Hello? The whole point about the Internet is that it makes physical location less important, no? I mean, a place can make itself attractive to Internet stuff with lots of good comms and fewer bad laws, but states are very much what the net is Not About, and watching two jockey to be the Internet State is so dumb it's funny. --
...but maybe you'd feel different if you found out more about COINTELPRO.
I can also echo the comments of the poster who observed that large-scale surveillance of "subversives" (eg CND organisers) was certainly in place in the eighties, and by many indicators has not slacked off. --
In practice, we can get all the crypto we want (look at the Debian non-US stuff) but we can also export it freely; I have source code for my algorithms on my Web pages. Wasenaar may change this but at the moment it looks like it won't. --
OK, that's a good reason not to use Slackware, but there are many others.
You know, it's a myth that the other distributions don't let you reach in and tinker with things. It's still allowed; it's just not always necessary. --
All encryption is *not* breakable (meaning not all of it is, not that none of it is). It's all circumventable, sure, but that's not the same thing. Please don't spread this bogus idea any further. --
Even if quantum computing is possible (which I don't think it is), Grover's algorithm just means that the resources needed to brute-force a key grow with the square root of the size of the key space. So 512-bit keys should protect you if you're worried about the entire universe being turned into a quantum computer. --
The idea of ignoring Microsoft and just working on building a good alternative is very appealing in theory. It certainly sounds better than being "anti-" anything, you come across as a more reasonable human being, and it's a very commonly voiced idea.
The trouble is that Microsoft don't feel the same way. Microsoft aren't interested in co-existing with alternatives: they want alternatives destroyed, they want Windows on every desktop, and they'll fight like dogs to leave us all with no other choice. They just don't have a very live-and-let-live attitude to the marketplace, and I don't think being nicer would convert them.
When I say I want them defeated, I mean I want them defeated in this goal. I don't mean I want the company to fold, the tens of thousands of employees on the streets, and the operating system unsupported - though it's an appealing image. I simply mean that I want them to turn into another operating systems vendor, another applications writing company, another participant in a marketplace which offers a choice.
For Microsoft, that is defeat. And so if we're trying to create alternatives, if we're trying to maintain a choice, then we're already anti-Microsoft whether we like it or not. --
Boggle. So, is/. just about the coolest thing possible, or what? And when do we get Alan Cox, RMS, Neal Stevenson, or Linus himself?
I wouldn't take the relatively short list of questions as an indicator of any problem. I came to the article wanting to post a question and saw that many questions had already been set far better than anything I could think of. I think it all went very well and certainly the answers are fun and enlightening.
And will the phrase "the cat's fuckin' pyjamas" be appearing on the front of the next Neal Stephenson book? --
When "enough compute power" involves converting every atom in the solar system into a key tester and running the whole thing for a million years, I don't think it's a problem. I think 256-bit keys would be beyond even that.
Spreading the message "encrypted == insecure" reduces the sum total of enlightenment in the world. Please don't do it.
I agree that the system doesn't offer fantastic guarantees, but not for that reason. --
The thing I want to know is, why did Ellison wait so long before announcing this? He seems keen to use Linux to attack Microsoft's dominance, and this is the obvious way to do it, so why didn't he announce such a project months ago? --
I agree entirely: access to anonymous forms of communication seems to me an essential freedom of a democratic society. Ideally, of course, people should be able to speak in their own name without fear of State comeback, but if that freedom is threatened you might need anonymity to know about it.
However, anonymity is not about having no identity: it is about having more than one identity. Superman is anonymous because no-one knows he's also Clark Kent, but it's clear that the guy who rescued the school bus yesterday is the same guy who stopped the nuclear terrorists last week; it's just not known that he's the same guy as wrote the story about the kitten hospital on Tuesday. That's why I don't respect AC's: it's not that they don't give their real names, but that they don't give any name at all: every comment is a "hit and run" comment, and there's no point in responding because even if you hear from them again you won't know about it. I think Slashdot should abolish ACs in favour of special anonymous accounts that don't need a valid email address to be enabled, for the best of both worlds.
For my part, I use my real, legal name. I now wish I hadn't - I'd rather not be *quite* as out as I am about, for example, SM - but I'm known by this name online now and I'm not inclined to change it. But I'd certainly encourage anyone who's started using online public forums recently to come up with a pseudonym (not a silly one, a straightforward one you can live with for a long time) and use it as a matter of course. Who the hell needs to know your real name anyway? --
The problem identified here seems to be a lack of free time to enjoy the good things in life. The dependence on technology - like having conversations on a cellphone while on the move - seems to be a timesaving measure. It may be a symptom, but it's not the cause. Throw away the phone, and your life would be worse, not better.
What we need is a society that values pleasure, and places less emphasis on paid work. Sadly I suspect that's some distance away. --
Most researcher do *not* believe it will happen. The techniques that reached 5 bits can't be extended very much further. No practical demonstrations of any extensible techniques exist at all. It's most likely that decoherence will render it impossible. --
There's a smear against the GPL in his article. As he says here, he needn't have named that license: he could have made it clear that his reservations applied to any system of code inspection. But, like I say... --
For another perspective on the way MIT has changed, you might be interested in visiting the ILTFP home pages. I don't know how widespread the ribbons are. --
Could you point me at a collection of software that offers calendar management, shared addresses, and general scriptable document sharing with *full* *distributed* *disconnected* operation?
I'd dearly love to have a free alternative to Lotus Notes, but I don't think there is one yet. And the Yoga project is clearly moribund. --
This is the other meaning of the phrase "open source" mentioned on the opensource.org Web pages: in intelligence/surveillance circles, an "open source" is one openly available, like a newspaper or magazine you can just buy anywhere, as opposed to a source that's handing you information that not just anyone can get. The two communities may be closer than we'd guessed! --
Perhaps Red Hat could take up Debian's "psuedo-CD-image" system, which allows the bulk of the work of providing CD images to be done by servers that have the distribution as a bunch of files, not as a CD image.
This is one of the best ideas I've ever come across. This program fetches all the files that will appear on the CD and simply concatenates them all. It then uses the "rsync" incremental-update protocol with the CD image servers to convert this concatenated file into a CD image: since much of the data that appears in the image is already on the client's machine the load on the CD image server is only 6% of what it was.
With this system in place, we can all start burning official CD images without slashdotting the mirrors too badly. I think it's a piece of bloody genius! --
Slashdot Mirror
Hello? The whole point about the Internet is that it makes physical location less important, no? I mean, a place can make itself attractive to Internet stuff with lots of good comms and fewer bad laws, but states are very much what the net is Not About, and watching two jockey to be the Internet State is so dumb it's funny.
--
...but maybe you'd feel different if you found out more about COINTELPRO.
I can also echo the comments of the poster who observed that large-scale surveillance of "subversives" (eg CND organisers) was certainly in place in the eighties, and by many indicators has not slacked off.
--
Please give a reference for the British voice scanner you mention. I don't think such a thing would have been possible in the sixties.
--
In practice, we can get all the crypto we want (look at the Debian non-US stuff) but we can also export it freely; I have source code for my algorithms on my Web pages. Wasenaar may change this but at the moment it looks like it won't.
--
OK, that's a good reason not to use Slackware, but there are many others.
You know, it's a myth that the other distributions don't let you reach in and tinker with things. It's still allowed; it's just not always necessary.
--
OS/2 was controlled by IBM, who manifestly did not have the stomach for the fight at the time.
We manifestly do.
Also, we know we're going to win.
--
All encryption is *not* breakable (meaning not all of it is, not that none of it is). It's all circumventable, sure, but that's not the same thing. Please don't spread this bogus idea any further.
--
Check out Cilk for what seems like quite an effective way to parallelize C.
--
Even if quantum computing is possible (which I don't think it is), Grover's algorithm just means that the resources needed to brute-force a key grow with the square root of the size of the key space. So 512-bit keys should protect you if you're worried about the entire universe being turned into a quantum computer.
--
The idea of ignoring Microsoft and just working on building a good alternative is very appealing in theory. It certainly sounds better than being "anti-" anything, you come across as a more reasonable human being, and it's a very commonly voiced idea.
The trouble is that Microsoft don't feel the same way. Microsoft aren't interested in co-existing with alternatives: they want alternatives destroyed, they want Windows on every desktop, and they'll fight like dogs to leave us all with no other choice. They just don't have a very live-and-let-live attitude to the marketplace, and I don't think being nicer would convert them.
When I say I want them defeated, I mean I want them defeated in this goal. I don't mean I want the company to fold, the tens of thousands of employees on the streets, and the operating system unsupported - though it's an appealing image. I simply mean that I want them to turn into another operating systems vendor, another applications writing company, another participant in a marketplace which offers a choice.
For Microsoft, that is defeat. And so if we're trying to create alternatives, if we're trying to maintain a choice, then we're already anti-Microsoft whether we like it or not.
--
Boggle. So, is /. just about the coolest thing possible, or what? And when do we get Alan Cox, RMS, Neal Stevenson, or Linus himself?
I wouldn't take the relatively short list of questions as an indicator of any problem. I came to the article wanting to post a question and saw that many questions had already been set far better than anything I could think of. I think it all went very well and certainly the answers are fun and enlightening.
And will the phrase "the cat's fuckin' pyjamas" be appearing on the front of the next Neal Stephenson book?
--
When "enough compute power" involves converting every atom in the solar system into a key tester and running the whole thing for a million years, I don't think it's a problem. I think 256-bit keys would be beyond even that.
Spreading the message "encrypted == insecure" reduces the sum total of enlightenment in the world. Please don't do it.
I agree that the system doesn't offer fantastic guarantees, but not for that reason.
--
The thing I want to know is, why did Ellison wait so long before announcing this? He seems keen to use Linux to attack Microsoft's dominance, and this is the obvious way to do it, so why didn't he announce such a project months ago?
--
I agree entirely: access to anonymous forms of communication seems to me an essential freedom of a democratic society. Ideally, of course, people should be able to speak in their own name without fear of State comeback, but if that freedom is threatened you might need anonymity to know about it.
However, anonymity is not about having no identity: it is about having more than one identity. Superman is anonymous because no-one knows he's also Clark Kent, but it's clear that the guy who rescued the school bus yesterday is the same guy who stopped the nuclear terrorists last week; it's just not known that he's the same guy as wrote the story about the kitten hospital on Tuesday. That's why I don't respect AC's: it's not that they don't give their real names, but that they don't give any name at all: every comment is a "hit and run" comment, and there's no point in responding because even if you hear from them again you won't know about it. I think Slashdot should abolish ACs in favour of special anonymous accounts that don't need a valid email address to be enabled, for the best of both worlds.
For my part, I use my real, legal name. I now wish I hadn't - I'd rather not be *quite* as out as I am about, for example, SM - but I'm known by this name online now and I'm not inclined to change it. But I'd certainly encourage anyone who's started using online public forums recently to come up with a pseudonym (not a silly one, a straightforward one you can live with for a long time) and use it as a matter of course. Who the hell needs to know your real name anyway?
--
The problem identified here seems to be a lack of free time to enjoy the good things in life. The dependence on technology - like having conversations on a cellphone while on the move - seems to be a timesaving measure. It may be a symptom, but it's not the cause. Throw away the phone, and your life would be worse, not better.
What we need is a society that values pleasure, and places less emphasis on paid work. Sadly I suspect that's some distance away.
--
Thank-you! It's astonishing that so many people can miss this bleeding obvious point. Let's see a nice high score for this one.
How about "any interior body is better than none" or "at least it's not made of radioactive waste"?
--
...holy penguin pee!
--
Of course, those promises have been delivered on: 2.2 is much better at SMP than 2.0. It's just that we can do still better...
--
Most researcher do *not* believe it will happen. The techniques that reached 5 bits can't be extended very much further. No practical demonstrations of any extensible techniques exist at all. It's most likely that decoherence will render it impossible.
--
There's a smear against the GPL in his article. As he says here, he needn't have named that license: he could have made it clear that his reservations applied to any system of code inspection. But, like I say...
--
For another perspective on the way MIT has changed, you might be interested in visiting the ILTFP home pages. I don't know how widespread the ribbons are.
--
Could you point me at a collection of software that offers calendar management, shared addresses, and general scriptable document sharing with *full* *distributed* *disconnected* operation?
I'd dearly love to have a free alternative to Lotus Notes, but I don't think there is one yet. And the Yoga project is clearly moribund.
--
This is the other meaning of the phrase "open source" mentioned on the opensource.org Web pages: in intelligence/surveillance circles, an "open source" is one openly available, like a newspaper or magazine you can just buy anywhere, as opposed to a source that's handing you information that not just anyone can get. The two communities may be closer than we'd guessed!
--
Perhaps Red Hat could take up Debian's "psuedo-CD-image" system, which allows the bulk of the work of providing CD images to be done by servers that have the distribution as a bunch of files, not as a CD image.
This is one of the best ideas I've ever come across. This program fetches all the files that will appear on the CD and simply concatenates them all. It then uses the "rsync" incremental-update protocol with the CD image servers to convert this concatenated file into a CD image: since much of the data that appears in the image is already on the client's machine the load on the CD image server is only 6% of what it was.
With this system in place, we can all start burning official CD images without slashdotting the mirrors too badly. I think it's a piece of bloody genius!
--
Here's Jamie Love, who seems to be the main person from Ralph Nader's organisation driving discussion of Microsoft, announcing that he's created The Unofficial and unauthorized: Brett Glass is unhappy with the GNU General Public License (GPL) page. The discussion that follows is enlightening. To my knowledge, Brett never *did* create his own page representing his arguments.
--