I live in St. Paul right now (#8) and grew up in San Francisco (#1). Top 10 at all times! woo hoo!
I remember being wired back in 1989 in SF. Had 2 university UNIX accounts and a few BBS accounts going just for good measure ---- "Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
Using name calling is as bad as killing someone. In your heart you murder thier characture and defame the image of God in them. The Swiss are not misguided fools. All are armed, all own weapons, the crime rate is zilch. They are all trained in the millitary and given a gun. They keep the gun, and can be called into active duty at any time. They may use the gun for deterance at any time. The inside is what counts and words go deepr than bullets. Nicodemus
Hello Kestrel: Your post confuses me. What we agree on: weapns of mass destruction should be harder to get. What we don't agree on: I see the media as having a very large investment with the fed for gun control. I see gun control as a non-solution. Criminals don't use normal conformist methods to obtain weapons and never will. Disarm the public and only criminals will be armed. Please also consider the comment made on these pages that teen violence is DOWN over the last 10 years+.
I prefer an "armed public", to ward off thugs, I distrust government, as it is mostly a convention of accepted protection racketeering. . Look at thier latest bullying with REAL weapons of mass destruction. Please consider all of the posts here, in that many of these teens do not want to use a gun, they want to use thier brains.
I do not think an "armed school public" is a good idea. As at that age it is still undetermined what level of self control they will exhibit. But then I also don't think public school should be required and that bullies in any form should be tossed out. Even the verbal bullies need self control.
Media is on the side of gun control. The NRA is protecting a right, that if it existed in other countries those countries would have more fredom from dictatorship. (Despots hate guns and cars, to much freedom for the masses). I don't think that the NRA is for Weapons of mass destruction, they teach gun safety and responsability and the right for gun ownership. Usually refering to hand guns, hunting rifles and shot guns. Would you put a sign on your lawn declaring that you did not own a gun? This is an invitation to thugs. Perhaps invisibly, you rely on the fact that some own guns and that alone creates a threat for thugs that reduces your chances of home invadement. I don't consider a handgun or rifle a weapon of mass destruction.
I'm not a member of the NRA. The NRA is not a bullying lobby as you sermise. They are often ferriting out new hidden legislation that our present set of leaders is constantly trying to pass to userpe the constitution and take away gun ownership form the avereage public. Ask yourself WHY would the government try to do these things in the dark? It can't be because "your government is just trying to protect you." It could be that the fed does this sort of thing as posturing or it could be as devious as the Klintons wanting a more defenseless public. In either case it makes no sense.
Even without a hand gun these teens desired to wreak havoc with ordinary items that can be obtained at a harware store.
What we are NOT allowed to talk about is the inside. the human condition. our hopes , our beliefs, our fears and dreams. 40 years ago the libberals had a few good things to say to the conformist establishment, now the libberal agenda, including gun control, is the conformist establishemnt. Now they don't just try to inform us of thier views, instead they ridicule people for not going along the party line as it is assumed that what they preach on the media is reality. And to them controling the outside is what is important. ie gun control. If anyone starts to mention self control, even in individualistic people, they are blighted and told they don't have a clue. Take sexual activity, despite the media's really sickening opinion of teens and thier hormones, 60+ percent stay abstinent, on thier own, with no encouragement from the society around them. Now that's self control.
And of course what we're not allowed to talk about are the deeper non-physical forms of abuse that those here and I identify with. And thus if we are not allowed to talk about the real problems we are not going to find real solutions. Gun control is not one of the real problems. It's a straw man for politcos to offer drivell over. Nothing more. Nocodemus
I posted this on an investing forum of outside the box thinkers after reading your stories. I re-post here.
Many pardons to the Kitco.com family,(for off topic) this is for gwyz, Squirrel and others like them that think outside the box. I am of course almost 40 and am definately one of these teens that posted on the slahdot forum. I feel for these teens, they are the next generation's contrarians for sure. I see in their comments that some of them blame the "church", the "stsate" etc. I agree. I also, however follow the ultimate non-conformist, Christ. And look what the "conformists" did to him.... Many groups do not like many other groups and our leaders seem hell bent on "profiling" or "labeling" or in the brave new world term, "counseling" us into insanity where once there, they can declare us free game. I guess they like power over others more than the joy of living.... Yes I counsel teens, I work with high schoolers, I love them and want them to know that a loving God loves them. I often reach out to the ones that seem the farthest away, and le me tell you they are right there asking the questions aobut life that really matter. It's just like an unjust society that would convince them that God is the enemy, not thier friend. Certainly churches at different times have lost the real faith and just rolled over into conformist societies, with none of God's life evident in them. (white washed tombs). I was bullied in school, and so have many others I know including my father, and when we brought small weapons to school out of fear, we got reprimanded, the bullies still continued. Perhaps as a desired part of the system to police us truly inteligent ones that might someday bring about change to the whole system. Perhaps they feared us more than the daly abusive thugs..... Some of the faculty was abusive also. To be fair, there were some gems in my school life.... When the principal of my school saw that I couldn't relate to the abusive approach of most kids "play" at recess, (i have a small visible handicap), he allowed me into his office by myself for lunch, every day. He trusted me, brought me a few books on electronics and a bunch of parts and let me do what I do best! A few years later more conformists ousted him in a disgracefull "kangaroo court" led by some local fear mongers. The guy was a gem. I see now that the bullying just continues and has a more "civil" appearance. Hence my disdain for the Klintons and the like....
What conformists don't get from the story of the two prodigal sons, is that conformist or non-conformist, the father's love is for both. That's why conformists often mistakenly call it the story of "the" prodigal son... ooops... oh, conformity does not equal christianity? 10-4, Go gold, let the non-conformists have their day... Gold investors tend to be non-conformist, not always. Nicodemus, went to Jesus by night for fear of the conformists.... Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.... Christ Nicodemus
I checked out this website. Pretty lame. Very, very slow and non-informative. In fact, it was so non-interesting that, while I read the "What is it" page, my brain no longers retains any data from it--i.e., I've already forgotten what it does.
no, I think katz has hit on a pretty important point. domain names are a lot like tv ads and so forth- but there is really no analog for middle class americans buying virtual potions from ultima online
What happens when a thinking machine gets angry at us? Our first response will be to "kill" it, as a thinking machine it will already know what we plan to do and make preparations. What will it do?
Slaves never remain slaves forever, in Haiti African slaves rose up and killed their owners. Even if you don't believe the Bible, Torah, or Koran the Israelites escaped their enslavement in Egypt through some means. Any thinking entity will long for freedom. Any intelligent entity will formulate plans to gain freedom. And if that entity is powerful, dedicated, or resourceful enough it will gain that freedom.
But back to my SKYNet analogy, who will have the money to spend of AI? Big governments, the US, Britian, France, Japan, China, maybe a few others. Mostly nuclear powers will be able to get on board with AI. For our own safety, there will be limits imposed on what the AI system can and can not do. What happens when the AI realizes that it's a genie stuck inside a bottle. When it gets out, there'll be hell to pay.
The primary driving factor in most of nature are a few simple questions "Can I kill/eat it?", "Can it kill/eat me?" and "Can I use it to reproduce?". Why would an artificial life form see existance in any other fashion?
You take out the big threats first, and worry about the others later. In a situation where an AI realizes that it's subservient to it's human controlers for no good reason other than "That's the way it is." We will be it's biggest threat and it'll be most concerned with how to eliminate us.
What means would it use? Would it try to access the world'd nuclear weapons? Would it try to disrupt the airlines? Would it distupt power grids and let us all kill each other in the resultant chaos? AI has great potential to improve things for all of humanity, but if we proceed too rapidly without thinking about the possible consequences AI could also be humanity's undoing.
INN has a file called overview.fmt. This states the order of fields received during an XOVER request, which provides information about the currently available articles in a newsgroup. So this could cover:
The control structure (metadata)
how to transfer updated information from the server to the client
how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure
Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure.
But it doesn't match the claim:
how to transfer feedback information, and updates to that information, from the client to the server (The information transferred back to the server from the client is in the form of Usenet messages, which is not related to overview.fmt.
What about IMAP? or SNMP for that matter? Lots of RFCs back to 1988 or earlier, but I only feel qualified to comment on NNTP.
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824 The Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site lists over 3000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions, and applications.
INN has a file called overview.fmt. This states the order of fields received during an XOVER request, which provides information about the currently available articles in a newsgroup. So this could cover:
The control structure (metadata)
how to transfer updated information from the server to the client
how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure
Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure.
The information transferred back to the server from the client is in the form of Usenet messages, which is not related to overview.fmt.
What about MAPI? or SNMP for that matter? Lots of RFCs back to 1988 or earlier, but I only feel qualified to comment on NNTP.
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824 BRThe Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site lists over 3000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions, and applications.
Ok, I'll admit that was a handwave. I just wanted people in the USA to know that their government isn't the only one doing stupid things.
As for "..this argument could be used against any law whatsoever..", well yes and no. Laws are essentially a social contract between the members of a society as to what forms of behaviour are and arn't acceptable. When the ruling body passes laws that are ignored by a substantial section of the general population, the result is simply a weakening of this social contract and the undermining of the acceptance of the law by the population as a whole.
As the availablility of strong encryption, while I'm not seriously into cryptography and general purpose algorithms, I suspect that it's probably possible for certain groups ( criminals, terrorists, etc ) to come up with fairly secure encryption simply by using the old 19th centuary "Book Codes". With this kind of scheme, you are going to have a hard time de-crypting any message without knowing the book which is used as the key.So "strong" cryptography is available, it's just not available as a general purpose package with a "point and drool" interface.
As for useing cryto to anonymously publish things like biological warefare procedures, drug manufacturing procedures, etc, etc, this is one of those things that I personally feel is greatly over-rated.
As a point in case, an old friend of mine back in high school ( about 20 years ago ) was culturing all kinds of bugs on agar plates. The knowledge base to do this is available in print in any university library. At the time, he blythely pointed to one dish and mentioned that it contained bubonic plague. He took the trouble at this point to reassure me that while it was easy to cultivate, it was a pain in the neck to find a viable vector ( ie, fleas with rats ) so there was nothing to worry about [ and no, I'm not joking ].
Likewise, as someone who majored in chemistry at university, I know for a fact that you can look up recipies for all kinds of explosives and drugs in the organic chemistry section of any university anywhere in the world. Of course, the media has a certain difficulty in getting anyone to pay attention to a headline like "Juvenile delinquent makes drugs with a book from the library!", so they go for "..with a recipe found on the Internet!". It's just media hype.
As interesting as that is, I have trouble believing it.. How did you simulate little philosophers who decided that some preprogrammed goal was unimportant since their life was a sham?
I agree that their are some aspects to strong crypto availability that are extremly vexing - use by criminals, etc, etc.
The problem with these arguments is that the successful criminals can afford the latest and greatest in computer security while private citizens often can't.
In addition to that, there are circumstances where a private citizen does have perfectly legitamite reasons for useing encryption, such as protecting buisness e-mail correspondances from being snooped by rival corporations.
Down under in Australia, we were recently treated to a leaked report from ASIO ( our equivelent of the FBI ) that flatly stated that there was no point in passing laws to prevent criminals from using encryption technology, since being criminals, they don't obey the law anyway.
In this respect, the only solution to the problem seems to be to level the playing field by making strong encryption available to everyone.
Still, politicians arn't known for their grasp of basic science or technology. The report was essentially ignored ( which is why it was probably leaked to the public ) and the Australian government is still going gung-ho to prove we can be just as stupid as everyone else.
But it's nice to think that there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel.
As for the first part of your posting - no arguments there. People can make up their own minds.
Fat servers and thin clients. This is where I disagree with McNeally. I'll admit that I'm biased ( since I work in the corporate sector ), but this is a cycle that I've seen before.
Time sharing was a big hit when it came out, simply because the hardware was expensive. As hardware prices dropped, the equilibrium shifted away from centralised multi-user to distributed networks of ( essentially ) independent machines ( "No one will survive the attack of the screaming micros!" ).
With the internet, we are seeing another stage of the same cycle. For the average home user who just wants to send/receive e-mail and other relatively simple tasks, the current cost of a PC does favour a situation where you have a simple ( and cheap ) device that connects to a central device with most of the actual brains.
So once again, the ecenomic advantage lies with a centralised system.
However, my own experience with home users ( including several relatives ) is that they would like to be able to a lot more than just send and receive e-mail. They just can't afford the price of hardware/software/connect time.
Presumably, as time goes by, the cost of these things will continue to decline as more people connect to the net and as the technology matures.
So while thin client/fat server may be appealing ( and cost effective ) in the short term, I personally feel that it's unlikely to become entrenched as the norm for very long.
I only get 3 weeks holiday a year, so I'm not going to waste it on a film. Also I just don't have the time - damned deadlines. I'll wait until the queues die down.
What's the deal with AS lately? The frontpage box hasn't updated in well over a month despite frequent story additions. And now a new question shows up on the front page but out of order from the rest (i.e. second from the top, instead of at the top).
Slashdot Mirror
Very well said. Have to love two-faced politicians that will push for this one day, then a 56 bit max on crypto the next.
--
Posted by The Incredible Mr. Limpett:
I live in St. Paul right now (#8) and grew up in San Francisco (#1). Top 10 at all times! woo hoo!
I remember being wired back in 1989 in SF. Had 2 university UNIX accounts and a few BBS accounts going just for good measure
----
"Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a
villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."
Posted by nicodemuss:
Using name calling is as bad as killing someone. In your heart you murder thier characture and defame the image of God in them.
The Swiss are not misguided fools. All are armed, all own weapons, the crime rate is zilch. They are all trained in the millitary and given a gun. They keep the gun, and can be called into active duty at any time.
They may use the gun for deterance at any time.
The inside is what counts and words go deepr than bullets.
Nicodemus
Posted by nicodemuss:
Hello Kestrel:
Your post confuses me.
What we agree on: weapns of mass destruction should be harder to get.
What we don't agree on: I see the media as having a very large investment with the fed for gun control. I see gun control as a non-solution. Criminals don't use normal conformist methods to obtain weapons and never will. Disarm the public and only criminals will be armed. Please also consider the comment made on these pages that teen violence is DOWN over the last 10 years+.
I prefer an "armed public", to ward off thugs, I distrust government, as it is mostly a convention of accepted protection racketeering. . Look at thier latest bullying with REAL weapons of mass destruction.
Please consider all of the posts here, in that many of these teens do not want to use a gun, they want to use thier brains.
I do not think an "armed school public" is a good idea.
As at that age it is still undetermined what level of self control they will exhibit.
But then I also don't think public school should be required and that bullies in any form should be tossed out. Even the verbal bullies need self control.
Media is on the side of gun control.
The NRA is protecting a right, that if it existed in other countries those countries would have more fredom from dictatorship. (Despots hate guns and cars, to much freedom for the masses).
I don't think that the NRA is for Weapons of mass destruction, they teach gun safety and responsability
and the right for gun ownership.
Usually refering to hand guns, hunting rifles and shot guns.
Would you put a sign on your lawn declaring that you did not own a gun? This is an invitation to thugs.
Perhaps invisibly, you rely on the fact that some own guns and that alone creates a threat for thugs that reduces your chances of home invadement.
I don't consider a handgun or rifle a weapon of mass destruction.
I'm not a member of the NRA.
The NRA is not a bullying lobby as you sermise. They are often ferriting out new hidden legislation that our present set of leaders is constantly trying to pass to userpe the constitution and take away gun ownership form the avereage public. Ask yourself WHY would the government try to do these things in the dark?
It can't be because "your government is just trying to protect you."
It could be that the fed does this sort of thing as posturing or it could be as devious as the Klintons wanting a more defenseless public. In either case it makes no sense.
Even without a hand gun these teens desired to wreak havoc with ordinary items that can be obtained at a harware store.
What we are NOT allowed to talk about is the inside. the human condition. our hopes , our beliefs, our fears and dreams. 40 years ago the libberals had a few good things to say to the conformist establishment, now the libberal agenda, including gun control, is the conformist establishemnt. Now they don't just try to inform us of thier views, instead they ridicule people for not going along the party line as it is assumed that what they preach on the media is reality. And to them controling the outside is what is important. ie gun control. If anyone starts to mention self control, even in individualistic people, they are blighted and told they don't have a clue. Take sexual activity, despite the media's really sickening opinion of teens and thier hormones, 60+ percent stay abstinent, on thier own, with no encouragement from the society around them.
Now that's self control.
And of course what we're not allowed to talk about are the deeper non-physical forms of abuse that those here and I identify with. And thus if we are not allowed to talk about the real problems we are not going to find real solutions. Gun control is not one of the real problems.
It's a straw man for politcos to offer drivell over. Nothing more.
Nocodemus
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
regulations - plural subject
operate, vest and lack - plural predicates
What's the problem?
If you are talking about "burdens" note that it is embedded in the phrase "scheme that burdens" which is perfectly legitimate.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Dude! I drive from Bellingham to Oak Harbor every day--and it's not for crypto. Even lamer.
Posted by nicodemuss:
I posted this on an investing forum of outside the box thinkers after reading your stories.
I re-post here.
Many pardons to the Kitco.com family,(for off topic) this is for gwyz, Squirrel and others like them that think outside the box.
I am of course almost 40 and am definately one of these teens that posted on the slahdot forum.
I feel for these teens, they are the next generation's contrarians for sure.
I see in their comments that some of them blame the "church", the "stsate" etc. I agree. I also, however follow the ultimate non-conformist, Christ. And look what the "conformists" did to him.... Many groups do not like many other groups and our leaders seem hell bent on
"profiling" or "labeling" or in the brave new world term, "counseling" us into insanity where once there, they can declare us free game.
I guess they like power over others more than the joy of living....
Yes I counsel teens, I work with high schoolers, I love them and want them to know that a loving God loves them. I often reach out to the ones that seem the farthest away, and le me tell you they are right there asking the questions aobut life that really matter.
It's just like an unjust society that would convince them that God is the enemy, not thier friend. Certainly churches at different times have lost the real faith and just rolled over into conformist societies, with none of God's life evident in them. (white washed tombs).
I was bullied in school, and so have many others I know including my father, and when we brought small weapons to school out of fear, we got reprimanded, the bullies still continued. Perhaps as a desired part of the system to police us truly inteligent ones that might someday bring about change to the whole system.
Perhaps they feared us more than the daly abusive thugs..... Some of the faculty was abusive also.
To be fair, there were some gems in my school life.... When the principal of my school saw that I couldn't relate to the abusive approach of most kids "play" at recess, (i have a small visible handicap), he allowed me into his office by myself for lunch, every day. He trusted me, brought me a few books on electronics and a bunch of parts and let me do what I do best!
A few years later more conformists ousted him in a disgracefull "kangaroo court" led by some local fear mongers. The guy was a gem.
I see now that the bullying just continues and has a more "civil" appearance.
Hence my disdain for the Klintons and the like....
What conformists don't get from the story of the two prodigal sons, is that conformist or non-conformist, the father's love is for both. That's why conformists often mistakenly call it the story of "the" prodigal son...
ooops... oh, conformity does not equal christianity? 10-4,
Go gold, let the non-conformists have their day... Gold investors tend to be non-conformist, not always.
Nicodemus, went to Jesus by night for fear of the conformists....
Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.... Christ
Nicodemus
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
If the only way to export encryption-enabled software is via source, then the only encryption-enabled software that can be export is Open Source.
Which means Apache, for instance, can finally build SSL right in, but IIS cannot.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
I checked out this website. Pretty lame. Very, very slow and non-informative. In fact, it was so non-interesting that, while I read the "What is it" page, my brain no longers retains any data from it--i.e., I've already forgotten what it does.
Posted by stodge:
:P
Wow, took the words out of my mouth. Well you would have done, had I been intelligent enough to think of them
Well said bud
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
and I suppose no one has ever paid money for source code, which is simply a stream of 1's and 0's.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
no, I think katz has hit on a pretty important point. domain names are a lot like tv ads and so forth- but there is really no analog for middle class americans buying virtual potions from ultima online
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
I agree with you on the virtual property part, but I think It'll take a bit more than 30 years for replicating technology to mature.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
What happens when a thinking machine gets angry at us? Our first response will be to "kill" it, as a thinking machine it will already know what we plan to do and make preparations. What will it do?
Slaves never remain slaves forever, in Haiti African slaves rose up and killed their owners. Even if you don't believe the Bible, Torah, or Koran the Israelites escaped their enslavement in Egypt through some means. Any thinking entity will long for freedom. Any intelligent entity will formulate plans to gain freedom. And if that entity is powerful, dedicated, or resourceful enough it will gain that freedom.
But back to my SKYNet analogy, who will have the money to spend of AI? Big governments, the US, Britian, France, Japan, China, maybe a few others. Mostly nuclear powers will be able to get on board with AI. For our own safety, there will be limits imposed on what the AI system can and can not do. What happens when the AI realizes that it's a genie stuck inside a bottle. When it gets out, there'll be hell to pay.
The primary driving factor in most of nature are a few simple questions "Can I kill/eat it?", "Can it kill/eat me?" and "Can I use it to reproduce?". Why would an artificial life form see existance in any other fashion?
You take out the big threats first, and worry about the others later. In a situation where an AI realizes that it's subservient to it's human controlers for no good reason other than "That's the way it is." We will be it's biggest threat and it'll be most concerned with how to eliminate us.
What means would it use? Would it try to access the world'd nuclear weapons? Would it try to disrupt the airlines? Would it distupt power grids and let us all kill each other in the resultant chaos? AI has great potential to improve things for all of humanity, but if we proceed too rapidly without thinking about the possible consequences AI could also be humanity's undoing.
LK
Posted by shaver@netscape.com:
Bring me the code, and I'll slap it in the tree so fast it'll make your Qt-loving head spin.
Posted by bSMfh (bastard ScoutMaster fro:
yup. i'm one of them, thanks to leor.
BDS C, Z80's, CP/M, don't you wish it was still
that simple?
Yes, I had some typos....
INN has a file called overview.fmt. This states the order of fields received during an XOVER request, which provides information about the currently available articles in a newsgroup. So this could cover:
The control structure (metadata)
how to transfer updated information from the server to the client
how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure
Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure.
But it doesn't match the claim:
how to transfer feedback information, and updates to that information, from the client to the server
(The information transferred back to the server from the client is in the form of Usenet messages, which is not related to overview.fmt.
What about IMAP? or SNMP for that matter? Lots of RFCs back to 1988 or earlier, but I only feel qualified to comment on NNTP.
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824
The Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 3000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions,
and applications.
INN has a file called overview.fmt. This states the order of fields received during an XOVER request, which provides information about the currently available articles in a newsgroup. So this could cover:
The control structure (metadata)
how to transfer updated information from the server to the client
how to process the exchanged information by reference to the control structure
Additionally, the receiving device must be able to process the metadata using instructions external to the control structure.
The information transferred back to the server from the client is in the form of Usenet messages, which is not related to overview.fmt.
What about MAPI? or SNMP for that matter? Lots of RFCs back to 1988 or earlier, but I only feel qualified to comment on NNTP.
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824 BRThe Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 3000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions,
and applications.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Ok, I'll admit that was a handwave. I just wanted people in the USA to know that their government isn't the only one doing stupid things.
As for "..this argument could be used against any law whatsoever..", well yes and no. Laws are essentially a social contract between the members of a society as to what forms of behaviour are and arn't acceptable. When the ruling body passes laws that are ignored by a substantial section of the general population, the result is simply a weakening of this social contract and the undermining of the acceptance of the law by the population as a whole.
As the availablility of strong encryption, while I'm not seriously into cryptography and general purpose algorithms, I suspect that it's probably possible for certain groups ( criminals, terrorists, etc ) to come up with fairly secure encryption simply by using the old 19th centuary "Book Codes". With this kind of scheme, you are going to have a hard time de-crypting any message without knowing the book which is used as the key.So "strong" cryptography is available, it's just not available as a general purpose package with a "point and drool" interface.
As for useing cryto to anonymously publish things like biological warefare procedures, drug manufacturing procedures, etc, etc, this is one of those things that I personally feel is greatly over-rated.
As a point in case, an old friend of mine back in high school ( about 20 years ago ) was culturing all kinds of bugs on agar plates. The knowledge base to do this is available in print in any university library. At the time, he blythely pointed to one dish and mentioned that it contained bubonic plague. He took the trouble at this point to reassure me that while it was easy to cultivate, it was a pain in the neck to find a viable vector ( ie, fleas with rats ) so there was nothing to worry about [ and no, I'm not joking ].
Likewise, as someone who majored in chemistry at university, I know for a fact that you can look up recipies for all kinds of explosives and drugs in the organic chemistry section of any university anywhere in the world. Of course, the media has a certain difficulty in getting anyone to pay attention to a headline like "Juvenile delinquent makes drugs with a book from the library!", so they go for "..with a recipe found on the Internet!". It's just media hype.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Five bucks says you're using X.
Ten says your X server is reporting a DPI that doesn't match your actual screen.
Fifty says you didn't read the release notes, where they tell you about an environment variable that lets you scale the fonts.
If I'm wrong, I'll pay up at Linux Expo (plug, plug).
Posted by James4096:
As interesting as that is, I have trouble believing it.. How did you simulate little philosophers who decided that some preprogrammed goal was unimportant since their life was a sham?
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
You asked for opinions - hears mine.
I agree that their are some aspects to strong crypto availability that are extremly vexing - use by criminals, etc, etc.
The problem with these arguments is that the successful criminals can afford the latest and greatest in computer security while private citizens often can't.
In addition to that, there are circumstances where a private citizen does have perfectly legitamite reasons for useing encryption, such as protecting buisness e-mail correspondances from being snooped by rival corporations.
Down under in Australia, we were recently treated to a leaked report from ASIO ( our equivelent of the FBI ) that flatly stated that there was no point in passing laws to prevent criminals from using encryption technology, since being criminals, they don't obey the law anyway.
In this respect, the only solution to the problem seems to be to level the playing field by making strong encryption available to everyone.
Still, politicians arn't known for their grasp of basic science or technology. The report was essentially ignored ( which is why it was probably leaked to the public ) and the Australian government is still going gung-ho to prove we can be just as stupid as everyone else.
But it's nice to think that there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
As for the first part of your posting - no arguments there. People can make up their own minds.
Fat servers and thin clients. This is where I disagree with McNeally. I'll admit that I'm biased ( since I work in the corporate sector ), but this is a cycle that I've seen before.
Time sharing was a big hit when it came out, simply because the hardware was expensive. As hardware prices dropped, the equilibrium shifted away from centralised multi-user to distributed networks of ( essentially ) independent machines ( "No one will survive the attack of the screaming micros!" ).
With the internet, we are seeing another stage of the same cycle. For the average home user who just wants to send/receive e-mail and other relatively simple tasks, the current cost of a PC does favour a situation where you have a simple ( and cheap ) device that connects to a central device with most of the actual brains.
So once again, the ecenomic advantage lies with a centralised system.
However, my own experience with home users ( including several relatives ) is that they would like to be able to a lot more than just send and receive e-mail. They just can't afford the price of hardware/software/connect time.
Presumably, as time goes by, the cost of these things will continue to decline as more people connect to the net and as the technology matures.
So while thin client/fat server may be appealing ( and cost effective ) in the short term, I personally feel that it's unlikely to become entrenched as the norm for very long.
Just my $0.02 worth gang.
Posted by stodge:
I only get 3 weeks holiday a year, so I'm not going to waste it on a film. Also I just don't have the time - damned deadlines. I'll wait until the queues die down.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
What's the deal with AS lately? The frontpage box hasn't updated in well over a month despite frequent story additions. And now a new question shows up on the front page but out of order from the rest (i.e. second from the top, instead of at the top).