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Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel?

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mcdowell_ag@sky.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 6, 2017 at 1:51:58 AM UTC, D B Davis wrote:
>> Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> > In article <6dc0628f-463e-40a8-9434-e2044a127b7d@googlegroups.com>,
>> > <lenona321@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >>Some articles. Only trouble is, I'm not sure if the publication date was
>> >>on January 1st or March 11th of 1818. (I'm in a rush.)
>> >
>> > Hm.  I looked at the Subject line and thought, "1817, a year
>> > after eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death?  Frankenstein?
>> >
>> > It's always a relief when I discover my brain still works.
>> >
>>
>>     The University of Cambridge reminds me of MIT. A militaristic vibe
>> seems present at both places. Whig historiography's scientific
>> progression to a better place resonates with the vibe.
> (trimmed)
> In general, I would expect any large organisation to host several different
> cultures and atmospheres. I spent three years as an undergraduate at Cambridge
> in the early eighties and didn't detect any militaristic vibe. I received the
> recommendation that I read "The Whig Interpretation of History" when attending
> an optional course on mathematical logic there. I spent two of those three
> years studying computer science. To the extent that there was an institutional
> culture at all, that sprung from almost all members of the faculty, and many
> students, doing part time work for Acorn Computers (now probably best known as
> designers of the ARM chip). One example of a Cambridge researcher not aligned
> with the military-industrial complex is Ross Anderson, who has been something
> of a maverick security researcher for years, and has long standing serious
> reservations about GCHQ (the UK's version of NSA) -
> https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2016/07/12/royal-society-report-on-cybersecurity-research/ https
://www.varsity.co.uk/news/6919
>
> (The main thing I found out about Cambridge academics at Cambridge was that they
> wanted to waste as little time on undergraduates as possible. I later spent some
> time as a Research Assistant at UCL. What I found there was a very strong desire
> to keep grants flowing in by keeping the funding bodies happy. In the case of
> Ministry of Defense funded work this meant producing monthly reports and trying
> to look good in competition with equivalent American research groups - DARPA and
> the MoD seemed to be pretty hands off. European Union funded research was much
> more in danger of conflicts of interest. At the time DARPA was giving away TCP/IP
> via BSD Unix, but the EU wanted to assemble a cartel of European industries with
> IPR over communications protocols for which they could charge. Fortunately for the
> internet, it turned out that free code implementing protocols tested and modified
> in practice beat out expensive complexity designed by committee and barely tested
> before standardisation. The only shadow remaining on the internet of those attempts
> is the presence of ASN.1 in SNMP, which to this day makes things unnecessarily
> complicated).

    "Military vibe" is sloppy of me. "Deep State (DS) vibe" works better
because DS includes /all/ of the usual suspects. Cambridge's ARM chip
enthusiasm is the smoking gun for me. (It's Microchip enthusiasm on this
side of the pond.)
    My current non-fiction read is _Spy Catcher_ (Wright). The book was
or is banned in Britain. It's written by a former spymaster named
Wright, who closely resembles the George Smiley character in a Le Carre
novel.
    Early in the book Wright talks about Klop Ustinov, the father of
the actor. The DS cheated Klop Ustinov out of a pension. Wright writes,
"I learned a lesson I never forgot: that MI5 expects its officers to
remain loyal unto the grave, without necessarily offering loyalty in
return." After the DS cheated Wright out of his pension he made up the
difference with sales of _Spy Catcher_.
    The book contains a lot of very dated science. It's all
fun-and-games and spy-versus-spy with the Communist bloc. You never know
the other side's using your own technology against you to feed you
chicken feed instead of gold dust. Then someone dies to remind readers
of the stakes of this game.
    In _Dune_ (Herbert) it seems wasteful (to me) for a young Paul
Atreides to devote so much time to martial arts. Then you see Ali
Abdullah Saleh's fate unfold and you understand why.

Thank you,

--
Don

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Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? lenona321@yahoo.com - 2017-12-05 12:02 -0800
  Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-05 20:35 +0000
    Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2017-12-06 01:51 +0000
      Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-06 13:48 +0000
        Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2017-12-06 10:31 -0800
        Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Leo Sgouros <adravirgo@gmail.com> - 2017-12-06 13:33 -0800
          Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2017-12-06 13:49 -0800
            Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Leo Sgouros <adravirgo@gmail.com> - 2017-12-06 14:00 -0800
              Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2017-12-07 00:58 -0800
            Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-07 00:13 +0000
              Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Cryptoengineer <treifamily@gmail.com> - 2017-12-06 19:25 -0600
      Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? mcdowell_ag@sky.com - 2017-12-06 22:10 -0800
        Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2017-12-07 01:06 -0800
          Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-07 14:26 +0000
            Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? Peter Trei <petertrei@gmail.com> - 2017-12-07 08:05 -0800
              Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-07 16:33 +0000
                Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2017-12-07 12:21 -0800
                Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? "Michael R N Dolbear" <me@privacy.net> - 2017-12-08 19:37 +0000
        Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2017-12-07 15:48 +0000
          Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? mcdowell_ag@sky.com - 2017-12-07 12:05 -0800
            Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2017-12-07 22:14 +0000
              Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? hamish.laws@gmail.com - 2017-12-07 14:50 -0800
  Re: Upcoming 200th anniversary of...guess which novel? lenona321@yahoo.com - 2018-01-05 14:46 -0800

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