The GPS devices that you use would like to differ with you

The modern media is no longer about communicating the news. Its is committed to instituting ideology. If you control the vocabulary of the debate, you control the outcome of the debate.

From Orwell's 1984

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

What is interesting is that this beam is made by several beams interacting at a focal point. What if they changed the difference of the focal point? Sure, one beam would dissipate over 70km, but perhaps they could manipulate intensity of the beam at a certain distance by the interaction....

What you describe are engineering problems. If history is any indication, the military is pretty good at [eventually] solving them. Nothing like the instinct to destroy someone else to get the human intellect working.

Well, I often write a lot of technical emails and need documentation nearby. A browser tab is useful to have the manual that you can read and copy text from and then another tab to write the email.

However, I use emacs [mu4e] and w3 or eww in another buffer. But I can see why for some people an email client and browser would make some sense.

Also many people use webmail, which is similar in that it runs in the browser. With a built-in email client you get something like webmail but good for offline use. That is certainly a feature than many would like.

Also, don't forget Zawinski's Law.

But materially they are the very same act. The Tea is destroyed no matter for what reasons you do it.

  Motive has a certain relation to culpability, in that motive often determines the moral judgement on the act.

If a person places a bomb and destroys a store, there is damage. It makes no difference if you call him a terrorist or activist, the damage is the same. The words 'terrorist' or 'activist' is trying to give a moral judgement on the act by somehow defining his motive. Indirectly 'activist' means there is some larger issue that the writer wants to explain to the readers. "Terrorist" means he is just an enemy to be eliminated.

Thus I think 'vandal' is the best word, as it describes more clearly the physical act without reference to his supposed motives. Calling him an activist implies that his motive is somehow morally defensible.

The "Tea Party" was the destruction of property by a bunch of hooligans.

If you actually read history, you should know that there were other cities in the colonies that simply refused the tea to be unloaded from the ships. The question was of 'taxation without representation', so they blocked the tea from unloading unless they also had representation in proportion to the taxes they would have to pay from it. The ships in Philadelphia and New York returned home without unloading the tea as dictated by the local governors. In Boston however they destroyed the property, not even allowing it to return to its owner.

And actually, if you study history, the Tea Act actually made tea cheaper for the colonies, in such a way that it threatened the rival Dutch merchants. It should be pointed out that many of the Dutch merchants took part in the protests as it was completely in their self interest. Even Samuel Adams proposed the same solution that was proposed at New York and Philadelphia - send the ships back. It was only at the crowds dissatisfaction with the meeting that a small group (30-100 they say) went to ransack the ship Dartmouth. You can read a simple summary of these events in the Wikipedia page.

The entire mythology that this band of miscreants was 'upholding their rights' is pure propaganda *after the fact*, as a kindling to the sentiments of independence and to escape the paying the cost of the damaged property. Even the expression "The Boston Tea Party" is from the 19th century, and not before. To say that this band of miscreants somehow had the right to destroy what wasn't theirs is simply nonsense. In fact, if you see the history which took place in other British colonies, the Tea Act was eventually repealed and they obtained greater independence, without the need of a bloody and protracted revolution.

[disclaimer: I studied in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I know Boston very well. The "Boston Tea Party" is a nice myth, but no serious reader of history in the original sources can claim that the Tea Party was somehow a purely patriotic act. It was the work of discontents that probably wasn't organised and certainly not planned by the main leaders of the American Revolution. It was only afterwards that it was used as a symbol of their intent and resolve.]

Why call these nuts activists? They are just destroying public property. We call that vandalism.

Seems like you can do whatever the hell you want, just call yourself an activist to excuse your behaviour. Maybe I should go tear down the neighbours hideous lawn ornaments in order to save the world from bad art so I can be an activist.

It doesn't matter what you want to draw attention to, destroying the property of someone else should just be called for what it is: destruction of property.

Actually, Rousseau is just copying from Aristotle's Politics [5, v]. Here is an interesting quote that reminds us of our own times. (in this translation despotes is made into 'tyrant') :

Revolutions in democracies are generally caused by the intemperance of demagogues, who either in their private capacity lay information against rich men until they compel them to combine (for a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies), or coming forward in public stir up the people against them. The truth of this remark is proved by a variety of examples. At Cos the democracy was overthrown because wicked demagogues arose, and the notables combined. At Rhodes the demagogues not only provided pay for the multitude, but prevented them from making good to the trierarchs the sums which had been expended by them; and they, in consequence of the suits which were brought against them, were compelled to combine and put down the democracy. The democracy at Heraclea was overthrown shortly after the foundation of the colony by the injustice of the demagogues, which drove out the notables, who came back in a body and put an end to the democracy. Much in the same manner the democracy at Megara was overturned; there the demagogues drove out many of the notables in order that they might be able to confiscate their property. At length the exiles, becoming numerous, returned, and, engaging and defeating the people, established the oligarchy. The same thing happened with the democracy of Cyme, which was overthrown by Thrasymachus. And we may observe that in most states the changes have been of this character. For sometimes the demagogues, in order to curry favor with the people, wrong the notables and so force them to combine; either they make a division of their property, or diminish their incomes by the imposition of public services, and sometimes they bring accusations against the rich that they may have their wealth to confiscate.

Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion. Whereas in our day, when the art of rhetoric has made such progress, the orators lead the people, but their ignorance of military matters prevents them from usurping power; at any rate instances to the contrary are few and slight. Tyrannies were more common formerly than now, for this reason also, that great power was placed in the hands of individuals; thus a tyranny arose at Miletus out of the office of the Prytanis, who had supreme authority in many important matters. Moreover, in those days, when cities were not large, the people dwelt in the fields, busy at their work; and their chiefs, if they possessed any military talent, seized the opportunity, and winning the confidence of the masses by professing their hatred of the wealthy, they succeeded in obtaining the tyranny. Thus at Athens Peisistratus led a faction against the men of the plain, and Theagenes at Megara slaughtered the cattle of the wealthy, which he found by the river side, where they had put them to graze in land not their own. Dionysius, again, was thought worthy of the tyranny because he denounced Daphnaeus and the rich; his enmity to the notables won for him the confidence of the people. Changes also take place from the ancient to the latest form of democracy; for where there is a popular election of the magistrates and no property qualification, the aspirants for office get hold of the people, and contrive at last even to set them above the laws. A more or less complete cure for this state of things is for the separate tribes, and not the whole people, to elect the magistrates.

Actually, spying on citizenry is really the effect of democratic rule if you think about it.

Any body with political power will naturally try to preserve its power, just like anything likes to hold onto what it has. Thus it will do everything possible to insure that it continues in power. Anything that is a danger to the exercise of its power must be observed, controlled or eliminated or else one loses political power.

In a monarchy, the threats to power are usually other possible candidates to the throne, or, more commonly, foreign powers. Thus a monarch will do everything possible to eliminate possible usurpers or foreign agression. Examples of history are the War of Roses, or most of medieval Europe.

In a democracy however, the power devolves from the people, and so those in power need to know what the people are planning to do, especially on how they plan to vote, because this is the only real threat to their power. The power devolves more from public opinion, and so public opinion has to be known, observed and eventually controlled in order to stay in power. Since political power resides in the voting populace, there is a general tendency in any democracy to try to control the opinion of the populace, or at least to know the dangers to which their power is endangered. The phenomenon of gerry-mandering is nothing else than political power trying to insure its continuance.

In a monarchy the people are naturally subject to the monarch, and the enemies are usually foreigners. Thus in a monarchy there is not much need of a general program of spying on citizenry. In a democracy however the people elect their ruler, and so a democratic ruler, if he wants to continue to rule, generally treats the citizens themselves as a threat to his power. Thus he must spy on them, know that they are doing, just like any political power spies on its enemies.

Even Aristotle said that a democracy naturally degenerates into despotism. The United States is simply repeating the past, though one must say in a much faster tempo than its predecessors.

"Hurr durr I'ma sheep."

(setq sarcasm 'on) Well, that will certainly help me convince the boss to upgrade our infrastructure. (setq sarcasm nil)

I wish people in Open Source realized that Open source means you are living in a fishbowl, and everyone can see your shit. In a closed system you can call your work anything you like, the marketers will take care of the image. Yet open source, for good or ill, is visible to all, including this kind of nonsense. Juvenile stuff just doesn't work with people who have the authority to make major decisions. You would think that there would be a natural sense of shame in trying to practice marketing when you are really an engineer. Stick to coding guys!

One reason we use a lot of BSD here instead of linux a few years ago, is that not only is it open source but also there is a very simple release cycle and no one feels the need to name each release some sort of catchy name. The version numbers also actually mean something. It is an engineered solution, not a marketing project for high school nerds.

Linux will always remain a toy until the people coding it learn to grow up and actually promote its true abilities as an industrial strength tool for doing real work. Hurr durr just doesn't give that message. Even Red Hat has learned this and stuck to a very predictable release numbering which is what the bean counters like. Predictability is what makes risk management possible, and that is why people will invest money in it. Sheep do not get to play that game.

But well, it's just the kernel, so one could just use the number, but damn this sort of stuff is exactly why linux will never be taken that seriously, even if it is free. /rant off

The "code was touched" in order to bring some new features in. Here is the commit for that branch to /dev/random r 273872

This is the much-discussed major upgrade to the random(4) device, known to you all as /dev/random.

This code has had an extensive rewrite and a good series of reviews, both by the author and other parties. This means a lot of code has been simplified. Pluggable structures for high-rate entropy generators are available, and it is most definitely not the case that /dev/random can be driven by only a hardware souce any more. This has been designed out of the device. Hardware sources are stirred into the CSPRNG (Yarrow, Fortuna) like any other entropy source. Pluggable modules may be written by third parties for additional sources.

The harvesting structures and consequently the locking have been simplified. Entropy harvesting is done in a more general way (the documentation for this will follow). There is some GREAT entropy to be had in the UMA allocator, but it is disabled for now as messing with that is likely to annoy many people.

The venerable (but effective) Yarrow algorithm, which is no longer supported by its authors now has an alternative, Fortuna. For now, Yarrow is retained as the default algorithm, but this may be changed using a kernel option. It is intended to make Fortuna the default algorithm for 11.0. Interested parties are encouraged to read ISBN 978-0-470-47424-2 "Cryptography Engineering" By Ferguson, Schneier and Kohno for Fortuna's gory details. Heck, read it anyway.

Many thanks to Arthur Mesh who did early grunt work, and who got caught in the crossfire rather more than he deserved to.

My thanks also to folks who helped me thresh this out on whiteboards and in the odd "Hallway track", or otherwise.

My Nomex pants are on. Let the feedback commence!

You can see the list of those who reviewed and commited the code in the link. They are all longtime contributors.

The problem was:

When the new random adaptor code was brought it in r273872, a call to
randomdev_init_reader to change read_random over to the newly installed
adaptor was missed. This means both read_random and arc4random (seeded
from read_random) were not returning very random data. This also
effects userland arc4random as it is seeded from kernel arc4random.

So there was a problem was that the new adaptor was not 'retro-fitted' to the existing code. A simple thing to miss - I've done this many times in refactoring code. The generated was getting new seeds from the old function and not the new one.

Yes, he joined them in 2013. He is their CTO I believe now. But PC-BSD is quite a bit older than that.

(By the way, why all the bash love? Only an idiot would write init scripts in bash. Anyone worried about security would use a POSIX shell like dash).

I think on that we can agree 100%. POSIX for the win.

I simply gave the link to show that Android does not use systemd, and actually has a "mess of scripts" in order to do its business.

You can see who works on PC-BSD by checking out the commit history on the official github repo Kris Moore is one of the main contributors and is a really nice guy. He works for iXsystems.

FreeNAS is a different beastie. Here is the github. As you can see there is actually very little overlap, but a lot of cross pollination between the various BSDs.

YES

THERE

ARE