*** Ideas and drafts for future posts **** DONE g/re/p - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2020-09-19 Sat 15:17] \\ /bin/ed post Did you know that grep(1) evolved out of =/bin/ed=? What's =/bin/ed= you say? =/bin/ed= is THE standard Unix text editor. Ken Thompson wrote ed. Ken Thompson wrote Unix (and a lot of it with ed). Ed has been creating Unix source, C-compilers, troff documents, man pages etc. since 1969. ***** ed as the source of grep Back to grep. #+begin_example # Create a file, foo.txt, with some strings gmj@ed tmp $ cat < foo.txt > grep > finds > regular > expressions > END # use /bin/ed to do a global (g) search for the regular expresson "re" and print (p) the matching lines. grep: gmj@ed tmp $ ed foo.txt 31 g/re/p grep regular expressions w q #+end_example There you have it. The origins of ed. ***** Some really basic ed editing #+begin_example gmj@ed tmp $ ed foo.txt 30 1 grep s/grep/search/ p search 1,$p search finds regular expresions $a and you can append text and more text . 1,$p search finds regular expresions and you can append text and more text w 70 q #+end_example ***** For less information Really, there's not much to ed. There's no configuration file. You don't need to know more than a few commands to edit files and call it a day. If you really need more .... CITE An for fun @edconf on twitter - twitter @edconf **** TODO Keeping my blood pressure down, keeping politics personal ***** Intro - me and politics I quit Facebook in the run up to the 2016 election to keep my blood pressure down. I have very definite political opinions. Most them revolve around letting people make their own decisions and looking for solutions to life's problems at a personal level. ***** My experiences during corona virus That said, I'm going to share some of my personal experiences during the coronavirus outbreak. ****** Dawn's wedding - drive-in shower. Neighbors called police. ****** Fly-over Military jets. Crowds. ****** Strong bias for personal choice Neighbors dogs bark. I don't like it. That's their choice. **** TODO Thinking on paper **** TODO Publish thoughts from my journal **** TODO Hiking stories **** TODO Write a blog/linked-in entry about cogita, fac, dic - See [[file:~/home/public/planning/cogita-fac-dic.org::*Cogita,%20fac,%20dic][Cogita, fac, dic]] - Illustrate with learning, applying some new thing. A language? A new AWS product? **** TODO Keeping up with the Claudii: From wax tablets to paper to the Internet Changes in resources for learning Latin from the days of Wheelock to DuoLingo. Journal 8/23/30. **** TODO Twitter Declaration Of Independence [2020-08-25 Tue] WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one Person (me) to dissolve the User Agreement which has connected him with a Social Media Corporation (Twitter), and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle him, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the Separation. He holds these Truths to be self-evident, ... **** TODO Mountaintop Experiences [2020-08-25 Tue] Some important things happened on Mountaintops: - sermon on the mount - transfiguration - cleansing the temple - curcifixion [2020-08-25 Tue] **** TODO Casting the first stone? [2020-08-25 Tue] A song by some Liberty University students: #+begin_quote What if I stumble What if I fall? What if I lose my step And I make fools of us all? Will the love continue When my walk becomes a crawl? What if I stumble And what if I fall? #+end_quote https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/dctalk/whatifistumble.html **** TODO My morning routine/journaling [2020-08-25 Tue] ***** Journaling - yesterday - today - in - out - up **** TODO This is not your fathers /etc/resolv.conf - understanding modern DNS resolution :PROPERTIES: :EXPORT_FILE_NAME: dns-today :EXPORT_HUGO_PUBLISHDATE: 2020-05-09 :END: ***** How things used to work In 1987 the staff at the Ohio State University Computer and Information Science were periodically logging in to SRI-NIC via FTP and downloading "the hosts file", that would be =/etc/hosts= on today's Unix systems. No DNS? No problem. Just look up the hosts IP address in the local database (flatfile) and off you go. DNS was new then and still rolling out. Updates? No problem. We'll pull the file once a week or so.... Then along came DNS the resolver library. Just configure =/etc/resolv.conf= on your VAX780 running BSD4.2 and let it go ask the new-fangled Root Name Servers who was authoritative for =.edu= and where to find the SOA for /red.rutgers.edu/. Poof. Life is good for few years on the academic/military/industrial not-so-complex Internet. Then the Web happened. Then Window boxes all started getting TCP/IP stacks. And the marketers, hackers, AOL-me-too crowd and the unwashed masses all arrived. And the stress on the nice friendly system coordinate by Jon Postel and friends started to show. Spoofed records? No problem. With a "quick" IETF DNS standard to permit (require?) people to digitally sign their zones and replies, everything will be fine, right? ***** What's in a name? People seems to have caught on that to be able to name something is to have power over it, so now *evreybody* wants to mess with name resolution for all kinds of reasons, ranging from - Load balancing - Advertising - Tracking user behavior - Blocking unwanted content - Key distribution - Security reconnaissance/mapping ***** Ubuntu - How does it today? This is an article/post all of its own. I broke my DNS. The attempts to fix it reveal an odyssey in the discovery of the complexity that has acreeted around DNS in the past 30 years. ***** Android - How does it today? ***** Windows - How does it today? ***** Chromebook - How does it today? ***** What about - VPNs - Protonvpn ***** What about - DoH ***** Around the edges - The dark web ***** Around the edges - Alternate roots ***** Back to sticks and stones DNS and the routing infrastructure represent two of the biggest potential points of failure for the modern Internet. Take DNS down and most everything does not work...Amazon, Apple, Netflix, online shopping, zoom. Of course, it would be possible to go back to the world before DNS. As long as you have a fixed IP address and don't mind working with network addresses such as /192.168.8.230/ or /fe90::5e3d:4bd8:7e40:3078/ instead of /amazon.com/ Looks like you don't have to ftp to sri-nic anymore, you can get get it from github.com https://github.com/PDP-10/sri-nic Wait, no DNS? #+begin_example host github.com | head -1 github.com has address 140.82.113.4 #+end_example Make that #+begin_example https://140.82.113.4/PDP-10/sri-nic #+end_example **** TODO DoH - understanding, experimenting, wireshark, personal options **** TODO Post a cybersecurity topic on linkedin SCHEDULED: <2022-11-23 Wed .+1m/3m> - State "DONE" from "IN-PROGRESS" [2022-10-23 Sun 05:00] - State "IN-PROGRESS" from "TODO" [2022-09-15 Thu 07:48] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-06-07 Tue 05:54] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-03-30 Wed 06:38] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-03-30 Wed 06:38] - State "DONE" from "IN-PROGRESS" [2022-03-23 Wed 06:42] - State "IN-PROGRESS" from "TODO" [2022-03-10 Thu 06:50] - Note taken on [2022-03-10 Thu 06:49] \\ In progress [[file:~/blog/drafts.org::*Security is not the only thing][Security is not the only thing]] **** DONE Write next "40 years of walled garden & open platforms" article SCHEDULED: <2022-10-29 Sat> - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2022-03-03 Thu 05:16] ***** material for future articles :noexport: ****** The Past :noexport: - I appear in the geologic records :: I make what may be my first appearance in the public record on the on the security-digest mailing list here https://securitydigest.org/tcp-ip/archive/1988/08#000129 (not sure why proxy arp source was a security issue ?), but the content is typical of the day ... software floating across the net (comp.sources.*, etc.) being grabbed (by me) and thrown up on an FTP server 'case that was the cats-meow in those days for software distribution. Check out the variety of email addressing mechanisms, one familiar, two unfamiliar today which expose topology in the email address. =he%idt.unit.no@relay.cs.net= =george@cis.ohio-state.edu= =!osu-cis!george= Back then, you often had to know how systems connected (pathalias anyone ?) There was a brief period (Hi, Karl !) where I was running the official GNU mailing <-> Usenet News gateway. B-News, C-News, NNTP, NNRP, and honey-danbur, Oh-My. - Preserving history :: At one point it was rumored that [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer][Henry Spencer]] (he of regular expression library fame a.k.a =decvax!utzoo!henry@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU= ) had a copy of "every Usenet message ever" on tape and there was an effort to collect and archive them...I think Google picked up on that effort later. Later the "way back" machine (archive.org) came online to try to do similar things for the web. The ephemeral nature of our digital presence and the importance of preserving it was apparent (to some) early on. But I'm pretty sure most CompuServe Forum messages are gone forever (anybody got [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#TapCIS][TapCIS]] arcives lying around ?) - My VAX/VMS Fortran BBS system - recursion using common blocks - GNU mailing lists, news<->mail gateways - CompusServe, the original walled garding - forums, the Amaga Forum, The UNIX forum... o sysop, free account -> karl hakcing things - news, mail opening them up - the web changed the economics o server, client, network o advertising - Charlie McCall said they talked about it - The rise of the web - AOL continued to rise, walled gardin - open, then - cookies, lock-in, paywalls - Now the goolges, facebooks and twitters of the world own you - Just try to link out from a linked-in article - the rise of social media - the graveyard of social media CompuServe, AOL/AIM, MySpace, GooglePlus - the talking wounded of social media SourceForge, SlashDot, BlogSpot, Wordpress, Yahoo, Jabber - the current rage in social media (those about to die...) Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter ****** The 404 Hall Of Fame :noexport: And before we leave the past completely, let's take a moment to remember the dearly departed. Here are some URLs I've known and loved. See where they lead now (and we're not even going to talk about AOL Keywords....) Many of these URLs still resolve to SOMETHING, because, hey, who doesn't check in at myspace.com once in a while, and eyeballs are eyeballs... - WOW from CompuServe :: This was going to be the AOL Killer: https://archive.org/details/WOW_from_CompuServe_Online_Made_Easy_META-CS1750A_Version_1.1_1996 - Lycos.com :: the search engine that "spider"ed the web (get it?) https://web.archive.org/web/19961022175214/http://www.lycos.com/ - http://www.compuserve.com :: Still there, but looking back https://web.archive.org/web/19990424095338/http://www.compuserve.com/gateway/default.asp Once upon a tiem I was hostmaster@compuserve.com (I ran the Solaris server that hosted the ?Apache? server ... might have been before Apache ... [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_HTTPd][NCSA httpd]] ? ... [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN_httpd][httpd]] ? - www.uu.net :: https://www.uu.net I worked there. Routed over 1/2 the Internet. Now Verizon Business network. Not the same company that use to run billing on Rick Adams' Awk scripts... - WorldCom :: Bernie went to jail. I left the company. The number of productive companies that got sucked into that black hole and destroyed was, well, part of a crime. Value was was destroyed. Dot Bomb. ... http://www.worldcom.com - myspace.com :: Something still there, but not my few web pages ... http://myspace.com - plus.google.com :: Gone, Gone, Gone. It was kind of like facebook-for-geeks. Mostly geeks used it. Not enough eyeballs. Facebook won. G+ got Killed By Google... : https://plus.google.com - Killed By Google :: And Google is in class by itself, with a whole web site dedicated just to tracking the things it created and killed (and is still killing): https://killedbygoogle.com/ - I guess the moral of the story is if you expect Twitter to be a system of permanent record for things subject to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act][Presidentail Records Act]], think again. - Microfilm the Internet !!! :: And in the honorable mention department, my father, Robert B Jones, spent 25 years fighting the loss of ephemeral information by running the Microfilm department at the Ohio Historical Society. Microfilm lasts hundreds of years. He preserved 19th century newspapers with the only extant account of Aunt Myrtle's visitors from Galopolis and the price of corn at the grain elevator in Mechanicsburg. He even has a publication reference on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Microfilm-Preparation-techniques-procedures-Historical/dp/B00071A5DE ****** The Present :noexport: - I quite facebook in 2016, too political - lost friends - thinking about quitting twitter now - but my main news source, professional feeds - short attention span, snipits, judmentalism, tribal - push model, not pull - addiction, "have to check it" constantly - keep phone off as long as possible - shortens attention span Here an app, there an app, evereywhere an app, app. Old McDonald had an app. E-I-E-I-O. Link to Narseo's work on privacy. And when you go to yahoo.com using a text based browser today, the first and only thing you see is.... #+begin_quote Your data, your experience Yahoo is part of Verizon Media. Click 'I agree' to *allow Verizon Media and our partners* to use cookies and similar technologies *to access your device and use your data (including location)* to understand your interests, and provide and measure personalised ads. We will also *provide you with personalised ads* on partner products. Learn more about how we use your data #+end_quote No. Just no. ****** The Future :noexport: - What's next? - text based browsing? - vpns? - just going offline? - returning to paper, journaling, letters - set up a BBS? o way more options than the early 80s (dialup) - RSS feeds? - run my own server? o mastadon? o discord? - a mix? ****** Conclusions :noexport: **** TODO Cybersecurity: Fire-drills or Calm Classification ***** Hook Stallman's password sendmail back doors.. clear-text passwords un-encrypted web traffic (HTTP) If you found one of these today, would it be a fire-drill or a calm, deliberate process of identifying the problem, assessing the risk and fixing things? ***** Security as a classification problem - What is? - How do I know? - How certain am I? - Is it "bad"? + depends on who you are + depends on time - What can I do about it? These issues need to be decoupled and thought of separately. ***** A few examples ****** Unencrypted HTTP Old trick ... telnet to the HTTP port.... #+begin_example $ telnet localhost 80 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. HEAD / HTTP/1.1 HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 349 Connection: close Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:47:35 GMT Server: lighttpd/1.4.45 Connection closed by foreign host. #+end_example - What is? - How do I know? - How certain am I? - Is it "bad"? + depends on who you are + depends on time - What can I do about it? ****** Clear Text Password SNMPv1 https://www.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A161 Shodan ... ?snmpv1? **** TODO TLS 1.3, China blocking :infosec: :PROPERTIES: :EXPORT_FILE_NAME: blocking-tls-13 :EXPORT_HUGO_PUBLISHDATE: 2020-08-18 :END: - See Paul Vixie Tweet 2020-08-09 + my android brave reading bookmarks (cloudflare blog, etc.) **** TODO Privacy: An attainable end state? A lost cause? ***** What is privacy? ***** Privacy in history + long history in law https://constitution.laws.com/right-to-privacy + Panopticon + Brave new world, 1984 ***** Central to being human? + My thoughts are mine. + Des Carte ... *I* think [my own thoughts], therefore *I AM* + Lock ... identity sum total of experiences + Creepy part at ML is that they know you better than you know yourself .. + Gov surveillance programs are a move towards omniscience. + Would there be a problem if we *new* that the entity seeking omniscience really, truly did have our best interest at heart? Would we need privacy in a world where everything and everybody where perfectly good and benevolent, where there were no scarcities, no competition? We strive for community, connection, union, but do we place limits on it due to corruption in people and the world? + 1 Cor 15 "...now we know in part, then we shall know fully, just as we shall be fully know" ... is complete So, back to privacy proper. Can we achieve privacy? "Check. Done. I'm private now. Next problem. ..." - Like security, can we be "secure"? - if not an attainable end state, why do we engage? existential experience? **** TODO Privacy: A path to making a living via bureaucracy? "Consulting, if you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem" - privacy notifications (dad, dead over a year) - lawyers + long history in law https://constitution.laws.com/right-to-privacy - policy makers - keynote speakers - CISSPs - Chief Privacy Officers - standards committees **** TODO Privacy: Something to rant about ... with words. Careers have been made on it....EFF...SOUPS...Lori Cranor, etc. journalists slashdot Wired **** TODO Privacy: Rage against the machine ... with code? VPNs,GPG,TOR,Adblockers,...delta chat, keybase... **** TODO Privacy: Hiding out on the digital frontier? So, I've recently started hanging out on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mastodon_(software)][mastodon]], a free, open source, federated, decentralized, twitter-like service as one way to escape the surveillance capitalism of twitter, facebook, google and friends. no ads. no algorithm messing with your timeline. it's refreshing. give it a try. in the past, i've registered my own domain names, run my own servers (mail, irc). i could return to my sysadmin roots and do it all again: VPNs, hosing my own domain, running my own web servers, running my own mail servers, etc. There are many more resources today (AWS, Digital Ocean, etc) then when I was running a Bell 3B2 with System V in my basement on a dialup line. But this all takes time. One has to balance privacy with actually, you know, living (family....) In addition to Mastadon for social media, here is a sampling of some encouraging and useful technologies out there (shiny objects never cease !): tor, VPNs (ProtonVPN), private email, private messaging (signal), personal "cloud" services like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nextcloud][NextCloud]], private-end-to-end chat over email: https://delta.chat/en/ and individual-not-corporate focused tec like https://sitejs.org/ It is *possible* to have a digital presence today that does not revolve round centralized servers, mass surveillance, corporations, governments and advertising. **** TODO Privacy: A process, an ideal, one part of life? The journey is the destination. **** TODO Privacy: Conclusion **** TODO Constantine: Love your enemies...and kill them? I've been listening to "The History of Rome" podcast, which is filling in a lot gaps in my knowledge of, well, the history of Rome. I've just gotten through the episodes on Diocletian, the tetrarchy, and Constantine. What. A. Mess. What a pile of contractions. There is an old (Viet Nam war era) slogan: #+begin_quote Join the Army, travel the world, meet interesting people...and kill them #+end_quote That's kind of what Constantine did. He fought civil wars to gain sole control of the Roman empire, in the process forcing his father-in-law (former co-Augustus with Diocletian) to commit suicide and fighting his final battle for control against his brother-in-law's army. #+begin_quote All we are sayin', is give peace a chance" John Lennon #+end_quote Maybe not. He attained (through force) control of Rome, the very definition of worldly power, yet supported a religion that commanded its followers to "Love your enemies". Tell that to his father-in-law and brother-in-law. Actually, he fought two battles against different brother-in-laws, including the battle of the Milvian bridge. "In hoc signo vinces". Killing in the name of Jesus? The cross (chi-rho) a talisman? #+begin_quote My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting... Jesus. John 18:36 #+end_quote Even his "Edict of Milan", legalizing Christianity in the Roman empire was in a backhanded attempt to incite yet another war with the eastern emperor Maximinus Daia who had renewed Galerius' (and Diocletian's) persecution of Christians. It worked. #+begin_quote War. Good God. What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing. Norman Whitfield/Barret Strong/The Temptations #+end_quote That he was not baptized until his death-bed may be one indication that he saw the contraction and took seriously the implications of actually joining the church and its call to holy living (like, you know, not killing your wife, son, brothers-in-law, fellow emperors, starting wars...). The demands of worldly power and the demands of the Church don't mix. **** TODO "Love[ing] your enemies" and killing them are not the same thing ***** History of Rome - Listing to podcats - Always interested in Rome, Greece - Initial interest driven as background for New Testament and the church. Still the case. But also fascinating lessons in human nature. ***** One lesson of Roman History: Power Corrupts - From Romulus and the 7 kings, through Marius, Caesar, ... Constantine - Endless wars, mostly for personal power. - Rule of the empire was a prize. Every few years it was up for grabs. Millions died, year after year, century after century supporting the egotistic power grabs of a few men. ***** Constantine: wars, murder ***** Constantine: embrace of the church - Edit of Milan, causus belli - Council of Nicea - - It seems to me that the embrace of Christianity had a lot to do with the fact that Constantine thought that a single church within the Roman empire was something he could shape and control more than, say, 100s of different de-centralized cults each with long history and seen, in many cases, as superior to the state (c.f. the taking of auspices). Also, the church was growing it was weak, poor, had recently gone through persecution - I can not judge another mans heart. We are all full of contradictions - death bed baptism ***** And the band played on - Constantine did well. The system he set up in the east continued for another thousand years. To put it in perspective, when Columbus discovered America in 1492 it was accurate to say that it had only been 39 years since the final fall of the Roman (Byzantine) empire. - The fall of the west, chaos, feudalism, kingdoms ***** Circles of Hell - Church picked up some of the pieces - Secular power - Dante: popes so corrupt that he pictured them as being punished for eternity in the lower circles of hell. Dante not popular with the popes and the Catholic hierarchy, but believable enough that his work became popular and /the/ foundation of western Literature. - The mixing of the power of Church and state also brought us the crusades and the Inquisition, wherein people sworn to "Love your Enemies" instead killed both their enemies and their brothers. ***** Nothing but the blood - Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. We saw that in Rome from Romulus to Constantine. We saw it in the secularized church from the fall of the west to the corrupt church of the middle ages. - To this day there are Christians who look hopefully to secular power, who pine for the election of the "right" people or the passage of the "right" laws. The result in Europe has been loss of moral authority, decline and marginalization. - My personal conclusion is clear. Oil and water don't mix. The Church should follow Jesus, not pine for the corrupting power of Caesar. ***** A few words from our sponsor I will close with a few words directly from Jesus (and his brother James). Long after anything I have to say is forgotten, these words will be remembered. I don't think these are out of context. #+begin_quote So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. John 6:15, NASB #+end_quote This contrasts directly the ascension of *many* Roman emperors. The forces under their command got fed up with something or someone (the old emperor) and proclaimed a new ruler, often, literally at the point of spear. "Lead us or die". Jesus took a 3rd way when faced with this situation. #+begin_quote And behold, one of those who were with Jesus [m]reached and drew out his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus *said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword. Matthew 26:51-52, NASB #+end_quote #+begin_quote Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” John 18:36 #+end_quote #+begin_quote “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” Matthew 5:43-44 #+end_quote #+begin_quote By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus, John 13:35 #+end_quote #+begin_quote Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. James 1:27 #+end_quote ***** Disclaimers I am a life-long amateur historian, philosophy-dabbler and arm-chair theologian. There piles of PhD dissertations, mountains of books, sermons, entire fields of study and branches of the Church dedicated to one of the other issues I touch on above. I'm sure I got some things wrong, glossed over important distinctions, made un-warranted generalizations and most certainly rankled the feather of those who have a different view. My aim is to piece things together, to understand as best I can, and figure out how to live the life I've been given. I am rabidly a-political. When I fail to be a-political, I tend towards libertarianism. Go read the Fountianhead and Atlas Shrugged. You will NEVER look at government as a force for good again. I have considered myself a Mennonite for 30 years. Go read the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_Mirror][Martyrs Mirror]] for stories of toleration and brotherly love [NOT] shown by the early Protestant "Magisterial" reformers to their brothers who did not look to the state as the foundation of the Church. **** TODO Maintaining Public Image - The King Has No Cloths ***** NOTES TO SELF :noexport: - Describe the problems with marketing without using the word - Use personal examples - What's the conclusion???? + Stop producing? + Work only for yourself? + Move to Galt's Gulch? (does it exist in Cyberspace? Bitcoin? Dark Web...) + Call the blood-suckers out and make them face themselves? ***** White Castle - "Ratburgers" - Dave Crone - I have a friend who has White Castle as a client - He shared some news story about White Castle on linked in - A few friends chimed in, discussing in the comments - The "product" has a LONG (100 year) history in Columbus, it's HQ, where Dave lies/works, where I used to live and where most of the commenters in the thread lived - The product is lower-end, cheep fast food that is, arguably, marginal as food, but has managed to last 100 years, so some people like it (or at least buy enough to keep them in business) - That said, over 100 years, people have developed an attitude toward the company. Many people hate it and wont touch it. Some (like me) keep coming back every so often (months...years) to remind ourselves why we /don't/ eat the stuff regularly. - A terminology has grown up around it over the years. The polite name for White Castle Hamburgers is "sliders". The less polite term is "ratburgers" or just "rats" (as in "let's go get some rats"). - This term has been widely used (at least in my circles around Columbus) for over half the companies life. - Nobody believes the burgers are made from rats - But when I used the term in the discussion thread, Dave deleted it (and politely messaged me to let me know) ***** CompuServe Web server I first met Dave when we first worked at CompuServe. Early in the history of the web, I was webmaster@compuserve.com. I ran the apache (or was it NCSA httpd ?) web server. Will Cowman did the content. There was a site re-design and "relaunch" (the logo looked like a black whirlpool sucking everything down -- which in the end was prophetic for CompuServe...but I digress) There was a party to celebrate the "launch". I was there. I ran the web server. Will was there. He did the content. 100 other people where there. They had done nothing. But they were at the party. This was one of the early events where I learned how the world works. ***** James Taggert I apparently am far from the first person to notice this tendency. [Find quotes from Atlas Shrugged about parties and celebrating things you did not do] - People celebrating things they can't do themselves or understand - No personal achievement, no reason for pride + aside, I see a similar problem in taking pride in achievement of professional athletes. You can form a tribe of people who paint their faces a certain way (literally, look at footage of college football crowds), engage in shared rituals (e.g. tailgate parties), but you can NOT take pride in on-the-field achievements that are not yours. Maybe you can take the same pride an investor takes in having picked a portfolio of winning stocks (without the direct benefit of you actually getting richer your team wins)... ***** Dilbert - "In 10 years, there will only be two kinds of jobs: technology jobs, and lying to the public" Politicians, Advertisers, Public Relations, Marketing, Religious Leaders (?), Customer Service, Project Managers, Lawyers... - Lying - to yourself - Lying - to those you work for - Lying - to "the public"" - Treating people as members of a group, not individuals - Manipulating people Marketing as tribalism? Group rituals, markers, colletivism? - the MBA, the large rim glasses and pink shirts, the language/vocabulary that marks you as "in" and only communicates to your "peer", the golf outings, the disdain for (and/or condescension) outsiders, group-think, #+begin_quote There's room at the top they are telling you still, but first you must learn, how to smile as you kill, if you want to be, like the folks on the hill ---John Lennon #+end_quote Probitas lauditur, et aliget **** IN-PROGRESS 40 years of walled gardens & open platforms: Part III history:computing:social:USENET:Facebook:Twitter:100DaysToOffload: :PROPERTIES: :EXPORT_FILE_NAME: walled-gardens-part-3 :EXPORT_HUGO_PUBLISHDATE: 2020-10-09 :END: - State "IN-PROGRESS" from [2020-10-10 Sat 06:17] ***** On the life and death of online communities #+begin_quote I've seen 'em come, and I've seen 'em die and long ago, I stopped askin' "why?" Johnny Cash, "San Quentin" #+end_quote I've been hanging around (and in some cases helping to create) online communities for years. This post is a reflection on the birth, life and death of some that I've been involved with. ***** Let's start with Rome Because, in the end, there is nothing new in the world and learning about ancient Rome is one of my hobbies. Of course, there were no "Online" communities in Rome because phones, computers, networks, the Internet, the Web and smart phones were all 2000 to 2700 years in the future. But Rome did have The Forum (a word CompuServe would co-opt for it's online discussion groups, it did have the Senate (SPQR anyone?), it did have courts, it did have the Rostra and rhetoric was one of the foun - rostra + physical place + had to be created + people have to come there + someone has to have something to say + people have to want to listen + speaker needs access to the rostra + feedback? + reposts: the greeks ***** Let's talk about the problem of the commons + Cows on Boston Common, overgrazing ***** Generalized creation, life, death You need: - people - desire to communicate/a reason to talk - a place to meet: physical, onlne - access/exclusion - protocols (who gets to speak, how long) And maybe: - archives - external exchange/commuicaton ***** ***** My experiences - TOPS20 email and BB - VAX VMS email - My VAX BB - Usenet - CompuServe + Forums + Email + Chat - CompusServe Gateways + email + news - AOL - "Eternal September" As they relate to creation, life, death