primitur

Australian, checking in. I first saw a Commodore Pet, then an Apple II shop, in Perth WA, around 1977 - 1982, competing with each other. Tandy had their TRS-80 shops too, but generally .. Apple II was the first "real PC" I remember seeing in the neighborhood of the late 70's. In the early to mid 80's, it was all C64 and Atari and Amstrad for games, pretty well mixed, but a lot of the richer-kids had big Apple II investments, even into the 80's .. and there were of course a lot of other clones in the arena, at that time, too.

One thing that I think that is important to understand is that these machines, and this code, is still out there, working. People are still playing these games (MAME) and the emulation scene that has arisen due to the fanboix fervour has really pushed a lot of the gems into the 21st century with new life and vigor. The "automatic game player"-coded-in-z80, i.e. hardware playing hardware, is a real hoot!

And last but not least, consider this: people are still writing amazing software for the older architectures, using modern principles, and learning astonishing new things about the "antique hardware", to boot! In my particular nook I have witnessed the Oric-1/Atmos machines (http://oric.org), typically considered a fairly "grotty" 8bit machine of the 80's, never enough decent software, died early .. yet now come to new life with the discovery of never-considered color-modes and graphics capabilities by some of the modern scenes very elite hackers, turning their eyes to the "old" machines and producing new hits!

I think a lesson in all of this is that the old machines still contain a lot of power. The robotron code could probably be refactored into something else, easily enough, if there was some intention behind doing it. There are a lot of 6809's out there, still, presumably in landfill its true, but nevertheless one could do worse than to re-discover old machines in the modern era, were one to want to sharpen ones skills ..

You are not excused from taking responsibility for your government, which is formed on the basis of the support of its people. You are responsible for your British government, citizen.

Did Haider violate the human rights of everyone on the planet, like the US has done?

No.

Next straw man ..

It is about the people, and nothing else. No government ever derived its powers without the consent - through apathy or direct support - of its peoples. Every other government was overthrown.

So, I concur with the OP: it is time for the American people to start feeling the pressure from those of us in the world who expect better from them. Before its too late.

The student was trying to reveal the Truth, which is that the NSA leadership are in fact, lying criminals, and she wanted to know if that was a requirement for participation in the NSA as a new recruit.

It is a fact that the NSA leaders are lying criminals who have violated the laws of the land.

The true fact of the matter is that any secret kept by the US military, which must not be revealed to the public in order to maintain public order, and which nevertheless does induce Terror in the receiver of the secret .. well folks: this is Terrorism being used on your Government by infiltrating agents whose true purpose is the destruction of the US, itself, and the establishment of a new world order. Of people, governments, corporations, armed with psychological processes designed with specific purposes, weaponized.

The Terror Meme is A Weapon, Gone Loose.

Anyone alive today, who is making a daily business of the commitment to ideas such as that populations must serve Terror, must be immediately taken off their positions of power.

The only possible hope is that the American people realize just how much responsibility they have to take in order to de-Throne their new masters. If you are not willing to burn the curtain, not just look behind it, then you must take responsibility until you are willing, citizen.

The right of the true enemy to keep secrets must be revoked. The absolutely certain result will be more peace, because Peace happens when people reveal secrets to each other with the intention of making Peace. To Make Peace, Communication: and destroy all barriers to doing so.

The US has to have a serious look at its secrecy policies, and there must be a serious attempt, by the People, to demonstrate to the world that Peace itself, has still yet a chance to prevail. Make no mistake: on the other side of US Military Secrets is a reason for the US Military to be removed from post. Always.

Another TV-free household reporting in, here. When my family and I want to watch a movie, we do indeed cramp around my 17" laptop and watch it. Its quite comfortable, four of us on the couch, and the screen propped up properly in front of us. We all see it, we're all quite comfortable.

I feel I must define TV-free, though. We have iPads and other tablets, and ample computer resources throughout the house, where its not really fair to say we don't "do the vegetable video brainwash thing", because we do. Its just that its not per some broadcast schedule and we choose, entirely, what we want to watch instead of having it imposed upon us by a Programming Director.

We never pay for video, though. Maybe once in a few moons my wife and I might go to the cinema, but unless the movie is really good, we don't bother. I have absolutely no problem with the idea of bankrupting "Hollywood", which I see as a disastrous cult that must be de-funded. Both of us have sort of made up our mind that mainstream entertainment is mindlessly boring, and so we do try to get involved a little more in the process of discovering new things. We do pay for art where we know the author of it, or have a way to pay them directly without having a Brand engine in the way.

There is no such thing as national security. The state of the existence of some such condition is a fallacy. There is, also, no such thing as a necessary state secret: every single secret the state could ever want to keep is a failure of the state to produce the only thing that states can produce, to make peace: shared knowledge of the world.

Oh, sure, the military-industrial mindset, where the entire world is naught by a jungle a-fire, full of cannibals .. they will prey upon my bold statement that secrets are unnecessary, but no secret is anything but a lie. It does not ever sustain itself, inherently, but rather consumes the holder of life, itself.

And to this one can only respond: if you believe your secrets are worth more than another human life, your attempt at holding a position, in State, as a member of the greater whole, has failed.

I would sack every general, immediately. Disarm the architects of the greatest scam that ever intruded upon mankinds search for Peace itself: the makers of War, in word and deed.

My mind looks at this statement:

""Alexander also noted that the NSA, under this part of the law, cannot intentionally target Americans in or outside the United States.""

.. and makes the conclusion that the NSA thinks it has the right to manage any relationship an American may have, by keeping data on all foreigners. In other words, the NSA thinks it has the right to know how your foreign friends are, American, and formulate a shadow around you consisting of a hole in the matrix.

What is it about American culture that allows itself to produce an entire body of citizens who truly believe they can operate as members of the broader conscious body of humans, existing as they do quite literally, gazing at navels?

I propose that Americans are fine being watched, because they want to be watched, primally. I think there is a deep-seated desire to actually have someone big, strong and brave, standing there watching every single thing you do. It can be seen as a reflection through the broader spectra of how we 'know these cultures'.

Perhaps the most criminal device in the world that has ever been used to attempt to cure cannibalism is indeed, the mirror ..

Ah, very nice hint, thanks for that! I see here:

https://code.google.com/p/libjingle/source/browse/trunk/talk...

That in fact your idea has a fair bit of merit. I will add "investigate adding libjingle to MOAI" to my MOAI to-do list, because .. it seems do'able.

I wish there were an easy, drop-in lib that would give me swarm/peerless networking like this, for Mobile platforms.

Even a Lua implementation would be enough for me.

1. You also chooose your participation in government. 2. Right, so because Mr. Z. et al., don't have a 'license to kill', there is a difference. This is the only difference. 3. Which do you trust more, McDonalds or Congress?

>to have an actual conversation both about privacy

Let us have a conversation about that:

Why should Mark Zuckerberg, et al., know things about you that the government shouldn't?

Or, to put it another way, shouldn't the very thing which represents You, the People, have as much information about you as, "They", the Corporations, do?

After all, Mr. Z, et al., can quite easily tell you things about yourself which, 3 words into the sentence, would give the government a lot of information it needs to optimize itself. To Serve You.

Whereas, the corporate stance is "we will own the consumers, all the consumers, and we will encourage them to endless consume our product", the government stance is: "how do we keep 240million people from cannibalizing themselves".

Mr Z., et al., are being mighty disingenous with this position, because the fact of the whole matter is, the Government would be the absolute BEST customer for him/them/et al., there is no better way to feed a consumer than to get the Government on your side, as we see with Pharmaceuticals, Farming, Oil, etc.

There are multiple points of view in this argument, is all I am trying to say, and by setting the above in word I hope to have at least set the scene for my real, tl;dr, which is this:

Privacy is a trap. Those who are fully exploiting the nature of the system, simply keep no secrets .. and trade never willingly with those who do.

Just in case someone is looking for a neat way to experiment with game Grids, the MOAI framework has some pretty good support for grids, in general, and works very well at giving you everything you need to set up a game and get a grid working, fairly smoothly:

http://getmoai.com/

(And, on a side-note, MOAI is going to get an HTML5 host pretty soon, meaning you can deploy to HTML5, iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, OSX .. Chrome NaCl .. and so on!)

Hey, thanks for the info about port80, perfect way for me to get some intel done .. so next time I'm in Perth I'll be sure to include a Wednesday meeting in the schedule.. alas, it'll be a year or two yet (young un's) but the time will come .. ;)

0.0000001 BTC to store a bit of data, indefinitely, for as long as the BTC network exists? Methinks there is a Dropbox plugin on its way ..

How to get Stripe in Australia, set up Pin, $$$-big (locally), BRANDBRANDBRAND (its an Aussie thing), and then .. when big enough, the sharks come calling, throw out the chum ..

Hi! I'm from Perth (Subiaco) but have been an ex-pat for over 20 years. The reason is, I've always considered Perth a mining town, and have managed to live in many other big cities around the world during an active professional life, working as a systems software developer. I'm quite ex-pat, but fondly dream of days in the sun..

So I take this opportunity to ask someone, sensibly: Is there a thriving tech scene in Perth? Software businesses, catering to a local market, that sort of thing? Like most major cities, there is probably an 'IT sector', consisting of hardware and systems support companies, probably -and of course the Uni's of WA are all very well connected in the F/OSS/Academic systems software departments. But, whats the local software economy like? Much custom, Business to business, software?

I imagine that with the Perth Mint and the Mining banks involved in all this, its going to be a solid way to do business in that part of the world, as well as Internationally. I'm, anyhow, off to get my family to set up their Pin Payments accounts asap .. :)

For every vim, there is a Kai's Power Tools. What people need to know about the user interface is that the interface itself doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what does the user think, and does she: USE IT?

The Elon Musk model, perhaps? Bootstrap by delivering to the people, repeat until Mars.

A super-capacitor, which may simply still be called a 'battery' (accumulator?) in the grand scheme of things, sure.. oh and I do not deny the chemistry in the chips, just that the entire consumption of it, as it stands right now, is the issue. Once I have a machine, I don't want to have to keep adding things to it: batteries (energy) included.

So I lust for the solar-powered mini-PC's that seem perched out there on the horizon.

This is why I say we must combine the effort to reduce the grid dependence by enduring mobility. Yes, the Planet has a non-uniform distribution of most resources, but the big fat problem with our energy use today is that we stay in place to use it. Indeed, cities do have to consider their location on the planet in the grand scheme of things; the means by which these cities expand/contract/endure/reduce is entirely an energy business.

My feel, is that any cultural event which occurs to reduce the dependence on a long-distance chemical eco-system, is going to be a way out of the mess. If computers can rapidly leap to the point where the Grid connection is made irrelevant, because computing is happening with the energy resources available to us in the near spectra, for free in the sense that we are not stuck in produce/consume loops everywhere, then we will have ourselves a lighter time of the days ahead.

I'd be quite happy to return to 8-bit computing if it was on a small device that harvested my daily jogging routine. Go for a jog, check e-mail. Finally a proper user interface.. ;)

I think nuclear power has a long way to go before it will ever become non-useful to the species, which is to say I'm pro nuclear-power, generally. I think its better for the Earth that we localize massive power generation around a relatively small area, rather than systemetize energy transfer into, almost, everything we do with Oil, for example. Transferring energy instead of making it and using it where its needed, seems to be one way we can reduce the overall footprint as quickly as possible. Nuclear power requires not nearly as much massive support infrastructure as coal and oil, I feel. Sure: quite some, but with micro-reactors on the horizon, this may also miniaturize.

But what I really think is we should be focussing the effort on local energy need, far more seriously. Like, establish real neighborhood energy systems that use the energy that is in the neighborhood - if its solar, solar. If it is thermal: thermal. If it is wind: wind. If there are none of the above sources available for your house: MOVE!

All of the tech exists for an average house-hold to step off the grid, and it really is mostly a matter of minds being changed about the 'culturally acceptable reality' of how we manage our energy-driven lifestyles.

I, for one, welcome the day when I can compute without having to ever once plug my laptop in, because its case is in fact no longer a dull grey oil-debt, but rather instead a highly efficient solar panel, and I look forward to using a 'slow system' if the CPU itself has evolved into an extremely lean - yet fully functional - current sink that gets along with whatever sunshine is available. I yearn for a complete dirth of chemical-derived power for my computing needs.

Hopefully, the day will come when stepping off the Grid is as easy as, once, the revolution that occurred when millions of us were suddenly able to carry around 20,000 songs in our pocket, access any knowledge, anywhere, and talk to anyone we chose to, any time, at a flick of a swish ..

You're right about that! What I'm enjoying, perhaps a little meta-, is how easily that swell soup of jewels is ground up into a fine sonic-screwdriver of a tool. Seems to me right now, I've got yet another reason to enjoy the golang experience ..

Well I for one was quite surprised that a) docker compiled so rapidly on my system, and b) its a very sublime binary. I guess I'm learning another reason why golang ought to get more of my free-time attention, so thats enough HN for me, I'm off to spend the afternoon reading your code.. Cheers to you and what I'm about to learn from docker! :)

> Homeless people don't need showers.

Homeless people DO need showers! Been there? Done that?

One sure-fire way to not get a job (and thus get yourself and your family off the street): show up stinking of whatever slept on you last night, under some bridge or cardboard or .. whatever.

Homeless people DO NEED SHOWERS. Showers and self-hygiene during conditions of regular duress are a sure-fire way to feel better about the day, get prepared for the challenges, face the sunshine and Do Something About It.

Government organized "Mental Health Care", in case you weren't paying attention, is exactly how this mess got started, In The First Place. So: Nope to that. Deny the currently-in-power insanity profiteers their budget!

Minimum Wage: TOTALLY! Absolutely with you on this one, buddy! Give someone a way to have a daily shower and a regular job to go to that can pay for a weeks worth of living expenses, and you've got a winning formula .. But thats always the problem when you are "A do-nothin' Bum": One mans Living expenses are another mans pocket-change ..

Drop the sh, and inspect the script before you run it. It just checks a few dependencies and system items, and then retrieves the docker binary, and puts it in /usr/local/bin. All of this can be done by hand by any Linux sysadmin .. And of course, it wouldn't take much to make a .deb for it either.

However, I would like to discuss the docker design a little more in detail, on the basis of its ease of use. First of all, I too do not like to have random stuff piped into my shell, so I went looking for the Docker sources. It was darned easy to build from sources, and quick too. At the end, I had a single binary.

And the cool thing about this binary is that its both the server and the client in the same package! So - the sysadmin of your Linux machine can (and should, manually, for now) build from sources, install in a local/ or ~/bin, and add the daemon to start up as needed.

Then, anyone else on the machine - not needing su rights - can run docker images, and so on.

This isolation, simplicity of install, and .. frankly .. rocking feature set .. is a beautiful thing. Can it be that golang is the secret sauce here? I say: yes.

Thanks for the great tip! I'll be dusting a toughbook off and having a little distro party .. looks like antiX is perfect for my needs! :) EDIT: In case its of interest, if I can get what I need onboard to build and run LOAD81 (see http://github.com/antirez/load81) then I'll be in heaven .. ancient hardware re-tasked with a Lua front-end! Fabulous new old toy!

Whats Audio support like? I've been running Ubuntu-Studio with JACK for years, and have a very much 'entrenched' setup consisting of multiple (20+) channels of Firewire Audio in my studio environment - it works great, and is a real power DAW. (I never, ever use Pulseaudio .. but do have an alsa-jack 'channel bridge' so that I can have Alsa compatability)

But I'd love to know that JACK is a first-class citizen on #!. Is it?

Also, I have a small stack of extremely old Panasonic Toughbook CF-25's that I've been trying to find a distro for, as I believe they're still quite useful, albeit ancient.. is it feasible to run it with only 128meg of RAM, yet moderate-sized hard drive, and Pentium-133 style CPU, you think?

Am I the only one who thinks this is obviously a ploy to sell more RAM to the angry users!?!@?