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Can Hollywood Learn From Intuit?
Ironica writes "Readers will recall the furor over Intuit's activation scheme for TurboTax 2002, which prompted a lawsuit and subsequently was removed from TT2002 and all future products. Here's an interesting editorial on CNNMoney suggesting that other DRM proponents could take a page out of Intuit's book ... if they have the sense."
Hello,
Recently I noticed that my teenage son Ezekiel had begun to encrypt
his emails with a program called PGP. I was concerned because I'd
always covertly monitored their email for any hints of illegal
activity, drug use or interest in the occult - some of his classmates
have begun playing Dungeons and Dragons and listening to KISS. Since
Ezekiel was now using PGP, his activites were hidden from me!
Additionally, I also overheard him talking of using a program called
Stegasaurus to embed secret information into normal-looking pictures.
Terrified that my son might be speaking in some sort of sinful code, I
immediately grounded him for a month. He was only allowed to go to
school and Bible study.
Anyways, I've done several days worth of research on this and
discovered a few things about PGP that I'd like to share with the
readers of these newsgroups. To begin with, I realized that many of
the claims made by the creators of PGP are blatently false. Although I
do not have a background in mathematics (I have an AA in Photography)
I was easily able to rebuild Ezekiel's private key via his public key
and one of his encrypted messages.
Of course I am above-average in intelligence, but PGP is supposedly
unbreakable! Perhaps crytogrophers aren't as smart as they believe?
Fortunately in this case Ezekiel was just discussing a girl he met in
school - a situation I harshly reprimanded him for. However, while PGP
may be a program with flaws, it got me thinking about other programs.
Perhaps someone will construct a PGP-like program that cannot be so
easily broken; one that would take days of computer time to hack!
My concern with a program like this is that people who use
cryptography always do so because they have something to hide. A sense
of guilt and shame seems to drive them. They know that they are doing
something wrong and desperately want to hide it from the eyes of the
world (although hiding it from the eyes of God is another matter!
LOL!)
A study recently released by the Institute for Family Computing
revealed that the top three uses of cryptography were for 1)
"terrorist-related activity" 2) pedophillia and 3) drug abuse. In fact
as far as I can tell, no legitimate use was on the top ten at all!
What scares me about this is that law-enforcement agencies will be
unable to sift through email to find people who are breaking the law,
or otherwise engaged in suspicious activity. At a time when our nation
is under siege, I find it disturbing that people are working on
developing cryptography that cannot be broken, even by our protectors
in the FBI and CIA! Only those with something to hide truly need
cryptography.
Thus I urge cryptogrophers world wide to refrain from working on such
programs, until our nation is no longer at war. I would ask those of
other countries to respect our right to self-defense and aid us in our
time of trouble. Your cryptographic skills can be better put to use
trying to find terrorists than to assist them.
I'm not Seth.
this is the first post of the story. all of you bow in reverence to the Anonymous Coward!
i know, dont feed the trolls, but this guy needed a good one
...they just blame it on pirates and hackers. Blame anyone, blame everyone, just not yourself.
horse cock
H O R S E
C O C K
Why C Is Not My Favourite Programming Language
Summary
In case you don't feel like scrolling through for a particular section here or just want a summary, here's a table of contents:
* No string type
* Functions for insignificant operations
* No string type: the redux
* The encouragement of buffer overflows
* Functions which encourage buffer overflows
* No boolean type
* High-level or low-level?
* Integer overflow without warning
* Portability?!
* The implications of this false 'portability'
* Archaic, unexplained conventions
* Blaming The Progammer
* Trapped in the 1970s
* Yet more missing data types
* Library size
* Specifying structure members
* Limited syntax
* Flushing standard I/O
* Inconsistent error handling
No string type
C has no string type. Huh? Most sane programming languages have a string type which allows one to just say "this is a string" and let the compiler take care of the rest. Not so with C. It's so stubborn and bullheaded that it only has three types of variable; everything is either a number, a bigger number, a pointer or a combination of those three. Thus, we don't have proper strings but "arrays of unsigned integers". "char" is basically just a really small number. And now we have to start using unsigned ints to represent characters for multibyte characters. Another insidious effect is that functions such as strlen() and the like now actually have O(n) complexity.
What. A. Crock. An ugly hack.
Functions for insignificant operations
Copying one string from another requires including in your source code, and there are two functions for copying a string. One could even conceivably copy strings using other functions (if one wanted to, though I can't imagine why). Why does any normal language need two functions just for copying a string? Why can't we just use the assignment operator ('=') like for the other types? Oh, I forgot. There's no such thing as strings in C; just a big continuous stick of memory. Great! Ditto for converting numbers to strings, or vice versa. You have to use something like atol(), or strtod(), or a variant on printf(). Three families of functions for variable type conversion. Hello? Flexible casting? Hello?
No string type: the redux
Because there's no real string type, we have two options: arrays or pointers. Array sizes can only be constants. This means we run the risk of buffer overflow since we have to try (in vain) to guess in advance how many characters we need. Pathetic. The only alternative is to use malloc(), which is just filled with pitfalls. Heck, the whole concept of pointers is an accident waiting to happen. You can't free the same pointer twice. You have to always check the return value of malloc() and you mustn't cast it. There's no builtin way of telling if a spot of memory is in use, or if a pointer's been freed, and so on and so forth. Having to resort to low-level memory operations just to be able to store a line of text is asking for...
The encouragement of buffer overflows
Buffer overflows abound in virtually any substantial piece of C code. This is caused by programmers accidentally putting too much data in one space or leaving a pointer pointing somewhere because a returning function fucked up somewhere along the line. C includes no way of telling when the end of an array or allocated block of memory is overrun. The only way of telling is to run, test, and wait for a segfault. Or a spectacular crash. Or a slow, steady leakage of memory from a program, agonisingly 'bleeding' it to death.
Functions which encourage buffer overflows
* gets()
* strcat()
* strcpy()
* sprintf()
* vsprintf()
* bcopy()
* scanf()
* fscanf()
* sscanf()
* getwd()
* getopt()
* realpath()
* getpass()
The list goes on and on and on. Need I sa
Goatse.cx
.cx country code top-level domain is that of Christmas Island, a tiny island 300 kilometres south of Java with about 500 residents, which is an Australian external territory. The .cx domain is popular among internet gambling sites and other operations because it won't disclose registrant's personal information and registration is cheap. Because of the goatse.cx website, however, some users have become wary of visiting any site that ends in .cx.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Goatse.cx is an infamous site on the World Wide Web. The name is a wordplay on "goat sex", a form of bestiality. Its main page contains a gory picture (with filename "hello.jpg") of a man opening his anus and rectum to approximately three times the normal size of such an orifice.
The image originates from an entire set of 40 images of the man depicted sitting on a peg to stretch his anus to those proportions. The images were located by the Stile Project website.
Goatse.cx has four sections:
* The "Receiver" section with two images
* The "Giver" section with one image
* The "Feedback" section, where e-mails send to the address feedback@goatse.cx are exhibited
* The "Contrib" section showcasing contributions to the site, among them several images of questionable taste:
o loopback.jpg is a picture of a man with his penis looped back into his anus.
o giver.jpg is a picture of a man at a nude beach with a photoshopped penis to be large.
o bush.jpg is a picture of United States President George Walker Bush with a picture of hello.jpg framed on a desk near him.
o Also contributed are a goatse.cx song, and an ASCII version of hello.jpg.
A link to goatse.cx is often disguised in posts to Slashdot and other such sites as a hoax in an attempt to trick readers into following the link to the website. Once Slashdot began to display the domain name of a linked URL in brackets following the link (example: "Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]"), people began to set up mirror sites and use public CGI redirect scripts run by sites such as Yahoo! or Slashdot itself. The site's images have also occasionally been used for Wikipedia vandalism.
Goatse.cx has an IRC server located at IRC.GOATSE.CX, which shows an ascii hello.jpg in the MOTD. IRC.GOATSE.CX is part of the IRC network Evolnet.
The
Goatse.cx is owned by Hick.org, which is a website about computer programming. Both Goatse.cx and Hick.org originate from the same IP address. The actual server of Goatse.cx and Hick.org is not located on Christmas Island, but in the US, in the Kansas City, Missouri metro-region. Goat.cx, a mirror of Goatse.cx, is located in the Houston, Texas metro-region.
Various parodies of the site exist, including oralse.cx, which features pictures of a kitten and a dachshund.
External links
* http://goatse.cx -- WARNING! This link takes you directly to the picture described above.
* http://hick.org/goat -- A copy of Goatse.cx on a different URL but originating from the same IP Address WARNING! This link takes you directly to the picture described above
* http://goat.cx -- another mirror of the site
* http://www.stileproject.com -- originally located the image set. WARNING! This site contains pornographic and potentially offensive materials. The Stile Project server is located in the Chicago, Illinois metro-region.
* http://goatse.cx/contrib/gap.zip -- ZIP file containing the entire image set.
Parodies
* http://oralse.cx -- A parody of goatse.cx; totally inoffensive by comparison. Oralse.cx is hosted in Houston, Texas metro-region.
* http://analse.cx -- A cartoon rabbit with a pancake on its head opens its anus in imitation of hello.jpg. Oralse.cx is also hosted in Houston, Texas metro-region.
* http://throatse.cx -- Another parody, showing a wide open mouth instead of a gaping anus, a
How can an anonymous poster be a karma whore?
For the same reason someone can seize power of the largest and greatest nation in the Western Hemisphere via a media coup and money. Oh, and would you like some erect horse cock with that whine?
And what reason is that, exactly? And, no I would not like some erect horse cock, but thanks for offering.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It