Now what the hell is the ignorant sentiment in the parent post doing moderated up to 5, while this sits at 2?
By the way, "took the initiative in" is what's known as a qualifier, all you arm-chair English professors. Get a clue, and quit attacking the geekiest candidate for being geeky, you geeks.
Pardon the venting of frustration here. It's getting pretty dull to see all the well-reasoned, factually well-cited arguments get buried in highly-modded "me too" attempts at refutation.
"No other particular reason not to encrypt" you say? Perhaps you have a mind like a steel trap, and never forget passphrases, but some of us have to count the possibility of losing the key as a reason to hesitate before encrypting entire filesystems!
Sorry to see this get modded down as "offtopic" (as I said in my other post on the subject). It's relevant in that Gygax likes to blow smoke, and isn't necessarily someone who gamers like to have speaking for them on issues like this.
I'm sorry to see someone else got modded down as "offtopic" for slamming Gygax. It was obviously someone who's played the games that are his only credentials. Gygax and TSR put out such hack-and-slash dreck that "roll playing games" made a better label than "role playing" did. TSR was the MS of the RPG industry. I've heard bad things said about Wizards of the Coast as well, but was fairly pleased to see them buy up TSR.
In case you're moderating and missed the on-topic point: Gygax is a pretty sad spokesman for supposedly persecuted game companies. If anything, TSR capitalized on the free publicity that D&D got when kids' suicides were blamed on it and religious nuts claimed it taught Satanism. For a more relevant, more persecuted game designer's perspective, talk to somebody at Steve Jackson Games. If that rings a bell, it may be due to the uproar when the US Secret Service raided the company, nearly put them out of business, but never brought charges.
Violence has been declining for the past half-decade or so. Is everyone taking that point? Actual violence is declining. If you want to postulate that better parenting is the path to lower violence, give parents credit! Saying "we need better parents" in response to an article about the decline of violence implies that you think there's something wrong with declining violence!
Wired referred to the court as having "technical savvy" for putting details of this case up on a web site. What they don't mention is that the web site is not only running IIS, but the documents are accessed via a "microsoft.asp" page.
I'd like to see a breakdown of membership numbers by region, since the voting results lead me to believe that people in North America are under-voting. Either that or they under-registered. Either way, it's pretty typical of Americans, but kinda surprising that the rest of North America didn't do more to make up for it.
The rest of North America make up for the US? Not only does the US have nearly 10 times the population of Canada (one of the other 2 North American countries), but per-capita representation was far better in the US than at least Canada (and I'd suspect Mexico as well).
Another example showing that FUD is a two-way street.
Sun has consistently demonstrated principles that make it nothing like MS but with smaller teeth. When they publish interfaces, protocols, and file formats, it's possible to write code that makes use of them without an expectation that they'll just be changed and used against you with the next release. NFS was given to the community by Sun, as probably the biggest, most obvious example. I'd rather not see any company in the position MS is in, but I'd be somewhat less troubled by a Sun monopoly than the MS one we do have. Even AT&T was a better monopoly than MS, with policies (and regulation) causing them to look out for consumers' best interests to some extent. Contrast that with the utter cynicism and ruthlessness displayed by MS.
As for Sun's diplomacy toward the open source community, as with any corporation, it's certainly wise not to trust 'em farther than you can throw 'em.
This looks like the Internet connectivity offered in Edmonton, Alberta (and elsewhere) by OA Net, where I work. The Airlink service has been a big seller, largely because DSL installs take so fscking long.
That would explain the double-password, two-format authentication process which doesn't even "remember" you for subsequent logins. I'm surely not the only one who's long since mislain the stupid letter with one of the passwords. An intentional result? Perhaps. There have been enough banks (and my credit union) that have tried the password-in-the-mail thing. I'm pretty good about keeping track of all my (*&#@!) accounts, but the seldom-used ones with passwords that come in snalmail tend to get lost.
Folks, this is just another example of MS funding its percieved competition, like with Apple. The antitrust trial isn't over yet, and when the next-most-popular platform vendor was hurting financially, MS jumped in with a bit of capital. Now that the next-most-popular office suite vendor is hurting, in jumps MS with a few (US$135M) bucks.
Hmm, isn't that about the number they kicked in to Apple as well?
The commentary by folks over at Counterpane (Bruce Schneier, et al) seems quite good. They say good things about Rijndael, regardless of whether they really wanted their own Twofish to win out.
I'm working for a Canadian company founded by emmigrants from Hong Kong and also mainland China. The company is now involved with deployment of fixed wireless for Internet connectivity in Shanghai and other Chinese cities besides Hong Kong and also Singapore. What I've heard from the people going over there for meetings doesn't make business sound that different from one city to the next.
What has disappointed me is that there don't seem to be any rumblings in favour of Linux trickling over from relatives of the founders.:-(
Keeping the rumoured big adoption of Linux in China in mind with the hope it's worth some leverage later...
/* Try writing 'GNU' without using an acronym. Go ahead. Try it. I dare ya. */
GNU's Not UNIX.
GNU is the proper name of the project, not just an acronym. So you can argue that it's still an acronym in its expanded form, but nobody ever expands it further, which would be redundant anyway, so in a sense, "GNU's Not UNIX" doesn't contain an acronym.
ObOnTopic: It would be nice to see some cross-polination between open source ICQ clients. It's far more convenient for me to run Zicq (text mode ICQ client) under Screen than to restart a graphical ICQ client like Licq any place I get on the Net. The RSA features of Licq sound pretty cool, tho'.
- -
One good geek deserves another.
It's important to realize that these are not mutually exclusive.
We absolutely should continue standing up to oppressive forces publicly. Excercise free speech to the extent your local legal systems allow. We're doing that to some extent right now. At the very least, the folks running Slashdot have their real identities on the line in support of this discussion.
Now whether some of us also participate anonymously in the sort of activities we're discussing in this thread is a separate issue.
Neal Stephenson can be pretty insightful, all right. This seems like one more thing leading at least in the direction of real life spew hacker profiling. At least, if they actually do care about people who are running Linux working around their profiler by writing their own software.
Interesting comments. I'd like to see where it says what you're referring to. The relevant part of the agreement I'm looking at seems to be where it says...
4.
Charge Backs. The Buyer Protection Guarantee does not obviate any other consumer
rights Users may have, including charge back rights that may be granted by the User's
credit card issuer. X.com fully stands behind all credit card transactions by accepting
disputes customers lodge with their issuing bank. The consumer is fully protected and as
the merchant of record we accept final responsibility for all card transactions. As such, we
afford customers all the rights and privileges expected of a credit card transaction. You
acknowledge that X.com does not control the outcome of any charge back decision
initiated through a customer's credit card issuing bank.
X.com encourages all buyer purchase disputes to be filed and resolved through the
Service's dispute resolution process, and reserves the right to restrict future account
access or functionality of buyers who file charge back complaints outside the Service. If a
charge back claim is initiated, whether as a result of a dispute or for any other reason,
the parties agree to provide to any requesting party on a timely basis any and all
necessary documentation to resolve any charge back or dispute. X.com DOES NOT act
as the agent of either party in any transaction or resulting dispute, though X.com does
control the outcome of disputes initiated through the Service's dispute resolution process.
In the event a charge back dispute is resolved against you, and you qualify for the Seller
Protection Guarantee, X.com will indemnify you for the charge back amount up to $5,000
per year. In the event a charge back dispute is resolved against you and you do not
qualify for the Seller Protection Guarantee, you agree to hold X.com harmless for the
charge back amount and to reimburse X.com from either your PayPal account or by other
means. Although X.com will vigorously pursue debt collection of any amounts owed to it,
X.com will never make electronic transfers from your bank account without your
explicit permission.
This is a very easy position for a computer geek, especially a Linux geek to take. If MS had served their market niche(s) in good faith, rather than exploiting their monopoly position in various ways (which have been detailed ad nausium all over), then maybe it would be reasonable to argue that they should be left alone. As it is, they're harming consumers on many levels (price gouging just getting serious, preventing innovation, etc.). That has to be stopped and remedied.
Since their aim is obviously to recruit as many "members" as possible, then claim that their membership supports MS, they need to broaden their appeal to prospective members as much as possible!
If MS is split in two, the company names should obviously be Micros~1 and Micros~2.
I think anything at all can be accomplished by GE, the only drawback would be that us - humans - may fall out of the production loop. We will not have to understand why an engine with octagonal and hexagonal and other types of parts work better than something else. It will be too complex for us to understand, and even if we could, who would bother? We would just use the results that appear as if by magic.
Plenty of us already just use tech that works, as if by magic, and don't bother to learn any more. Heck, what else can you say about programmers who make the dismissive remark, "that's a hardware problem"?
I'd expect that those of us who want to know how certain things work would just start from the end result of the computer GE. It tends to be much easier to figure out why something works than to figure out how to do something in the first place.
It would be poetic justice for MS to move up to British Columbia -- just like the State of Washington couldn't protect them from the US judiciary, the Province of British Columbia wouldn't protect them from the Canadian courts. Nobody at MS is dumb enough to set themselves up for extra anti-trust falls that way.
Of course, they'd get to switch from saying they're from "Washington, not D.C." to saying they're from "B.C., not Washington..."
Cryptonomicon may be a great book, and Neal Stephenson certainly writes good stories with tech interest, but data havens have certainly appeared in other stories before it! Take a look at gobs of stuff by Bruce Sterling or William Gibson. Sterling's book,
Islands in the Net
, makes a few references to them. They must be mentioned a few times in Gibson's
Neuromancer
books.
So why keep asking if HavenCo is based on
Cryptonomicon
? Is it just the World War Two connection, or is there a major data network being run under Seahaven that nobody has mentioned yet?
They may have to struggle with this assumption that the only data one would put in a haven is the illegal sort. There are all sorts of data which are not illegal but which people might want to put out of the reach of potential ignorant and/or corrupt local law enforcement. Think of Steve Jackson Games, which had all its equipment seized by the US Secret Service and held until they nearly went out of business while charges were never filed! There are gobs of examples like that one which are lower profile or less extreme.
Another question might just be how many businesses and individuals will realize the value of putting their data out of reach.
Slashdot Mirror
Now what the hell is the ignorant sentiment in the parent post doing moderated up to 5, while this sits at 2?
By the way, "took the initiative in" is what's known as a qualifier, all you arm-chair English professors. Get a clue, and quit attacking the geekiest candidate for being geeky, you geeks.
Pardon the venting of frustration here. It's getting pretty dull to see all the well-reasoned, factually well-cited arguments get buried in highly-modded "me too" attempts at refutation.
"No other particular reason not to encrypt" you say? Perhaps you have a mind like a steel trap, and never forget passphrases, but some of us have to count the possibility of losing the key as a reason to hesitate before encrypting entire filesystems!
Sorry to see this get modded down as "offtopic" (as I said in my other post on the subject). It's relevant in that Gygax likes to blow smoke, and isn't necessarily someone who gamers like to have speaking for them on issues like this.
In case you're moderating and missed the on-topic point: Gygax is a pretty sad spokesman for supposedly persecuted game companies. If anything, TSR capitalized on the free publicity that D&D got when kids' suicides were blamed on it and religious nuts claimed it taught Satanism. For a more relevant, more persecuted game designer's perspective, talk to somebody at Steve Jackson Games. If that rings a bell, it may be due to the uproar when the US Secret Service raided the company, nearly put them out of business, but never brought charges.
Did we read the same article, here?
Violence has been declining for the past half-decade or so. Is everyone taking that point? Actual violence is declining. If you want to postulate that better parenting is the path to lower violence, give parents credit! Saying "we need better parents" in response to an article about the decline of violence implies that you think there's something wrong with declining violence!
Wired referred to the court as having "technical savvy" for putting details of this case up on a web site. What they don't mention is that the web site is not only running IIS, but the documents are accessed via a "microsoft.asp" page.
(That comment shows why you should carefully check default form values when trying out a new browser so as not to look like an idiot.)
Sun has consistently demonstrated principles that make it nothing like MS but with smaller teeth. When they publish interfaces, protocols, and file formats, it's possible to write code that makes use of them without an expectation that they'll just be changed and used against you with the next release. NFS was given to the community by Sun, as probably the biggest, most obvious example. I'd rather not see any company in the position MS is in, but I'd be somewhat less troubled by a Sun monopoly than the MS one we do have. Even AT&T was a better monopoly than MS, with policies (and regulation) causing them to look out for consumers' best interests to some extent. Contrast that with the utter cynicism and ruthlessness displayed by MS.
As for Sun's diplomacy toward the open source community, as with any corporation, it's certainly wise not to trust 'em farther than you can throw 'em.
This looks like the Internet connectivity offered in Edmonton, Alberta (and elsewhere) by OA Net, where I work. The Airlink service has been a big seller, largely because DSL installs take so fscking long.
That would explain the double-password, two-format authentication process which doesn't even "remember" you for subsequent logins. I'm surely not the only one who's long since mislain the stupid letter with one of the passwords. An intentional result? Perhaps. There have been enough banks (and my credit union) that have tried the password-in-the-mail thing. I'm pretty good about keeping track of all my (*&#@!) accounts, but the seldom-used ones with passwords that come in snalmail tend to get lost.
Hmm, isn't that about the number they kicked in to Apple as well?
The commentary by folks over at Counterpane (Bruce Schneier, et al) seems quite good. They say good things about Rijndael, regardless of whether they really wanted their own Twofish to win out.
What has disappointed me is that there don't seem to be any rumblings in favour of Linux trickling over from relatives of the founders. :-(
Keeping the rumoured big adoption of Linux in China in mind with the hope it's worth some leverage later...
GNU is the proper name of the project, not just an acronym. So you can argue that it's still an acronym in its expanded form, but nobody ever expands it further, which would be redundant anyway, so in a sense, "GNU's Not UNIX" doesn't contain an acronym.
ObOnTopic: It would be nice to see some cross-polination between open source ICQ clients. It's far more convenient for me to run Zicq (text mode ICQ client) under Screen than to restart a graphical ICQ client like Licq any place I get on the Net. The RSA features of Licq sound pretty cool, tho'.
- -
One good geek deserves another.
We absolutely should continue standing up to oppressive forces publicly. Excercise free speech to the extent your local legal systems allow. We're doing that to some extent right now. At the very least, the folks running Slashdot have their real identities on the line in support of this discussion.
Now whether some of us also participate anonymously in the sort of activities we're discussing in this thread is a separate issue.
Neal Stephenson can be pretty insightful, all right. This seems like one more thing leading at least in the direction of real life spew hacker profiling. At least, if they actually do care about people who are running Linux working around their profiler by writing their own software.
Interesting comments. I'd like to see where it says what you're referring to. The relevant part of the agreement I'm looking at seems to be where it says... (This is all quoted from their popup service agreement page.)
This is a very easy position for a computer geek, especially a Linux geek to take. If MS had served their market niche(s) in good faith, rather than exploiting their monopoly position in various ways (which have been detailed ad nausium all over), then maybe it would be reasonable to argue that they should be left alone. As it is, they're harming consumers on many levels (price gouging just getting serious, preventing innovation, etc.). That has to be stopped and remedied.
Naturally it had to be asked.
Since their aim is obviously to recruit as many "members" as possible, then claim that their membership supports MS, they need to broaden their appeal to prospective members as much as possible!
If MS is split in two, the company names should obviously be Micros~1 and Micros~2.
Plenty of us already just use tech that works, as if by magic, and don't bother to learn any more. Heck, what else can you say about programmers who make the dismissive remark, "that's a hardware problem"?
I'd expect that those of us who want to know how certain things work would just start from the end result of the computer GE. It tends to be much easier to figure out why something works than to figure out how to do something in the first place.
Of course, they'd get to switch from saying they're from "Washington, not D.C." to saying they're from "B.C., not Washington..."
- Islands in the Net
, makes a few references to them. They must be mentioned a few times in Gibson's- Neuromancer
books.So why keep asking if HavenCo is based on
- Cryptonomicon
? Is it just the World War Two connection, or is there a major data network being run under Seahaven that nobody has mentioned yet?Another question might just be how many businesses and individuals will realize the value of putting their data out of reach.