On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 02:37:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics
>
> Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a negative”
> ...

About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.

On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote in
<lo3dvqFo19fU2@mid.individual.net>:

> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 02:37:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics
>>
>> Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a negative”
>> ...
>
> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.

Besides talking about the "Perennial Philosophy", I sometimes get drawn in
by the question of the source of consciousness.

The fact that we experience our subjective states, our qualia, our "I", is
danged miraculous...

--
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
OS: Linux 6.11.5 Release: Mint 21.3 Mem: 258G
"Ensign Expendable, step on that rock! - Kirk"

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 20:38:47 -0400, bad sector wrote:

> Not only in Britain, Quebec was "150 foot tall white pines as far as the
> eye could see". Then your navy requisitioned AND harvested them all for
> ship masts while no Quebecer had a right to touch them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tree_Riot

The people of New Hampshire disputed that. I enjoyed living there until it
started drifting left and I sought greener pastures.

On 10/26/24 1:51 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
>> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
>> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.
>
> Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?
>
> That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the existence of
> an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements could
> not be synthesized.

All philosophy is bullshit - including this philosophy :-)

On 10/25/24 6:17 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 01:09:38 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Um ... even weak crypto takes a lot of CPU time to decode.
>
> A graphic illustration of strong crypto used stupidly:
> <https://github.com/corkami/pics/blob/master/binary/CryptoModes.png>.

Yes, even 'strong' crypto can be used badly.

However for MOST, even AES-128 ought to be good
enough, AES-256 even more. According to some
going away from AES is best ... Camilla or even
GPG.

Note, if you want to INDIVIDUALLY encrypt files
then OpenSSL is THE best because of SPEED. GPG
and friends, there's a long initialization period.
This is something I've had a lot of experience with.
Wrote a nice, kinda large and 'smart', 'C' app other
langs could evoke to do the hard work.

There ARE tiny diffs between the Linux and Win
versions of OpenSSL ... so search and take note
of the fine variation in the CL params. OR, well,
use large/complex pre-packaged backup apps - but
you lose a lot of fine control. Direct use of
OpenSSL works great from custom 'C', Pascal or
Python pgms (my faves).

Towards the end I did write a backup apps that
individually encrypted files. Easy to get 'em
back, AS NEEDED, afterwards. OpenSSL was the
best way. OUR files weren't especially WORTH
cracking. This was good. Banks/govt and such
may have a different perspective. Better perhaps
to zip-up large archives and encrypt those
using better-than-AES methods. DOES need kinda
a lot of mem and diskspace ....

On 10/22/24 8:21 PM, CrudeSausage wrote:
> On 2024-10-22 8:00 p.m., Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:18:00 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>>
>>> So you're in favour of slave labour because you can get your hobby
>>> computer for less?
>>
>> Strange. I thought you wanted to take jobs away from those running those
>> manufacturing lines in the third world. Now you’re trying to sympathize
>> with them as “slave labour”?
>
> Do you purposefully misunderstand what you read? It is very clear that
> the labour being used to produce less expensive computers is slave
> labour. I have _always_ been in favour of products being sold in the
> West being produced in the West. I would _never_ advocate for anything
> sold here to be manufactured anywhere else, especially since it turns
> out to be slave labour.

With Linux, it's less "slave" labor as "dedicated volunteer"
labor.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>> Weak cryptography is easy to fix. The hard part to fix is weak random
>>> numbers.
>>
>> Other way round. A bad RNG can be swapped out for a better one with
>> little or no impact on anything else.
>
> Unfortunately, you can never be sure your RNG is good.

You can’t be 100% certain of anything. There’s a 2^-256 chance someone
could guess an AES-256 key in a single try, for instance. But you can be
certain enough for practical purposes.

Accidents (DSA-1571, Sony) and compromises (Juniper, Crypto AG) happen;
so does cryptanalysis (Enigma). But the majority of vulnerabilities are
not cryptographic in nature.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

On 26/10/2024 08:01, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 10/26/24 1:51 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
>>> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
>>> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.
>>
>> Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?
>>
>> That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the
>> existence of
>> an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements
>> could
>> not be synthesized.
>
>
>   All philosophy is bullshit - including this philosophy  :-)
>
>
That is the reaction of 99% of those who are exposed to it.

But it isn't. It has tools enabling you to think in extremely different
ways.
The problem is most people think it purports to reveal Truth, but it
doesn't. It is however and interesting study of Lies.

--
The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

Anon.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 26/10/2024 08:01, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>> On 10/26/24 1:51 AM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On 26 Oct 2024 05:45:31 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
>>>> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
>>>> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.
>>>
>>> Did he mention the Anthropic Principle at all?
>>>
>>> That’s a controversial one. Fred Hoyle used it to predict the existence of
>>> an energetic state of the carbon atom without which heavier elements could
>>> not be synthesized.
>>
>>
>>   All philosophy is bullshit - including this philosophy  :-)
>>
>>
> That is the reaction of 99% of those who are exposed to it.
>
> But it isn't. It has tools enabling you to think in extremely different
> ways.
> The problem is most people think it purports to reveal Truth, but it doesn't.
> It is however and interesting study of Lies.

Another advantage is familiarity with arguments and lines of reasoning. If
I had a penny for every time some technologist thought that he came up
with a brand new argument, for it only to turn out that it was discussed
1000 years ago, I'd be rich!

On 10/26/24 02:38, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 20:38:47 -0400, bad sector wrote:
>
>> Not only in Britain, Quebec was "150 foot tall white pines as far as the
>> eye could see". Then your navy requisitioned AND harvested them all for
>> ship masts while no Quebecer had a right to touch them.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tree_Riot
>
> The people of New Hampshire disputed that. I enjoyed living there until it
> started drifting left and I sought greener pastures.

What I didn't know until a few years ago when I looked deeper into it is
that the Co2 absorbed by the leaves is then STORED in the wood so the
trillions of six foot diameter trunks all over the place stored vast
amounts of dioxide. Gone. My wife's paternal grandfather remembered
that in winter they would ignore the roads burried in snow and would
move about on horse-drawn sleighs "beelining through the forests under
the branches of hundred footers". Gone. Personally I've surpassed my own
thousand-per-person standard, now approching 1200 planted.

vallor wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 02:37:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in <vfhkm0$3i0mb$1@dont-email.me>:
>
>> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics
>>
>> Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a negative”
>> ...
>
> Prove it!

You can't prove a negative by enumeration.

"There are no humans with feathers."

--
Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good. I know better. The things
I worry about don't happen.
-- Watchman Examiner

rbowman wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> On 26 Oct 2024 05:56:48 GMT, vallor wrote:
>
>> Besides talking about the "Perennial Philosophy", I sometimes get drawn
>> in by the question of the source of consciousness.
>>
>> The fact that we experience our subjective states, our qualia, our "I",
>> is danged miraculous...
>
> I lean toward the view that it's epiphenomena. Language arose as an
> evolutionary benefit and now is used to tell ourselves stories about what
> is going on.

And Rene Descartes is a drunken fart
"I drink therefore I am!"
-- Monty Python

From this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNBy1D1Y0h4

Are you a poofter?

Ooops, that video stops before the Philosopher's Song. Here's the song,
with lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMfCTBkMgKY

--
* * * * * THIS TERMINAL IS IN USE * * * * *

On 2024-10-26, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 02:37:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 01:08:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> Welcome to the problems of metaphysics
>>
>> Next stop: that wonderful fallacy known as “you can’t prove a negative”
>> ...
>
> About the time Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than
> nothing?' in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' my head started to hurt. That
> was sentence 1, chapter 1. It didn't get better from there on.

This contrasts with your typical math text book, which starts out with
a few pages of trivial statements before making the jump to the edge
of the universe, cued by that magical phrase "It is obvious that..."

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

rBowman: Heidegger asked 'Why are there beings at all rather than nothing?'
in 'Introduction to Metaphysics' . . . my head started to hurt.

As the cosmos goes from infinitely hot/dense to infinitely cold/sparse,
"residual eXergy" (potential entropy) fuels both "life" (games) & gravity.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:47:01 -0400, bad sector wrote:

> The responsibility for protecting its own falls on sovereign governments
> so when oriental cheap-labour combined with subsidies allowed them to
> undercut then western governments should have countered not by
> subsidising (you cannot cut out a hole) but by completely interdicting
> those imports.

That’s how things used to be done in the bad old days, when most of the
“consumer” goods we take for granted were rare and expensive luxuries that
could be afforded only by the rich. That is, where they existed at all.

Do you really want to go back to those days?

On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:28:13 -0400, bad sector wrote:

> On 10/24/24 18:25, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:40:59 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> But the whole mess is all part of people taking up *moral* positions.
>>
>> No, the whole mess is all part of people rationalizing their moral
>> positions based on religion. Keep your religion out of your morality,
>> and things become a lot simpler.
>
> The word 'religion' lost its clarity or use a long time ago ...

I use it with a specific meaning: those who follow a holy book that tells
them their particular sky fairy is the only true sky fairy, all other sky
fairies are false.

They can’t all be right on the first point; they can all be right on the
second.

On 10/26/24 16:41, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:47:01 -0400, bad sector wrote:
>
>> The responsibility for protecting its own falls on sovereign governments
>> so when oriental cheap-labour combined with subsidies allowed them to
>> undercut then western governments should have countered not by
>> subsidising (you cannot cut out a hole) but by completely interdicting
>> those imports.
>
> That’s how things used to be done in the bad old days, when most of the
> “consumer” goods we take for granted were rare and expensive luxuries that
> could be afforded only by the rich. That is, where they existed at all.
>
> Do you really want to go back to those days?

Probably, people were DIY qualified then. Nowadays you go into a
'specialized' computer store and ask for some info all you get is an
insulted look and "do I look like Goggle to you?". I rebuilt my first
car in my late teens with next to no tools, today youth say "the ashtray
is full, how much a month for a gaming bluetooth display with four
wheels?", they need a smartphone to know how to shit. Globalization?
Give them a little poverty instead (very likely to come anyway).

"On September 20, 1917, the Income War Tax Act, 1917 received Royal
Assent and, in one form or another, has been with us ever since. Since
it was meant as a temporary measure, it was to be reviewed a year or two
after the end of the war to assess whether it was still necessary and
suitable." NB 'temporary'.

On 26 Oct 2024 05:56:48 GMT, vallor wrote:

> Besides talking about the "Perennial Philosophy", I sometimes get drawn
> in by the question of the source of consciousness.

Certain schools of Buddhist thought hold that consciousness is an
illusion. Modern science certainly does seem to be leaning that way.

> The fact that we experience our subjective states, our qualia, our "I",
> is danged miraculous...

There are also individuals who have partially or totally lost such
ability, as a result of damage to particular areas of the brain.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 18:01:01 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> This contrasts with your typical math text book, which starts out with a
> few pages of trivial statements before making the jump to the edge of
> the universe, cued by that magical phrase "It is obvious that..."

Back in the days of “New Maths”, you started out with set theory and built
up from there.

It made sense to me, as a middle-school kid. Somehow it fell out of
favour ...

On 2024-10-26 3:32 a.m., 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> On 10/22/24 8:21 PM, CrudeSausage wrote:
>> On 2024-10-22 8:00 p.m., Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On Tue, 22 Oct 2024 09:18:00 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>>>
>>>> So you're in favour of slave labour because you can get your hobby
>>>> computer for less?
>>>
>>> Strange. I thought you wanted to take jobs away from those running those
>>> manufacturing lines in the third world. Now you’re trying to sympathize
>>> with them as “slave labour”?
>>
>> Do you purposefully misunderstand what you read? It is very clear that
>> the labour being used to produce less expensive computers is slave
>> labour. I have _always_ been in favour of products being sold in the
>> West being produced in the West. I would _never_ advocate for anything
>> sold here to be manufactured anywhere else, especially since it turns
>> out to be slave labour.
>
>
>   With Linux, it's less "slave" labor as "dedicated volunteer"
>   labor.

What the volunteers have been able to accomplish is quite impressive,
either way.

--
CrudeSausage
Paleoconservative, Catholic, Christ is king.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 09:56:59 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>
>> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>>
>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>>>
>>>> Weak cryptography is easy to fix. The hard part to fix is weak random
>>>> numbers.
>>>
>>> Other way round. A bad RNG can be swapped out for a better one with
>>> little or no impact on anything else.
>>
>> Unfortunately, you can never be sure your RNG is good.
>
> You can’t be 100% certain of anything.

Can you be sure of that?

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 19:27:34 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:

> What the volunteers have been able to accomplish is quite impressive,
> either way.

And Torvalds has to bear his share of credit (or blame, if you prefer) for
that.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 19:27:34 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>
>> What the volunteers have been able to accomplish is quite impressive,
>> either way.
>
>And Torvalds has to bear his share of credit (or blame, if you prefer) for
>that.

Linus is a *god*, he'd literally have to murder someone for me to lose
any respect for him. The world owes him more than can be repaid.

--
Joel W. Crump

Amendment XIV
Section 1.

[...] No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.

Dobbs rewrites this, it is invalid precedent. States are
liable for denying needed abortions, e.g. TX.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 18:01:01 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> This contrasts with your typical math text book, which starts out with a
> few pages of trivial statements before making the jump to the edge of
> the universe, cued by that magical phrase "It is obvious that..."

Don't I know that phrase all too well... It reminds me of my high school
algebra teacher. "You skip steps and don't show your work. Usually you get
the right answer but if you don't I have no idea where you went wrong."

I'll admit I still don't have much patience for videos where someone
spends five minutes shuffling stuff around the equals sign, multiplying or
dividing here and there. Some things are kind of obvious.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024 23:26:21 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 26 Oct 2024 05:56:48 GMT, vallor wrote:
>
>> Besides talking about the "Perennial Philosophy", I sometimes get drawn
>> in by the question of the source of consciousness.
>
> Certain schools of Buddhist thought hold that consciousness is an
> illusion. Modern science certainly does seem to be leaning that way.

https://zmm.org/teachings-and-training/liturgy/heart-sutra/

The Heart Sutra will keep you busy for a while. Of that doesn't do the
trick, move on to Nagarjuna's tetralemma:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetralemma