The latest book by Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk, is about the loss of institutional knowledge in the departments of the Federal Government. And about the consequences that arise when the people making decisions are unaware of the outcomes, options, and alternatives. The blind being led by the blinder.
Or, as Daniel Ellsberg said as he exited the movie theatre right after seeing the film Doctor Strangelove, "It's non-fiction."
An English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Books in 2014. It won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel[5] and was nominated for the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel. --> A film is in production.
Wikipedia says "It is the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, but Chinese readers generally refer to the whole series by the title of this first novel. The title itself refers to the three-body problem in orbital mechanics."
The Undoing Project by Michael lewis -- made me rethink everything I thought about how human make decisions, The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre -- his amazing life, wonderfully told by the author. So, Anyway , by John Cleese -- his funny autobiography Ghost of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry -- the saddest story ever, of school children lost in the Tsunami. The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto -- Dutch New York was way different than whatever you think it was. And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, by Yanis Varoufakis -- How the world's money systems actually work. The Quartet, by Joseph Ellis -- the story of the US Constitution. Ratification, by Pauline Maier -- about the miracle beyond miracles that the US Constitution was ever ratified. A Legacy of Spies, by Le Carre -- The final finale of the George Smiley story. Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande -- the cary end of life decisions we all get to make.
Surely there's no cap to the price of one Bitcoin. Why would there be! Naturally, there's a relevant HitchHiker's quote:
"The Triganic Pu is a unit of galactic currency, with an exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu. This is simple enough, but, since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change."
Oblivion isn't really as bad as its reputation. I have tons of free time. So, I ride my bike, read alot (online and mostly non-fiction books), attend concerts, and don't think much about punched cards, Assembler, and decades of well-meaning (if ineffectual) managers. Now, with the help of years of peace since being downsized once too many times, I realize that my best works mean nothing at all, and the joys of my career were entirely spent/earned with the exceptionally good people I was lucky to work with. As the rise of neural nets encroaches upon more and more domains of effort previously reserved for humans, you can be sure that some many of those still programming may be able to continue their fun in the absence of employment. As i say, as long as you have the financial ability to survive in the world as happily as you want (an increasingly BIG "if"), oblivion isn't all that bad. Actually really nice here. See you at the beach...
that kind of measurement system would mistakenly assume that all CPU intensive pages were a problem. that ain't the case. thus, tons of false positives requiring authorization and white-listing.
Security Vector Alert. It seems to me that public UBS charging ports are a way for security vulnerabilities to be spread amongst the popululation. I assume that someone is already working on a way to implant malware in those ports. It's like kissing everyone in the city during an Ebola epidemic.
Reminds me of the bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where...
"The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a pack of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic copyright laws. It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws."
[not dealing with the morality or politics of this, but simply as it relates to hiding information that you use] Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has some good examples of how anyone can conceal information they've discovered. When the Allies in WW II wanted to protect the secret that they could decrypt the German's Enigma traffic, they had to take steps beyond simply not using the information (e.g.: not telling anyone that Coventry was going to be bombed). If you want to use information, without letting anyone know for sure that you've got the information, you've got to show other possible means for having that info.
If you watermark the file (PDF or other) with some identifying information about each file's recipient, you can track down the source of some of the piracy. Of course, once pirated, the game's over.
Alternatively, you can only make the document available online, with user identification required.
is it just me, or is anything above 25ms ping time suspect? i'm on a 30mbps Comcast connection, and i've always got sub-20ms ping time (according to speedtest.net). 300ms sounds unacceptably crazy high to me.
12 years ago, I wrote about this. "TV is something that watches you," is on the first page of chapter 1 of my book, "Playing for Profit" (still available on Amazon). It's obvious that watching behavior leads to better personalized service and better opportunities for marketers to try to sell you stuff.
Am i imagining this? I recall Stephenson writing about people being "computers", in Cryptonomicon. And, of course, it was largely set in WW II Bletchley Park.
I wrote a book about this more than 5 years ago (Playing for Profit). Here's a relevant quote....
"Open and Closed Along with the bragging rights for bringing all of these cool services to as many people as possible, goes the right to control something we want no-one to control. In the movie Citizen Kane, when Charles Foster Kane states that "They think what I tell them to think," he means it. His power crosses all media.
It's not altogether different in the world of TV, cable, and radio. Though no -one has that kind of über-control over the totality of our entertainment choices, there are choke-points that do limit what we can watch. Each of the networks is, essentially, a scarce resource that the network controls to maximize its profit.
The four commercial TV networks control all of the material we watch on the only broadcast network that reaches everyone. There's no Gutenburg press to help the independent video producer. The four networks are the only way to reach that audience (therefore the only way to reach the advertisers who want that mass audience).
Similarly for cable, except there it's dominated by 2 companies: Time Warner Turner, and Tele-Communications Inc (TCI). If you want to have carriage on their systems, not only do you have to pay these operators for carriage, they will first have to approve your content.
And then there's the Internet. A truly open network, with no limits on what can be shared across the world. Anyone can be a publisher, anyone can be a broadcaster, and one can view whatever they want. The most open network ever devised.
Think about it. If you profited by controlling a scarce resource, such as access to a large number of cable TV households, what would you think about the possibility of a network that no-one can control and with no scarcity. Some pundits have already begun to question whether today's closed networks will be able to control the world's only open network. Because is they can convert the Internet to a closed network (pass through us if you want to publish), then it's probably in their economic self-interest to do so. Scarcity equals power. "Carriage is no big deal unless the network is a closed, scarce resource," says Tom Morgan
Which is why it matters who wins the war of the networks. If the networks remain separate, sometimes competitors and sometimes partners, then the Internet remains open. If any one of the networks wins the war, then sooner or later they'll find an excuse to close the network (we're just protecting the public).
The ghost of Charles Foster Kane continues to haunt us."
In World War II, the allies cracked the code of the German High Command. In order to protect the secret that they could read this message traffic, they had to pretend that they couldn't. Thus, they acted dumb, taking no precautionary measures, and let the city of Coventry be bombed without evacuating anyone. A lot of people died in the bombing, but Churchill and his pals figured this was the price of eventually winning the war. (This is all covered in the excellent book "Bodyguard of Lies."
Just imagine, for a moment, that some government has the ability to crack any encrypted messages. Ask yourself if someone in a position of high authority, charged with protecting the country at all costs -- would they consider playing dumb (yet again), as the best way to keep the secret?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, The Stupids are in charge.
The latest book by Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk, is about the loss of institutional knowledge in the departments of the Federal Government. And about the consequences that arise when the people making decisions are unaware of the outcomes, options, and alternatives. The blind being led by the blinder.
Or, as Daniel Ellsberg said as he exited the movie theatre right after seeing the film Doctor Strangelove, "It's non-fiction."
I mean ... really!
An English translation by Ken Liu was published by Tor Books in 2014. It won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel[5] and was nominated for the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel. --> A film is in production.
Wikipedia says "It is the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, but Chinese readers generally refer to the whole series by the title of this first novel. The title itself refers to the three-body problem in orbital mechanics."
Coming soon to a theatre near you.
PS: The URL returnoftheluddites.com is still available. Though, maybe a Luddite with a website is an oxymoron.
The Undoing Project by Michael lewis -- made me rethink everything I thought about how human make decisions,
The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre -- his amazing life, wonderfully told by the author.
So, Anyway , by John Cleese -- his funny autobiography
Ghost of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry -- the saddest story ever, of school children lost in the Tsunami.
The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto -- Dutch New York was way different than whatever you think it was.
And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, by Yanis Varoufakis -- How the world's money systems actually work.
The Quartet, by Joseph Ellis -- the story of the US Constitution.
Ratification, by Pauline Maier -- about the miracle beyond miracles that the US Constitution was ever ratified.
A Legacy of Spies, by Le Carre -- The final finale of the George Smiley story.
Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande -- the cary end of life decisions we all get to make.
Never gonna change. Dysfunctional family needs therapy. Lots of explosions. Cute robots and critters (think: merchandising).
Money maker, cash cow, hard to see how they can change what's pretty much set in stone. Uh, I meant Carbonite.
My question why any sensible person anywhere, would ever discuss this ... and give the guy the air tie he wants?
Pretty please don't bring a sample home.
Surely there's no cap to the price of one Bitcoin. Why would there be! Naturally, there's a relevant HitchHiker's quote:
"The Triganic Pu is a unit of galactic currency, with an exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu. This is simple enough, but, since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change."
Oblivion isn't really as bad as its reputation. I have tons of free time. So, I ride my bike, read alot (online and mostly non-fiction books), attend concerts, and don't think much about punched cards, Assembler, and decades of well-meaning (if ineffectual) managers. Now, with the help of years of peace since being downsized once too many times, I realize that my best works mean nothing at all, and the joys of my career were entirely spent/earned with the exceptionally good people I was lucky to work with. As the rise of neural nets encroaches upon more and more domains of effort previously reserved for humans, you can be sure that some many of those still programming may be able to continue their fun in the absence of employment. As i say, as long as you have the financial ability to survive in the world as happily as you want (an increasingly BIG "if"), oblivion isn't all that bad. Actually really nice here. See you at the beach ...
that kind of measurement system would mistakenly assume that all CPU intensive pages were a problem. that ain't the case. thus, tons of false positives requiring authorization and white-listing.
Security Vector Alert. It seems to me that public UBS charging ports are a way for security vulnerabilities to be spread amongst the popululation. I assume that someone is already working on a way to implant malware in those ports. It's like kissing everyone in the city during an Ebola epidemic.
Reminds me of the bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where ...
"The simplistic style is partly explained by the fact that its editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a pack of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic copyright laws. It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws."
surely, there's a protocol-level solution to this.
[not dealing with the morality or politics of this, but simply as it relates to hiding information that you use]
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has some good examples of how anyone can conceal information they've discovered. When the Allies in WW II wanted to protect the secret that they could decrypt the German's Enigma traffic, they had to take steps beyond simply not using the information (e.g.: not telling anyone that Coventry was going to be bombed). If you want to use information, without letting anyone know for sure that you've got the information, you've got to show other possible means for having that info.
If you watermark the file (PDF or other) with some identifying information about each file's recipient, you can track down the source of some of the piracy. Of course, once pirated, the game's over.
Alternatively, you can only make the document available online, with user identification required.
i wrote this in 1998 (14 years ago), on the first page of my book, Playing for Profit (published by John Wiley & Sons).
is it just me, or is anything above 25ms ping time suspect? i'm on a 30mbps Comcast connection, and i've always got sub-20ms ping time (according to speedtest.net). 300ms sounds unacceptably crazy high to me.
12 years ago, I wrote about this. "TV is something that watches you," is on the first page of chapter 1 of my book, "Playing for Profit" (still available on Amazon). It's obvious that watching behavior leads to better personalized service and better opportunities for marketers to try to sell you stuff.
Am i imagining this? I recall Stephenson writing about people being "computers", in Cryptonomicon. And, of course, it was largely set in WW II Bletchley Park.
all the governmental spy labs around the world. rest assured that Kodachrome will be developed well into this century.
Hedge This! http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=58 75_0_4_0_C/
Bye Bye 80/20! http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=59 89_0_4_0_C/
I wrote a book about this more than 5 years ago (Playing for Profit). Here's a relevant quote....
"Open and Closed
Along with the bragging rights for bringing all of these cool services to as many people as possible, goes the right to control something we want no-one to control. In the movie Citizen Kane, when Charles Foster Kane states that "They think what I tell them to think," he means it. His power crosses all media.
It's not altogether different in the world of TV, cable, and radio. Though no -one has that kind of über-control over the totality of our entertainment choices, there are choke-points that do limit what we can watch. Each of the networks is, essentially, a scarce resource that the network controls to maximize its profit.
The four commercial TV networks control all of the material we watch on the only broadcast network that reaches everyone. There's no Gutenburg press to help the independent video producer. The four networks are the only way to reach that audience (therefore the only way to reach the advertisers who want that mass audience).
Similarly for cable, except there it's dominated by 2 companies: Time Warner Turner, and Tele-Communications Inc (TCI). If you want to have carriage on their systems, not only do you have to pay these operators for carriage, they will first have to approve your content.
And then there's the Internet. A truly open network, with no limits on what can be shared across the world. Anyone can be a publisher, anyone can be a broadcaster, and one can view whatever they want. The most open network ever devised.
Think about it. If you profited by controlling a scarce resource, such as access to a large number of cable TV households, what would you think about the possibility of a network that no-one can control and with no scarcity. Some pundits have already begun to question whether today's closed networks will be able to control the world's only open network. Because is they can convert the Internet to a closed network (pass through us if you want to publish), then it's probably in their economic self-interest to do so. Scarcity equals power. "Carriage is no big deal unless the network is a closed, scarce resource," says Tom Morgan
Which is why it matters who wins the war of the networks. If the networks remain separate, sometimes competitors and sometimes partners, then the Internet remains open. If any one of the networks wins the war, then sooner or later they'll find an excuse to close the network (we're just protecting the public).
The ghost of Charles Foster Kane continues to haunt us."
Just imagine, for a moment, that some government has the ability to crack any encrypted messages. Ask yourself if someone in a position of high authority, charged with protecting the country at all costs -- would they consider playing dumb (yet again), as the best way to keep the secret?
Of course they would.
Whether or not they can, is only known to them.