Crypto will soon solve all the problems of anonymnity. It will solve them by removing the possiblity of anonymnity on most of the 'net.
When public key crypto becomes accepted by 'the powers that be' (everybody seems to feel it is inevitable) one of the ways 'the powers that be' will recover some power from the fact that it's out there will be to require digital signatures on all 'net traffic. Send out packets that don't contain your signature, tracable back to a valid identity, and they get dropped at a number of transfer points on the 'net.
The fact that something like this is technologically feasible, and the fact that it's one of the easiest ways for 'authorities' to capture an advantage from crypto means that it's inevitable. When it does happen, say goodbye to anonymnity. Personally, I won't miss it much. Anonymnity causes some real ugly human tendencies to come out, that I've seen in play since the early days of BBSing.
Even if it isn't mandated by law, a lot of us will be empowered to just turn off anything coming from anonymous sources when digital signatures become the norm. "If you wanna say something to me, show your damn face, etc."
If the pamphlets in your physical mailbox didn't have postmarked stamps on them, and weren't deposited there by the mailman, the people who put them there broke a Federal law and can be prosecuted. It's an easier rule to get enforced than anything related to electronic-spam. Just complain to the postmaster.
Memorizing facts, and learning them in the process of using them, are two very different things. Most "geeks" these days only have enough knowledge of hardware to know which end of the screwdriver to use while assembling a PC Clone. That was kinda sorta my point.
Bitten a head off a chicken lately? No? Then you're not a geek.
If you're downloading an AIM client from anywhere but AOL, you run a much greater risk of getting a trojan anyway.
When I can get packages like the newer versions of Netscape to stop automaticaly shoving down my throat an AIM client that I then have to manually delete from the system, I will start taking your sentiment seriously.
Adding extra stuff to IE does not break a standard. Either IE is compliant (can render everything in the standard) or not. To argue that adding additional features breaks the standard is to shove mediocrity down our throats.
The standard doesn't specify that a Mail Client and Newsreader should be embedded into the browser. So that means Netscape is in blatant violation of the standard? IE certainly isn't as Outlook is a separate program.
Why should anybody 'compete on a level playing field'? In case you hadn't noticed, no such thing exists. None ever will. If it did, it would be unlevel again in a few milliseconds (if you don't know what I mean, look up the word 'compete' and discover that somebody generally has to win).
Oh, and when Microsoft "punches another kid in the nose" I consistently hear people yelling bloody murder. As well they should, for their own reasons.
If you wanted to use some other vendor's implementation of those protocols, it would be listed under a different vendor. Choose one of the the IPX versions listed under Novell, for instance, if you like. Or take the "Open" choice and click "Have Disk."
I'm staring right now at a bitmap of the 'bruised lower lip' woman character from that movie "Star Wars, the fourth episode renumbered as episode one" and realizing they've made a ton of money from the movie already.
Granted they've invested considerable money into the form of Black Magick that we in this culture call 'advertising' and should be able to reap the benefits from the mindspace they now own in each of our heads.
So let them take down anybody who 'pirates' the copyrighted images. It's nothing new. I don't even feel it's Stuff that Matters. But I'm a real geek, not a wannabe.
Real geeks know, for example the relative merits of the different families of TTL (74, 74S, 74LS, 74ALS, 74C, 74HC, etc.) Ubergeeks even know why the 74S family is nearly obsolete (except where screaming speed is necessary, ie a few gates on video cards,) and which chips in the LS family their code is most likely still flowing through in the late 90's (i.e. the 74LS244 and 74LS373, though in a lot of cases it will be HC families instead).
Isn't it possible to check the referring page or site and block access to a page if the referring page isn't an approved one?
With this mechanism, if sites don't want outside referrals to their pages or content, it seems to me that they should take responsibility themselves to block access if it doesn't come from their own referring pages, and not run crying to an outside agency.
I of course apologize in advance if I'm dead wrong on how this blocking mechanism works.
I've always wondered why anybody would be so stupid as to have a Bob Marley or Grateful Dead sticker on a vehicle. I've often wondered if the only people who do so are the narcs.
When 'they' go after the first of any of these groups (or any other non-criminal groups) it will be time to speak up. Until then, speaking up will just fog up the water, dilute the message, and make it difficult to speak up if and when it becomes necessary.
Re:Star Trek's Money System
on
Beaming Money
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Star Trek is supposed to be consistent? I thought it was just a TV show.
Re:I'll stick with cash
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Beaming Money
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That's all very fine. But please don't sound so cheerful in advocating "smart, technologically intelligent alternatives" to moral behaviour.
It's just chilling.
Re:Another spurious Star Trek reference
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Beaming Money
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What happens when stealing right hands becomes a popular practice among criminals. . .
I learned how to program for 'embedded systems' on the job at a previous company. They needed the code for a new device, and I was a tech there. I got the rare opportunity to move into coding, and wrote all or most of the code for three lines of devices while in their employ. Part of it at technician's pay, and part as a software engineer. It was 100% assembly language, in 4 and 8 bit controllers.
It's cool to write code for a 4-bit processor with 8K of program memory and 512 bytes of Data memory. It's not exactly a honcho platform, but then it gets embedded into thousands of devices that you can point to and say your code is governing the operation of.
With all the frantic responses I am reading in this discussion thread it seems that people think that if we don't continue to fund space exploration all the time it's gonna be all used up or something. Clue: Space isn't going away. If money isn't budgeted for projects, we'll do it another day.
I fail to see the need for us as a planet to rush things like this. Certainly, there is a vocal minority who think trashing the biosphere is acceptable since they plan on just jumping a rocket ship to somewhere else (fat chance), but for the most part it seems like even if we quit all space exploration for another century, all it would mean would be that it would be there a century later for us to explore.
Honestly, what's the rush here? Are the stars and the planets gonna go away if we don't hurry up and find them?
I always love it when a supposed Unix-head gets it in his mind that the cat command somehow removes files from the drive when used to send copies of the files to/dev/null.
The ol' hard drive must get kinda full on these folk's systems....
That's a rather cynical attitude, and it clearly shows that you've not accumulated much knowledge or skill.
Valuable vocational skills are not little 'factoids' that can be passed around like little packages. It's the depth of experience that counts, and really matters in most workplaces. It's having seen it done before countless times, and knowing what did and didn't work in the past.
Slashdot Mirror
Cool stuff, man.
Things like this make it sound like the GPL should be almost impossible to enforce.
I take it that with your creative adventures in time travel, you've turned off cron?
Apparently you've never heard of libel, eh?
Read up on it, before you make a grave mistake and somebody hauls you into court for it.
Here's a theory I will throw out for discussion:
Crypto will soon solve all the problems of anonymnity. It will solve them by removing the possiblity of anonymnity on most of the 'net.
When public key crypto becomes accepted by 'the powers that be' (everybody seems to feel it is inevitable) one of the ways 'the powers that be' will recover some power from the fact that it's out there will be to require digital signatures on all 'net traffic. Send out packets that don't contain your signature, tracable back to a valid identity, and they get dropped at a number of transfer points on the 'net.
The fact that something like this is technologically feasible, and the fact that it's one of the easiest ways for 'authorities' to capture an advantage from crypto means that it's inevitable. When it does happen, say goodbye to anonymnity. Personally, I won't miss it much. Anonymnity causes some real ugly human tendencies to come out, that I've seen in play since the early days of BBSing.
Even if it isn't mandated by law, a lot of us will be empowered to just turn off anything coming from anonymous sources when digital signatures become the norm. "If you wanna say something to me, show your damn face, etc."
If the pamphlets in your physical mailbox didn't have postmarked stamps on them, and weren't deposited there by the mailman, the people who put them there broke a Federal law and can be prosecuted. It's an easier rule to get enforced than anything related to electronic-spam. Just complain to the postmaster.
That's Psychic TV, I think off one of Gen's "Rave" albums.
But I'm not expecting a hundred bucks from an AC...
Memorizing facts, and learning them in the process of using them, are two very different things. Most "geeks" these days only have enough knowledge of hardware to know which end of the screwdriver to use while assembling a PC Clone. That was kinda sorta my point.
Bitten a head off a chicken lately? No? Then you're not a geek.
If you're downloading an AIM client from anywhere but AOL, you run a much greater risk of getting a trojan anyway.
When I can get packages like the newer versions of Netscape to stop automaticaly shoving down my throat an AIM client that I then have to manually delete from the system, I will start taking your sentiment seriously.
Adding extra stuff to IE does not break a standard. Either IE is compliant (can render everything in the standard) or not. To argue that adding additional features breaks the standard is to shove mediocrity down our throats.
The standard doesn't specify that a Mail Client and Newsreader should be embedded into the browser. So that means Netscape is in blatant violation of the standard? IE certainly isn't as Outlook is a separate program.
Why should anybody 'compete on a level playing field'? In case you hadn't noticed, no such thing exists. None ever will. If it did, it would be unlevel again in a few milliseconds (if you don't know what I mean, look up the word 'compete' and discover that somebody generally has to win).
Oh, and when Microsoft "punches another kid in the nose" I consistently hear people yelling bloody murder. As well they should, for their own reasons.
It's a big world out there, folks.
If you wanted to use some other vendor's implementation of those protocols, it would be listed under a different vendor. Choose one of the the IPX versions listed under Novell, for instance, if you like. Or take the "Open" choice and click "Have Disk."
I'm afraid you are not a worthy vessel, oh little one.
heh
I'm staring right now at a bitmap of the 'bruised lower lip' woman character from that movie "Star Wars, the fourth episode renumbered as episode one" and realizing they've made a ton of money from the movie already.
Granted they've invested considerable money into the form of Black Magick that we in this culture call 'advertising' and should be able to reap the benefits from the mindspace they now own in each of our heads.
So let them take down anybody who 'pirates' the copyrighted images. It's nothing new. I don't even feel it's Stuff that Matters. But I'm a real geek, not a wannabe.
Real geeks know, for example the relative merits of the different families of TTL (74, 74S, 74LS, 74ALS, 74C, 74HC, etc.) Ubergeeks even know why the 74S family is nearly obsolete (except where screaming speed is necessary, ie a few gates on video cards,) and which chips in the LS family their code is most likely still flowing through in the late 90's (i.e. the 74LS244 and 74LS373, though in a lot of cases it will be HC families instead).
Wannabies just get confused by all this.
Isn't it possible to check the referring page or site and block access to a page if the referring page isn't an approved one?
With this mechanism, if sites don't want outside referrals to their pages or content, it seems to me that they should take responsibility themselves to block access if it doesn't come from their own referring pages, and not run crying to an outside agency.
I of course apologize in advance if I'm dead wrong on how this blocking mechanism works.
I've always wondered why anybody would be so stupid as to have a Bob Marley or Grateful Dead sticker on a vehicle. I've often wondered if the only people who do so are the narcs.
The question needs to be, are 'they' going after:
1. Labor unions ?
2. Communists ?
3. Jews ?
4. Catholics ?
When 'they' go after the first of any of these groups (or any other non-criminal groups) it will be time to speak up. Until then, speaking up will just fog up the water, dilute the message, and make it difficult to speak up if and when it becomes necessary.
Star Trek is supposed to be consistent? I thought it was just a TV show.
That's all very fine. But please don't sound so cheerful in advocating "smart, technologically intelligent alternatives" to moral behaviour.
It's just chilling.
What happens when stealing right hands becomes a popular practice among criminals. . .
I learned how to program for 'embedded systems' on the job at a previous company. They needed the code for a new device, and I was a tech there. I got the rare opportunity to move into coding, and wrote all or most of the code for three lines of devices while in their employ. Part of it at technician's pay, and part as a software engineer. It was 100% assembly language, in 4 and 8 bit controllers.
It's cool to write code for a 4-bit processor with 8K of program memory and 512 bytes of Data memory. It's not exactly a honcho platform, but then it gets embedded into thousands of devices that you can point to and say your code is governing the operation of.
With all the frantic responses I am reading in this discussion thread it seems that people think that if we don't continue to fund space exploration all the time it's gonna be all used up or something. Clue: Space isn't going away. If money isn't budgeted for projects, we'll do it another day.
I fail to see the need for us as a planet to rush things like this. Certainly, there is a vocal minority who think trashing the biosphere is acceptable since they plan on just jumping a rocket ship to somewhere else (fat chance), but for the most part it seems like even if we quit all space exploration for another century, all it would mean would be that it would be there a century later for us to explore.
Honestly, what's the rush here? Are the stars and the planets gonna go away if we don't hurry up and find them?
I always love it when a supposed Unix-head gets it in his mind that the cat command somehow removes files from the drive when used to send copies of the files to /dev/null.
The ol' hard drive must get kinda full on these folk's systems....
And $260 million would probably be enough to cover the mandated pay raises for the tenured NASA employees.
That sentiment is just the kind of thing that scares the suits away from Linux. Not that I think it's a bad sentiment, just making an observation.
A significant number of them can probably afford very good computers. What does 'deserve' have to do with it at all?
That's a rather cynical attitude, and it clearly shows that you've not accumulated much knowledge or skill.
Valuable vocational skills are not little 'factoids' that can be passed around like little packages. It's the depth of experience that counts, and really matters in most workplaces. It's having seen it done before countless times, and knowing what did and didn't work in the past.