And sometimes, they are even right…

Date: March 5, 1974
To: Bob Metcalf and Dave Boggs
From: R. T. Bachrach
Location: PARC - Bldg. 31
Organization: GSL - 44

Subject: Comments on “Draft Ethernet Overview”

I have read with dismay your presentation “Draft Ethernet Overview”. As I am sure you are aware, technically or conceptually there is nothing new in your proposal. Perhaps appropriately, you have chosen a coined jargon utilizing discredited scientific conceptual expression in which to frame your ideas. I find your analysis of the proposed interconnection lacking in technical credibility. Quantitative statistical analysis would show that your proposed system would be a failure. You have tried to adopt a scheme inappropriate to the intended engineering application. A random transmisstion scheme such as you propose, along with the quasi-de-randomizing hardware you invoke to patch the obvious deficiency, would place in fact an undo [sic] hardware, software, and scheduling problem on the individual stations.

You should seriously reconsider your basic premises and formulate fully and logically all the parameters necessary to evaluate the system. Your transmission medium or environment is not quantum noise limited. Simple analysis shows that imposing a [P]oisson (i.e., random) statistics on message transmission drastically reduces the available effective bandwidth. Such a system is effective (reasonable) only in the limit of negligible average bit transmission rates. In fact you will want to maintain as high an effective transmission rate as possible. This requires a synchronized system. The fallacy in your conception is that the stations should be transmitting randomly. One possibility for a syncrhonized system would be time division multiplexing. You should seriously study how the telephone companies handle this problem. For example the A.T.T. long lines T2 buried microwave link multiplexes close to 10[^]7 - 6 KHz channels.

Most importantly, you should fully define your engineering applications before proceeding further. You specify an undefined message packet length, a 1 mile or 1 mile diameter loop and 256 stations working at a 3 Mbs rate. What is the nature of the station? How many bits transmitted does an activity require and what is the expected average rate that the 256 stations will be seeking use of the bus in the comtemplated application? What is a tolerable dead time for a given station to acquire a full set of data? The worst case delay for your 1 mile loop is ~2 usec. What effect does this have on far station getting locked out, etc. . . .?

RTB/Tk

cc: W. K. English
R. W. Taylor
J. I. Elkind
H. H. Hall

[signed: Robert Bachrach]

It is a lot easier to complain without offering solutions in a memo, or a blog comment, or a usenet or mailing list thread. For some reason, in conversation, the same behavior is obviously lame, annoying, counter-productive, etc…

They are so fun to write though.

American Express is using Spinal Tap’s first single in a commercial.

Truthiness really jumped the shark with this compendium of knowledge and answers.

The mind simply REELS.

On logic:

1. A young man approached me at a seminar and stated, ‘Well, I still believe in the big bang, and that we arrived here by chance random processes. I don’t believe in God.’ I answered him, ‘Well, then obviously your brain, and your thought processes, are also the product of randomness. So you don’t know whether it evolved the right way, or even what right would mean in that context. Young man, you don’t know if you’re making correct statements or even whether you’re asking me the right questions.’

The young man looked at me and blurted out, ‘What was that book you recommended?’ He finally realized that his belief undercut its own foundations —such ‘reasoning’ destroys the very basis for reason.

2. On another occasion, a man came to me after a seminar and said, ‘Actually, I’m an atheist. Because I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in absolutes, so I recognize that I can’t even be sure of reality.’ I responded, ‘Then how do you know you’re really here making this statement?’ ‘Good point,’ he replied. ‘What point?’ I asked. The man looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Maybe I should go home.’ I stated, ‘Maybe it won’t be there.’ ‘Good point,’ the man said. ‘What point?’ I replied.

This man certainly got the message. If there is no God, ultimately, philosophically, how can one talk about reality? How can one even rationally believe that there is such a thing as truth, let alone decide what it is?

WHAT THE FUCK!!??

Mashups? No, I want northern-skiffle covers of R&B; tunes.

g-form - From the Block

Brilliant.

“There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life…. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.”

How much?

From the National Safety Council: The odds of getting struck by lightning in one’s lifetime are 1/80,000.

The NWS suggests four factors necessary for recovery:

• Supportive family/friends network.
• Becoming your own advocate and learning as much as you can about this disability.
• A physician willing to listen, read, learn and work with the survivor and their family.
• A sense of humor.

That’s great general advice, but they also put the lifetime odds at 1/5,000. What gives?

This graphic listing the top causes of death helpfully points out that the odds of dying, the baseline, all causes combined, is 1/1, or 100%.

I can’t find any consistant numbers on the terrorist attack odds, lifetime, per year, or otherwise. Most put the odds at over 1/1 million, or make assumptions like “if there was a shopping center attack every week, and you went shopping every other week” type hypotheticals.

Checking out McSweeney’s was on my some-day-maybe list for a few years, and I finally got around to buying The Better of McSweeney’s, Volume 1 in BWI airport this winter. Great stuff.

I’ve since grabbed Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category and enjoyed it over two weeks at the beach for my weddinig and honeymoon.

They are having a sale.

As you may know, it’s been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney’s included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000—actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn’t hit right away, but it’s hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there’s really no way to absorb a loss that big.

We are committed to getting through and past this difficult time, and we’re hoping you, the readers, who have from the start made McSweeney’s possible, will help us.

Over the next week or so, we’ll be holding an inventory sell-off and rare-item auction, which we hope will make a dent in the losses we sustained. A few years ago, the indispensable comics publisher Fantagraphics, in similarly dire straits, held a similar sale, and it helped them greatly. We’re hoping to do the same.

So if you’ve had your eye on anything we’ve produced, now would be a great time to take the plunge. For the next week or so, subscriptions are $5 off, new books are 30 percent off, and the entire backlist is 50 percent off. Please check out the store and enjoy the astounding savings, while knowing every purchase will help dig us out of a big hole.

Do buy.

OK, it’s only $5 off a regular four-book subscription, but that’s $12.50 a book, and each one is bound to be great.

Bound.

Dear list,

You asked for it, and we delivered! Due to the increased demand for more “Month of” projects, and the growing popularity of posting hashes to this list, we proudly present… THE MONTH OF RANDOM HASHES.

Every day for the next month we will be providing a list of not one… not two… not three… not four… not five… not six… not seven… not eight… not nine… not ten… not eleven… not twelve… not thirteen… not fourteen… not fifteen… not sixteen… not seventeen… not eighteen… not nineteen… not twenty… not twenty-one… not twenty -two… not twenty-three… not twenty-four… not twenty-five… not twenty-six… not twenty-seven… not twenty-eight… not twenty-nine… not thirty… not thirty-one… not thirty-two… not thirty-three… not thirty-four… not thirty-five… not thirty-six… not thirty-seven… not thirty-eight… not thirty-nine… not forty… not forty-one… not forty-two… not forty-three… not forty-four… not forty-five… not forty-six… not forty-seven… not forty-eight… not forty-nine… not fifty… not fifty-one… not fifty-two… not fifty-three… not fifty-four… not fifty-five… not fifty-six… not fifty-seven… not fifty-eight… not fifty-nine… not sixty… not sixty-one… not sixty-two… not sixty-three… not sixty-four… not sixty-five… not sixty-six… not sixty-seven… not sixty-eight… not sixty-nine… not seventy… not seventy-one… not seventy-two… not seventy-three… not seventy-four… not seventy-five… not seventy-six… not seventy-seven… not seventy-eight… not seventy-nine… not eighty… not eighty-one… not eighty-two… not eighty-three… not eighty-four… not eighty-five… not eighty-six… not eighty-seven… not eighty-eight… not eighty-nine… not ninety… not ninety-one… not ninety-two… not ninety-three… not ninety-four… not ninety-five… not ninety-six… not ninety-seven… not ninety-eight…

not even ninety-nine…

but… ONE HUNDRED!

To make the project even more successful, this number (100) only represents the number of random strings that hashes are generated for, and not the total number of hashes we provide daily! You will receive an md5sum, sha1sum, and sha256sum of all 100 random strings every day.

That is THREE HUNDRED hashes. In your mailbox. Free. Every day.

Stay tuned for more details!

Brilliant.

Here are the first three from today’s, to give you a taste.

[ITEM #1]
md5: 53da840b93b8a209fe273c0a6011a53b
sha1: f23d002845794ab3f34b0bfc925b87017b1a4920
sha256: 298c8122826de54d9753850fd7fd7dfbf2490b5784d76f48d166526be819e03a

[ITEM #2]
md5: bed4346e8662918e654ac4a85a9c08e8
sha1: e62d1f28787b489c369471a70782575629fe34ce
sha256: f591e1d99955eac3817a46b90768893ffdca3e8c3750ea19ec14e3974ea1e3f5

[ITEM #3]
md5: e366a12b2b67f78bc953f937c0969907
sha1: 5f55786c9425a325f16c4000765227792c9b343a
sha256: 9d8a54d1dc7c69ce991228baefe18b4543c80892a1904b810e32787ccb649a15

Ars visits the new creation museum.

In popular mythology, the Ostrich is famous for hiding its head in the sand at the first sign of danger. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder is noted for his descriptions of the ostrich in his Naturalis Historia, where he describes the Ostrich and the fact that it hides its head in a bush.

There have been no recorded observations of this behavior. A common counter-argument is that a species that displayed this behavior would not survive very long. Ostriches do deliberately swallow sand and pebbles to help grind up their food; seeing this from a distance may have caused some early observers to believe that their heads were buried in sand. Also, ostriches that are threatened but unable to run away may fall to the ground and stretch out their necks in an attempt to become less visible. The coloring of an ostrich’s neck is similar to sand and could give the illusion that the neck and head have been completely buried.[5]

The Ostrich’s behavior is also mentioned in the Bible in God’s discourse to Job (Job 39.13-18). It is described as being joyfully proud of its small wings, but unwise and unmindful of the safety of its nest and harsh in the treatment of its offspring, even though it can put a horse to shame with its speed. Elsewhere, ostriches are mentioned as proverbial examples of bad parenting (see Arabian Ostrich for details).

Idiotic or hilarious, I can’t decide.

This has been available for a while but I forgot to link to it: The Shmoocon talks on the One Laptop per Child project. The discussion has a bit of an information security leaning to it given the audience, but it still packs content for people that don’t approach everything with a screwdriver and a tinfoil hat.

It was neat watching the otherwise brilliant Dan Kaminsky seemingly miss the point during the Q&A.;

Since I just poked at the guy, I should link to his talk too: Weaponizing Noam Chomsky, or Hacking with Pattern Languages, which I think was really really interesting, if slagged by professional pedant Toby Kohlenberg.

I don’t have anything to make up for poking Toby, so I’ll probably end up being interviewd by him for a job or something similar.

This Saturday. J Roddy Walston and The Business

Ottobar. Doors open at 9pm/ Show at 10pm - ALL AGES

I’m hoping to make it after my step-brother Pete’s wedding, which is that afternoon.