gribble: So the Dollar Vigilante scam ring is going to jail. on Trilema - A blog ...: <http://trilema.com/2014/so-the-dollar-vigilante-scam-ring-is-going-to-jail/>; Doug Casey | Casey Research: <https://www.caseyresearch.com/team/staff/doug-casey>; Totally Incorrect - Doug Casey's New Book - Casey Research: <https://www.caseyresearch.com/ee/legacy/totally-incorrect/?ppref=>
mircea_popescu: why the fuck is this "casey research ring my scam bell"
mircea_popescu: "IS THE WORLD'S FIRST AND LARGEST"
mircea_popescu: don't credit newspapers just because they're newspapers when you know in your own field what a shitfest they are ; don't expect the laws etc are anythig but badly written, poorly maintained code full of holes. as reverse-engineerable as anything else.
mircea_popescu: the appearance of "costs" is what's known in poker as a trap. to keep the fucktards out. so dun be a fucktard, you can think, there's no rule that you may only think about coding or something. think all through, the same way, everywhere.
mircea_popescu: yes you pay more for utilities, but not THAT much more and in general actually less than what the tax would have cost you, and you get to deduce the rent too, and it never really ends.
mircea_popescu: ascii_field you're a smart kid, do the math. or better yet, have the girl do the math.
mircea_popescu: actually a honest signal to all the twerps involved not to mess around.
ascii_field: then have problem with isp:
ascii_field: laws of the monkeys proclaim, must stand upside-down on head on odd-numbered tuesdays
mircea_popescu: and lord it over the well hung locals ?
ascii_field: not itching to, either
ascii_field: it isn't. just a sheepskin not worth the tanning
ascii_field: usg won't diddle in the congo
pete_dushenski: jurov thanks for the update :)
punkman: unfortunately, I don't yet own a datacenter in the Congo
trinque: the scientologists have this figured out
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: i did think about this, earlier; principal obstacle is the provision of adequate cooling in my sorry hovel. but in the absence of a better idea, will have to resort to this
jurov: ANN: all funds are there, it just got nonsensical answers from mpex
jurov: ANN: coinbr had to be shut down and will likely stay for several days till i fix the mess.
mircea_popescu: it'll be cheaper than paying a coin a month for 10 months i'm sure, and we also get the added advantage that we put all the eggs in your basket
mircea_popescu: how about you pick out a system, i buy it, and then you run nsa from home.
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: traditional lease in this part of the world, for human habitation, is 1y
BingoBoingo: Dulap probably needs a datacenter with dogs on the floow
mircea_popescu: i prefer the more broad "unretarded"
ascii_field: i would dare to suggest that the subcontract should include a stipulation that >1 unsanctioned reset per year == termination
mircea_popescu: yeah i dun see a problem paying 1-1.5 for this. provided the box is decent and the dc unretarded, i'd take it.
BingoBoingo: <pete_dushenski> not a ~real~ recession, those don't happen in the biggest bestest firstest americas << Testnet Americans
mircea_popescu: me either.
ascii_field: the xerox thing is brain-meltingly hilarious
punkman: from the comments: "Have there been any lawsuits by companies against Xerox for damages caused by Xerox machines substituting characters in various financial reports or other types of reports. I'm having difficulty getting people to believe your report. "
punkman: "More and more known enterprises reach out ot me these days, asking theirselves if they have a huge problem with their scanned documents. Others are already certain thay actually have a huge problem, some of them in security critical contexts. All have in common that they understandably are afraid of publicity."
punkman: "Rick Dastin, Vice President at Xerox, is the first one actually working at Xerox being able to tell me that character substitutions actually can occur and Xerox knows (in contrast to their support). They also tell me that this is wanted."
punkman: "A reader tells me there is a small notice in his copier's admin panel about character substitution. On his device, the “bug” can be avoided by setting compression from “normal” to higher. As a consequence, the issue must have been known by Xerox – so why was nobody telling us?"
ascii_field: ^ from my reading, this had a very real chance of destroying the non-pgp contract as even a theatrical production
btcdrak wonders where he can short Mike and Gavin's reputation which seem to be going down in flames along with the XT movement.
ascii_field: what we are attempting is rather like buying, cleaning, repairing old car; they - pulling off the wheels off someone else's parked machine, as in india
ascii_field: yes, i would ~like~ a gcc library; (and a gpg library.) but i understand the authors' logic re: how this could easily and catastrophically help the enemy
ascii_field: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=01-09-2015#1258486 << looks very much, again, like the gcc thing
phf: i like the href name
phf: https://www.gnupg.org/faq/gnupg-faq.html#keep_dreaming 8.21 I’m a programmer and I need a way to call GnuPG internals directly. Is there a library for this? No, nor will there be.
ascii_field: or at least, the only one with some track record of success.
ascii_field: the only weapon.
phf: This has been frequently requested. However, the current viewpoint of the GnuPG maintainers is that this would lead to several security issues and will therefore not be implemented in the foreseeable future. However, for some areas of application gpgme could do the trick.”
phf: re gnupg, that was actually in faq for a while, but they shortened the whole answer to "not a chance"
ascii_field: little monkeys who want to take the 'good bits', file off the serial numbers, and run with'em
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 16:07:54; ben_vulpes: and the 'open source world' went along with this for how long?
ascii_field: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=01-09-2015#1258454 << the only reason why we still have something like open source softs to kick around is that rms did this.
ascii_field: think of your internal organs. what if they were as easy to steal, cleanly and quietly, as a bicycle ?
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 16:05:28; trinque: yup, in the case with gcc, I think the idea was that there'd be a barrier to understanding it if it were monolithic
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 16:07:42; ben_vulpes: so not just technically challenging to call into the c code of but actually deliberately obfuscated?
ascii_field: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=01-09-2015#1258445 << i do not know. but partly for the same reason as gcc, likely.
ascii_field: 'They then use these keys to spawn large numbers of EC2 instances to mine for bitcoins.' << exercise for the reader: calculate how much, e.g., litecoin, could have been mined by the attacker.
trinque: strikes me as exactly the idiocy of "free software"
phf: <ben_vulpes> asciilifeform has referred to rms doing this with i believe a compiler as well, and i would hear the story << https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/
ben_vulpes: and the 'open source world' went along with this for how long?
ben_vulpes: so not just technically challenging to call into the c code of but actually deliberately obfuscated?
trinque: and therefore a barrier to say ripping off components and making non-free versions
trinque: yup, in the case with gcc, I think the idea was that there'd be a barrier to understanding it if it were monolithic
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform has referred to rms doing this with i believe a compiler as well, and i would hear the story. 'cawsmic rayz and shitgnome bitrot' isn't the kind of story to scare children into losing sleep over.
ben_vulpes: i'm asking specifically about the conspiracy, mats.
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 01:34:42; asciilifeform: in real world, 'telescreen' is not in every room but in every toilet stall, and people not only do not hide from it but pose for it, and complain about not enough resolution on the ccd.
pete_dushenski: not a ~real~ recession, those don't happen in the biggest bestest firstest americas
trinque: mod6: surely this is just a temporary correction or whatever the fuck the propaganda term is now
pete_dushenski: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/rule-48-the-arcane-nyse-rule-to-tame-a-wild-market.html
pete_dushenski: Hmm I'm still seeing "Status : Internal error" on the mpex receipts
gribble: The operation succeeded.
punkman: we maybe could have bug-to-bug compatibility between bitcoinds built with rotor, but otherwise when did bitcoind have bug-to-bug compatibility across versions of itself, openssl, bdb, etc
punkman: what could possibly be the target for bug-to-bug compatibility?
asciilifeform: the bug-for-bug compatibility thing ensures that nsa will follow bitcoin (yes, therealbitcoin) around, like an inoperable cancer
asciilifeform: the best that could be achieved is 'ada ecc lib that provably does what the openssl routines claimed to do'
assbot: Logged on 28-06-2015 04:49:55; asciilifeform: decimation: i don't think that a mathematically-rigorous description of openssl (not to even mention boost and bdb) could be achieved in 10,000 years of sweat
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 08:27:20; mircea_popescu: anyway, the ridiculous pretense that openssl is still even a thing at all.
asciilifeform: ht to choose for yourself what is good and what is evil. Anyone who wants to enter has to relinquish this right, and give it to the owner. Because anyone who enters through the gate automatically acquires an owner.'
asciilifeform: 'The western establishment is nurturing ISIS like an attack dog, feeding it, training it to like human blood, in order to then release it and offer people the freedom of choice: you can die in its teeth, or you can hide behind a gate, the keys to which are in the hands of global capitalism. And they will charge you for the entrybut not in money. That is, not just in money. The payment they require is your freedomyour rig
asciilifeform: this is the only alternative to gay marriage, feminism, total surveillance of everyone and extraterritorial American justice.'
asciilifeform: 'The most important thing in such a creation is that it must be horrible. It must be self-evidently horrible. So horrible that everyoneeven the idiotscould understand that thisthis thing covered in blood, holding a torn-off human leg in its handis the only alternative to having the United States of America in complete control of everything. That burning people alive, mass executions, beheadings, sanctioned rapes
gribble: The operation succeeded.
asciilifeform: ;;later tell mircea_popescu dulap: 'reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.el6.x Tue Sep 1 03:05 - 10:05 (07:00)' << phuctor is dead in the water until this stops.
assbot: Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS - The Daily Beast ... ( http://bit.ly/1KD2dtP )
punkman: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/31/petraeus-use-al-qaeda-fighters-to-beat-isis.html
assbot: Logged on 29-08-2015 12:16:01; mats: http://www.gliderzz.com I have been seeing these around a lot lately
assbot: Amazon.com: The Three-Body Problem (9780765377067): Cixin Liu, Ken Liu: Books ... ( http://bit.ly/1L0f9G1 )
shinohai: punkman: This I assume? http://www.amazon.com/The-Three-Body-Problem-Cixin-Liu/dp/0765377063
punkman: I put "The Three-Body Problem" on my list recently, seems like it got a Hugo award in the meantime
shinohai: Perhaps he could be described as a member of the species whose brain has not yet fully evolved.
adlai: cazalla: ty for the poem
cazalla: punkman, she is carrying the child in her ass?
mircea_popescu: in other news, http://31.media.tumblr.com/1aa153796752dbb8d067f547d5944174/tumblr_mzxmu4NJkS1qaoeoqo6_r2_400.gif
BingoBoingo: Well, If I know the FBI/Treasury/WTFObolaBBQ is watching why would I even create an opportunity to be framed as a person looking to participate in drug commerce?
assbot: A Law Enforcement Encounter: If you ran a Bitcoin related service before the thing hit $100 you prolly ought to be somewhat concerned and/or prepared | Bingo Blog
BingoBoingo: shinohai: Why would I ever participate in discussions there. http://www.thedrinkingrecord.com/2014/08/25/a-law-enforcement-encounter-if-you-ran-a-bitcoin-related-service-before-the-thing-hit-100-you-prolly-ought-to-be-somewhat-concerned-andor-prepared/
mircea_popescu: anyway, the ridiculous pretense that openssl is still even a thing at all.
shinohai: Nice article BingoBoingo All you need to do now is drop it off in r/darknetmarkets and a few .onion forums, there goes your BIP101 support
mircea_popescu: they'll sell their worthless startup for billions and so forth, if only they respect licenses and never say bad things about fat people or something
shinohai: Because as we say in the South, "Backdoor guests are best".
btcdrak: No surprises here then, common VCs backing BIP101 http://qntra.net/2015/08/bip-101-syndicate-shares-fiat-ties-opposition-to-actual-bitcoin/
gribble: The operation succeeded.
shinohai: ;;later tell trinque despite me being the most "Special Ed" of anyone here, persistence paid off: http://i.imgur.com/3xAoZTN.png?1
punkman: BingoBoingo: I dunno why anyone humors the license derps
BingoBoingo: In the world of license mess http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/the-peculiar-libretunnel-situation
cazalla: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=31-08-2015#1257612 <<< almost clicked off while waiting but figured alf would not link such a thing without providing the goods.. did not disappoint
fluffypony: BingoBoingo: that's a CMake best practices thing, the guy that did that (Ben Boeckel) is one of the CMake developers
BingoBoingo: The way everything is organized now is also very hard to work with. cmake scattered all over every directory
fluffypony: BingoBoingo: well it's either that or we have to refactor every exception into functions_windows.cpp / functions_bsd.cpp / functions_linux.cpp etc., which would make the code splintered and extremely hard to work with
BingoBoingo: fluffypony: Seriously though all the ifdefs scattered everywhere
gribble: The operation succeeded.
mircea_popescu: incidentally, the "bitcoin uses port 8333" thing is retarded.
mircea_popescu: anyway, the "blocking ports" bs has been going on for nigh on 20 years now.
mircea_popescu: <asciilifeform> 'v' is a double-edged sword, however, i must say, in that it makes it possible to build therealbitcoin without reading patches or giving a fuck << blind trust is only a problem to the blind trustor.
assbot: [bitcoin-dev] AT&T has effectively banned Bitcoin nodes by closing port 8333 via a hidden firewall in the cable box ... ( http://bit.ly/1JIwQce )
phf: for example this code http://paste.lisp.org/display/154625 validates signatures (using ccl's ffi generator and slightly patched gnupg 1.4.19), but on failure verify_signature either prints to stdout, with no notable return code or sometimes exit(...)'s the whole process
phf: which wouldn't be a problem in a traditional c code, but in case of gnupg half of the code seems to have hidden, side channel concerns, that i just don't have yet enough experience in practical crypto to grok
mod6: <+asciilifeform> rather than roasting in the hell of figuring my patch topology out with a pencil << imagine how much easier it is now for a person to literally pick a place in the flow and patch directly to it. instead of wading through mutliated corpses trying to find the least smelly ones.
mod6: fair assesment there. but, i think it's great, and clean, and "works". responsibility is on the signer to read what they sign. same in life.
phf: i spent some time going through exercise of getting rid of main in gnupg 1.*, compiling it into a dynamic library, loading into a lisp and calling c functions through ffi. it's doable, but yeah environment very hostile to librarification: often times reporting is done only as a printf, with no status codes, so impossible to do simple (= (ffi-call...) 0) without unpacking the c level function
asciilifeform: which was really not the case before, despite well-intentioned efforts of the people here at making automatic build scripts, etc
asciilifeform: 'v' is a double-edged sword, however, i must say, in that it makes it possible to build therealbitcoin without reading patches or giving a fuck
mod6: and for taking the time to explain some of it to me.
mod6: anyway, thanks for putting all this together!
asciilifeform: no gpg-compatible anything of any other kind exists anywhere.
mod6: i guess i don't mean to confuse.. was just thinking about it in the capacity where a stripped down box is being used.
mod6: but yeah, i just `mkdir -p ~/.seals ~/.wot` and dropped the sigs into ~/.seals and the pub keys in ~/.wot and off it went.
asciilifeform: as shown in the demo tarball.
asciilifeform: nicknames end up being the respective filename-sans-extension.
asciilifeform: place pubkeys in the dir (defaults to home dir, subdir .wot) and, importantly,
asciilifeform: some corresponding to a released patch set, others not
asciilifeform: it is mainly because my disk is littered with 1,001 copies of therealbitcoin tree
mod6: the origin cmd is pretty neat too
asciilifeform: btw mod6 does the 'o' command make sense?
asciilifeform: other than various fixes / cleanups, the 1 thing i still wanna add to 'v' is file histories
mircea_popescu: perhaps the anatomically nudest orgasm depiction
mod6: heheh, my fingers didn't want to type what my brain was trying to say. it's a little baked from the sun today at the fair.
mod6: well, the 2 i just mentioned come last. is there any reason on the sort order of the last 2? or i just need to grok toposort more?
mod6: ok, i think i get it. neither patches/asciilifeform_maxint_locks_corrected.vpatch or patches/asciilifeform_add_verifyall_option.vpatch have any dependants (d's)
asciilifeform: roughly, the way it works - must work - is that no patch is applied for which the dependencies have not already been applies.
mod6: i was mechanically cross checking the output file checksums against the v054-TEST2 bundle and noticed that i didn't come out with -verifyall in there. was really wondering for a minute lol.
asciilifeform: but there are no timestamps, remember !
mod6: which isn't the case chronoligicaly
mod6: asciilifeform: qq, I was under the impression that when using press, if I picked something like 'maxint_corrected', it would patch all the way up through that one. but it didn't seem to apply the -verifyall patch? or do I misunderstand how its supposed to work? http://dpaste.com/1J2BS40.txt thoughts?
phf: (asciilifeform: by the way if you haven't played http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/darkeye/darkeye.htm. it's not much of a quest, but it has a consistently fantastic mood. Burroughs does voice acting for one of the characters)
asciilifeform: did not go to yaletonward with the right folks ?
mircea_popescu: "Alydian Inc., a unit of CoinLab Inc., on Friday filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. bankruptcy court in Seattle. The 10-page court filing didn't disclose why Alydian filed for bankruptcy or how it hopes to repay its debts."
mircea_popescu: why. because it's run by the catamite club of us.
mircea_popescu: you kidding me they just took even more millions at whatever dilution
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i still can't figure out why they are (?) in debt. am i thick or what
mircea_popescu: your 10 bucks buys them less than a second of life.
mircea_popescu: how many alfs are there ? how many do they need, to cover their immense if fictitious debt base ?
mircea_popescu: how much did they make on that deal ?
asciilifeform: i just gave them more than kilo personally not long ago
mircea_popescu: for the same reason.
asciilifeform: why would they?
phf: for the love of god
asciilifeform: 'for the love of god, montrezor!!!'
phf: the only thing enemy will drink is amontillado
mircea_popescu: im in fucking love with the fucking bash omg/
mircea_popescu: "mircea_popescu: giving inept infantrymen good horses doesn't create an elite cavalry regiment, it just creates a lot of injured horses. giving stupid people smart things doesn't make them smart. it'll just make a lot of broken smart things."
mircea_popescu: wehn i linked to it, i linked to an item put there a week or so ago.
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 02:51:34; asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: after the thread!
mircea_popescu: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=01-09-2015#1257994 << no, it was not after the thread.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i have written on many occasions, that this (the froth) is why the very youngest of the folks worth anything in computerdom are circa early 1980s
mircea_popescu: had i met linux as a boy i'd be pissing with froth on the entire stupid stack.
mircea_popescu: that behaviour is certainly the l;argest contributor of wy i am even vaguely interested in computers at all
asciilifeform: was it the ring signature thing ?
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 02:28:35; gernika: boots up to C:\. Then they just have to type in the name of the game they want to play and hit enter.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform more in the sense that the blondy teen that is always clenching her jaws shut is vaguely interesting in a way her verbose airheaded cogeners are not
asciilifeform: can mircea_popescu or anyone else remind me, what was supposed to be the upside of being a glass bott^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husing monero ?
asciilifeform: it is 'interesting' in the same sense as denizen of insane asylum who thinks he is a glass bottle is more interesting than the fella who thinks he is ordinary napoleon ?
mircea_popescu: The upshot of this is that you can run a client that is a year old, but pretty much after that 1 year anniversary you'll be dropped off the network (even if there have been no "real" changes in that year)."
mircea_popescu: Anything that is more of a soft fork will kick in immediately (as long as it doesn't drop pre-fork clients off the network). Anything on the p2p layer (ie. hard forkable) will be kept in the wings until the next fork date (as roughly estimated from block height) and then is enabled.
mircea_popescu: sufficient number of miners are running the new code.
mircea_popescu: Every 6 months, either on March 15 + September 15 or on April 15 + October 15, the Monero network will have a hard fork. 30 days before the fork we will have a code freeze + tag + release, and if there are no major changes we'll have an increase in the protocol version (ie. that's at a minimum). A similar fork system to Bitcoin will apply, whereby a rollover to the new code after the trigger block will only occur if a
mircea_popescu: "Basic bottom line: every 6 months there's a hard fork. You get 1 hard fork's grace before you have to update or be left behind.
mircea_popescu: so i've been sort-of idly thinking maybe monero is actually something should be taken seriously. then BingoBoingo dug up https://forum.getmonero.org/4/academic-and-technical/303/a-formal-approach-towards-better-hard-fork-management
gernika: I would have checked then even numbered answers
asciilifeform: (they turned it into a line of calculators that was wildly popular)
asciilifeform: (doubt they'd release it)
asciilifeform: reversing 'derive' is this thing that i come back to for a week or two every other year or so.
asciilifeform: it was written in 'mulisp', which is compiled in such a way as to make this theoretically feasible.
asciilifeform: btw i've always thought it would be interesting to get the lisp src of derive (yes) out of the exe
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 01:40:57; asciilifeform: so far, EVERY SINGLE SI FAB ON THE PLANET and ALL THE DESIGN TOOLING (with the exception of chuck moore's...) runs on winblowz
asciilifeform: at any rate, the fdd image is here for n00bz as well
mircea_popescu: but it also has very little regard for you know, "the reader has come to expect"
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: naturally. in the mental universe various folks inhabit, nothing mircea_popescuine could even begin to contemplate happening.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform one of the funniest protests (sexually repressed women generally) bring to my sexual themed writings is "oh, it would never happen like that".
asciilifeform: gernika: it's a straight floppy image with the real thing in it, created strictly with actual msdos running on emulated hardware
gribble: The operation succeeded.
BingoBoingo: ;;later tell fluffypony Is this really the way to seed anything? https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/blob/master/src/crypto/oaes_lib.c#L503
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 01:33:36; asciilifeform: on account of how you can't really write an engaging yarn about inhabitants of the real thing, as we have it
gribble: The operation succeeded.
mircea_popescu: why ? the eval!
assbot: Logged on 01-09-2015 01:29:13; asciilifeform: no one is banning linux. instead there is a 'linux foundation' (see log) which will sign 'legit, non-terrorist' kernels for you
gribble: The operation succeeded.
asciilifeform: ;;later tell gernika http://loper-os.org/pub/derive_and_more.img.gz << floppy image containing PROPER msdos, sys utils (for making more of self), himem, edit, qbasic, buncha other stuff, and Derive.
mircea_popescu: in local news, argentina GDP fell 4.9% today because one of the lengthy queues accidentally merged with its own ending, resulting in 84`755 people spending an average of 8 hours following a very intricate 12 mile pattern through town for no apparent purpose.
mircea_popescu: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=01-09-2015#1257852 << you're telling me like i'm the one shitting in the broadband lol
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: after the thread!
asciilifeform: whenever you scratch the surface of damn near anything.
asciilifeform: esp. considering the games.
phf: what isn't. at some point freedos was legit in a poc||gtfo kind of way, i.e. "we did it for the lulz", but now it's positioned as the only legitimate way to run dos programs. that you of course purchased from GoG.
asciilifeform: there are some very serious folks who are working on having it be forgotten that a 486 was an entirely usable thing, and in many ways a superior cultural artifact, all things considered, than the computer you and i are sitting in front of today
gernika: it starts - but the screen is filled with garbage
gernika: Tried derive.exe on freedos too - doesn't work either.
assbot: Commander Keen - The Doom Wiki at DoomWiki.org - Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, and more ... ( http://bit.ly/1KATjwL )
asciilifeform: yes, it can. but it is rare for anyone to give the megatonne of shit that must be given, for it to actually happen;
asciilifeform: gernika: no argument. my point concerned the traditional argument 'oh but anything can be reverse-engineered perfectly'
gernika: boots up to C:\. Then they just have to type in the name of the game they want to play and hit enter.
phf: at some point you had SAIL and Augment basically design by men for men, lisp machines, xerox park as products of that. later you get two bit hacks selling imperfect copies of the glimpsed technology, thats your 80s and 90s. at this point there's already "no grasp", but the control is limited, basically a byproduct of commercialism. now you get the next stage, which is when the bureaucrats are getting involved
asciilifeform: and this despite the fact that msdos 6.2 source leaked in late '90s
asciilifeform: to the point that 'freedos' still won't run certain gamez
asciilifeform: or think of even something so humble as msdos. despite the fact that you could fill several bookcases with material like 'norton's guide', 'undocumented dos', etc. the thing was never fully reverse-engineered by anyone
phf: that's obvious with hindsight, but imaginary in the same sense that лихие 90ые were imaginary, or really any other "interesting times"
asciilifeform: the rug was somewhat imaginary to begin with.
phf: i don't know how much of this concern is driving cause vs. purposes, i.e. real limitations experiences by you vs. building civilization from first principles anathema millenials style.
asciilifeform: or rifle, to the zulu
asciilifeform: more commonly it is simply to deny modern tech to the vanquished
asciilifeform: phf: diddling is not the only or even the most traditional exertion of control by the crown
phf: that's not a problem that i'm facing though, since i don't know of diddle diesel engines (i'm sure they are but..)
asciilifeform: there is, after all, a reason why civilized men drive ferrari while the pashtun lives and dies in own shit and fucks goats
phf: it's the main factory though, since everything else can be done pashtun style