Oh, yeah? I was arrested for armed bank robbery - let me tell you how that works in San Francisco. In this town, the newspapers rarely report bank robberies. Why? Because when I was arrested, there were probably forty or fifty bank robbers operating in the area. At least every time I went to court in the Fed van, holding eleven people, at least 20-30% of them were bank robbers...
The banks do NOT want people to know how easy it is to rob a bank (getting caught is another matter)...
But, yes, it SHOULD be reported publicly. Ignorance is not bliss...
You remember Corvis little 10MB HD that had 10 Radio Shack Model I's attached to it?
When I saw that device, I said, "The mainframe is dead". I was right (mainframes running thousands of copies of Linux notwithstanding)...
I remember working on an (already obsolete in the 60's) RCA 301 in the mid-70's - thirty thousand pounds of hardware, a dozen tape drives, 40K - that's K, NOT M - of CORE memory - real, magnetic cores! - and a disk drive that held I think 15MB and had a platter about three or four feet wide that took a 30HP motor to spin it! (We never got it working, it was surplus...)
I read about this years and years ago. NASA sent a spacecraft to Venus or someplace. The system had two processors, each of which was designed to test the other processor for signs of failure and if such were detected, to shut the other processor down and take control of the spacecraft.
Well, one of the processors' software had a bug in it that caused it to believe the OTHER processor was defective. It shut the other one down and began to take the craft off-course.
NASA had to reprogram it from the ground to convince it that it was the one that was defective. When they managed to do so, it restarted the other processor, handed off control, and shut itself down.
I can easily see DRM having problems like that which is what the author is suggesting.
Now, one way to get your ass beat in the joint is to be known as someone who testified against someone else in open court or otherwise. This can make your time in the joint REALLY BAD - assuming you don't get stabbed to death.
Snitches are not liked in the joint - even though there are tons of them there.
If he's smart, he will NOT testify against ANYONE - or even make ANY statements about ANYONE.
"Minimum-security" could mean a number of things. If he's going to a prison CAMP, that is minimum security. If he's going to a LOW FCI (Federal Correctional Institution) that is another higher level.
In any event, if he keeps his mouth shut and stays away from the real assholes and if he isn't that good-looking a young kid, he should have no problem with sexual harassment. The Fed system is not like the state system - the Feds control their inmates a lot more. Not to say it doesn't happen, but in eight years in three joints (including Leavenworth USP) I never saw or heard of anybody getting raped.
There WERE known homosexuals, and it's best not to have any dealings with them, because it's easy to get tarred by association. I had a cellie who did some business (wine-making, I think) with two interracial homosexuals in the next cell - one night, I was warned that five guys were going to bust into the cell and kick his ass, and I should get out of there until lockdown. As it happened, he had already been warned and he "checked in" to the Hole before it could happen.
I spent eight years, three-and-a-half months in Federal prison for armed bank robbery - I'm not your ordinary geek:-) - so I have some notes on the prison comments.
First, Federal prison is not state prison. The Feds have their own program and the joints typically do not look or operate like you see in the movies.
Second, there are dangerous people in the joint. Most of the people are street people from five classes: 1) Ghetto blacks. 2) Ghetto Hispanics. 3) White urban punks. 4) White rural rednecks. 5) Bikers (who cross over into classes 3 and 4).
and a smattering of Native Indians, a few Asians, and a certain number of white-collar people. I had a cellmate in the Hole one time who was a Savings and Loan executive...
Third, do not run your mouth. People are very sensitive in the joint. You will notice most of them running their mouths, which is why they get into fights, get stabbed, etc. Keep your mouth shut unless you have to say something, and be polite and respectful to people when you do say something. This goes for the guards, too - no matter how much they act like assholes - and they will.
Fourth, the guards come in two classes: 1) The guy who can't get a real job and enjoys making $30,000 a year or so for basically doing nothing but unlocking doors and escorting prisoners and handling paperwork. He tends to view the whole thing as a job and won't hassle you unless you break a rule.
2) The assholes. These are usually (but not always) young punk wannabe cops (B.O.P. guards are not considered "real" cops by "real" cops.) They are too stupid to get a real job (including a real cop job which requires a college education), and they have something to prove. They will hassle you for no reason.
Fifth, if you threaten a guard with actual violence, you WILL get your ass kicked by three or four of them - despite the fact that it is illegal. And if you complain, you will be ignored by the B.O.P., and if you take it to court through your lawyer, you will not have enough evidence and you will lose (in 90% of the cases.) So NEVER threaten a guard. If a guard roughs you up a little, accept it.
Sixth, you are in their system - accept it. Don't bother trying to change anything, don't try to fight it, don't file lawsuits, do not waste your time and energy in confrontation - you will lose. This is the Federal government - they have billions in budget and the support of the entire country in how they treat prisoners. It's not going to change any time soon.
Seventh, you are lucky that you will get a minimum security facility near your home. Don't count on staying there - you won't, most likely. If you get in a beef with another inmate, they will ship you or the other inmate or both of you. They may ship you halfway across the country just because they need to thin out their population. ALL the joints are overcrowded. They may arbitrarily ship you because your Case Manager does not like your face. If you ship, you may be flown or you may spend a day or two on a bus winding through six states, plus stays of up to two weeks in Transit facilities.
Eighth, the food in Federal joints depends on where you are - some places are good, some are lousy, and they change depending on who becomes the Food Administrator.
Ninth, do not gamble, do not argue over what program is on the TV set in the TV room, do not deal with known homosexuals, do not argue over access to the telephone. That is how inmates get their asses kicked or stabbed.
Tenth, and this is critical. NEVER talk to the staff about ANYTHING ANY inmate did. This makes you a snitch and you will get your ass kicked or stabbed to death. If an inmate kills another inmate in front of you (rather rare in most joints), you DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN! And keep in mind that a LOT of inmates ARE snitches and they will tell on something you did.
11th, there are other geeks and white collar people in the joint. Find them and hang out with them (to a certain degree) - you need support. Stay away from the guys who are in the gangs - you could get caught up in something just by association.
There's a lot more I could go into but this should help keep you in one piece. In eight years I never got into a fight, got roughed up by guards only once - however, I did spend three years of that time in the Hole and stayed at three different facilities.
And remember, you will do 85% of your sentence IF you stay out of trouble - if not, you will do it all. Three years is long, but you can make it in one piece - and you will learn a LOT about how the Federal government REALLY works.
Which is why UNIX will eventually go away as Linux improves enough to take over, and eventually Linux too will go away when someone with money finally decides to do an OS correctly...
It's fucking software, not a culture... Do it right, or get put out of business at some point...
(Still waiting for someone to do it to Windows... Clearly the UNIX people aren't up to it...)
They pass bills, they embed DRM chips in the CPUs, they run DRM software, they kill Linux, yada, yada, yada...
The result? The consumer stops buying and spends their $120/month entertainment money (IIRC, that is the national average) on something else, like going out to dinner more often with friends or paperback porn or whatever...
And the music and movie industry collapses into a depression...
You CANNOT legislate human economic behavior.
So let them do what they want - it'll kill those industries quicker than the speed of light...
And something better will take over - making those who invest in that something better the billions currently going to these assholes...
I can't wait to get rich off other people's stupidity.
There was an article on Sony in Wired a couple of YEARS ago where Sony researchers demonstrated the picking up of a file on a desktop screen (I mean a REAL DESKTOP SCREEN) and putting it on a WALL screen (I mean a REAL WALL SCREEN).
Obviously Microsoft stole this idea along with everything else they've ever put out with the sole exception of some font tech...
And even further back, Stewart Brand's Media Lab book had them using wall screens that moved around the display space and zoomed on objects simply by looking at them (lasers tracking eye movement, IIRC)...
Correct. Foreign terrorists do not use American libraries to learn how to build bombs - they are trained in this by foreign intelligence agencies, specifically Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc.
However, they COULD use American libraries and any other open source avenues to gain information on potential targets for those bombs. I think this is more what the FBI is interested in...
And of course the FBI is interested in hassling anybody else they don't like - for instance, the American Indian Movement, which IIRC won a case in Federal Court and a Federal judge's decision was that the FBI conducted illegal black bag jobs, illegal wiretapping, illegal this and that against the AIM group solely for the purpose of harassing them out of existence...
In the 60's, the FBI printed up posters with Abby Hoffman and other radical faces on it proclaiming that these "Jews" were against black people and spread the posters around black neighborhoods...
Yes, that was it. I read it years ago - something about a talk show host who discovers some billionaire is draining little children for immortality or something (IIRC)... I forget most of it, but it was a wild read.
Spinrad's "Little Heroes" sort of presages the current RIAA mess in the music business, too. It's about the conflict between a music label that owns everything having to do with music and which puts out computer-generate Artificial Personalities (APs) as rock stars which is mostly crap content and a bunch of anarchist revolutionary geeks who use "open source hacking" (in a sense - they give away their hacking programs) to try to bring the company and the rest of society down. A great read!
Galactus? Yeah, he's cool, but in the latest infinity Abyss mini-series, Thanos created a replicant of himself with MORE than Galactus' power, and preceded to defeat his replicant (which went off on its own along with four other Thanos replicants) by strategy and cunning and the help of some lame Earth superheroes.
George Lucas is on record wanting it to be law that no one can use your image or anything else without paying you. The example he used was a sculptor who makes a sculpture, sells it to you, you paint it blue, he sues you.
(He wants to own Yoda, see and doesn't want anyone using Yoda in a porn movie...)
This is unmitigated BS...IMO...
Nobody "owns a moment"...
Nobody owns anything that is not physically under their control in some sense. Hell, eminent domain means you don't even own land...unless you bribe the government officials taking it...
You take a picture, you sell it to me, I own that picture. I don't care if you own the negatives, I own that picture and can do bloody well anything I want with it - sell it, scan it, distribute it to hell and back, convert it to a porn image with editing, whatever... You should have NO say in that at all.
(Unless of course we have agreed in contract otherwise - which I would never do...)
Yeah, I know, De Niro wants science, not sci-fi...screw him, this book MUST be made into a summer blockbuster.
No, not Minskys' book, the sci-fi one that has a similar title because it's based on similar tech. Authored by Eric L. Harry, came out in 1996. Great book on the impact of near-term radical technology (robots, neural net computers, asteroid mining, etc.) - sort of "Jurassic Park Meets the Island of Dr. Moreau" only substituting giant robots for dinosaurs.
Short concept: Harvard babe psychologist (perfect Jodie Foster role) gets hired by Bill Gates-like reclusive billionaire (I'm thinking Val Kilmer at his most enigmatic) to fly to his private Pacific island where he runs his own spaceport and robotized manufacturing plant that puts up LEO satellites (like Craig McCaw's Teledesic thingy), supposedly to do some psych counseling. Turns out it's not him she has to psychoanalyze but his giant neurocomputer that runs everything on the island and is starting to behave erratically. Meanwhile she discovers this guy is building small nukes, and VR pods and the computer is directing her into strange situations, while the boss's security chief (I'm thinking Ed Harris for this part) is getting suspicious of everybody including his boss. Then a decapitated dead man turns up on the island. Then she finds out our boy is making giant ten-foot-tall robots with their own neurocomputers, uncontrolled by the central computer, which doesn't happen to like them - because they are autonomous - really autonomous, as in running around the island out of control. And then an asteroid suddenly shows up approaching Earth orbit - apparently brought there by our boy who intends to use nukes to put it into a LaGrange zone. Only the computer has to do it - and it's getting a little weird... And the US Government has a destroyer offshore and Navy Seals ready to invade the place if that asteroid takes a wrong turn...
Great story, lots of science, lots of action - the final battle between two groups of robots and the humans as a third party is both visually interesting and funny.
This movie would easily do $250-500 million domestic...
Unfortunately, I don't see De Niro in any of it...
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Oh, yeah? I was arrested for armed bank robbery - let me tell you how that works in San Francisco. In this town, the newspapers rarely report bank robberies. Why? Because when I was arrested, there were probably forty or fifty bank robbers operating in the area. At least every time I went to court in the Fed van, holding eleven people, at least 20-30% of them were bank robbers...
The banks do NOT want people to know how easy it is to rob a bank (getting caught is another matter)...
But, yes, it SHOULD be reported publicly. Ignorance is not bliss...
With rusty zippers and yellow shoes...
Can we now say that BSD has gone back to the old days of the IBM company songbooks?
This should be the last nail in BSD's coffin...
Er, you all remember "disk packs"?
You remember Corvis little 10MB HD that had 10 Radio Shack Model I's attached to it?
When I saw that device, I said, "The mainframe is dead". I was right (mainframes running thousands of copies of Linux notwithstanding)...
I remember working on an (already obsolete in the 60's) RCA 301 in the mid-70's - thirty thousand pounds of hardware, a dozen tape drives, 40K - that's K, NOT M - of CORE memory - real, magnetic cores! - and a disk drive that held I think 15MB and had a platter about three or four feet wide that took a 30HP motor to spin it! (We never got it working, it was surplus...)
I read about this years and years ago. NASA sent a spacecraft to Venus or someplace. The system had two processors, each of which was designed to test the other processor for signs of failure and if such were detected, to shut the other processor down and take control of the spacecraft.
Well, one of the processors' software had a bug in it that caused it to believe the OTHER processor was defective. It shut the other one down and began to take the craft off-course.
NASA had to reprogram it from the ground to convince it that it was the one that was defective. When they managed to do so, it restarted the other processor, handed off control, and shut itself down.
I can easily see DRM having problems like that which is what the author is suggesting.
Now, one way to get your ass beat in the joint is to be known as someone who testified against someone else in open court or otherwise. This can make your time in the joint REALLY BAD - assuming you don't get stabbed to death.
Snitches are not liked in the joint - even though there are tons of them there.
If he's smart, he will NOT testify against ANYONE - or even make ANY statements about ANYONE.
"Minimum-security" could mean a number of things. If he's going to a prison CAMP, that is minimum security. If he's going to a LOW FCI (Federal Correctional Institution) that is another higher level.
In any event, if he keeps his mouth shut and stays away from the real assholes and if he isn't that good-looking a young kid, he should have no problem with sexual harassment. The Fed system is not like the state system - the Feds control their inmates a lot more. Not to say it doesn't happen, but in eight years in three joints (including Leavenworth USP) I never saw or heard of anybody getting raped.
There WERE known homosexuals, and it's best not to have any dealings with them, because it's easy to get tarred by association. I had a cellie who did some business (wine-making, I think) with two interracial homosexuals in the next cell - one night, I was warned that five guys were going to bust into the cell and kick his ass, and I should get out of there until lockdown. As it happened, he had already been warned and he "checked in" to the Hole before it could happen.
I spent eight years, three-and-a-half months in Federal prison for armed bank robbery - I'm not your ordinary geek :-) - so I have some notes on the prison comments.
First, Federal prison is not state prison. The Feds have their own program and the joints typically do not look or operate like you see in the movies.
Second, there are dangerous people in the joint. Most of the people are street people from five classes:
1) Ghetto blacks.
2) Ghetto Hispanics.
3) White urban punks.
4) White rural rednecks.
5) Bikers (who cross over into classes 3 and 4).
and a smattering of Native Indians, a few Asians, and a certain number of white-collar people. I had a cellmate in the Hole one time who was a Savings and Loan executive...
Third, do not run your mouth. People are very sensitive in the joint. You will notice most of them running their mouths, which is why they get into fights, get stabbed, etc. Keep your mouth shut unless you have to say something, and be polite and respectful to people when you do say something. This goes for the guards, too - no matter how much they act like assholes - and they will.
Fourth, the guards come in two classes:
1) The guy who can't get a real job and enjoys making $30,000 a year or so for basically doing nothing but unlocking doors and escorting prisoners and handling paperwork. He tends to view the whole thing as a job and won't hassle you unless you break a rule.
2) The assholes. These are usually (but not always) young punk wannabe cops (B.O.P. guards are not considered "real" cops by "real" cops.) They are too stupid to get a real job (including a real cop job which requires a college education), and they have something to prove. They will hassle you for no reason.
Fifth, if you threaten a guard with actual violence, you WILL get your ass kicked by three or four of them - despite the fact that it is illegal. And if you complain, you will be ignored by the B.O.P., and if you take it to court through your lawyer, you will not have enough evidence and you will lose (in 90% of the cases.) So NEVER threaten a guard. If a guard roughs you up a little, accept it.
Sixth, you are in their system - accept it. Don't bother trying to change anything, don't try to fight it, don't file lawsuits, do not waste your time and energy in confrontation - you will lose. This is the Federal government - they have billions in budget and the support of the entire country in how they treat prisoners. It's not going to change any time soon.
Seventh, you are lucky that you will get a minimum security facility near your home. Don't count on staying there - you won't, most likely. If you get in a beef with another inmate, they will ship you or the other inmate or both of you. They may ship you halfway across the country just because they need to thin out their population. ALL the joints are overcrowded. They may arbitrarily ship you because your Case Manager does not like your face. If you ship, you may be flown or you may spend a day or two on a bus winding through six states, plus stays of up to two weeks in Transit facilities.
Eighth, the food in Federal joints depends on where you are - some places are good, some are lousy, and they change depending on who becomes the Food Administrator.
Ninth, do not gamble, do not argue over what program is on the TV set in the TV room, do not deal with known homosexuals, do not argue over access to the telephone. That is how inmates get their asses kicked or stabbed.
Tenth, and this is critical. NEVER talk to the staff about ANYTHING ANY inmate did. This makes you a snitch and you will get your ass kicked or stabbed to death. If an inmate kills another inmate in front of you (rather rare in most joints), you DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN! And keep in mind that a LOT of inmates ARE snitches and they will tell on something you did.
11th, there are other geeks and white collar people in the joint. Find them and hang out with them (to a certain degree) - you need support. Stay away from the guys who are in the gangs - you could get caught up in something just by association.
There's a lot more I could go into but this should help keep you in one piece. In eight years I never got into a fight, got roughed up by guards only once - however, I did spend three years of that time in the Hole and stayed at three different facilities.
And remember, you will do 85% of your sentence IF you stay out of trouble - if not, you will do it all. Three years is long, but you can make it in one piece - and you will learn a LOT about how the Federal government REALLY works.
Which is why UNIX will eventually go away as Linux improves enough to take over, and eventually Linux too will go away when someone with money finally decides to do an OS correctly...
It's fucking software, not a culture... Do it right, or get put out of business at some point...
(Still waiting for someone to do it to Windows... Clearly the UNIX people aren't up to it...)
In less than fifty years, nanotech will begin changing human nature beyond recognition.
Climate change is irrelevant to Transhumans...
Of course, the monkeys will probably complain...
They pass bills, they embed DRM chips in the CPUs, they run DRM software, they kill Linux, yada, yada, yada...
The result? The consumer stops buying and spends their $120/month entertainment money (IIRC, that is the national average) on something else, like going out to dinner more often with friends or paperback porn or whatever...
And the music and movie industry collapses into a depression...
You CANNOT legislate human economic behavior.
So let them do what they want - it'll kill those industries quicker than the speed of light...
And something better will take over - making those who invest in that something better the billions currently going to these assholes...
I can't wait to get rich off other people's stupidity.
That was funny! I'm saving that one. I may print it and hand it out to people at the next IT conference at Moscone here in San Francisco...
There was an article on Sony in Wired a couple of YEARS ago where Sony researchers demonstrated the picking up of a file on a desktop screen (I mean a REAL DESKTOP SCREEN) and putting it on a WALL screen (I mean a REAL WALL SCREEN).
Obviously Microsoft stole this idea along with everything else they've ever put out with the sole exception of some font tech...
And even further back, Stewart Brand's Media Lab book had them using wall screens that moved around the display space and zoomed on objects simply by looking at them (lasers tracking eye movement, IIRC)...
DOS!
Correct. Foreign terrorists do not use American libraries to learn how to build bombs - they are trained in this by foreign intelligence agencies, specifically Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc.
However, they COULD use American libraries and any other open source avenues to gain information on potential targets for those bombs. I think this is more what the FBI is interested in...
And of course the FBI is interested in hassling anybody else they don't like - for instance, the American Indian Movement, which IIRC won a case in Federal Court and a Federal judge's decision was that the FBI conducted illegal black bag jobs, illegal wiretapping, illegal this and that against the AIM group solely for the purpose of harassing them out of existence...
In the 60's, the FBI printed up posters with Abby Hoffman and other radical faces on it proclaiming that these "Jews" were against black people and spread the posters around black neighborhoods...
This is the true FBI in action...
Yes, that was it. I read it years ago - something about a talk show host who discovers some billionaire is draining little children for immortality or something (IIRC)... I forget most of it, but it was a wild read.
Spinrad's "Little Heroes" sort of presages the current RIAA mess in the music business, too. It's about the conflict between a music label that owns everything having to do with music and which puts out computer-generate Artificial Personalities (APs) as rock stars which is mostly crap content and a bunch of anarchist revolutionary geeks who use "open source hacking" (in a sense - they give away their hacking programs) to try to bring the company and the rest of society down. A great read!
Galactus? Yeah, he's cool, but in the latest infinity Abyss mini-series, Thanos created a replicant of himself with MORE than Galactus' power, and preceded to defeat his replicant (which went off on its own along with four other Thanos replicants) by strategy and cunning and the help of some lame Earth superheroes.
Thanos is THE MAN!
It's lucky this guy is a billionaire 'cause he'll never work again - he's a fucking idiot...
"Remember when we said there was no future?
Well, this is it!"
Nuts! Found out again before I even got started...
Right on! I LIKE Tori!
Too bad they picked her to do this stupid stuff with...
George Lucas is on record wanting it to be law that no one can use your image or anything else without paying you. The example he used was a sculptor who makes a sculpture, sells it to you, you paint it blue, he sues you.
(He wants to own Yoda, see and doesn't want anyone using Yoda in a porn movie...)
This is unmitigated BS...IMO...
Nobody "owns a moment"...
Nobody owns anything that is not physically under their control in some sense. Hell, eminent domain means you don't even own land...unless you bribe the government officials taking it...
You take a picture, you sell it to me, I own that picture. I don't care if you own the negatives, I own that picture and can do bloody well anything I want with it - sell it, scan it, distribute it to hell and back, convert it to a porn image with editing, whatever... You should have NO say in that at all.
(Unless of course we have agreed in contract otherwise - which I would never do...)
Yeah, I know, De Niro wants science, not sci-fi...screw him, this book MUST be made into a summer blockbuster.
No, not Minskys' book, the sci-fi one that has a similar title because it's based on similar tech. Authored by Eric L. Harry, came out in 1996. Great book on the impact of near-term radical technology (robots, neural net computers, asteroid mining, etc.) - sort of "Jurassic Park Meets the Island of Dr. Moreau" only substituting giant robots for dinosaurs.
Short concept: Harvard babe psychologist (perfect Jodie Foster role) gets hired by Bill Gates-like reclusive billionaire (I'm thinking Val Kilmer at his most enigmatic) to fly to his private Pacific island where he runs his own spaceport and robotized manufacturing plant that puts up LEO satellites (like Craig McCaw's Teledesic thingy), supposedly to do some psych counseling. Turns out it's not him she has to psychoanalyze but his giant neurocomputer that runs everything on the island and is starting to behave erratically. Meanwhile she discovers this guy is building small nukes, and VR pods and the computer is directing her into strange situations, while the boss's security chief (I'm thinking Ed Harris for this part) is getting suspicious of everybody including his boss. Then a decapitated dead man turns up on the island. Then she finds out our boy is making giant ten-foot-tall robots with their own neurocomputers, uncontrolled by the central computer, which doesn't happen to like them - because they are autonomous - really autonomous, as in running around the island out of control. And then an asteroid suddenly shows up approaching Earth orbit - apparently brought there by our boy who intends to use nukes to put it into a LaGrange zone. Only the computer has to do it - and it's getting a little weird... And the US Government has a destroyer offshore and Navy Seals ready to invade the place if that asteroid takes a wrong turn...
Great story, lots of science, lots of action - the final battle between two groups of robots and the humans as a third party is both visually interesting and funny.
This movie would easily do $250-500 million domestic...
Unfortunately, I don't see De Niro in any of it...
No, Hinckley has not been released from the nuthouse (AFAIK)...
Is that guy related to Gerrera Rivaldo?