> So who would you have us vote for? Nader? > (let's be realistic... he has no chance of winning).
Let's be realistic : Ralph Nader would be a total disaster as President:
prickly, posturing, egotistic, unable to make effective compromise.
A politician's _job_ is to compromise.
Nader has always been an inspiring figure (to those who share his values),
but a failure as an executive. The PIRGs were independent because they
had to be. Ralph can lead but he can't manage and doesn't get along
with people who *can* manage.
Starting in 1922, General Motors bought up many of the nation's electric urban and interurban light rail systems, including the excellent streetcars that served Los Angeles, converted them to internal combustion engines, and deliberately managed them into failure. Before this time, good electric streetcars made an automobile unneccessary in many urban areas. See http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/4518
Flowcharts haven't been a particularly useful tool for program design since people stopped writing primarily in assembler. And they're tedious and time-consuming to construct. And they're out of date the day after they're created. I had no idea that they were still taught.
but a couple of the games were great, especially for their day. The EA "Shockwave" series, an almost-free-flight shooter, was well done and had considerable replay value. And "PO'ed" was kind-of-twisted FPS with interesting level design, interesting weapons, a personal jetpack, and the first missile-cam I ever saw. EA also did a great rendition of "Road Rash" that was the most instantly-playable game I've ever seen.
> Those stickers you see all over are not Calvin of Calvin and hobbes fames. > They are similear, but different enough to not infringe.
They infringe.
People who buy and display them are beneath contempt -- they pollute the memory of The Greatest Comic Strip Evar Bar None.
OTOH, it's sort of a benefit that barbarians who either unaware of such considerations or who don't care publicly identify themselves in this way -- a little like the busty chrome silhouette commonly seen on the backs of trucks, which concisely convey the message "Driver Is Neanderthal".
>[ Garfield's ] Jim Davis pretty much introduced cynicism to the funnies
You are apparently too young to remember Walt Kelly's masterpiece _Pogo_ comic strips during the McCarthy era, and then during Nixon. Does the phrase "We have met the enemy and he is us" ring a bell?
> When is the US going to grow up and recycle and refine spent uranium
"Breeder" reactors breed plutonium as the second-generation fuel.
It's quite difficult to build an amateur nuclear weapon from
reactor-grade enriched uranium.
It's much easier to build an amateur nuclear weapon from
refined plutonium.
Thoughtful people everywhere have serious concerns about producing
large quantities of refined plutonium, because they think that
it may in the end prove difficult to keep it completely out of
the hands of people like Mr. Bin Laden.
ob. book: _The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb_, by Richard Rhodes
> It's not like the RIAA can just go into people's homes > and start busting open computers for pirated music.
[ solely on the basis of alleged copyright infringement ]
Actually, they probably can, but have not yet adopted this tactic.
This is exactly what Scientology's OSA did to Dennis Erlich, a former high-ranking Scientologist who started to discuss the secret inner doctrines of Scientology on Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology sometime in 1994.
OSA went to a judge, alleged copyright violation, got an ex parte writ of seizure, and ransacked Erlich's home, tacking his computer and backups, and many paper documents not covered by the writ.
The raid is described here, and you can download a Real video of the raid here
Scientology is way out in front of the **AA on this copyright business. They had the foresight to call Erlich, (and others who dared to publicly discuss the Sekrit Skripchurs on Usenet) "copyright terrorists".
> You may not make the insane late-90's bucks now (150K+), > but you can EASILY make enough to live very well > (especially since you can live incredibly well on less than 1/3rd of that).
You don't live around here (Silicon Valley), do you?
uhClem (because my mother was a Bozoette at school) --- '...bozos by their nose-o's. From the Spanish
"vos otros", the "b" and the "v" being the same.
I.e., viz., BVD biz. Underwear industry: it is
estimated the *no* undewear will be worn by the
year 2020...'
For those of us who learned to program before the advent of the IBM PC, they have the "correct" layout
(the layout for which and with which vi was developed)
with the control key just to the left of the 'a', As God Intended)* Buckling spring, Alps switches, removable keycaps, steel base, fully programmable key assignments, DIP switches for common configuration options. Indispensible and indestructible.
I have two, and they continue to work perfectly after lo these many years, and there's a brisk market for them on ebay (lots of old hackers treasure them).
But they're no longer made.
Fortunately, CTI makes a close copy. The Avant Stellar is by all accounts superb, and bears the Tibor Polgar seal of approval. Buy a couple while they're still made, and you're set for life.
The Customizer seems to be similar, but I have no experience with this keyboard.
* and if you're one of those people like me who has spent the
last twenty years cursing IBM for screwing up the layout of
ASCII keyboards for all time by fiddling with the the
One True Layout (with the control key to the left of the 'a'),
then you may be happy to know about the superb small program ctrl2cap from Systems Internals, which makes the usless never-to-be-sufficiently-damned caps lock key into a control key. Tiny, slick, sophisticated, open source, free. Check it out.
> To make it worse, it probably also enables DRM at a file system level...
Bingo.
And when you don't *have* to know where and how your data is actually stored in order to access it, MS will arrange things so that you won't really be *able* to know where your data is stored.
You won't be able to access any data without an up-to-date subscription to the (MS) DRM certificate facility.
My own idiosyncratic essentials
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
_The_Dispossessed_, Ursula K. LeGuin _Stand_on_Zanzibar_, John Brunner _Lucifer's_Hammer_, Larry Niven _The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_, Ursula K. LeGuin _Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance _, Robert Pirsig _Gateway_, Fred Pohl _The_Forever_War_, Joe Haldeman _Slow_River_, Nicola Griffith _The_Sheep_Look_Up_, John Brunner _Lord_of_Light_, Roger Zelazny _The_Doomsday_Book_, Connie Willis _The_War_of_the_Worlds_, H.G. Wells _Earth_Abides_, George R. Stewart _A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz_, Walter Miller _Been_Down_So_Long_It_Look_Like_Up_To_Me_, Richard Farina _The_Folk_of_the_Air_, Peter S. Beagle _Aegypt_, John Crowley _The_Day_of_the_Triffids_, John Wyndham _Rocannon's_World_, Ursula K. Leguin _Planet_of_Exile_, Ursulak K. Leguin _Ringworld_, Larry Niven _The_Long_Walk_, Slavomir Rawicz _We_Die_Alone_, David Howarth
all that being said, two books tower above all other summer reading:
_Treasure_Island_, Robert Louis Stevenson _Huckleberry_Finn_, Mark Twain
> When the "Next Generation Secure Computing Base" is in place, > expect to pay EVERY time you watch or listen to anything produced > by the television networks, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
You underestimate them.
In the OS after Longhorn, you will have to pay a monthly fee to retain access to to data _you_created_. If you have a disk, you will not control its contents; you might not be allowed to know what's on it.
Your data and applications will only work if your computer is net-connedted, so that the DRM mechanisms can watch what you're doing.
Crazy phil man saith: > stock up on fast systems now, while you can. > Get all your computer purchasing out of the way this year, > and skip the whole DRM thing entirely.
Here's where I think the dividing line is on Wintel. I'd be grateful for corrections.
Disk drives - CPRM:
- No CPRM-mandatory products in wide distribution.
BIOS - TCPA:
- no data. Anyone know which ones have TCPA support
already built in?
Processor - La Grande:
- current P4 dice don't have La Grande, CPU IDs can be disabled.
- Prescott-design processors due "in the third quarter
of 2003" will have La Grande
Chipset -
The hot intel "Canterwood" chipset seems to work well
with non-La Grande processors. Will its successor?
OS - Palladium, EULAs, etc.:
- Windows 9x is not an operating system.
No actual security of any kind is really possible.
- Windows 2000 is a real OS, albeit kinda klunky.
but it doesn't have the hooks to make DRM mandatory.
Up to SP2 the EULAs were acceptable - then the EULA for SP3
had that scary clause about agreeing that MS could download and
install updates without your knowledge or further consent,
(now it looks like that was just CYA for the "auto update"
feature, which can be turned off). But I think that you can
run Windows 2000 at SP 2 or 3 and be in the clear, especially
if you don't rush into any further service packs or updates
without careful scrutiny. Withdrawn from market, but still
available e.g. on ebay.
- Windows XP is the same OS as Windows 2000, with a whole
lot of minor annoyances fixed. Big improvement in backward
compatibility with Windows 9x: it's a far better gaming platform.
But it was designed to be the carrot that lured people onto
Passport and MyWallet, and to support Windows Media DRM.
May already be some Palladium or precursor under the hood.
Currently being shipped on all new OEM boxen.
- Longhorn, or whatever the next generation is codenamed:
it will be possible for someone to configure it to make Palladium
mandatory. Will the owner of the HW be allowed to configure it?
- You don't own any data; you pay
a monthly fee for access to certain data, some of which you
may have created. If you quit paying, you lose acceess, and
the data might go away.
Windows Media Player
Trojan Horse. Introduces DRM, and each update locks it down tighter,
gives the user less control. EULAs and built-in DRM already
onerous and unacceptable in 7.1. People who download and install
the current WMP 9 are drinking the kool-aid.
Real Player, Quicktime, etc.
I have no knowledge. Anyone?
So, I conclude that if I wish to continue with Wintel and still have control of my data, I *must* buy a new box with a fast P4 on a Canterwood chipset, and I must do it this summer while I still can.
Re:Internet is not slow TV...
on
World of Ends
·
· Score: 1
> Does anyone really consider the internet to be just slow TV?
Hardly anyone.
There are, however, some notable holdouts:
Senator Fritz Hollings, D. Disney^H^H^H^H^H^H SC
Representative Dan Berman, D. CA San Fernando
Jack Valenti and the MPAA
Michael Eisner
Slashdot Mirror
> So who would you have us vote for? Nader?
> (let's be realistic... he has no chance of winning).
Let's be realistic : Ralph Nader would be a total disaster as President
prickly, posturing, egotistic, unable to make effective compromise.
A politician's _job_ is to compromise.
Nader has always been an inspiring figure (to those who share his values),
but a failure as an executive. The PIRGs were independent because they
had to be. Ralph can lead but he can't manage and doesn't get along
with people who *can* manage.
Starting in 1922, General Motors bought up many of the nation's
electric urban and interurban light rail systems, including
the excellent streetcars that served Los Angeles, converted them
to internal combustion engines, and deliberately managed them into failure.
Before this time, good electric streetcars made an automobile
unneccessary in many urban areas.
See http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/4518
> I'm sure that all kinds of good science are being done
> as manpower and air leaks permit
A common misconception among non-scientists.
The ISS project has not been useful for significant scientific research.
Unmanned craft, on the other hand, have.
See the Senate testimony
of Robert Park for corroboration.
The campus radio station should broadcast the
songs at a specific time -- the copyright holders
would get a small compensation.
Then the professor should ask the students to each
tape that broadcast for personal use, which they are
legally allowed to do.
Flowcharts haven't been a particularly useful tool for program design
since people stopped writing primarily in assembler.
And they're tedious and time-consuming to construct.
And they're out of date the day after they're created.
I had no idea that they were still taught.
but a couple of the games were great, especially for their day.
The EA "Shockwave" series, an almost-free-flight shooter, was well done and had considerable replay value. And "PO'ed" was kind-of-twisted FPS with interesting level design, interesting weapons, a personal jetpack, and the first missile-cam I ever saw. EA also did a great rendition of "Road Rash" that was the most instantly-playable game I've ever seen.
> Those stickers you see all over are not Calvin of Calvin and hobbes fames.
> They are similear, but different enough to not infringe.
They infringe.
People who buy and display them are beneath contempt -- they pollute the memory of The Greatest Comic Strip Evar Bar None.
OTOH, it's sort of a benefit that barbarians who either unaware of such considerations or who don't care publicly identify themselves in this way -- a little like the busty chrome silhouette commonly seen on the backs of trucks, which concisely convey the message "Driver Is Neanderthal".
"There's treasure everywhere." Calvin
>[ Garfield's ] Jim Davis pretty much introduced cynicism to the funnies
You are apparently too young to remember Walt Kelly's masterpiece
_Pogo_ comic strips during the McCarthy era, and then during Nixon.
Does the phrase "We have met the enemy and he is us" ring a bell?
> When is the US going to grow up and recycle and refine spent uranium
"Breeder" reactors breed plutonium as the second-generation fuel.
It's quite difficult to build an amateur nuclear weapon from
reactor-grade enriched uranium.
It's much easier to build an amateur nuclear weapon from
refined plutonium.
Thoughtful people everywhere have serious concerns about producing
large quantities of refined plutonium, because they think that
it may in the end prove difficult to keep it completely out of
the hands of people like Mr. Bin Laden.
ob. book: _The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb_, by Richard Rhodes
Sewer Shark on the 3DO console
Jurassic Park Interactive on the 3DO console
> It's not like the RIAA can just go into people's homes
> and start busting open computers for pirated music.
[ solely on the basis of alleged copyright infringement ]
Actually, they probably can, but have not yet adopted this tactic.
This is exactly what Scientology's OSA did to Dennis Erlich,
a former high-ranking Scientologist who started to discuss the
secret inner doctrines of Scientology on Usenet newsgroup
alt.religion.scientology sometime in 1994.
OSA went to a judge, alleged copyright violation, got an
ex parte writ of seizure, and ransacked Erlich's home,
tacking his computer and backups, and many paper documents
not covered by the writ.
The raid is described here, and
you can download a Real video of the raid here
Scientology is way out in front of the **AA on this copyright business.
They had the foresight to call Erlich, (and others who dared to
publicly discuss the Sekrit Skripchurs on Usenet)
"copyright terrorists".
> Please try to describe in instance where distributing copyrighted material
> without the copyright holder's permission is 'right'.
Restaurant employees singing "Happy Birthday To You" to customers.
Girl Scouts singing copyrighted songs at camp.
Quoting an excerpt from an article or book in a hostile review thereof.
> I once heard that everyone in the world could fit on Cuba
ob. book: _Stand_On_Zanzibar_ John Brunner
> You may not make the insane late-90's bucks now (150K+),
> but you can EASILY make enough to live very well
> (especially since you can live incredibly well on less than 1/3rd of that).
You don't live around here (Silicon Valley), do you?
uhClem ...'
(because my mother was a Bozoette at school)
---
'...bozos by their nose-o's. From the Spanish
"vos otros", the "b" and the "v" being the same.
I.e., viz., BVD biz. Underwear industry: it is
estimated the *no* undewear will be worn by the
year 2020
was the Northgate Computer Systems Omnikey.
For those of us who learned to program before the
advent of the IBM PC, they have the "correct" layout
(the layout for which and with which vi was developed)
with the control key just to the left of the 'a', As God Intended)*
Buckling spring, Alps switches, removable keycaps, steel base,
fully programmable key assignments, DIP switches for common
configuration options. Indispensible and indestructible.
I have two, and they continue to work perfectly after
lo these many years, and there's a brisk market for them
on ebay (lots of old hackers treasure them).
But they're no longer made.
Fortunately, CTI makes a close copy. The Avant Stellar
is by all accounts superb, and bears the Tibor Polgar seal of approval.
Buy a couple while they're still made, and you're set for life.
The Customizer seems to be similar, but I have no experience with this keyboard.
* and if you're one of those people like me who has spent the
last twenty years cursing IBM for screwing up the layout of
ASCII keyboards for all time by fiddling with the the
One True Layout (with the control key to the left of the 'a'),
then you may be happy to know about the superb small program
ctrl2cap from Systems Internals, which makes the
usless never-to-be-sufficiently-damned caps lock key
into a control key. Tiny, slick, sophisticated, open source, free.
Check it out.
"ideas"
you should find some older person whose tattoos are
a couple decades old.
take a close look at that 20-year-old tattoo.
really. you want that?
it may look fresh and lovely when it's new --
but it's not always gonna be new.
> To make it worse, it probably also enables DRM at a file system level...
Bingo.
And when you don't *have* to know where and how your
data is actually stored in order to access it, MS will
arrange things so that you won't really be *able* to know
where your data is stored.
You won't be able to access any data without an up-to-date
subscription to the (MS) DRM certificate facility.
> and it is PAscal, not this joke of a language called C or C++).
Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
_The_Dispossessed_, Ursula K. LeGuine _, Robert Pirsig, Richard Farina
:
_Stand_on_Zanzibar_, John Brunner
_Lucifer's_Hammer_, Larry Niven
_The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_, Ursula K. LeGuin
_Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenanc
_Gateway_, Fred Pohl
_The_Forever_War_, Joe Haldeman
_Slow_River_, Nicola Griffith
_The_Sheep_Look_Up_, John Brunner
_Lord_of_Light_, Roger Zelazny
_The_Doomsday_Book_, Connie Willis
_The_War_of_the_Worlds_, H.G. Wells
_Earth_Abides_, George R. Stewart
_A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz_, Walter Miller
_Been_Down_So_Long_It_Look_Like_Up_To_Me_
_The_Folk_of_the_Air_, Peter S. Beagle
_Aegypt_, John Crowley
_The_Day_of_the_Triffids_, John Wyndham
_Rocannon's_World_, Ursula K. Leguin
_Planet_of_Exile_, Ursulak K. Leguin
_Ringworld_, Larry Niven
_The_Long_Walk_, Slavomir Rawicz
_We_Die_Alone_, David Howarth
all that being said, two books tower above all other summer reading
_Treasure_Island_, Robert Louis Stevenson
_Huckleberry_Finn_, Mark Twain
> see if [chimps and humans] can make babies [together]
Unlikely. Different chromosome counts.
Humans have 23 pairs, all extant apes have 24 pairs.
Not an insuperable barrier, but likely to cause problems.
> When the "Next Generation Secure Computing Base" is in place,
> expect to pay EVERY time you watch or listen to anything produced
> by the television networks, the RIAA, and the MPAA.
You underestimate them.
In the OS after Longhorn, you will have to pay a monthly fee
to retain access to to data _you_created_.
If you have a disk, you will not control its contents;
you might not be allowed to know what's on it.
Your data and applications will only work if your computer
is net-connedted, so that the DRM mechanisms can watch what
you're doing.
Crazy phil man saith :
:
:
:
:
> stock up on fast systems now, while you can.
> Get all your computer purchasing out of the way this year,
> and skip the whole DRM thing entirely.
Here's where I think the dividing line is on Wintel.
I'd be grateful for corrections.
Disk drives - CPRM
- No CPRM-mandatory products in wide distribution.
BIOS - TCPA
- no data. Anyone know which ones have TCPA support
already built in?
Processor - La Grande
- current P4 dice don't have La Grande, CPU IDs can be disabled.
- Prescott-design processors due "in the third quarter
of 2003" will have La Grande
Chipset -
The hot intel "Canterwood" chipset seems to work well
with non-La Grande processors. Will its successor?
OS - Palladium, EULAs, etc.
- Windows 9x is not an operating system.
No actual security of any kind is really possible.
- Windows 2000 is a real OS, albeit kinda klunky.
but it doesn't have the hooks to make DRM mandatory.
Up to SP2 the EULAs were acceptable - then the EULA for SP3
had that scary clause about agreeing that MS could download and
install updates without your knowledge or further consent,
(now it looks like that was just CYA for the "auto update"
feature, which can be turned off). But I think that you can
run Windows 2000 at SP 2 or 3 and be in the clear, especially
if you don't rush into any further service packs or updates
without careful scrutiny. Withdrawn from market, but still
available e.g. on ebay.
- Windows XP is the same OS as Windows 2000, with a whole
lot of minor annoyances fixed. Big improvement in backward
compatibility with Windows 9x: it's a far better gaming platform.
But it was designed to be the carrot that lured people onto
Passport and MyWallet, and to support Windows Media DRM.
May already be some Palladium or precursor under the hood.
Currently being shipped on all new OEM boxen.
- Longhorn, or whatever the next generation is codenamed:
it will be possible for someone to configure it to make Palladium
mandatory. Will the owner of the HW be allowed to configure it?
- You don't own any data; you pay
a monthly fee for access to certain data, some of which you
may have created. If you quit paying, you lose acceess, and
the data might go away.
Windows Media Player
Trojan Horse. Introduces DRM, and each update locks it down tighter,
gives the user less control. EULAs and built-in DRM already
onerous and unacceptable in 7.1. People who download and install
the current WMP 9 are drinking the kool-aid.
Real Player, Quicktime, etc.
I have no knowledge. Anyone?
So, I conclude that if I wish to continue with Wintel
and still have control of my data, I *must* buy a new box
with a fast P4 on a Canterwood chipset, and I must do
it this summer while I still can.
> Does anyone really consider the internet to be just slow TV?
Hardly anyone.
There are, however, some notable holdouts:
Senator Fritz Hollings, D. Disney^H^H^H^H^H^H SC
Representative Dan Berman, D. CA San Fernando
Jack Valenti and the MPAA
Michael Eisner