Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Encumbrance, Silence, Internalization
Different folks, different contributions Dr. Sheueling Chang-Shantz writes:
"Hello, I am the lead researcher/developer of the ECC project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. I appreciate very much the news you posted on Slashdot regarding 'OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun.'However, your wordings "Sun Microsystems has donated ... developed by Whitfield Diffie ..." seems to be causing some confusion on Slashdot forum. It gave the wrong interpretation that Whit has invented ECC. Sun is definitely making no attempt to claim that Whitfield Diffie has invented the Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem. Technically, neither has Whitfield Diffie developed the ECC technology that Sun has donated to the OpenSSL project recently.
I would appreciate it if you could correct the news before too late.
For clarification, Elliptic curve cryptography was independently invented by Neal Koblitz, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington and Victor Miller who was then at IBM.
Whitfield Diffie is Sun's chief security officer who co-invented Diffie-Helman public-key cryptography."
We now go north of the border ...
And further on the topic of that donation by Sun, friscolr writes "In a recent post on misc@, OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt states...
OpenSSL is becoming a non-free software project, because the code from Sun contains licenses which invoke patent litigation; the licence on the new code basically builds a contract that says "if you use this code, you cannot sue Sun".
He goes on to say, 'once again, i think it is time to fork OpenSSL.' Thank you, Theo, for always making sure we will have 100% free software at our disposal and for standing by your stated goals."
[Headline redacted] Dotnaught writes "The question of whether British composer Mike Batt's "A Minute's Silence" on the "Classical Graffiti" CD (by The Planets) violated the copyright of John Cage's silent composition " 4'33" " has been resolved in an out-of-court settlement. Batt reportedly paid the John Cage Trust an "adequate sum" (whatever that is). On his site, Batt writes, 'We have now settled the matter of my artless plagiarism of John Cage's silence, by his publishers caving in and us winning! Why didn't I think of that before! We could have saved a lot of time and buggering about, although I must say, the struggle was one of the most amusing disputes I've ever , er, disputed.' Batt may yet have the last laugh. According to the New Yorker, Batt has been busy copyrighting chunks of silence of various lengths other than the four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence owned by Cage."
Hey, does this guy really work for the government? In response to broadly worded news that the U.S. Department of the Interior was switching to an all-Microsoft computing infrastructure, security architect (and oftc.net honcho) D. Clyde Williamson fired off a well-phrased mail to Hord Tipton, Acting Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Interior. asking for clarification, and urging that the DOI consider advantages of not tying themselves completely to proprietary systems. Tipton's response (posted with his permission) is informative:
"Thanks for your views on the DOI's attempts to standardize operating systems. Whereas it is true we are moving towards enterprise approaches to desktops and operating systems, there will be as you suggest a heterogenous mix at the server level. We have not decided at this point to be 100% Microsoft although that discussion has been entertained. There are certain risks and efficiencies that must be considered regardless of the path taken.Our major concern is interoperability and our current situation is all over the map. Thus standardization is an important step forward for us.
Thanks again for your views.
Hord Tipton
Department of the Interior"
Why relying on a single vendor for such an important aspect of the modern workplace is still considered an "enterprise approach" I'm not sure, but it is certainly true at many companies.
But only for 2 minutes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
(And just to clarify your point)
That's "at the user level."
They're still leaving the door way open for running different types of servers.
I'm rather impressed at the prompt response of a major player at the DOI. What with all the requests for press he's probably getting, he appears to have a great deal of store set in relatively private "public relations."
Could someone give good, logical reasons? I'm seriously all ears.
What's this Submit thingy do?
I have copyrighted the act of NOT posting on Slashdot. If you don't post, you're in violation. If you don't post twice, you're OK. I haven't copyrighted that. As far as I know, that one's under the GNU copyleft.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Right on! They should be 100% *nix! Why don't they see the light?
Facetiousness aside, they're considering it because they should investigate all the alternatives. 100% MS is a viable option, albeit a poor and risky choice for most applications, but a choice nonetheless. One should investigate all the alternatives before coming to a conclusion.
"I hereby claim the copyright on......all posts not submitted regarding this article."
Plagarist!
Every word this person said has been written before! Here..
Why not? There are advantages to a homogenous environment. Many of these advantages are the same no matter which vendor provides 100% of your systems.
But hey! Let's consider the "alternative": 60 webservers all serving the same site, some running IIS, some running Apache, some running Iplanet. Now, go and maintain all of that.
I work in a very heterogenous datacenter, but all machines of the same type, in the same environment, run the same code on the same platform. The reasons for homogeneity on some level should be readily apparent.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
FYI, according to the OpenBSD site it's "Theo de Raadt", not "Theo DeRaadt".
Don't believe me? Check this user's posting history, Theo's personal homepage, interviews, or mailing list posts.
In the cryptography mailing list, it appears that Theo may not need to declare jihad on licenses he doesn't like.
According to Ulf Möller there will be a patch made before the next release to isolate the ECC code in case of patent concerns. The ECC code can be included or excluded based on a configure flag like the present RC5 and IDEA algorithms which are still patented in various parts of the world.
Apparently the patent claim is an additional optional provision that companies can use the Sun code under a truce against lawsuits if they agree to not sue about ECC patent infrigement either.
"We have not decided at this point to be 100% Microsoft although that discussion has been entertained. There are certain risks and efficiencies that must be considered regardless of the path taken."
Like or hate their decision, anybody who's ever tried to print from a Linux box to a printer hosted on a Windows machine can sympathize. Technical superiority is fine and all, but ease of use has a larger impact on overall efficiency.
"Heh, you'd think they'd go with Mac."
I know you meant this sarcastically, but you inadvertently touched on an interesting point: The more interest you have with your computer, the more efficient you'll become with it.
I'm really good with Windows. Always have been. But when I got my first job as an animator, they put me on an Alpha station running NT 3. (yes 3... or was it 3.52 or something like that? All I remember is that the interface resembled Windows 3.0, and I was used to 95.) My boss suggested I find some plugins for Lightwave and get them installed. But I was afraid to mess with this thing! Not only was the interface really different, but it also had an entirely different processor. If it had been NT4 (Umm.. not quite sure if NT4 was ready to go then...) I would have been pretty comfortable in playing with it. Why? Because I used Windows 95 at home and the interface was similar. I had a pretty good idea of what I could do with it and not feel like I'm going to break it.
My point? Well, it's safe to assume most of the people there have a Wintel PC in their house. If the computers they use at work are Wintel as well, they'll be more comfy with it. No matter how good an OS is, it is difficult to support somebody who's unfamiliarity with their system makes them scared to mess with it.
Apparently Batt gave the Cage Trust a suitcase full of no money.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
Ok, this is important to me. Yeah, it sounds stupid that the suit was over silence - but what it really was about was that he credited Cage as an author and did not pay the estate. THAT caused the problem. Even Sonic Youth did a track of silence and didn't get sued - because they didn't have the cavalier audacity to credit someone else without checking the ramifications.
So how about we stop making fun of the situation? Cage's estate isn't at fault here. That guy shouldn't pull such stupid shit.
Email me for a licence on "Method and apperatus for disseminating a plurality of absence of content via online bitching servers".
Thanks.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I have copyright on various lengths of passing gas.
Well, your lawyers are welcomed to stick their face near my ass to inspect the duration.
Waiter, another Burrito Grande, please.
Table-ized A.I.
As the digits of PI have considerable prior art, I would suggest that the digits of another irrational number be copyright. Among other prior art from PiDigits we see:
The page goes on to list some other interesting sequences of numbers and their positions.
He paid them a six figure sum.
1. Copyright 3, 5, 7, and 14 question marks.
2. ???
3. ?????
4. ???????
5. ??????????????
6. Profit!!!
Table-ized A.I.