But yeah, I thought it was pretty odd that a girl with a total aversion to brand could even stand to use a Mac. I mean, it kind of made sense that all these 'creative' types would use them, but Cayce? Granted, they did give it to her, but you'd think she'd ditch it for the most no-name PC clone laptop she could get her hands on.
PR Is bland in the beginning, absolutely amazing in the middle, and bland again at the end. ATP is strong all the way through, and gives you a swift kick in the nuts at the end.
I thought Pattern Recognition was his best work yet when I was a third of the way through, too. I was riveted. In fact, I thought it was better then anything he'd written by an order of magnitude.
Yup, it was a good opening line. To bad the world's TV manufactures have conspired to make it have the exact opposite meaning:P
I just finished the book this morning
on
Pattern Recognition
·
· Score: 3, Informative
And I was thinking of doing a review of the story and submitting it to slashdot. I wish I had, because this one is pretty bland.
The first 50 pages or so, when we get an introduction to Cayce and her world seem sort of devoid of life. I ended up setting down the book for a while, reading only a few pages at a time. Once the main plot thread really got going, however I was sucked instantly in.
In fact, what I found most lacking in the beginning, the texture that's so prevalent and so beautifully described in a lot of Gibson books really came out in full force, in the description of Japan and Russia. The characters also started to come out in a lot more depth, once we got to meet Darrin, Voytek and his sister, Parka boy, The whole Kieko project (which, despite my earlier post) Is truly the funniest part of the book.
One thing that was really kind of Jarring about the book was it's whole 'post-sept.11th' feel. Of course, we are still technically post-sept-11th. But now it seems we've moved on to a sort of 'insane war mongering' mode. Or at least our government has. The war on Iraq doesn't really feel connected to the attack just a year and a half ago. The whole culture changed on September 11th, but it's mostly back to the way it was. And PR book is set in that temporary culture.
(Gibson actually mentioned that on his blog, that the book was set last year, not this year)
Another thing that bothered me was the sort of technical errors in the book. Not minor mistakes, but rather an apparent misunderstanding of cryptography. A misunderstanding that forms a central pillar of the plot. If not the central pillar. And not only that, no one ever thinks to encrypt their email, even though they suspect people may be listening in.
And yeah, the ending was positively Stephensonian. IE, it sucked. We get to hear the whole story, but everything just works out much to well. I don't want to give anything away for those who haven't read it though, so I won't bitch to much, in particular. Not here. There's a nice section for spolier-filled discussion on Gibson's site, which I will now have to check out, having finished the book.
I'm certain that One time pad encryption (where you use a stream of random data the same length as the input as a key, and you only use it ONCE) is unbreakable.
I also believe that some form of quantum encryption has been proven to be unbreakable, but I have no idea how it works, or why. Especially since a regular computer can do anything a quantum computer can do, if given enough time.
If these Israelis could prove mathematically that their encryption method can't be easily reversed, then I think they might as well claim it's unbreakable as you can say something like "the key can't be found even if every atom of silicon on earth was used as a transistor, and was used as one until the sun burns out". Or something like that. Remember, public key crypto is only believed to be secure, since no one's been able to figure out how to factor large numbers quickly. It doesn't mean they never will.
Actualy, if you divide into/48, you've still got a whopping 80 bits left. Take off the 6 you mentioned (top 3 for format, multicast bit, link local, unicast), and we still have 74. So, we have room for 2^74 sites, or 2^42 times as large as the internet would be now, if each site had one IP, and we discounted things like the multicast address, etc. 2^42 is 4398046511104, not 4096:)
Which is really annoying. All the other pages are just pages discussing my site. Autopr0n.com used to be the #1 result for a search on "autopr0n" and I got tons of hits from people doing just that.
So for now, we have nothing to worry about. It would kind of suck to support something just to have the rug pulled out from under you though.
Not that the patent office has any brains, but it seems to me if microsoft wanted a valid patent, they really shouldn't have simply copied everything done by Sun... I mean, what exactly is so orgional in.NET?
My school recently replaced a bunch of dual boot windows/linux machines with some Solaris workstations. All I can say is "What the fuck?" The damn things are running CDE for gods sake.
I was waiting in line the other day to use a 'burning station' where you can get CDs made for site-licensed software, and I tried using one of the machines. It was ridiculous. The only browser they had was Netscape, and Java didn't even work! I mean, this is a sun machine!
Solaris may make a good server OS, but for a desktop OS I'd rather stick with windows or Linux.
Lets face it, this is really all political. I doubt the EU will be as lenient as the US has been, simply because it's not at all in their interests to have a powerful company based in the US controlling their desktops. Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous.
The really intresting thing is that for the first time there's a real alternative to microsoft in the form of Linux and Free software. The rest of the world is jumping on it in order to escape.
Not taxing the internet was good while it was building up, because it helped it grow. Now that it's established, there's no real reason not to tax it like everything else.
Personaly, I would like it if the tax code was vastly simplifed, rather being soooo complex, though
I wonder how it will handle things like amazon's email marketing and the like. Is everyone who runs a mailing list going to have use these things to look up 'do-not-mail' address?
OTOH, if they allow 'existing bussness relationship' we'll all still get tons of spam from people who think that paying $10,000 for a list of email address is the same as me 'opting-in' for a 'partner' site.
Japan and China are totally different when it comes to things like software piracy. I'd be willing to bet that software piracy in Japan is an order of magnitude less then it is in the US.
As another poster mentioned, it would be like calling the US and Mexico 'practically the same thing'. Or even the US and Cuba.
Slashdot Mirror
The morality of mimetic engineering, the destruction of the diffrent cultures of the world, replaced by an all-consuming monoculture.
But yeah, I thought it was pretty odd that a girl with a total aversion to brand could even stand to use a Mac. I mean, it kind of made sense that all these 'creative' types would use them, but Cayce? Granted, they did give it to her, but you'd think she'd ditch it for the most no-name PC clone laptop she could get her hands on.
PR Is bland in the beginning, absolutely amazing in the middle, and bland again at the end. ATP is strong all the way through, and gives you a swift kick in the nuts at the end.
I thought Pattern Recognition was his best work yet when I was a third of the way through, too. I was riveted. In fact, I thought it was better then anything he'd written by an order of magnitude.
But then I kept reading.
Yup, it was a good opening line. To bad the world's TV manufactures have conspired to make it have the exact opposite meaning :P
And I was thinking of doing a review of the story and submitting it to slashdot. I wish I had, because this one is pretty bland.
The first 50 pages or so, when we get an introduction to Cayce and her world seem sort of devoid of life. I ended up setting down the book for a while, reading only a few pages at a time. Once the main plot thread really got going, however I was sucked instantly in.
In fact, what I found most lacking in the beginning, the texture that's so prevalent and so beautifully described in a lot of Gibson books really came out in full force, in the description of Japan and Russia. The characters also started to come out in a lot more depth, once we got to meet Darrin, Voytek and his sister, Parka boy, The whole Kieko project (which, despite my earlier post) Is truly the funniest part of the book.
One thing that was really kind of Jarring about the book was it's whole 'post-sept.11th' feel. Of course, we are still technically post-sept-11th. But now it seems we've moved on to a sort of 'insane war mongering' mode. Or at least our government has. The war on Iraq doesn't really feel connected to the attack just a year and a half ago. The whole culture changed on September 11th, but it's mostly back to the way it was. And PR book is set in that temporary culture.
(Gibson actually mentioned that on his blog, that the book was set last year, not this year)
Another thing that bothered me was the sort of technical errors in the book. Not minor mistakes, but rather an apparent misunderstanding of cryptography. A misunderstanding that forms a central pillar of the plot. If not the central pillar. And not only that, no one ever thinks to encrypt their email, even though they suspect people may be listening in.
And yeah, the ending was positively Stephensonian. IE, it sucked. We get to hear the whole story, but everything just works out much to well. I don't want to give anything away for those who haven't read it though, so I won't bitch to much, in particular. Not here. There's a nice section for spolier-filled discussion on Gibson's site, which I will now have to check out, having finished the book.
Is the funniest thing in the book, not Bigend's name.
Are the slashdot editors really this ignorant? This is pure BS. Christ.
I'm certain that One time pad encryption (where you use a stream of random data the same length as the input as a key, and you only use it ONCE) is unbreakable.
I also believe that some form of quantum encryption has been proven to be unbreakable, but I have no idea how it works, or why. Especially since a regular computer can do anything a quantum computer can do, if given enough time.
If these Israelis could prove mathematically that their encryption method can't be easily reversed, then I think they might as well claim it's unbreakable as you can say something like "the key can't be found even if every atom of silicon on earth was used as a transistor, and was used as one until the sun burns out". Or something like that. Remember, public key crypto is only believed to be secure, since no one's been able to figure out how to factor large numbers quickly. It doesn't mean they never will.
Personaly, I doubt it, though.
Actualy, if you divide into /48, you've still got a whopping 80 bits left. Take off the 6 you mentioned (top 3 for format, multicast bit, link local, unicast), and we still have 74. So, we have room for 2^74 sites, or 2^42 times as large as the internet would be now, if each site had one IP, and we discounted things like the multicast address, etc. 2^42 is 4398046511104, not 4096 :)
Which is really annoying. All the other pages are just pages discussing my site. Autopr0n.com used to be the #1 result for a search on "autopr0n" and I got tons of hits from people doing just that.
So for now, we have nothing to worry about. It would kind of suck to support something just to have the rug pulled out from under you though.
.NET?
Not that the patent office has any brains, but it seems to me if microsoft wanted a valid patent, they really shouldn't have simply copied everything done by Sun... I mean, what exactly is so orgional in
We would each need to have a /96 in order for the situation to be the same as with ipv4.
If you figure the market is 80% of the population, which is probably a lot closer, especially for Japan, then you end up with less then 1 IP per user.
Obviously, a huge problem.
It's my server.
My school recently replaced a bunch of dual boot windows/linux machines with some Solaris workstations. All I can say is "What the fuck?" The damn things are running CDE for gods sake.
I was waiting in line the other day to use a 'burning station' where you can get CDs made for site-licensed software, and I tried using one of the machines. It was ridiculous. The only browser they had was Netscape, and Java didn't even work! I mean, this is a sun machine!
Solaris may make a good server OS, but for a desktop OS I'd rather stick with windows or Linux.
Lets face it, this is really all political. I doubt the EU will be as lenient as the US has been, simply because it's not at all in their interests to have a powerful company based in the US controlling their desktops. Not that the US really does, but M$ is really a huge and powerfull company. It's value to our economy is enormous.
The really intresting thing is that for the first time there's a real alternative to microsoft in the form of Linux and Free software. The rest of the world is jumping on it in order to escape.
The Euro worth more then the dollar!? heresy!
Damn bush and his asinine financial policies.
Not taxing the internet was good while it was building up, because it helped it grow. Now that it's established, there's no real reason not to tax it like everything else.
Personaly, I would like it if the tax code was vastly simplifed, rather being soooo complex, though
You don't turn it off, you just fold up the keyboard and the screen shows a clock.
I hope you're not sitting in front of your PC using the keyboard and monitor 24-7...
I wonder how it will handle things like amazon's email marketing and the like. Is everyone who runs a mailing list going to have use these things to look up 'do-not-mail' address?
OTOH, if they allow 'existing bussness relationship' we'll all still get tons of spam from people who think that paying $10,000 for a list of email address is the same as me 'opting-in' for a 'partner' site.
Japan and China are totally different when it comes to things like software piracy. I'd be willing to bet that software piracy in Japan is an order of magnitude less then it is in the US.
As another poster mentioned, it would be like calling the US and Mexico 'practically the same thing'. Or even the US and Cuba.
maybe they thought it was just an new MP3 file, and shared it with everyone...nothing wrong with that is there?
Exactly. That's why we all hate Redhat, slackware, Mandrakesoft, Caldera, etc.
The idea that plagiarism is wrong, and sharing is not, is not hypocritical.
Also, if there was no copyright, there would be no need for the GPL.
as long as you don't distribute the changes. It says that on like the 3rd line of the damn thing!