igning e-mails sounds more like a liability than anything else.
One day someone receives an email from his parents, asking for urgent money transfer because of some disaster; the bank account is provided. The guy goes to the bank and transfers almost all he has.
A week later this person might be very upset that he did not demand a digital signature on the email because his parents never sent him any requests for money, are in perfect health and have no idea whose bank account it was...
How about a floppy containing a user-generated graphic file?
Better to use a user-generated random file.
Presumably this could be compared to a hash stored on the machine as easily as could a string of characters
This would be bad because you'd be leaking the secret key (your graphic/random file) to possibly compromised computer.
The better solution would be to send challenges to the dongle, and it would respond appropriately (signing them with its secret key, for example). The floppy can't do it.
Seems to me this would be a lot cheaper than a chip and a dongle
A floppy costs $1. A dongle costs $10. They are in the same price range. However floppy wears out, can be easily demagnetized, bent and otherwise damaged. It can also be duplicated without stealing it, so you'd never know that someone is using your access rights for months... The floppy is also BIG and unwieldly to carry around, but a USB dongle on a keychain is no problem (I have HASP4 dongle in front of me right now.)
[a floppy is] no more subject to physical theft than a dongle
As I just said, you can't duplicate the dongle, so someone has to physically steal it. But if you are really concerned about theft of the dongle then
you can attach a passphrase to it, and enter it securely by, for example, pressing one of three little buttons on the dongle itself, in response to LED flashes. This is very safe because this passphrase input method bypasses the possibly insecure computer that the dongle is plugged into.
You could use brute force, but it is not even necessary. Image has "key points" where the user is likely to click. People already mentioned key points on faces, for example. On other photos the user will find something else to use as a guide. People are very unlikely just to click in the middle of nowhere - they will never be able to repeat the trick!
This means that an automated procedure can be developed to locate image's regions that are sufficiently visually different from the surrounding areas, and then the "clicking attack" can be mounted only against those areas. It will significantly reduce the crypto strength. For example, if you have two people on the photo, each with 5 key points, you have an alphabet of 10 "digits" (each corresponding to a key area), and if you do 6 clicks on this photo you are producing 6-digit number, so you have 10 million combinations. This is a very low count, and it can be cracked quickly. If the user clicks on 2 or 3 key points of the image then the number of combinations drops very fast.
But even without an automated cracker, it would be trivially easy to break in. A human that walks up to a secured computer can see the image, and he locates those key points himself. Then he can click on various points in hope to recover the pattern.
Another very bad side effect is that if the legitimate logon is observed without looking at the screen - which is common in office space - then the attacker can hear the number of mouse clicks, and can see the user's hand moving the mouse. Then the attacker can guess the pattern; the number of clicks tells him how complex the attack will be.
Personally, I believe that the best local authentication device is a USB dongle with a small chip inside. You are issued one, or buy one for $10. Plug it in, get authenticated. Unplug and take with you - nobody will log in as you. This can be used remotely too, combined with the crypto glue (the USB dongle can have your secret key, and it can be used to sign the login cookie, for example).
Several people commented that this thing allows to redistribute files before you finish downloading them. But this is not a big deal simply because most of the time file is not being downloaded, it just sits on the HDD 99.9999% of its life. The gain from the early upload would be next to nothing.
It's not Napster or Morpheus, which I could see Microsoft actually blocking.
Blocking Napster etc. would be the stupidest move on MS part. It would generate instant shift to an OS that allows people to access the music. So MS is caught between the rock and hard place - it does not want to encourage Napster-like P2P because of ties to other big businesses, but on the other hand if it stops the P2P then it will hurt itself immeasurably.
When you buy large quantities of anything you get a good discount:-)
Indeed, Tito paid more total, but $100K is way more affordable. I dare say, this flight would be cheap enough for millions of people. If I had the money, I'd take the flight - you just got to leave the planet, even if once in a lifetime. Quite possibly, I will get my chance - my business goes well, and the price should only go down.
Mandrake attempts to live in capitalist environment by rules of a charity. This is not very appropriate - though I don't say it is wrong. But there are better and fairer ways to do the same.
The company must emit more shares (proportionally to the amount of money they want to borrow) and offer those shares to everyone, *including* free software people. We would buy those shares and become co-owners of the company. But Mandrake would lose some of share value due to this emission, and this is fair as well because more shares are printed.
As it stands, Mandrake just wants free gifts. Instead, it should offer a deal: "you give me $100, I give you a piece of a company." That would be much more appropriate, IMO. I would *very much* prefer to own a piece of a free software company rather than a "membership" somewhere.
As long as I can regulate the performance (and the battery drain) it's OK. Many notebooks are used mostly as desktops, but the owner has to travel with them occasionally. That's the fate of all notebooks I have at the office. Two of them are travelling right now, but when at customer's site, they will be plugged into AC and demoing our stuff at full speed. Same when I use them at the office. Rarely they are used on airplanes.
When on battery power, the CPU will run slower and colder anyway. This trick is useful for the AC power - which is actually how most notebooks are used most of the time. Then the CPU runs at full speed, but the cooling may be worse than on an airplane.
Until now, people created and grew their online characters only in role-playing games. Years and years of sleepless nights went into each character, and sometimes a real money was spent on a magical ring or another object of value.
But now we are shown that all these games are exactly that - games. A better thinking person decided to create and develop his online character of auction seller! He spent considerably less time on that, probably less money as well - and as result he ran away with a wad of cash! Pragmatism wins again.
If American values are not great, then why the hell do hordes of Chinese students (from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) fight with tooth and nail to stay in the USA?
Appreciation of mature capitalist economy does not equal to appreciation of reckless and arrogant politics. But here we are, merrily combining the two.
Chinese values are crap. They created a society in which nobody wants to live.
It's their call, not mine. I just don't want to tell them what to do, one way or another.
very same Chinese students fighting to stay in the USA support the nationalistic brutal policies of the Beijing government
I talked to a well-educated guy from PRC (Shanghai), and he told me a lot about China. Not everything that you (or me) see and hear is what it really is. China is a very diverse country, united only by strong central government. If this government is to vanish, chinese provinces will be in war with each other in no time. Chinese have the most experience in ruling a *huge* country, and so far they were successful in holding it together. So don't rock the boat. One can live happily in China, as long as he does not play politics.
Also, don't make a mistake about Falun Gong, it is a political force to reckon with, it got as much religion in it as Seko Asahara's mad gang. Many things were done in name of religion, mostly bad things. Overthrow of Chinese government by Falun Gong would be the worst thing to happen to entire planet. Taliban would look like choir boys compared to mysterious leaders of Falun Gong.
So, sure, let's go with Chinese values. I'll have the FBI come and flog you without a trial [...] Or perhaps you would prefer American values?
If it is wrong to apply american values to chinese culture, then the reverse would be wrong too. Weird, at very least.
Whether I, not being Chinese, like or dislike PRC's policies, is irrelevant because I have no say in their affairs, and though I listen to those who know (like you), I don't want to force my own world view on others. That would be rude and arrogant, and probably only make them angry at me. If your neighbor comes uninvited and starts criticizing your new furniture, wouldn't you ask him to get lost? Same here.
If Chinese people want to criticize their government, they have to work for that. American people did so in their time, and USSR, and Eastern Europe... Rephrasing Koz'ma Prutkov, "If you want to be free - be free!"...
I don't know how good the software is, and I don't read much of Chinese, but the front page definitely is quite an artistic design! With all those horses and stuff, it is *so different* from western style!
In no way I can know everything:-) I dealt only with russian-made AKM, and I know that Chinese-made clones were not as good, in many areas. But I don't know how good a barrel those clones have. True, it is far from simple to bore it well, that's why an average 3rd world country buys guns instead of making their own. I will keep your info in mind, thanks!
The AK-47 was fairly good. I know, I was on a firing range myself and shot from AKM. On 200 meters distance it was very easy to hit a full height target, and on 30 meters all hits were within an inch of each other, even though I never shot from AKM before. Snipers in Vietnam often used just AK-47 and they were very efficient. As I said, I tried the weapon and it is OK.
But if you are confusing a foot soldier's weapon with a sniper's rifle - don't. They are very different. AKM is not designed to be more precise than it is necessary, it does not even have a good sight. It is not needed - infantrymen are not snipers, they don't even know how to measure distance... and they rarely have time to aim carefully. Those machine guns are weapons of close range combat (200-300 meters max.)
AK-47 or AKM have several big advantages for developing countries. They are easy to maintain, they can be taken apart, cleaned and put together in seconds, they use ammo that is widely available, they are cheap, they are available from several manufacturers, they are very deadly, and they are very simple to use, and you could get thousands of them just if you ask (that's why many African countries have debts to USSR). Compare that to elitist M-16 and you see why everyone buys AK-47.
A team of professional futurologists established that the popular junk news site "Slashdot" will disappear in a puff of hot air in just 3 million years, or 8076 hours and 77 milliseconds. Researchers base their predictions on the fact that most of recently published articles are not even worthy of tabloids, scream sensationalism, are extremely stupid, and don't deserve reading.
Slashdot Mirror
One day someone receives an email from his parents, asking for urgent money transfer because of some disaster; the bank account is provided. The guy goes to the bank and transfers almost all he has.
A week later this person might be very upset that he did not demand a digital signature on the email because his parents never sent him any requests for money, are in perfect health and have no idea whose bank account it was...
It is worth noting that US taxpayers pay for the bombs, but someone else is going to benefit from the oil pipeline.
In other words, I am willing to spend $100 of your money if it puts $1 into my pocket.
Better to use a user-generated random file.
Presumably this could be compared to a hash stored on the machine as easily as could a string of characters
This would be bad because you'd be leaking the secret key (your graphic/random file) to possibly compromised computer.
The better solution would be to send challenges to the dongle, and it would respond appropriately (signing them with its secret key, for example). The floppy can't do it.
Seems to me this would be a lot cheaper than a chip and a dongle
A floppy costs $1. A dongle costs $10. They are in the same price range. However floppy wears out, can be easily demagnetized, bent and otherwise damaged. It can also be duplicated without stealing it, so you'd never know that someone is using your access rights for months... The floppy is also BIG and unwieldly to carry around, but a USB dongle on a keychain is no problem (I have HASP4 dongle in front of me right now.)
[a floppy is] no more subject to physical theft than a dongle
As I just said, you can't duplicate the dongle, so someone has to physically steal it. But if you are really concerned about theft of the dongle then you can attach a passphrase to it, and enter it securely by, for example, pressing one of three little buttons on the dongle itself, in response to LED flashes. This is very safe because this passphrase input method bypasses the possibly insecure computer that the dongle is plugged into.
This means that an automated procedure can be developed to locate image's regions that are sufficiently visually different from the surrounding areas, and then the "clicking attack" can be mounted only against those areas. It will significantly reduce the crypto strength. For example, if you have two people on the photo, each with 5 key points, you have an alphabet of 10 "digits" (each corresponding to a key area), and if you do 6 clicks on this photo you are producing 6-digit number, so you have 10 million combinations. This is a very low count, and it can be cracked quickly. If the user clicks on 2 or 3 key points of the image then the number of combinations drops very fast.
But even without an automated cracker, it would be trivially easy to break in. A human that walks up to a secured computer can see the image, and he locates those key points himself. Then he can click on various points in hope to recover the pattern.
Another very bad side effect is that if the legitimate logon is observed without looking at the screen - which is common in office space - then the attacker can hear the number of mouse clicks, and can see the user's hand moving the mouse. Then the attacker can guess the pattern; the number of clicks tells him how complex the attack will be.
Personally, I believe that the best local authentication device is a USB dongle with a small chip inside. You are issued one, or buy one for $10. Plug it in, get authenticated. Unplug and take with you - nobody will log in as you. This can be used remotely too, combined with the crypto glue (the USB dongle can have your secret key, and it can be used to sign the login cookie, for example).
Several people commented that this thing allows to redistribute files before you finish downloading them. But this is not a big deal simply because most of the time file is not being downloaded, it just sits on the HDD 99.9999% of its life. The gain from the early upload would be next to nothing.
Blocking Napster etc. would be the stupidest move on MS part. It would generate instant shift to an OS that allows people to access the music. So MS is caught between the rock and hard place - it does not want to encourage Napster-like P2P because of ties to other big businesses, but on the other hand if it stops the P2P then it will hurt itself immeasurably.
Indeed, Tito paid more total, but $100K is way more affordable. I dare say, this flight would be cheap enough for millions of people. If I had the money, I'd take the flight - you just got to leave the planet, even if once in a lifetime. Quite possibly, I will get my chance - my business goes well, and the price should only go down.
The company must emit more shares (proportionally to the amount of money they want to borrow) and offer those shares to everyone, *including* free software people. We would buy those shares and become co-owners of the company. But Mandrake would lose some of share value due to this emission, and this is fair as well because more shares are printed.
As it stands, Mandrake just wants free gifts. Instead, it should offer a deal: "you give me $100, I give you a piece of a company." That would be much more appropriate, IMO. I would *very much* prefer to own a piece of a free software company rather than a "membership" somewhere.
What religion? Unless, of course, hard SF counts as religion in your book :-) Follow the link!
For those who didn't read the book, do it now - this is an interesting story! You can buy used for just $2.
Take into account that China is ruled by old people, and those old people don't mind financing a promising scientific research.
Actually, instead of defragging, it would just frag it, instantly :-)
As long as I can regulate the performance (and the battery drain) it's OK. Many notebooks are used mostly as desktops, but the owner has to travel with them occasionally. That's the fate of all notebooks I have at the office. Two of them are travelling right now, but when at customer's site, they will be plugged into AC and demoing our stuff at full speed. Same when I use them at the office. Rarely they are used on airplanes.
When on battery power, the CPU will run slower and colder anyway. This trick is useful for the AC power - which is actually how most notebooks are used most of the time. Then the CPU runs at full speed, but the cooling may be worse than on an airplane.
This will be prevented by stupidifying the populace even more.
But now we are shown that all these games are exactly that - games. A better thinking person decided to create and develop his online character of auction seller! He spent considerably less time on that, probably less money as well - and as result he ran away with a wad of cash! Pragmatism wins again.
Appreciation of mature capitalist economy does not equal to appreciation of reckless and arrogant politics. But here we are, merrily combining the two.
Chinese values are crap. They created a society in which nobody wants to live.
It's their call, not mine. I just don't want to tell them what to do, one way or another.
very same Chinese students fighting to stay in the USA support the nationalistic brutal policies of the Beijing government
I talked to a well-educated guy from PRC (Shanghai), and he told me a lot about China. Not everything that you (or me) see and hear is what it really is. China is a very diverse country, united only by strong central government. If this government is to vanish, chinese provinces will be in war with each other in no time. Chinese have the most experience in ruling a *huge* country, and so far they were successful in holding it together. So don't rock the boat. One can live happily in China, as long as he does not play politics.
Also, don't make a mistake about Falun Gong, it is a political force to reckon with, it got as much religion in it as Seko Asahara's mad gang. Many things were done in name of religion, mostly bad things. Overthrow of Chinese government by Falun Gong would be the worst thing to happen to entire planet. Taliban would look like choir boys compared to mysterious leaders of Falun Gong.
If it is wrong to apply american values to chinese culture, then the reverse would be wrong too. Weird, at very least.
Whether I, not being Chinese, like or dislike PRC's policies, is irrelevant because I have no say in their affairs, and though I listen to those who know (like you), I don't want to force my own world view on others. That would be rude and arrogant, and probably only make them angry at me. If your neighbor comes uninvited and starts criticizing your new furniture, wouldn't you ask him to get lost? Same here.
If Chinese people want to criticize their government, they have to work for that. American people did so in their time, and USSR, and Eastern Europe... Rephrasing Koz'ma Prutkov, "If you want to be free - be free!" ...
Don't tell Chinese how to live, we have Bush for that! "American values", t..y m..x, what about Chinese values, whatever they are?
I don't know how good the software is, and I don't read much of Chinese, but the front page definitely is quite an artistic design! With all those horses and stuff, it is *so different* from western style!
In no way I can know everything :-) I dealt only with russian-made AKM, and I know that Chinese-made clones were not as good, in many areas. But I don't know how good a barrel those clones have. True, it is far from simple to bore it well, that's why an average 3rd world country buys guns instead of making their own. I will keep your info in mind, thanks!
Too late. Sprint already has such auto-update, and it is free.
But if you are confusing a foot soldier's weapon with a sniper's rifle - don't. They are very different. AKM is not designed to be more precise than it is necessary, it does not even have a good sight. It is not needed - infantrymen are not snipers, they don't even know how to measure distance... and they rarely have time to aim carefully. Those machine guns are weapons of close range combat (200-300 meters max.)
AK-47 or AKM have several big advantages for developing countries. They are easy to maintain, they can be taken apart, cleaned and put together in seconds, they use ammo that is widely available, they are cheap, they are available from several manufacturers, they are very deadly, and they are very simple to use, and you could get thousands of them just if you ask (that's why many African countries have debts to USSR). Compare that to elitist M-16 and you see why everyone buys AK-47.
A team of professional futurologists established that the popular junk news site "Slashdot" will disappear in a puff of hot air in just 3 million years, or 8076 hours and 77 milliseconds. Researchers base their predictions on the fact that most of recently published articles are not even worthy of tabloids, scream sensationalism, are extremely stupid, and don't deserve reading.