Bruce Sterling was talking about individual privacy, not the larger issue here of a kind of 'civil disobedience'. If everyone were to use encryption all the time, ECHELON and its ilk would become useless.
On a personal level, it's not really relevant. If someone wants to know all about you, they'll put in keyboard sniffers, or use the radiation emission from your monitor (can't remember the name of it right now) or any number of other social engineering techniques. Shredding your trash only stops your neighbor. Anybody serious can just call up the credit bureaus, phone companies, utilities and own you.
Short of living in a shack in the woods or having bazillions and living your life through the screen of lawyers and accountants, any ordinary shmoe, on an individual level, is pretty much unable to safeguard their privacy. It wouldn't take much of a 'black bag' operation to break into your doctor's office and copy your medical records, either. On an individual level, you're screwed.
On a large level, everyone using encryption would put a serious crimp on the NSA, CIA, and corporate espionage. Of course, right now, using encryption in all your communications makes you stick out like a sore thumb.
So it's OK to participate in this civil disobedience if you have nothing to hide (ooh, a catch-22) and you only communicate with people who are willing to deal with the pain and bother of encryption. There you go.
However, your faith in Serpent is perhaps misguided. It may have received a similar level of analysis as Rijndael up to now, but you can guarantee that as an also-ran, it's not going to continue to receive this level of investigation. All of which leaves you more, not less, vulnerable in the longer term....
You're forgetting the obverse to that. Since Serpent will be getting less scrutiny, it's less likely that it will be broken. Unless there's some simple way to break it (which seems unlikely at this point) far fewer people will be trying to crack it, therefore it's more likely to stay uncracked.
If any of the 5 AES candidates are going to be broken, the one most likely to be is the one that's studied the hardest. And, of all the algorithms, I'm pretty sure that Rijndael was the one that was least secure.
So going with Serpent doesn't seem like such an unwise move after all. It's all in the way you look at it. 'Security through not-that-many-eyeballs-looking-at-it-even-though-t he-algorithm-is-published.' Works for me. --
DOH! I knew that. I really did. This must be a corollary of the law that says a post with a spelling correction will have a spelling mistake in it. Well, at least it was a linguistic mistake, not a physics or math one. -- Looking for a job
Pardon me, I think it's time I registered to vote.
I think you're too late. In most states, the deadline to register has passed. Go to election.com to check it out. There's a few where it's October 27th or so, but most deadlines were in the first half of this month.
If you're going to have a planet that's the same density as this one, you're going to have a problem with us living on it. Our planet (Sol, Terra, Earth, Third big rock from the sun) is about 8,000 miles in diameter, therefore about 25,000 miles in circumference.
Let's see. 3 times the diameter, so 27 times the volume? Gravity would be 9 times as big? It's been a long time since my last physics class, so someone correct me here. I don't relish weighing a ton. -- Looking for a job
I agree with your estimation that things like heating, food, and lodging are essential while phone and internet access are not. There are however, many fallacies in your little post.
Heating with wood is far more detrimental to the environment than most of the other methods. Including nuclear power. As someone who worked in the nuclear industry for 10 years, you're just going to have to take my word on that. (Yes, there are some dirty reactors still in operation but we actually know how to build them right these days. The fact that no one is doing so is unfortunate. Coal fired power plants are even worse on the environment. Ever visit a strip mine?)
Your friends have a lot of money. Adding solar power to a house is expensive and probably not worth the money in most states in the US. The southwest, Texas, Florida perhaps. Not many other places. Gas stove? Gas costs money. They hunt for their food? On their own land? What would happen if all 300 million of us had to hunt for our food. Your friends' lifestyle is only sustainable because the rest of us live differently.
The fact that you can survive without phone or internet access doesn't say anything about your quality of life.
First let's look at lifestyle. If you're the loner type, then moving to a house in the woods might be the thing for you. Man (and woman) is a social animal. Most (>70% I believe) of the US lives in an urban area. We want to be around other people. We want to communicate. Picking up the phone and calling any one of my friends at any time is a convenience and definitely improves the quality of my life.
Secondly, let's look at money. If you're not rich, how do you achieve a lifestyle of no phone/net access. How many professions (or ways of making money) are left without using the phone or harming the environment. Damn few. You can live in your shack in the woods and proclaim you're not harming the environment, but what do you do for a living?
And lastly, I believe you're incredibly shortsighted. Right now it's not necessary to have net access. I'm not sure that's going to be true in 50 years. You'll likely get everything but the essentials via the net. Music, books, entertainment, interactive games, etc. You'll be able to get by without it, just like you can get by without a phone today. The Amish do so. Doesn't mean the rest of us want to live that way.
Perhaps in this day and age online access shouldn't be subsidized, but I see a point in the not too distant future when it becomes necessary. I know that phones are still subsidized for low-income families. I believe that will happen for 'net access also.
You can proclaim your friends as having less kharmic debt to nature than most of us but the only thing that allows them to do so is the rest of us living differently. 100 million people hunting and searching for fire wood for their families would shortly deplete our forests and game.
Your friends are not living an ideal life in any absolute sense. Just in your estimation. -- Looking for a job
First, he's 15. He's doing this just to get a rise out of someone. He doesn't have anything else to do except pick his zits.
He was already moderated down to '-1 Troll', so anyone who makes decisions based on his advice is probably deserving of that fate.
He probably considers it a victory, since he got a rise out of someone and is therefore more likely to continue posting idiotic crap like this. And anyone looking for CPU purchasing advice and reading/. at -1 is so broken they won't be fixed by your post, no matter how erudite it is.
If someone had moderated him up then yeah, sure, point out the fallacy of listening to him, but in this case the moderation system worked. -- Looking for a job
Are you saying that NetSol won't get their $9 off of each domain registered with the new TLD's? Aren't they still controlling the main root servers?
When I registered my domains with register.com (or whoever it was) they took my $15 bucks per, but they had to pony up $9 to NSI. So what, are these new companies that are going to be taking care of the new domains going to set up their own root servers?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but if NSI still gets their $9, I don't know that they would be too upset with having a million new TLD's opened up. If they don't get their cut, then I can see your point, but how's the whole DNS-root-servers-talking-to-each-other thing going to work out? Anyone know? -- Looking for a job
Re:Hacking, Cracking, my opinion.
on
Hackers
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· Score: 2
Hacking is neither good nor evil. It just is. Just like the force. Or guns. Or the written word.
To call all hackers innately good is just as wrong as calling all communists evil. The ability to hack does not conform to any arbitrary definition of good or evil. It's more basic than that. Like gravity or breathing or music.
Would you define a cheetah killing and eating an impala as an evil act? An avalanche killing some skiers?
You can put the labels 'good' and 'evil' on individual actions based on your socio-economic status, upbringing, moral and ethical code, religious beliefs, and whatnot but that doesn't mean that those labels can apply to hacking in general. Just to individual actions.
You need to rethink your basic assumptions. Hacking is a state of mind/being. Information wants to be free. -- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
I'm not sure where you're going with this. In Germany and Italy you can have a life but in the others, not? I heard that France had a mandatory 36 hour work week - MAX. I believe you have to have all kinds of justification to work overtime. That may have changed but I'm pretty sure I read about that in the past year or two.
I don't know what it's like in the other countries you mentioned, but if Germany and Italy are better than France, I have to really question why the fu** I'm still living in the US.:)
As a programmer, I know I could make more money if I decided to work long hours at some other company. I have a two year old son. Nothing in my life is more important than him (a concept no one convinced me of, until the moment he was born.) I work 9-5 (about) and I get to see my wife and son every night. I don't live in a mansion, just a comfortable house in a middle-class neighborhood. I fell in love with computers at age 16 when a buddy down the street got himself an Apple ][, so I'm not in it for the money. I love computing. I'd do it even if it paid minimum wage.
So to all you aspiring women geeks: you can have a life and be a geek. You just have to decide what's important to you. People who choose money are generally uninteresting (IME). Choose life. I enjoy every day. Sappy, but true.
-- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
If that all works out you're gonna get blown a lot. You should try to schedule all of them on the same day and tape it. Then you could sell the video right next to the one of the woman who did like 500 guys all in one day.
That would be awesome! I should make a list of all the people that can blow me. I wonder if my wife would object? -- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
You want us to try to reach a consensus on/.? You want a majority of the people on/. to pick a candidate and vote for him/her? Boggle!!
Question: Is this glass half-full or half-empty? (Shows glass, filled half-way with water.)
10%: Half-full
20%: Half-empty (there seem to be more pessimists on/.)
12%: That's not a glass, it's a cup.
15%: MS sucks.
5%: How about a Beowulf cluster of half full/empty glasses?
10%: Want to open source/copyleft/GPL the glass pouring/emptying mechanism
10%: Karma whores and their supporters/detractors
2%: Want to know if Jon Katz had something to do with this
8%: Hot grits and Natalie Portman
3%: This is an inappropriate topic for/.
5%: Other inanities
So, to reiterate, you want us to figure out who to vote for. Unless Ms. Portman is a candidate, I doubt you'll have much luck.
I guess I vote for half-empty. (Pessimistic or Realistic? You decide.) -- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
I see your point, but diversity is a good thing. There's more than one web browser, mp3 player, OS, etc. Putting all your eggs in one basket and all that.
At this point in internet development, we haven't figured out what the best way to do things is yet. It may turn out that Freenet has the best implementation, but I doubt it. The Publius system seems more robust to me. Distribution of data such that loss of some nodes still allows you to retrieve the original data. It has more appeal to me on a pure mathematical basis.
In Freenet, nothing is encrypted. If some 'bad guy' wants to get rid of some information shared on Freenet, he could theoretically do that, since he could find everyone that hosted that particular file. (Assuming certain capabilities built into things like Echelon, Carnivore, Cisco routers.:) ) With encryption and a mathematically defined way of distributing data, doing the same thing in the Publius system would be much more difficult.
Publius for stuff that's subversive, proscribed, titillating, banned, etc. Freenet for other things. -- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
Program a client to seek and re-assemble the MP3 based on url 1. It's merely inconvenient (to the point where freenet will probably darwinize this to obscurity) but hardly a showstopper for pirates.
You're missing the point, I think. This is not designed to be the end-all of file sharing. It's a particular application of file sharing for a particular kind of file. There's plenty of room for other kinds of file-sharing.
The authors of this particular application didn't want to be overwhelmed with audio and video files. To some people, sharing mp3 files is low on their list of 'important things in life.'
If this was the only file-sharing 'hammer' in existence, then you might certainly be justified to use it to pound your particular mp3 'nail.' Since there's already numerous other (and perhaps better) ways to share large audio/video files, splitting one up in the manner you suggest above is probably a waste of energy/space.
If napster/freenet/etc. all disappear, I'll remove my objection, of course.
-- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
Does PETA know about this? Is there going to be a protest? How inhumane! Bacteria have a right to live just like we do. What's next? Monkeys? Dogs? People?!? -- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
While it is perfectly legal for me to walk around with a baseball bat, even swinging it around wildly... But it becomes illegal at your nose...
A better analogy might be a gun (at least, here in the US). You're allowed to own a gun, just like you're allowed to own L0phtCrack. If you use it to commit a crime, you not only will be charged with the crime, but also "... with a deadly weapon", or at perhaps just "discharging a firearm within city limits".
Nobody is going to get arrested just for owning a cracking tool (at least not yet), but prosecutors can easily add on things like that to any actual crimes committed. -- '...let the rabbits wear glasses...' Y2038 consulting
One thing to remember is that one-time pads are still secure, no matter how fast the cracking machine is. But then you still have to have a secure means of transmitting one-time pads.
Nothing preventing you from making a bunch of CD's with one-time pads on them and giving them out to your co-conspirators. Of course, now you're vulnerable to real-world cracking (by compromising one of the CD's or perhaps one of your fellow conspirators), but at least your on-line communications will be safe. --
A similar story about John Paul Stapp who died yesterday. He held the unofficial land speed record for a while. (How about decelerating so quickly your eyeballs almost pop out!)
The article also tells you the origin of Murphy's law. Pretty funny. --
I don't know your exact situation, but I went to school at night for 2-1/2 years, while working (enlisted scum in the U.S. Navy, actually.) This was late 1990 - early 1993. I got a BSCS. It's called National University. At the time, it was touted as being the third largest private educational institution in the country. They were in California and Arizona at the time, although I have no idea what they have done in the meanwhile.
Any major urban center should have something like this. It's not as good as MIT, (very light in the math department, for instance) but the classes are all taught by people working in the field, actually using the things they teach while at their day jobs.
If you're still reading: The schedule was two nights a week (M/W or T/Th) from 5:30 - 10:00pm, and every other Saturday for 8 hours. One class a month. Started off with Pascal, quickly switched to C, then classes on compiler design, databases, assembler, hardware design, and a 3-month long senior project at the end.
They gave me credit for just about every college level class I had ever taken, as long as I could provide a transcript, and I ended up needing 24 classes to graduate - with each class being somewhere between a 3 - 5 credit hour class at a regular university, I imagine. I seem to remember it was 7 elective and 17 'core' classes. The classes were $495 each at the time.
It may not have as much cachet as MIT, CalTech, U of Waterloo, etc. but I can talk the talk well enough that I don't think it's ever mattered.
First of all, about Star Wars - Lucas designed it as the fourth episode of a trilogy of trilogies. He left the IV off during the first weeks, because pretty much everyone thought it would bomb, and that way no one would know they were missing 8 other movies along the same lines. (And, as you probably know by now, he decided not to do the last trilogy after all.) After a few weeks, they changed it to Episode IV. Perhaps 4 or 5 weeks, perhaps more.
I remember seeing 'The Sword and the Sorcerer' when it first came out, and everyone of us was totally stoked because at the end, it said something like "Coming soon 'Tales of the Ancient Empire'", which of course was never made. Bastards!
The Matrix was conceived as a trilogy by the W. brothers. They've said so. They didn't tell anyone about that because they were hedging their bets (shades of 1977!) Once they figured out that they were making lots of money, they sprung parts 2 and 3 on everyone.
And before we go any further - yes, all stories have already been told. There's nothing new under the sun. The matrix was a classic coming of age story. A lot of other mythology, mysticism, nature of man/consciousness, etc. stuff was thrown in, but it's a coming of age story, nonetheless.
With that out of the way: All the 'Neo's a god', there's nothing else to do posts are pretty unimaginative. As my D&D characters became more powerful, more and more story lines opened up, not fewer. At 1st level, you fight orcs and goblins. At 20th level, you can fight orcs and goblins and every other monster in the manual (and lots that aren't, if your DM is any good.)
First of all, if I'm the head AI, I don't put my best guys on the front line, so the guys Neo has beaten aren't necessarily the end-all and be-all of bad guys. AI version 2.0 is up next, and they're using the new improved 2.3.99 kernel.;}
Possible plot devices:
What allowed the Oracle to see the future? What about the matrix allows her to do that? Is the matrix just an elaborate Adventure game that she happens to have played through a couple of times? Seeing the future requires either magic or advanced technology. Once you allow magic, and infinitude of possibilites intrude.
A god in the matrix doesn't mean crap in the real world. Tell Bruce Lee or Tank Abbott (or whoever) you know Kung Fu in the real world and he'll laugh. Perhaps some fighting in RL (real life), with Neo getting his butt kicked. Shades of Superman 2!
The AI's using people (goodlife, so to speak - STR) to do their dirty work. If learning can be done in software... need I say more?
You gotta visit Zion. You gotta get a new and badder ship. You gotta fight some real robots. What about a T1 style AI in a human-looking body? What's the AI's level of technology in RL?
Betrayal in the group - it's been done, but not to death (pun intended.) Gotta meet the guy who originally escaped the matrix - and of course he'll betray them - but then change his mind at the last second and sacrifice himself.
You've got to create infrastructure to support 6 billion humans. You've got to ensure the AI's don't just start killing everyone off.
How are new humans made? Artificial insemination of an ovary in a lab somewhere? Quite a few stories there.
And I wouldn't be a guy if I didn't say: Carrie-Anne Moss with less clothing on. That alone would be worth the price of admission. 'Nuff said.
I haven't scratched the surface of what a good screenwriter could do with the elements put in place by the movie. It could be an Aliens/T2/Wrath of Khan type of sequel. It could be a Jaws II/Police Academy II/Highlander II type of sequel.
I, for one, am looking forward to it/them. --
Re:a couple of observations
on
RoboFly
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· Score: 1
The fly with four wings puzzled me at first, too. But here's what I think happened:
1. They needed to study a flying thing. Supposition: 2 wings should be less complicated than 4 wings. Eventually, a fly is decided on.
2. A fly is studied. A theory on how it flies is arrived at.
3. In trying to build a fly construct (three different wing motions that, taken together, create backspin and air vortices that create lift) it is discovered that 4 wings will be needed.
I guess pretty soon all my fellow cypherpunks will be emitting hourly EMP blasts around their homes, just to maintain a little privacy. Of course, I'm assuming EMP will affect these things (or at least the listening/recording devices attached to them) and that they're not already in use by clandestine TLA's. I suppose I'll be visiting Radio Shack after work. (Not that I have anything to hide.)
Anybody physically checked the remains of any flies they've swatted, lateley? If you were designing one of these, would you include small containers of fake fly blood in your eavesdropping robofly? Seems logical...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. --
If an earthquake hit Silicon Valley (and I'd hate to see that, since I'm living around there now), I can't imagine/. posting an article saying 'Oh, there goes our software and other cool gadgets.'
Well, all the really good software comes from Washington state, so we wouldn't have to worry about that. Might lose a few gadgets, though.
(Is this gonna get moderated as funny or flamebait? Inquiring minds want to know.)
Slashdot Mirror
Bruce Sterling was talking about individual privacy, not the larger issue here of a kind of 'civil disobedience'. If everyone were to use encryption all the time, ECHELON and its ilk would become useless.
On a personal level, it's not really relevant. If someone wants to know all about you, they'll put in keyboard sniffers, or use the radiation emission from your monitor (can't remember the name of it right now) or any number of other social engineering techniques. Shredding your trash only stops your neighbor. Anybody serious can just call up the credit bureaus, phone companies, utilities and own you.
Short of living in a shack in the woods or having bazillions and living your life through the screen of lawyers and accountants, any ordinary shmoe, on an individual level, is pretty much unable to safeguard their privacy. It wouldn't take much of a 'black bag' operation to break into your doctor's office and copy your medical records, either. On an individual level, you're screwed.
On a large level, everyone using encryption would put a serious crimp on the NSA, CIA, and corporate espionage. Of course, right now, using encryption in all your communications makes you stick out like a sore thumb.
So it's OK to participate in this civil disobedience if you have nothing to hide (ooh, a catch-22) and you only communicate with people who are willing to deal with the pain and bother of encryption. There you go.
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If any of the 5 AES candidates are going to be broken, the one most likely to be is the one that's studied the hardest. And, of all the algorithms, I'm pretty sure that Rijndael was the one that was least secure.
So going with Serpent doesn't seem like such an unwise move after all. It's all in the way you look at it. 'Security through not-that-many-eyeballs-looking-at-it-even-though-
--
DOH! I knew that. I really did. This must be a corollary of the law that says a post with a spelling correction will have a spelling mistake in it. Well, at least it was a linguistic mistake, not a physics or math one.
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Looking for a job
Pardon me, I think it's time I registered to vote.
:)
I think you're too late. In most states, the deadline to register has passed. Go to election.com to check it out. There's a few where it's October 27th or so, but most deadlines were in the first half of this month.
Sorry. Try again in four years.
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If you're going to have a planet that's the same density as this one, you're going to have a problem with us living on it. Our planet (Sol, Terra, Earth, Third big rock from the sun) is about 8,000 miles in diameter, therefore about 25,000 miles in circumference.
Let's see. 3 times the diameter, so 27 times the volume? Gravity would be 9 times as big? It's been a long time since my last physics class, so someone correct me here. I don't relish weighing a ton.
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Looking for a job
I agree with your estimation that things like heating, food, and lodging are essential while phone and internet access are not. There are however, many fallacies in your little post.
Heating with wood is far more detrimental to the environment than most of the other methods. Including nuclear power. As someone who worked in the nuclear industry for 10 years, you're just going to have to take my word on that. (Yes, there are some dirty reactors still in operation but we actually know how to build them right these days. The fact that no one is doing so is unfortunate. Coal fired power plants are even worse on the environment. Ever visit a strip mine?)
Your friends have a lot of money. Adding solar power to a house is expensive and probably not worth the money in most states in the US. The southwest, Texas, Florida perhaps. Not many other places. Gas stove? Gas costs money. They hunt for their food? On their own land? What would happen if all 300 million of us had to hunt for our food. Your friends' lifestyle is only sustainable because the rest of us live differently.
The fact that you can survive without phone or internet access doesn't say anything about your quality of life.
First let's look at lifestyle. If you're the loner type, then moving to a house in the woods might be the thing for you. Man (and woman) is a social animal. Most (>70% I believe) of the US lives in an urban area. We want to be around other people. We want to communicate. Picking up the phone and calling any one of my friends at any time is a convenience and definitely improves the quality of my life.
Secondly, let's look at money. If you're not rich, how do you achieve a lifestyle of no phone/net access. How many professions (or ways of making money) are left without using the phone or harming the environment. Damn few. You can live in your shack in the woods and proclaim you're not harming the environment, but what do you do for a living?
And lastly, I believe you're incredibly shortsighted. Right now it's not necessary to have net access. I'm not sure that's going to be true in 50 years. You'll likely get everything but the essentials via the net. Music, books, entertainment, interactive games, etc. You'll be able to get by without it, just like you can get by without a phone today. The Amish do so. Doesn't mean the rest of us want to live that way.
Perhaps in this day and age online access shouldn't be subsidized, but I see a point in the not too distant future when it becomes necessary. I know that phones are still subsidized for low-income families. I believe that will happen for 'net access also.
You can proclaim your friends as having less kharmic debt to nature than most of us but the only thing that allows them to do so is the rest of us living differently. 100 million people hunting and searching for fire wood for their families would shortly deplete our forests and game.
Your friends are not living an ideal life in any absolute sense. Just in your estimation.
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Looking for a job
Yeah, but...
/. at -1 is so broken they won't be fixed by your post, no matter how erudite it is.
First, he's 15. He's doing this just to get a rise out of someone. He doesn't have anything else to do except pick his zits.
He was already moderated down to '-1 Troll', so anyone who makes decisions based on his advice is probably deserving of that fate.
He probably considers it a victory, since he got a rise out of someone and is therefore more likely to continue posting idiotic crap like this. And anyone looking for CPU purchasing advice and reading
If someone had moderated him up then yeah, sure, point out the fallacy of listening to him, but in this case the moderation system worked.
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Looking for a job
Are you saying that NetSol won't get their $9 off of each domain registered with the new TLD's? Aren't they still controlling the main root servers?
When I registered my domains with register.com (or whoever it was) they took my $15 bucks per, but they had to pony up $9 to NSI. So what, are these new companies that are going to be taking care of the new domains going to set up their own root servers?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but if NSI still gets their $9, I don't know that they would be too upset with having a million new TLD's opened up. If they don't get their cut, then I can see your point, but how's the whole DNS-root-servers-talking-to-each-other thing going to work out? Anyone know?
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Looking for a job
Hacking is neither good nor evil. It just is. Just like the force. Or guns. Or the written word.
To call all hackers innately good is just as wrong as calling all communists evil. The ability to hack does not conform to any arbitrary definition of good or evil. It's more basic than that. Like gravity or breathing or music.
Would you define a cheetah killing and eating an impala as an evil act? An avalanche killing some skiers?
You can put the labels 'good' and 'evil' on individual actions based on your socio-economic status, upbringing, moral and ethical code, religious beliefs, and whatnot but that doesn't mean that those labels can apply to hacking in general. Just to individual actions.
You need to rethink your basic assumptions. Hacking is a state of mind/being. Information wants to be free.
--
'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
I'm not sure where you're going with this. In Germany and Italy you can have a life but in the others, not? I heard that France had a mandatory 36 hour work week - MAX. I believe you have to have all kinds of justification to work overtime. That may have changed but I'm pretty sure I read about that in the past year or two.
:)
I don't know what it's like in the other countries you mentioned, but if Germany and Italy are better than France, I have to really question why the fu** I'm still living in the US.
As a programmer, I know I could make more money if I decided to work long hours at some other company. I have a two year old son. Nothing in my life is more important than him (a concept no one convinced me of, until the moment he was born.) I work 9-5 (about) and I get to see my wife and son every night. I don't live in a mansion, just a comfortable house in a middle-class neighborhood. I fell in love with computers at age 16 when a buddy down the street got himself an Apple ][, so I'm not in it for the money. I love computing. I'd do it even if it paid minimum wage.
So to all you aspiring women geeks: you can have a life and be a geek. You just have to decide what's important to you. People who choose money are generally uninteresting (IME). Choose life. I enjoy every day. Sappy, but true.
--
'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
Wow man,
If that all works out you're gonna get blown a lot. You should try to schedule all of them on the same day and tape it. Then you could sell the video right next to the one of the woman who did like 500 guys all in one day.
That would be awesome! I should make a list of all the people that can blow me. I wonder if my wife would object?
--
'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
You want us to try to reach a consensus on /.? You want a majority of the people on /. to pick a candidate and vote for him/her? Boggle!!
/.)
/.
Question: Is this glass half-full or half-empty? (Shows glass, filled half-way with water.)
10%: Half-full
20%: Half-empty (there seem to be more pessimists on
12%: That's not a glass, it's a cup.
15%: MS sucks.
5%: How about a Beowulf cluster of half full/empty glasses?
10%: Want to open source/copyleft/GPL the glass pouring/emptying mechanism
10%: Karma whores and their supporters/detractors
2%: Want to know if Jon Katz had something to do with this
8%: Hot grits and Natalie Portman
3%: This is an inappropriate topic for
5%: Other inanities
So, to reiterate, you want us to figure out who to vote for. Unless Ms. Portman is a candidate, I doubt you'll have much luck.
I guess I vote for half-empty. (Pessimistic or Realistic? You decide.)
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
I see your point, but diversity is a good thing. There's more than one web browser, mp3 player, OS, etc. Putting all your eggs in one basket and all that.
:) ) With encryption and a mathematically defined way of distributing data, doing the same thing in the Publius system would be much more difficult.
At this point in internet development, we haven't figured out what the best way to do things is yet. It may turn out that Freenet has the best implementation, but I doubt it. The Publius system seems more robust to me. Distribution of data such that loss of some nodes still allows you to retrieve the original data. It has more appeal to me on a pure mathematical basis.
In Freenet, nothing is encrypted. If some 'bad guy' wants to get rid of some information shared on Freenet, he could theoretically do that, since he could find everyone that hosted that particular file. (Assuming certain capabilities built into things like Echelon, Carnivore, Cisco routers.
Publius for stuff that's subversive, proscribed, titillating, banned, etc. Freenet for other things.
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
The authors of this particular application didn't want to be overwhelmed with audio and video files. To some people, sharing mp3 files is low on their list of 'important things in life.'
If this was the only file-sharing 'hammer' in existence, then you might certainly be justified to use it to pound your particular mp3 'nail.' Since there's already numerous other (and perhaps better) ways to share large audio/video files, splitting one up in the manner you suggest above is probably a waste of energy/space.
If napster/freenet/etc. all disappear, I'll remove my objection, of course.
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
Does PETA know about this? Is there going to be a protest? How inhumane! Bacteria have a right to live just like we do. What's next? Monkeys? Dogs? People?!?
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
...that the slash quote at the bottom of my page is: "You will lose an important tape file."
Coincidence? Hmmmm....
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
While it is perfectly legal for me to walk around with a baseball bat, even swinging it around wildly... But it becomes illegal at your nose...
A better analogy might be a gun (at least, here in the US). You're allowed to own a gun, just like you're allowed to own L0phtCrack. If you use it to commit a crime, you not only will be charged with the crime, but also "... with a deadly weapon", or at perhaps just "discharging a firearm within city limits".
Nobody is going to get arrested just for owning a cracking tool (at least not yet), but prosecutors can easily add on things like that to any actual crimes committed.
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2038 consulting
Something still makes me think that the fact that CRUSOE is an anagram for SOURCE had something to do with picking Crusoe as the 'code' name.
Perhaps they're open sourcing processor/chip development.
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'...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
Y2035/38 consulting
One thing to remember is that one-time pads are still secure, no matter how fast the cracking machine is. But then you still have to have a secure means of transmitting one-time pads.
Nothing preventing you from making a bunch of CD's with one-time pads on them and giving them out to your co-conspirators. Of course, now you're vulnerable to real-world cracking (by compromising one of the CD's or perhaps one of your fellow conspirators), but at least your on-line communications will be safe.
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A similar story about John Paul Stapp who died yesterday. He held the unofficial land speed record for a while. (How about decelerating so quickly your eyeballs almost pop out!)
The article also tells you the origin of Murphy's law. Pretty funny.
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I don't know your exact situation, but I went to school at night for 2-1/2 years, while working (enlisted scum in the U.S. Navy, actually.) This was late 1990 - early 1993. I got a BSCS. It's called National University. At the time, it was touted as being the third largest private educational institution in the country. They were in California and Arizona at the time, although I have no idea what they have done in the meanwhile.
Any major urban center should have something like this. It's not as good as MIT, (very light in the math department, for instance) but the classes are all taught by people working in the field, actually using the things they teach while at their day jobs.
If you're still reading: The schedule was two nights a week (M/W or T/Th) from 5:30 - 10:00pm, and every other Saturday for 8 hours. One class a month. Started off with Pascal, quickly switched to C, then classes on compiler design, databases, assembler, hardware design, and a 3-month long senior project at the end.
They gave me credit for just about every college level class I had ever taken, as long as I could provide a transcript, and I ended up needing 24 classes to graduate - with each class being somewhere between a 3 - 5 credit hour class at a regular university, I imagine. I seem to remember it was 7 elective and 17 'core' classes. The classes were $495 each at the time.
It may not have as much cachet as MIT, CalTech, U of Waterloo, etc. but I can talk the talk well enough that I don't think it's ever mattered.
Hope this helped.
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First of all, about Star Wars - Lucas designed it as the fourth episode of a trilogy of trilogies. He left the IV off during the first weeks, because pretty much everyone thought it would bomb, and that way no one would know they were missing 8 other movies along the same lines. (And, as you probably know by now, he decided not to do the last trilogy after all.) After a few weeks, they changed it to Episode IV. Perhaps 4 or 5 weeks, perhaps more.
;}
I remember seeing 'The Sword and the Sorcerer' when it first came out, and everyone of us was totally stoked because at the end, it said something like "Coming soon 'Tales of the Ancient Empire'", which of course was never made. Bastards!
The Matrix was conceived as a trilogy by the W. brothers. They've said so. They didn't tell anyone about that because they were hedging their bets (shades of 1977!) Once they figured out that they were making lots of money, they sprung parts 2 and 3 on everyone.
And before we go any further - yes, all stories have already been told. There's nothing new under the sun. The matrix was a classic coming of age story. A lot of other mythology, mysticism, nature of man/consciousness, etc. stuff was thrown in, but it's a coming of age story, nonetheless.
With that out of the way: All the 'Neo's a god', there's nothing else to do posts are pretty unimaginative. As my D&D characters became more powerful, more and more story lines opened up, not fewer. At 1st level, you fight orcs and goblins. At 20th level, you can fight orcs and goblins and every other monster in the manual (and lots that aren't, if your DM is any good.)
First of all, if I'm the head AI, I don't put my best guys on the front line, so the guys Neo has beaten aren't necessarily the end-all and be-all of bad guys. AI version 2.0 is up next, and they're using the new improved 2.3.99 kernel.
Possible plot devices:
What allowed the Oracle to see the future? What about the matrix allows her to do that? Is the matrix just an elaborate Adventure game that she happens to have played through a couple of times? Seeing the future requires either magic or advanced technology. Once you allow magic, and infinitude of possibilites intrude.
A god in the matrix doesn't mean crap in the real world. Tell Bruce Lee or Tank Abbott (or whoever) you know Kung Fu in the real world and he'll laugh. Perhaps some fighting in RL (real life), with Neo getting his butt kicked. Shades of Superman 2!
The AI's using people (goodlife, so to speak - STR) to do their dirty work. If learning can be done in software... need I say more?
You gotta visit Zion. You gotta get a new and badder ship. You gotta fight some real robots. What about a T1 style AI in a human-looking body? What's the AI's level of technology in RL?
Betrayal in the group - it's been done, but not to death (pun intended.) Gotta meet the guy who originally escaped the matrix - and of course he'll betray them - but then change his mind at the last second and sacrifice himself.
You've got to create infrastructure to support 6 billion humans. You've got to ensure the AI's don't just start killing everyone off.
How are new humans made? Artificial insemination of an ovary in a lab somewhere? Quite a few stories there.
And I wouldn't be a guy if I didn't say: Carrie-Anne Moss with less clothing on. That alone would be worth the price of admission. 'Nuff said.
I haven't scratched the surface of what a good screenwriter could do with the elements put in place by the movie. It could be an Aliens/T2/Wrath of Khan type of sequel. It could be a Jaws II/Police Academy II/Highlander II type of sequel.
I, for one, am looking forward to it/them.
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The fly with four wings puzzled me at first, too. But here's what I think happened:
1. They needed to study a flying thing. Supposition: 2 wings should be less complicated than 4 wings. Eventually, a fly is decided on.
2. A fly is studied. A theory on how it flies is arrived at.
3. In trying to build a fly construct (three different wing motions that, taken together, create backspin and air vortices that create lift) it is discovered that 4 wings will be needed.
I guess pretty soon all my fellow cypherpunks will be emitting hourly EMP blasts around their homes, just to maintain a little privacy. Of course, I'm assuming EMP will affect these things (or at least the listening/recording devices attached to them) and that they're not already in use by clandestine TLA's. I suppose I'll be visiting Radio Shack after work. (Not that I have anything to hide.)
Anybody physically checked the remains of any flies they've swatted, lateley? If you were designing one of these, would you include small containers of fake fly blood in your eavesdropping robofly? Seems logical...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
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(Is this gonna get moderated as funny or flamebait? Inquiring minds want to know.)
Your Linux Myths was an excellent read. Do you have any plans for publishing more good fiction?
/. Myths page?
Perhaps a Plan 9 Myths page? A PDP/11 Myths page? A