We use HN in Java, and I find reading other code that does not use it to be harder than reading our code.
Of course. You're used to it. Reading something you're used to is always easier than reading something you're not. We write Java sans HN, and I promise you that I would have an easier time reading our code than yours.
I do not understand the justification for using HN in Java -- I have been writing Java code for six years now, and I very much doubt that I've wasted a lot of time wondering "Hmmm, I wonder what type of variable this is...". Java doesn't have most of the complexities of C/C++ with respect to types (no confusion about whether something is a pointer or not, for instance), so what's the reason for using HN in Java? How can the benefits possibly outweigh the cost?
You were probably correct a few years ago, but you need to get with the times.
There is no film in the world that can outshoot a high-sensitivity CCD nowadays. Cameras like the Kodak 760x can shoot at ISO 6400 with reasonable quality, which film is utterly incapable of matching with any sort of quality, and CCDs are only getting better.
Yes, crappy consumer digicams suck at anything over ISO 100. But a serious professional digicam beats the pants off of film at high ISOs. (In case you were wondering, my wife is a professional photographer who shoots with a Nikon D1X. I do know a bit about this.)
My concern is obviously for that of robustness. Java is already flimsy as it is in this respect (imagine running an entire OS with a single such point of failure).
"Flimsy"? I've been a professional Java developer for six years. I have written server software (running to Solaris and Linux) and client software (Swing applications running on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux). The server-side software is used by almost a million people a day; the client-side software hasn't yet been released to the public but is already being used internally. It will be used by millions when it is released.
Number of Java crashes I have seen in the past few years: Zero.
Java is obviously only as stable as your computer, so of course when a whole Windows machine goes down, you lose Java as well. However, I have seen absolutely no crashes directly tied to Java, on any OS, since JDK 1.2.2 came out. I don't know what version of Java you are playing with, but I'd hardly call that "flimsy".
As far as "imagine running an entire OS with a single such point of failure", that is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Are you suggesting the Linux kernel is not a single point of failure? When the Linux kernel freaks out, your whole system goes down. That's a single point of failure if I've ever heard one.
At about $149, Nintendo will roughly break even on sales of each GameCube, Harrison said. The company has kept manufacturing costs lower by not offering an installed DVD player on the GameCube like its rival consoles
Nintendo has never lost money on the Cube. MS was estimated to be losing $60-$80 per system at launch -- it's anybody's guess how much they are losing now, with (presumably) reduced manufacturing cost fighting against a $100 price drop.
And, while I don't have figures for Sony, I believe you're mistaken about them as well. They were certainly losing money on the PS2 at launch time, they may well be again after the $100 drop.
It's easy enough to open an iButton without destroying it. I seem to recall you just keep it in a pressurized N2 atmosphere while cracking the case, and it won't even realize that it has been opened.
Nonsense. They were all saying "This merger shouldn't happen" back when it was still being negiotiated. The fact that they're still saying it now is not the least bit suspicious.
This deal was pushed through so that the TW execs could make a lot of money, and so that AOL could have some real assets when the Internet bubble burst.
The XBox is getting its ass kicked in worldwide sales. Even in North America it is being outsold by the GameCube (although the GC is still behind in terms of total NA sales).
If you like playing little kiddie games thats great. I'll stick with my Halo, Wreckless, Max payne for now. Also sorry to burst your bubble.
Well, I'm glad you enjoy those games. Good for you. I happen to enjoy Mario and Zelda, and I'm a married adult -- I don't think that makes me "kiddie". For the record, I'm also getting Resident Evil and Eternal Darkness, both of which are very bloody and horrific.
Xbox E3 lineup will be awesome.
Glad you think so -- you've made quite an investment in the XBox, and I hope you get games you enjoy for it.
However, names like "Mario", "Zelda" and "Metroid" are important to a lot of people. Nintendo is showing all of their best franchises at E3 this year, and I very much doubt that any journalists will see Microsoft or Sony as having a better showing this year. We'll see in a little over a month, though -- feel free to scream "I TOLD YOU SO!" if a significant number of journalists (as supposedly objective parties) think MS trounced the competition at E3. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.
However I dont think you understand that XBOX does have very good 3rd party support.
And I don't think you were listening to me. I didn't say the XBox has lousy third-party support now -- I was referring to a hypothetical situation in which the XBox has failed. Obviously, at that point, all third parties are out the window, and the XBox 2 would have to start rebuilding support.
Picture, if you will, how Sega would have fared had they tried to introduce the Dreamcast 2. The situation facing the XBox 2 will be the same, if the XBox flops.
The xbox price cut is a good thing.
I don't recall saying otherwise.
Before you make you doom and gloom predictions and start talking about xbox 2 please do a little research. Just pulling out of your ass all these prediction about the xbox 2 is pretty weak
I was speaking hypothetically. IF the XBox fails, there will be no XBox 2 -- at least not a successful one. Yes, I also predicted that this situation is likely, but the main point of my post was the logical conclusion that an XBox failure all but forces an XBox 2 failure.
Go back to your GC fanboy message boards. I think thats where you belong.
Ooookay. I think we have an insecure college kid on our hands, folks.
One thing I find interesting is that I've repeatedly heard the argument that Microsoft can just throw money at XBox until it succeeds. The whole first-iteration-sucks but the third-one-will-be-good thing Microsoft is famous for.
I don't buy it.
The XBox looks likely to fail. It's getting its ass whipped everywhere but America, and even here the GameCube has started to outsell it despite no strong releases on the GameCube side. When Resident Evil, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Eternal Darkness, and Star Fox Adventures hit the GameCube (supposedly all this year), Microsoft will need to have some damned strong support on their side to survive just in North America. And, barring some big surprises being revealed at E3, it doesn't look like they have too many great games coming, at least not that will stand up to Zelda and Mario. In any case, no matter how they do here, I think it's very likely that Japan, Europe, and Australia are lost causes.
Suppose they do fail utterly -- they have to discontinue the XBox because people aren't buying it. Now, this is Microsoft, so of course they go back to the drawing board and release the even-more-powerful XBox 2. Twice as powerful as the Playstation 3, say, and a bit cheaper. Sounds great, right? Microsoft can just keep shoveling these things into the market until one of them sticks, the same way they've done with everything else.
Well, no. Firstly, Microsoft's first-party games won't support the XBox 2 by itself. Nintendo is the only game company in the world that can pull that trick off. So the XBox 2 will need third-party support in order to have any games at all, and without games nobody will buy the system, no matter how powerful it is.
Even after the XBox failure, many PC game companies might be willing to port their stuff to the XBox 2 for a quick buck. But can you imagine *anybody* developing exclusive software for the XBox 2, after the complete and utter failure of the XBox? Well, it's not impossible, but the XBox 2 would have to have a lot going for it in order to attract any third-party game companies. The Japanese third-parties, in particular, would be unlikely to touch the thing after the obvious failure of the first. They're leery enough dealing with the first one, and only tremendous work on Microsoft's part got any Japanese support at all.
I'm well aware that Microsoft has deep pockets and can afford to buy game companies outright in order to force them to develop for the XBox 2 -- but that's not the point. They've already bought Bungie, and shovelled money at others, and it doesn't seem to be making a hell of a lot of difference. They need to fix the problem *now*, or it will be far, far more expensive to try to salvage the XBox 2. Microsoft isn't stupid -- they are perfectly well aware that unless they succeed now, it will be *really* expensive to try to make a comeback.
In my view, if the XBox fails, it's all over for Microsoft's game console business. It will be really tough to buy back consumer and third-party confidence after the fiasco that looks to be shaping up.
Clarification -- a whole book of codes is transmitted at once. Then you use each code once.
This is actually a lot better than it might sound, because you only have to worry about super-secure physical transit once, and then you get N opportunities to send completely unbreakable messages over whatever insecure channels you want. They could be announced on the nightly news if you wanted, and they would be completely and totally secure as long as nobody had your codebook.
(How can you prove they are "completely and totally" secure? Surely you can just brute-force a one-time pad?... Well, no. Say the pad is 500 characters long, and you transmit cyphertext <= 500 characters. In the absence of the pad, you would have to try each and every possible pad... which gives you each and every possible message. There are as many potential plaintexts as there are possible pads, and a huge number of them would be comprehensible, plain English. Comprehensible, plain English with absolutely no relation to the cyphertext, but you get the point.
There is no way to determine that "WE ATTACK AT DAWN" is the *true* plaintext, and not just some random coincidence that resulted from a certain choice of potential pad.)
They have a program which generates new keys for each subsequent transaction, and they claim that this counts as a "one-time pad".
Nonsense -- a one-time pad is only secure because there is provably no way to figure out the keys without a copy of the codebook (assuming they were generated through appropriate random means).
As long as a program is producing the keys, they will exist in a particular sequence. All you need to do is figure out at which point in the random sequence you are, and then you can generate the rest of the sequence easily, allowing you to eavedrop on the conversation.
Admittedly, the article was fluff, but key-hopping doesn't significantly increase the difficulty of breaking encryption. Unless there is something else behind this that I'm missing, this is another "Compress random data by 99%! For real this time!"
"If the government outlaws rocket launchers today, they'll be outlawing slingshots tomorrow? Where will it end?"
You might as well say "Well, if the government outlaws murder, it's only a small step for them to outlaw all *depictions* of murder. Next year we won't even be able to play Quake!" Murder has been outlawed since, well, forever, and yet our rights to enact it in movies, stories, and pictures remain unaffected. Not all slopes are slippery.
Erotic stories are one thing, but sexual predation of children is not free speech. Child pornography is illegal, and this law merely makes it a bit more difficult to distribute. Where's the harm in that? As far as not stopping the problem -- existing laws against child pornography obviously didn't stop the problem. Perhaps we should just repeal them all? For that matter, why is murder illegal? It still happens anyway.
Please convince me that a credible threat to innocent bystanders' personal liberties exists, and that the (threat * damage) is greater than the any positive effect this law could have. So far, I'm siding with the lawmakers.
We are talking about pornography involving actual children, not stories or drawings. "Sexual abuse of children" != "Free speech". The ACLU would throw a hissy fit (and rightly so) if erotic stories or drawings were affected, but this law seems harmless enough to me.
Except that child porn also legally includes fantasy drawings or writing of children in sexual situations, which does not harm children.
Uhhh... reference? I think you are mistaken on this.
Yes, the vernacular "child porn" might be considered to cover those two cases, but AFAIK the legal definition does not.
I would strongly oppose any such definition. If you enjoy a movie or videogame featuring violent murders, nobody claims that you're a closeted mass-murderer solely based on that. Similarly, if you enjoy a fantasy depiction of children engaged in sex, nobody should be able to claim you're a closeted pedophile based on that. They *do* claim that, I know, but I believe the law in this case errs on the side of caution. Fantasy harms no one as long as all involved are sane.
I think most of us enjoy things in movies, stories, and videogames that we would be absolutely horrified about in real life, and I am not aware of any law jeopardizing the rights of adults to access such works. If you know of any, please let me know, because I'll start writing letters to my representatives.
In a telephone interview after the appearance, Heckenkamp's father, Thomas Heckenkamp, said his son is only trying to protect his rights . "They've overstepped their bounds, and they're keeping him from defending himself," he said.
I wonder if I'm the only one who would have said "I have no idea when my son turned into such a moron. I bet the little bastard is on drugs."
I mean -- seriously -- I know you're supposed to stand up for your children and all that, but this kid's father is an idiot. They've "overstepped their bounds" by arresting your son for illegal activities? The judge has been quite patient with the kid, it seems, considering that contempt of court hasn't been added to the list of charges. Makes you wonder how good of a father the guy is.
These "personality types" are pretty specific to error handling in C / C++.
As a die-hard Java programmer, it merely makes me shake my head in wonder at the kind of crap C programmers are willing to put up with. Certainly not to say that Java makes error handling irrelevant, or even necessarily easy, but at least I don't have to check if a pointer == NULL after every damned allocation. Optimists are a lot less dangerous in Java (still irritating, though).
In addition to the obvious comment "next-gen drives won't require an adapter", you're also missing the fact that you can ship a magazine with one adapter and fifty FlexCDs.
You're making a good overall point, but source code is not fundamentally different from binary code.
I could, if I were so inclined, write code by hand in Motorola machine code, and call that the source code. Then I could create a compiler which could translate (enough) Motorola machine code into Intel machine code to compile my program, and call the Intel program the binary. I could even GPL the program, and require everybody to distribute the Motorola machine code (the "source code") along with the Intel machine code (the binary), and that would be 100% upheld in court.
This is obviously a contrived example, but the *only* difference between this and, say, using Java are that no machines exist which understand Java source code directly. You could, in theory, build such a machine, and could then safely refer to Java source code as "binary machine code" -- and it would be, every bit as much as Intel machine code is binary machine code. The really cool thing is then you could program directly in Java bytecodes, and call that the source code, and use a decompiler to turn that into Java source, which would be understandable by the machine and therefore safely call that the compiled binary machine code.
Yes, these are obviously contrived examples, but the point is that you can't say "Source code is NOT a program, it's closer to an algorithm than to a program" and then claim that the same is not true of binaries. After all, I could distribute my stupid Motorola-to-Intel program, and then tell everybody "Hey, the source code is there, you should have read it". A binary is just a more-difficult-to-understand computer language, and the difficulty of understanding it doesn't seem like a good foundation for a legal definition.
Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.
Since when is this covered by fair use? Let's have a look at the relevant section of Title 17:
US Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107
Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Funny, while it mentions news reporting, research, and things of that nature, I don't see anything in there about "sharing with your buddies". Sending people songs over AIM is *not* considered fair use. You can certainly argue that the law should be changed, but you at least need to know what the law says.
(Note that I am not saying anything regarding the speech, or the college kids downloading mp3's. I am merely correcting a significant misunderstanding of copyright law.)
Hmm. There's no evidence that you have a soul either.
Quite correct. I do not believe that souls exist, given the complete lack of evidence in their favor. That of course means that I do not believe that I possess one.
Does that make it OK for me to kill you?
Most Christians don't believe that animals have souls, either. Do you run around killing people's pet dogs and cats and then claim that it's okay because they don't have souls?
The Mona Lisa doesn't have a soul. Is it okay to break into the Louvre and torch it with a flamethrower?
The presence of absence of an invisible, incorporeal, supernatural being hovering around a material body is not what causes murder to be wrong. Murder is "wrong" because it has been defined as such by society.
The fact that murder's wrongness is defined by society, as opposed to the presence of a soul, is quite clear to an objective observer. Strangling a happily sleeping baby is demonic. Shooting a godless infidel heathen soldier from whatever country we happen to be at war with today can net you a medal and a promotion.
If you believe that both the enemy soldier and the sleeping baby have souls, your decision of whether it was right to kill them clearly hinges on something other than the presence or absence of a soul. Thus, you clearly do not believe that the presence of a soul is what makes killing wrong, no matter how you rationalize it to yourself internally.
I don't know why I'm wasting my time responding to an AC troll, but whatever. Still hoping for my super-powerful wombat of doom...
Slashdot Mirror
We use HN in Java, and I find reading other code that does not use it to be harder than reading our code.
Of course. You're used to it. Reading something you're used to is always easier than reading something you're not. We write Java sans HN, and I promise you that I would have an easier time reading our code than yours.
I do not understand the justification for using HN in Java -- I have been writing Java code for six years now, and I very much doubt that I've wasted a lot of time wondering "Hmmm, I wonder what type of variable this is...". Java doesn't have most of the complexities of C/C++ with respect to types (no confusion about whether something is a pointer or not, for instance), so what's the reason for using HN in Java? How can the benefits possibly outweigh the cost?
You were probably correct a few years ago, but you need to get with the times.
There is no film in the world that can outshoot a high-sensitivity CCD nowadays. Cameras like the Kodak 760x can shoot at ISO 6400 with reasonable quality, which film is utterly incapable of matching with any sort of quality, and CCDs are only getting better.
Yes, crappy consumer digicams suck at anything over ISO 100. But a serious professional digicam beats the pants off of film at high ISOs. (In case you were wondering, my wife is a professional photographer who shoots with a Nikon D1X. I do know a bit about this.)
...except that the exact same sentence can be translated differently, depending on the context.
Speaker 1: Where are we going?
Speaker 2: To the bank.
If you're on a river, the meaning of "bank" is different than if you're in a grocery store.
My concern is obviously for that of robustness. Java is already flimsy as it is in this respect (imagine running an entire OS with a single such point of failure).
"Flimsy"? I've been a professional Java developer for six years. I have written server software (running to Solaris and Linux) and client software (Swing applications running on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux). The server-side software is used by almost a million people a day; the client-side software hasn't yet been released to the public but is already being used internally. It will be used by millions when it is released.
Number of Java crashes I have seen in the past few years: Zero.
Java is obviously only as stable as your computer, so of course when a whole Windows machine goes down, you lose Java as well. However, I have seen absolutely no crashes directly tied to Java, on any OS, since JDK 1.2.2 came out. I don't know what version of Java you are playing with, but I'd hardly call that "flimsy".
As far as "imagine running an entire OS with a single such point of failure", that is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Are you suggesting the Linux kernel is not a single point of failure? When the Linux kernel freaks out, your whole system goes down. That's a single point of failure if I've ever heard one.
Actually you could just flip the words "Communism" and "Democracy" throughout the whole article, and you have a story about the US!
Yes, because we frequently arrest people for having anti-government opinions. Happens all the time.
Dumbass.
Nintendo has never lost money on the Cube. MS was estimated to be losing $60-$80 per system at launch -- it's anybody's guess how much they are losing now, with (presumably) reduced manufacturing cost fighting against a $100 price drop.
And, while I don't have figures for Sony, I believe you're mistaken about them as well. They were certainly losing money on the PS2 at launch time, they may well be again after the $100 drop.
You just messed up the entire universe! Classic fencepost error. You need three (3) \n's to create four (4) lines.
:-).
Good thing God knows how to code
It's easy enough to open an iButton without destroying it. I seem to recall you just keep it in a pressurized N2 atmosphere while cracking the case, and it won't even realize that it has been opened.
Nonsense. They were all saying "This merger shouldn't happen" back when it was still being negiotiated. The fact that they're still saying it now is not the least bit suspicious.
This deal was pushed through so that the TW execs could make a lot of money, and so that AOL could have some real assets when the Internet bubble burst.
All in all the STL is god's gift to programmers.
You made a typo: "programmers" should have been "those, poor, poor bastards who are still stuck using C++".
Just thought I'd point that out.
And in your day, it probably didn't cost twenty-five bucks for two tickets, some popcorn, and a Coke.
Ummmm ... okay.
The XBox is getting its ass kicked in worldwide sales. Even in North America it is being outsold by the GameCube (although the GC is still behind in terms of total NA sales).
If you like playing little kiddie games thats great. I'll stick with my Halo, Wreckless, Max payne for now. Also sorry to burst your bubble.
Well, I'm glad you enjoy those games. Good for you. I happen to enjoy Mario and Zelda, and I'm a married adult -- I don't think that makes me "kiddie". For the record, I'm also getting Resident Evil and Eternal Darkness, both of which are very bloody and horrific.
Xbox E3 lineup will be awesome.
Glad you think so -- you've made quite an investment in the XBox, and I hope you get games you enjoy for it.
However, names like "Mario", "Zelda" and "Metroid" are important to a lot of people. Nintendo is showing all of their best franchises at E3 this year, and I very much doubt that any journalists will see Microsoft or Sony as having a better showing this year. We'll see in a little over a month, though -- feel free to scream "I TOLD YOU SO!" if a significant number of journalists (as supposedly objective parties) think MS trounced the competition at E3. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.
However I dont think you understand that XBOX does have very good 3rd party support.
And I don't think you were listening to me. I didn't say the XBox has lousy third-party support now -- I was referring to a hypothetical situation in which the XBox has failed. Obviously, at that point, all third parties are out the window, and the XBox 2 would have to start rebuilding support.
Picture, if you will, how Sega would have fared had they tried to introduce the Dreamcast 2. The situation facing the XBox 2 will be the same, if the XBox flops.
The xbox price cut is a good thing.
I don't recall saying otherwise.
Before you make you doom and gloom predictions and start talking about xbox 2 please do a little
research. Just pulling out of your ass all these prediction about the xbox 2 is pretty weak
I was speaking hypothetically. IF the XBox fails, there will be no XBox 2 -- at least not a successful one. Yes, I also predicted that this situation is likely, but the main point of my post was the logical conclusion that an XBox failure all but forces an XBox 2 failure.
Go back to your GC fanboy message boards. I think thats where you belong.
Ooookay. I think we have an insecure college kid on our hands, folks.
One thing I find interesting is that I've repeatedly heard the argument that Microsoft can just throw money at XBox until it succeeds. The whole first-iteration-sucks but the third-one-will-be-good thing Microsoft is famous for.
I don't buy it.
The XBox looks likely to fail. It's getting its ass whipped everywhere but America, and even here the GameCube has started to outsell it despite no strong releases on the GameCube side. When Resident Evil, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Eternal Darkness, and Star Fox Adventures hit the GameCube (supposedly all this year), Microsoft will need to have some damned strong support on their side to survive just in North America. And, barring some big surprises being revealed at E3, it doesn't look like they have too many great games coming, at least not that will stand up to Zelda and Mario. In any case, no matter how they do here, I think it's very likely that Japan, Europe, and Australia are lost causes.
Suppose they do fail utterly -- they have to discontinue the XBox because people aren't buying it. Now, this is Microsoft, so of course they go back to the drawing board and release the even-more-powerful XBox 2. Twice as powerful as the Playstation 3, say, and a bit cheaper. Sounds great, right? Microsoft can just keep shoveling these things into the market until one of them sticks, the same way they've done with everything else.
Well, no. Firstly, Microsoft's first-party games won't support the XBox 2 by itself. Nintendo is the only game company in the world that can pull that trick off. So the XBox 2 will need third-party support in order to have any games at all, and without games nobody will buy the system, no matter how powerful it is.
Even after the XBox failure, many PC game companies might be willing to port their stuff to the XBox 2 for a quick buck. But can you imagine *anybody* developing exclusive software for the XBox 2, after the complete and utter failure of the XBox? Well, it's not impossible, but the XBox 2 would have to have a lot going for it in order to attract any third-party game companies. The Japanese third-parties, in particular, would be unlikely to touch the thing after the obvious failure of the first. They're leery enough dealing with the first one, and only tremendous work on Microsoft's part got any Japanese support at all.
I'm well aware that Microsoft has deep pockets and can afford to buy game companies outright in order to force them to develop for the XBox 2 -- but that's not the point. They've already bought Bungie, and shovelled money at others, and it doesn't seem to be making a hell of a lot of difference. They need to fix the problem *now*, or it will be far, far more expensive to try to salvage the XBox 2. Microsoft isn't stupid -- they are perfectly well aware that unless they succeed now, it will be *really* expensive to try to make a comeback.
In my view, if the XBox fails, it's all over for Microsoft's game console business. It will be really tough to buy back consumer and third-party confidence after the fiasco that looks to be shaping up.
And one of my old professors bemoaned the switch away from Fortran.
So what?
The opinions of individuals are irrelevant in a contest decided by the masses.
Clarification -- a whole book of codes is transmitted at once. Then you use each code once.
... Well, no. Say the pad is 500 characters long, and you transmit cyphertext <= 500 characters. In the absence of the pad, you would have to try each and every possible pad ... which gives you each and every possible message. There are as many potential plaintexts as there are possible pads, and a huge number of them would be comprehensible, plain English. Comprehensible, plain English with absolutely no relation to the cyphertext, but you get the point.
This is actually a lot better than it might sound, because you only have to worry about super-secure physical transit once, and then you get N opportunities to send completely unbreakable messages over whatever insecure channels you want. They could be announced on the nightly news if you wanted, and they would be completely and totally secure as long as nobody had your codebook.
(How can you prove they are "completely and totally" secure? Surely you can just brute-force a one-time pad?
There is no way to determine that "WE ATTACK AT DAWN" is the *true* plaintext, and not just some random coincidence that resulted from a certain choice of potential pad.)
They have a program which generates new keys for each subsequent transaction, and they claim that this counts as a "one-time pad".
Nonsense -- a one-time pad is only secure because there is provably no way to figure out the keys without a copy of the codebook (assuming they were generated through appropriate random means).
As long as a program is producing the keys, they will exist in a particular sequence. All you need to do is figure out at which point in the random sequence you are, and then you can generate the rest of the sequence easily, allowing you to eavedrop on the conversation.
Admittedly, the article was fluff, but key-hopping doesn't significantly increase the difficulty of breaking encryption. Unless there is something else behind this that I'm missing, this is another "Compress random data by 99%! For real this time!"
*sigh*
The ol' slippery slope.
"If the government outlaws rocket launchers today, they'll be outlawing slingshots tomorrow? Where will it end?"
You might as well say "Well, if the government outlaws murder, it's only a small step for them to outlaw all *depictions* of murder. Next year we won't even be able to play Quake!" Murder has been outlawed since, well, forever, and yet our rights to enact it in movies, stories, and pictures remain unaffected. Not all slopes are slippery.
Erotic stories are one thing, but sexual predation of children is not free speech. Child pornography is illegal, and this law merely makes it a bit more difficult to distribute. Where's the harm in that? As far as not stopping the problem -- existing laws against child pornography obviously didn't stop the problem. Perhaps we should just repeal them all? For that matter, why is murder illegal? It still happens anyway.
Please convince me that a credible threat to innocent bystanders' personal liberties exists, and that the (threat * damage) is greater than the any positive effect this law could have. So far, I'm siding with the lawmakers.
How is this counter to the ACLU's goals?
We are talking about pornography involving actual children, not stories or drawings. "Sexual abuse of children" != "Free speech". The ACLU would throw a hissy fit (and rightly so) if erotic stories or drawings were affected, but this law seems harmless enough to me.
Except that child porn also legally includes fantasy drawings or writing of children in sexual situations, which does not harm children.
... reference? I think you are mistaken on this.
Uhhh
Yes, the vernacular "child porn" might be considered to cover those two cases, but AFAIK the legal definition does not.
I would strongly oppose any such definition. If you enjoy a movie or videogame featuring violent murders, nobody claims that you're a closeted mass-murderer solely based on that. Similarly, if you enjoy a fantasy depiction of children engaged in sex, nobody should be able to claim you're a closeted pedophile based on that. They *do* claim that, I know, but I believe the law in this case errs on the side of caution. Fantasy harms no one as long as all involved are sane.
I think most of us enjoy things in movies, stories, and videogames that we would be absolutely horrified about in real life, and I am not aware of any law jeopardizing the rights of adults to access such works. If you know of any, please let me know, because I'll start writing letters to my representatives.
In a telephone interview after the appearance, Heckenkamp's father, Thomas Heckenkamp, said his son is only trying to protect his rights . "They've overstepped their bounds, and they're keeping him from defending himself," he said.
I wonder if I'm the only one who would have said "I have no idea when my son turned into such a moron. I bet the little bastard is on drugs."
I mean -- seriously -- I know you're supposed to stand up for your children and all that, but this kid's father is an idiot. They've "overstepped their bounds" by arresting your son for illegal activities? The judge has been quite patient with the kid, it seems, considering that contempt of court hasn't been added to the list of charges. Makes you wonder how good of a father the guy is.
These "personality types" are pretty specific to error handling in C / C++.
As a die-hard Java programmer, it merely makes me shake my head in wonder at the kind of crap C programmers are willing to put up with. Certainly not to say that Java makes error handling irrelevant, or even necessarily easy, but at least I don't have to check if a pointer == NULL after every damned allocation. Optimists are a lot less dangerous in Java (still irritating, though).
In addition to the obvious comment "next-gen drives won't require an adapter", you're also missing the fact that you can ship a magazine with one adapter and fifty FlexCDs.
You're making a good overall point, but source code is not fundamentally different from binary code.
I could, if I were so inclined, write code by hand in Motorola machine code, and call that the source code. Then I could create a compiler which could translate (enough) Motorola machine code into Intel machine code to compile my program, and call the Intel program the binary. I could even GPL the program, and require everybody to distribute the Motorola machine code (the "source code") along with the Intel machine code (the binary), and that would be 100% upheld in court.
This is obviously a contrived example, but the *only* difference between this and, say, using Java are that no machines exist which understand Java source code directly. You could, in theory, build such a machine, and could then safely refer to Java source code as "binary machine code" -- and it would be, every bit as much as Intel machine code is binary machine code. The really cool thing is then you could program directly in Java bytecodes, and call that the source code, and use a decompiler to turn that into Java source, which would be understandable by the machine and therefore safely call that the compiled binary machine code.
Yes, these are obviously contrived examples, but the point is that you can't say "Source code is NOT a program, it's closer to an algorithm than to a program" and then claim that the same is not true of binaries. After all, I could distribute my stupid Motorola-to-Intel program, and then tell everybody "Hey, the source code is there, you should have read it". A binary is just a more-difficult-to-understand computer language, and the difficulty of understanding it doesn't seem like a good foundation for a legal definition.
Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.
Since when is this covered by fair use? Let's have a look at the relevant section of Title 17:
US Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107
Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Funny, while it mentions news reporting, research, and things of that nature, I don't see anything in there about "sharing with your buddies". Sending people songs over AIM is *not* considered fair use. You can certainly argue that the law should be changed, but you at least need to know what the law says.
(Note that I am not saying anything regarding the speech, or the college kids downloading mp3's. I am merely correcting a significant misunderstanding of copyright law.)
Hmm. There's no evidence that you have a soul either.
Quite correct. I do not believe that souls exist, given the complete lack of evidence in their favor. That of course means that I do not believe that I possess one.
Does that make it OK for me to kill you?
Most Christians don't believe that animals have souls, either. Do you run around killing people's pet dogs and cats and then claim that it's okay because they don't have souls?
The Mona Lisa doesn't have a soul. Is it okay to break into the Louvre and torch it with a flamethrower?
The presence of absence of an invisible, incorporeal, supernatural being hovering around a material body is not what causes murder to be wrong. Murder is "wrong" because it has been defined as such by society.
The fact that murder's wrongness is defined by society, as opposed to the presence of a soul, is quite clear to an objective observer. Strangling a happily sleeping baby is demonic. Shooting a godless infidel heathen soldier from whatever country we happen to be at war with today can net you a medal and a promotion.
If you believe that both the enemy soldier and the sleeping baby have souls, your decision of whether it was right to kill them clearly hinges on something other than the presence or absence of a soul. Thus, you clearly do not believe that the presence of a soul is what makes killing wrong, no matter how you rationalize it to yourself internally.
I don't know why I'm wasting my time responding to an AC troll, but whatever. Still hoping for my super-powerful wombat of doom...