypted networks. Of course, this could be used for both good and bad, so it's probably going to cause a ruckus and some people dopey enough to let someone not deeply in their web of trust access to whatever information (files? music? movies? pics?) is stored there are likely to make it short-lived.
In another article today (here) we were discussing how it's no one's business what I exchange with other people. The problem with the work environment is that because you are being compensated for your time, you are expected to dedicate that time to work being done for the company/organization rather than web surfing for non-work related things, chatting with friends, and tweaking your desktop. However, with some sort of file encryption and pipe encryption you could communicate with being snooped on. The only issue there is that someone could block the ports, so common ports like 80 should be used to perform the protocol. Of course, this is a tool and could be used for both good and bad, so likely it would cause a ruckus. VPNs of a more private sort are in the future for file sharing, so those that start it up are going to be the next Internet money makers.
Exactly! I'm not sure whether PGP's web of trust or something like the Thawte cert web of trust would be best. Both seem to provide the same service in almost the same way, but they both have drawbacks. I'm currently doing an evaluation of the two to decide which to use and neither one seems to be a hands down choice. The drawback with FreeS/WAN is that it allows unprepared connections, where a scheme like this requires that the connections be limited and thus prepared. I can see this evolving into something that would easily be cracked by undercover cops just like any other secret group; no matter how tight you are, someone always fscks it up. In addition, a machine that is compromised would end up having a list of authorized systems, which ends up incriminating them. Very sticky: on one hand you need anonymity and on the other you need to authenticate them.
We should be using something like FreeS/WAN to make secure connections between computers and trade files or as the site says "allow systems to connect through secure tunnels without prearrangement". It's no one's damn business what I send to anyone I'm working with. Right now FreeS/WAN is only available for Linux, but I'm sure it can be coaxed into working for Cygwin and other platforms.
That combined with some file encryption makes the systems secure from brain to brain. Why have the file encryption as well? Because the pipe encryption hides *what* you are doing with the encrypted file, but once it's on a machine it's exposed again. Of course that means the people wanting your info have to go to more extreme measures to get the info, but you can take the pain, right?
If we can perceive it in any tiny way, it is somehow real. Everything that you perceive is really just an image held by neurons in your brain and not the real thing anyway, so it's all the same. Now, about those things we believe but cannot perceive...
I think we've gotten so use to the rapid, rabid pace of innovation over the past decade that we expect it is a necessary part of good business. Certainly, any company that is stripped of the ability to innovate these days is given a death sentence, but consider that the alternative is a death sentence for the industry in general if companies like MS are allowed to rule without fear of the law. If an action against an antitrust entity is undertaken, however, it must still be done by the law and not by the government trampling on anything we hold dear because that doesn't make them any better than Microsoft.
Does anyone remember the days before Windows 95 where Linux was just emerging and PC software sucked in general because updates were few and far between and no one produced anything that was standardized or barely compatible? Given the opportunity, with or without Microsoft, the computer industry will screw it up again all on their own, churning out software that sucked. I'm not saying Microsoft actively shores up the industry; it's more likely that their bulk takes up space in the industry that would be otherwise held by a million sucky small companies unable to employ everyone that MS does and unable to support partner companies (including supply houses) that employ all their employees and so on. I have faith that the open source community would survive a disappearance of Microsoft, but how many of us would still be able to afford food is another question.
Welcome to the incompatibility that now reigns in the world of Windows CE. Will that be SH3, SH4, MIPS, ARM, etc with your Palm? Do they plan to emulate the older chips to get the older software to run? That would definitely make the point of moving to the new processor moot.
If artists don't see a dime, we'll have to start flipping dimes into the hats of starving artists all over the world much more often.
Seriously, though, there isn't much incentive for people to pursue music if there is no return. On the other hand that might just leave the people that are really into the music and worth listening to. Anyway, stop listening to so much tripe and stick to the stuff you really like. If you really love that music, you'd pay for it, otherwise you're just faking.
I hereby am claiming all rights to rot26. In fact, I demand that everyone cease and desist all use of rot26 encoded web sites and software immediately.
Lets look up places to start enforcing this in the phone book...
right at the first letter...
A...
Oh, look! Adobe!
But you are right. It is not so different. We consider decryption devices to be socially (or at least economically) destablizing. I for one am opposed to that sort of thing here.
Note that you have not been put before a firing squad for opposing that sort of thing. BTW, what decryption devices are considered socially or economically destabilizing? We use a VPN connection between International sites, and all that helps us do is produce more and be socially productive.
The good part of China having cyber cafes was that the people could get information out to the rest of the world quickly. Now that they are closed down, it is one less channel for people to report to the world about what atrocities are happening. In that sense it is important because those people have lost a voice, not as though they legally (according to their country) had that voice to begin with.
We'll have to rely on people escaping across the Himalayas or being lucky enough to leave that nation to learn about those sort of things from now on if they all go away.
Cellphones and internet cafes have become rampant in China. The chineese government already admits that they cannot control the cellphone boom, and SMS messaging. The internet cafes provide an easy way for any chineese citizen to get online, and there are many ways around the state filter boxes, so many in fact that it is practically impossible to stop people from finding and using proxy-servers available all over the country.
Cripes! That's it! Better than Radio Liberty! We compile a list of pagers and SMS capable devices in use in China and begin sending messages into the email addresses corresponding to them on a frequent basis. It can be a great way of spreading information freely! That or their government will move in and kill all the pager and cellphone users in one fell swoop.
People might not know about it if they don't hear it over and over. Consider that each time someone hears it, they may become more and more against that sort of thing and move towards becoming that internal or external force. It's a process and does not happen overnight just because you and I saw it was something that should be dealt with. It takes longer for the word to spread so that everyone is as disgusted with the situation as we are. I guarantee you it will take a few years more before anything much more is done.
On the positive side, maybe a democratic China will be hosting the Olympics in 2008.
I can just see the tanks now, rolling through the Olympic village, squishing the athletes as they run for their lives because the Chinese mistook morning calisthenics for Falun Gong meditation. IBM's usual Olympic webcasts will instead be broken into hourly by government sponsored Chinese hackers so that websurfers world wide are treated to that spectacular shot of the goatse.cx guy. In a masterful display of revisionism, Olympic commentary will refer to all events as Chinese wins and victories over US hegemony, no matter what the real outcome was; anyone who does not tow that state line comes home broken with a broken spirit and mind courtesy of the PLA. Lastly, a plane load full of athletes is shot down over Japan as the Chinese complain that because they once had soldiers standing on those shores at some point in history that the plane had invaded their airspace.
What is it they say about tigers and their stripes? 2008 will be very interesting. Personally, I expect the Chinese to do something really dumb between now and then to cause boycotts of the games.
I have no problem with this if the Russians are just scooting him up in one of their Soyuz capsules. They have plenty of those rockets and they need the $$$.
Just wondering, though, if back in the days of the Wright brothers whether there was a hoopla about tourists going up in the skies. These days that makes up a very large portion of the aviation industry. We can expect the same of the space industry once launches past earth orbit become routine.
We take it as a loss and move on to try again. $4 million can be raised again and could be raised many times over for the amount of money spent on many other space related projects.
Something like solar sails, which can have an immediate return when demonstrated as a proof of concept, should have higher priority over things like missions to Mars, which can not only benefit from the solar sails, but which also provide a return much later. Giving it that type of priority, it could be ready in a couple of months.
In 400 years someone will be sitting on Mars sipping wine in a city and not even remember that a solar sail project in 2001 failed.
You can get an epods one for around $200, hack it back to plain Windows CE, and add a 802.11b hub and card for cheaper than that! $2000 is an insane price to ask, so I assume this company will either have to discontinue the line before it gets too far out the door, or drag the Rio and RioCar down with it as it dies trying.
The Internet is unfortunately full of applets that suck. What I meant by Javascript not going anywhere was that it is an example of something has been standard and you don't see it disappearing because there is no war over it...it was just accepted. Bad choice for an example, I should have chosen something without the word Java in it so that you guys wouldn't have been reminded of the newbie "is Javascript the same as Java" questions.
All Sun needs is an auto update tool that gets run every month or week to let you now when a new version is out. Every other little tray icon application does something like that, so no reason Sun can't include a little something that does the same.
On the other hand, you have Java apps that might work with 1.1 and not with 1.4. Having end users casually perform upgrades may not be something developers want, which could cause more headaches than its worth. Updating the JRE could be left to individual developers and as long as its in a common place (C:\jdk, C:\jre, etc) they won't need to duplicate work.
I have no problem with this. Java on the web sucks for the most part. For corporate applications where you have to use Java, the latest JRE or JDK comes bundled anyway so nothing is lost there. All you have to do is include the JRE in the next version of Netscape, Mozilla, AIM or RealPlayer, which everyone installs anyway and everything is back to the status quo.
Even if it fades away on the desktop, Java is still useful in the backend on the server side, so it will live on as many other old languages have, being fruitful and all. How many Internet users out there really keep an eye on whether the servers driving their favorite Internet application are written in Java, C, or Cobol anyway? They just want to surf over to it and use it.
At any rate, this is the fault of Sun for not standardizing it as they should have. We don't see Javascript (or whatever its called these days) going anywhere.
Ring! Ring! Reality here! I hardly think taking down the whitehouse.gov web site is taking down the government. Of course, I wouldn't mind taking something like this and starting to aim it at some IP addresses in China.
I'm hit every 5-15 minutes. Hmmmm. Maybe we should not be protecting the innocent. Looks like some attempt at buffer overflow.
65.84.139.36 - - [19/Jul/2001:10:04:54 -0400] "GETHere are the guys that were hitting me. Folks might recognize a few. Have at them!
[root@solo logs]# grep default.ida * | awk '{print $1}' | awk -F: '{print $2}' | sort -u169.207.170.50
193.193.215.41
195.114.67.186
195.200.34.139
196.40.46.250
200.182.20.71
202.113.13.252
203.178.84.2
206.242.192.51
206.251.234.67
207.202.221.176
209.158.17.60
210.85.180.152
211.234.104.145
211.42.161.37
213.236.154.78
216.166.147.30
24.26.222.234
24.41.33.105
63.111.12.10
63.111.224.183
63.208.139.169
64.89.77.186
65.84.139.36
66.22.142.101
66.61.64.188
Doubtful that it's that easy. Plus there's that whole going to war thing that involves citizens participating. Being a citizen of only one country sort of reduces the chances of my being involved.
There are already plenty like what we read in the Cryptonomicon. The only problem is, someone has to be brave enough to jump in. You'll be sure and let me know if these are worth pursuing. They sound too much like the spam I've been getting lately.
e-gold.com , goldeconomy.com, goldmoney.com