Zaibatsu, lovely zaibatsu... Monday, 19-Oct-98 03:09:50 Maybe no-one sees the humor in this but me: Wal-Mart Stores sued Amazon.com, accusing the Internet bookseller of stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit, filed in New York, says Amazon has recruited former Wal-Mart associates and targeted the firm's vendors to learn more about its database, which analysts say is second in size only to the US government's and includes data on consumer buying habits. A spokesman for Amazon denied the charge and said Amazon was only "hiring the brightest, hardest-working, and most-talented people." Amazon reportedly wants to be the discount superstore of cyberspace. " That's quite some database, considering the NSA, Hoover's paranoia, et al _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- And now somethng totally different Tuesday, 20-Oct-98 20:45:17 Hi Indeed It would be nice database to have a look on. Talking about accessing such source, have a look on the issue of scientific american of October 1998. Nice article about an inquisitive fellow who get caught by this ego. This article could be a wonderful base for reality cracking with its mixture of hoaxes and reality. It raises a question is Ego the best anti-Underground tool ;)) ? Harma PS Hope you read your old thread HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: And now somethng totally different Thursday, 22-Oct-98 04:02:42 In a sense it is...there's always the hacker credo of "never tell a [flesh | meat| personal] friend of your exploits...it is the surest way to be caught". Likewise, telling of your activities on IRC (or posting a web page) leaves you activity open for monitoring by others...and again, potential for being caught. The most successful underground figure is one whose activities are never even suspected of having taken place, let alone knowing who did them. Also a threat is idle banter/chatter/etc, in emails or in chat room. You may reveal more than you mean to (or you may mean to reveal more than you mean to reveal, a red herring...), especially after a few of those Martini-Wodkas (or, worse, the true Martinis which are not watered down with Tonic Water ;). _m --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: And now somethng totally different Thursday, 22-Oct-98 13:35:35 But what about public site or public messageboard, you are a "public person" for sure monitored. How does it feel ?? I totally agreed to this point but then how do you communicate, teach, propagate your knowledge. The aim of such work is to verbessern our knowledge for everybody. Our society is mutating in a new one were the power of information will allow more liberty with all the implication of freedom of speech. You (or we) are able to use cracking skills to reality cracking (wonderful idea by the way). May I know why you (it is not personal) want to give this know-how ?? Mastering the art to extract information from data, analysing facts is a new strength which can be applied to anything you want. By the way I know that it is really +ORC to drink Martini, but the flavor of a good Pomerol are also a good ZEN promoting tool ;)) HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Re: And now somethng totally different Friday, 23-Oct-98 03:23:38 I have personally found martinis to be abominably useless for cracking purposes. However, in the height of my "cracking days" (I do not do all that much cracking any more, contrary to popular belief) I found that a dram of Lagavulin 16-year would bring all of the soft-ice command sinstantly to memory. Now, to your questions: How does it feel to be monitored? I'm a bleedin' paranoid, I always assume I am being monitored, so I guess it feels normal. I have a bad habit of lying my @ss off in the presence of strangers as well, so email/chat is not too much a problem. How do you teach/spread knowledge without exposing yourself? You can't. Granted, you can be very very careful like +ORC, but in general if decide to pass on illicit knowledge--whether it is how to crack by +ORC or how to make meths in your basement by Uncle Fester--you take upon yourself the responsibility of that knowledge (meaning you should watch who you give it to, and weed out the undesireables), and you resign yourself to the chances of getting caught. Why teach? there are many reasons: 1) You only learn what you truly do and do not know by teaching others; 2) To ensure that the information does not die; 3) To "awaken" the talents/brains/individuality of others (as Fravia with his reality cracking and our hcu); 4) to have other people to talk about this stuff with (prime example: I work best in dialogue, discussing and planning projects, and realized when working with visual assembler that I knew no-one in the flesh who knew a damn thing about assembly or IDE coding...very big impairment on my normal development process); 5) to make a mark or leave a legacy (as +orc, obviously, has done). Hey +Mammon, why don't you autoapprove your (and others) postings? (note the infinitesimal change above... fravia+ :-) As for the last bit (before the Pomerol ;), you are absolutely correct: separating information from disinformstion is a prinamry survival trait. The brain is at its most basic cognitive level a pattern-matching device, especially as this applies to perception (e.g. detecting motion aganist a static background, hearing a steady tread behind random noise, etc). This seems forgotten by quite a few, who think the brain is for distracting... _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re4: the return of the Re :) Friday, 23-Oct-98 18:00:33 Dear _m, May Iask you to be careful when writing Lagavulin 16 years old, some stupid censor could not understand that this teen is in fact a old bottle of whisky :)) Did you try this one ? http://www.scala.dk/staff/gi/whisky/Edradour.htm To come back to our discussion, I would like to point out that the most difficult part of reversing something is to point out the exact information in an ocean of data. This could be applied to software reverse engineering (SRE)and interrupt tracking, to reverse-networking with the weakness in the defense and so on. The main problem of this knowledge is the use done by the individual. Each active individual is modelling his own referential. By referential I imply the mixture of education, environment, culture, religion ,... Then in a society where cyberspace allows discussion, forum without (nearly) any geopolitical barrier. The new generations have more potentiality than mine ( Note for stalkers:I am old enough to buy my old bottle of St Julien). But they did not see all the perspectives of this new communication tool/weapon. The quest of knowledge is a Graal quest , there is no end: How could you consider that you know enough ?? Just read +fravia , He/She/They still enjoy reading books, collecting knowledge and wisdom. Reality cracking is a everyday task, as M. Jourdain in Moliere Many people do it without noticing. As SRE I think this is part of our Human duty to apply our brain to choices more important than selecting between pepsi and coke. But what is the real power of undergroung idea ?? If they are broadcasted, they are most of the time polished, changed. How many people consider that TV can give false information ? How many people think that controlling the correctness of the Net is a warranty of Freedom ?? I am against porn and other smut sites BUT there were network even before the advent of internet. Controlling the Net for whatever reason, is also controlling email, info. Ok, I am also a little paranoid, but who is not here ?? Harma PS It seems that this talk is a dialog. so in order not to bother this messageboard when can continue by email. HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re5 ... It's... Sunday, 25-Oct-98 05:50:53 Edradour: the label looks familiar, but I do not think I have tried it. I am currently working on an Ardbeg 17-year Islay (I favor malts from that region), then I will be off to pick up a second bottle of 23-yr Northport (cask strength-- 109.4 !) while it's still on the shelf. Here's how I view the whole freedom of information deal: Premise 1-- Information must be free. To supress information is to suppress communication, education, and expression. Furthermore, to charge for information is to enforce economic suppression, therefore information must remail free --in terms of supression and in terms of cost-- if one at all respects freedom of education, freedom of expression, and freedom of communication (i.e., between two parties). Premise 2-- All information is inherently equal; there is no information that is more valuable or more dangerous than any other. Therefore all information must be equally free. Immediately we have a problem with Premise 2. Why? Because all information is not equal. Let me give you a couple of brief examples: In high school I taught a friend how to make a simple pot.-chlorate mixture; for the next few months he was blowing up every mailbox in the district with pipebombs. I once tried to get a friend of mine into martial arts instead of straight-brutality fighting; I introduced him to a few acupressure points...the result being that from then on he would rap people on Cv17 as a "joke". All information, when properly imparted, bestows upon the student not only the knowledge itself, but the wisdom and responsibility of when to use it. In these two cases, I taught the knowledge but not the responsibility; therefore there were two people running around using my knowledge irresponsibly. So Premise 2 is correct in spirit but causes havoc and harm if implemented. Parallels can be found in rampant social problems--for example, the irresponsible (read: untrained) use of guns, drugs, and sex leading to murder, addiction, and disease. So what is needed is not absolute control-- i.e., banning knowledge of martial arts or banning explosives or banning discussions of software protections--but rather a requisite "supplemental education" to go with the knowledge. I.e., the knowledge is free but first you must go through this course on gun safety, or that seminar on the economics of software piracy, or this discussion of STDs. Now, as you have pointed out, the Internet is a new deal--one that makes such regulation impossible. Therefore it is the duty of the teachers to make sure that the "supplemental education" still takes place. This can be done through obscurity (you have to learn enough about the web and people to be able to coax your way into inner circles and hidden servers), through saturation (overdoing the technical end so that a cracker must have produced--and hopefully distributed--some software in order to understand the essays that s/he reads to learn how to crack), or through misinformation (leaving blanks in the lessons, writing down wrong asm addresses, etc to make the student work for their knowledge). This, in my opinion, is just not being done. The same goes for reality cracking, only it is a little different. In this case, the "supplemental education", or "prerequisite" for all of you undergrads, serves to make the student mentally receptive to the reality cracking lesson. Most people not only tune out what is being done to them, they also scorn criticism of their system. A good example comes to mind very recently, when a friend's SigOther asked me, since I did not watch TV, what then did I do? The question was phrased a bit oddly, as in "what's the use of writing computer code?" (I guess she thinks that's all I do ;), and tacked onto the end was "If you could do only one recreational activity the rest of your life, what would it be?". To me, this was an absurd question, I would never do ONE thing the rest of my life (so I answered "everything"), but that is how the "uninitiated" think. TV=variety(yeah right)=recreation. OK, I'm dragging on. But the point is that reality cracking, in and of itself, is preaching to the converted. You must first convince the herd that there is a reality to crack ;) As for email discussion, my address is above. However, I think there may be a few interested in this discussion, however silent they may be... (excluding fravia who vandalized my last post by saying "our hcu" instead of "the hcu", thus forcing upon me false allegiences ;) _m PostScript: I do not in fact mind that the herd are exploited, as long as there is room for me to slip through the cracks. My "training" (be that a combined life-experience and educational system) leans towards a manipulative, propagandistic tendency which I have so far refrained from capitalizing on (though it gets you what you want ;). I sleep well at night knowing that 98% of the sods out there are marks; it means I can always come out ahead by exploiting that weakness; though it is kind of like taking candy from a baby and therefore not very gratifying (which is why I rarely do it). And it also means that hype-driven ignorant members of the MediaCult flock such as "That stupid kid spamming this board" are by their very nature being exploited for their every last dollar and every last loyalty (who do you trust? fravia or microsoft? ;), and THAT gets my entire revenge for me and allows me to peacefuly smile and nod at futile "Microsft will WIN" spammings. hey fravia, was that you posting under my handle and pretending to be stupidkid recently (I assume to get me to start moderating; it worked), or do you just pass anything with my name on? mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, 25-Oct-98 21:12:01 Nice choice of whiskey, but I still stick to my habits of red gorgeous St Julien ;) Information should be free: nice utopia with all my respect to your wisdom. It would be great but unfortunatly everything leads to the exact opposite direction. Years ago the web was full of free database or sites were you could find many things free. Then some greedy people realized that making a pay-per-view site for neews papers or litterature research was TheWay. In fact it is so easy, people are believing anything. More and more nowadays that some of my colleagues were sure that paying a lot is the only way to make sure that you have the good information !! Now you have to turn back information free using a knowledge reserved for few elites or curious people. I knew fravia via Tapu and Tapu via a german friend fond of assembly and klingon culture ;) BUT it did not occured to me to search the web for fravia+ reverse-engineering in order to learn weaknesses in java-protected site and so.. In life University is becoming a Business due to "budget cut" (I do not want to start here an essay on politician and politics), so in order to respond to the needs of industry some faculty closed leading to an irreparable harm. The purpose of University was also to increase the knowledge in fields with no direct economic obvious profit. It is driving in an other way, faster and faster. WHY ? because building information has a cost when you reversed Microsoft registry and make it free you are living away the time/effort/ressources you spent to make these discoveries. Now try to find how many people agreed to do the same. Not any, isn't it? A researcher gives away a vaccine against malaria, but did he find a manufacturer to make it free ?? This leads to awful objectives: A drug is now a product so what is better: 1- A drug which heal 2- A drug which prevent/cures only if you take it everyday. :)) You see my point, pharmaceutical are making billions playing with health and diseases. In order to be cured you have to be among the Elite (you have to afford to pay your medication). I do not want this to happen to knowledge, and I am ready to figth for it. Software/Reality/Network-Reverse-Engineering is mostly using your brain to understand, assimilate and scatter knowledge. Free information could be achieved if people like us are able to go through defenses to uncover informations. Propaganda for freedom of information is a nice ideology, but how many among us are really fighting for it. My main concern is the fact that this work is not a common task, so do the research, some the work and some abuse it. Information are equal: This point is tricky because by using the word information you are considering valuable data extracted from a poly- or mono-source medium. There is a large difference in value between name of John Smith's new girlfriend and the way to fight/protect against back-orifice. Off course all information are equal because if these data are information by definition there are valuable. The "Substantifique Moëlle" (the very substance, for the french speaking people) is a double sided sword. All information are equal and they could also be equally employed for good or for bad. That's why I would like to add: Teaching responsabilities is part of the Information-deal: In few words, education is part of information in order to get better understanding diversity is needed. BUT the mentor did not give the cultural wealth, he shows how to get it. After a laps of time (longer or sooner depending on the ability of his/her protégé), he will witness the emerging of a new mature entity, able to find by him/herself. This would imply: -Basic knowlege freely available -Intermediate 1 for 1 -Advanced at this point discussion and transmissions are parts of your duties We have right but we have also duties. I know that's too organisez to be applied reallistically but everybody has his own utopia :)). The story is pretty long and I need a new refill, let s talk about it tomorrow. Take care HARMA[a]fnmail dot com HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re5 ... It's... Monday, 26-Oct-98 11:46:53 Hope you don't mind my jumping in here. You state that information should be free. I have some doubt that can be ever achived. Information=Knowledge, my employer pays me for the knowledge I posses,I obtained that knowledge by obtaining information.My employer doesn't give his product away,nor do I give my knowledge away.I worked to get that knowledge therefor it was certainly not free. That is my reality,not yours. imho reality is highly overrated. Information being equal is a personal thing,only of value to the possesor. If you stated you had eaten a MacDonalds hambuger,and I stated that I had eaten one too, that information would be equal. The fact that I had dug mine out of a dumpster in back of the place because I happened to be living on the street, makes the reality quite different. I think I'm starting to ramble!! We all see from different aspects,but,most feel from the same place. name_text name_text --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Re5 ... It's... Monday, 26-Oct-98 18:38:32 Hi Just read carefully the thread before, and about McDonald that what i would consider as data. In addition, our society is based on a system where your information is exchanged by a currency. Your boss pay for your information ( point 1 information is valuable ) from this he makes profit (at least I hope for your future). Now the point 2 is not to focus on your job-food-life. If you consider your life as your main center of interest so keep your knowledge for yourself. On the other hand if you consider that you can give a bit of your knowlege, not selling giving , you increase the community knowledge and so improve the society. If you masterize your subject why being afraid to teach people ?? You might be able to learn from the others. Risky but at least you are acting for progress. Do not take it personal, I also have a job. But try to think about life in term of self-estime, education, progress, society, community. By the way the Internet Community does imply something....... +mammon that's your turn HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re7 ... It's... Tuesday, 27-Oct-98 03:00:21 The value of information is determined by the "consumer", if you will, or the "buyer" of that information--just as with material goods. If an individual is willing to pay $2K to learn Novell or to find out that you eat at McDonald's (remember that even this trivial info is useful to marketing analysts, and they will pay $$ for databases of it), then they will do so...but if they can get it cheaper, or free, then they will obviously go that route. Thus it is totally possible for information to remain free. However, there exists in many cultures a profiteering or capitalistic mindset, in which the supplier charges as much as he can (as much as the market will bear) for his information or product. If the price is too high, the buyer will not pay it; if the price is too low then in the "material" world there could be a supply problem, however in the "immaterial" world of "raw information" the supplier loses nothing (except subjectively-determined profit) by lowering the price. This is not readily apparent because a lot of information/goods are in demand (though, if you look closely, much of this demand is created by hype--do you really need to upgrade Win95 to Win98, or NT4 to NT5, or Office 97 to Office 98, or IE3 to IE4, etc?); thus it is hard to see that suppliers of information lose nothing (except, of course, the time/materials which they put into trasnmitting the info) by supplying information for free. The only "loss" is profit, and the need for profit is spawned by immersion in a capitalistic culture--though it may be unlearned. Those who work for profit and exist for profit are blind to any sort of "greater good" or even concern beyond their own status/skin by their very nature; they are not artists, or creators, or inventors, or pioneers; rather they are investors, merchants, capitalists, schemers. Now of course a person may choose to profit from an idea or a talent of theirs; in our society that is not only expected, but is required as a survival trait. However whether you produce to make profit or make profit from what you produce determines how much of a role greed plays in your creativity/productivity. Your employer does not pay your for the knowledge you possess; if he wanted your knowledge he would learn it and do the job himself. Your employer pays for your time, which is put into work that he does not want to do, or cannot do and does not want to learn to do. The fact that you can supply such knowledge qualifies you to be on his payroll, but gives you very little power as a supplier of information as your information is not in such demand (I am generalizing, yes, I do not know what you do) that you cannot be replaced. As for working for information, one must work to get any knowledge...yet usually that work is in the effort to understand the knowledge (for example, learning assembly language to understand cracking). Work or effort is not money; charging for information adds an additional price tag on top of the effort required to understand the information, and it is at this point that information is no longer free. Obviously this is not a utopian society where we can all work at jobs we enjoy and produce goods and services that only benefit society as a whole; the last such civilization that had such a system was wiped out by European colonists in the sixteenth century ( read your Howard Zinn ;). Modern society excels in mechanical, chemical, electrical, and communication technologies; however it is extremely ignorant of economic, political, or social technologies (you cannot look at the stock market, the distribution of wealth and resources, or *any* current system of government and argue against this statement with a straight face). Hmm, this is getting rather long. Your serve! _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: keep on guys, it is interseting Tuesday, 27-Oct-98 04:12:34 I always apreciate people that could, like baron Munhausen, pull out from a swamp theirselves (I have another reality here and I could watch yours from a different angle and see things usual people there do not see; but it is easy to advice someone else; try it onto yourself :)). All of you guys are just such people. Plz, dont go e-mail (and do not allow to be dropped by the 'obsolescence' timer..) SvD --------------------------------------------------------------------- Do not take it personal Tuesday, 27-Oct-98 22:19:17 OK read the subject, it has nothing to do with you. Thanks for the critics and the comparison. I do not consider that we are like Munchausen, just because we did not lie or invent stories to make us look important (Hope mammon+ think the same). But yes I accept critics and look on my writing with the light of other people opinion. BUT I think that critics just for the fun of it are not a constructive behavior. Destroying a castle and leaving ruins is not the best way to progress. I can understand that people do not like the idea of free information for everyone. Some think that they are the only one powerful enough to free information. Losing this power is frightening for them. BUT you can also be famous to scatter knowledge (fravia+ is a good example). Please feel free to give us a positive following to your mail. In life there is always a ying and a yang. You are pointing out the negative, I rather want to work on the positive aspect. But mixing these two would promote faster the spreading of knowledge. HARMA PS: I do not want to start a fight here. Remember that it is a moderated board. Fravia+ here: Yes, please remember it... all of you, and please also remember that this is an 'experimental board for reversing matters... HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Rhetoric Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 04:24:39 I guess in a certain sense rhetoric is like pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps. Certainly it has that pattern of laying a foundation upon premises which may be proven later on... This is not quite a group sitting around the pub in the student union arguing intangibles simply for the sake of the argument, but it is close :) Remember that one's personal beliefs rarely influence which side (pro or con) of a debate one takes; the crowning achievement of the rhetorician (is that a word?) is that he can argue either side of an issue admirably well, without ending up like the two unfortunate metahpysical philosophers in Peter DeVries' "Slouching Towards Kalamazoo". But more to the point: the issue is unresolved, we have --as it were-- been dealing with tangents rather than the concrete problem at hand. Restated thusly: Without considering methods for enforcing or preventing F.O.I., and barring differences in types/value of information, Should Information Be Free? Note this is information, i.e. facts and data,. not necessarily knowledge and understanding, and not inclusive of code, programs, ideas, intellectual property, etc. Also consider the various meanings of "Free", i.e. free of cost, free from suppression, free to express itself openly, free from concealment or obscurity. Now, before everyone answers simply "yes" or "no", explain why :) _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: you absolutely misunderstood me Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 05:16:25 oh my god... Thanx a lot, I will now keep my too cute sense of humour (with dark aspects) turned off, or nobody will understand me right in the western world... What a critics? Where it is ?? it is not interseting, it is INTERESTING (oh,that's my left hand's fault)! the Baron is A POSITIVE hero!! Aren't you inside the consumerism swamp? Aren't you pulled yourself out from there? I AM TRYING TO encourage you, not to stop !!! if you asking me, this thread (without these shits, ofcourse), when seems finished, MUST BE carefully transferred into an ESSAY of Reality Information Cracking! It is a MUST to read for any man that is trying-to-understand-reality-and-change-it... enough ranting. The truth is born in a dispute, or what it was in latine :(... Well, where it were up to... ...IMO the employer pays you because you have the know-how (or "dont-know", as we call it here :)), AND IT IS Not obvious how to transfer your knowledge to some other else. There are employers, which will immediately throw you out if they think they got a cheaper one, that have the same (in his opinion) knowledge; and there are employers that will encourage you to spread you knowledge, just because it is important. It IS VERY HARD to balance between these... Here is another one, If tired from the previous.. There are a few people that understand (and want) that information must be free. All the rest are a) holding bridles of some info source; or b) frighten that some info source will pour them out and they will be drowned. What do you think about this? Now I am unplugging my self and listening in great silence... Cheerz, or Beers P.S. have a good dark Guiness beer from me... SvD --------------------------------------------------------------------- The magic word Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 06:27:19 Any one with Guinness running through their veins I can consider kindred ("blood is thicker than water", heheh). I understand what you mean about employers-there are two kinds of employers who will encourage you to learn more: the ones who want to profit by it, and the ones who want to reward you (and once again, you have a distinctly separate motive here: profit on the one hand, and "for the good of another" on the other). You can tell the difference by what the employer wants you to learn. To illustrate with a couple of jobs where I had the longest tenure: I had a job as an admin where I took it upon myself to fix the computers, because I did not like the downtime--I went from knowing basic DOS commands to setting up a LAN, writing a database, fixing accounting software, upgrading and building PCs, writing menu-driven BBS-style software, and even data recovery in about two and a half years. My employer was more that eager to let me research, browse the web, and more or less follow my own agenda on learning simply because he liked my work, and was willing to put up with my printing out Cyborg tutorials and 500-page Hacker's Handbooks in balance for all the times I bailed him out of a tight spot. To contrast, I later worked in a corporate environment doing tech support (and introducing the rest of the techs to Soft-Ice ;) and was encouraged to learn--the company offered to pay for study materials for an MCSE (I declined), and to send me to classes for supporting MSOffice. My enquiries about matters of interest--Unix, network administration, systems-level programming-- met with resistence as the company saw no need for me to learn those areas. Needless to say, I am no longer with that company... Of course the worst employers are the ones who want you to not learn at all... Now, you mentioned people who have information and their motives for not giving it away. Some people fear that by retaining a hold on information they retain power, and that by releasing information they lose that power (never realizing that any power base relying on such secrecy is inherently unstable--especially in the face of the Espionage and R&D fields). To bore you with another anecdote, I met once a friend of a friend and witnessed some of his paintings. I asked him how he achieved a particular technique, as I liked it and was interested in applying it to my own work. My friend actually had to pressure him into responding as he was loathe to give up what must have been his gimmick! (Not that he had anything to worry about; my paintings suck horribly ;) Other people just do not see the profit in giving information away/ [Note the above statement implies that there is a profit, though truth be told it is more of an intagible gain]. The question that started all of this off was "you spent a lot of time producing information for free; why did you do it?" To find out why information is not free, to root out the problem at its source, you must ask the rest of the world "why do you not?" _m --------------------------------------------------------------------- <---------Back around here ;) Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 06:44:36 There are a few important questions that have been lost along the wayside. We have here fuel for many a thought, that I must leave for the moment lest I spend my whole night on this machine. We have here the proper use of the human brain, the "human duty" versus individual motivation (do you enquire? or do you slack?), the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and why it only strikes a few, the internet and its implications for the freedom of information, the responses of those controlling the information to this freedom, the mainstreaming of alternative/underground information in order to broadcast ("free") it at all, and of course "good" freedom (technical info, current affairs, history) versus "bad" freedom (cyberstalking, porn, exploitation). Any takers? _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: <-----Back around here ;) Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 07:50:00 oooooh why I had to put my nose here...it will grow now veeeeery long (from Pinoccio, the wood kid, if you remember)... just an addition: there are other kinds of dividing info into good and bad; it depends if it is a statistical-related info, or it is personality-related. [ Example: if one finds out (e.g.from the doctor), that he will die after 5 days, this could be "bad" info; but if he learn that his mother-by-law (or whatever is called the mother of his wife) will die in 5 days, this could be "good" ;o). I said "COULD" in both cases... (there was someone's "clever" thought about: if one dies, it is a tragedy; if 100 died it is a apocalipsis; if millions died, it is a statistica ;() ] And another question to those listed by _m: who should divide the info into "good" and "bad", i.e. to set the criteria ? P.S. do you use some special browser for the messageboard threads? It is hard to follow, using standart browsers. Or I have to write one somewhen ;)? SvD --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: <--- Back around here ;) Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 11:48:37 This is getting hard for me to follow. I only consider myself of avg. intellect, so maybe this is over my head!!! I need a def. of what info. you're talking about. Is this a matter of providing source code with a program?,or, are we talking about general info. Is information in it's entireity(spelling) a basis for knowledge??? If information can not be used by the possesor does it still qualify as knowledge?? I've heard a saying oncde that goes " you're a encyclopedia of usless knowledge", does that statement hold truth?? Can there be useless knowledge,or, just useless information,if indeed information can be useless?. As to the REALITY of it all I go back to a statement by +mammon (forgive me if I misquote you), "first we have to convince the herd there is a reality to crack". Is it you intention to state that the teeming masses have no scence of there plight in this god forsaken world we live in??, I think not. (please excuse the venom I'm in contract negs. and my juices are flowing) Nothing personal,we all see from diff. points. Well I hope I added something of value to this discussion.If not e-mail and I shall cease. name_text --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Re: <--- Back around here ;) Thursday, 29-Oct-98 04:28:28 It's not your intellect, it's the rather freeform flow of ideas. The discussion is bouncing back and forth between freedom of data, of information, of source code, of ideas, of expression. I think it all started off with the freedom-of-information debate, but then you have the question of "what is information"? ============================================ Is the color of my shoelaces information? Is my home address information? Is my email address information? Is my spending pattern information? ============================================ Is source code information? Is a compiled binary executable information? Is a decompiled binary executable information? Is it the same information as the source code? ============================================ Is the parts-list to a nuke information? Is the tutorial on building a nuke information? Is a missile guidance system information? We do need a few definitions here, specifically: information, facts, data, knowledge, free. let's start with the easy ones: Data: a piece or token of information Fact: a confirmed data/datum Knowledge: applicable information a few backups: Confirmed: verified to be empirically true Applicable: of practical or pragmatic value now the funny ones: Information: (root inform: "to give form", ation= a thing that is, thus a thing that gives form) A communication that describes or makes clear some aspect of outer or inner reality (communication being used in the sense of an encapsulation or a representation). Free: unrestricted in its comings and goings. anyone want to fix these? ;) Now as for the rest, yes I do believe that the teeming masses are unaware of their "plight"; this is a result my direct experience with quite a few members of the "teeming masses", a good percentage (10-30) are aware of what is going on, but the majority of whom either a)have no clue what is going on, b) have been given clues and tune them out (denial/"faith"), or c) have been given clues and prefer to simply not think about it (apathy). Now of course there are instances when the masses are shocked into awareness and action--say, at an election, a revolution, or a riot--but for the most part people go on with their day-today lives, absorbed with trivialities and distracting themselves via career / family / enterntainment / community / status / money from the fact that there is a deeper reality, that many of the things we take for granted (our "operating assumptions") are in fact questionable, that most of our reality is a self-perpetuating fiction created by various aspects of society (the stock market, the media, peer groups, churches, schools, etc). What I call "aware" are people who from day to day understand this, who occasionally try to puzzle it out or fix it, and who are nevertheless competent and capabale of dealing with the social world on a needs-exchange-sacrifice basis. _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Re: Re: <--- Back around here ;) Thursday, 29-Oct-98 12:54:08 Do you consider yourself apart from the teeming masses? Do you consider yourself anti-social,as in apart from the society that prepetulats these fictions upon the teeming masses? Are you one of the few "aware" ones? I don't think rasing a family is trival! I wouldn't think your parents would either! To propagate the species is a demand of nature! I take it you are not a parent,I know of very few who don't live there lives on a needs-exchange- sacrifice basis! The first rule of nature is survival,we all have times when we chose what must be done over what should be done. Society as a whole is ficticous,if it weren't there would be know need for this thread.We would all be of the same thought.(that is if a society is based upon a group of like entites). Then comes REALITY, WHOSE, mine,yours,thiers, does the fact that I live in a repressed geo-political enviroment have any effect on Mr. Bill Gates,on you,on anyone,or is my reality mine alone.(counting out for the moment mental disease) Do my belifes make me an outcast(if so from what),a martry(spelling),an enlightened person. No to all the above,they just make me me!! Apart from any belief in society,or reality,I am niether above,or below.I am one!!! To turely understand the teeming masses(I don't profess to understand all)I think it would help to be one of them!! I hope you dont take this in a bad way!!!!! I mean you no disrespect,malice,or ill will in any way!!!! I just happen to belive the saying "to understand a man,you must walk a mile in his shoes",and to the extent that we are all different thats alot of walking!!!!! Peace be with you!!! P.S. To all the female readers I am sorry about all the ' his,he' references.I'm lazy his/hers is alot of work!!!!! name_text --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re:x5<--- Back around here ;) Friday, 30-Oct-98 07:29:47 "Do you consider yourself apart from the teeming masses? Do you consider yourself anti-social,as in apart from the society that prepetulats these fictions upon the teeming masses? Are you one of the few "aware" ones?" Yep, I'm an anti-social bastard. I admit, I have no problems with it. I can deal with people on a one-to-one level, but I have found that people acting in concert/en masse simply reduces them to a very crude, very unevolved, conformant personality which I utterly despise. I can truly say that all of the people whose existence I have appreciated were individuals, and the ones whom I thought were a "waste of sperm", were conformists. I'm a misanthrope, so sue me ;) I didn't mean to imply that family was a trivial task; actually it is quite difficult. I was lumping it under "distractions" because, well, it is one. Not that that is a bad thing--reading is a distraction, computers are a distraction, good scotch is a distraction...but how much you let the distratcion overwhelm your overa cognizance of the state of affairs is the issue. Of course your beliefs/view of reaity/etc make you an individual. I hardly argue with that, nor with your points about survival, day-to-day life, and the empathy issue (walking a mile...didn't I just write that somewhere else? hmmm...) Let me restate.... I did not by my post mean to imply that I set myself apart from the rest of society, or that I do not appreciate individuals, or that I categorically divide people inot "herd" and "not-herd". That is just not the case, as fun as it is to ham up to the "damn-you-all" persona that accompanies such views. I take it for a given that every indivudal is different, that every person has a unique view of reality, that every person must be understiod in order to communicate with them properly; it is one of the skills that enables me to deal with others so easily in a professional environment. However, I also have a severe contempt for the blind "consumer" personality, and all who play this role. I find that people who ignore or deny the maniplualtion of themselves, their interests, their "class" and their pocketbook are, to me, pathetic. If someone recognizes "yes, this is a corporate scam, but you gotta make the appearance of complying" and goes along with it, I am OK (sort of...however, such behavior on a broad scale only perpetuates the scam). If someone says "there is no scam, this is a good product" (say, win98 ;) then I tend to view them --unless proven different on subsequent occasions-- as a hype-driven drooling idiot. Perhaps I stressed the wrong points in my previous post. However when you mean to talk of traits that accompany the actions of people behaving en masse, then you must necessarily speak of those people in generalizations, in the terms of a group. Each of those people may have a unique position, a breathtakingly refreshing view on life and our consensual reality...yet each of those people is partaking in a mode of behavior that I view as indicative of decay in our society. Therefore I must describe it, and as such I must place myself outside of the group regardless of whether or not I share traits/behavior patterns with that group. Understand me? I may perform the same behavior I condemn (not likely, but that is not the issue), however the behavior is only destructive when it is performed en masse, and thus the individual in and of him/herself is out of consideration. yes, society is a collection of individuals...but those individuals act alike, and when they do it is more often destructive than constructive. bones? _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: <---Back around here ;) Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 22:47:06 Yes you are right. Information is related to the person. From what you said I can find another fact: you obviously have bad estim for oyur mother in law otr you like the stereotype of the bad mother in law ;)) Information is neither good nor bad, but the use of information could have good or bad effects. Virus programming could be used to create self-healing programm but also destructive war weapons, it is the same for bot (hope the advanced page will give us some good trick). That's why free information is so powerful, you are allowed to be in the dark side if you want.... HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- :(( Die thread die........... Wednesday, 04-Nov-98 18:10:36 _m is fed up with this thread Why not another subject ?? HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: :(( Die thread die........... Saturday, 07-Nov-98 07:43:36 _m not fed up _m just not spending much time on message boards these days Thinks they as bad as chat rooms, for time-sink factor 'course, _m still goes to linux board... ;) _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Time is so valuable Saturday, 07-Nov-98 15:50:41 Hi H <> _m => board=time*thread+reading while !(_m_NewThread) Sleep++ ;) HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- rev 2 Sunday, 08-Nov-98 19:11:06 // Web Board Monitoring Utility ;) char boards[] = yayayya.com; //we know all of these .. if (! ONLINE) spawn('ezppp'); while (ONLINE) { for (x = 0; x<100; x++){ usleep( Visasm, 10000 ); usleep( WebPage, 10000 ); usleep( Apj, 10000 ); usleep( cracking, 10000 ); usleep( coding, 10000 ); usleep( jobsearch, 10000000 ); //bias :) CheckBoard( boards[x]); if (x == 100) x = 0; } } mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: rev 2.1.c (Just a Microsoft touch) Wednesday, 11-Nov-98 12:14:38 TO give it a professional "Microcrap design" :))) just add: Check for Internet Explorer use only and avoid any webpages containing the words: fravia- ORC - _m .... HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Just going back to the left Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 22:07:05 It seems that this thread had a tendency to drift to the right ;) Let's continue one of the longest threat of this messageboard. Why not to sum up this into an essay. Dear fravia++, what do you think about this discussion ? Harma HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Just going back to the left Thursday, 29-Oct-98 04:32:24 fravia++? That is kind of funny from a programming standpoint ;) _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Just going back to the left Friday, 30-Oct-98 18:16:44 You are the only one to have catched it. I found Turbo Fravia no enough powerful, and Visual Fravia too Micro$oft oriented ;) HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Re: Just going back to the left Saturday, 31-Oct-98 05:32:00 How about "Fravia Builder", we can macth the new Borland product scheme ;) Or better yet (heheh): gnuFravia (gravia? Their naming convention is a little haphazard-- gawk, gimp, gcc) _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Re: Re: Just going back to the left Monday, 02-Nov-98 11:39:14 And what about FraviaRW ? By the way no mor philosophical/political talk ?? HARMA HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Check the new thread and continue the discussion Wednesday, 28-Oct-98 22:39:05 Dear mammon_ I take a little break from the info/knowledge concpets to dive in the difficult question of freedom of speech, specially good and bad. Freedom of speech is a right in some Constitution. Wonderful tool used in may ways. One of the biggest controversy about the Net is the spreading of smut sites, porn-sites and so on. I would like to recall that this industry has promoted sales among society from VCR to CR-reader to NEt connection. Why ? because whenever you look at Sex is the best way to attract people and off course money. Do people want to fight such sites ? Yes in public but how many back home download some stream-live movie. Now let's talk about good and bad freedom. Allowing any theory to be broadcast lead to many ethical problem. Racism, Porn, Pedophilia and such subjects are offending to most of us. BUT it allow also to reverse the speech, to unconstruct the mechanism by which hata could be promoted. One of the tool of propaganda is to convince people that the "propaganda" of your enemy is worst than yours. Without freedom of speech these topics would still exist , but would be underlying, being a secret spread among the initiated. It would be worst not to know what your enemy think. I know this is provocative but it eill boost our thread. HARMA --------------------------------------------------------------------- Freedom of speech Thursday, 29-Oct-98 03:59:42 This is going to sound a little strange, maybe because I'm just a little off-beat. I think there should be absolute freedom of expresson--there should be no punishment or ostracization for the expression of any idea or opinion. I do not, however, believe in "freedom of audience". What I mean by this is that specific audiences should not be permitted access to certain expressions. Let me give you an example of audiences and "expressions" that do not go well together: *pornography and children *gullible types and sales pitches/deceptions *crowded thetaer and the word "fire" (old one :) *unstable types and suicide/violence/rape details *Christian Fundamentalists and Evolution *Scientologists and rational thought ;) Certain audiences are going to be offended or negatively influenced by certain expressions; that is just their nature (Peter Sotos, for example, I find to be a vivid and intense author, yet there are very few friends with whom I can share his work without offending them). In my opinion, any individual who is likely to be deeply offended or personally altered by someone else's expression is to be viewed as a child; they must be protected and taught self-reliance. So why not limit the audiences rather than the exhibitors? OK, in practice this comes out in "PG-R-X" rated films and "no-women-allowed" Promise Keeper meetings (by the way, if yu haven't checked this group out you're missing some great entertainment ;), neither of which really solves the problem. But hell, we're talking theory at the moment, eh? Leave application for later. Actually, in a certain sense the "corporate" environment does this. Corporate bookstores have a limited, inoffensive selection of books; corporate video stores have a limited, inoffensive selection of movies, etc. What this amounts to is suppression by way of non- distribution. This is no solution as it is still supression. perhaps a variety of "clique" tongues, like in the old role-playing games where you have the "Thieve's Cant" and the "Chaotic Tongue" and the "Monk Sygnes"...we could have the "Cracker's cant", the "Lecher's Lexion", the "Scientist Speake". That way you can only read books/material you have studied for (course there's still pictures...). Hmm, this is sounding like that Jack Vance novel, Languages of Pao. I knew I read too much of his stuff... _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Freedom of speech Thursday, 29-Oct-98 07:56:15 ". . .So why not limit the audiences rather than the exhibitors? OK, in practice this comes out in "PG-R-X" rated films and "no-women-allowed. . ." Um, excuse the interruption but I have to take exception there. That is a perfect example of the kind of attitude that forestalls true freedom of expression in adult, fully functional and inependant females. That "we've got to protect the little lady" attitude infantalizes women and keeps them dependant. You need to ask yourself, "is she really offended by this or is she pretending to be because it's what our culture demands of her?" Michelle ;-) M100 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Re: Freedom of speech Friday, 30-Oct-98 07:09:02 yep, that's one of the problems with it I was trying to point out. Effectively, you cannot determine what a person should or should not see (short of, perhaps, walking the letaphorical mile in their shoes); therefore this method of control is lacking in application. By that I mean, if there were a way of determining how a given piece of information was going to affect a person, and if there were an objective means of determining whether or not this effect was for the good of ther person/society as a whole, then this would be a good type of control (it is better, in my opinion, than preventing expression at all, because if the expression is still taking place then sneaky buggers like me can sneak in and check it out ;). Otherwise, yep, it is oppressive not to the performers but rather to the audience--a flaw, of course, in the choosers of the audience. What I was really trying to get at is that people lack an amazingly ability to self-censor. I mean, Xtian Fundamentalists do not say "I am going to avoid listening to the new MManson album as it will just torque me off", bigots do not say "I will stay home this year instead of burning crosses outside of the MLK rally, that just makes me so agitated", and louts in general do not say "I am going to stop listening to what that guy is saying because it just makes me want to kick his ass". It is tempting to force such limitation on people who cannot control their own intake, much as you would watch a diabetic's or an addicts' consumpition. However, as you point out, it is impractical...and, of course, like so many other issues in this thread--irresolvable. Hnnnh, guess a few inflammatory comments are all it takes to drag a few more people into this discussion :) _m mammon_ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Re: Freedom of speech Friday, 30-Oct-98 18:23:11 I do not have much time now, but I think that classification is not the way. I know that offending messages are broadcast around the world but whatever we do, there will always be smut&dirt. Why do the media focus on all the negative aspect of the freedom of speech ?? Because it is first easier to point out abad aspect than the utility. People love blood, smut and all this related info just have a look on how many soap, tabloids newspaper are watched or read. classify information is one of your task, up to you to discard such and such idea. But ignore them are even worst. Know your enemy so you will be able to defeat him more easily..... HARMA HARMA