Comment Early Soviet Computing? (Score 4, Interesting) 80
If you can suggest references (preferably in English) I would be most appreciative. I know of only one book and it seems to be a singular point of view.
For the last several years I've noticed Google's search results getting worse and worse as time went by. Ten years ago, typing the title of a work returned that work usually in the first spot. They now seem to completely ignore the "title" meta tags.
My year isn't starting out so well. So far only two people have bought Mars, Ho!. No best seller for me =(
Googling for it shows how useless Google is becoming; it's now completely disregarding any and all punctuation and spacing, as well as capitalization and word order like they've done for a while now. Searching for "Mars, Ho!" brings up a bunch of people and medical facilities named Marsho. Three pages in and no hint of any page with the words "mars" and
Bing was better! Believe it or not, along with the folks named Marsho (people at MS are as stupid as Google staff... fucking morons) halfway down the first page was a NASA "Mars, Ho!" page, followed by my book. I think I'll change my default search engine.
Even the yahoos at Yahoo had better results, better even than MS's. The first result was, idiotically, Marsho Medical (look, idiotic seaqrch engines, there's a SPACE dammit). That was followed by NASA's "Mars, Ho!", followed by "images for", one of which was the book cover. Both Bing and Yahoo had the kindle editions listed on the first results, three pages down in Google and there's no hint the book even exists.
I'm kinda bummed... but I usually get the blues this time of year anyway.
Thanks, so far there are two. I think Patty's the other one, I emailed her.
Not "best seller" territority, unfortunately. =(
1) I didn't have to try to lose weight after stopping Paxil (it came off by itself), but if you're still taking them, losing weight may be impossible
2) Yes, attitude does affect quality.
3) Well, when it comes to other people, yes.
It's that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowledge that when the next New Year comes along nobody will remember that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash. I might as well, too. Just like I did last year (yes, a lot of this was pasted from last year's final chapter).
It isn't supposed to be. I'll get to that later, but first, please download the Amazon e-book! It's only two bucks and I'd really like to see my name on a best seller list.
Speaking of names, the dufuses at Amazon insist on a first name. At least they left it lowercase.
First of all, you say, "North Korea didn't hack Sony," as if it is an indisputable, known fact. It is not -- by any stretch of the imagination.
The fact is, it cannot be proven either way in a public forum, or without having independent access to evidence which proves -- from a social, not technical, standpoint -- how the attack originated. Since neither of those are possible, the MOST that can be accurate stated is that no one, in a public context, can definitively demonstrate for certain who hacked Sony.
Blameless in your scenario is the only entity actually responsible, which is that entity that attacked Sony in the first place.
Whether that is the DPRK, someone directed by the DPRK, someone else entirely, or a combination of the above, your larger point appears to be that somehow the US is to blame for a US subsidiary of a Japanese corporation getting hacked -- or perhaps simply for existing.
As a bonus, you could blame Sony for saying its security controls weren't strong enough, while still reserving enough blame for the US as the only "jackass".
Bravo.
Many of the same slashdotters who accept "experts" who claim NK didn't hack Sony will readily accept as truth that it was "obviously" the US that attacked NK, even though there is even less objective proof of that, and could just as easily be some Anonymous offshoot, or any number of other organizations, or even North Korea itself.
See the logical disconnect, here?
For those now jumping on the "North Korea didn't hack Sony" bandwagon that some security "experts" are leading for their own political or ideological reasons, including using rationales as puzzling and pedestrian as source IP addresses of the attacks being elsewhere, some comments:
Attribution in cyber is hard, and the general public is never going to know the classified intelligence that went into making an attribution determination, and experts -- actual and self-appointed -- will make claims about what they think occurred.
With cyber, you could have nation-states, terrorists organizations, or even activist hacking groups attacking other nation-states, companies, or organizations, for any number of motives, and making it appear, from a social and technical standpoint, that the attack originated from and/or was ordered by another entity entirely.
That's a HUGE problem, but there are ways to mitigate it. A Sony "insider" may indeed -- wittingly or unwittingly -- have been key in pulling off this hack. That doesn't mean that DPRK wasn't involved. I am not making a formal statement one way or the other; just saying that the public won't be privy to the specific attribution rationale.
Also, any offensive cyber action that isn't totally worthless is going to attempt to mask or completely divert attention from its true origins (unless part of the strategic intent is to make it clear who did it), or at a minimum maintain some semblance of deniability.
At some point you have to apply Occam's razor and ask who benefits.
And for those riding the kooky "This is all a big marketing scam by Sony" train:
So, you're saying that Sony leaked thousands of extremely embarrassing and in some cases damaging internal documents and emails that will probably result in the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment being ousted, including private and statutorily-protected personal health information of employees, and issued terroristic messages threatening 9/11-style attacks at US movie theaters, committing dozens to hundreds of federal felonies, while derailing any hopes for a mass release and instead having it end up on YouTube for rental, all to promote one of hundreds of second-rate movies?
Yeah...no.
For the first time in nine years I got to see my youngest daughter on Christmas; this is the first Christmas in nine years she didn't have to work. Great Christmas present!
And the second to last pre-publication copies came Christmas eve eve. I finished going through it this morning, and the book itself is ready. What wasn't was the cover; I fixed it and ordered another copy, so Mars, Ho! should be online in a couple of weeks.
FM is now an analog/digital mix. They broadcast the analog channel with two digital channels piggybacked on the signal. They don't call it digital, they call it "High Def".
And if they're too broke to pay the fees, they must have trouble selling ads. KSHE has no problem, but they're probably the most popular station in St Louis.
I certainly agree that copyright lengths are way too long, and that the extreme lengths hinder creative expression. I ran across it with Random Scribblings; I had to change Dork Side of the Moon, reducing the lyrics of the two songs to "fair use" snippets, since I can find no way to contact Roger Waters for usage permission. That album is four decades old and should not be under copyright.
You are right, copyright is supposed to encourage creators so their work will belong to everyone after the copyright lapses. How is anyone supposed to get Hendrix or Cocker to perform again?
It does add challenges to creativity.
I suspect a long period of suffering by most, followed by a French revolution style bloodbath.
For movies and video games there is a thousand years worth of public domain sheet music your musicians can perform. You can do anything with Beethoven's music, for instance, that you want. Bend it, shape it, make it fit your game or movie.
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?