User talk:Sandy Harris

Welcome!

Welcome to the Citizendium! We hope you will contribute boldly and well. You'll probably want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at CZ:Getting Started for other helpful "startup" links, and CZ:Home for the top menu of community pages. Be sure to stay abreast of events via the Citizendium-L (broadcast) mailing list (do join!) and the blog. Please also join the workgroup mailing list(s) that concern your particular interests. You can test out editing in the sandbox if you'd like. If you need help to get going, the forums is one option. That's also where we discuss policy and proposals. You can ask any constable for help, too. Me, for instance! Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and have fun! D. Matt Innis 10:40, 22 December 2007 (CST)

hi and welcome

Hi Sandy, Welcome to the Citizendium, and thanks for editing in the Computers Workgroup.Pat Palmer 20:38, 22 December 2007 (CST)

forums

Sandy, re: your enquiry on my user page, I believe the forums have been phased out, and people are encouraged to use the mailing lists instead. You might also post on the Computers Workgroup talk page if you have a suggestion for work someone might want to do.Pat Palmer 11:57, 28 December 2007 (CST)

Pat, I don't know where you got that idea -- the Forums are VERY active! I think, in fact, that that is where just about all of the discussions are going on.... Hayford Peirce 12:30, 28 December 2007 (CST)

I can clarify this. For general project discussion, the forums are the place to go. For discussion of workgroup-specific issues, go to CZ:Mailing lists. There are still workgroup-specific boards, but they are now discouraged... --Larry Sanger 12:34, 28 December 2007 (CST)

So far, after a dozen or so attempts on several different days, I've been completely unable to reach any forums. I suspect the Great Firewall of China is blocking them. Sandy Harris 12:43, 28 December 2007 (CST)

Still not accessible to me. Fine if I use a proxy, so it seems clear the Great Firewall has blocked them. Of course I can bypass that, but I am not willing to do so routinely. It slows performance a good deal and creates risks -- to me since it may be illegal under local laws and to others since if I over-use a bypass technique, the Chinese gov't are more likely to catch on and block that technique.

So I will use forums only if I think something I could do there is very important. Sandy Harris 09:59, 10 October 2008 (CDT)

one-time pad

Hi! Thanks for your notice. I've changed the status accordingly and left a note on the talk page so that the copyright issue is clear. Please note that imported articles are supposed to be improved here. The external content just copied from elsewhere and not developed further on Citizendium sooner or later gets deleted. An article that is improved becomes CZ_Live; still, it retains a notice about the original source (BTW, you may be interested in adding such a note at the bottom of your article). Cheers! Aleksander Stos 10:19, 17 January 2008 (CST)

Comment on CZ:Bold Moves addition

Moved from CZ:Bold Moves (which is just a log, not a discussion forum):

Sandy, I am unclear about what you're trying to do - and what is One-time pad is all about? Can you help me? And welcome to CZ, by the way! Stephen Ewen 02:44, 21 March 2008 (CDT)

Network architectural models

I appreciate your mentioning concerns on the talk page before making major changes. Now, since I wrote some of the articles in question, my "authority" as a Computers Workgroup editor cannot be asserted, due to conflict of interest.

Nevertheless, we really do need to discuss certain things on article talk pages. First, a great many real-world network architects and protocol designers really wish, for very specific reasons, that the OSI model be discarded as a teaching tool. It introduces many obsolete concepts or things that are just wrong, especially when the teacher tries to force incompatible Internet concepts into it. There is more relevance, at least with respect to telephony, to considering the SS7/ATM model, with due regard that even there, SIGTRAN is moving SS7 to an IP framework, and, while optical communications are very much alive, ATM itself is more historical; its assumptions involved some technological dead ends that, for example, did not predict that extremely fast routers do not need fixed-length cells.

I've commented on one example under VPN. Again, it may be a good idea to stress that not all models are PPVPN, but the terminology from PPVPN is useful and quite general in the IETF.

Howard C. Berkowitz 13:17, 1 August 2008 (CDT)

Existing VENONA article

There was already a substantial article, VENONA, before you deleted my reference to the primary source in cipher, and then created Venona. Please stop deleting citations and redirecting away from existing work. I have asked for assistance from the Constabulary.

I have indeed cited some of my own outside work on Citizendium, but I put prominent disclaimers on the talk page or referred only to peer-reviewed published material. There is no obvious peer review of the external material that you wrote. If you want to cite your own research, one way to do so is under the signed articles subpage. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:29, 2 August 2008 (CDT)

I am not "being silly" about having citations in relevant places; I am following consensus practices about putting references where they are relevant. If you don't think pseudorandom numbers are relevant to one-time pads, I'm not sure quite what to say -- except this is the sort of thing that tends to be an Editor call on CZ. It might be useful for you to discuss this with another Computers Workgroup editor, or a Constable. Do you understand that a workgroup editor has some content responsibility? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:57, 2 August 2008 (CDT)

Do not move citations without consensus, or when a relevant Editor states they are relevant in the place they are, unless you get a Constable or uninvolved Editor to mediate and/or arbitrate the matter. This is not Wikipedia, and we do not get into edit wars. I have added citations, where I felt they were appropriate, in my judgment as an Editor. I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish besides confrontation. This is a sincere attempt to improve quality, but you seem unwilling to consider any opinion other than your own; I'd rather not have to see this enforced by a constable. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:13, 2 August 2008 (CDT)

I have commented at Cipher. Please remember to use the talk pages on these articles to avoid misunderstandings. Constable D. Matt Innis 08:48, 3 August 2008 (CDT)

It's a party, and you're invited!

Hi ! Your CZ Write-a-Thon MC here. Please head over to the Party Room and add yourself to the list of revelers in whatever category you think appropriate. Thanks for contributing! Aleta Curry 18:41, 6 August 2008 (CDT)

Starting some new material for cryptanalysis.

On the talk page for now -- I'll use a sandbox if it gets too big -- I'm doing some suggested basic text on "tactics" that go before strategy. They are quite basic, but a beginner may need them. Give me a little time to get out a rough draft: it's 1200 my time; I want to spend 30-60 minutes on this. I won't touch the main article until doing this. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:03, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

categories

At citizendium there is no need to manage the categories at the bottom of each page. We have a metadata page associated with each article. The one for ULTRA is at Template:ULTRA/Metadata. You'll notice that along with removing the categories from the article I made another edit to the metadata. That edit allows the subpages template to now place the correct categories on the article and all the subpages. This has the advatange that we do not need to make many changes when we wish to add/change or remove a category. You can read more at CZ:Subpages. Chris Day 14:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)