First Internet ecommerce was at least 1990

This article from FastCompany claims that the first Internet e-commerce transaction was 1994. This isn't true. The site "cdconnection.com" was selling CDs online since 1990. Well, they claim 1990, I don't know what evidence they have. But I personally can remember buying CDs on their site for over a year before I switched jobs in mid-1994 (so probably at least 1993).

I write this up because it's apparently an important concern when Internet e-commerce was "invented", so I'm writing up what I witnessed. It's a silly competition, of course, since Internet e-commerce is such an obvious idea that nobody can "invent" it. Somebody probably accepted payments for things online even before that. But, as of 1993 when I purchased music, CDconnection was a well-honed business, a "site", with an interface, with a wide selection, using Telnet with V100 commands to format the screen.

Some notes on the eDellRoot key

It was discovered this weekend that new Dell computers, as well as old ones with updates, come with a CA certificate ("eDellRoot") that includes the private key. This means hackers can eavesdrop on the SSL communications of Dell computers. I explain how in this blog post, just replace the "ca.key" with "eDellRoot.key".

If I were a black-hat hacker, I'd immediately go to the nearest big city airport and sit outside the international first class lounges and eavesdrop on everyone's encrypted communications. I suggest "international first class", because if they can afford $10,000 for a ticket, they probably have something juicy on their computer worth hacking.

I point this out in order to describe the severity of Dell's mistake. It's not a simple bug that needs to be fixed, it's a drop-everything and panic sort of bug. Dell needs to panic. Dell's corporate customers need to panic.

Note that Dell's spinning of this issue has started, saying that they aren't like Lenovo, because they didn't install bloatware like Superfish. This doesn't matter. The problem with Superfish wasn't the software, but the private key. In this respect, Dell's error is exactly as bad as the Superfish error.

https://t.co/xXClNPHQZl pic.twitter.com/PIP6i9OLEm

— dombili (@dombili) November 23, 2015

We should all follow Linus's example

Yet another Linus rant has hit the news, where he complains about how "your shit code is fucking brain damaged". Many have complained about his rudeness, how it's unprofessional, and part of the culture of harassment in tech. They are wrong. Linus Torvalds is the nicest guy in tech. We should all try to be more like him.

The problem in tech isn't bad language ("your shit code"), but personal attacks ("you are shit").

A good example is Brendan Eich, who was fired from his position as Mozilla CEO because people disagreed with his political opinions. Another example is Nobel prize winner Tim Hunt who was fired because people took his pro-feminist comments out of context and painted him as a misogynist. Another example is Pax Dickinson, who was fired as CTO of Business Insider because of jokes he made before founding the company. A programmer named Curtis Yavin* was booted from a tech conference because he's some sort of monarchist. Yet more examples are the doxing and bomb threats that censor both sides of the GamerGate fiasco. The entire gamer community is a toxic cesspool of personal attacks. We have another class of people, the "SJW"s, who viciously attack those they disagree with, trying to get them fired. They treat those who make a mistake or disagree with them as an evil misogynists who needs to be punished, rather than as people who need to be corrected -- or debated.

What all these things have in common is that they attack the person. They strive to dehumanize the person, to make them an un-person, so that we stop empathizing with them. These attacks seek to intimidate and punish, not to educate or inform.

Linus punishes nobody. He intimidates nobody. He has that power, to act as a dictator to ban people for life from the Linux kernel, but doesn't use that power. Indeed, his use of power demonstrates extreme humility. Even in this case, he declares he doesn't "want" to accept the code into the kernel, not that he "won't".

His rant is designed to inform. The Linux kernel is a work of art based on certain consistent principles, such as not needlessly obfuscating implementation details. He takes the time to yet again lay out his philosophy that guides the kernel. Yes, his language is strong, but I'm not sure how else he'd communicate the unreasonableness of the code in question.

Personal attacks are increasingly the norm in our society. Pick any political debate -- the basis of people's arguments is not that the opposition is wrong, but that they are unreasonable and sub-human. Such discourse would improve if everyone emulated Linus's example, as we'd start debating the issues (albeit with course language) rather than attacking each other.

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Seriously, try it. Can you debate issues like abortion, anti-vaxx, taxes, immigration, or global warming in such a way that it doesn't include dehumanizing personal attacks? Can you debate such issues with the overwhelming belief that your opponents are reasonable people? Linus displays that belief. You don't.

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Linus could, of course, be even nicer. But the thing is, Linus doesn't ruin careers, unlike these harassers feted by WIRED. 

The Godwin fallacy

As Wikipedia says:

Godwin's law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation, because a Nazi comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate, in effect committing the fallacist's fallacy, or inferring that an argument containing a fallacy must necessarily come to incorrect conclusions.

An example is a discussion whether waving the Confederate flags was "hate speech" or "fighting words", and hence undeserving of First Amendment protections.

Well, consider the famous march by the American Nazi party through Skokie, Illinois, displaying the Swastika flag, where 1 in 6 residents was a survivor of the Holocaust. The Supreme Court ruled that this was free-speech, that the Nazi's had a right to march.

Citing the Skokie incident isn't Godwin's Law. It's exactly the precedent every court will cite when deciding whether waving a Confederate flag is free-speech.

I frequently discuss totalitarianism, as it's something that cyberspace can both enable and defeat. Comparisons with other totalitarian regimes, notably Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, are inevitable. They aren't Godwin hyperbole, they are on point. Those who quickly cite Godwin's Law are committing the "fallacist's fallacy", or the "Godwin's Fallacy".