We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied
– Claud Cockburn (1904-1981)
I’m going to read more deeply, but the allegations in the Evidence Eliminator link posted below leave me thinking extreme paranoia on the part of Evidence Eliminator:
In considering the exceptionally defamatory content, (the article delivers a propaganda payload of 16 lies) and the conduct of WIRED.COM we have to ask readers to consider the question of whether or not WIRED.COM, LYCOS and/or their trademark holders Carnegie Mellon University (who allegedly have CIA connections) were involved in sending the emails as part of a deliberate covert action to defame and discredit Robin Hood Software Ltd. and Evidence Eliminator™.
Firstly let me state that I know CMU SCS (School of Computer Science) as well as anyone. I was a CMU undergraduate and graduate student, a founding employee of Compuguard, CMU’s first hight tech spin off company, worked for years in the Robotics Institute and then in the Music Lab for several more years. Just to establish my credentials, here is my web page at my old home.
Lycos, like most of the new high tech companies in Pittsburgh is a spinoff from CMU. It was one of the very first web indexers, if not the first. It was done by students.
Lycos went commercial and moved off the campus. Since the work was done with university resources, the university took some stock. CMU is quite a good place for entrepreneurs. Perhaps because for many years the President was a business school type (yes, CMU also has a top business school), the university policies both encourage entrepreneurs and make loads of dosh for the Alma Mater.
We (and I still strongly identify myself with CMU SCS) were always very good at getting DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funding because we were successfully churning out some of the most advanced work in the world, year after year. CMU (and myself) were on the internet before it was the Internet. I would go so far as to say CMU SCS (along with MIT and Stanford) created the whole ethos of the internet, an ethos which has survived a growth from 20 machines in 1973 to hundreds of millions today.
CMU has been a central clearing house for computer security for ages; formally so with the founding of CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) within the freestanding Software Engineering Institute in the 80’s, around the time of the Morris Internet Worm. CERT tracks software vulnerability reports and patterns of computer breakins. Any SysAdmin who isn’t aware of them doesn’t know his job.
Now as to the allegation. Does CMU SCS have “ties” to NSA? Probably, but only in the sense it has “ties” to any of it’s Industrial Affiliates, or anyone else from whom the researchers can extract money. CMU is a private university and a very businesslike place as far as money is concerned. As far as lifestyle and research, SCS runs almost like a libertarian anarchy but based on our “reasonable person” principle. The place would drive an experienced cat-herder mad.
Next, Lycos has been a freestanding company for some years. That means it has outgrown the university roots. Although I have not been in Pittsburgh in nearly 10 years, I would bet they are in the industrial park on the Monongahela River where the mile long Johns & Laughlin Steel Mill stood when I was a kid. CMU and the City of Pittsburgh and I think the University of Pittsburgh jointly developed it into a high tech industrial park. It’s a couple miles from the campus at any rate.
Now down to the meat of it. If CMU SCS grads ran tests against Evidence Eliminator and found it wanting, I know which party I would believe. In any case, I’ll be contacting the department to get “our” side of the story.
If you are really worried about keeping your machine clean, you had better just discard your Microsoft products altogether, and you had better be prepared to switch to Linux and (at this point in history) to learn a great deal about security and forensics.
If you’re too lazy or too busy to do it yourself, I’m available on the subject for £70/hr and up.
Yours truly and fellow blogger David Carr attended an awards ceremony hosted by Privacy International for its annual Big Brother Awards at the London School of Economics. When we got there my heart sank. Ok, one or two mates from the Libertarian Alliance were in the room, but my worst fears were aroused when I saw a bunch of twerps sporting George W. Bush face masks. Oh God, I thought, we’ve got the usual mix of muddle-headed Blame-America-First lefties, peaceniks and other delusional types.
But, I have to report that the evening turned out better than I, or I am sure Mr Carr, could have expected. As well as handing out these “awards” to such bodies as the Department of Education (UK) for various infringements of privacy, Privacy International also handed out genuinely positive awards to those who have protected or advanced the course of liberty over the past 12 months, including the right-leaning Daily Telegraph.
It was a genuinely wonderful moment as various lefties hissed and cringed as Telegraph reporter Stephen Robinson went up on stage to pick up the award for the paper’s A Free Country campaign. The Telegraph has opposed state ID cards, supported decriminalisation of some drugs, opposed threats to trial by jury, and also opposed the ongoing encroachments on British liberty from Brussels.
I think something very important happened last night. What we saw were a bunch of peaceniks forced to acknowledge, through gritted teeth, that there is such a thing as a non-left libertarian movement that is passionate about freedom, determined to protect it, but also savours capitalism. I think this is a meme that is going to continue infecting the body politic.
Tom.Burroughes@reuters.com
 When the state watches you, dare to stare back
I have no idea if this is a pukka story but it certainly looks interesting. Anyone out there have a take on this?
Whatever you can provide yourself with to secure protection from men is a natural good
– Epicurus
A tip of the kevlar battlebowler to Dave Tepper
According to Wired the media industry has spent massive amounts of money in its’ attempts to buy the government:
Also, in the 2000 election cycle , the entertainment industry handed Democrats a whopping $24.2 million in contributions compared to $13.3 million to Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.
No wonder they were so loath to give Libertarian Presidential Candidate Harry Browne coverage during the 2000 election campaign. They just didn’t want to waste any of their Demopublican investment.
Dave Tepper suggests ideas for a blogger drinking game. I’m not sure we need a game at Samizdata HQ. We take our drinking as dead seriously as 1930’s Hollywood newspapermen.
I’m sure Perry can atest to the similarity between the state of his bar after the Samizdatistas went home and an African field after the locusts have gone.
I’ve just read this Opinion Journal review of a new Mel Gibson movie and it sounds like a “must see”.
I do find myself of two minds on the tenor of the article. It says some things which I fervently agree with:
“Black Hawk Down” is a true story. But it differs from “We Were Soldiers” in that nearly everyone admits the shootout in Somalia was the bad consequence of aimless foreign policy–many just don’t want to admit it was Bill Clinton who didn’t have a clear sense of what he was doing and thus his policy hung those men out to dry.
There is no reason why one cannot simultaneously respect the valour and ability of the men who fought in Somalia against incredible odds while simultaneously disagreeing they should have been sent there in the first place.
Where I part ways from the reviewer is on Vietnam. Where I see no difference betwixt the two – honourable men doing the best they can at the behest of dishonourable and incompetent politicians – the reviewer apparently believes Vietnam served some sort of purpose. I lived through the time. I saw no point to it then and 30 years on I still don’t.
This is a dichotomy never to be bridged in this life. But perhaps we can all make peace amongst ourselves by settling on something we can agree on. Those who fought in Vietnam were decent, brave and honourable men who deserved more respect than they received.
Natalija’s suspicions seem to have been correct
Both The Telegraph and The Times are reporting in their print editions that a French officer may have tipped off war criminal Radovan Karadzic about the impending operation to grab him in Bosnia.
Is anyone surprised?
I was going to just point out a splendid article in the UK edition of Esquire magazine by the dependably excellent Karen Krizanovich about ‘the murky world of the dominatrix’ and how context really matters:
Let’s say that one evening your girlfriend starts having a go at you for not doing the washing-up. “You are so lazy!” she screams, slapping a teatowel against her firm thigh. Her breasts quiver as she gestures at you. “I should put you across my knee and spank you!” she shrieks, her pupils dilating with anger. She’s red in the face now, and you are the helpless target of all her built-up rage and resentment. She steps forward, towel in hand, to take her revenge…
Whoa! Stop right there. Maybe this isn’t the perfect evening for you. But picture this scene in the bedroom with both of you naked. Maybe now you get the point.
Yes indeed I do!
But the fact is that quite apart from this howlingly wonderful Karen Krizanovich piece, this is one of the best issues of Esquire I have read in ages. There is a great article about the race car driver and supremely cool French Resistance hero Robert Benoist, a fascinating piece on the Falklands War, a hilarious ‘Ali G’ interview, new iMacs, why the sex, sadism and hard drinking in Ian Fleming’s James Bond books make the 007 movies look pallid, and an excellent list of Britain’s 40 most eligible women. Under the entry for supermodel Kate Moss:
Money: You know your annual salary? She wouldn’t get out of bed for that.
Personality: Like shouting at an alien bartender through a wall of ice 6ft thick while juggling two cats and a monkey
Run, do not walk, to your nearest news agent and purchase a copy of the April UK edition of Esquire
I’ll take up Dodgson’s gauntlet. Let’s look at the young girl in the article. What are her choices in life and what do various systems of thought say about which are preferable? She may face a starving future versus being the well treated slave of a rich man. Given the culture, she might eventually become an influential member of the harem.
How does this differ from what socialism offers all of us? Instead of a rich, dirty old man, we get the State. It takes care of us, feeds us, gives us our medicine, tells us what we may do and when we may do it, and punishes us for disobedience or for showing it insufficient love and respect. Slaves, whether State or private are usually treated well because they are valuable property.
As for myself and other Libertarians, we prefer the Patrick Henry route; “Give me Liberty, or give me Death.”
I have no more problem with “private” slaves revolting and killing their masters than I did with the fall of Communism… when the slaves revolted and killed their masters.
We neither confirm nor deny our spies have determined Stephanie is a pseudonym for one of Brian’s many young starlets in waiting.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Recent Comments