Not 'notepad', it's pathetic. Small files, lame text support, etc.
But, I do use an editor for taking most of my notes.
Editpad and UltraEdit are the two editors that I use. Editpad is very lightweight, and UltraEdit is very full featured. Editpad is a basic text editor that sits in the windows system tray and handles multiple documents open at once. UltraEdit does everything... unlimited size files, hex editing, syntax highlighting, etc. And it too sits in the system tray. Both have a small memory footprint and are reasonable to always have open, switching to with a hotkey.
Being able to always have an editor just a keystroke away make 'scribbles' easy.
I also threw a link to my reminder.txt file, which contains all my apointments, etc, into the startup folder, so when I start the computer it pops up. Unobtrusive, but easy.
Probably the biggest hurdle for electronic notetaking is having to reach for the mouse, go through the menus, open the program, type the note, and then save it with a good enough name that you can find it next time. My setup removes most of those problems.
1> Be clueless and avoid using technological means of viewing storage.
That certainly is one reason. A lot of people I've worked with have been very reluctant to try new ways of doing things.
2>Avoid unreliable storage or retrieval mechanisms, which lead to lost data, lost time, and lost profits or enjoyment.
This is a valid reason. I tend to save local copies of my favorite web content (not paper copies, just on disk) because of the unreliability of the whole system. If the net connect between my computer and theirs is down, etc... Until the reliability is a lot better, I will probably have local copies of the important things.
And then there's the issue of trusting that it won't change. With something large like the Jargon File, or other mirrored and well respected work, you can be fairly sure it won't go missing overnight, or be censored because someone's boss objected to the dirty entries, etc. But how about with a list of your favorite jokes, or a good news article (most sites only keep them for a while). It's like giving everyone scissors and black felt pens and letting them run around in your library.
3>Take it with them. [snip]
This will only get better. Some of the ebooks are already pretty good. When they've been out long enough to iron out some design issues (good ways to store scribbles and annotations, good interface with and without a pen, etc.) and have more storage, you'll probably see a lot of people using them.
A light (1.5kg or under) ebook would significantly lower the threshhold where paper becomes more convenient. Especially if it was also a general purpose notebook computer and maybe cellphone/pager all in one.
Do you see any potential problems with malicious product forking, where a company would leverage a large market share and a modified GNU/Linux with some proprietary software, to try to control the whole community.
(An example, though I apologize for the MS-paranoia, is MS making a MS-Linux which would be compatible with some new proprietary NT networking/file-system, setting everyone up to use only MS-Linux in situations where it needs to coexist with NT, but controlling the Linux-derivative through seperate, yet required proprietary modules.)
If so, do you see using the Linux trademark that Linus has control over, to allow marketing of 'Linux' derivatives and software only if they follow certain free-software rules. (Not making the basic OS depend on any proprietary or patented code, etc...)
We could end up in the future, if this happens, with many patented protocols used on GNU/Linux derivatives, and many distributions like Debian being basically shut-down because they couldn't even reverse engineer the protocols, and won't release a non-totally open distro.
If crypto helps someone without harming society, then it helps society.
Society is a collection of people, and this group as a whole is helped if individuals are happier.
Crypto has MANY non-evil uses. Encrypting credit cards numbers, or using e-cash is one. It doesn't do anything new, just enables us to conduct financial transactions over insecure connections.
Crypto can also help in keeping bids secret, promoting fair play in bidding for contracts, something that is often messed with by organized crime.
Crypto for unions allows them to hold discussions about striking without the management catching on and firing or punishing the ringleaders. (Something that happens a lot, even though it's against the law.)
Your argument against crypto is as spurious as it would be if you were trying to ban Rider trucks with Timothy McVeigh as your case.
You know, it doesn't sound much different than rogers@home cable. Except that we get 1 static IP.
btw, when I was helping a friend install ADSL he didn't get a static IP, it changed twice in a week (he shuts his computer off). Is the static IP thing from your ISP, or from BC Tel?
And only 2.5Mbit downloads? I'm sorry... I get 340k/s on a fairly regular basis (from large sites.)
I pay $45 for the cable modem, There is a cost for basic cable, but my roommate gets cable anyway, so it doesn't cost me anything. The $5 difference between the two I can live it.
There aren't actually any server restrictions from on @home (in our area). I asked the help desk before setting up my own ftp and web servers and they said as long as I don't attract attention by having a warez site running at full bandwidth all the time, they don't care.
Oh yeah, I got the 10/100 card free with my free install. Lucked out and was able to talk the sales rep into a free install by dropping hints about ADSL.
Right. And I've been around on the net since the 80s and should know that. Brain fade.
But, I'd doubt that many of the companies out there know it. So if they were squatting I doubt they'd throw up any services.
And that was really my point. If you don't use a domain name, except to point it at another, or display a few messages about how it's for sale, or is being held to deny the use to other, then you shouldn't be able to keep it.
Decent (short) domain names are in fairly short supply. The FCC wouldn't let a company reserve part of the spectrum and then not use it, so why should we let people reserve part of our finite resources and then not make use of them? Especially when it's not like they're in process of gearing up to use those resources, but are holding them just to keep someone else from making use of them. How anti-competetive can you get?
I should have specified... The scanner would skip over that instance of them. All 'naughty' keywords that are all in a block. The rest of the message would then be scanned like normal.
This is what is done with webpages that are keywording. It used to be that comments, black on black text, etc, would be recorded by the search engines. Now they ignore any text that (as best they can determine) won't get printed and simply catalog the rest.
Admittedly, a terrorist could use echelon keywords as code words, 'nuclear = carbomb' etc, and write a coded message in the Echelon block, but then they could just as easily use 'chocolate = carbomb' and not even be noticed.
I don't think they'd miss anything by screening out obvious keyword blocks.
But, I doubt they actually keyword scan this way. I think they'd narrow their target a bit first instead of examining everything on the net.
Rather than having a million different DNS servers with slightly different databases, trying to do that a search engine should be doing, leave it to seach engines.
To fix the domain camping problem, simply remove domain names. Or make a much easier way to find a site.
After all, if you could type "Ford motors" into a browser and get to the ford site, or at worst, have a list of matches, then what does it matter if the URL is ford.com or fordmotorswebsite.com?
By implementing something like a cross between white and yellow pages, but globally, we could remove the primary importance from DNs.
It's unfair that there can only be one books.com, like anyone getting a new account now, if they want bob@isp.com, they'll end up with bob231@isp.com. And this will only get worse. Are our children going to thank us when they get bob2.129e17@isp.com?
Mirabilis handles this properly with ICQ.
You can use any name you like, no matter how many other people use it. What distinguishes you is the unique number you get. You can give your friends this number, or they can look you up by providing your nickname and other details to narrow the list if it's too long.
The same thing should work for domain names. There should be a central repository of listings associated with each company registering on the net. They'd get to specify a few keywords, and their name, and maybe an alternate form or two. Then when you look for IBM you don't type ibm.com, or internat(...).com, you simply type "ibm computers". Or you type "computers" and then narrow the yellow-pages listing down to until you find it, etc.
Then, like phone numbers, the actual string that identifies your location becomes mostly unimportant.
They censored nigger in the topic because "n-word" is a lot more accurate. After all, the story was posted here not because of race relations, but because someone was trying to prevent someone else from saying something unPC.
And censorship on the net, or even attempts to censor, are geek news.
I doubt they censored the word to be more PC, but rather to sarcastically take a jab at the NAACP for their uber-PC tactics.
You know, if you mark them as Echelon keywords, and use them all in a row like that, any decent scanner will pass right over them. I mean, they would simply ignore any keywords within a few words of "echelon" after the five-hundredth unrelated post made it to human eyes.
And this string of keywords... it's like people used to do to get noticed by search engines. And now all search engines filter out blatant keywording like that.
To really fool them, post a paragraph or so talking about one of those 'forbidden' topics. Write a text generator that makes correct-sounding paragraphs out of sentence snippets, but randomized their order to prevent them filtering out known junk-text. Then rotate your sig all the time.
Only that way will you actually bug some snoop. Assuming they actually bother to keyword scan internet traffic.
If websites had to have unique content, then the NAACP would at least have to make a half-assed attempt to use nigger.com, if only as a repository of anti-defamation information.
It would be hard to enforce, but if all domain names had to have unique content, or be eligible for an auction perhaps, if someone else wanted the domain, then it would give people some recourse.
And this thread is correct. It's no better for the NAACP to squat on a domain name than for George Bush, or some lame name-reseller...
12 Midnight corresponds to 0:00, which is the start of the new day, so 12 midnight is 12 am.
Unlike with years, time counting starts with zero, because it's counting elapsed time. 0:00 doesn't mean the 0th second, it means that 0 full seconds have elapsed since the start of the day.
Thus, because counting starts at 0, it's 0 -> 11:59 instead of 0:01 -> 12:00... Thus, if noon:01 is pm, then noon is pm too, because that cycle starts at zero.
They should have had a young woman, perhaps an 18yo who looked very young, and like the girl in the picture that was sent to him, waiting.
That way they'd know from how he acted when he saw her if he was trying to have sex with her, or actually thought she was older, and that he did want to have sex, but thought it was someone older with the same fantasies he had.
If he'd been met by someone playing the 13yo who he had talked to, perhaps he'd have shown through his actions that he didn't really intend there to be a young girl, or maybe he'd have tried to take her to a nearby hotel. Let him prove their case for them. The fact that they arrested him before he had a chance to do anything seems to suggest that they didn't think he would.
And the kiddy porn shouldn't really be relevant. It shows that he had a fantasy about kiddy porn, but that's obvious from what he's fantisizing about. It doesn't show that he would actually do anything about it. It's a seperate crime, and he should be liable for any appropriate penalties, but it shouldn't be evidence against him at his trial.
btw, I think he has a good case with the "I was sure she was just roleplaying" thing, mainly due to the way the FBI mishandled this. They were in a dad&daughter sex channel, even if that doesn't equal entrapment (He saw it and that gave him the idea he wouldn't have otherwise had.) it would indicate that the person on the other end wasn't really a 13yo girl. Then when they arrested him just for showing up, without trying to find out what he'd do if she did appear to be 13...
I'm pretty sure the guy is a bit of a sleeze, but I'm unwilling to say he deserves a long prison sentence without them doing more to prove his guilt.
Um, I don't exactly recall a waiver being signed by the ones being herded into the slaughter house either.
Is consent the only issue you have against animal sex? I mean, if you trained a sheep (with food treats) that being sex0r3d was good, and it 'consented' (didn't need to be held down) would beastiality suddenly be okay?
No, I'm not an animal rights freak, and I enjoy a good steak. I just thought it was funny that you didn't like animal sex, simply because they can't consent. (Like, he lusts after them, but except for ones trained to sign, he's too polite to simply assume that they want him.:)
Re:Decoding the binary - Yet Another Post (YAP)
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Beyond, always beyond. If I'm going to write a program to do it (and I'm *not* going to do it with the calculator) then I'm going to write one that I can reuse.
And once I've done that, I might as well document it so that beginners can follow it. I know how nice examples were when I learned to program.
Re:Geek Girl reveals where all the Geek Girls are
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Not suprised you find a lot of lesbians on the net. Being one you'd tend to notice.
And yes, I would guess that there are more lesbians on the net than in general population. And more gay men, and more goths, and more chess-club members, etc. Pretty well anyone demographic that wouldn't fit in well with 'normal' society will be found in higher numbers on the net (except maybe distressed Amish teens) because they can safely find similar people, or can just not mention it. It's a safe haven.
The problem people have finding partners, in geek society or not, is that they tend to fixate. Minx, Killcreek, Iambe, and Nitrozac have thousands of guys lusting after them simply because they're famous. The chance they'll pick any one guy is slim, let alone some guy sending unsolicited email.
The trick is to leave yourself open. There may be more men than women on the net so far, but there are still enough women out there that you can probably find a very close match, but don't get too focused on one person or small set of people. Not only do people chase one person to the exclusion of others, but they tend to chase impossible relationships.
You show a bit of this tunnel-vision with the 'Linus Lust'. Linus is a great guy, but there are many programmers out there as brilliant as him. I know several.
This wisdom about being unable to get a geek girl if you are unable to get a girl period is... partially true.
Geek women aren't going to magically overlook your quirk about not bathing, or how you rudely interupt in conversations when you want to show your knowledge of trivia any more than non-geek girls, or for that matter, friends in general. But, geek girls are probably going to be easier for many of us because we don't do the non-geek things as much, like going to clubs, or playing sports. (Yes, I know some of you do, but on average...) So geek girls are probably going to have similar interests and this helps a lot.
The subject of relationships is a bit too long to really go into here, and unfortunately it's like zen. You only get it when you stop striving for it, and only realized you've got it years afterwords.
You know, it's hard to see how post #4 can be redundant... I mean, it could be offtopic, or a flame, or uninteresting, but it would be a stretch to believe that it could be redundant. Perhaps if it was message #104.
Maybe moderators need to view messages with a thresh of -1, in newest to oldest order, without any other scores listed. (To fix multiple problems, not just the one that caused this...)
Decoding the binary - Yet Another Post (YAP)
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I know we all need to prove our geekiness by writing a program to do this, but I decided to write something that will not only work, but that beginners could follow.
So, I wrote a C program, commented the hell out of it, and compiled it for msdos platforms (As such, it might not like LFNs, sorry, best I can do when not on a Win/DOS box right now).
I saw the perl that was already here, and the C, but I thought this would be better because 1) it works 2) it isn't obfuscated to make it shorter, and 3) everything is commented.
The C code *is* a lot longer than the perl, but it's a lot more robust than what was posted here. It'll read from a file, prints a help message, prints usable error messages, has more robust parsing, etc.
Anyways, if you were baffled by the write-only perl posted earlier, read the code to this, it should be a bit easier to understand.
I won't include the answers, I'll assume you can find them (they're posted in this thread a fair bit.) if you want a spoiler, or will run the programs (this, or another) to get them.
As long as I'm linking to files, I'll mention some of the other files on my page.
Flashlight Quake2 - An x86-Windows Q2 mod. You run around in the dark with a flashlight and shoot your friends. Docs included.
Fire - A DOS/Windows program, basically a screensaver. It's 1238 bytes, you perl size snobs try that!:)
Q2 Screenshot of a bug in the lighting code. I think it happens when a texture is stretched or compacted.
Source and Executable for a program to decrypt WSFTP passwords. I wrote it when I switch to using BulletProof FTP.
swl2pcx.zip - A program to convert SiN (The Q2-engine game) texture files to PCX format. I used it for Blue's contest to find the Blue's News easter-egg texture in the game. Unfortunately, someone beat me to it. If you have the game, try this, there's some really funny stuff hidden in there. (You need to unpack the files first, use a standard.PAK explorer.)
Well, it's a good way to communicate. Not even the OTP, but posts to usenet.
If you want to send a message to a spy somewhere with internet access you could just post the message to alt.test, or some other group where it wouldn't get cancelled as spam or offtopic. Then the spy DLs it and runs it through PGP...
It would be a lot less suspicious for a tech-stealing spy working at a megacorp that builds warplane for the government to be seen spending time on the computer reading usenet news than listening to a shortwave radio, jotting down numbers.
The messages would be easily filterable by the bad guys if they clued in, but there are many ways you could sneak something like this past them...
As was mentioned, on-topic posts on a botany list containing a hidden code. Depending on the length of the code message, this sort of thing could be done without changing the message much.
Smart cards with a serial port could revolutionize OTP systems. Simply burn a few hundred 1k blocks of OTP onto the card, then as each is used, it self destructs... Smart cards are already being built that do this if tampered with. The spy simply sends the message to the pad and enters a PIN, the card checks the next block to see if the code will decrypt the first two bytes of known plaintext (not a problem because it's not a cipher, knowing part of it doesn't help to know the rest) and if so, decrypts, sends the message back, and triggers some self destruct that burns out the rom in that block.
With this, spies could have what looks to be a regular telephone smartcard (in the EU at least) and might even function as one, but when used in a different way, laid on a reader (which would be fairly easy to build, needing only 3-4 wires) and sent an activation code (that the spy would memorize) they would start to function as OTP code units until unplugged, when they were revert to being phone cards. And perhaps, to help the spy, they could even be unlimited phone cards.:)
Re:About "tapping" the Internet...
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No, I'm not missing it. I agree about victimless crimes, and the futility of trying to stop them, etc.
But, the place to stop these laws is with the legislators, not the police.
The police are given a job and need to be able to do it. Denying them the ability to stop victimless crimes which are nonetheless crimes hurts their ability to stop 'real' crime.
If the police can't even manage to stop teens selling drugs, it doesn't set a good example and might lead to those teens breaking other laws because they think the police are incompotent. This isn't a good situation. I agree we need to stop this, but I think we need to stop the law that makes the police go to these lengths for stupid crimes instead of making them do it and then not letting them.
I think the future of politics isn't letting us tell the representative what we want, or in letting us choose between representatives more easily, but in getting rid of the representatives.
For most issues we don't really need a representative. Most of their time is spent meeting with special interest groups, campaigning, etc. It wouldn't be hard to keep as up to date on the issues as the average representative.
Electronic voting, either via telephone or the internet would let people directly vote on the issues.
Being able to proxy votes to other people (anonymously, and without a direct count available to the proxy-holer, to prevent forced proxying) would get past the issue of having too many issues to vote on. With a little setup you could proxy everything, everything except certain issues, or everything related to certain issues. For instance, you could vote internet, encryption, and constitutional issues yourself, proxy IP law issues to the FSF or ESR, proxy drug issues to the ACLU, etc.
A test, similar to that talked about in the recent electronic polling thread, where you had to read a text about current issues and answer a certain number of fact-based questions correctly (or take another test, until you finally learned enough about the issues to score high enough) before being able to vote would stop people from simply endlessly proxying their votes to someone without actually participating in the process at all.
To be eligible to receive proxies, a person would have to make their votes public, as well as details as to who they proxy certain issues to. This would let you choose someone to represent you without having to trust them to not change their mind, and without having to wonder about secret deals.
Perhaps people voting proxies could even vote a day early to give news agencies a chance to review their votes and warn people who might be unhappy with their decision to revoke proxies before the final counting.
The drawback of this system is that voting blocks would be fairly powerful. The religious right wouldn't have to count on members going to polls to vote correctly when they could easily get them to proxy votes on the desired issue. But this also works in favour of the moderates. It's easier to bus 100k fanatics to the polls, but how about the pro-choicers who aren't so fanatical? Now they can vote their choice on the issues without compromising on an otherwise lousy representative, or missing work, etc.
Some public figures would be very powerful. Oprah wields a Slashdot effect when it comes to directing people to books. She'd probably have a similarly huge block of proxies. This is countered by the fact that 1) politicians are already votes in based on their hair as much as their ideas, and 2) proxies could be withdrawn if abused.
To prevent voting in of nightmare laws, constitutional ammendments could require a higher percentage of votes. To raise or lower a tax could requrie 51%. To modify the constitution could require 85% and a similar ratification after a 1y cooling-off period before being implemented. This system of higher requirements and cooling off periods could be used to stabalize policy where flip-flopping would be harmful, such as in building a new highway (start it, spend a lot, stop it, rip it up, start it again, etc) or foreign policy.
To similarly provide consistency, the positions now filled with elected politicians, such as the senate, and various senate commitees, which are deemed to be useful (public debate on CSPAN would be more useful if people had a stake in watching it and controlling the political futures of the people arguing) could be filled by selecting the people with the most proxies over the last however many months. Similarly a commitee would be filled with the people with highest number of proxies on specific issues.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but why should we be happy simply letting our 'representatives' rule us more conveniently by letting us elect them on the net when we could go all the way and get rid of the representatives.
I think the future of politics isn't letting us tell the representative what we want, or in letting us choose between representatives more easily, but in getting rid of the representatives.
For most issues we don't really need a representative. Most of their time is spent meeting with special interest groups, campaigning, etc. It wouldn't be hard to keep as up to date on the issues as the average representative.
Electronic voting, either via telephone or the internet would let people directly vote on the issues.
Being able to proxy votes to other people (anonymously, and without a direct count available to the proxy-holer, to prevent forced proxying) would get past the issue of having too many issues to vote on. With a little setup you could proxy everything, everything except certain issues, or everything related to certain issues. For instance, you could vote internet, encryption, and constitutional issues yourself, proxy IP law issues to the FSF or ESR, proxy drug issues to the ACLU, etc.
A test, similar to that talked about in the recent electronic polling thread, where you had to read a text about current issues and answer a certain number of fact-based questions correctly (or take another test, until you finally learned enough about the issues to score high enough) before being able to vote would stop people from simply endlessly proxying their votes to someone without actually participating in the process at all.
To be eligible to receive proxies, a person would have to make their votes public, as well as details as to who they proxy certain issues to. This would let you choose someone to represent you without having to trust them to not change their mind, and without having to wonder about secret deals.
Perhaps people voting proxies could even vote a day early to give news agencies a chance to review their votes and warn people who might be unhappy with their decision to revoke proxies before the final counting.
The drawback of this system is that voting blocks would be fairly powerful. The religious right wouldn't have to count on members going to polls to vote correctly when they could easily get them to proxy votes on the desired issue. But this also works in favour of the moderates. It's easier to bus 100k fanatics to the polls, but how about the pro-choicers who aren't so fanatical? Now they can vote their choice on the issues without compromising on an otherwise lousy representative, or missing work, etc.
Some public figures would be very powerful. Oprah wields a Slashdot effect when it comes to directing people to books. She'd probably have a similarly huge block of proxies. This is countered by the fact that 1) politicians are already votes in based on their hair as much as their ideas, and 2) proxies could be withdrawn if abused.
To prevent voting in of nightmare laws, constitutional ammendments could require a higher percentage of votes. To raise or lower a tax could requrie 51%. To modify the constitution could require 85% and a similar ratification after a 1y cooling-off period before being implemented. This system of higher requirements and cooling off periods could be used to stabalize policy where flip-flopping would be harmful, such as in building a new highway (start it, spend a lot, stop it, rip it up, start it again, etc) or foreign policy.
To similarly provide consistency, the positions now filled with elected politicians, such as the senate, and various senate commitees, which are deemed to be useful (public debate on CSPAN would be more useful if people had a stake in watching it and controlling the political futures of the people arguing) could be filled by selecting the people with the most proxies over the last however many months. Similarly a commitee would be filled with the people with highest number of proxies on specific issues.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but why should we be happy simply letting our 'representatives' rules us more conveniently by letting us elect them on the net when we could go all the way and get rid of the representatives.
Re:About "tapping" the Internet...
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Perhaps.
But, as long as anti-drug laws exist, we can't go about making it harder for police to enforce them or we might as well be taking all their authority.
The way to fight this is to repeal the anti-drug laws, not cripple the law enforcement. If you take away their ability to uphold the laws because of bad laws, you make it harder for them to uphold 'good laws'.
I remember someone saying, but I can't remember who, Heinlein probably, that if you can't enforce a law, don't pass it, otherwise you just lessen your authority in eyes of the people who will wonder which other laws you're incapable of enforcing. (very rough paraphrase.)
So yes, the drug laws are pretty stupid, but we can't blame it on the cops, or handicap them because of it, or it hurts all of us.
>> Now, this a certified Very Bad Thing (tm), since German publishers are notoriously conservative and stuck-up. >> If you are German, don't flame me, I have very good German friends that I respect and care about -- thank you very much
> Oh, where have we heard that one before? I'm not racist, I have lots of black friends. God, you're transparent!
He did say that *publishers* were conservative. A country with hate-speech laws will tend to create more law-phobic publishers than one without.
As such, I wouldn't doubt that the publishers are conservative. I mean, if you do the same thing as everyone else, you're unlikely to get singled out for punishment.
Slashdot Mirror
Not 'notepad', it's pathetic. Small files, lame text support, etc.
But, I do use an editor for taking most of my notes.
Editpad and UltraEdit are the two editors that I use. Editpad is very lightweight, and UltraEdit is very full featured. Editpad is a basic text editor that sits in the windows system tray and handles multiple documents open at once. UltraEdit does everything... unlimited size files, hex editing, syntax highlighting, etc. And it too sits in the system tray. Both have a small memory footprint and are reasonable to always have open, switching to with a hotkey.
Being able to always have an editor just a keystroke away make 'scribbles' easy.
I also threw a link to my reminder.txt file, which contains all my apointments, etc, into the startup folder, so when I start the computer it pops up. Unobtrusive, but easy.
Probably the biggest hurdle for electronic notetaking is having to reach for the mouse, go through the menus, open the program, type the note, and then save it with a good enough name that you can find it next time. My setup removes most of those problems.
1> Be clueless and avoid using technological means of viewing storage.
That certainly is one reason. A lot of people I've worked with have been very reluctant to try new ways of doing things.
2>Avoid unreliable storage or retrieval mechanisms, which lead to lost data, lost time, and lost profits or enjoyment.
This is a valid reason. I tend to save local copies of my favorite web content (not paper copies, just on disk) because of the unreliability of the whole system. If the net connect between my computer and theirs is down, etc... Until the reliability is a lot better, I will probably have local copies of the important things.
And then there's the issue of trusting that it won't change. With something large like the Jargon File, or other mirrored and well respected work, you can be fairly sure it won't go missing overnight, or be censored because someone's boss objected to the dirty entries, etc. But how about with a list of your favorite jokes, or a good news article (most sites only keep them for a while). It's like giving everyone scissors and black felt pens and letting them run around in your library.
3>Take it with them. [snip]
This will only get better. Some of the ebooks are already pretty good. When they've been out long enough to iron out some design issues (good ways to store scribbles and annotations, good interface with and without a pen, etc.) and have more storage, you'll probably see a lot of people using them.
A light (1.5kg or under) ebook would significantly lower the threshhold where paper becomes more convenient. Especially if it was also a general purpose notebook computer and maybe cellphone/pager all in one.
Do you see any potential problems with malicious product forking, where a company would leverage a large market share and a modified GNU/Linux with some proprietary software, to try to control the whole community.
(An example, though I apologize for the MS-paranoia, is MS making a MS-Linux which would be compatible with some new proprietary NT networking/file-system, setting everyone up to use only MS-Linux in situations where it needs to coexist with NT, but controlling the Linux-derivative through seperate, yet required proprietary modules.)
If so, do you see using the Linux trademark that Linus has control over, to allow marketing of 'Linux' derivatives and software only if they follow certain free-software rules. (Not making the basic OS depend on any proprietary or patented code, etc...)
We could end up in the future, if this happens, with many patented protocols used on GNU/Linux derivatives, and many distributions like Debian being basically shut-down because they couldn't even reverse engineer the protocols, and won't release a non-totally open distro.
Not at all true.
If crypto helps someone without harming society, then it helps society.
Society is a collection of people, and this group as a whole is helped if individuals are happier.
Crypto has MANY non-evil uses. Encrypting credit cards numbers, or using e-cash is one. It doesn't do anything new, just enables us to conduct financial transactions over insecure connections.
Crypto can also help in keeping bids secret, promoting fair play in bidding for contracts, something that is often messed with by organized crime.
Crypto for unions allows them to hold discussions about striking without the management catching on and firing or punishing the ringleaders. (Something that happens a lot, even though it's against the law.)
Your argument against crypto is as spurious as it would be if you were trying to ban Rider trucks with Timothy McVeigh as your case.
Converge this!
I was just waiting for that AC who used to say "Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!!" in *every* thread. For once, he'd be on topic. Mostly. :)
btw, when I was helping a friend install ADSL he didn't get a static IP, it changed twice in a week (he shuts his computer off). Is the static IP thing from your ISP, or from BC Tel?
And only 2.5Mbit downloads? I'm sorry... I get 340k/s on a fairly regular basis (from large sites.)
I pay $45 for the cable modem, There is a cost for basic cable, but my roommate gets cable anyway, so it doesn't cost me anything. The $5 difference between the two I can live it.
There aren't actually any server restrictions from on @home (in our area). I asked the help desk before setting up my own ftp and web servers and they said as long as I don't attract attention by having a warez site running at full bandwidth all the time, they don't care.
A screenshot you might enjoy.
Oh yeah, I got the 10/100 card free with my free install. Lucked out and was able to talk the sales rep into a free install by dropping hints about ADSL.
Right. And I've been around on the net since the 80s and should know that. Brain fade.
But, I'd doubt that many of the companies out there know it. So if they were squatting I doubt they'd throw up any services.
And that was really my point. If you don't use a domain name, except to point it at another, or display a few messages about how it's for sale, or is being held to deny the use to other, then you shouldn't be able to keep it.
Decent (short) domain names are in fairly short supply. The FCC wouldn't let a company reserve part of the spectrum and then not use it, so why should we let people reserve part of our finite resources and then not make use of them? Especially when it's not like they're in process of gearing up to use those resources, but are holding them just to keep someone else from making use of them. How anti-competetive can you get?
I should have specified... The scanner would skip over that instance of them. All 'naughty' keywords that are all in a block. The rest of the message would then be scanned like normal.
This is what is done with webpages that are keywording. It used to be that comments, black on black text, etc, would be recorded by the search engines. Now they ignore any text that (as best they can determine) won't get printed and simply catalog the rest.
Admittedly, a terrorist could use echelon keywords as code words, 'nuclear = carbomb' etc, and write a coded message in the Echelon block, but then they could just as easily use 'chocolate = carbomb' and not even be noticed.
I don't think they'd miss anything by screening out obvious keyword blocks.
But, I doubt they actually keyword scan this way. I think they'd narrow their target a bit first instead of examining everything on the net.
There is a better way.
Rather than having a million different DNS servers with slightly different databases, trying to do that a search engine should be doing, leave it to seach engines.
To fix the domain camping problem, simply remove domain names. Or make a much easier way to find a site.
After all, if you could type "Ford motors" into a browser and get to the ford site, or at worst, have a list of matches, then what does it matter if the URL is ford.com or fordmotorswebsite.com?
By implementing something like a cross between white and yellow pages, but globally, we could remove the primary importance from DNs.
It's unfair that there can only be one books.com, like anyone getting a new account now, if they want bob@isp.com, they'll end up with bob231@isp.com. And this will only get worse. Are our children going to thank us when they get bob2.129e17@isp.com?
Mirabilis handles this properly with ICQ.
You can use any name you like, no matter how many other people use it. What distinguishes you is the unique number you get. You can give your friends this number, or they can look you up by providing your nickname and other details to narrow the list if it's too long.
The same thing should work for domain names. There should be a central repository of listings associated with each company registering on the net. They'd get to specify a few keywords, and their name, and maybe an alternate form or two. Then when you look for IBM you don't type ibm.com, or internat(...).com, you simply type "ibm computers". Or you type "computers" and then narrow the yellow-pages listing down to until you find it, etc.
Then, like phone numbers, the actual string that identifies your location becomes mostly unimportant.
They censored nigger in the topic because "n-word" is a lot more accurate. After all, the story was posted here not because of race relations, but because someone was trying to prevent someone else from saying something unPC.
And censorship on the net, or even attempts to censor, are geek news.
I doubt they censored the word to be more PC, but rather to sarcastically take a jab at the NAACP for their uber-PC tactics.
You know, if you mark them as Echelon keywords, and use them all in a row like that, any decent scanner will pass right over them. I mean, they would simply ignore any keywords within a few words of "echelon" after the five-hundredth unrelated post made it to human eyes.
And this string of keywords... it's like people used to do to get noticed by search engines. And now all search engines filter out blatant keywording like that.
To really fool them, post a paragraph or so talking about one of those 'forbidden' topics. Write a text generator that makes correct-sounding paragraphs out of sentence snippets, but randomized their order to prevent them filtering out known junk-text. Then rotate your sig all the time.
Only that way will you actually bug some snoop. Assuming they actually bother to keyword scan internet traffic.
If websites had to have unique content, then the NAACP would at least have to make a half-assed attempt to use nigger.com, if only as a repository of anti-defamation information.
It would be hard to enforce, but if all domain names had to have unique content, or be eligible for an auction perhaps, if someone else wanted the domain, then it would give people some recourse.
And this thread is correct. It's no better for the NAACP to squat on a domain name than for George Bush, or some lame name-reseller...
There's got to be a use it, or lose it, policy.
12 mid -> 0:00
12:01 am -> 0:01
...
12 noon -> 12:00
12:01 pm -> 12:01
12 Midnight corresponds to 0:00, which is the start of the new day, so 12 midnight is 12 am.
Unlike with years, time counting starts with zero, because it's counting elapsed time. 0:00 doesn't mean the 0th second, it means that 0 full seconds have elapsed since the start of the day.
Thus, because counting starts at 0, it's 0 -> 11:59 instead of 0:01 -> 12:00... Thus, if noon:01 is pm, then noon is pm too, because that cycle starts at zero.
They should have had a young woman, perhaps an 18yo who looked very young, and like the girl in the picture that was sent to him, waiting.
That way they'd know from how he acted when he saw her if he was trying to have sex with her, or actually thought she was older, and that he did want to have sex, but thought it was someone older with the same fantasies he had.
If he'd been met by someone playing the 13yo who he had talked to, perhaps he'd have shown through his actions that he didn't really intend there to be a young girl, or maybe he'd have tried to take her to a nearby hotel. Let him prove their case for them. The fact that they arrested him before he had a chance to do anything seems to suggest that they didn't think he would.
And the kiddy porn shouldn't really be relevant. It shows that he had a fantasy about kiddy porn, but that's obvious from what he's fantisizing about. It doesn't show that he would actually do anything about it. It's a seperate crime, and he should be liable for any appropriate penalties, but it shouldn't be evidence against him at his trial.
btw, I think he has a good case with the "I was sure she was just roleplaying" thing, mainly due to the way the FBI mishandled this. They were in a dad&daughter sex channel, even if that doesn't equal entrapment (He saw it and that gave him the idea he wouldn't have otherwise had.) it would indicate that the person on the other end wasn't really a 13yo girl. Then when they arrested him just for showing up, without trying to find out what he'd do if she did appear to be 13...
I'm pretty sure the guy is a bit of a sleeze, but I'm unwilling to say he deserves a long prison sentence without them doing more to prove his guilt.
Um, I don't exactly recall a waiver being signed by the ones being herded into the slaughter house either.
Is consent the only issue you have against animal sex? I mean, if you trained a sheep (with food treats) that being sex0r3d was good, and it 'consented' (didn't need to be held down) would beastiality suddenly be okay?
No, I'm not an animal rights freak, and I enjoy a good steak. I just thought it was funny that you didn't like animal sex, simply because they can't consent. (Like, he lusts after them, but except for ones trained to sign, he's too polite to simply assume that they want him.
Beyond, always beyond. If I'm going to write a program to do it (and I'm *not* going to do it with the calculator) then I'm going to write one that I can reuse.
And once I've done that, I might as well document it so that beginners can follow it. I know how nice examples were when I learned to program.
Not suprised you find a lot of lesbians on the net. Being one you'd tend to notice.
And yes, I would guess that there are more lesbians on the net than in general population. And more gay men, and more goths, and more chess-club members, etc. Pretty well anyone demographic that wouldn't fit in well with 'normal' society will be found in higher numbers on the net (except maybe distressed Amish teens) because they can safely find similar people, or can just not mention it. It's a safe haven.
The problem people have finding partners, in geek society or not, is that they tend to fixate. Minx, Killcreek, Iambe, and Nitrozac have thousands of guys lusting after them simply because they're famous. The chance they'll pick any one guy is slim, let alone some guy sending unsolicited email.
The trick is to leave yourself open. There may be more men than women on the net so far, but there are still enough women out there that you can probably find a very close match, but don't get too focused on one person or small set of people. Not only do people chase one person to the exclusion of others, but they tend to chase impossible relationships.
You show a bit of this tunnel-vision with the 'Linus Lust'. Linus is a great guy, but there are many programmers out there as brilliant as him. I know several.
This wisdom about being unable to get a geek girl if you are unable to get a girl period is... partially true.
Geek women aren't going to magically overlook your quirk about not bathing, or how you rudely interupt in conversations when you want to show your knowledge of trivia any more than non-geek girls, or for that matter, friends in general. But, geek girls are probably going to be easier for many of us because we don't do the non-geek things as much, like going to clubs, or playing sports. (Yes, I know some of you do, but on average...) So geek girls are probably going to have similar interests and this helps a lot.
The subject of relationships is a bit too long to really go into here, and unfortunately it's like zen. You only get it when you stop striving for it, and only realized you've got it years afterwords.
You know, it's hard to see how post #4 can be redundant... I mean, it could be offtopic, or a flame, or uninteresting, but it would be a stretch to believe that it could be redundant. Perhaps if it was message #104.
Maybe moderators need to view messages with a thresh of -1, in newest to oldest order, without any other scores listed. (To fix multiple problems, not just the one that caused this...)
So, I wrote a C program, commented the hell out of it, and compiled it for msdos platforms (As such, it might not like LFNs, sorry, best I can do when not on a Win/DOS box right now).
C Source Code
MSDOS Executable
Full Package with input files
I saw the perl that was already here, and the C, but I thought this would be better because 1) it works 2) it isn't obfuscated to make it shorter, and 3) everything is commented.
The C code *is* a lot longer than the perl, but it's a lot more robust than what was posted here. It'll read from a file, prints a help message, prints usable error messages, has more robust parsing, etc.
Anyways, if you were baffled by the write-only perl posted earlier, read the code to this, it should be a bit easier to understand.
I won't include the answers, I'll assume you can find them (they're posted in this thread a fair bit.) if you want a spoiler, or will run the programs (this, or another) to get them.
As long as I'm linking to files, I'll mention some of the other files on my page.
Flashlight Quake2 - An x86-Windows Q2 mod. You run around in the dark with a flashlight and shoot your friends. Docs included.
Fire - A DOS/Windows program, basically a screensaver. It's 1238 bytes, you perl size snobs try that! :)
Q2 Screenshot of a bug in the lighting code. I think it happens when a texture is stretched or compacted.
Source and Executable for a program to decrypt WSFTP passwords. I wrote it when I switch to using BulletProof FTP.
swl2pcx.zip - A program to convert SiN (The Q2-engine game) texture files to PCX format. I used it for Blue's contest to find the Blue's News easter-egg texture in the game. Unfortunately, someone beat me to it. If you have the game, try this, there's some really funny stuff hidden in there. (You need to unpack the files first, use a standard .PAK explorer.)
Well, it's a good way to communicate. Not even the OTP, but posts to usenet.
:)
If you want to send a message to a spy somewhere with internet access you could just post the message to alt.test, or some other group where it wouldn't get cancelled as spam or offtopic. Then the spy DLs it and runs it through PGP...
It would be a lot less suspicious for a tech-stealing spy working at a megacorp that builds warplane for the government to be seen spending time on the computer reading usenet news than listening to a shortwave radio, jotting down numbers.
The messages would be easily filterable by the bad guys if they clued in, but there are many ways you could sneak something like this past them...
As was mentioned, on-topic posts on a botany list containing a hidden code. Depending on the length of the code message, this sort of thing could be done without changing the message much.
Smart cards with a serial port could revolutionize OTP systems. Simply burn a few hundred 1k blocks of OTP onto the card, then as each is used, it self destructs... Smart cards are already being built that do this if tampered with. The spy simply sends the message to the pad and enters a PIN, the card checks the next block to see if the code will decrypt the first two bytes of known plaintext (not a problem because it's not a cipher, knowing part of it doesn't help to know the rest) and if so, decrypts, sends the message back, and triggers some self destruct that burns out the rom in that block.
With this, spies could have what looks to be a regular telephone smartcard (in the EU at least) and might even function as one, but when used in a different way, laid on a reader (which would be fairly easy to build, needing only 3-4 wires) and sent an activation code (that the spy would memorize) they would start to function as OTP code units until unplugged, when they were revert to being phone cards. And perhaps, to help the spy, they could even be unlimited phone cards.
No, I'm not missing it. I agree about victimless crimes, and the futility of trying to stop them, etc.
But, the place to stop these laws is with the legislators, not the police.
The police are given a job and need to be able to do it. Denying them the ability to stop victimless crimes which are nonetheless crimes hurts their ability to stop 'real' crime.
If the police can't even manage to stop teens selling drugs, it doesn't set a good example and might lead to those teens breaking other laws because they think the police are incompotent. This isn't a good situation. I agree we need to stop this, but I think we need to stop the law that makes the police go to these lengths for stupid crimes instead of making them do it and then not letting them.
I think the future of politics isn't letting us tell the representative what we want, or in letting us choose between representatives more easily, but in getting rid of the representatives.
For most issues we don't really need a representative. Most of their time is spent meeting with special interest groups, campaigning, etc. It wouldn't be hard to keep as up to date on the issues as the average representative.
Electronic voting, either via telephone or the internet would let people directly vote on the issues.
Being able to proxy votes to other people (anonymously, and without a direct count available to the proxy-holer, to prevent forced proxying) would get past the issue of having too many issues to vote on. With a little setup you could proxy everything, everything except certain issues, or everything related to certain issues. For instance, you could vote internet, encryption, and constitutional issues yourself, proxy IP law issues to the FSF or ESR, proxy drug issues to the ACLU, etc.
A test, similar to that talked about in the recent electronic polling thread, where you had to read a text about current issues and answer a certain number of fact-based questions correctly (or take another test, until you finally learned enough about the issues to score high enough) before being able to vote would stop people from simply endlessly proxying their votes to someone without actually participating in the process at all.
To be eligible to receive proxies, a person would have to make their votes public, as well as details as to who they proxy certain issues to. This would let you choose someone to represent you without having to trust them to not change their mind, and without having to wonder about secret deals.
Perhaps people voting proxies could even vote a day early to give news agencies a chance to review their votes and warn people who might be unhappy with their decision to revoke proxies before the final counting.
The drawback of this system is that voting blocks would be fairly powerful. The religious right wouldn't have to count on members going to polls to vote correctly when they could easily get them to proxy votes on the desired issue. But this also works in favour of the moderates. It's easier to bus 100k fanatics to the polls, but how about the pro-choicers who aren't so fanatical? Now they can vote their choice on the issues without compromising on an otherwise lousy representative, or missing work, etc.
Some public figures would be very powerful. Oprah wields a Slashdot effect when it comes to directing people to books. She'd probably have a similarly huge block of proxies. This is countered by the fact that 1) politicians are already votes in based on their hair as much as their ideas, and 2) proxies could be withdrawn if abused.
To prevent voting in of nightmare laws, constitutional ammendments could require a higher percentage of votes. To raise or lower a tax could requrie 51%. To modify the constitution could require 85% and a similar ratification after a 1y cooling-off period before being implemented. This system of higher requirements and cooling off periods could be used to stabalize policy where flip-flopping would be harmful, such as in building a new highway (start it, spend a lot, stop it, rip it up, start it again, etc) or foreign policy.
To similarly provide consistency, the positions now filled with elected politicians, such as the senate, and various senate commitees, which are deemed to be useful (public debate on CSPAN would be more useful if people had a stake in watching it and controlling the political futures of the people arguing) could be filled by selecting the people with the most proxies over the last however many months. Similarly a commitee would be filled with the people with highest number of proxies on specific issues.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but why should we be happy simply letting our 'representatives' rule us more conveniently by letting us elect them on the net when we could go all the way and get rid of the representatives.
I think the future of politics isn't letting us tell the representative what we want, or in letting us choose between representatives more easily, but in getting rid of the representatives.
For most issues we don't really need a representative. Most of their time is spent meeting with special interest groups, campaigning, etc. It wouldn't be hard to keep as up to date on the issues as the average representative.
Electronic voting, either via telephone or the internet would let people directly vote on the issues.
Being able to proxy votes to other people (anonymously, and without a direct count available to the proxy-holer, to prevent forced proxying) would get past the issue of having too many issues to vote on. With a little setup you could proxy everything, everything except certain issues, or everything related to certain issues. For instance, you could vote internet, encryption, and constitutional issues yourself, proxy IP law issues to the FSF or ESR, proxy drug issues to the ACLU, etc.
A test, similar to that talked about in the recent electronic polling thread, where you had to read a text about current issues and answer a certain number of fact-based questions correctly (or take another test, until you finally learned enough about the issues to score high enough) before being able to vote would stop people from simply endlessly proxying their votes to someone without actually participating in the process at all.
To be eligible to receive proxies, a person would have to make their votes public, as well as details as to who they proxy certain issues to. This would let you choose someone to represent you without having to trust them to not change their mind, and without having to wonder about secret deals.
Perhaps people voting proxies could even vote a day early to give news agencies a chance to review their votes and warn people who might be unhappy with their decision to revoke proxies before the final counting.
The drawback of this system is that voting blocks would be fairly powerful. The religious right wouldn't have to count on members going to polls to vote correctly when they could easily get them to proxy votes on the desired issue. But this also works in favour of the moderates. It's easier to bus 100k fanatics to the polls, but how about the pro-choicers who aren't so fanatical? Now they can vote their choice on the issues without compromising on an otherwise lousy representative, or missing work, etc.
Some public figures would be very powerful. Oprah wields a Slashdot effect when it comes to directing people to books. She'd probably have a similarly huge block of proxies. This is countered by the fact that 1) politicians are already votes in based on their hair as much as their ideas, and 2) proxies could be withdrawn if abused.
To prevent voting in of nightmare laws, constitutional ammendments could require a higher percentage of votes. To raise or lower a tax could requrie 51%. To modify the constitution could require 85% and a similar ratification after a 1y cooling-off period before being implemented. This system of higher requirements and cooling off periods could be used to stabalize policy where flip-flopping would be harmful, such as in building a new highway (start it, spend a lot, stop it, rip it up, start it again, etc) or foreign policy.
To similarly provide consistency, the positions now filled with elected politicians, such as the senate, and various senate commitees, which are deemed to be useful (public debate on CSPAN would be more useful if people had a stake in watching it and controlling the political futures of the people arguing) could be filled by selecting the people with the most proxies over the last however many months. Similarly a commitee would be filled with the people with highest number of proxies on specific issues.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but why should we be happy simply letting our 'representatives' rules us more conveniently by letting us elect them on the net when we could go all the way and get rid of the representatives.
Perhaps.
But, as long as anti-drug laws exist, we can't go about making it harder for police to enforce them or we might as well be taking all their authority.
The way to fight this is to repeal the anti-drug laws, not cripple the law enforcement. If you take away their ability to uphold the laws because of bad laws, you make it harder for them to uphold 'good laws'.
I remember someone saying, but I can't remember who, Heinlein probably, that if you can't enforce a law, don't pass it, otherwise you just lessen your authority in eyes of the people who will wonder which other laws you're incapable of enforcing. (very rough paraphrase.)
So yes, the drug laws are pretty stupid, but we can't blame it on the cops, or handicap them because of it, or it hurts all of us.
>> Now, this a certified Very Bad Thing (tm), since German publishers are notoriously conservative and stuck-up.
>> If you are German, don't flame me, I have very good German friends that I respect and care about -- thank you very much
> Oh, where have we heard that one before? I'm not racist, I have lots of black friends. God, you're transparent!
He did say that *publishers* were conservative. A country with hate-speech laws will tend to create more law-phobic publishers than one without.
As such, I wouldn't doubt that the publishers are conservative. I mean, if you do the same thing as everyone else, you're unlikely to get singled out for punishment.