Eric Schmidt has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, wrote Lex [1], and just spent 10 years running one of the most important software companies in the world, while generally retaining the respect of the thousands of engineers in his company. His credentials are as close to unimpeachable as, say, PG's.

Tech is massive, multifarious, and constantly growing. It's easy to believe one's parochial corner is the center. Tor, it's safe to say, is not the center.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)

Well, Ok, I didn't know that. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

So I guess it really was a practical joke I didn't get.

Also, "Tor" is the Scandinavian spelling of Thor. He probably thought of that when he saw the name, and mentally hashed it as "that anonymous routing software that's named for the Germanic god of thunder". I can imagine making that mistake.

Still surprised that he did not Tor though.. maybe over expectations ?

Tor is 'Tor' and not 'TOR'.

(https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#WhyCalledTor)

> In fact, we can usually spot people who haven't read any of our website (and have instead learned everything they know about Tor from news articles) by the fact that they spell it wrong.

Accuracy is important when you're complaining about the failures of other people.

I wouldn't be surprised if Eric Schmidt has forgotten more about the implementation details of TCP/IP than most of us have ever known. Keep in mind, he ran software development at Sun, which means he was in charge of one of the major teams of Unix developers in the pre-Linux days, while TCP/IP was growing in importance.

Give the guy a break.

Why? Because expecting a tech CEO to know about tech is unreasonable?

And he probably knows detailed stuff about things you have no idea about.

The guy has been an (excellent?) engineer, then a CTO and later on a CEO of a major multinational corporation. And AFAIK, he did each of his jobs vastly better than the norm.

Who are you with your pretentiousness?

Edit: With your original post you clearly displayed your ignorance in the open, the ignorance of not even being bothered to check the background of the person you are attacking for their background.

Am I ignorant of tech, because I barely know anything about electronics and bitcoin?

> Am I ignorant of tech, because I barely know anything about electronics and bitcoin?

If you want to write a book about it then yes.

> Who are you with your pretentiousness?

Also please let's keep the discussion polite and non-personal.

Your willingness to talk about stuff you have no idea about is astounding.

If I want to write a book, I needn't have any competence in the domain. Often, indeed most of the time books about societal topics start with the author having little to no knowledge about the specifics. And the biggest part of writing a book is doing research about the domain. And this transcript is exactly that. Research.

And I believe that this book is going to be about society and people, not a technical manual.

And even if it were. Quality of the book is never judged, by the amount of knowledge the author had about the domain at the start of the process. What matters is the quality of knowledge within the book.

And even that quality is pretty much relative to the knowledge of the intended audience. I am pretty sceptical that either you or Julian Assange are the prime audience.

Also having a clueless author at the start of the process about a specific domain gives room for interesting observations and conclusions down the road.

Edit: Calling you out on your pretentiousness is hardly personal. I am merely observing a fact. Maybe it is redundant as I am certain that other readers are aware of it on their own.

> Your willingness to talk about stuff you have no idea about is astounding.

Sorry, you're a little bit too aggressive for me. Please excuse me as I won't reply to your posts anymore.