The Mozilla project uses tinderbox. It comes in version 1 and 2 flavours, and is nowhere near mature (version 1 is more mature, I believe), but it is an open source framework that already exists. It is a tool for automating testing and reporting results. For running test cases you need something else, like DejaGNU.
You might also find that a lot of projects are using lighterweight scripts to automate testing. Since the software available isn't mature, a quick custom solution written in a scripting language (shell or Perl are good choices) might be a good solution.
What they mean is it has been four years since a remote root exploit was discovered in the default install of the currently released version. If you run extra services or an old version, that doesn't necessarily hold.
As for their honesty, take the local root exploit in the default install recently discovered as an example. The problem was a format string error, and it had been noted and fixed in CVS before the exploit was discovered, however it was not considered a security problem, so no patch was issued. Upon discovery of the problem a patch was immediately issued. Anyone who updated immediately wasn't vulnerable. However, because a hole was discovered in the current release, they considered it a local root exploit and updated the claim accordingly.
If they had issued a patch before any vulnerability was discovered, they would not have considered it a blemish on the record. The claim is valid, and the iterpretation is sensible, although perhaps it is not the best possible interpretation.
There is a set of services that government should clearly supply. Making laws is one of them. Sure, people should be able to draft and submit laws, but once there, they should be available for everyone. If a company drafts a law for profit, it should only be as a result of a comission from some other party, and once submitted it should clearly be available for everyone to examine.
This is one of those times that I am truly ashamed to be USian.
Of course it's better out of the box. I had disable ftpd and telnetd and sendmail from my last install. Windows doesn't automatically enable IIS. Of course, once you do the things to make the platform useful and secure, Linux is way more secure. But out of the box, I do agree that Windows is more secure.
I'm pretty sure that NT has a new implementation of the stack. It's seriously multithreaded, as revealed by those horrible benchmarks some time ago. That isnt't the case for any of the free unices that I know of. They may have used it for reference, or in some of their uniprocessor systems, though.
I think their fear of the GPL is more contamination. In most things, they are ahead of the curve, but they are probably scared that when they are playing catch up, or when they are reimplementing existing technologies, that they will accidentally borrow something GPL'ed, thus causing legal problems of unknown dimensions.
I fear that unmanned combat vehicles is going to further lead to the dehumanizing of war. The Vietnam war ended because even though we were winning by any rational measure, our people were on the ground getting shot up and experiencing firsthand the death and destruction that they were causing.
By the Gulf war, our soldiers weren't at risk, and we didn't have the firsthand accounts of the horrors of war. No one saw the bombs blowing people up. Without those things, there was a lot less resistance to the war.
With unmanned vehicles, the risk is even less, and the consequences are seen even less. No longer are pilots of attack aircraft at risk, and no longer do they even see the ground before firing, or the devestation left behind, even from a distance. The only people who see the casualties are the victims, and no one cares about them then. This is truly a horrible development.
Please, take a joke! I love Perl; I work with it for a living. If you think it is never confusing, you've obviously never used it for anything serious.
It's good that this is done in the open. I would be uncomfortable with genetic engineering being an open source discipline (ie. downloading a gene set and coding your own modifications to it then compiling it into a living creature), but I'd much rather have the knowledge out in the open than locked up for who knows what to happen to it.
To be a designer, you need talent and a portfolio. Forget education; the only thing it will get you is help in making your portfolio.
If you want to be a designer, you have to show something good. Not necessarily technologically impressive, but something with good gameplay and good ideas, preferably well implemented. A simple solo project is fine, but to be really impressive you probably want to get programmers and artists involved.
You might also try making some really neat and original mods and maps for existing games. Show off your design skills, and remember that as a designer you'll have other people to implement the stuff so long as you have a good vision to drive it.
As for game programming, look for the same things as any other programmer, but substitute game related stuff into the skills you show off. Do some graphics or AI projects. An education is a good thing here, but make sure to take applicable courses. Abstract math is pretty useless, but graphics, AI, UI and algorithms could all be useful. Again, though, experience is the key. Have some existing work to show off in your specialty.
Gaming houses don't have huge profit margins, and their problems are pretty simple. They aren't looking for the best or the brightest. They want people who may have limited abilities, but can solve their problems right away, without any training. To get hired, you have to be one of those people.
That would be so good. We've seen that there are places where the serial memory technology is a good thing. Maybe if someone with a bit more brains took over those patents, we could see either a new form of serial memory that was a less costly standard, or somoe cheaper RIMM's.
Right now there is no reason to compare RAMBUS vs. SDRAM on performance, because obviously you'll get better performance from SDRAM, since you can put in more than twice as much for the same amount of $$$.
Why is Havenco at risk? They're just another company out to make a buck. They don't care one way or the other about copyright.
Sure, they will provide service for copyright violators, even blatant ones. But for that to take place, there has to be someone with a business plan involving copyright violations. "Give other people's stuff away for free," sounds nice in theory, but you have to survive off of it also. To do that, you have to be pretty public, so why bother with stealth? Second, that means a lot of bandwidth, and for all Havenco is, they aren't a provider of cheap bandwidth.
I'm sure the fight will heat up, but I doubt Havenco has much stake in it, one way or the other.
My guess is that in that case, as well as in the drug transport scenario mentioned above, designing a controller to give this thing much accuracy is probably difficult. Even with a GPS, it's still pretty much at the mercy of the wind. Not to belittle their efforts, but "Europe" is a pretty big target compared to Area 51 or Vinny's backyard. I'd consider an RC job much more viable. With this thing, you could likely get some photos (not necessarily the ones you wanted), but to retreive them it would have to send a homing signal.
What would really be useful would be to use the best software tool for the job, considering issues like efficiency, ease of use, cost, maintainability, etc.. Obviously, it will sometimes be free software, and other times not be.
But I guess that would be too much work for a government. That would put too much responsibility in the hands of people with a chance of knowing what they are doing. Better to adopt a policy of all free software, or all Microsoft, or all Ada, and remove all freedom of choice. That way no one is able to make a good decision, err, I meant, no one is able to screw up.
I do have a question, though. Suppose (say for interoperability, because of evil closed document formats) the only possible word processor is MS Word. Now, Linux is a viable alternative to MS Windows, and hence mandated. Does the choice of MS Word mean they have to run MS Windows (pretend that there is no way to run Word from Linux), or will they run Linux and give up Word?
I've seen this situation before. A company standardizes on WordPerfect, but the secretaries have Word as well so they can deal with outside documents. They just change word processors based on what they're working on (actually, they only use Word, because they like it better, but don't tell anyone, that's their secret). I'm not sure how it would work if they had to reboot to switch word processors. Anyway, for a company this works great. They might lose business if they couldn't send or receive Word documents. For governments this isn't a concern; they can just serve their citizens less efficiently. It's not like the citizens have another choice.
That happened to me also; it was seen as a "bad hard disk" that I was able to use (after grounding the motherboard properly) for several years thereafter without problem.
But I do have the solution! We just use transparent aluminum. Thank Star Trek for the solutions to today's problems, from the future!
It won't be long before wireless technology removes the need for large infrastructure to enter the local telephone network.
Think about this: already mobile phones cost only slightly more than base phone service.
My bet is the baby Bell's are desperate to enter the long distance market because they think the local market will soon be just as competitive as the long distance market, and they won't be able to survive at all if that is their only market.
They may be able to design a totally free platform, but there are still difficulties.
First is hardware. They probably need some custom ASIC's to glue it together, plus case, controllers, etc.. Sure, they can get away with mostly PC hardware, but if that was all, it would just be a standardized PC platform, and no more a gaming console than my PC. Anyway, this is expensive, because you have to manufacture and distribute it. Downloading the designs won't help, because few people will have the ability to compile them to real silicon.
Second is the system software. Sure, Linux is wonderful and all, but it's not optimized for multimedia. It's slow compared to Windows, and likely much slower still compared to a highly optimized console platform. Further, to make a good multipurpose device they need something like DVD playback, video recording, etc.. DVD at least requires some expensive licenses to implement, and the IP issues would probably mean giving up on the totally free goal. Other media would probably require some sort of rights management system, and I don't know how open content providers would be to an open protection mechanism.
Third is for application software. A console is nothing without it. And without consoles, the market is nothing. Sure, Joe. E. Linux will write some game as a hobby or to make his resume flashy, but how will that compare to Metroid 4. Think sales (or distribution if it's free), because TuxTroid will be tiny in comparison, even in the unlikely event it is just as playable.
So where does that leave us? A high priced system, with very limited availability, that appeals mainly to Linux zealots and budding developers. It doesn't sound like a good bet to me. It didn't to Indrema, and the main difference was that they were willing to cater to the corporate crowd to get some acceptance.
This effort is doomed to failure just as surely as Indrema, except that instead of going out all at once, it will fade away as the vapour slowly dissipates to reveal that there never was anything at all.
I don't like to rain on anyone's parade, but Lucasfilm is a big media corporation, and you can't just go assuming they are good guys because they make cool movies. Read the terms of use of their website. After all, you've already accepted them. Even worse, there isn't so much as a splash box asking me to accept them or leave; come on, even Microsoft says these are the terms, take them or leave them, BEFORE installing Office XP.
Anyway, for anyone who is too lazy, or doesn't want to accept them before reading them, here are a few key points:
"By using this site, you signify that you agree to these Terms of Use." By the time you've read them, you've already agreed.
"The sale, auction, lease, loan, gift, trade or barter, or use of any of the text, graphics, photographs, audio and/or video material or stills from audiovisual material or any other materials contained herein, for any other purpose, in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed, including the use of any of the aforementioned materials on any other Web site or networked computer environment, without a prior written consent from Lucasfilm, is expressly prohibited." You can't give the pics to your friend, in fact, you can't even email them to yourself, should you be so inclined.
"The creation of derivative works based on the materials contained herein including, but not limited to, products, services, fonts, icons, link buttons, wallpaper, desktop themes, on-line postcards and greeting cards and unlicensed merchandise (whether sold, bartered or given away) is expressly prohibited. You may download one copy of the materials on any single computer for your personal, non-commercial home use only, provided you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices." Hmm, one copy only (I hope my browser's cache doesn't count as a second copy!), and I'm not allowed to create a derivative work, like a desktop wallpaper. God forbid anyone should actually like Star Wars, apparently Lucasfilm doesn't allow it.
"If at our request you send certain specific submissions (e.g., postings to chats, surveys, message boards, contests, or similar items) or, despite our request that you not send us any other creative materials, you send us creative suggestions, ideas, notes, drawings, concepts, or other information (collectively the "Submissions") shall be deemed and shall remain the property of Lucasfilm Ltd. in perpetuity. By making any Submission, the sender automatically grants, or warrants that the owner of such material expressly grants, Lucasfilm the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, and distribute such material (in whole or in part) throughout the universe and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed, for the full term of any copyright, trademark or patent that may exist in such material for any purpose that Lucasfilm chooses, whether internal, public, commercial, or otherwise, without any compensation, credit or notice to the sender whatsoever. " Two sentences of leglaese. I think it says that anything you say to them, or on their site, belongs to them. Sounds good to me; if episode III is as bad as episode I, they can just steal some fan fics and use them. They've already said they own them and can do whatever they want without giving you credit, or even telling you.
"We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of these Terms of Use at any time.... Your continued use of this site after the posting of changes to these terms will mean you agree to abide by those changes." And best of all, they can change them without telling you. That makes me especially confident in their privacy policy.
I have my doubts that this policy would be worth the bits it was sent with in court, but I sure hope it isn't. I'm pretty sure I violated it just by viewing the site in my browser. What a load of crap.
Looks like key features like plugin support and printing are still missing, so it's probably not the browser to use at the moment. Still, I run a KDE desktop, and it's nice to see Mozilla using my preferred toolkit. I'll wait for a while for it to settle down before switching to it (from konq and Gtk Mozilla), but props to the developers for getting this done!
Ruby may be very nice (I don't know; I haven't tried it), but it's just coming into the market at the wrong time. We already have two big names (Perl and Python) in the UNIX community, and Windows hackers have those wonderful choices, plus Visual Basic. Plus there are numerous other choices that are only slightly less desirable, such as tcsh and ksh.
I wish Ruby all the best, but unless it becomes a lot more prevalent, I'm not going to bother learning it. Oh, anyone want to download my new, free software UNIX clone, Monux? It doesn't let you do anything more, but it has a slightly more modular kernel and simpler device interface than Linux does.
Hmm, the linked article has a lot in common with the intended one. I can just imagine gforce on my geforce, pumping out psychidelic exit poll visualizations... The democrats have this one by a swirl, even though it was the good old party that pioneered the open polls that combined with the open source to make these displays possible.
With the exit polls dancing to the spaced out '60s rock, all I need to complete the picture are some 'shrooms, and to wake up tomorrow and have someone tell me that George Junior winning was just a bad trip.
Since this article is a book review, personally, I'd consider discussions of the novel in question to be on topic. Secondary topics that I'd also consider to be completely on topic are discussions of other similar books, or discussions of issues raised in the book.
The parent post to this one was a question on the cyberpunk genre, that this book is supposedly a close relation of. That seems on topic to me.
Continuing the previous poster's point, I too find many such novels to be excessively violent, and to describe scenarios that are very far fetched, both technologically and socially. This is especially poignant since they are usually set in the near future, when it should be reasonable to expect a lot of continuity from today.
If these books have made an accurate (I think it's more appealing than accurate; they seem more like macho fantasies to me) portrayal of hackers, they have also given up all semblance of accuracy on other characters. Unless the Internet is truly the next big revolutionary thing, and hackers really do assume god-like powers, the portrayals are more comic than relevant.
For every ugly website founded on millions of dollars of venture capital with a shaky business plan and appeal to at least zero people worldwide, there is another one that is just as ugly and appeals to just as few, but has more funding and no business plan whatsoever.
Re:What I don't get about the Monty Hall Problem
on
The Three Hat Problem
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· Score: 1
What you are probably missing is that although you resolve the uncertainty associated with 2, you don't change the probability associated with the prize being behind 2 or three, versus the probability of the prize being behind 1.
I expect the NSA has enough experience working with the security weaknesses in Linux that they will really know how to fix them. We should be able to pinpoint unknown vulnerabilities by carefully examining their patches. On the other hand, if it is too cryptic, they may also be making it more vulnerable to some obscure attacks.
On the other hand, encryption is more of a consumer feature, I think. Security professionals have no problem using end user installed third party solutions, but it is a key for things like media rights management. In that light, I think it is a bit funny that PGP gets involved in this effort.
Slashdot Mirror
You might also find that a lot of projects are using lighterweight scripts to automate testing. Since the software available isn't mature, a quick custom solution written in a scripting language (shell or Perl are good choices) might be a good solution.
As for their honesty, take the local root exploit in the default install recently discovered as an example. The problem was a format string error, and it had been noted and fixed in CVS before the exploit was discovered, however it was not considered a security problem, so no patch was issued. Upon discovery of the problem a patch was immediately issued. Anyone who updated immediately wasn't vulnerable. However, because a hole was discovered in the current release, they considered it a local root exploit and updated the claim accordingly.
If they had issued a patch before any vulnerability was discovered, they would not have considered it a blemish on the record. The claim is valid, and the iterpretation is sensible, although perhaps it is not the best possible interpretation.
This is one of those times that I am truly ashamed to be USian.
Of course it's better out of the box. I had disable ftpd and telnetd and sendmail from my last install. Windows doesn't automatically enable IIS. Of course, once you do the things to make the platform useful and secure, Linux is way more secure. But out of the box, I do agree that Windows is more secure.
I think their fear of the GPL is more contamination. In most things, they are ahead of the curve, but they are probably scared that when they are playing catch up, or when they are reimplementing existing technologies, that they will accidentally borrow something GPL'ed, thus causing legal problems of unknown dimensions.
By the Gulf war, our soldiers weren't at risk, and we didn't have the firsthand accounts of the horrors of war. No one saw the bombs blowing people up. Without those things, there was a lot less resistance to the war.
With unmanned vehicles, the risk is even less, and the consequences are seen even less. No longer are pilots of attack aircraft at risk, and no longer do they even see the ground before firing, or the devestation left behind, even from a distance. The only people who see the casualties are the victims, and no one cares about them then. This is truly a horrible development.
Please, take a joke! I love Perl; I work with it for a living. If you think it is never confusing, you've obviously never used it for anything serious.
Change to Python; Perl is just too confusing sometimes.
It's good that this is done in the open. I would be uncomfortable with genetic engineering being an open source discipline (ie. downloading a gene set and coding your own modifications to it then compiling it into a living creature), but I'd much rather have the knowledge out in the open than locked up for who knows what to happen to it.
If you want to be a designer, you have to show something good. Not necessarily technologically impressive, but something with good gameplay and good ideas, preferably well implemented. A simple solo project is fine, but to be really impressive you probably want to get programmers and artists involved.
You might also try making some really neat and original mods and maps for existing games. Show off your design skills, and remember that as a designer you'll have other people to implement the stuff so long as you have a good vision to drive it.
As for game programming, look for the same things as any other programmer, but substitute game related stuff into the skills you show off. Do some graphics or AI projects. An education is a good thing here, but make sure to take applicable courses. Abstract math is pretty useless, but graphics, AI, UI and algorithms could all be useful. Again, though, experience is the key. Have some existing work to show off in your specialty.
Gaming houses don't have huge profit margins, and their problems are pretty simple. They aren't looking for the best or the brightest. They want people who may have limited abilities, but can solve their problems right away, without any training. To get hired, you have to be one of those people.
Right now there is no reason to compare RAMBUS vs. SDRAM on performance, because obviously you'll get better performance from SDRAM, since you can put in more than twice as much for the same amount of $$$.
Sure, they will provide service for copyright violators, even blatant ones. But for that to take place, there has to be someone with a business plan involving copyright violations. "Give other people's stuff away for free," sounds nice in theory, but you have to survive off of it also. To do that, you have to be pretty public, so why bother with stealth? Second, that means a lot of bandwidth, and for all Havenco is, they aren't a provider of cheap bandwidth.
I'm sure the fight will heat up, but I doubt Havenco has much stake in it, one way or the other.
My guess is that in that case, as well as in the drug transport scenario mentioned above, designing a controller to give this thing much accuracy is probably difficult. Even with a GPS, it's still pretty much at the mercy of the wind. Not to belittle their efforts, but "Europe" is a pretty big target compared to Area 51 or Vinny's backyard. I'd consider an RC job much more viable. With this thing, you could likely get some photos (not necessarily the ones you wanted), but to retreive them it would have to send a homing signal.
But I guess that would be too much work for a government. That would put too much responsibility in the hands of people with a chance of knowing what they are doing. Better to adopt a policy of all free software, or all Microsoft, or all Ada, and remove all freedom of choice. That way no one is able to make a good decision, err, I meant, no one is able to screw up.
I do have a question, though. Suppose (say for interoperability, because of evil closed document formats) the only possible word processor is MS Word. Now, Linux is a viable alternative to MS Windows, and hence mandated. Does the choice of MS Word mean they have to run MS Windows (pretend that there is no way to run Word from Linux), or will they run Linux and give up Word?
I've seen this situation before. A company standardizes on WordPerfect, but the secretaries have Word as well so they can deal with outside documents. They just change word processors based on what they're working on (actually, they only use Word, because they like it better, but don't tell anyone, that's their secret). I'm not sure how it would work if they had to reboot to switch word processors. Anyway, for a company this works great. They might lose business if they couldn't send or receive Word documents. For governments this isn't a concern; they can just serve their citizens less efficiently. It's not like the citizens have another choice.
But I do have the solution! We just use transparent aluminum. Thank Star Trek for the solutions to today's problems, from the future!
Think about this: already mobile phones cost only slightly more than base phone service.
My bet is the baby Bell's are desperate to enter the long distance market because they think the local market will soon be just as competitive as the long distance market, and they won't be able to survive at all if that is their only market.
First is hardware. They probably need some custom ASIC's to glue it together, plus case, controllers, etc.. Sure, they can get away with mostly PC hardware, but if that was all, it would just be a standardized PC platform, and no more a gaming console than my PC. Anyway, this is expensive, because you have to manufacture and distribute it. Downloading the designs won't help, because few people will have the ability to compile them to real silicon.
Second is the system software. Sure, Linux is wonderful and all, but it's not optimized for multimedia. It's slow compared to Windows, and likely much slower still compared to a highly optimized console platform. Further, to make a good multipurpose device they need something like DVD playback, video recording, etc.. DVD at least requires some expensive licenses to implement, and the IP issues would probably mean giving up on the totally free goal. Other media would probably require some sort of rights management system, and I don't know how open content providers would be to an open protection mechanism.
Third is for application software. A console is nothing without it. And without consoles, the market is nothing. Sure, Joe. E. Linux will write some game as a hobby or to make his resume flashy, but how will that compare to Metroid 4. Think sales (or distribution if it's free), because TuxTroid will be tiny in comparison, even in the unlikely event it is just as playable.
So where does that leave us? A high priced system, with very limited availability, that appeals mainly to Linux zealots and budding developers. It doesn't sound like a good bet to me. It didn't to Indrema, and the main difference was that they were willing to cater to the corporate crowd to get some acceptance.
This effort is doomed to failure just as surely as Indrema, except that instead of going out all at once, it will fade away as the vapour slowly dissipates to reveal that there never was anything at all.
Anyway, for anyone who is too lazy, or doesn't want to accept them before reading them, here are a few key points:
"By using this site, you signify that you agree to these Terms of Use." By the time you've read them, you've already agreed.
"The sale, auction, lease, loan, gift, trade or barter, or use of any of the text, graphics, photographs, audio and/or video material or stills from audiovisual material or any other materials contained herein, for any other purpose, in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed, including the use of any of the aforementioned materials on any other Web site or networked computer environment, without a prior written consent from Lucasfilm, is expressly prohibited." You can't give the pics to your friend, in fact, you can't even email them to yourself, should you be so inclined.
"The creation of derivative works based on the materials contained herein including, but not limited to, products, services, fonts, icons, link buttons, wallpaper, desktop themes, on-line postcards and greeting cards and unlicensed merchandise (whether sold, bartered or given away) is expressly prohibited. You may download one copy of the materials on any single computer for your personal, non-commercial home use only, provided you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices." Hmm, one copy only (I hope my browser's cache doesn't count as a second copy!), and I'm not allowed to create a derivative work, like a desktop wallpaper. God forbid anyone should actually like Star Wars, apparently Lucasfilm doesn't allow it.
"If at our request you send certain specific submissions (e.g., postings to chats, surveys, message boards, contests, or similar items) or, despite our request that you not send us any other creative materials, you send us creative suggestions, ideas, notes, drawings, concepts, or other information (collectively the "Submissions") shall be deemed and shall remain the property of Lucasfilm Ltd. in perpetuity. By making any Submission, the sender automatically grants, or warrants that the owner of such material expressly grants, Lucasfilm the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, and distribute such material (in whole or in part) throughout the universe and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed, for the full term of any copyright, trademark or patent that may exist in such material for any purpose that Lucasfilm chooses, whether internal, public, commercial, or otherwise, without any compensation, credit or notice to the sender whatsoever. " Two sentences of leglaese. I think it says that anything you say to them, or on their site, belongs to them. Sounds good to me; if episode III is as bad as episode I, they can just steal some fan fics and use them. They've already said they own them and can do whatever they want without giving you credit, or even telling you.
"We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of these Terms of Use at any time. ... Your continued use of this site after the posting of changes to these terms will mean you agree to abide by those changes." And best of all, they can change them without telling you. That makes me especially confident in their privacy policy.
I have my doubts that this policy would be worth the bits it was sent with in court, but I sure hope it isn't. I'm pretty sure I violated it just by viewing the site in my browser. What a load of crap.
Looks like key features like plugin support and printing are still missing, so it's probably not the browser to use at the moment. Still, I run a KDE desktop, and it's nice to see Mozilla using my preferred toolkit. I'll wait for a while for it to settle down before switching to it (from konq and Gtk Mozilla), but props to the developers for getting this done!
I wish Ruby all the best, but unless it becomes a lot more prevalent, I'm not going to bother learning it. Oh, anyone want to download my new, free software UNIX clone, Monux? It doesn't let you do anything more, but it has a slightly more modular kernel and simpler device interface than Linux does.
With the exit polls dancing to the spaced out '60s rock, all I need to complete the picture are some 'shrooms, and to wake up tomorrow and have someone tell me that George Junior winning was just a bad trip.
The parent post to this one was a question on the cyberpunk genre, that this book is supposedly a close relation of. That seems on topic to me.
Continuing the previous poster's point, I too find many such novels to be excessively violent, and to describe scenarios that are very far fetched, both technologically and socially. This is especially poignant since they are usually set in the near future, when it should be reasonable to expect a lot of continuity from today.
If these books have made an accurate (I think it's more appealing than accurate; they seem more like macho fantasies to me) portrayal of hackers, they have also given up all semblance of accuracy on other characters. Unless the Internet is truly the next big revolutionary thing, and hackers really do assume god-like powers, the portrayals are more comic than relevant.
For every ugly website founded on millions of dollars of venture capital with a shaky business plan and appeal to at least zero people worldwide, there is another one that is just as ugly and appeals to just as few, but has more funding and no business plan whatsoever.
p(1) = 1/3
p(2) = 1/3
p(3) = 1/3
select 1:
p(1) = 1/3
p(2U3) = p(2) + p(3) = 2/3
remove 2:
p(1) = 1/3
p'(2) = 0
p'(3) = p(2U3) - p'(2) = 2/3 - 0 = 2/3
What you are probably missing is that although you resolve the uncertainty associated with 2, you don't change the probability associated with the prize being behind 2 or three, versus the probability of the prize being behind 1.
On the other hand, encryption is more of a consumer feature, I think. Security professionals have no problem using end user installed third party solutions, but it is a key for things like media rights management. In that light, I think it is a bit funny that PGP gets involved in this effort.