I am refering to the phd's who put in the card when they are a support tech, for instance. It doesn't inspire confidence. I suppose the other poster has it right, if they are doing what the phd is meant for, it means something. If they are not, its curious, at least.
So you are a phd and feel you are superior to others, right?
What "tiers" of status are you speaking of? These exist? Because of degrees? Not in my world. A fast food employee is just as valuable a person to me as a CEO. In fact, the higher the corporate food chain people are, the less desirable coworkers they seem to become, and the less competent.
There is nothing sadder than a phd computer scientist writting code with the other non-phd types. They are SO bitter about this. Man do they make sure to put phd on their business cards, which IMNSHO is even sadder. The last thing I want is a phd who is writting perl code, or building up a rack.
I realize this, I was being a little extreme to make a point. I don't know what was being advocated by the statements that drew the attention of the FBI.
I tend to think though, that in order to achieve any major shift in governing policies, be that to another form or to no form at all, would require the overthrow of the current system.
I have not read the Anarchist FAQ in many many years.
But if you read the tone of that letter he posted, he thinks he may be offed by the government! Well, certainly sounds like a big battle to me if he thinks this could be a result. So, he has endangered himself, his family and his friends by what he is doing (so he thinks.) Well.... Then its time to put up or shut up, I'd say.
More likely its an arm chair revolutionary being spooked by the reality of the situation.
BTW, I have strong opinions on this, because I was raised by high ranking members of the RCP and as a child in the 70's, witnessed first hand FBI and government oppression. My family and their friends went far and above what this guy has done. Some lost their lives. Many are in prison for life. Some are exiled from the country never to return. My point is, this guy was a very weak and dangerous person to put your freedom on the line for by using his sites.
My folks used to work shifts at the RCP book store in Los Angeles, akin to him operating his web site. They were shot at, had arson attempted on the shop many many times and were arrested regularly. For selling books. I remember the bullet holes in the boarded up windows, I remember them showing them to me and explaining who and why this happened. I remember a close family friend who was murdered by an off duty police officer during a may day parade, stabbed through the chest with an american flag pole. That to me is courage and conviction, regardless of what you believe in.
So I have strong opinions on this guy and his not taking a stand. Not that I am right, but I'm loud!:-)
While I tend to agree about choosing the important battles, how do we know he's not condemning many other people to this fate? By wisely choosing his battle (to be fought elsewhere) he may be forcing a battle upon others who were relying on discretion.
For all we know, this could be the ultimate battle he could have fought. Or not, I don't know.
If his family is more important to him than fighting for the rights of the people he gave an outlet to, than he shouldn't have done it in the first place. What kind of priorities does he have that he can mislead people in such a way? I will only protect you until they actually come-a-asking? Why have the charade in the first place?
Perhaps he didn't know he was a coward until it actually came up, who knows. I guess it goes to show people that you cannot trust anybody you do not know. Lesson learned for the people who trusted him.
Of course I am talking out of my ass on a hypothetical, I don't know this guy nor the content of the sites in question. I am making broad assumptions in order to support my argument:-)
Then so be it! Some people are actually willing to DIE for their beliefs and their strong desire to change things. Many a revolution has had these types. The US was founded on the lives of this type of person.
I have no sympathy for somebody who espouses an idealogy in name only, but cannot put it into practice. You want anarchy? You want to stand up to the powers that be? Then STAND UP TO THEM. Wanting to do something is useless. You cannot whine and cry about how evil the powers are, how you want to provide the information to topple the powers, only to bend over when they tell you to drop the soap! Well, you CAN, but why would you? To live a fantasy? Whats the point?
Why was this guy hosting a site with inflamatory information, if he didn't plan on standing up for that information? What was his motivation? Mental exercises in futility? He sits and moans about the murderous regime in power and yet, when given the chance to actually use his own power to thwart them, gives in. What a rare chance that is. He simply gave into the truth of his own situation: his beliefs and convictions were not strongly held.
If a soldier can withstand certain levels of torture before divulging information, why cannot a person who believes they are fighting this sort of war withstand the friggin legal system? The worst he'd get is 3 squares and a cot, not torture and death. People have withstood much more than some paperwork throughout history.
Ahh. So don't actually stand up for something. You aren't sticking it to the man by going to jail, but you may be sticking it to the man if you go to jail because you will not divulge information the man wants.
What does "push as far as you can as long as you can" mean? Only until you wimp out?
If you are advocating violent overthrow of a government, you sure as shit better be able to withstand the reverse. Giving up under pressure is how the status quo is maintained.
Not so. Disks are never allowed to leave classified areas in my experience, without physical destruction. They are wiped per DOD prior to leaving the project, and destroyed (melted down) prior to leaving the site. You NEVER return hardware to manufacturers in classified situations.
The DOD writes are not sufficient, there are ways to retrieve data from drives written over 10 times and more, its just prohibitively expensive and very very time consuming.
I agree the "press release" sounds like a crock of shit. You know, I bet this guy is LOVING this right now. I mean, here he is, living his dream! FBI, secret info, cloak and dagger WOOO HOOOO!! Its every internet revolutionaries dream to ACTUALLY be involved in something.
Well, while its technically feasible to retrieve data from a wiped drive, ie. one thats been written over, its very expensive and time consuming. At least try to hinder them a bit, and see if the info is worth it.
Perhaps dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda may work better, though far slower.
You're right though, nothing is going to stop a determined forensics investigation, short of sand paper on the platters.
There is no mention of a court order, he was ordered by the FBI. Under certain provisions of the PARTRIOT act, a court order is not necessary. So, we do not KNOW that a judge looked at this, though thats mostly irrelevant.
Anyway, I don't totally fault the FBI anyway, they are doing what they are mandated to do, as in being big brother. I DO fault this bozo for complying. I guess this "anarchist" feared going to jail or losing his job.
I do not agree that posts on a website constitute threats to our national security. And even if they did, so what? If certain types of speech scare the government so badly, well then those are the EXACT types of speech most in need of first amendment protection!
Yeah, and they should expect something in return. Some choice quotes from our founding fathers:
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson
"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson
"When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom." - Thomas Paine
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, that must be it. I mean, somebody is suspected of something, so somebody must be guilty! Do you even know what is being requested by the FBI? No? But.. they must have a legit reason, huh?
How do you know its not because somebody posted an explosives faq? That is, by the way, protected speach. And is considered contraband information by those in authority.
Right on there. "Though I pretend to be an anarchist and revolutionary, I am really a scared sheep like the rest of you and thought this was just a game. Whaaaaa."
Why does he have to comply? rm -rf / the server and do your time pal. What a friggin pussy.
However, what real value is this device going to add to a system? Look at the prices - you could buy another computer. System RAM is so cheap, this would not really give you a very good price/performance ratio at all. Its a cool gadget that has its niche uses, but for speeding up swap on a desktop its not worth it. For much less than the price of one of these things, you could strip across 3 drives on 3 PCI scsi controllers and get screaming swap performance. Also, what is causing all the swap action? Why would adding a $1600 device be a cost effective solution? Some performance metrics and a good analysis of your system would show you the bottlenecks on your system.
I design and build high performance supercomputers, and ram disks have never been very cost effective. At least with Unix/Linux, more system ram is always cheaper and easier. With Windows, I'm not as sure, but I'd bet the performance gain would not be even noticeable to you.
A faster CPU, better motherboard and more RAM would cost less and give far more obvious performance enhancements.
I'd say, the late 70's change the movie industry far more than George Lucas and Star Wars did. Were tend to distill all this down to these seemingly pivotal events. At the time, it was not pivotal. The wheels were in motion, the entire movie making world does not owe its new found self to George Lucas. There were countless people, movies, innovations and technologies constantly evolving at the time.
BTW, they blew up Alderaan, not Dantooine:-) Leia was far too trusting.
Ok, that is a good point. The cultural phenomenon that occured was pretty wild. However, that was not invented by Lucas. If invented by anybody, it would be Gene Simmons! KISS was doing this heavily by that time. The entire entertainment industry was evolving in this direction. Star Wars (and Lucas) were simply at the right place at the right time. The industry changed itself. The individuals who capitalized on it are incidental. Much like claiming Bill Gates changed the world forever. No, personal computing changed the world forever. He was just there at the right place at the right time.
Its was simply evolutionary, not revolutionary. There were plenty of movies with effects, 2001 predated star wars. Close Encounters was the same release year.
ILM is a great effects house. I am not disputing the greatness of ILM. However, Lucas did not single handedly invent the movie effects industry. He refinied some pieces of it, sure. Thats about it. You mean to tell me nobody used miniatures until star wars? Nobody used blue screens?
There were movies in 3D years before star wars.
All I am saying is that star wars was a great story, with some clever effects tricks that were passable.
The merchandising stuff was pretty huge. The movie effects themselves were already being pioneered. The people who worked on Star Wars, Close Encounters, etc. were refining their craft, and still are. Whats so revolutionary about people improving what they already know how to do?
Certainly, they are part of our culture. However, the form of that story as he sells it, is his to do with as he pleases. The story itself is all of ours, its part of our collective storytelling culture now. As a movie, its his.
I do think its kind of lame for him to remake them over and over, but oh well, its not that important to me. I know the story well enough in my head, its the story that is important, not the effects, etc.
Dude. The OT was a cheesey sci-fi series with shitty effects. Now, I love cheesey sci-fi series, but how did star wars change the movie industry forever? What, it made sci-fi more acceptable?
Why are you calling him a bastard? These aren't your movies. They are his. He can do whatever he wishes, if you don't like it then DON'T BUY IT.
Lucas doesn't owe you anything. How has he "lost it"? You think he is actually insane? He is a fucking zillionaire, he's a fucking genius.
The prequels tell the story we all knew already. You KNOW the entire story, so why are you saying its lame if you have such glorious memories of the OT? Only the middle of the story is any good? You think the lame ass skywalker-pretty-boy poses in ANH are cool? There are just as many lame scenes in ANH or ROTJ or even ESB, as there are in the new ones. I think they are all kinda lame, but watch them anyway, because I dig the story. The story fucking rocks, its a cool tale.
Star Wars ANH was NOT any sort of watershed moment in movie history except for its box office earnings. Its just a stupid movie. Thinking it is some big event in history is total Lucas fanboy bullshit.
Oh, and BTW.... the OT relied on tons of effects to tell the story as well. Do you think Lucas should be making real droids, spaceships, deathstars, blowing up planets, inventing laser blasters and light sabers?
Get over it. Nobody cares.
Re:I don't see any way to create an account yet.
on
Gmail Goes Public
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Its a link on the front page of google.com that appears at random. I just got the link myself while googling.
Its not about how easy it is to read. Any beginning programmer should be able to read it.
The issue is understanding it. Perhaps this piece of code is has drastic ramifications on some ancient code elsewhere which cannot be changed (ie. binary only) which may not be totally obvious. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The point is, if there is some fact about the code not immediately obvious from reading the code itself, it needs to be stated. Very little code can be said to be self documenting in a very clear way.
Remember, its not about HOW the code does what it does. Its WHY.
You are right on the money. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I'd have to say that commenting is the true programming. Its the intent and description of the code. The implementation is arbitrary. The WHY's and WHAT's should be clearly spelled out. The HOW is almost secondary.
Slashdot Mirror
You know where to get free crack?
Who ever said open source was about not making money?
Last I checked, Redhat had some big pockets, as did Novell.
I am refering to the phd's who put in the card when they are a support tech, for instance. It doesn't inspire confidence. I suppose the other poster has it right, if they are doing what the phd is meant for, it means something. If they are not, its curious, at least.
So you are a phd and feel you are superior to others, right?
What "tiers" of status are you speaking of? These exist? Because of degrees? Not in my world. A fast food employee is just as valuable a person to me as a CEO. In fact, the higher the corporate food chain people are, the less desirable coworkers they seem to become, and the less competent.
There is nothing sadder than a phd computer scientist writting code with the other non-phd types. They are SO bitter about this. Man do they make sure to put phd on their business cards, which IMNSHO is even sadder. The last thing I want is a phd who is writting perl code, or building up a rack.
I realize this, I was being a little extreme to make a point. I don't know what was being advocated by the statements that drew the attention of the FBI.
:-)
I tend to think though, that in order to achieve any major shift in governing policies, be that to another form or to no form at all, would require the overthrow of the current system.
I have not read the Anarchist FAQ in many many years.
But if you read the tone of that letter he posted, he thinks he may be offed by the government! Well, certainly sounds like a big battle to me if he thinks this could be a result. So, he has endangered himself, his family and his friends by what he is doing (so he thinks.) Well.... Then its time to put up or shut up, I'd say.
More likely its an arm chair revolutionary being spooked by the reality of the situation.
BTW, I have strong opinions on this, because I was raised by high ranking members of the RCP and as a child in the 70's, witnessed first hand FBI and government oppression. My family and their friends went far and above what this guy has done. Some lost their lives. Many are in prison for life. Some are exiled from the country never to return. My point is, this guy was a very weak and dangerous person to put your freedom on the line for by using his sites.
My folks used to work shifts at the RCP book store in Los Angeles, akin to him operating his web site. They were shot at, had arson attempted on the shop many many times and were arrested regularly. For selling books. I remember the bullet holes in the boarded up windows, I remember them showing them to me and explaining who and why this happened. I remember a close family friend who was murdered by an off duty police officer during a may day parade, stabbed through the chest with an american flag pole. That to me is courage and conviction, regardless of what you believe in.
So I have strong opinions on this guy and his not taking a stand. Not that I am right, but I'm loud!
While I tend to agree about choosing the important battles, how do we know he's not condemning many other people to this fate? By wisely choosing his battle (to be fought elsewhere) he may be forcing a battle upon others who were relying on discretion.
For all we know, this could be the ultimate battle he could have fought. Or not, I don't know.
If his family is more important to him than fighting for the rights of the people he gave an outlet to, than he shouldn't have done it in the first place. What kind of priorities does he have that he can mislead people in such a way? I will only protect you until they actually come-a-asking? Why have the charade in the first place?
:-)
Perhaps he didn't know he was a coward until it actually came up, who knows. I guess it goes to show people that you cannot trust anybody you do not know. Lesson learned for the people who trusted him.
Of course I am talking out of my ass on a hypothetical, I don't know this guy nor the content of the sites in question. I am making broad assumptions in order to support my argument
Then so be it! Some people are actually willing to DIE for their beliefs and their strong desire to change things. Many a revolution has had these types. The US was founded on the lives of this type of person.
I have no sympathy for somebody who espouses an idealogy in name only, but cannot put it into practice. You want anarchy? You want to stand up to the powers that be? Then STAND UP TO THEM. Wanting to do something is useless. You cannot whine and cry about how evil the powers are, how you want to provide the information to topple the powers, only to bend over when they tell you to drop the soap! Well, you CAN, but why would you? To live a fantasy? Whats the point?
Why was this guy hosting a site with inflamatory information, if he didn't plan on standing up for that information? What was his motivation? Mental exercises in futility? He sits and moans about the murderous regime in power and yet, when given the chance to actually use his own power to thwart them, gives in. What a rare chance that is. He simply gave into the truth of his own situation: his beliefs and convictions were not strongly held.
If a soldier can withstand certain levels of torture before divulging information, why cannot a person who believes they are fighting this sort of war withstand the friggin legal system? The worst he'd get is 3 squares and a cot, not torture and death. People have withstood much more than some paperwork throughout history.
Ahh. So don't actually stand up for something. You aren't sticking it to the man by going to jail, but you may be sticking it to the man if you go to jail because you will not divulge information the man wants.
What does "push as far as you can as long as you can" mean? Only until you wimp out?
If you are advocating violent overthrow of a government, you sure as shit better be able to withstand the reverse. Giving up under pressure is how the status quo is maintained.
Not so. Disks are never allowed to leave classified areas in my experience, without physical destruction. They are wiped per DOD prior to leaving the project, and destroyed (melted down) prior to leaving the site. You NEVER return hardware to manufacturers in classified situations.
The DOD writes are not sufficient, there are ways to retrieve data from drives written over 10 times and more, its just prohibitively expensive and very very time consuming.
I agree the "press release" sounds like a crock of shit. You know, I bet this guy is LOVING this right now. I mean, here he is, living his dream! FBI, secret info, cloak and dagger WOOO HOOOO!! Its every internet revolutionaries dream to ACTUALLY be involved in something.
Well, while its technically feasible to retrieve data from a wiped drive, ie. one thats been written over, its very expensive and time consuming. At least try to hinder them a bit, and see if the info is worth it.
Perhaps dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda may work better, though far slower.
You're right though, nothing is going to stop a determined forensics investigation, short of sand paper on the platters.
There is no mention of a court order, he was ordered by the FBI. Under certain provisions of the PARTRIOT act, a court order is not necessary. So, we do not KNOW that a judge looked at this, though thats mostly irrelevant.
Anyway, I don't totally fault the FBI anyway, they are doing what they are mandated to do, as in being big brother. I DO fault this bozo for complying. I guess this "anarchist" feared going to jail or losing his job.
I do not agree that posts on a website constitute threats to our national security. And even if they did, so what? If certain types of speech scare the government so badly, well then those are the EXACT types of speech most in need of first amendment protection!
How do you cry "fire" on a crowded website?
Yeah, and they should expect something in return. Some choice quotes from our founding fathers:
... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson
"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
"When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom." - Thomas Paine
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, that must be it. I mean, somebody is suspected of something, so somebody must be guilty! Do you even know what is being requested by the FBI? No? But.. they must have a legit reason, huh?
How do you know its not because somebody posted an explosives faq? That is, by the way, protected speach. And is considered contraband information by those in authority.
Right on there. "Though I pretend to be an anarchist and revolutionary, I am really a scared sheep like the rest of you and thought this was just a game. Whaaaaa."
Why does he have to comply? rm -rf / the server and do your time pal. What a friggin pussy.
Not at all. Striped swap is much faster.
However, what real value is this device going to add to a system? Look at the prices - you could buy another computer. System RAM is so cheap, this would not really give you a very good price/performance ratio at all. Its a cool gadget that has its niche uses, but for speeding up swap on a desktop its not worth it. For much less than the price of one of these things, you could strip across 3 drives on 3 PCI scsi controllers and get screaming swap performance. Also, what is causing all the swap action? Why would adding a $1600 device be a cost effective solution? Some performance metrics and a good analysis of your system would show you the bottlenecks on your system.
I design and build high performance supercomputers, and ram disks have never been very cost effective. At least with Unix/Linux, more system ram is always cheaper and easier. With Windows, I'm not as sure, but I'd bet the performance gain would not be even noticeable to you.
A faster CPU, better motherboard and more RAM would cost less and give far more obvious performance enhancements.
hehe, that was awesome. My advanced custom rig has a spoiler and cool after market rear view mirror I custom bought.
I'd say, the late 70's change the movie industry far more than George Lucas and Star Wars did. Were tend to distill all this down to these seemingly pivotal events. At the time, it was not pivotal. The wheels were in motion, the entire movie making world does not owe its new found self to George Lucas. There were countless people, movies, innovations and technologies constantly evolving at the time.
:-) Leia was far too trusting.
BTW, they blew up Alderaan, not Dantooine
Ok, that is a good point. The cultural phenomenon that occured was pretty wild. However, that was not invented by Lucas. If invented by anybody, it would be Gene Simmons! KISS was doing this heavily by that time. The entire entertainment industry was evolving in this direction. Star Wars (and Lucas) were simply at the right place at the right time. The industry changed itself. The individuals who capitalized on it are incidental. Much like claiming Bill Gates changed the world forever. No, personal computing changed the world forever. He was just there at the right place at the right time.
Its was simply evolutionary, not revolutionary. There were plenty of movies with effects, 2001 predated star wars. Close Encounters was the same release year.
ILM is a great effects house. I am not disputing the greatness of ILM. However, Lucas did not single handedly invent the movie effects industry. He refinied some pieces of it, sure. Thats about it. You mean to tell me nobody used miniatures until star wars? Nobody used blue screens?
There were movies in 3D years before star wars.
All I am saying is that star wars was a great story, with some clever effects tricks that were passable.
The merchandising stuff was pretty huge. The movie effects themselves were already being pioneered. The people who worked on Star Wars, Close Encounters, etc. were refining their craft, and still are. Whats so revolutionary about people improving what they already know how to do?
Certainly, they are part of our culture. However, the form of that story as he sells it, is his to do with as he pleases. The story itself is all of ours, its part of our collective storytelling culture now. As a movie, its his.
I do think its kind of lame for him to remake them over and over, but oh well, its not that important to me. I know the story well enough in my head, its the story that is important, not the effects, etc.
Dude. The OT was a cheesey sci-fi series with shitty effects. Now, I love cheesey sci-fi series, but how did star wars change the movie industry forever? What, it made sci-fi more acceptable?
Why are you calling him a bastard? These aren't your movies. They are his. He can do whatever he wishes, if you don't like it then DON'T BUY IT.
Lucas doesn't owe you anything. How has he "lost it"? You think he is actually insane? He is a fucking zillionaire, he's a fucking genius.
The prequels tell the story we all knew already. You KNOW the entire story, so why are you saying its lame if you have such glorious memories of the OT? Only the middle of the story is any good? You think the lame ass skywalker-pretty-boy poses in ANH are cool? There are just as many lame scenes in ANH or ROTJ or even ESB, as there are in the new ones. I think they are all kinda lame, but watch them anyway, because I dig the story. The story fucking rocks, its a cool tale.
Star Wars ANH was NOT any sort of watershed moment in movie history except for its box office earnings. Its just a stupid movie. Thinking it is some big event in history is total Lucas fanboy bullshit.
Oh, and BTW.... the OT relied on tons of effects to tell the story as well. Do you think Lucas should be making real droids, spaceships, deathstars, blowing up planets, inventing laser blasters and light sabers?
Get over it. Nobody cares.
Its a link on the front page of google.com that appears at random. I just got the link myself while googling.
Its not about how easy it is to read. Any beginning programmer should be able to read it.
The issue is understanding it. Perhaps this piece of code is has drastic ramifications on some ancient code elsewhere which cannot be changed (ie. binary only) which may not be totally obvious. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The point is, if there is some fact about the code not immediately obvious from reading the code itself, it needs to be stated. Very little code can be said to be self documenting in a very clear way.
Remember, its not about HOW the code does what it does. Its WHY.
You are right on the money. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but I'd have to say that commenting is the true programming. Its the intent and description of the code. The implementation is arbitrary. The WHY's and WHAT's should be clearly spelled out. The HOW is almost secondary.