Wonderful! Seems to be public domain, too?
Why was this secret?
11–20 of 219 posts
Re: Why was this secret?
#12"So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!” Must agree... until someone makes it your problem, by social standards, laws, or anything else they can use to make your life harder.
My thoughts almost exactly.
It's all fine until you wind up on some sort of watchlist because of something "someone" found, and then travelling by air is a nightmare.
I'm not sure why, exactly, we decided that people we don't like but we can't pin any crimes on are punished by having limited access to air travel, but that's how it is!
On a related and more personal note, I once got in a large amount of trouble for a slashdot post. The company I worked for found a post I wrote when I wasn't an employee discussing social engineering attacks on building security(not theirs, mind you, but general ones). This led to some very tense discussions where I was accused of being a hacker, not caring about security, and plenty of other things. My personal (though public) livejournal came to the discussion, too. It was to the point where, if they tried to haul me in again, I would have requested an attorney.
It ultimately blew over and was recognized for what it was; Corporate Security trying to justify the money they spent on data mining. But it was a very tense period.
After that incident I keep things a lot less public.
Re: Why was this secret?
#13I've often said that the best way to get a quick competitive advantage against our rivals would be to send them our source.
Re: Why was this secret?
#14My favorite thing on GameFAQs is the angry verbiage at the end of every FAQ promising dire legal consequences should anyone attempt to appropriate and profit from their work. Do you really think anyone anywhere is going to pay for your Donkey Kong Country strategy guide?
If I ever write a game FAQ, it's going to end with "if you figure out a way to make a profit off of this, you are legally required to let me know how you did it so I can congratulate you."
Re: Why was this secret?
#15> "I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think. " Uh - yeah this is completely naive. Here is why; the informatin is meaningless to you only if you are not looking to manipulate, exploit, blackmail or have the upper hand of the person holding the secrets . This is…
I don't think he's making a point the NSA dragnet (which I'm assuming you're referring to) - that's obviously a completely different thing.
He's talking about individuals willfully releasing information, not some secret government program to collect all your personal data that has ever been on the Internet.
Re: Why was this secret?
#16It makes for an interesting thought about what is intrinsically valuable versus what isn't.
The diary is 'non-intrinsic' because he doesn't have the context in which the information makes sense. A series of usernames and passwords is secret because it is self referentially useful.
Stuff in the first category can become useful over time (the Mosaic effect) when someone suddenly lashes out about something and that connects the context of a series of family dramas. Stuff in the latter category is useful right away.
Its useful to think about both cases. (oh and I really enjoyed reading through the ideas, they are fun) I should put my list up somewhere as well.
Re: Why was this secret?
#17Great idea. Here's mine:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pn5vL3TY3VKr3WyZrKBpWnGW...
Re: Why was this secret?
#18In the context of coding projects, the author's conclusion seems realistic. Given current events though, I can't help but wonder if there's a subtext about privacy and snooping. If so, then I would venture this observation: Your friend's super-secret diary is meaningless to you only because you have no desire to abuse the access you've been given. Suppose instead your friend's devious enemy obtained the diary. Then,…
While searching for the Dilber strip IvyMike mentioned, I came across one relevant to your post: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-24/
Re: Why was this secret?
#19There's an old joke: so this guy is trying to get rid of an ugly old sofa, he puts it out on the curb with the sign "free sofa!". Days pass; no luck. So he puts up a new sign saying "sofa: $50, call ###-####" and it's gone in ten minutes.
Re: Why was this secret?
#20This is such bullshit - poorly formulated hippy dribble. If he was really interested in such ideas, he would know and use GPL/AGPL/MIT/Apache licences already for his code, and CC for his writings. Instead he makes everyone hippy dippy stupid about secrecy and privacy. It might all be fine when you are rich, cis-straight and white, but a single non friendly idea and you are a threat to the state. People that cheapen…
This is honestly the most worthless comment I have ever seen on HN. Besides ad hominem, there is literally nothing here other than a giant pile of conspiracy.