Re: A sad thread - RMS vs. OpenBSD
I said: (There are also multiple useful, mutually-inconsistent formal systems in both fields.) Duncan Patton a Campbell said: Provably so? Reid Nichol said: I'd love an example of Math being inconsistent. Quite frankly, I'd be surprised if this is true. Tony Abernethy's example of non-Euclidean geometries being inconsistent with Euclidean geometry is a good one. The statement Mathematics is consistent, is not false. It is meaningless. At least if you try to consider it mathematically. It is sort of like saying, the public library is consistent. In mathematics, there are mathematical systems. Mathematical systems have axioms. Axioms are statements that, within a particular system, are accepted without proof. Using a mathematical system doesn't mean you believe the axioms--it just means that you are willing to see what happens when you suppose that they are true. A set of statements is consistent if the conjunction of all the statements in the set is not a contradiction. (Also, the empty set is consistent.) Otherwise the set is inconsistent. A mathematical system is itself consistent if the set containing all and only axioms of that system is consistent. Otherwise the system is inconsistent. Two or more mathematical systems are mutually consistent if the union of their sets of axioms is consistent, and mutually inconsistent otherwise. Statements A and B are dependent if and only if either provably follows from the other. Otherwise they are independent. The axioms of Euclidean Geometry are provably consistent. The Parallel Postulate, which states that parallel lines intersect nowhere, is provably independent of the other axioms of Euclidean Geometry. Adding in the Parallel Postulate gives you a geometry describing a flat space. Adding in its negation or statements stronger than its negation (i.e. statements from which its negation follows, but which do not follow from its negation) give you geometries describing other spaces. Both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries (such as those in which the parallel postulate does not hold) are used by mathematicians. A similar situation exists where ZFC (accepting the Axiom of Choice) and ZF-C (accepting the negation of the Axiom of Choice) systems are mutually inconsistent extensions of ZF (Zermelo-Frankel) set theory. Both ZFC and ZF-C are used by mathematicians. Separate from the matter of inconsistent systems, there are also fundamental questions in mathematics about how precise or absolute our math really is. What I have just done is to sketch a proof. It is a proof about mathematical systems. To do this proof formally, I need a formal metasystem that handles mathematical systems as mathematical objects. How do I then justify my metasystem? To justify a claim formally, I prove it. How do I justify that I have proved it? Ultimately all formal reasoning rests on informal reasoning. In physics, the obvious example is that General Relativity is inconsistent with quantum mechanics (or if you don't think QM is a system, then with any system based on QM, e.g. QED, QCD). The hope is that a unified field theory can be formulated that makes accurate predictions about gravitation at high energies at the quantum level. To speak fast and loose, this would represent a rewriting of General Relativity to make it consistent with what we know about quantum mechanics, in the same sense that Newtonian physics has to be rewritten to turn it into quantum mechanics. And yet, General Relativity is still hugely useful. Not only does it predict cosmic observations with great accuracy, but your GPS wouldn't work without it (the Earth's gravitational field has an effect on the spacing of signal pulses, and that effect has to be accounted for). In informal language on this list, Richard Stallman has certain ideas about what contains and recommends mean. Theo de Raadt and most other list contributors have a different idea. Defining these terms in different ways, these people come to different results. The results are inconsistent because the definitions are inconsistent. In the way I'd use the words, I don't think OpenBSD contains or recommends any non-free software. I say this because, for Stallman's notion of recommending by reference to make sense, a compilation must at least recommend whatever it contains (e.g. OpenBSD recommends its kernel). But I don't think that presenting non-free software as an option to users constitutes recommendation. Since this is the only way that anyone (e.g. Stallman) has suggested that OpenBSD recommends non-free software, I don't think there is any real recommendation. If this is true then by the contrapositive law OpenBSD doesn't contain non-free software either. That is *not* a proof--just an outline of my thinking. See, it makes sense to me that one might think that presenting non-free software as an option constitutes recommendation. As a somewhat parallel case, I don't think that presenting contraception as an option in sex education
Re: A sad thread - RMS vs. OpenBSD
Just recently, I said: On the other hand, well-formed statements can talk about some of their properties in certain systems. If worse comes to worse, you can simply use a different system to evaluate the statement. This really does make sense and there is information conveyed--a parallel would be Raymond Smullyan's example of a sign that reads, This sign was made my Cellini. That sign is actually telling you something. Typographical correction: Raymond Smullyan's example is of a sign that says: This sign was made *by* Cellini. -Eliah
Re: Completeness consistency, was: A sad threa
On Jan 7, 2008 7:47 PM, Reid Nichol wrote: You haven't pointed to an instance of an inconsistency in Mathematics. Which, I'll point out, was what I explicitly asked for. Let me speak in a more formal tone, so that perhaps I will be clearer. There are at least two useful mathematical systems that are mutually inconsistent. That is equivalent to my original claim about inconsistency in mathematics. I never said, Mathematics is inconsistent. See below where, yet again, I provide an example of an instance of what I have been talking about. Basically, you're referencing a choice in Mathematics that we have, that we can go for either consistent OR complete. And you seem to be saying that Mathematics is neither? You don't seem to understand the issues involved and/or have incomplete knowledge/understanding of the history of Mathematics. Is this addressed to me? Only very recently have I posted regarding completeness. My original claim that there are at least two useful mathematical systems that are mutually inconsistent has little to do with completeness. If this is addressed to me, I am beginning to better understand Stallman's claim that people on this list have been building straw men. You quote Ingo Schwarze at the bottom of your post, who compliments what I have said and also talks about completeness. From this you appear to have concluded that my claim that there exist useful but mutually inconsistent mathematical systems arises from an argument about completeness. Actually it has nothing to do with completeness. As far as I know, Ingo Schwarze brought up completeness for the first time in this discussion. You appear to be looking at what he said about me and assuming that it served as a summary of what I said. It does not. What is flabbergasting me is that you haven't a clue and/or lack the attention to detail to answer questions that were explicitly asked. Point of fact, Mathematics has been proven to have the option to be either consistent OR complete. From what I've learned, we've chosen to be consistent. Which, IMO, was a very very wise decision. If you don't agree, point to a specific instance of an inconsistency in modern Mathematics. A specific instance of an inconsistency in modern mathematics? Can you give me a specific instance of an inconsistency in your public library? Mathematics is not a system. It is a field of study. Different systems are studied. Some are consistent with one another. Some are not. Systems with mutually contradicting axioms are not mutually consistent systems, and yet may still be useful. I have already provided examples. I will do so again: Zermelo-Frankel set theory with the Axiom of Choice, versus Zermel-Frankel set theory with the negation of the Axiom of Choice. If you choose to continue to maintain that I am incorrect in my claim that there are multiple useful mathematical systems that are mutually inconsistent, please respond to that specific example. Eliah Kagan wrote: Tony Abernethy's example of non-Euclidean geometries being inconsistent with Euclidean geometry is a good one. This is so very wrong it isn't even funny. You deserve to be ridiculed publicly into oblivion for making such nonsensical statements. I'm sure that people aspiring to learn more mathematics will see that you have said that and conclude that you are the one who knows what you are talking about and that I am a nonsensical fool. I mean seriously, Euclidean geometry assumes a perfectly flat plain whereas non-Eucliden geometry does not. Do you think they'll go in different directions? Do you think that it is even remotely reasonable to compare the conclusions after such a divergence without considering limiting cases? I think systems with mutually inconsistent axioms are mutually inconsistent. This is not a *problem* and it does not make mathematics any less valid as a field. In fact, it is useful. But it is also true. Though a couple of the statements you make after the above statement are reasonable, you take it in a direction and make conclusions that aren't (meaningless?!?!?). This mixture of reasonable with unreasonable, including such logic makes such statements erroneously compelling, which is very dangerous for those learning this stuff for the first time. You insist on me giving examples even when I have already done so, repeatedly. I have acquiesced to your request. Now I would ask that you give specific examples of my unreasonable conclusions and specify why they are unreasonable. Please stay away from making any statements on the foundations of Mathematics in the future as you seem to be at least partially ill equipped to speak on this topic. In other words, you have enough knowledge and speak well enough to convince students/others and perhaps yourself, but at the same time, lack the necessary knowledge/logic to come to reasonable conclusions. That you disagree with me does not mean that I am wrong or dangerous
Re: Completeness consistency, was: A sad thread
Ingo Schwarze wrote: Eliah has beautifully demonstrated this for both Mathematics and Physics. What is flabbergasting me about such questions is that these are extremely old facts - essentially, known for more than 70 years - and many people still believe that formal science can be both complete and consistent. For the record, I do not believe that there is necessarily no complete and entirely correct *physical* theory out there to be discovered. Such a theory, when formalized mathematically, would have to allow well-formed undecidable statements. But those statements would not necessarily be *about* physical reality, any more than an applied system that modestly extends Zermelo-Frankel set theory (with or without the Axiom of Choice) to contain axioms about voter demographics is incomplete with respect to classification of voters due to the undecidability of the Continuum Hypothesis. In other words, the complete physics would actually use only part of the mathematical framework used to formalize it. It's also possible that a complete and correct theory of physics will be discovered and be accepted, and still not be formalized mathematically. Quantum Electrodynamics is probably the most successful scientific theory ever (in terms of the number, consistency, and precision of its predictions), and yet as far as I know it has still not been formalized in the mathematical sense. -Eliah
Re: A sad thread - RMS vs. OpenBSD
The following sentence is true. The previous sentence is false. Oh and by the way this sentence is also false. The Liar's Paradox would not be a good example of useful mathematical systems being mutually inconsistent, or of formal language being imprecise or expressing non-absolute ideas. A string of characters in a language is not necessarily evaluable. So =+4()F is not a well-formed statement, and neither are those sentences (Nor the simpler version, This sentence is false.). When you think of how you would formalize something like that (i.e. how you would construct a system where a sentence could discuss its own truth value), you come to realize that there is no way to do so. Which makes sense, since sentences like that don't contain any information anyway. On the other hand, well-formed statements can talk about some of their properties in certain systems. If worse comes to worse, you can simply use a different system to evaluate the statement. This really does make sense and there is information conveyed--a parallel would be Raymond Smullyan's example of a sign that reads, This sign was made my Cellini. That sign is actually telling you something. The famous sentence, This sentence cannot be proved in system S, can be a well-formed statement in some systems. If it can be expressed in system S then system S is either incomplete (there is a true non-theorem) or inconsistent (there is a false theorem). This is Godel's result. The non-obvious and surprising part about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is that it turns out that any mathematical system powerful enough to provide for basic arithmetic is also in effect powerful enough to express such a statement. Hence there is no single mathematical system that can prove all true statements and disprove all false ones. (Having to do with constraints on statementhood, intuitionist logicians might disagree with that claim--I'm not sure. But then, I don't think intuitionists accept Godel's proof anyway, because it is a reductio.) This seriously calls the notion of absolute mathematical truth into question. And yet, that no mathematical system of useful complexity is both complete and consistent does not diminish the precise nature of mathemtical formalism, nor does it ensure that there be multiple inconsistent systems that are simultaneously useful. Those are for other reasons. Mathematical precision is limited because ultimately any definition is understood on the basis of ideas that are not themselves defined, much as a written tradition cannot exist without an oral tradition that consisting at least of literacy skills. Inconsistent systems are simultaneously useful because it is valuable to take different assumptions seriously and explore their results, and also because when one is describing only part of reality--which is all that anybody has ever been able to do with formal mathematical systems anyway--it is useful to use assumptions different from those most useful describe another part of reality. Similarly, in the world of informal (or less formal) communication, I think it is inherently valuable when people disagree about things, have different perspectives, embrace different worldviews, subscribe to different religions, to have different cultural backgrounds, and so forth. The whole *point* is that they are inconsistent, and not merely that they are different. -Eliah
Re: A sad thread - RMS vs. OpenBSD
On Jan 6, 2008 9:38 PM, Matthew Szudzik wrote: Not true. Language can define the laws of of physics or of mathematics in extremely clear, precise, and absolute terms. Many if not most physicists and mathematicians would dispute that statement. There are numerous important debates in the fields of physics and mathematics about what fundamental rules mean and how they may and may not be used. (There are also multiple useful, mutually-inconsistent formal systems in both fields.) In math, physics, or software licensing, one must ask whether problems of clarity are the result of the language and how it is used, or the result of people not knowing quite what they mean when they use the language. Imprecise language is valuable when one wants to communicate imprecise ideas. Bringing the discussion back to operating systems, I think that the our legal system is a giant complicated mess for the same reason that Microsoft Windows is a giant complicated mess: a cleanly-organized system was simply not a priority for its creators. A cleanly-organized legal system would operate efficiently and consequently be extremely powerful. Horrible atrocities would result. The US legal system was designed for the express purpose of limiting its own efficiency. I doubt the creators of Microsoft Windows made a bad operating system to empower the people who would be most directly affected by it. While not everything about Microsoft is bad, I wouldn't give them so much credit as to compare their products to a poorly functioning government. -Eliah
Re: Richard Stallman...
On Jan 5, 2008 12:53 PM, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: 4) FYI I think the wine project is counter-productive as it enables running non-free software on free software operating systems, and as such de-incentivates the creation of replacements. 4.1) but it's free software and its authors have their own independence. It makes good sense to establish principles and stick to them. It makes sense that different people have different principles and will criticize one another on the basis of them. But I think it is important to recognize that what furthers adoption of free software over non-free software is complicated and does not seem to follow from any simple rule. For instance, it seems to you that the Wine project is counter-productive. But the Wine project is inseparable from winelib. If you're not already familiar with winelib, check it out--then I'd be curious to know if you still think the Wine project is counterproductive, considering that there are many free applications that are Windows-only for technical reasons arising out of decisions made early in their development. Separately from this, Wine enables people who retain Windows for a few applications to switch over entirely to other operating systems. How do you balance this effect against your suggested effect of discouraging development of free replacements to software? What would you need to know to actually know that Wine was ultimately counterproductive, or ultimately productive? When it comes right down to it, a lot of the arguments about what do and will have what effect don't stand up unless supported with statistical evidence. This is the sort of thing you could publish a paper on, or maybe a book. But there is no reason for anybody to buy any argument about what specific kinds of free software encourage adoption of free software that doesn't provide something approaching hard evidence. It is one thing to say that there is a way for a project to be run that is most ethical. It is another to say that this will have the most ethical effects in the long run. There is no reason to believe that what has the best effects in the long run is necessarily the right thing, but then again, if it turns out that the ethical thing usually leads to unethical results in the long run, it is worth examining one's ethics. -Eliah
Re: Richard Stallman...
I wrote: discouraging development of free replacements to software? What would you need to know to actually know that Wine was ultimately counterproductive, or ultimately productive? When it comes right down Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: The world is not made of such extremes, fortunately. It is counterproductive in so far as to promoting the development of Free Software that replaces proprietary programs running on Windows. If this is not clear to you, please help me be more clear. When you say the world is not made of such extremes, do you mean you think the long-term effects of something are always unquantifiable? That these specifically are unquantifiable? Indeed, if you could be more clear, that would be helpful. Suppose someone is unable to use Wine to run a proprietary program on a free operating system. As a result, they never use the free operating system. So they never use all the free programs that are part of that operating system. Well most of those programs fulfill a function that is also fulfilled (or sought to be fulfilled) by proprietary programs. So by enabling them to use their proprietary program in conjunction with a free operating system, they are also using many free alternatives to many other proprietary programs. This seems to promote development of software that replaces proprietary programs. There are also quite a few free programs that run only on Windows. (Being able to redistribute a program and its source and modify and redistribute the source doesn't somehow cause it to be instantly ported to other platforms by the grace of God.) These programs can be run on other operating systems with Wine. They can be ported to run on other operating systems with winelib. What I'm saying is that the matter of what supports replacing proprietary software with free software is complicated and merits a more textured analysis. In response, you seem to be saying that I hold a black-and-white view. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (though you have managed to quote me in a way that makes it look like I hold and black-and-white view, I will assume that this was not intentional). -Eliah
Re: Lenovo notebooks
On 10/27/06, Breen Ouellette wrote: I think your statement may be a little too broad. Not everyone who avoids the CDs deserves shame. It's the people who only take from the project, and never give back in kind for the high value that they have received, who should feel ashamed. That would still be most OpenBSD users, wouldn't it? As a non-developer, I feel that *whatever* I do (short of becoming a developer), I am not giving back in kind for the high value that I have received. Yet this makes me feel grateful (and somewhat humbled), not ashamed. And what is the shame in taking something for free and not reciprocating when someone gives it to you for free and makes clear that there are no strings attached and that they want it that way? -Eliah
Re: Contributing and Shame [Was: Lenovo notebooks?]
On 10/28/06, Breen Ouellette wrote: The shame enters the picture when you place expectations for additional output from the people giving freely. I see people griping all the time for this or that feature, or support for this or that hardware. I see this from people who contribute nothing and never will. I see what you're saying. On the other hand, I'm not sure the shame is less justified when people who do contribute place expectations for additional output from the people giving freely. In fact, whether or not such a person donates seems totally irrelevant to their placement of unjustified expectations. People complain that certain hardware is not supported very well, but have they ever written even one email to the vendor demanding open documentation? These people should be ashamed, but of course they never will. These people should be ashamed (if indeed it is ever true to say that someone *should* experience some emotion...which it is not) because they fail to exercise their own autonomy, instead begging others who they see as being in positions of authority to magically fix the situation. This has nothing to do with loyalty or duty to the OpenBSD project, monetary or otherwise. -Eliah
Re: Contributing and Shame [Was: Lenovo notebooks?]
On 10/28/06, Breen Ouellette wrote: That same behaviour of expecting magic fixes, if it were applied to a larger community like that of North America (sorry if you aren't from this continent), would not be shameful in the least. People in North American culture whine and complain for fixes from higher authorities (governments, legal systems, corporations, gods, employers, unions, and on and on) all the time without being shamed by those around them. In fact, in most cases those around them agree wholeheartedly. How many people in North America are proactive in their daily lives? I believe the number is very few. Is your position then that people in North Americans who are not proactive in their daily lives should not be ashamed, because they act in accordance with the cultural expectations of their society? [...] if we define new ways to shame those who deserve it, beyond badmouthing them on this list, it could be beneficial to. the OpenBSD project. Theo has shown some success in shaming companies about their restrictive policies. It seems to me that he has shown some success in convincing companies (rather, the people who control companies) that it is in their interest to change their restrictive policies. It is not clear to me that shame, whether the emotion or the action, has anything to do with it. Perhaps there are other ways to use shaming to the advantage of the project. Of course, it is a dangerous tool and could become a major problem for the project as well. Perhaps so. I would say that perhaps there are ways to using shaming to the advantage of the project, since I am not convinced that anyone ha used shaming to the advantage of the project so far. It seems to me that the primary effect of shaming on the lists has been to convince people that it is in their interests to oppose the OpenBSD project. Arguably, shaming people on the lists has the positive effect of underscoring that the OpenBSD project doesn't embrace the kind of niceness that has become associated with ideologically hypocritical (or ideologically non-serious) software ventures. But this positive impact, if real, is not a result of shaming per se. Another possibility is that shaming people has an effect on OpenBSD similar to the effect of recreational drug use on many rock artists. (Highly idealized example follows.) Being perceived as correlated with success, some artists might think that it results in or aids success, which might be true under some rare, highly specialized circumstances--for instance, it might inspire some compositions. But in actuality, other factors tend to account for success, and the drug use mostly interferes both by taking up time better used for other ventures and by impairing the acts of practice and performance. Such rock artists may believe that their drug use leads people to like them and act in accordance with their goals, which is sometimes true, but probably doesn't outweigh the negative effects--and often people who like them and/or act in accordance with their goals do it in spite of the drug use, rather than because of it. And many people, many of them other rock artists or people valuable to rock artists in their advancement of artistic (and sometimes political, and sometimes economic) goals, simply disregard such rock artists as not worth their time. Due to lack of information and experience, I do not consider myself competent to evaluate any of these suggestions definitively. But perhaps some people here could. -Eliah
Re: Intel Core Duo - should I go for bsd.mp?
On 10/26/06, Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote: Most likely some time tomorrow I'll have a Thinkpad R60 with an Intel Core Duo processor land in my lap. I wonder, would it be at all useful to try running it with a bsd.mp kernel? Unless you just want to use one of the two cores, bsd.mp would seem to be the way to go... -Eliah
Re: blobs are bad
On 10/18/06, Nico Meijer wrote: Hi Girish, If you keep saying something good won't happen -- well then you can bet it won't happen. I don't get your point Theo. Search the net for karma and the law of attraction. Perhaps that will give you some insight in what -I think- Theo means. HTH... Nico Karma and the law of abstraction are very abstract. The more concrete analogy here is that confidence is an asset. In the case of convincing vendors to support open source, the idea, I think, is that if you proclaim that vendors who don't do so profit by failing to do so, they will believe you. On the other hand, suppose vendors who support open source only do so because they believe that it profits them, and the only arguments they take seriously are those involving their profit. This is at least highly plausible. Should we then not say that because it's not functionally useful to do so? -Eliah
Re: News From HiFn
On 7/11/06, Dan Farrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Insulting rhetoric has no place in a civilized debate. I actually agreed with him, until he thought that all of this is just 'American.' It's actually 'capitalistic', and America isn't the only country in on that game. I'm not sure capitalistic is any more accurate or any less insulting than American. What we're talking about here is consumers believing that the natural state of affairs is for companies to devalue their customers. This notion is, among other things, fundamentally anticapitalistic--it undercuts the basis of capitalistic competition. I think that the phenomenon that Theo was railing against is a certain kind of authoritarianism--the idea that if you have an organization that is big and official then that organization's big and official wishes should be respected, and that any attempt on the part of customers to change the group behavior of the organization should be based on appeasement and taking whatever you can get, however small. I think that the idea that it makes sense for individuals to be victimized by groups (and just real nice when they're not)--or that it makes sense for one group to be victimized by another--is very authoritarian. I am an American, and I have observed that this is precisely how almost all law-abiding Americans relate to police officers (law abiding citizens are the customers, but we fear cops as if we were criminals, we are taught from a young age that the proper way to respond to police presence is to allow ourselves to be victimized, and we rarely try to change this state of affairs). My travel experience outside the U.S. is very limited, but I presume that America is not alone in being infected with this kind of authoritarian stupidity. Theo: Assuming that you were using American as a descriptive term, rather than as an insult, would you mind clarifying what it was that you meant to convey? Perhaps the effective vilification of America (and now a counter-vilification of capitalism) is due to a a misunderstanding. -Eliah
Re: lightweight openbsd
On 6/26/06, Damien Miller wrote: just please don't bug people on OpenBSD lists about private hacks like this. I, for one, find discussion about private hacks like this to be valuable. And I think it falls under the heading of, Miscellaneous discussion about OpenBSD, which happens to be the official description for this list. -Eliah
Re: Hifn policy on documentation
On 6/16/06, Siju George wrote: Hi all, I 've been told by people ( more than one ) off list how *uncivilized* it is to forward *private* mail publicly *even when it has some bad content*. And I have been asked to apologize publicly ( not by Hank Cohen ). Without trying to Justify my points any more I apologize doing this. I am wrong. I accept it. Sorry Hank. I know the damage is done. But I 'll make sure that it is not repeated anymore. And thank you so much for all who sent the mails of reproof and correction. Thank you for taking effort to put me in the right track. And thank you so much for all who silently put up with this misbehaviour. You did nothing wrong. Email is fundamentally not private unless and until (1) all the correspondents have reason to trust one another, and (2) they mutually agree to keep the correspondence private, and (3) the emails are encrypted, or the emails are only private in a very trivial sense. (1) is unlikely given that Mr. Cohen's email was in response to you accusing him of lying. (2) is impossible since the email was unsolicited. And I am guessing (3) was not the case. While there is a wider variety circumstances than 1+2+3 in which it is considered impolite to redistribute private emails, beyond that, it's your call, and nobody should assume that you will keep their words privileged (and I seriously doubt Mr. Cohen expected it). Furthermore, only someone who fundamentally misunderstands the concepts of reasonable assumption of privacy and conversational intimacy would think that your posting of Mr. Cohen's unsolicited message qualifies for this category of extended impoliteness. And there are many such people--just look at how many companies require universal use of signatures stating things like the contents of this message are private and if you are not the intended recipient, you are required to delete this message immediately and you may not use its contents. At the risk of starting something that really would be off-topic, I would like to point out that when people attribute privacy and privilege where they do not exist, the notions of privacy and privilege are degraded, and the ability of all people to enjoy those things where they do exist is diminished. We should focus less on being civilized and more on fulfilling our obligations to one another, where those obligations exist. It is largely due to the actions and inactions of civilized people that many of those obligations are not fulfilled, every day, all over the world. Please understand that I am not trying to knock etiquette, which I think is very important because it provides a protocol with which people can communicate. But as I have just argued, I don't think that etiquette is a big issue in this case. I think calling an unsolicited email from a company representative responding to a post to a public mailing list addressing a former post to the same mailing list by the company representative about a company matter private is dangerous to our continued enjoyment of privacy. I further think that encouraging people to keep private fundamentally non-private correspondence has the effect of giving license to people to send abusive and non-productive emails. -Eliah
Re: Hifn policy on documentation
On 6/14/06, Darrin Chandler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I blame neither Mr. Cohen nor the lawyers. It's the decision makers at the company who have decided this policy, which is a policy change from years ago. Nobody else at the company is to blame. That's how responsibility works. No, it's not. If you do something that is morally reprehensible, it is morally reprehensible whether or not you are doing it because you were ordered to do it. For Mr. Cohen to tell us lies or inexcusably misinformed statements reflects negatively on him personally, because that is something that no one ought to do. Perhaps Mr. Cohen would be fired if he refused to act immorally. That doesn't mean that his actions are beyond criticism. I don't think that anybody, prior to the post I am making right now, has called Mr. Cohen or the lawyers into question for their individual morality. Up to this point, we have been criticizing what Mr. Cohen said, and we have been criticizing Hifn the company and any and all employees who would carry out actions on behalf of the company with which we disagree and with which we believe to constitute bad business and degradation of users' freedom. This has included but has at no point been limited to or particularly focused on Mr. Cohen. But now that you bring it up, yes, Mr. Cohen made the wrong decision when he chose to carry out the will of his company. And since he is the Product Line Manager (read his signature), he was probably involved in establishing just what the will of his company is. -Eliah
Re: Hifn policy on documentation
On 6/13/06, Marcus Watts wrote: In this case, the vendor appears to be talking about documentation, which means they're actually confused. EAR covers chips but not documentation. By US law they *have* to care about the chips. Otherwise they're not in business. However the same law and a bunch of court cases also makes a big thing about free speech. For quite a number of years, when cryptography was considered a munition and not allowed to be exported without special license, people were writing books and talking about cryptography almost entirely without problems. Somebody needs to point this out to them; there's simply no defensible US export legal reason for them to make people fill out web forms of any form to acquire human readable documentation. As one example, Phil Zimmerman was not permitted to export the source code to PGP electronically, so he published a print book containing it in a character set particularly conducive to OCR (in the state of that technology at that time). The issue there was that people in the NSA and other anti-public-crypto goons in the US government were comfortable and secure in their authority to obtain censorship of electronic communications, but it was totally out of their league (at least in that particular instance) to extend the censorious regulations to the print medium. So that issue is very real, but it is totally separate from what is going on here, because: (1) the materials in question are being distributed in an electronic form (2) the materials in question are not actually subject to any US export restrictions of any kind, and Mr. Cohen is either lying to us or is quite misled. The issue of the US government not being permitted to restrict speech does not appear to me to be the applicable one here, because the only organization that is acting against the interests of freedom in this case is Hifn. They can blame the US government all they want--they're lying (or severely and inexcusably mistaken). -Eliah
Re: eWeek comment on OpenBSD
On 6/6/06, Roger Neth Jr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even OpenBSDin my humble opinion, the safest operating system on the planetis crackable, if you allow anyone to come and pound away at its network interface. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1972281,00.asp Construed literally, that would have to mean that all operating systems, including OpenBSD, have remote holes in their underlying TCP/IP stack implementations. (He's talking about pounding away at the **network interface** here!) This is manifestly unlikely. There are probably very few operating systems with remote holes in their TCP/IP stack implementations, and OpenBSD is probably not one of them. Steven J. Vaugh-Nichols probably doesn't mean this--he probably means something else. But it's not clear to me what he means, and I'm not sure it's clear to him, either. If he means that running OpenBSD doesn't guarantee that you'll never get hurt by a cracker, though, he's certainly right about that. -Eliah
