Most of the code that I see exhibits what I can only describe as a kind of aggressive indifference.
It's not just that they don't care.
They *totally* don't care.
And they're going to make sure you know it.
And suffer for it.
After a while, dealing with this stuff is just depressing.
Especially if you do care.
Or maybe they both stood their ground.
Or something.
And this is what we want, right?
Half the country in the morgue, and the other half in prison, because, because...stand your ground!
Or something...
some kind of 6502 assembly code in the Terminator's red overlay
I knew a guy (Hi, Tom!) who identified the code as coming from the Apple ][ ROMs (which were 6502)
He said he recognized some of the code comments.
You already have your algorithm running in electronic hardware, right?
Your current gate count is the sum of
* the gate count of your CPU
* the gate count of your RAM
* the gate count of your program ROM
So that's an upper bound on the gate count.
If that number is too big for your manufacturing partner,
then you have an optimization problem.
Optimization is a hard problem...
Props to Rudy Rucker...
At this point, I think we'd be better off if the NSA's efficacy were reduced to zero (infinitely weaker: 1/x -> 0). Then we could rebuild it from the ground up with proper political, legal, and operational controls.
In fact, I suspect that the NSA retains most--if not all--of its operational capabilities.
The NSA doesn't face any significant legal restrictions. The law allows them to do most of what they want, and they just do the rest anyway, secure in the knowledge that the courts won't(?) can't(?) shut them down.
The NSA does have a political problem right now. It's not much of a political problem: most of the political establishment wants them to keep doing what they are doing. They wouldn't have any political problem at all if their P.R. weren't so inept. Hayden yammering about "defectors" and "treason" and "infinite weakness" is just more P.R.
This tunnel was locally controversial, with opponents arguing that
- it was expensive
- it wouldn't help with Seattle's traffic problems, AND
- these monster boring machines have a track record of getting stuck underground, and then what are you going to do? Call Roto-Rooter?
Sounds like it's starting to come true...
Counting is an algorithm, like long division or the use of logarithmic tables--in this case an algorithm for assessing the exact numerosity of a set of objects. It consists of reciting a memorized stretch of blank verse ("one, two, three, four, five,
This is just one of many possible algorithms for ascertaining numerosity. In some societies, people pair up the objects with parts of their body, and I know several computer programmers who count like this: "Zero, one, two three, four. There are five."
--Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, p. 141
Oh man...I used to play that until there were Mikeys flashing on the backs of my eyelids when I closed my eyes...
I wonder if they will be any better at running data centers than they were at running auto centers.
We used to take our cars to Sears to get the oil changed.
Nothing complicated, just an oil change.
I'd say they succeeded in changing the oil about two thirds of the time.
But one third of the time, something would go off the rails, and we would go home without the oil change.
Eventually, I gave up going there.
Some time after that, they closed their auto centers.
We know that we basically can only ask for one multi-billion dollar accelerator at a time,
Just sayin'...
I read the book when I was kid.
I saw the movie when it came out.
Neither is a parody.
Starship Troopers is--first and foremost--a science-fiction novel.
Heinlein wrote these things. It was how me made his living.
To the extent that the novel has any deeper themes, it is an exploration of violence, mainly in a military context, although there are a few scenes scattered through the book that present violence in other contexts. In one of his letters, Heinlein wrote something to the effect of "Men are going to fight, so we ought to understand why." Heinlein served in the U.S. Navy, and it seems to me that the novel is strongly informed by his experience there.
The movie is a straightforward Hollywood adaptation of the novel. It seems remarkable to me mainly for the extent to which it does not butcher, repurpose, or hijack the original material.
In the movie, war bulletins, recruitment ads, and government P.R. are all shown as voice-overs while images of web pages appear on a TV monitor. Links, drop-downs, and pop-ups appear on the screen while the announcer encourages viewers to "click here for more information". This is fairly characterized as parody, but it is a parody of the internet, not the military. In particular, it is a parody of the way corporate messaging has moved on-line, rather than the militaristic content of that messaging.
I read the book when I was kid.
I saw the movie when it came out.
Neither is a parody.
Starship Troopers is--first and foremost--a science-fiction novel.
Heinlein wrote these things. It was how me made his living.
To the extent that the novel has any deeper themes, it is an exploration of violence, mainly in a military context, although there are a few scenes scattered through the book that present violence in other contexts. In one of his letters, Heinlein wrote something to the effect of
"Men are going to fight, so we ought to understand why." Heinlein served in the U.S. Navy, and it seems to me that the novel is strongly informed by his experience there.
The movie is a straightforward Hollywood adaptation of the novel. It seems remarkable to me mainly for the extent to which it does not butcher, repurpose, or hijack the original material.
In the movie, war bulletins, recruitment ads, and government P.R. are all shown as voice-overs while images of web pages appear on a TV monitor. Links, drop-downs, and pop-ups appear on the screen while the announcer encourages viewers to "click here for more information". This is fairly characterized as parody, but it is a parody of the internet, not the military. In particular, it is a parody of the way corporate messaging has moved on-line, rather than the militaristic content of that messaging.
It's called elite panic, and it's extremely dangerous.
The people in the world with real power--kings and princes, billionaires and CEOs--spend their lives worrying that the people that they took power from, and hold power over, are going to rise up and take that power back. That's how elites get power in the first place: by taking it from others. They naturally assume that everyone else is trying to do the same thing. They also spend their lives making sure this doesn't happen.
As long as the elites feel secure, you don't notice this so much, but when they feel threatened--or worse, humiliated--they panic, and go on a rampage. People go to prison. People die.
It used to be that power came from control of croplands. After the industrial revolution, power came from control of mines and factories. This suited the elites. They could enforce their control with armies and police.
Today, significant power comes from control of computers. But you can't control computers with armies and police. You can control the hardware--lock the server rooms, take the computers off-line--but that doesn't get you what you need. What you need is running systems, and that needs programmers and sys admins. All those people walk out the door every night, and unless they come back in the morning, your hardware is pretty much useless. You don't have control of the computers.
This change crept up on the elites while they weren't watching. (CEOs don't pay attention to computers. That's operations, right? That why I hired a COO, right?) So everything just rolls along from year to year and decade to decade, until a Randal Schwartz or a Terry Childs comes along, and the elites realize that they don't have control, and they panic, and then they crucify the object of their panic.
The Forbes article assumes that Childs withheld passwords in a bid for job security, which is absurd. Slackers and grifters don't face down police officers and go to prison on principle. They hand over the passwords and move on to their next scam.
Many of the Slashdot comments argue that withholding passwords is a kind of office theft, like stealing the keys to the safe. That's a fair analogy for explaining what a password is, but not really on point for the issues raised by this case.
The actual conviction was for disruption/denial of computer services, which is overblown, at best. The city of San Fransisco got control of their computers, with only minor inconvenience and substantially no loss of service.
My guess is that Childs suffers from some variety of asperger's, or paranoia, or obsessive-compulsive, or the like. The proximate reason that he is in prison is that this disorder--whatever it is--caused him to stumble into the maw of the legal system.
The ultimate reason that Childs is in prison is that he was the object of panic--the person in view--when one of the elites looked up and realized that they weren't in control of their computer systems. So they crucified him.
...in order to show more relevant video adverts on screens as they queue at the till
I avoid retailers who put video ads in my face while I'm queued.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
