Nicely put. General ed wasn't that great in '65 when I graduated high school; I can't see that it's gotten any better. From what I've seen, most people don't want education - they prefer indoctrination, compliance, and 'tickets' to good pay.
Yeah, the night owl stuff. Wouldn't be a prob if one could shoe horn in eight hours sleep somewhere, because I really dig sunlight, but in the wee hours it's _quiet_. Cheers.
Clean install, yessir, that's the way to go. I eventually learned that. It seems like more work at the outset, but can save bags of time fiddling with stuff. I'd forgotten that I'd have to do a repair install to 'set' a new HAL or somesuch. Still, it worked. Only in the last few years have I moved any Linux installs to new homes - with the later versions of major distros and vanilla configs it tends to be a lot smoother, all right. I think it's one of the reasons I also developed a liking for virtual machines. Unless one requires direct hardware access for something it goes much more smoothly. Haven't compiled any kernels in a while; getting old and lazy.
It's 4:30 am, couldn't sleep, got my first good laugh of the day when I read "hoops of flaming sodium" - thanks.
@ mykael_j - yeah, I was fairly lucky, and I chalked the tedious bits down to learning. I don't do that anymore, just down to the homebuilt and a laptop; when I work on somebody else's machines I try to do it a bit smarter than I used to.
Re:Not a Real Problem Unless Vacations Are Evil
on
The Real Job Threat
·
· Score: 1
Yup, rather like the Peter Principle and corollaries in action; the dicks run the show.
Amen. Finding the solutions, for me, could get frustrating. The only other real problems I had were lock-ups caused by me and my messing about whilst "tweaking" the experience. System once locked up, or so I thought, so I left and went to the bar; four hours later, not ten minutes after I'd returned home, XP chugged through whatever the holdups were and presented the original window I'd asked for. Beer goggles and all, but I thought it was amazing.
I recall the excitement, even wonder, when upgrading from 98SE on a Dell Optiplex (GX-100 ?)- Celeron A and 128MB RAM that I got via MSU salvage. Wow, night and day, _and_ compatibility modes. With a larger HDD and going to 384MB memory, XP worked fine. Due my own efforts, I'd reinstall/repair every few months for the first couple of years. Finding congenial, efficient, and effective AV and firewall, etc., getting the apps I wanted, was an interesting exercise.
Over the years, several times XP woke up in brand-new homes (other used but more capable machines). After multiple reboots discovering new hardware, etc., and sometimes tracking down proper drivers, it kept chugging along; Microsoft was always gracious in re-activating.
Ran 64-bit in '06-'07 while in school. Used Virtual PC and VMWare stuff. Later dual-booted for most of two years with Vista 64-bit.
I switched to Linux full time early this year but XP lives on in VirtualBox.
Point taken. Nope, so far as I know. Well, apart from Narus/ATT/NSA and all that, but that's different tech.
I read some of the stuff from the links given in Ross Anderson's piece. Trusted comms, great. Freedom from malware, great. Potential for abuse, also great.
I started with the 1972 USAF pdf and went on from there, chronologically, for a few hours, then skipped around. The Congressional stuff strikes me as relevant, viz. government, but YMMV.
To me, given history, the gap between what government does now and what it will have the [relatively near] potential to do is interesting.
Is the question of what a government is doing at this instant of sole relevance?
Not saying you're wrong, only that "systematic" in this instance [if memory of what I've read here and there over the years is right enough] was largely a humungous amount of frequently trial-and-error plodding drudgery sparked with occasional flashes of inspiration over many tedious, frustrating hours, days, weeks, months. A successful result was not a foregone thing but rather as much a hoped-for goal, via faith in himself and such of his methods, through dogged perseverance and uncommon ambition. He suffered bouts of self-doubt and loss of hope. His own accounts and those of people who knew him well can be [ahem] illuminating.
As for "careful engineering of a complete system" - well, yes, but. None of this sprang like Hera from the mind of Zeus (if I have my reference a-rightly), notwithstanding his vision as he went along (again, his own accounts). It was piece-work - true, original engineering in the sense of, for instance, "okay, I've got a lamp working well enough, now to power it (well enough to be going on with)... now, how to get a lamp shining in the next room, the next block, the next town... then to patent, license, promote, make, sell, etc.
Your statement is correct and textbook clean. Simple in hindsight: dynamo, generator, wire, lamp, (and a bunch of other stuff); _et voilà_, success, profit, fame, and an electrically-lit planet. My attempted understanding is of mind and flesh and the kind of genius and ambition and a willingness to plod as needed at work and at working that's perhaps not so widely comprehended nowadays.
Of course, your use of "included" make my post moot, eh? And I suspect that unlike me the smart people here understood the background right off the bat.
Sorry. "complete hogwash" kinda struck me sideways.
Okay, I read. I followed the included link http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html and read it, then spent another couple of hours reading more from a few of the links included in that article. At first blush there is some seriously horrifying stuff going on, much of it masquerading under the simplified banner of "think of the children"-style of emotional appeal but whose ultimate goal, and real appeal to the powers that be, is ultimately profit and control. Then it gets worse, IMO.
To me the warning of the dictum latterly attributed to Lord Acton (?) of "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." applies. [I suspect that that thought precedes written language.] If the power exists, it will be used - similar to yet farther reaching than "The 400" effectively control the US economy concomitant with its realpolitik. (I came across an article yesterday about researchers using systems analysis to determine that 1381 multi-nationals effectively controlled the planet's economy, all sans benefit of conspiracy but rather merely efficiency, but cannot find the link just now - science 2.0, perhaps; it was interesting reading, and it doesn't require a tin-foil hat to accord it some credence.)
So, if I have this a-rightly: TC does not, or will not, eventually, require more than a CPU and, at root, certain few government keys. It will be independent of OS, BIOS or UEFI, separate on-board chip, application code, what have you. Non-TC CPUs will be isolated to unconnected hobbyists; there will be no Internet functionality independent of approved TC CPUs. By extension, it will not even be possible to have private electronic-based communication amongst "ourselves" using PGP and such, because non-TC comms will not make it through any of various Internet intermediaries. And I suggest not counting on darknet.
At the moment, so far as I know, volume production of chips is not a trivial or easily hidden activity; further, absent genuine keys or imaginary effective counterfeits, independent and free electronic interaction will not be possible. If you think that's a gloomy overthink, it was worse before I read the comics section.
What with proprietary formats and such, DRM, DMCA, etc. - tip of the iceberg and all that - I see this as a snowball rolling down an endless slope such that the only hope is that "the" singularity when it may happen might prove a more benign overlord or, perhaps, even companion of sorts. Meanwhile, let's continue to have fun. It's only cradle to grave, right?
On the off-chance anyone got this far: sorry for the long post. I first read on some of this back in the early 90's, and found it to be sufficiently scary and depressing then after doing a bit of extrapolation.
Any smart people with non-smart-ass ideas on how to deal with this? I'm a bit more than curious, even 'tho, at 64, it may not be personally relevant for long.
"and then there is the ultimate question of what the fuck i am going to do if i grab a powerful processor"
Edge case: there is little I'm still able to do to contribute anything useful anywhere or to anyone. Therefore, six years ago I started crunching for worldcommunitygrid - I figured it was at least useful, and potentially very useful, provided I had a place to live, had a computer, and could pay the electric and ISP bills.
I got a six-core processor (1090T, up from a 9350e) in June. Using three cores I've been able to crunch since then more than the previous five and a half years. So for me the question is a no-brainer. It helps that I've still got three cores left for normal stuff, games, and virtual machines.
Presuming I can save enough from what little is left over from Social Security after bills, I look forward to putting together an eight-core system.
Regarding overall price/performance/power consumption after reading through five comparisons, yes, I'm a bit disappointed with FX, but not enough to preclude me from using it in my next build.
Thank you for the information and the links. I found the discussion following Corbett's post at lwn.net enlightening. I'll be trying out Jupiter on my laptop.
It's a developers' preview. Install as a vm, give it a couple of cores, a gig or so of memory, maybe 20gig dynamic hard drive. Have fun, explore. Unless you're a developer, waste time.
Right on. The reflexive riposte of "stupid users" is often wrong-headed. For decades personal computers have been marketed as appliances. Expecting the general user to become hip to HIPS, AV, doing updates to their piece-meal systems (OS, drivers, apps, etc.) is unrealistic. Any admonishments or usage tips regarding security or safe surfing presented to the customer are, I suspect, merely things to be clicked through by them to get to doing whatever it is they wish to do.
Trying to convince people even to do updates often as not falls on deaf ears. For instance, among other things, I've recommended to Windows users for years to use Secunia - first their on-line scanner and now their excellent PSI. It helps, but only if people take heed or let me install it.
The suggestion for using a virtual machine for browsing (apart from licensing issues) is a good one, but who amongst the general user population will even be aware of this, let alone do so?
Expecting general users to educate themselves to become proficient in doing their own security and incorporate best practice is little more than an elitist cop-out. Unless and until suppliers put useful security at least on par with marketing's out-the-door bling, I don't see the situation improving. Transparent updates for all software, provided the vendor is trusted, the update is verified to work (without regressions) and old versions verified as being completely removed might help. I'm not holding my breath.
Hells bells, even with the big improvements in fllters, we've managed to do little to even remove spam from the networks this past decade.
[In the hope of saving some the trouble of typing, I've been using Linux as my main OS for several years; all Windows installs are as virtual machines.]
wherein Warren and Brandeis refer to 'what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone"'
As for the lie told by the ISTHA, it's despicable, yet nowadays such behaviour by government and corporations has become ubiquitous and otherwise unremarkable.
Slashdot Mirror
Nicely put. General ed wasn't that great in '65 when I graduated high school; I can't see that it's gotten any better. From what I've seen, most people don't want education - they prefer indoctrination, compliance, and 'tickets' to good pay.
On April 14, this year, Wisconsin efile tax site required a specific version or higher of Adobe Reader; no lesser versions, no alternatives.
Nice. Elegant, even.
Yeah, the night owl stuff. Wouldn't be a prob if one could shoe horn in eight hours sleep somewhere, because I really dig sunlight, but in the wee hours it's _quiet_. Cheers.
Clean install, yessir, that's the way to go. I eventually learned that. It seems like more work at the outset, but can save bags of time fiddling with stuff. I'd forgotten that I'd have to do a repair install to 'set' a new HAL or somesuch. Still, it worked. Only in the last few years have I moved any Linux installs to new homes - with the later versions of major distros and vanilla configs it tends to be a lot smoother, all right. I think it's one of the reasons I also developed a liking for virtual machines. Unless one requires direct hardware access for something it goes much more smoothly. Haven't compiled any kernels in a while; getting old and lazy.
It's 4:30 am, couldn't sleep, got my first good laugh of the day when I read "hoops of flaming sodium" - thanks.
@ mykael_j - yeah, I was fairly lucky, and I chalked the tedious bits down to learning. I don't do that anymore, just down to the homebuilt and a laptop; when I work on somebody else's machines I try to do it a bit smarter than I used to.
Yup, rather like the Peter Principle and corollaries in action; the dicks run the show.
Amen. Finding the solutions, for me, could get frustrating. The only other real problems I had were lock-ups caused by me and my messing about whilst "tweaking" the experience. System once locked up, or so I thought, so I left and went to the bar; four hours later, not ten minutes after I'd returned home, XP chugged through whatever the holdups were and presented the original window I'd asked for. Beer goggles and all, but I thought it was amazing.
I recall the excitement, even wonder, when upgrading from 98SE on a Dell Optiplex (GX-100 ?)- Celeron A and 128MB RAM that I got via MSU salvage. Wow, night and day, _and_ compatibility modes. With a larger HDD and going to 384MB memory, XP worked fine. Due my own efforts, I'd reinstall/repair every few months for the first couple of years. Finding congenial, efficient, and effective AV and firewall, etc., getting the apps I wanted, was an interesting exercise.
Over the years, several times XP woke up in brand-new homes (other used but more capable machines). After multiple reboots discovering new hardware, etc., and sometimes tracking down proper drivers, it kept chugging along; Microsoft was always gracious in re-activating.
Ran 64-bit in '06-'07 while in school. Used Virtual PC and VMWare stuff. Later dual-booted for most of two years with Vista 64-bit.
I switched to Linux full time early this year but XP lives on in VirtualBox.
Thanks, XP.
Point taken. Nope, so far as I know. Well, apart from Narus/ATT/NSA and all that, but that's different tech.
I read some of the stuff from the links given in Ross Anderson's piece. Trusted comms, great. Freedom from malware, great. Potential for abuse, also great.
I started with the 1972 USAF pdf and went on from there, chronologically, for a few hours, then skipped around. The Congressional stuff strikes me as relevant, viz. government, but YMMV.
To me, given history, the gap between what government does now and what it will have the [relatively near] potential to do is interesting.
Is the question of what a government is doing at this instant of sole relevance?
Thank you for the reminder, and the link. I'll try to do better.
Um. Re: "systematic approach..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison#Electric_light gives a concise if somewhat antiseptic account.
Not saying you're wrong, only that "systematic" in this instance [if memory of what I've read here and there over the years is right enough] was largely a humungous amount of frequently trial-and-error plodding drudgery sparked with occasional flashes of inspiration over many tedious, frustrating hours, days, weeks, months. A successful result was not a foregone thing but rather as much a hoped-for goal, via faith in himself and such of his methods, through dogged perseverance and uncommon ambition. He suffered bouts of self-doubt and loss of hope. His own accounts and those of people who knew him well can be [ahem] illuminating.
As for "careful engineering of a complete system" - well, yes, but. None of this sprang like Hera from the mind of Zeus (if I have my reference a-rightly), notwithstanding his vision as he went along (again, his own accounts). It was piece-work - true, original engineering in the sense of, for instance, "okay, I've got a lamp working well enough, now to power it (well enough to be going on with)... now, how to get a lamp shining in the next room, the next block, the next town... then to patent, license, promote, make, sell, etc.
Your statement is correct and textbook clean. Simple in hindsight: dynamo, generator, wire, lamp, (and a bunch of other stuff); _et voilà_, success, profit, fame, and an electrically-lit planet. My attempted understanding is of mind and flesh and the kind of genius and ambition and a willingness to plod as needed at work and at working that's perhaps not so widely comprehended nowadays.
Of course, your use of "included" make my post moot, eh? And I suspect that unlike me the smart people here understood the background right off the bat.
Sorry. "complete hogwash" kinda struck me sideways.
Thanks for the link.
Okay, I read. I followed the included link http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html and read it, then spent another couple of hours reading more from a few of the links included in that article. At first blush there is some seriously horrifying stuff going on, much of it masquerading under the simplified banner of "think of the children"-style of emotional appeal but whose ultimate goal, and real appeal to the powers that be, is ultimately profit and control. Then it gets worse, IMO.
To me the warning of the dictum latterly attributed to Lord Acton (?) of "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." applies. [I suspect that that thought precedes written language.] If the power exists, it will be used - similar to yet farther reaching than "The 400" effectively control the US economy concomitant with its realpolitik. (I came across an article yesterday about researchers using systems analysis to determine that 1381 multi-nationals effectively controlled the planet's economy, all sans benefit of conspiracy but rather merely efficiency, but cannot find the link just now - science 2.0, perhaps; it was interesting reading, and it doesn't require a tin-foil hat to accord it some credence.)
So, if I have this a-rightly: TC does not, or will not, eventually, require more than a CPU and, at root, certain few government keys. It will be independent of OS, BIOS or UEFI, separate on-board chip, application code, what have you. Non-TC CPUs will be isolated to unconnected hobbyists; there will be no Internet functionality independent of approved TC CPUs. By extension, it will not even be possible to have private electronic-based communication amongst "ourselves" using PGP and such, because non-TC comms will not make it through any of various Internet intermediaries. And I suggest not counting on darknet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing_Group gives a quick look at the initial industry players.
At the moment, so far as I know, volume production of chips is not a trivial or easily hidden activity; further, absent genuine keys or imaginary effective counterfeits, independent and free electronic interaction will not be possible. If you think that's a gloomy overthink, it was worse before I read the comics section.
What with proprietary formats and such, DRM, DMCA, etc. - tip of the iceberg and all that - I see this as a snowball rolling down an endless slope such that the only hope is that "the" singularity when it may happen might prove a more benign overlord or, perhaps, even companion of sorts. Meanwhile, let's continue to have fun. It's only cradle to grave, right?
On the off-chance anyone got this far: sorry for the long post. I first read on some of this back in the early 90's, and found it to be sufficiently scary and depressing then after doing a bit of extrapolation.
Any smart people with non-smart-ass ideas on how to deal with this? I'm a bit more than curious, even 'tho, at 64, it may not be personally relevant for long.
Interesting thing for them to try. Kinda similar to the airships in Soft Targets by Dean Ing.
Um, last I heard, didn't George Bush decide to sell of the bulk of the US helium stockpile, at below market rates?
Could it simply be a method for getting the names of malcontents?
Why can't we have politicians who can think rationally?
Because rational people don't run for office?
Or, perhaps, once elected they become irrational due to the job.
The one thing I didn't see in the over one hundred comments I read:
Happy Birthday, Ubuntu.
Just for grins you may want to check out a nifty distro named Zorin. It gives you a choice of desktop appearances to boot to including XP and Win7.
At least LSD worked as advertised.
Can't say as I recommend coffee as a sinus cleaner. At least the keyboard wasn't in my lap.
Yep, thanks, that should time out about right, God willin' and the creek don't rise.
"and then there is the ultimate question of what the fuck i am going to do if i grab a powerful processor"
Edge case: there is little I'm still able to do to contribute anything useful anywhere or to anyone. Therefore, six years ago I started crunching for worldcommunitygrid - I figured it was at least useful, and potentially very useful, provided I had a place to live, had a computer, and could pay the electric and ISP bills.
I got a six-core processor (1090T, up from a 9350e) in June. Using three cores I've been able to crunch since then more than the previous five and a half years. So for me the question is a no-brainer. It helps that I've still got three cores left for normal stuff, games, and virtual machines.
Presuming I can save enough from what little is left over from Social Security after bills, I look forward to putting together an eight-core system.
Regarding overall price/performance/power consumption after reading through five comparisons, yes, I'm a bit disappointed with FX, but not enough to preclude me from using it in my next build.
Thank you for the information and the links. I found the discussion following Corbett's post at lwn.net enlightening. I'll be trying out Jupiter on my laptop.
The Redlands link is a nice bit of history. Thanks.
It's a developers' preview. Install as a vm, give it a couple of cores, a gig or so of memory, maybe 20gig dynamic hard drive. Have fun, explore. Unless you're a developer, waste time.
Right on. The reflexive riposte of "stupid users" is often wrong-headed. For decades personal computers have been marketed as appliances. Expecting the general user to become hip to HIPS, AV, doing updates to their piece-meal systems (OS, drivers, apps, etc.) is unrealistic. Any admonishments or usage tips regarding security or safe surfing presented to the customer are, I suspect, merely things to be clicked through by them to get to doing whatever it is they wish to do.
Trying to convince people even to do updates often as not falls on deaf ears. For instance, among other things, I've recommended to Windows users for years to use Secunia - first their on-line scanner and now their excellent PSI. It helps, but only if people take heed or let me install it.
The suggestion for using a virtual machine for browsing (apart from licensing issues) is a good one, but who amongst the general user population will even be aware of this, let alone do so?
Expecting general users to educate themselves to become proficient in doing their own security and incorporate best practice is little more than an elitist cop-out. Unless and until suppliers put useful security at least on par with marketing's out-the-door bling, I don't see the situation improving. Transparent updates for all software, provided the vendor is trusted, the update is verified to work (without regressions) and old versions verified as being completely removed might help. I'm not holding my breath.
Hells bells, even with the big improvements in fllters, we've managed to do little to even remove spam from the networks this past decade.
[In the hope of saving some the trouble of typing, I've been using Linux as my main OS for several years; all Windows installs are as virtual machines.]
There had better be an over-arching demonstrable benefit - because any invasion of privacy is just that: an _invasion_ of privacy.
c.f. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html
wherein Warren and Brandeis refer to 'what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone"'
As for the lie told by the ISTHA, it's despicable, yet nowadays such behaviour by government and corporations has become ubiquitous and otherwise unremarkable.