Re:One of the characteristics of a conspiracy theo
on
Roswell Declassified
·
· Score: 1
The problem with conspiracies, is that you wind up with some serious "circular logic" going on, when you try to prove or disprove their existence. After all, the nature of a conspiracy, if it exists, is to remain unknown until such a time as it's work (whatever that might be) is complete... and maybe afterwards.
So, if the people who don't believe in the conspiracy insist it doesn't exist because there is no evidence, the conspiracy theorist is going to point out that the people involved are concealing / destroying / hiding / whatever, the evidence... And then the anti-conspiracy people are going to point out that there's no evidence of evidence being destroyed / hidden / concealed / whatever... to which the conspiracy theorist is going to reply that there's no evidence, because it's been concealed / hidden / destroyed, etc.. lather, rinse, repeat.
And then, if evidence which contradicts the conspiracy theory comes to light, the conspiracy theorist will insist that it was trumped up, to make the conspiracy *seem* fake, in order to continue concealing it's existence... Then, when somebody points out that there is no evidence that the evidence is fake, the conspiracy theorist will insist that that evidence has been concealed / hidden / destroyed, etc... see above for how this ends...
It's similar in a sense, to the arguments about proving the existence of God... how do you prove that something *doesn't* exist... Throw in the amazing ability of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, a few oddballs, some people who stand to profit from the belief in the conspiracy, a few well-intentioned people who happen to believe for some seemingly legitimate reason, and there's no reason why a good conspiracy theory shouldn't keep going pretty much forever...
This is, of course, assuming that there really *isn't* a conspiracy... but... what if there is?
It positively drives me nuts, for instance, that my state's Department of Revenue is ksrevenue.org instead of revenue.ks.us like it should be, and the main site for state info is accesskansas.org . . . ORG? Please.
That's a good example of what I'm talking about. The TLD's aren't being used the way they were meant to be used anyway, so why bother caring about them.
Besides, you don't browse the 'Net in the same sense that you browse the directories on your hard drive.... At least in my experience, most of my 'Net surfing is driven through:
hyperlinks from another site
bookmarks
memorization (of a specific url)
search engines
albeit not necessarily in that order. So, for me at least, the thing about having the 'Net organized like a hard drive is pretty much irrelevant.
Cities should not have TLDs. There's too many of them. At the very least they should be under a.us domain or, even better, under a.ca.us domain.
Why are there too many? Why should there even be a limit on the number of TLD's? If you really think about it, what significance does a TLD really have? It's just one small part of a globally unique identifier...
I mean, yeah, nominally the TLD's mean something... but in practice, whatever geographic or functional distinctions are supposed to exist between the TLD's, are ignored. Take my own website for example... it's registered in.co.uk, even though I live in Chapel Hill, NC, USA, not Great Britian. They (the registrars) don't seem to enforce many (if any) restrictions on TLD's, so why worry about them?
As long as it's unique, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to have a domain like:
1) This is really the only reason I need to be stating. "Every body has access to it". Other government agencies and/or anti-government/terrorist organizations could easily search the code for exploits and vulnerabilities that would allow them to attack government computers. Depending on how the gov designs their networks and implements the opensource software, it could lead to some serious troubles.
So you're arguing for "security through obscurity?" Get real. Security through obscurity doesn't work and we all know it. People find plenty of exploits and vunerabilities for Windows and commercial Unix, without the source code, now don't they?
The benefit of OSS and Free Software, is that the exploits and vunerabilities tend to get fixed MUCH faster, than they would for commercial operating systems.
That's cool. I never knew about the provisional patent before.... Sounds like the patent office actually did something halfway intelligent for a change.
I looked into filing a patent earlier this year, and it looks like the minimum cost to file a regular patent is around $700.00, IIRC... hence my statement above, about patents being too damn expensive.
1. These guys are patenting trivial, obvious shit that absolutely does NOT deserve a patent... and if the patent examiners had any modicum of technical competency, most of this shit would get rejected.
and
2. It costs so much to file a patent now, that it's damn near impossible for a private inventor to patent anything, unless he / she is already independently wealthy.
The idea of patents has (had?) some merit, but abuses like this make me think we should just scrap the entire idea of patents, and have an IP free-for-all... put all the existing patents in the public domain, and quit issuing new ones, permanently.
Good call. If one is going to read that, he might as well read "The Messianic Legacy" by the same author, as well. These two books will definitely give you a lot to think about... maybe not so appealing for born-again christians, though...
Another good choice would be Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframe to Microprocessor
Also, if you've got some free time on your hands, you might try reading something completely "out of nature" for yourself.. broaden your mind, if you will... like, if you're atheist, read the King James Bible... if you're a devout christian, read the Satanic Bible... If you hate Microsoft, read "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell (and published by Microsoft Press). Listen to Nu-metal and hate 80's metal? Read The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, the Motley Crue auto-biography. Something completely out of character might be fun, for a change of pace.
Computer history stuff, deals with the history of a company called Data General and how the engineers there thrashed like hell to release a new computer architecture in a year.
Very cool history of IBM, deals largely with the time-frame when OS/2 was still a big part of IBM's world... I think this was written before Lou Gerstner's era began, so it's definitely dealing with the "old" IBM...
Read Kevin Mitnick's book The Art of Deception. Kevin points out that the human side of security is often completely overlooked, and can be the source of your most serious security problems.
His book also gives plenty of realistic examples of how "hackers" of various types exploit the people in an organization, to gain access to priveleged information... and he explains the policies and practices that need to be in place to prevent this from happening.
You can have every sophisticated packet filtering firewall / application proxying firewall / intrusion detection system / network monitoring / etc. tool in the world... but if end-users freely give out the dial-up number and their username/password for the Remote Access Server to anybody who claims to work in "tech support" and use a lot of big, technical sounding words, then you ain't secure.
mark felstein
P.O.Box 667933
Pompano Beach, Florida 33066
United States
Registered through: Go Daddy Software (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: EMARKETERSAMERICA.ORG
Created on: 16-Jan-03
Expires on: 16-Jan-05
Last Updated on: 16-Jan-03
Administrative Contact:
felstein, mark mefels@aol.com
P.O.Box 667933
Pompano Beach, Florida 33066
United States
9542887575 Fax --
Technical Contact:
felstein, mark mefels@aol.com
P.O.Box 667933
Pompano Beach, Florida 33066
United States
9542887575 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order:
PARK3.SECURESERVER.NET
PARK4.SECURESERVER.NET
Okay, everyone, get it out of your system: reply, now, with the other 1,345 APIs that we should consider in addition to EJB, JDO, and, now, OJB and Hibernate. Don't be shy, now. Post!
Just do it with the database vendor's db specific interface API.. CLI for DB2, for example.
Better yet, just use low-level ODBC calls.
Or, better yet, do it in ADO, or DAO or OLE-DB,or whateverthehellmicrosoftiscallingitthismonth, and write a JNI wrapper around it for Java....
I can't understand why the hell they recommend against using C++. It's standardized, fairly portable (if written correctly), supports a multi-pardigm approach to programming (procedural, object-oriented, generative ) and is supported on nearly every platform known to man. The resulting code is usually quite performant, using a decent compiler (again, assuming the source is written by someone competent).
I can't see the FSF recommending Java, since it hardly qualifies as "Free", so it would seem that C++ would be exactly the language they would recommend.
When the time comes where businesses can influence either directly or indirectly the functioning of our 'democratic state' there will be need of a revolution
How very, very true. I've said it before, but I'll say it again.. (With all due apologies to Queensryche)... I hear a "revolution calling..."
Or if not an out and out armed revolution (which won't even be possible if we keep sitting back and letting the govt. ass-rape the 2nd Amendment), at least some SERIOUS FUCKING REFORM OF THE EXISTING GOVERNMENT.
This kind of shit is why I Vote Libertarian. At least there is one political party dedicated to preserving the freedoms guaranteed to us by the Constitution.
As has been said, many times, many ways, each officeholding choice is a selection between (almost always) two people who are either virtually identical in position, with only very minor distinguishing features, or two people who are, at the best, dishonest opportunists who siezed a chance to run for office because it's better than having a real job.
I believe that to be true, ONLY if you limit yourself to voting for "major party" candidates... ie, republicrats or demopublicans.
On the other hand, since I vote predominantly Libertarian, I feel like I do usually have a meaningful choice that's not just "picking the lesser of two evils" or whatever.
Wouldn't CVS be considered "Sorta-Kinda" client-server? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought all the networking stuff for CVS was basically a hacked together add-on to what is basically a non client-server application. After all, wasn't CVS originally just a bunch of scripts for running RCS commands?
I also worked at a web dev company once where people who had certain skills would give little classes in-house about their expertise, to help pass on their wisdom to others.
The company I work for does something like this. Once a month, one of the developers gives a little mini-class on a topic of interest... we call it TechShare, and I think it's a cool way to get people on the same page regarding technical stuff.
We also have a monthly "technical staff meeting", where all the developers get together in a conference room, and just talk about stuff that's going on, swap ideas, ask questions, etc... we're in the middle of a big "reuse initiative" right now, so those monthly meetings tend to focus on that issue at the moment. Again, I find them to be a very useful tool for getting all of our developers in sync.
Hey great. I still have 3 more years in school so I'll be getting out right in time to exploit this one. I don't know about you guys but I was too young for the first one. Then when it blew up I was really pissed off that I missed out on all the free venture capital.
All joking aside, you're probably not the only person who feels that way. I for one missed out on the whole "get rich in tech" thing, by not finishing school and landing a programming job until right near the end of the first bubble...
Therefore, I predict that as greedy as people are, and as many people as out out there wanting to get rich.... as soon as it becomes even slightly obvious that the economy is *really* starting to recover, people are gonna be back all over tech stocks again, which means higher valuations for companies, which means more money to hire new programmers... and the flow of venture capital should loosen up again as well...
So basically, I think we'll have a sort of "mini second tech bubble", except with one difference this time.. it won't be a bubble, it will be for real? Why? For one, because venture capitalists will be more demanding in terms of deciding who to float money to... you'll still be able to get it, but you'll have to have a REAL business plan, and maybe even have an MBA on board... not just two geeks with a cool new idea... secondly, because people will take advantage of the lessons learned during the first tech bubble, to create real companies that actually stand a chance to make a real profit... unlike last time, where it was just "get to market first, get as many clicks as possible, and worry about profits later, blah, blah"
Why shouldnt p100 64mb's be able to browse the web?
They should... using the software that ran on them when they were in their prime. Try surfing the web with Netscape Navigator 3.0, it will probably run just fine on that p100 / 64 MB box.... just don't complain about pages that don't render properly, not being able to use Java/Flash/Shockwave/plugin-x, not having support for MathML, SVG, PNG, etc., not having tabbed browsing, etc., etc., etc....
The point is, the web has changed, the software for browsing it has changed, and at some point, the hardware needs to change...
But, if most of the sites you surf are plain vanilla HMTL and you can have a happy surfing experience with Navigator 3.0, by all means... keep running the P100....
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with conspiracies, is that you wind up with some serious "circular logic" going on, when you try to prove or disprove their existence. After all, the nature of a conspiracy, if it exists, is to remain unknown until such a time as it's work (whatever that might be) is complete... and maybe afterwards.
So, if the people who don't believe in the conspiracy insist it doesn't exist because there is no evidence, the conspiracy theorist is going to point out that the people involved are concealing / destroying / hiding / whatever, the evidence... And then the anti-conspiracy people are going to point out that there's no evidence of evidence being destroyed / hidden / concealed / whatever... to which the conspiracy theorist is going to reply that there's no evidence, because it's been concealed / hidden / destroyed, etc.. lather, rinse, repeat.
And then, if evidence which contradicts the conspiracy theory comes to light, the conspiracy theorist will insist that it was trumped up, to make the conspiracy *seem* fake, in order to continue concealing it's existence... Then, when somebody points out that there is no evidence that the evidence is fake, the conspiracy theorist will insist that that evidence has been concealed / hidden / destroyed, etc... see above for how this ends...
It's similar in a sense, to the arguments about proving the existence of God... how do you prove that something *doesn't* exist... Throw in the amazing ability of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, a few oddballs, some people who stand to profit from the belief in the conspiracy, a few well-intentioned people who happen to believe for some seemingly legitimate reason, and there's no reason why a good conspiracy theory shouldn't keep going pretty much forever...
This is, of course, assuming that there really *isn't* a conspiracy... but... what if there is?
That's a good example of what I'm talking about. The TLD's aren't being used the way they were meant to be used anyway, so why bother caring about them. Besides, you don't browse the 'Net in the same sense that you browse the directories on your hard drive.... At least in my experience, most of my 'Net surfing is driven through:
-
hyperlinks from another site
-
bookmarks
-
memorization (of a specific url)
-
search engines
albeit not necessarily in that order. So, for me at least, the thing about having the 'Net organized like a hard drive is pretty much irrelevant.Cities should not have TLDs. There's too many of them. At the very least they should be under a .us domain or, even better, under a .ca.us domain.
.co.uk, even though I live in Chapel Hill, NC, USA, not Great Britian. They (the registrars) don't seem to enforce many (if any) restrictions on TLD's, so why worry about them?
Why are there too many? Why should there even be a limit on the number of TLD's? If you really think about it, what significance does a TLD really have? It's just one small part of a globally unique identifier...
I mean, yeah, nominally the TLD's mean something... but in practice, whatever geographic or functional distinctions are supposed to exist between the TLD's, are ignored. Take my own website for example... it's registered in
As long as it's unique, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to have a domain like:
phillip.rhodes.loves.elisabeth.shue
or whatever.
1) This is really the only reason I need to be stating. "Every body has access to it". Other government agencies and/or anti-government/terrorist organizations could easily search the code for exploits and vulnerabilities that would allow them to attack government computers. Depending on how the gov designs their networks and implements the opensource software, it could lead to some serious troubles.
So you're arguing for "security through obscurity?" Get real. Security through obscurity doesn't work and we all know it. People find plenty of exploits and vunerabilities for Windows and commercial Unix, without the source code, now don't they?
The benefit of OSS and Free Software, is that the exploits and vunerabilities tend to get fixed MUCH faster, than they would for commercial operating systems.
...and on what does Beowulf run? Last time I checked, Linux...it hasn't been ported to anything else.
Beowulf runs on Windows, as well. Check here if you don't believe me.
That's cool. I never knew about the provisional patent before.... Sounds like the patent office actually did something halfway intelligent for a change.
I looked into filing a patent earlier this year, and it looks like the minimum cost to file a regular patent is around $700.00, IIRC... hence my statement above, about patents being too damn expensive.
There are two problems here....
1. These guys are patenting trivial, obvious shit that absolutely does NOT deserve a patent... and if the patent examiners had any modicum of technical competency, most of this shit would get rejected.
and
2. It costs so much to file a patent now, that it's damn near impossible for a private inventor to patent anything, unless he / she is already independently wealthy.
The idea of patents has (had?) some merit, but abuses like this make me think we should just scrap the entire idea of patents, and have an IP free-for-all... put all the existing patents in the public domain, and quit issuing new ones, permanently.
I third this recommendation. "Soul of a New Machine" really is a great read.
Hey! I did too mention Koontz!!! :-)
Don't forget John Saul, either.
Michael Baigent's 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail'
Good call. If one is going to read that, he might as well read "The Messianic Legacy" by the same author, as well. These two books will definitely give you a lot to think about... maybe not so appealing for born-again christians, though...
Aaaah, how'd I forget the "Wrinkle in Time" books by Madeleine L'Engle.
Another good choice would be
Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframe to Microprocessor
Also, if you've got some free time on your hands, you might try reading something completely "out of nature" for yourself.. broaden your mind, if you will... like, if you're atheist, read the King James Bible... if you're a devout christian, read the Satanic Bible... If you hate Microsoft, read "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell (and published by Microsoft Press). Listen to Nu-metal and hate 80's metal? Read The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, the Motley Crue auto-biography. Something completely out of character might be fun, for a change of pace.
A few suggestions... some fiction, some non-fiction, some that could maybe go :-)
either way...
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.
I'm in the middle of this right now, and it
is looking pretty good so far!
The Code Breakers, by David Kahn.
Cool, talks about the history of cryptography
and secret communications and stuff....
Soul Of A New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
Computer history stuff, deals with the history of a company called Data General and how the engineers there thrashed like hell to release a new computer architecture in a year.
The Emperor's New Mind, by Roger Penrose & Martin Gardner
Roger Penrose "attacking the foundations of strong
Artificial Intelligence." Very cool read.
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essense of Mind and Pattern, by Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstader rambling on about all sorts of
weird stuff... Worth reading just for his treatment of the idea of "self-reference."
Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM, by Paul Carroll
Very cool history of IBM, deals largely with the
time-frame when OS/2 was still a big part of IBM's world... I think this was written before Lou Gerstner's era began, so it's definitely dealing with the "old" IBM...
The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne
A classic, and for good reason. Long, very
worth-while... I've probably read this book 15+ times, and if I hadn't lost my copy I'd read it again soon.
Secrets and Lies by Bruce Schneier
Calling this a book on Computer Security really doesn't do it justice. Definitely worth a read if you have any interest in security.
A few other possibilities:
"The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks
"Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" by Ed Yourdon
"Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer" by Ed Yourdon
"Object-Oriented Software Construction" by Bertrand Meyer
"Death March" by Ed Yourdon
Anything by Dean Koontz, Stephen King, John Saul, Clive Barker, or H.P. Lovecraft.
Read Kevin Mitnick's book The Art of Deception. Kevin points out that the human side of security is often completely overlooked, and can be the source of your most serious security problems.
His book also gives plenty of realistic examples of how "hackers" of various types exploit the people in an organization, to gain access to priveleged information... and he explains the policies and practices that need to be in place to prevent this from happening.
You can have every sophisticated packet filtering firewall / application proxying firewall / intrusion detection system / network monitoring / etc. tool in the world... but if end-users freely give out the dial-up number and their username/password for the Remote Access Server to anybody who claims to work in "tech support" and use a lot of big, technical sounding words, then you ain't secure.
If anything, this lends even more credibility to the theory that M$ was behind this all along.
IBM, just go ahead and buy SCO, GPL everything they own, and let's put this silliness behind us.
And in case *THOSE* don't work, here's some more:
mark felstein
P.O.Box 667933
Pompano Beach, Florida 33066
United States
Registered through: Go Daddy Software (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: EMARKETERSAMERICA.ORG
Created on: 16-Jan-03
Expires on: 16-Jan-05
Last Updated on: 16-Jan-03
Administrative Contact:
felstein, mark mefels@aol.com
P.O.Box 667933
Pompano Beach, Florida 33066
United States
9542887575 Fax --
Technical Contact:
felstein, mark mefels@aol.com
P.O.Box 667933
Pompano Beach, Florida 33066
United States
9542887575 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order:
PARK3.SECURESERVER.NET
PARK4.SECURESERVER.NET
Previously their role models were Bon Jovi, Tiffany, George Michael, and Mariah Carey. NOthing's changed. Try again
Well, nothing except that Jon Bon Jovi has more talent in his left elbow than Emimem, Christina, Britney and Holly have combined!
Okay, everyone, get it out of your system: reply, now, with the other 1,345 APIs that we should consider in addition to EJB, JDO, and, now, OJB and Hibernate. Don't be shy, now. Post!
,or whateverthehellmicrosoftiscallingitthismonth, and write a JNI wrapper around it for Java....
Just do it with the database vendor's db specific interface API.. CLI for DB2, for example.
Better yet, just use low-level ODBC calls.
Or, better yet, do it in ADO, or DAO or OLE-DB
I can't understand why the hell they recommend against using C++. It's standardized, fairly portable (if written correctly), supports a multi-pardigm approach to programming (procedural, object-oriented, generative ) and is supported on nearly every platform known to man. The resulting code is usually quite performant, using a decent compiler (again, assuming the source is written by someone competent).
I can't see the FSF recommending Java, since it hardly qualifies as "Free", so it would seem that C++ would be exactly the language they would recommend.
When the time comes where businesses can influence either directly or indirectly the functioning of our 'democratic state' there will be need of a revolution
How very, very true. I've said it before, but I'll say it again.. (With all due apologies to Queensryche)... I hear a "revolution calling..."
Or if not an out and out armed revolution (which won't even be possible if we keep sitting back and letting the govt. ass-rape the 2nd Amendment), at least some SERIOUS FUCKING REFORM OF THE EXISTING GOVERNMENT.
This kind of shit is why I Vote Libertarian. At least there is one political party dedicated to preserving the freedoms guaranteed to us by the Constitution.
As has been said, many times, many ways, each officeholding choice is a selection between (almost always) two people who are either virtually identical in position, with only very minor distinguishing features, or two people who are, at the best, dishonest opportunists who siezed a chance to run for office because it's better than having a real job.
I believe that to be true, ONLY if you limit yourself to voting for "major party" candidates... ie, republicrats or demopublicans.
On the other hand, since I vote predominantly Libertarian, I feel like I do usually have a meaningful choice that's not just "picking the lesser of two evils" or whatever.
Wouldn't CVS be considered "Sorta-Kinda" client-server? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought all the networking stuff for CVS was basically a hacked together add-on to what is basically a non client-server application. After all, wasn't CVS originally just a bunch of scripts for running RCS commands?
I also worked at a web dev company once where people who had certain skills would give little classes in-house about their expertise, to help pass on their wisdom to others.
The company I work for does something like this. Once a month, one of the developers gives a little mini-class on a topic of interest... we call it TechShare, and I think it's a cool way to get people on the same page regarding technical stuff.
We also have a monthly "technical staff meeting", where all the developers get together in a conference room, and just talk about stuff that's going on, swap ideas, ask questions, etc... we're in the middle of a big "reuse initiative" right now, so those monthly meetings tend to focus on that issue at the moment. Again, I find them to be a very useful tool for getting all of our developers in sync.
Hey great. I still have 3 more years in school so I'll be getting out right in time to exploit this one. I don't know about you guys but I was too young for the first one. Then when it blew up I was really pissed off that I missed out on all the free venture capital.
All joking aside, you're probably not the only person who feels that way. I for one missed out on the whole "get rich in tech" thing, by not finishing school and landing a programming job until right near the end of the first bubble...
Therefore, I predict that as greedy as people are, and as many people as out out there wanting to get rich.... as soon as it becomes even slightly obvious that the economy is *really* starting to recover, people are gonna be back all over tech stocks again, which means higher valuations for companies, which means more money to hire new programmers... and the flow of venture capital should loosen up again as well...
So basically, I think we'll have a sort of "mini second tech bubble", except with one difference this time.. it won't be a bubble, it will be for real? Why? For one, because venture capitalists will be more demanding in terms of deciding who to float money to... you'll still be able to get it, but you'll have to have a REAL business plan, and maybe even have an MBA on board... not just two geeks with a cool new idea... secondly, because people will take advantage of the lessons learned during the first tech bubble, to create real companies that actually stand a chance to make a real profit... unlike last time, where it was just "get to market first, get as many clicks as possible, and worry about profits later, blah, blah"
Does foobar mean anything?
That's debatable, but it might have descended from the acronym FUBAR, which translates to:
Fucked Up Beyond all Recognition
or, alternatively:
Fucked Up Beyond all Repair
Why shouldnt p100 64mb's be able to browse the web?
They should... using the software that ran on them when they were in their prime. Try surfing the web with Netscape Navigator 3.0, it will probably run just fine on that p100 / 64 MB box.... just don't complain about pages that don't render properly, not being able to use Java/Flash/Shockwave/plugin-x, not having support for MathML, SVG, PNG, etc., not having tabbed browsing, etc., etc., etc....
The point is, the web has changed, the software for browsing it has changed, and at some point, the hardware needs to change...
But, if most of the sites you surf are plain vanilla HMTL and you can have a happy surfing experience with Navigator 3.0, by all means... keep running the P100....