p.s. they didn't throw me off: i left. too many incredibly hurtful comments from andrew. the one i will always remember is where he thanked tim potter for completing winbind, without acknowledging that i had helped nor that winbind would have even been possible without the dce/rpc client libraries i'd written.
working with others requires cooperation both ways.
_i_ have learned where i have failed.
now PLEASE will you do me the favour of communicating to andrew and to jeremy where THEY have failed.
the samba team is not a team at all: it is a group of people who work on their own areas with hardly any actual cooperation at all.
i WISH that the samba project had an ASF charter, with an additional clause that lends equal weight to "strategic" decisions in the part about code being accepted on "technical merit".
if the ASF charter was in place on the samba project, so many many people would not have left it in frustration.
there is much more that i could say but the number of comments on this topic is getting high (and consequently thinner), and is distracting me from my work.
XAD is very interesting, and it works, yet is... lacking in key areas that would aid in migration.
you can make a XAD server be a member of an NT-controlled forest, but the replication protocol is itself a beast-and-a-half, such that it is not yet possible for a XAD server to replicate and then "take over" an NT server.
which is a pity.
also, lukeh has modified a number of open source projects to allow "plugin" components to be added, such that he can out-source to his own components.
the source code for these plugin methods _is_ available - ironically, the one for samba does pretty much EXACTLY what i do for samba tng - outsource the DCE/RPC traffic - yet unfortunately, XAD itself, the core of it, perhaps unsurprisingly, is proprietary.
yep. i totally agree! i can't even apply for jobs any more because i would rapidly become a threat to any of the long-standing employees, simply by opening my mouth and explaining things to them that would not have occurred to them.
my last job was working for a parallel processor company: in the tutorials they gave in the first WEEK i came up with a way to use the processor that the guy who had DESIGNED the DMA controller had not thought of. within three months he was not on speaking terms with me, his contempt barely disguised.
ironically employed as an applications engineer, i came up with enough new ideas for the company to apply for six or seven new patents on the CORE architecture of their product.
one other thing that i really should make clear is that i used - and still use - a programming technique which recently gained a name: "extreme programming".
basically what i do is i build up a picture in my head of what results i want to achieve, and how, in broad architectural terms that that picture should be built.
then i start incessantly, repeatedly, rapidly, bluntly and brutally chipping away at the details: in the case of coding that could result in 30 cvs commits per day.
does this work? oops, no it didn't, let's try something else.
occasionally, usually due to exhaustion or frustration, i would sit and re-think.
i bounced hundreds of messages off of the samba mailing lists, most of which were not actually understood but that was okay because it allowed me to think out loud.
this process drove jeremy allison completely nuts.
jeremy's development model was radically different: very controlled, very calculated, very infrequent cvs commits (relatively speaking) - if it's not ready, if it don't work, it ain't going in the cvs repository.
contrast this with me having at best a pentium 90 with 16mb of memory (my fastest machine) and having to do partial-builds (ccache didn't exist) due to a complete build taking 90 minutes, and random cvs commits in case someone stole my computer from the cybercafe...... i frequently had no choice but to commit in code at the risk of breaking the build.
yes - i wanted to introduce several stand-alone daemons, for several reasons:
1) project manageability.
you tell people that samba is 350,000 lines of code and they freak out. you tell them that they can work on say writing a special samr daemon (e.g. a sql db one) which would be oh about 30-50k lines, and they start to calm down a bit.
2) clear delineation and separation of code at logical boundaries.
the complexity of the samba project was getting out of hand, and it is still out-of-hand.
by introducing separate services, which almost every other implementor of NT-compatible servers have done, you don't end up feeling like you've swallowed a tiger.... would anyone DREAM of merging postfix, cyrus, nntpd and apache into a single daemon??
3) commercial and other-licensed-projects can interoperate.
sun microsystems would never have bothered to license AT&T's AFPS code [NT 3.5 ported to SysV by microsoft - badly - and bought by AT&T].
or, at least, if they had, they would have chucked away the file-server part of it, and used smbd as the file server, whilst still using the NT-based services from NT 3.5-ported-to-unix!
and they would have used the published interfaces - the ones used to communicate with the external DCE/RPC services.
the reasons i was quoted AGAINST doing separate services were that a) it would be several milliseconds too slow (which is a rubbish argument on a network-based protocol) and b) unix domain sockets cannot be used securely (which, given that they are used in winbind is again rubbish)
no, the real reasons why samba was not turned into separate daemons was a) so that samba could be used to maintain control as a single GPL project b) because i was the one advocating it c) the level of complexity was not understood and i failed to explain it clearly enough.
i see patterns. i mean i SEE patterns. it freaks people out. especially those people who are insecure in their abilities and position.
one thing i do have a lot of difficulty with when i fail to explain or get across a deep understanding of a complex topic.
i find it particularly frustrating in areas where people are supposed to have the capabilities and expertise to cope with a certain level of complexity.
but - basically - the one way to absolutely GUARANTEE to make me see pink mist is for you to be dishonest. whereever i find people being dishonest with themselves, me, or other people, i WILL go for the throat - without fail.
yes, i failed. i took on a fascinating and very large task - to help EVERYONE out of a difficult hole, both microsoft, the open source community AN D its users, AND microsoft and samba's competitors (the Storage Area Network community) i succeeded in getting the knowledge out there but i failed in implementing it in an "acceptable" way.
yes, the times when i was working on samba got progressively more painful as the difference between the SAMBA_NTDOM and the main cvs branch got steadily further and further apart - in the end approximately 100,000 to 120,000 lines of code apart.
yes, without the work that i did for four years, spurred by paul ashton's initial decoding of the NT domains logon system, the samba team would likely still be peddling you a system that was compatible with windows 95. that's a gross exaggeration: the Active Directory interoperability is a lot easier but still fraught with difficulties.
one of the key problems was that andrew tridgell found it increasingly difficult to actually accept that i could think of things that he could not.
he also had great difficulty, as most people do, in accepting the level of complexity of the MSRPC (aka DCE/RPC) subsystem and quite how inter-connected the whole thing is.
in the end, i had to use other people (such as tim potter, to whom i am very grateful) to get ideas and code accepted.
in particular, the winbind project: note the striking similarity between the use of unix domain sockets in winbind, which andrew tridgell reviewed and accepted, and the use of unix domain sockets in Samba TNG, which andrew tridgell REFUSED to review and REFUSED to accept.
i was told, by andrew tridgell, things like "you should try to log in as root occasionally, and if you break out in a cold sweat, lie down for a while until the feeling goes away".
whilst i learned an awful lot about systems programming from andrew, the way that he treated me was with disdain and complete lack of respect - which was terribly, terribly disappointing for me because, being absolutely honest, i loved and respected him greatly.
anyway: he learned nothing from me, and consequently, he has set samba's development back by at least ten man-years.
luke howard, in three years, ON HIS OWN, produced XAD (www.padl.com) which he has been selling for at least the past two years as a commercial product - an NT 5 Active Directory Server.
Formats that include Self-Protecting Digital Content(TM) address key sharing attacks by binding a title's decryption algorithms with renewable security logic. Instead of having a simple decryption key, titles carry their own security software that can integrate system renewability, forensic marking, decryption, and other security processes. This strong binding is essential to avoid attacks that try to separate the ability to decrypt a title from its security rules.
Requirement #3: Pirates must not be able to bypass the security of high-definition disc formats by posting title or media keys on the Internet.
*ROTFL*. so they gonna solve that by banning internet access?
of all the answers, here, i'm surprised that none of them mention these two projects:
http://sf.net/projects/selinux
http://sf.net/projects/xen
the first project allows you to grant root access to lusers, thereby convincing the program that it's got root access, but the SELinux security kicks in as well, which is far more flexible than the 20+-year-old unix security model, and most importantly SELinux doesn't give a rats arse about what a superuser is.
the second project, xen, is like vmware only faster and is a bit like where vmware installs the screen/keyboard/mouse driver and you _have_ to use those drivers. xen-linux compiles as a completely new architecture (named, duh, xen) and it comes with its own virtual device drivers.
by compartmentalising an SE/Linux XEN machine you can restrict the pants off of the vendor's software and can blow it away with ease if they start dicking about.
no, you don't have to have DC brushless motors to get the most.
the LRK motor design is a stonking electric motor that is amazingly 96% efficient or better, and it is very simple to build (requiring only a lathe).
Rainer Partenan has created prototype RECHARGEABLE sealed aluminium-based batteries that are FIVE TIMES more power/weight ratio than Li-Ion batteries.
plus, aluminium batteries won't explode on contact with air, unlike lithium-ion batteries, in an accident.
60kg of partenan cells could get a standard family car a distance of 500 miles.
a 5-fold reduction in weight of this 2400kg vehicle's battery, probably about 1,000 kg, would bring the battery down to 200kg, reducing the weight of this vehicle to a frightening 1600kg.
that means that those numbers on the 0-60 time? assuming that it's still possible for the eight wheels to stick to the ground with only 1600kg weight, well you divide those by 1.5.
so with only 1600kg, the 0-60 time on this vehicle would be 2.7 seconds not 4, and the 0-100 time would be 4.7 seconds, not 7.
this is a legally binding agreement between microsoft and my butt.
microsoft to sign here: xxxxxx
1) my butt agrees that all smelliness and any shit emanating from it is wholly owned by microsoft.
2) i agree to give up any rights to any biological material passed though and developed by my gut which is forced out my butt.
3) should i put into my mouth any food that could cause irreparable harm to microsoft, due to the resultant stench up to 48 hours later, i agree to throw up and clear up the resultant mess.
4) i agree to regular colonic irrigation in order to indemnify microsoft against any butt-related illnesses.
5) i agree to indemnify microsoft against any costs related to "fishing out", should i fail accidentally to provide to microsoft all butt excrecations.
6) i agree that any corks or bottles purchased shall be at my own expense.
I'd like to take this more as an opportunity to make some comments on sci-fi as a whole, and i would be interested to hear your reactions to those comments.
i have read every decent sci-fi book i can get my hands on - yours, hamilton, bear, banks, card, macleod, reynolds, clarke, asimov to name a few - at one point i ran out of books and had to start reading the scifi masterworks series like psychoshop and last and first men.
from a materialistic point of view, the subject matter ranges pretty much the whole gamut of timespans as outlined by "last and first men" by olaf stapledon: i.e. all other sci-fi books pretty much "fill in some of the gaps" on a timeline scale of 2*10^^3 years ("snowcrash" by yourself) up to about 10^^8 years ("the end of eternity" by asimov).
from a spiritual point of view, the subject matter is fairly coarse: wars, lawlessness, alternative laws, politics, sex, intrigue, science projections come true - very few authors - orson scott card, ian macleod, peter f hamilton being amongst the notable exceptions - have anything that sets stable or benign higher consciousness [than humans] at the forefront of their storylines.
even iain banks, who introduced "the culture" to us, with the [real intelligence - bugger the "A" in AI] "minds" going far beyond human baseline consciousness, couldn't, i don't think, quite come to terms with the magnitude of what he was describing: just at the point where his "culture series" books began to touch on the "sublime" races, he himself xxxxed off on a motorbike pub tour of scotland (or so i heard).
so, if there _is_ a question, it's this: why is there so much "soul-searching" going on in sci-fi books that doesn't really hint, except in macleod's "dark light" and a very few others, at the underlying spiritual and god-quantum-ridden nature of the universe??
to make that slightly clearer than mud: recently, stephen hawking had to announce that he was wrong in his belief about black holes not having memory: i am sorry, but that's just so obvious to me that in a universe where dimensions are strings (and where most dimensions are temporarily of zero or near-infinitesimally-zero length) and the number of dimensions is infinite, the ability of black holes to store information seems abundantly clear: the collapse of matter into a black hole merely transforms that matter up the chain of higher dimensions (into its "memory"), where three of those dimensions (which we know as x y and z) simply have the same value - for all the matter at the centre of the black hole.
if _that_ is possible, then certainly a hell of a lot more is possible than what even sci-fi books are only hinting at!
make sure you get a bike which has, at some point in the drive train, a torque measuring device that will match your own efforts with assisted power.
the last thing that you want is a speed controller.
it's pretty straightforward to replace one or both of the pedal cranks with cranks that have torque measuring devices: any [really] serious cyclist will have a heart-rate monitor, speedometer _and_ torque measuring to determine how much pressure they're exerting on the pedals.
from the exerpt you gave, it's not the slightest bit tongue in cheek.
in a very short paragraph, he's expressing some views which basically say that the effects of capitalism - which you are taking for granted as sacrosanct - are causing some really serious world-wide problems; that the internet is viewed by those who support capitalism is a threat _to_ capitalism.
except he's not quite come out and said that directly, because, of course, capitalism _is_ sacrosant.
i recommend anyone who believes that capitalism is good, or that corruption and bribery is bad for trade, or that racism extends just to skin colour, to read _all_ of Ian Macleod's sci-fi books, back-to-back.
if you can't hack Ian Macleod then at least go read some of Anne McCaffrey's co-authored books.
5. In 1990 I served as expert to the Court (Eastern District of NY) in Computer Associates v. Altai, a software copyright infringement case that articulated the abstraction, filtration, comparison test for software. I have also been retained by the Department of Justice on its investigation of the INSLAW matter. In 1992 (and later in 1995) my task in that engagement was to investigate alleged copyright theft and subsequent cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
remember also that by routing via alternative machines, there exists the distinct possibility that
1) an external attacker - such as france telecom, AT & T on a mission to protect their POTS business - cannot really track randomly-assigned connections that don't actually start or end at the final destination
2) traffic _might_ arrive quicker (because it takes an alternate route).
Slashdot Mirror
p.s. they didn't throw me off: i left. too many incredibly hurtful comments from andrew. the one i will always remember is where he thanked tim potter for completing winbind, without acknowledging that i had helped nor that winbind would have even been possible without the dce/rpc client libraries i'd written.
working with others requires cooperation both ways.
_i_ have learned where i have failed.
now PLEASE will you do me the favour of communicating to andrew and to jeremy where THEY have failed.
the samba team is not a team at all: it is a group of people who work on their own areas with hardly any actual cooperation at all.
i WISH that the samba project had an ASF charter, with an additional clause that lends equal weight to "strategic" decisions in the part about code being accepted on "technical merit".
if the ASF charter was in place on the samba project, so many many people would not have left it in frustration.
there is much more that i could say but the number of comments on this topic is getting high (and consequently thinner), and is distracting me from my work.
XAD is very interesting, and it works, yet is ... lacking in key areas that would aid in migration.
you can make a XAD server be a member of an NT-controlled forest, but the replication protocol is itself a beast-and-a-half, such that it is not yet possible for a XAD server to replicate and then "take over" an NT server.
which is a pity.
also, lukeh has modified a number of open source projects to allow "plugin" components to be added, such that he can out-source to his own components.
the source code for these plugin methods _is_ available - ironically, the one for samba does pretty much EXACTLY what i do for samba tng - outsource the DCE/RPC traffic - yet unfortunately, XAD itself, the core of it, perhaps unsurprisingly, is proprietary.
yep. i totally agree! i can't even apply for jobs any more because i would rapidly become a threat to any of the long-standing employees, simply by opening my mouth and explaining things to them that would not have occurred to them.
my last job was working for a parallel processor company: in the tutorials they gave in the first WEEK i came up with a way to use the processor that the guy who had DESIGNED the DMA controller had not thought of. within three months he was not on speaking terms with me, his contempt barely disguised.
ironically employed as an applications engineer, i came up with enough new ideas for the company to apply for six or seven new patents on the CORE architecture of their product.
now that's _gotta_ piss some people off.
hi there :)
one other thing that i really should make clear is that i used - and still use - a programming technique which recently gained a name: "extreme programming".
... i frequently had no choice but to commit in code at the risk of breaking the build.
basically what i do is i build up a picture in my head of what results i want to achieve, and how, in broad architectural terms that that picture should be built.
then i start incessantly, repeatedly, rapidly, bluntly and brutally chipping away at the details: in the case of coding that could result in 30 cvs commits per day.
does this work? oops, no it didn't, let's try something else.
occasionally, usually due to exhaustion or frustration, i would sit and re-think.
i bounced hundreds of messages off of the samba mailing lists, most of which were not actually understood but that was okay because it allowed me to think out loud.
this process drove jeremy allison completely nuts.
jeremy's development model was radically different: very controlled, very calculated, very infrequent cvs commits (relatively speaking) - if it's not ready, if it don't work, it ain't going in the cvs repository.
contrast this with me having at best a pentium 90 with 16mb of memory (my fastest machine) and having to do partial-builds (ccache didn't exist) due to a complete build taking 90 minutes, and random cvs commits in case someone stole my computer from the cybercafe...
this also drove jeremy nuts.
c'est la vie.
yes - i wanted to introduce several stand-alone daemons, for several reasons:
... would anyone DREAM of merging postfix, cyrus, nntpd and apache into a single daemon??
1) project manageability.
you tell people that samba is 350,000 lines of code and they freak out. you tell them that they can work on say writing a special samr daemon (e.g. a sql db one) which would be oh about 30-50k lines, and they start to calm down a bit.
2) clear delineation and separation of code at logical boundaries.
the complexity of the samba project was getting out of hand, and it is still out-of-hand.
by introducing separate services, which almost every other implementor of NT-compatible servers have done, you don't end up feeling like you've swallowed a tiger.
3) commercial and other-licensed-projects can interoperate.
sun microsystems would never have bothered to license AT&T's AFPS code [NT 3.5 ported to SysV by microsoft - badly - and bought by AT&T].
or, at least, if they had, they would have chucked away the file-server part of it, and used smbd as the file server, whilst still using the NT-based services from NT 3.5-ported-to-unix!
and they would have used the published interfaces - the ones used to communicate with the external DCE/RPC services.
the reasons i was quoted AGAINST doing separate services were that a) it would be several milliseconds too slow (which is a rubbish argument on a network-based protocol) and b) unix domain sockets cannot be used securely (which, given that they are used in winbind is again rubbish)
no, the real reasons why samba was not turned into separate daemons was a) so that samba could be used to maintain control as a single GPL project b) because i was the one advocating it c) the level of complexity was not understood and i failed to explain it clearly enough.
yeh, i'll accept that - both parts.
i see patterns. i mean i SEE patterns. it freaks people out. especially those people who are insecure in their abilities and position.
one thing i do have a lot of difficulty with when i fail to explain or get across a deep understanding of a complex topic.
i find it particularly frustrating in areas where people are supposed to have the capabilities and expertise to cope with a certain level of complexity.
but - basically - the one way to absolutely GUARANTEE to make me see pink mist is for you to be dishonest. whereever i find people being dishonest with themselves, me, or other people, i WILL go for the throat - without fail.
and it gets me into difficulties. c'est la vie.
yep, that's me.
yes, i failed. i took on a fascinating and very large task - to help EVERYONE out of a difficult hole, both microsoft, the open source community AN D its users, AND microsoft and samba's competitors (the Storage Area Network community) i succeeded in getting the knowledge out there but i failed in implementing it in an "acceptable" way.
yes, the times when i was working on samba got progressively more painful as the difference between the SAMBA_NTDOM and the main cvs branch got steadily further and further apart - in the end approximately 100,000 to 120,000 lines of code apart.
yes, without the work that i did for four years, spurred by paul ashton's initial decoding of the NT domains logon system, the samba team would likely still be peddling you a system that was compatible with windows 95. that's a gross exaggeration: the Active Directory interoperability is a lot easier but still fraught with difficulties.
one of the key problems was that andrew tridgell found it increasingly difficult to actually accept that i could think of things that he could not.
he also had great difficulty, as most people do, in accepting the level of complexity of the MSRPC (aka DCE/RPC) subsystem and quite how inter-connected the whole thing is.
in the end, i had to use other people (such as tim potter, to whom i am very grateful) to get ideas and code accepted.
in particular, the winbind project: note the striking similarity between the use of unix domain sockets in winbind, which andrew tridgell reviewed and accepted, and the use of unix domain sockets in Samba TNG, which andrew tridgell REFUSED to review and REFUSED to accept.
i was told, by andrew tridgell, things like "you should try to log in as root occasionally, and if you break out in a cold sweat, lie down for a while until the feeling goes away".
whilst i learned an awful lot about systems programming from andrew, the way that he treated me was with disdain and complete lack of respect - which was terribly, terribly disappointing for me because, being absolutely honest, i loved and respected him greatly.
anyway: he learned nothing from me, and consequently, he has set samba's development back by at least ten man-years.
luke howard, in three years, ON HIS OWN, produced XAD (www.padl.com) which he has been selling for at least the past two years as a commercial product - an NT 5 Active Directory Server.
when skype release their linux version with a d-bus API it will be possible to do this yourself.
note to self: must contact virus writers tell them to hurry up deployment.
signed,
commissioner for strategic exploitation of IT.
Formats that include Self-Protecting Digital Content(TM) address key sharing attacks by binding a title's decryption algorithms with renewable security logic. Instead of having a simple decryption key, titles carry their own security software that can integrate system renewability, forensic marking, decryption, and other security processes. This strong binding is essential to avoid attacks that try to separate the ability to decrypt a title from its security rules.
Requirement #3: Pirates must not be able to bypass the security of high-definition disc formats by posting title or media keys on the Internet.
*ROTFL*. so they gonna solve that by banning internet access?
AUTOMATED UPDATES???????
*gibber*. the US military is happy for _microsoft_ to push automated updates onto 500,000 windows desktops???
what did i miss. is there something i haven't quite understood?
of all the answers, here, i'm surprised that none of them mention these two projects:
http://sf.net/projects/selinux
http://sf.net/projects/xen
the first project allows you to grant root access to lusers, thereby convincing the program that it's got root access, but the SELinux security kicks in as well, which is far more flexible than the 20+-year-old unix security model, and most importantly SELinux doesn't give a rats arse about what a superuser is.
the second project, xen, is like vmware only faster and is a bit like where vmware installs the screen/keyboard/mouse driver and you _have_ to use those drivers. xen-linux compiles as a completely new architecture (named, duh, xen) and it comes with its own virtual device drivers.
by compartmentalising an SE/Linux XEN machine you can restrict the pants off of the vendor's software and can blow it away with ease if they start dicking about.
partenan cells. www.europositron.com
no, you don't have to have DC brushless motors to get the most. the LRK motor design is a stonking electric motor that is amazingly 96% efficient or better, and it is very simple to build (requiring only a lathe).
www.europositron.com
Rainer Partenan has created prototype RECHARGEABLE sealed aluminium-based batteries that are FIVE TIMES more power/weight ratio than Li-Ion batteries.
plus, aluminium batteries won't explode on contact with air, unlike lithium-ion batteries, in an accident.
60kg of partenan cells could get a standard family car a distance of 500 miles.
a 5-fold reduction in weight of this 2400kg vehicle's battery, probably about 1,000 kg, would bring the battery down to 200kg, reducing the weight of this vehicle to a frightening 1600kg.
that means that those numbers on the 0-60 time? assuming that it's still possible for the eight wheels to stick to the ground with only 1600kg weight, well you divide those by 1.5.
so with only 1600kg, the 0-60 time on this vehicle would be 2.7 seconds not 4, and the 0-100 time would be 4.7 seconds, not 7.
this is a legally binding agreement between microsoft and my butt.
microsoft to sign here: xxxxxx
1) my butt agrees that all smelliness and any shit emanating from it is wholly owned by microsoft.
2) i agree to give up any rights to any biological material passed though and developed by my gut which is forced out my butt.
3) should i put into my mouth any food that could cause irreparable harm to microsoft, due to the resultant stench up to 48 hours later, i agree to throw up and clear up the resultant mess.
4) i agree to regular colonic irrigation in order to indemnify microsoft against any butt-related illnesses.
5) i agree to indemnify microsoft against any costs related to "fishing out", should i fail accidentally to provide to microsoft all butt excrecations.
6) i agree that any corks or bottles purchased shall be at my own expense.
when is this shit going to end???
problem goes away.
Dear Mr Stephenson,
I'd like to take this more as an opportunity to make some comments on sci-fi as a whole, and i would be interested to hear your reactions to those comments.
i have read every decent sci-fi book i can get my hands on - yours, hamilton, bear, banks, card, macleod, reynolds, clarke, asimov to name a few - at one point i ran out of books and had to start reading the scifi masterworks series like psychoshop and last and first men.
from a materialistic point of view, the subject matter ranges pretty much the whole gamut of timespans as outlined by "last and first men" by olaf stapledon: i.e. all other sci-fi books pretty much "fill in some of the gaps" on a timeline scale of 2*10^^3 years ("snowcrash" by yourself) up to about 10^^8 years ("the end of eternity" by asimov).
from a spiritual point of view, the subject matter is fairly coarse: wars, lawlessness, alternative laws, politics, sex, intrigue, science projections come true - very few authors - orson scott card, ian macleod, peter f hamilton being amongst the notable exceptions - have anything that sets stable or benign higher consciousness [than humans] at the forefront of their storylines.
even iain banks, who introduced "the culture" to us, with the [real intelligence - bugger the "A" in AI] "minds" going far beyond human baseline consciousness, couldn't, i don't think, quite come to terms with the magnitude of what he was describing: just at the point where his "culture series" books began to touch on the "sublime" races, he himself xxxxed off on a motorbike pub tour of scotland (or so i heard).
so, if there _is_ a question, it's this: why is there so much "soul-searching" going on in sci-fi books that doesn't really hint, except in macleod's "dark light" and a very few others, at the underlying spiritual and god-quantum-ridden nature of the universe??
to make that slightly clearer than mud: recently, stephen hawking had to announce that he was wrong in his belief about black holes not having memory: i am sorry, but that's just so obvious to me that in a universe where dimensions are strings (and where most dimensions are temporarily of zero or near-infinitesimally-zero length) and the number of dimensions is infinite, the ability of black holes to store information seems abundantly clear: the collapse of matter into a black hole merely transforms that matter up the chain of higher dimensions (into its "memory"), where three of those dimensions (which we know as x y and z) simply have the same value - for all the matter at the centre of the black hole.
if _that_ is possible, then certainly a hell of a lot more is possible than what even sci-fi books are only hinting at!
make sure you get a bike which has, at some point in the drive train, a torque measuring device that will match your own efforts with assisted power.
the last thing that you want is a speed controller.
it's pretty straightforward to replace one or both of the pedal cranks with cranks that have torque measuring devices: any [really] serious cyclist will have a heart-rate monitor, speedometer _and_ torque measuring to determine how much pressure they're exerting on the pedals.
then you turn that into amps...
But even in europe there are still wars, Northern Ireland and Baskenland, because in those cases one side doesn't want peace.
an opportunity for peace in nortern ireland in the late 1980s was scuppered by the UK government because they're using ireland for gun-running.
from the exerpt you gave, it's not the slightest bit tongue in cheek.
in a very short paragraph, he's expressing some views which basically say that the effects of capitalism - which you are taking for granted as sacrosanct - are causing some really serious world-wide problems; that the internet is viewed by those who support capitalism is a threat _to_ capitalism.
except he's not quite come out and said that directly, because, of course, capitalism _is_ sacrosant.
i recommend anyone who believes that capitalism is good, or that corruption and bribery is bad for trade, or that racism extends just to skin colour, to read _all_ of Ian Macleod's sci-fi books, back-to-back.
if you can't hack Ian Macleod then at least go read some of Anne McCaffrey's co-authored books.
5. In 1990 I served as expert to the Court (Eastern District of NY) in Computer Associates v. Altai, a software copyright infringement case that articulated the abstraction, filtration, comparison test for software. I have also been retained by the Department of Justice on its investigation of the INSLAW matter. In 1992 (and later in 1995) my task in that engagement was to investigate alleged copyright theft and subsequent cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
whoo-hoo-heehee
remember also that by routing via alternative machines, there exists the distinct possibility that
1) an external attacker - such as france telecom, AT & T on a mission to protect their POTS business - cannot really track randomly-assigned connections that don't actually start or end at the final destination
2) traffic _might_ arrive quicker (because it takes an alternate route).