Larry Wall & Cults

[Morten Reistad]

That is understandable considering the relative sizes of the US
GDP and the rest of the world (until recently), the isolationist
ethic between the wars, and such things as the world attitude that
Spain was much more then the US could bite off in 1898. Wilson,
Roosevelt (both), Truman, Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Nixon are
among the counter-examples. Even Reagan, while a sad example of
domestic policy, did fairly well in the foreign affairs
department. Elephants do not need to pay too much attention to
the surrounding fauna.

I do not agree. Kennedy and Clinton had a lousy foreign-policy
record. The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, the Cuba crisis were all
examples of glorious miscalculations. Ditto Rwanda, Somalia, and
the

Carter was not so bad; but remained unfocused; using all energy
withing the US. I still don't get why they didn't see the Iranian
blow-up. Everyone else did.

Nixon is a special case; the way he inherited the Vietnam war,
the Cold war and the way he messed up domestic policy. I think
he did all right, but no better, on a foreign policy front.

However Bush is demonstrably poor. He ignored the warnings from
the CIA, FBI, outgoing Clinton administration about imminent
attacks. He was focused on attacking Saddam and Iraq from the
first, and perverted 9/11 into that at the earliest opportunity.
He has offended many more than most of his predecessors. I will
say that he seems to have learned the names of some foreign
leaders since being elected.

Bush has had an agenda all right; but I don't quite get what it is.

If it is oil, then he is mishandling it big time; Iraqi oil is NOT
flowing. Iraq is a huge mess. Why was that guy Bremer chosen; his
qualifications does not make sense.

You either have to make converts or do a Pinochet. (hit so hard
everyone is afraid they will NOT die.)

-- mrr

 

[Alan Balmer]

Since this is somewhat related to computer programming and AI I will reply.

The US has started a initiative to integrate all information about people
in the USA into a central database.

Where have you been? This has been happening for years, in fits and
starts punctuated by ACLU lawsuits. The current political climate
(including the Patriot Act) may expedite the process by providing more
money and (possibly) better coordination between agencies, but it's
nothing new.

This includes confidential information like your medical files. Think what
you say to your psychologist is confidential? Think again. Being paranoid
can be enough to get a "red flag".
They will have access to all your credit records and will monitor all your
travels in and out of the country.
If you buy flowers on the apposite side of town they can deduce that you
have a lover and
use this as a means of distortion. (Edgar A. Hoover style)

Most of the above is speculative fiction.

BTW, did you mean "extortion"? Distortion is what we see a lot of
here, though Hoover may have done some of that too.

 

[John Thingstad]

BTW, did you mean "extortion"? Distortion is what we see a lot of
here, though Hoover may have done some of that too.

I guess what I see are endless possibilities of abuse.
No government can be trusted with that type of power.
I feel it is our responsibility as programmers to prevent this type
of abuse of information. I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists.
When you sell out freedom, liberty and justice then what exactly are we
fighting to protect?
Bader-Meihof groups philosophy was that in order to protect the public
from terror
the government would turn the country into a police state. Then the people
would rebel and
support the revolution. From this point of view Bush is letting the
terrorist's win by
sacrificing our constitutional rights.

Anyhow this is probably not the place to discuss this...

 

[Charlie Gibbs]

Since this is somewhat related to computer programming and AI I will
reply.

The US has started a initiative to integrate all information about
people in the USA into a central database.

Not just people in the USA.

This includes confidential information like your medical files.

The main challenge in computing is sieving through the amount of data.
Politically it is to pressure the foreign governments to wave their
privacy protection acts and allow unlimited access to information to
a foreign power.

It's been revealed that here in British Columbia (that part of
Canada on the Pacific coast for those of you who are geographically
challenged), management of medical information has been farmed out
to a subsidiary of a U.S. corporation. According to the Patriot Act,
the U.S. government is entitled to access these files, and anyone -
American or Canadian - who so much as mentions that they're doing it
can be thrown into a U.S. jail.

Don't know what you think of this but it scares the hell out of me!

Me too.

 

[Reynir Stefánsson]

So spake Brian Inglis:

A common network run by PTTs with ISDN terminal links IIRC.

That's sort of the idea that I got: Job Security for the telcos.

 

[jmfbahciv]

[snipp Rush Limbaugh's's talks show mentioned]

Oh! Taste in talk shows.

Ah, then I have deplorable tastes in your opinion. I find Rush
greatly entertaining; but wouldn't use him as a data point.

Oh, not just him but the ...I can't think of a good word to
use...I use it as a pulse measurement to find out what that
particular ilk of people are thinking.

I wish the left could dig up someone as entertaining as Rush.
Carvell.

With most of these you miss the point if you listen for content
at all.

I generally use the content as a clue to figure out what the
group is trying to not talk about a.k.a. smoke and mirrors.
There are other things one can deduce based on what is getting
talked about and how it's getting described.

..The media IS the message. And you are the product, to
be entertained enough so you can be sold to advertisers.

Sure. The exception is those who don't have normal behaviour
patterns.
<snip>

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

 

[jmfbahciv]

I've lost the freedom to read whatever books I want, without the
government snooping over my shoulder.

You lost that before 9/11; its cause was tranferrring library
catalogs and book tracking online.

I've lost what little was left of the freedom to presume that the
government isn't listening to my phone calls and scanning my email.

This is not a freedom.

(This particular freedom has been being eroded for decades, but the
Patriot Act is pretty much the final nail in the coffin.)

Are you kidding? Did you live through the McCarthy and Hoover
eras? Hoover as in FBI, not president. AFAICT, this Patriot ACt
at least leaves a paper trail.

I've lost the freedom from the assumption that, if I read certain books
and speak of believing in certain principles, I'm not necessarily going
to act in a criminal manner to further those principles. (If I loudly
proclaim that the government is horribly wrong, and I also happen to buy
a copy of something like, say, The Anarchist's Cookbook... I'm now
liable to be perceived by the government as a terrorist, and thus be
subject to arrest and imprisonment with no charges being filed and no
access to legal recourse.

How did you get this conclusion? Has a US citizen bought the book,
only yakked about it and then was arrested and imprisoned
with no trail or arraignment?

.. It doesn't matter whether the government can
*prove* that I planned anything, or even if I can prove that I have no
such plans -- there's no opportunity for me to offer or dispute evidence.)

I have a good friend who's a (European) immigrant. It is now legal for
the government to detain her for any length of time they so desire,
without giving any reason more definite than "suspected involvement in
terrorism" -- and with *no* need to provide any evidence to back that
claim. Whether it's been done or not is irrelevant -- she's very much
aware of the feeling that, despite the fact that she's been living and
working in the US for most of her adult life, the mere fact that she's
not "American" makes her immediately suspect, and potentially subject to
being "disappeared".

People are not being made to disappear. YOu do know what that
term means?

.. Trusting to the goodwill and honesty of the
government to *not* use its authority is, to say the least, not exactly
heartening.

You have been doing it all your life.

Most importantly, I've lost the freedom to live my life *without*
feeling quite so much like Big Brother is just waiting for me to make a
mistake, so that the rest of the US can be "saved" from terrorism.

Now I know you didn't live through the Nam war.

(I've said my piece, but I don't expect we're likely to ever reach an
agreement. So, especially considering that I don't feel that
comp.lang.* is really an appropriate place for political discussion, I
won't be commenting further in this subthread.)

This is not a political discussion.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

 

[Chuck Dillon]

I guess what I see are endless possibilities of abuse.
No government can be trusted with that type of power.
I feel it is our responsibility as programmers to prevent this type
of abuse of information.

IMHO, it is unrealistic/naive to expect society to get all of the
benefits of an integrated digital world and at the same time have
significant protection of the information that world thrives upon.

Everybody and their uncle is walking around in public having "private"
conversations on their wireless gadget without realizing that privacy
doesn't apply to what they are doing. The data systems are really no
different, the risk is just less obvious.

I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists.

And at the same time groups like the 9/11 families are clamoring for
answers as to why the government didn't prevent the attack. If you
believe what you say I suggest you work to wean your fellow citizens
from their government centric lives.

When you sell out freedom, liberty and justice then what exactly are we
fighting to protect?
Bader-Meihof groups philosophy was that in order to protect the public
from terror
the government would turn the country into a police state. Then the
people would rebel and
support the revolution. From this point of view Bush is letting the
terrorist's win by
sacrificing our constitutional rights.

Your argument is shallow if you direct it to the person who happens to
be holding the office of President at the moment. The President can't
introduce or pass law. The Patriot Act is a nearly bipartisan law of
the land passed by the congress. If you have a problem with the
government then address the government realistically. Otherwise it's
just part of the political noise of an election year.

-- ced

 

[Chuck Dillon]

Chuck Dillon wrote:

... snip ...



Must it? I am not claiming that it must not, but that the matter
deserves more thought than a panic reaction. The very first thing
to settle should be the objectives. Then the means and costs of
achieving such can be considered.

Your choice to charactize things in terms like "panic reaction" doesn't
make it so. If their was a rush to act by a pseudo-democratic
government it is because the "loyal opposition" chooses to act in
concert with the majority party. There was virtually no resistance
from the Democrat side when debating the effective declaration of war
on Iraq nor the Patriot Act. If you got the impression of panic it
comes from the bipartisan nature of the actions taken.

-- ced

 

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

smD the TLA that represents a washing-machine size disk. Mountable.
^ Made impressive head crashes from time to time.

But I won't interfere with this lovely thread drift with lots
of relevant facts.

the first disks i played with at the univ. were 2311s on 360/30; they
were individual, top-loading, with mountable disk packs; 2311 disk
pack was a little over 7mbytes. didn't find picture of 2311 ... but
this picture of 1311 were similar ... the lid of the unit was released
and raised (something like auto engine hood)
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_1311.html

the next were 2314s that came with 360/67. it was long single unit
with drive drawers that slid out. top & bottom row with 9 drives.
drives had addressing plugs .... eight plus a spare. a 2314 pack could
be mounted on the spare drive, spun up .... and then the addressing
plug pop'ed from an active unit and put in the spare drive. it reduced
the elapsed time that the system saw unavailable drive (time to power
off a drive, open the drawer, remove a pack, place in new pack, close
drawer, power up the drive). 2314 pack was about 29 mbytes. picture
of 2314 cabinet
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2314.html


the next were the 3330s ... long cabinet unit looked similar to 2314
.... but with only 8 drawers (instead of 9). 3330-i pack had 100mbytes
.... later 3330-ii pack had 200mbytes. picutre of 3330 unit ... the three
cloaded plastic units on top of the unit were used to remove disk pack
and hold it.
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH3330.html

close up of 3330 disk pack in its storage case ... also has picture
of 3850 tape cartridges
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH3850B.html

misc. other storage pictures:
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_photo.html

next big change was 3380 drives with totally enclosed, non-mountable
cabinet.

old posting on various speeds and feeds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#8 3330 disk drives

and some more old performance data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#10 virtual memory

i had written a report that relative disk system performance had
declined by a factor of ten times over a period of 10-15 years. the
disk division assigned their performance group to refute the
claim. they looked at it for a couple of months and concluded that i
had somewhat understated the relative system performance decline
.... that it was actually more. the issue was that other system
components had increased in performance by 40-50 times ... while disks
had only increased in performance by 4-5 times ... making relative
disk system performance 1/10th what it had been. misc. past posts
about the gpd performance group looking at the relative system
performance issue:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#29 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#22 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#63 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#3 IBM 360 memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#16 Paging query - progress

it was possibly one of the things contributing to disk divisionproviding
funding for the group up in berkeley ... misc. references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#4 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#47 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#29 cheaper low quality drives

i use to wander around bldgs 14 & 15 and eventually worked on redoing
kernel software for their use. misc. past posts about disk engineering
and product test labs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

 

[Alan Balmer]

How did you get this conclusion? Has a US citizen bought the book,
only yakked about it and then was arrested and imprisoned
with no trail or arraignment?

The book is readily available from Amazon.com, and 145 of their
customers have written reviews of it. We'll have to check how many of
them are in jail in Guantanamo ;-) One reviewer recommended a
companion book - "Home Workshop Explosives", also available from
Amazon.

Also available on DVD.

I see a lot of second-hand opinions on the Patriot Act. Hardly any of
them have actually read it.

 

[Alan Balmer]

I guess what I see are endless possibilities of abuse.
No government can be trusted with that type of power.

Of course not. That's why we have separation of powers, checks and
balances, a multi-party system, and elections.

I feel it is our responsibility as programmers to prevent this type
of abuse of information. I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists.
When you sell out freedom, liberty and justice then what exactly are we
fighting to protect?
Bader-Meihof groups philosophy was that in order to protect the public
from terror
the government would turn the country into a police state. Then the people
would rebel and
support the revolution. From this point of view Bush is letting the
terrorist's win by
sacrificing our constitutional rights.

Anyhow this is probably not the place to discuss this...

Probably not - there are too many intelligent, informed people here
who might poke holes in it.

 

[Alan Balmer]

It's been revealed that here in British Columbia (that part of
Canada on the Pacific coast for those of you who are geographically
challenged), management of medical information has been farmed out
to a subsidiary of a U.S. corporation. According to the Patriot Act,
the U.S. government is entitled to access these files, and anyone -
American or Canadian - who so much as mentions that they're doing it
can be thrown into a U.S. jail.

Can you point to the relevant section(s) of the Act?

Can you point to the international agreement which allows Canadian
citizens to be thrown into US jails for the stated offense?

 

[Alan Balmer]

Bush has had an agenda all right; but I don't quite get what it is.

And, of course, entertaining the possibility that his agenda is just
what he says it is, is completely out of the question.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Can you point to the relevant section(s) of the Act?

Can you point to the international agreement which allows Canadian
citizens to be thrown into US jails for the stated offense?

I know I shouldn't reply to threads like this, but I just can't
help it...

What makes you think that the current US government gives a
shit about international agreements? Bush thinks he's entitled
to declare anybody and everybody an "enemy combatant" and lock
them up in secret forever. Add a moustache and he'd make a
pretty good Stalin.

 

[John Thingstad]

And, of course, entertaining the possibility that his agenda is just
what he says it is, is completely out of the question.

Yes, the Iraq war ruled that out.

 

[Harry Penner]

Please educate yourself on what the agenda *is*, before making
statements about it.

A detailed analysis of the Bush foreign policy agenda and its
underpinnings is here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/podhoretz.htm

Happy reading!

-Harry

 

[Coby Beck]

Can you point to the international agreement which allows Canadian
citizens to be thrown into US jails for the stated offense?

It's probably in the same international agreement that allows citizens of
any country to be held incommunicado indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. And
the same international agreement that allows Afgan and Iraqi POW's to be
imprisoned with no Geneva convention protection and hidden from
International Red Cross. Do you really think the Bush administration cares
about international agreements?

 

[Coby Beck]

And, of course, entertaining the possibility that his agenda is just
what he says it is, is completely out of the question.

Not out of the question, be obviously untrue.

"We must invade Iraq to remove the threat of a madman with WMD"
--> Inspectors were inside Iraq looking already.
--> N. Korea was boasting about its nuclear program and firing
test missles all over the place.
--> Not a stick of said WMD has been found since invading.

"We must save the Iraqi people from a ruthless dictator"
--> since Hussein is just one of scores of such monsters and Iraq
was the country chosen, this can not be the reason.

"We must fight terrorism"
--> The hunt for Osama, known to be NOT IN Iraq was practically dropped
to invade Iraq.
--> Everyone outside of the Fox news network knows there was never any
link from Iraq to Osama.
--> Terrorism is now a big problem in Iraq where it was not before.

 

[Alan Balmer]

It's probably in the same international agreement that allows citizens of
any country to be held incommunicado indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. And
the same international agreement that allows Afgan and Iraqi POW's to be
imprisoned with no Geneva convention protection

They are being treated under the Conventions, even though not legally
entitled to such treatment. This was discussed in some depth quite a
while ago - if you're really interested, check google groups.

and hidden from
International Red Cross.

Not very well, apparently. The Red Cross found them. So did a bunch of
lawyers.

You apparently haven't been keeping up. Those DNC talking points have
been obsolete for a while now.

Do you really think the Bush administration cares
about international agreements?

Yes.