xradionut

If I recall correctly, you could adjust the brightness on the VT 100 series through one of the setup modes. The VT200 had choices other than green. The TRS-80 Model 4 had white and I used a 4p as a terminal to remote mainframes and minis. The Xerox 820 was white. Most of the early Apple/IBM PC monochromes were green, but there were some really nice amber third party monitors.

We had Byte magazine which had Dick Pountain's articles of sexy hardware with which fantasize too...

I agree and disagree:

GPG has a sucky API and crazy CLI. It's a stack of eggs that everyone is scared to improve.

People don't even try to understand the bare basics of PKI or even security because they are fundamental lazy and not required too. No one expects them to understand the math, just the few processes required for basic usage. If you can understand the arcane rules of baseball, or how to drive a stick, or solder, or field strip a pistol or basic cooking, you can learn how to "use" encryption.

After 4 decades of reading/watching sci-fi, I've evolved to reality based entertainment. :p

Actually if you read John Barne's article on world-building,"How to Build a Future," where he talks about building the universe for the "Thousand Cultures" series, he discusses in detail the issues with local interstellar travel. (Since he has to plot around them.)

Also Star Trek is space opera, you probably should be reading hard sci-fi.

"That's astounding. This is probably going to be one of our first destinations, when humanity starts building interstellar craft."

Not going to happen for practical physical and economic reasons.

I'd sooner bet on a mass extinction event or singularity than a bunch of greedy superstitious primates actually develop interstellar travel.

Complain? We had options to change the intensity or use amber/black or white/black. No one in the day would have used intense green characters for a whole shift, it would have "burned" the CRT.

Your analogy sucks and you could have easily fixed it: "If Microsoft gave Office away, destroyed the competition, then killed Office..."

Google killed Reader and trust.

Plenty of folks who are technically adept, dislike it as well.

I've got code that I wrote for the TI-99 4A when I was in high school. It's probably better than the code my boss wrote for a client two years ago that I get to refactor and convert to a new platform. (Yes, the alcohol bill on this project will be high...)

I've placed Stackoverflow in my "mostly useful" list of programming sites. Mainly because the over-zealous moderation, the gaming of karma, and lack of elaboration/quality on many of the answers.

There's still a lot of interest and development in concrete and material science for building stuff, it's just there's not a lot of big, easy, sleazy, vaporous paydays like we see in the software startup community. (How many people understand the advantages of additives or basalt rebar in certain applications?)

Don't cause waves, pay taxes.

It's too late for the general population in the US. But there are very smart folks with means that have hedged their bets by having estates in multiple countries.

The problem now is that who you vote for doesn't represent you. They represent themselves, their donors and their social class/circle. They've also sworn an oath to the Constitution, then passed laws that are against that oath.

For all practical purposes the "classical constitution United States" that we were taught in school and media doesn't exist anymore. But we pretend it does for pragmatic reasons.

"There really are two classes of programmer : the one that build "tools" for other developers, and the ones that build end-user software."

Actual the second group is occasionally saying, "WTF was the first group thinking?" after spending hours trying to get the tools to work for the real world. (Try spending a few hours/days writing wrappers for PKI software with shitty APIs...)

The major problem with the IRS is that is handicapped by law and politics from doing it's job. There's an insane amount of capital sitting in offshore accounts that probably should have been taxed. Loopholes for the big players are crazy.

There are variety of careers and situations where falsehoods are encouraged and necessary.

They don't have to force you into silence, they can force you thru duress not to be silent. All that is needed is some sort of incentive or leverage. (Keep up the good work citizen or ...)

If the actual system is robust enough to be a "dead-man" switch then you have to plan for "false positives/negatives" and have more than one person involved in the process in case of emergencies. This increases your social attack surface. Two people might be trusted if one is dead and didn't leave any evidence behind.

I don't see the usefulness. You can sign a lie cryptographically just as well as a fact.

Software Defined Radio is a good FPGA application: http://www.srl-llc.com/

The biggest problem is people, not technical. Too many of them, and they are too irrational, or uneducated or held captive economically by the current events. Unfortunate this problem is unsolvable in conventional moral and ethical terms, but a working solution would be worth trillions to the remaining rent collecting population.

Although it's apparent that the US military and police are prepped for widespread civil unrest.

As a long term, now former subscriber, I have to disagree with you. It's all about the page clicks today, fuck the users.

There used to be anonymity, but it's too late to start now. I've met a few people, (outside of the homeless community or the third world), that are truly anonymous in the practical sense of the word. It's not something that 99.99% percent of people would consider or desire.

Just because we get a few token gestures, doesn't mean we have any real change. What happens in Washington and Colorado really doesn't affect the people in power and may be advantageous for them to use in the future as scapegoat material.

From a fact based analysis, it's not bullshit. Read your history, look at current situation as data to be sifted through and it's obvious that the reality is different from the popular image portrayed.

Meta Comment: Considering that Ars is mining their forum database and pissing off members/subscribers to post tabloid-style shaming articles about the NSA whistleblower, I believe the first step in privacy is to avoid visiting their web site ever again.

And other systems. Amazing how much demographic data is available to third parties alone. Spend some time with a skip tracer or good bail bonds person and you realize how easy it is to get almost any data of significance on a individual.

Considering all the tax sheltering that the corporations engage in and the government doesn't aggressively pursue, I think they already get great financial breaks.

(My contacts at IRS said they are warned to avoid "poking" into certain institutions actions without highest authorization. So they go after the small fry and leave the big fish alone. Fucking game of life is rigged.)

You forgot to write large checks to them and their party.