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Launch mechanisms are engineered to a very high standard to be undefeatable.. specifically, someone with the drawings, an indefinite amount of time, and sophisticated test equipment would be unable to set off a nuke. This guy speculates that attempts to bypass the security measures result in a detonate of the high explosives designed to deform the fissionable material. So, anyway, no, I don't think that the technicians know how to bypass anything.

Steve Bellovin has a fascinating page on the subject here

The quote at the beginning has become one of my favourite metaphors for describing a process that should be close to impossible:
"Bypassing a PAL should be, as one weapons designer graphically put it, about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end."

Steve Bellovin has a fascinating page on the subject here

The quote at the beginning has become one of my favourite metaphors for describing a process that should be close to impossible:
"Bypassing a PAL should be, as one weapons designer graphically put it, about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end."

Last time these were mentioned, I bookmarked this link, some interesting speculation:

AT&T also offers a VoIP service called AT&T CallVantage. I haven't tried them myself but it might be worth looking into.

The real reason Comcast bought TechTV is so they can control the flow of technical information.

Comcast along with Cisco/Linksys and CableLabs plan to SNOOP on YOUR HOME NETWORK!

"I have a router and NAT." NO PROBLEM. ATT is working on fixing that bothersome little problem.

And if your using their new extreme tier with that fancy new Cisco/Linksys WCG2000 router/modem/SNOOPER no problem. CableHome aka SpyHome will allow them to:

CableHome 1.0 support for the ability to deliver secure, managed services from Comcast's head-end network to the subscribers' home network

TRANSLATION:
The goals for the CableHome Management Portal include:
* Enable viewing of LAN IP Device information obtained via the CableHome DHCP Portal (CDP)
* Enable viewing of the results of LAN IP Device performance monitoring done by the CableHome Test Portal (CTP)
* Provide the capability to disable LAN segments

You can read more here.
So TechTV had to go! Too much info in the wrong hands!

they started it in '63, they didn't finish it till '64. rtfa

Gheesh. C++ started in 1986 and they still havn't even finished the draft for the standard.

Please explain to me exactly how you can implement a resource management system (or regime as you call it) in C++ for, lets say, managing socket connections, that has no equivlent in Java. You are aware of this method, right?

Okie dokie (pardon the bad formatting):

class TCPSocket
{
int handle_;
public:
TCPSocket()
{
handle_ = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
}

~TCPSocket()
{
close(handle_);
}
};

I think you'll find that there's no equivalent to the above in Java.

This may prove to be good reading, if you are interested in learning more.

So, it's simply another type of denial of service. A TCP Reset packet can be faked, which will result in a legitimate open TCP connection being closed by a third party.

No, the ability to forge a TCP RST (reset) has been known since 1989 when Steve Bellovin published his article on insecuritys in TCP/IP.

The novelity is that this is much easier way of spoofing a RST that the TCP stack accepts.

Funny, but it seems that empherial source ports for a TCP connection may be more secure in this case, since it increases the space that the attacker has to guess within.

Of course it is a pure "D'oh" that large TCP windows increase exposure to the older known weakness of TCP RST attacks (Steve Bellovin, wrote a paper on it in 1989).

Heh, forgot to include a link to Cyclone.

All kidding aside, I really don't see why more people aren't using a fast, safe, low-level real-time capable language like Cyclone instead of C for many things.
Don't get me wrong, C is great for a certain set of specific things, but more often than not the power gets used in a suboptimal way (which wouldn't occur in a less expressive language).

Cheers,
Justin

The most interesting is why the Founder of D feels it is necessary to compare his language to other languages.

Quote from Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: "When looking at a language comparison consider who wrote it, consider carefully if the descriptions are factual and fair,
and also if the comparison criteria are themselves fair for all languages considered. This is not easy."

I tend to agree. A comparison table biasing the featured product makes me feel somewhat suspicious.

Moreover, some of the features where C++ is listed as 'No' are available although GC'ing isn't something I miss much about C/C++

I work for a small computer company, and we've only just received our first scam call this week. I identified it immediately as such from reading on this particular scam online, so we played along with the person to get as much info as we could, then blew them off. Amazingly, they CALLED BACK the next day to check the status of their order...our boss convinced them we'd fired the salesperson they were talking to because he was screwing barnyard animals in the warehouse, and he said we could provide the customer a copy of a video if he wanted to purchase it...:-).

Anyway, I found out you can specifically block internet-relay calls without impeding the ability for people to use standard TTY relay services to contact you. Go Here and check it out. You just call a 1-800 number and tell AT&T you want to filter internet-relay calls specifically.

If you have never heard what AT&T Natural Voices sound like you should listen to the demos. I first discovered these over two years ago and although they haven't changed that much quality wise, they are the best synthesized voices I have ever heard.

-- paper

AT&T president Theodore Vail in 1907, was that the telephone by the nature of its technology would operate most efficiently as a monopoly providing universal service. Vail wrote in that year's AT&T Annual Report that government regulation, "provided it is independent, intelligent, considerate, thorough and just," was an appropriate and acceptable substitute for the competitive marketplace.

Before AT&T accepted regulation, it was still not a government sponsored monopoly, except for the narrow head start it had through Bell's patents (a head-start that lasted less than twenty years during which the Bell System did very little to built itself up.) AT&T for the most part was a bunch of Bell licensees that was eventually bought up by AT&T corporation, coupled with various independents who found basic issues of interconnection made it more valuable to be part of the AT&T network than to remain independent.

The reason that you don't see new cable being laid by startups is that it is expensive, and competing in a market that is already dominated by a few players does not look good on your VC application.

Hey, looks like someone didn't read Neal Stephenson's article "Mother Earth, Motherboard" in Wired a few years ago. See, AT&T did not "accept" government regulation. They were a government sponsored monopoly, like most telephone companies in the world. Then, in the 1970's/1980's, the government prosecuted them as a monopoly and broke them into the baby bells. The reason that you don't see new cable being laid by startups is that it is expensive, and competing in a market that is already dominated by a few players does not look good on your VC application. Plus, there is a law that says that local monopolies have to provide competitors space on their networks at a comparable cost to their own maintenance.

Excellent post. Moving away from C/C++ is a good idea for many projects, but since there's far too much C/C++ code out there for that to be a universal solution, we need to see wider deployment of stackguarding compilers like the propolice and stackguard patches to gcc 3.x. We also need to look at easy migration paths from C/C++ to a type-safe language, like Cyclone, a type-safe dialect of C.

Well, acording to Bjarne stroupstrup it is not valid c++ and HE should know :} Bjarnes faq for void main()

• Before the Bell System Breakup in 1984, there was Bell Labs.
  
• After the split, AT&T got Bell Labs, Long Distance, and Manufacturing (aka Western Electric), and the 7 Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) jointly ran a smaller Labs spinoff called Bellcore.
  
• Bellcore had N years of funding, and eventually turned into Telcordia and was bought by SAIC.
  
• In 1992-93, AT&T spun off Unix Systems Labs, which got acquired by Novell, which sold it to SCO in 1995.
  
• In 1996, AT&T spun off Lucent (aka Western Electric) and NCR. Lucent got most of Bell Labs, especially the physics/chemistry/computer people, and AT&T kept a much smaller AT&T Labs, mainly communications and computer and Internet folks.
  

The part that went to Lucent is called Bell Labs -- the part that stayed is called AT&T Labs

1. VNC - which is a multiplatform Remote administration tool.
2. Text to speach.
3. Multimodal data access
4. Handwriting recognition.
5. Wlan technologies

1. VNC - which is a multiplatform Remote administration tool.
2. Text to speach.
3. Multimodal data access
4. Handwriting recognition.
5. Wlan technologies

Almost all extant C practitioners would benefit greatly if they gradually abandoned C-style and learned multi-paradigm C++. The world would be a better place.

This is not a troll, and before all of you fundamentalist fanatics pull out your flamethrowers, inform yourselves:

C++ FAQ

C vs. C++

The case for the continued existence of C is tenuous at best.

AT&T uses such patterns to look for deadbeats who sign up new calling plans to flee old debt.

Designers in abundance, salesmen all around but what I need is a coder and a C to sail them on.

But this C is tiny and difficult to sail so I'll hand them all an upgrade to C++ and let them wail.

This shrieking is ill met, I stop and look profound as I have a solution it's C pound.

My coders all have left me with this ugly stinking mess I should have not given them more and more but merely better less.

Uh huh, my neighbor washes toilets for a company that makes rockets. That doesn't make him an rocket scientist. You either, for that matter.

If we can speak with one voice, we can play an important role in protecting the nation's critical infrastructure.

This post proudly brought you by GNAA member: Lysol!

Name, Address Phone
Nothnagel, Raymond L. DAAP 07
Daniels Hall, ROOM 0217 2720 SCIOTO ST CINCINNATI OH 45219 r.nothnagel@fuse.net (513)556-7920

________________________________________________
| ______________________________________._a,____ |
| _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
| __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
| _j#'_.00#,___4#dP_"#,__j#,__0#Wi___*00P!_"#L,_ |
| _"#ga#9!01___"#01__40,_"4Lj#!_4#g_________"01_ |
| ________"#,___*@`__-N#____`___-!^_____________ |
| _________#1__________?________________________ |
| _________j1___________________________________ |
| ____a,___jk_GAY_NIGGER_ASSOCIATION_OF_AMERICA_ |
| ____!4yaa#l___________________________________ |
| ______-"!^____________________________________ |
` _______________________________________________'

From what I can tell the only things you can ascertain from his email are that he works at a company (ok), and doesn't understand how some aspects of the system he's using work. You're right luckily I don't work with him if I did he'd be gone.

So? Shredding someone's resume because they got an MCSE is pretty ignorant I might add anyway. You say Toe May Toe I say Toe Mah Toe. For your information, companies (and the company I currently work for) screen their employees out beyond "what certifications do you have". It would seem by the amounts of posts like this most companies are falling for the okey doke "Hi I have my XYZ certification"

Why not shred it if they have a Mexican sounding name, after all.. are Mexicans known for their outstanding tech skills? Apples and oranges idiot. I'm hispanic

I know plenty of people who have MCSE's and countless other certs who did it just based on the thinking that "Hey, it's probably better than not having them." Good for you. I know plenty of people with jsut degrees who know their shit. Hell the entire upper crust IEEE guys don't run around touting MCSE, CCNA, CISSP bullshit. They just know their shit. Take a look at people like Steve Bellovin, I don't recall him adding uber certs to his signatures, and he is probably one of the top ten engineers on the planet without question.

This elitist attitude is pretty sickening. And it usually comes from people who themselves don't have any experience working in a large tech company. Elitist attitude? Again your perception means nothing here, nor does mine. As for experience it does mean something. As for working in a large tech environment you're right, I only work on a 2 server farm and have never worked elsewhere. You would know because what... You know me? Sure.

Sort of like the armchair quarterbacks shouting things like "Oh man, I could do that! Geez, this guy doesn't know anything." But not stepping up to do it themselves. Cry me a river there pal, it brings tears of sorrow to my heart.

And by the way, I don't have an MCSE, or any real certifications for that matter. I don't even have a high school diploma, and that's never kept me out of work. If you're looking for sympathy try checking between shit and syphillis in the dictionary. For the record I don't have any certs and it's never stopped me before. I've been a Senior Security Engineer, Senior Systems Engineer, Senior Systems Administrator, and now a Network Engineer at an ISP, all the way from starting as a junior linux admin. Spare me the chop-suey sympathy ploy. I've learned everything the hard way by doing it, and a hell of a lot of reading.

Oh wait... Did I mention I come from a broken home in the hood and my father used to beat me. I went to college dropped out? Wahh wahh... That's all true you know, maybe someone could mod me up or hire me on sympathy alone. Your post? Definitely most unimpressive. Welcome to reality guy where business and personal matters are like oil and water.

1. See
Cyclone for a version of C without buffer overflows.

2. C# is not interpreted; it is always compiled down. But it is against the license terms to discuss performance -it may still crawl but we cannot talk about it.

3. Java GUIs do crawl, but that is what IBM's SWT is for -Swing is the real issue.

This ruling was awaited, but it is the easiest in the long VoIP cases yet to be judged. FWD is just a signaling/directory service, from what I understand.

Now consider Vonage which sells phone service on top of broadband, yet is not registered as a telephone service provider. Or AT&T who claims that its VoIP phone-to-phone services are not subject to the same regulation than other phone-to-phone services.

The key issue yet remaining to be assessed is the question of access charges. These are the cost billed by a local carrier to a long distance carrier, which is much higher than the cost of the very same local leg leased to, say, an individual or a business.

AT&T, preceded in this regard by many other smaller long-distance carriers are using local business lines to deliver regular phone-to-phone calls on the local market, in order to go around access charges. AT&T claims that because it uses the Internet to carry the calls, they are VoIP and should be free of access charge. Obviously local carriers don't really see it this way...

My guess is that the FCC wanted to look pro-Internet in this big VoIP debate, so it is ruling now on FWD before they have an opportunity to look at the Vonage ("PC/phone") and AT&T ("phone/phone") cases. These two are much trickier to regulate and their implications, whatever the outcome may be, will be far-reaching.

Huge amounts of money per minute for international calls?

I don't know what you're talking about.. since we get calls to the entire industrialized world for under $0.25 USD per minute. I can call Japan for $0.10 per minute and can call the UK for $0.08 per minute. Thats almost as cheap as the $0.07 per minute I'm paying for domestic long distance.

I remember paying $0.25 per minute for calls within the same state! Before deregulation, it was even worse. Even today, most in-state calls are more expensive than international calls. Hell, even calls to Russia are $0.20 per minute!

Here, see what I'm talking about:
http://www.consumer.att.com/global/english/

These rates are damn cheap.. and I'm glad to have them.

BTW, AT&T will be providing VoIP. They don't say how cheap it will be yet, but they are saying it will be cheaper than POTS. See here:
http://www.consumer.att.com/voip/

-molo

Huge amounts of money per minute for international calls?

I don't know what you're talking about.. since we get calls to the entire industrialized world for under $0.25 USD per minute. I can call Japan for $0.10 per minute and can call the UK for $0.08 per minute. Thats almost as cheap as the $0.07 per minute I'm paying for domestic long distance.

I remember paying $0.25 per minute for calls within the same state! Before deregulation, it was even worse. Even today, most in-state calls are more expensive than international calls. Hell, even calls to Russia are $0.20 per minute!

Here, see what I'm talking about:
http://www.consumer.att.com/global/english/

These rates are damn cheap.. and I'm glad to have them.

BTW, AT&T will be providing VoIP. They don't say how cheap it will be yet, but they are saying it will be cheaper than POTS. See here:
http://www.consumer.att.com/voip/

-molo

Okay, I'll bite. Read how the aglorithms in the STL are implemented. Stroustrup's book has excellent examples that are more digestable than cracking open the STL source if you don't feel like approaching that.

maxim: cycles are cheap, people are expensive. For the *vast majority* of software it is significantly better value to design and build a well architected OO solution than to optimise for performance in languages and methodologies that are more difficult to implement and maintain. Who cares if it's not very efficient - it'll run twice as fast in 18 months, and will be a lot cheaper to change when the client figures out what the actually wanted in the first place. But I guess you already knew that.

I couldn't possibly agree more with this. Hits the nail right on the head.

...I consider that as one of the better arguments against OO code - It simply does not map well to real-world CPUs...

This on the otherhand, couldn't be more incorrect. I'm not sure I'll ever understand the motivation of people who post this crud. How can anyone know so little, and not know that they know so little?

Object oriented code is just as fast as anything else. If you don't believe me, listen to Stroustrup:
Learning Standard C++ as a New Language.

The market is currently quite rough, especially to break into. After being laid off when a product tanked on the market, I've gone a few months without having a single resume responded to - and I have almost a decade of professional programming experience that was applicable to the jobs I've applied for (and my resume used to keep the phones ringing daily for months when I posted it - the market has changed a bit).

I've been spending the extra time continuing development on my personal code library and projects, writing open source code, and working on a few products that I expect there to be a market for when they're done. That's how I'd suggest breaking into the field as well.

You have a very special situation though - you know, or can find out if you think about it and ask your colleagues, exactly what one fairly wealthy niche market needs. What software would help you - as a doctor - work more efficiently? What software have you and your colleagues found lacking? There's your first project :)

It won't be easy, and you won't make money fast. My recommendation would be to start learning about computers and computer programming now while thinking about products. As soon as you feel like you can design a useful program and have one in mind - take a shot at it.

Use CVS ( or for Windows, WinCVS ) or some other revision control so you can keep track of all the code you write (I wish I had when I started!). Estimate for yourself how long tasks should take - track those estimates, and figure out why they were right or wrong. Document everything, especially the code.

Once you have a product you think is worthy for your target audience - use it yourself in your work. Then let some colleagues try it out. Fix anything you find wrong with it, and ask your colleagues for suggestions.

Then, set up a website, advertise it, and try to sell it - or set up a project on SourceForge and make it open source - whichever you feel more comfortable with. On SourceForge, you'll be able to enlist the help of other more experienced programmers and together tailor the product towards excellence. If you sell it and it's successful, you'll be able to afford to switch careers to full-time programmer/entreprenuer and just work on your business.

That brings me to another point - if you aren't currently running your own doctor's office, start learning business skills too. They're just as hard to pick up as programming skills - possibly harder for some. Figure out what you'll need to do to start running your own software company. Even if you decide to write your own software as open source and become an employee for someone else professionally, this will help you at the negotiating table.

What I would NOT recommend is dropping out of medicine, getting a BS in computer science, and expect doors to be immediately open when you g

And if its portability would be so great, why did complete, standards-compliant compilers only get available recently? Why do many projects choose not to use exceptions or even templates to avoid portability problems?

Language standards evolve and it takes time for compilers to become compliant. Even ANSI C has seen some changes over the past few years -- and I guarantee to you that compilers didn't implement the new changes instantly. They don't evolve C++ to piss you off, they evolve C++ so that the language can serve you better. Forgive them if some of the new language features are hard to implement... hey, no one ever said building a compiler was easy.

ISO C++ does have a larger grammar than ANSI C, but the features the syntax introduced by C++ aren't gratuitous. Read The Design and Evolution of C++ by Stroustrup and you'll understand the whys and musts of C++.

As for why aren't templates and exceptions used in all projects... Well, there are good fundamental reasons why projects might choose to not use templates or exceptions or both, and they have little to do with portability.

For example, while templates are fast and type safe, they also might explode the size of your code. So if small is what you need, you may find that using void * containers is cheaper than using templates.

As for exceptions, it's understood that exceptions are slower than more traditional methods of checking status return codes. Some projects may need a better guarantee of performance than what exceptions might introduce to their runtime.

C++ is all about making features affordable and at the same time giving you choices. If the language looks ugly, it's only because some non-trivial amount of ANSI C compatibility has always been highly desireable. C++ remains a practical choice for developing highly scalable, highly reliable software.

This is due to the way C++ is generally taught [...]

I taught a university course on programming languages where we only had a few weeks for C++. The goal was to teach it for its own merits, not as an extension to C. The book "Accelerated C++" by Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo was excellent. It uses the standard library from the beginning so you can do practical coding immediately. In particular, you get experience using templates and classes, before you need to create your own. Here's a good review of it.

It still sounds terrible when read by a text-to-speech converter.

Beyond Concern: Understanding Net Users' Attitudes About Online Privacy

Here's the link: Beyond Concern: Understanding Net Users' Attitudes About Online Privacy

Before looking at SPF you may want to read what Claus Assmann [theaimsgroup.com], and Wietse Venema [theaimsgroup.com] have to say on the subject.

You might also want to read what Steve Bellovin (one of the guys who invented USENET among other things) and Eric Raymond have to say about it. They spend a little more time understanding SPF...

Wired story with Raymond's comments.

Bellovin's comments in an email to the SPF mailing list.

For C++, binary compatible goes the extra distance of requiring that the dynamic dispatch and run-time type information layouts be the same. When a C++ class gets created, there are hidden bits of data that are used to handle virtual functions and the likes of . Many binary interface standards don't specify how these work, but to be truly compatible, the two compilers have to match here. See Stroustup's Technical FAQ for a little more information.

The best UNIX tools I've used for windows is UWIN, from AT&T. It's written by David Korn, of ksh fame. It does really well with the subtleties of UNIX semantics that Cygwin and MS miss. It's not free unless you're in research/academia, but well worth the money.

I for one would rather get kicked in the bean bag then be forced to use Cygwin. But thats just me. I'll see how this compares to UWIN when its out for download.

There's not just the trade balance, there are also the questions of customs & immigration

I currently make most of my living programming Java, yet I view it as either C++ for dummies or Python for suites, and either way, it doesn't match the original.

Then, with more and more languages, especially ones with VMs, you get further and further away from the hardware. The end result: you lose performance. It does more and more for you, but at the expense of real optimizations, the kind that only you can do.

Now the zealots will come out and say, "Language X is better than language Y, see!" To me this argument is boring. I tend to use the appropriate tool for the job. So:

• Python for scripts, prototypes, proofs of concept, or components where performance generally is not an issue.
• For desktop apps, Visual Basic (yep, most IT apps are in VB). There is no justifiable reason for an IT department group to write a sales force reporting system in C++! If you want C++, go get a job at a software company. Stop wasting money and time making yourself feel like a hotshot. [I'd consider Kylix here if it was based on Basic. Why? Because honestly, Pascal is just about dead, and Basic is the king of the simple app. Let's just live with it and move on. I do want a cross-platform VB . . . ]
• For web apps, well, I stick around PHP/ASP.NET. Why? Portability! And moreover, the sticking point in a web-based app is not the UI layer; it's usually the underlying data extraction and formatting. Don't waste your time with lower level languages there. IMHO it's just not worth it. JSP and Java stuff, yuck! Too much time for too little bang.
• Java/C# (also consider mono/LISP for most production apps. Why? Portability! I want no vendor holding me by the balls. I want platform independence on the back end, and these are the few ways to achieve it. I'd include Haskell/OCAML here when appropriate. Perl? I'm loathe to use Perl as production, considering most Perl code cannot be understood 2 weeks after it's written. I'd rather take the hit in performance and be able to pass the code to someone else later.
• C++/C for components--just components--where performance is at an absolute premium or there exists some critical library that only has this kind of interface. But this step has to be justified by the team, with considerable explanation why a different architecture could not suffice. Otherwise, the team could waste time checking for dangling pointers when instead it could be doing other things, like finishing up other projects.
• Assembly? Only when there is not a C complier around. Embedded stuff. Nowadays, you just do not have the time to play.

Yes, my teams use many languages, but they also put their effort to where they get the biggest bang for the buck. And in any business approach, that's the key goal. You don't see carpenters use saws to hammer in nails or drive screws. Wise up!

A bit like:
Office tracking as already in use.

AT&T

Bell Labs

IBM

I'd say that these are fair trades for what you say is monopoly. The fact is that like nobody will invest the huge amounts of capital required unless a return is somewhat guaranteed. Not all monopoly is bad.