After the developers pissed a lot of people off, Pidgin was forked and among other things Funpidgin promises voice and video support as well. I think they'll pull it off before the Google guys.
I understood that the experiment was not meant to make people like RDIF tags. It seems they just want to make people think about the technology and make their own conclusions. If the attenders see how much information can be gathered about their activities by them just carrying a small tag along during the conference, they might think twice before agreeing to let the government make carrying such a tag a legal requirement in a not-so-distant future.
Being an Estonian I can say that the so called attacks weren't really such a big deal. Basically a few government web pages (parliament's, government's president's and couple more) were DDOS'ed for a couple of hours from Russian ips. It's not like this caused too much trouble (the government's infranet still worked just fine, the citizens just couldn't access the pages). I do think that the idea of Cyber Defence is quite cool and I'm glad, that we're the pioneers here but it does seem that this really is the primary reason here, to pioneer something. It might still become useful one day and I'll be interested to see how this rolls out. I do enjoy the fact that the small size of Estonia allows us to try all the new IT solutions on quite a large scale very fast. So far we've done quite well and I hope that we can do something revolutionary on the international scale as well. The IT innovation part of Estonia is really something I'm proud of.
If you RTFA then RIAA doesn't make the mp3s available for download. It searches them and then checks who downloads.
The RIAA maintains a list of songs whose distribution rights are owned by the RIAA's member organizations. It has given that list to Media Sentry, a company it hired to search for online pirates. That company runs copies of the LimeWire program and performs searches for those copyrighted song titles, one by one, to see if any are being offered by people whose computers are connected to the LimeWire network. --- The LimeWire software allows users who right-click on any song entry and choose "browse host" to see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others for download. The software also lists the IP address of active file sharers. --- Using public, online databases (such as those at arin.net or samspade.org), Media Sentry locates the name of the Internet-service provider and determines which traders are located at colleges or universities. They do however download (and perhaps unintentionally share as well) the mp3s that they're not sure are the right ones. I doubt that RIAA will sue it's own investigators for copyright infringement but on the other hand, they seem pretty desperate. I wonder about "unintentional entrapment" however.
The security advisor at linuxsecurity.com seems to confirm that this is how it works:
A weakness has been discovered in the random number generator used by OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems. As a result of this weakness, certain encryption keys are much more common than they should be, such that an attacker could guess the key through a brute-force attack given minimal knowledge of the system. This particularly affects the use of encryption keys in OpenSSH, OpenVPN and SSL certificates.
I'm not an expert but I think that when the randomness that is used to generate the key turns out to be non-random, then the potential keyspace becomes extremely small. So small, that you might be able, in theory, to brute force it as there are not that many possibilities. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The parent is absolutely correct. I keep suggesting the IT department of my hospital should start slowly migrating over to Linux and open-source software to cut the costs and give users more control over their software. They agreed that Linux would probably work better and more reliably but:
1. Every single application that is used in the hospital depends on Windows (surprisingly even the special hardware- MRI, X-rays).
2. We would have to retrain or replace the whole IT staff as no one has even seen Linux in action.
3. Even more surprisingly the vendor that develops the hospital software modules has conditions in the contract that do not allow it to be used anywhere other then Windows.
Microsoft has pretty much everyone by the balls and getting out of this mess has not been made easy.
I'm sorry for the flamebaiting. I know I might sound like an asshole and probably even am but all this has really been a valid concern to me. I spend most of my time with those in the proffession and althought I prefer not to let it look like it, I am interested what is thought of all that from outside. So I'll reply. Just let me know if I get too redundant.
My word, this guy brings shame to the profession. I hope I never run into you professionally if you are indeed a surgeon. Where are you located (region is ok) -- I am interested to know how you have such cemented views.
That's interesting. Most people I know seem to think quite the opposite. The fact that I may consider what I do superior to other fields does not mean I go around insulting people or constantly telling them off. I actually get along with reasonable people quite well. My views have always been like that and I can't say they've ever failed me. I work in Europe, I'd rather not be more specific.
To fellow slashdotters, this guy represents only a (hopefully small) subset of the surgical mindset. Early on in medical school I met some a$$hole surgeons who threw tools in the OR and abused staff and residents, and have terrible stories I could tell. Nevertheless, it is far from universal. Some of the best surgeons I met and know are great people, who are definitely not in surgery for money or "prestige," and who were ivy-league educated (as I am) and could have gone to a more lucrative and "prestigious" investment banking job on wall street.
In that case I apologise to you as well. This is not what I have seen. Yes, I've also met the tool-throwers you mention but not among skilled surgeons. Self-control is something that is well valued around here. I also don't abuse anyone. Nevertheless all the good surgeons I know still have a mindset similar to myself. Those that do not, remain mediocre or change specialties. Again, this is what I see. Money and prestige? You can keep the money, but prestige is really something that I aspire for. This motivates me to do my work better which in turn saves lives.
I trained at MGH (Boston) almost a decade ago and there was the entire gamut -- true terrible assholes who felt that they were so good that they had to be assholes, and good surgeons that were good people. I have never really seen a strong correlation between the two as the poster above suggests. There are always the straw arguments that he presents (e.g. would you rather go to a good asshole or a bad nice guy?) Well, how about a good, nice surgeon? Fortunately, they do exist.
This may seem like a straw argument but I can say this honestly. I've never seen a great surgeon who is not arrogant, egocentric and doesn't consider himself/herself to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. We have to be overconfident in ourselves. There is no room for doubt in the OR. I would personally never let myself be cut open by someone who is not 200% sure that he is the best man for the job. The fact is, you can't afford to be cocky and arrogant If you aren't good. Kill a couple of patients because you overrate yourself and the respect and career are gone.
Even as such, I'm sure my pedigree is better than this poster (I don't have to prove myself and am not obviously as obsessed with "prestige".) Funny thing is I bet I have seen him before as the CT surgery world is not that big and I've presented at major meetings in the past.
Since moving on to a private practice hospital affiliated group, I like to think of myself as having elite skills and the fortune of not being a jerk. All of the guys in my group are people I would (and have) sent my relatives, or enjoy a round of golf with after work.
So, don't fuel any negative views with this guy's flamebaits. Surgeons are people - some good, some not so good, in both skill and attitude.
This is all nice but I still disagree. I'd never recommend a surgeon to someone on the basis that he/she is a nice person. I would re
Wow, you're quite an asshole. You hope that all of humanity remains in the dark so that you can have a job and feel important? You obviously don't really give a shit about helping people so why should we give a shit about your complaints? What would you do if you had both an HIV vaccine and an HIV treatment drug? Let me guess, you'd shelve the vaccine so you can get repeat business, make more money and feel in control.
You're a douchebag and I hope you slam your hands in a car door so you can never work again. This is quite the reaction I expected and it's well justified. It's very natural, that people expect their doctors to be altruistic good-doers and in most areas of medicine that really is the case. I can't say, that the helping people part doesn't work for me at all, because it does, it really is satisfying. It still can't even nearly compete with the rest of the package. Most surgeons I've met seem to think quite alike. There are some, that really do their job purely for the altruism part but they seem to be the minority in surgery. Surgery is about competition and skill and has been since the invention of anesthesia. It's about the physical skill as much knowledge. In reality it is completely impossible to be the nice guy patients expect for every last one of them. Thus there is quite a lot of acting involved. In the end, that kind of attitude that you might not like IS best for the patient. Who do you want to perform your GABG, a mediocre altruist or an egocentric professional who is confident because he/she really is that good? I know which I would prefer and I know which way I'm heading as well. I do not have to want to do good in order to be useful. I can work only for my own pleasure and still do what patients and the public expect of me.
Yes, I do feel important, no, you don't have to give shit about my complaints. I wouldn't shelve the vaccine. I'm not evil and I have nothing against patients getting better and being happy. Quite the opposite. Money does not interest me quite so as recognition. I just seem to prioritise myself over everything else and so far that has only done me good.
I'm sorry for stirring you up, that was just my ugly.02$ If I really do happen to slam my hands between something, you'll have one asshole less who'll fix you up the next time you happen to be in a car crash or when your inflaming appendix is killing you. Luckily for you it seems that with these kinds of developments in medicine you can soon let your GP do the job.
P.S. There might be surgeons here that really do the job so they can help people and nothing more and consider me an asshole as well. In that case I apologise for the stereotyping, feel free to mod me down as well. I only speak of what I have encountered.
I for one do not welcome our new surgery-performing overlords. I study to be a surgeon because it's a job that needs exceptional skill and dedication. I love the stress, the blood, the gore and the responsibility. If all this turns out to be equal to being a common technician and not about being as skilled and concentrated as humanly possible, if robotics allow every first year med student to perform as flawlessly as the highest skilled brain surgeon by compensating for their every mistake, then it's time to move to some third world country. Selfish? Absolutely. I still do hope, that robotic surgery will not be applicable to every single procedure.
I feed on difficulties, challenges and competition and my ego is, by this, most certainly bruised.
400$? That should be perfect for the upcoming OpenMoko Freerunner. The specs are about as good as XO-1, it actually does run linux unlike XO-1 and it fits into your pocket. You'll even have 5$ left.
OOXML's standard status, OLPC, what will Microsoft's money buy next?
Their motives do seem quite clear. Last thing that Microsoft wants is a new generation of open-source hackers that actually dare to have control over their own computers. Logical move in their part, guess money buys it all.
P.S. I might have accidentally already posted this as AC but the post didn't seem to come through. Excuse me if that was not the case.
You are kind of right but not quite. Fluxbox is not just a window manager. It contains it's own tools to run other programs (fbrun), have menus and all the such. I would consider it still a desktop environment as I don't need much else to be able to use the desktop. It all depends on the definition.
"Two desktop environments for Linux"? Are you referring to Gnome? There aren't just two desktop environments, there are a lot more and this is in no way a bad thing. The beauty of Linux is that you have choice. You can use whatever the hell you deem necessary. I for example am perfectly happy on my fluxbox. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, they all have their pros and cons but what are pros for one user are cons for another. Choice and competition are always good things and merging all the Linux DEs into one giant blob would most certainly not achieve anything.
The next logical question is, if you password-protect and encrypt your hard drive to thwart precisely this kind of unwarranted and unjustifiable privacy invasion, can Customs force you to divulge your passwords?
Schwab
The answer to this is to use deniable encryption. For example throw all your sensitive data on a separate partition that is at the end of the hard drive and encrypt it. Not the data, the partition. Keep the decryption tools on a separate pen drive or just make them look like something innocent. Now it looks just as if part of the hard drive is simply unused. If they don't know the encryption is there, they can't do anything. If a window jumps up at boot that says "Enter the passphrase that will decrypt the harddrive where all the information that customs shouldn't see is" you can be sure you'll be searched and probed in minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
After the developers pissed a lot of people off, Pidgin was forked and among other things Funpidgin promises voice and video support as well. I think they'll pull it off before the Google guys.
I understood that the experiment was not meant to make people like RDIF tags. It seems they just want to make people think about the technology and make their own conclusions. If the attenders see how much information can be gathered about their activities by them just carrying a small tag along during the conference, they might think twice before agreeing to let the government make carrying such a tag a legal requirement in a not-so-distant future.
Being an Estonian I can say that the so called attacks weren't really such a big deal. Basically a few government web pages (parliament's, government's president's and couple more) were DDOS'ed for a couple of hours from Russian ips. It's not like this caused too much trouble (the government's infranet still worked just fine, the citizens just couldn't access the pages). I do think that the idea of Cyber Defence is quite cool and I'm glad, that we're the pioneers here but it does seem that this really is the primary reason here, to pioneer something. It might still become useful one day and I'll be interested to see how this rolls out. I do enjoy the fact that the small size of Estonia allows us to try all the new IT solutions on quite a large scale very fast. So far we've done quite well and I hope that we can do something revolutionary on the international scale as well. The IT innovation part of Estonia is really something I'm proud of.
I'm not an expert but I think that when the randomness that is used to generate the key turns out to be non-random, then the potential keyspace becomes extremely small. So small, that you might be able, in theory, to brute force it as there are not that many possibilities. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Microsoft has pretty much everyone by the balls and getting out of this mess has not been made easy.
My word, this guy brings shame to the profession. I hope I never run into you professionally if you are indeed a surgeon. Where are you located (region is ok) -- I am interested to know how you have such cemented views.
That's interesting. Most people I know seem to think quite the opposite. The fact that I may consider what I do superior to other fields does not mean I go around insulting people or constantly telling them off. I actually get along with reasonable people quite well. My views have always been like that and I can't say they've ever failed me. I work in Europe, I'd rather not be more specific.
To fellow slashdotters, this guy represents only a (hopefully small) subset of the surgical mindset. Early on in medical school I met some a$$hole surgeons who threw tools in the OR and abused staff and residents, and have terrible stories I could tell. Nevertheless, it is far from universal. Some of the best surgeons I met and know are great people, who are definitely not in surgery for money or "prestige," and who were ivy-league educated (as I am) and could have gone to a more lucrative and "prestigious" investment banking job on wall street.
In that case I apologise to you as well. This is not what I have seen. Yes, I've also met the tool-throwers you mention but not among skilled surgeons. Self-control is something that is well valued around here. I also don't abuse anyone. Nevertheless all the good surgeons I know still have a mindset similar to myself. Those that do not, remain mediocre or change specialties. Again, this is what I see. Money and prestige? You can keep the money, but prestige is really something that I aspire for. This motivates me to do my work better which in turn saves lives.
I trained at MGH (Boston) almost a decade ago and there was the entire gamut -- true terrible assholes who felt that they were so good that they had to be assholes, and good surgeons that were good people. I have never really seen a strong correlation between the two as the poster above suggests. There are always the straw arguments that he presents (e.g. would you rather go to a good asshole or a bad nice guy?) Well, how about a good, nice surgeon? Fortunately, they do exist.
This may seem like a straw argument but I can say this honestly. I've never seen a great surgeon who is not arrogant, egocentric and doesn't consider himself/herself to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. We have to be overconfident in ourselves. There is no room for doubt in the OR. I would personally never let myself be cut open by someone who is not 200% sure that he is the best man for the job. The fact is, you can't afford to be cocky and arrogant If you aren't good. Kill a couple of patients because you overrate yourself and the respect and career are gone.
Even as such, I'm sure my pedigree is better than this poster (I don't have to prove myself and am not obviously as obsessed with "prestige".) Funny thing is I bet I have seen him before as the CT surgery world is not that big and I've presented at major meetings in the past. Since moving on to a private practice hospital affiliated group, I like to think of myself as having elite skills and the fortune of not being a jerk. All of the guys in my group are people I would (and have) sent my relatives, or enjoy a round of golf with after work. So, don't fuel any negative views with this guy's flamebaits. Surgeons are people - some good, some not so good, in both skill and attitude.
This is all nice but I still disagree. I'd never recommend a surgeon to someone on the basis that he/she is a nice person. I would re
As long as Jack Thompson exists, violent video games will have nothing to fear. We should only worry when he's gone.
To whom it might interest- EFF's list of ISPs who allow publicly sharing Internet access.
Yes, I do feel important, no, you don't have to give shit about my complaints. I wouldn't shelve the vaccine. I'm not evil and I have nothing against patients getting better and being happy. Quite the opposite. Money does not interest me quite so as recognition. I just seem to prioritise myself over everything else and so far that has only done me good.
I'm sorry for stirring you up, that was just my ugly
P.S. There might be surgeons here that really do the job so they can help people and nothing more and consider me an asshole as well. In that case I apologise for the stereotyping, feel free to mod me down as well. I only speak of what I have encountered.
I for one do not welcome our new surgery-performing overlords. I study to be a surgeon because it's a job that needs exceptional skill and dedication. I love the stress, the blood, the gore and the responsibility. If all this turns out to be equal to being a common technician and not about being as skilled and concentrated as humanly possible, if robotics allow every first year med student to perform as flawlessly as the highest skilled brain surgeon by compensating for their every mistake, then it's time to move to some third world country. Selfish? Absolutely. I still do hope, that robotic surgery will not be applicable to every single procedure.
I feed on difficulties, challenges and competition and my ego is, by this, most certainly bruised.
400$? That should be perfect for the upcoming OpenMoko Freerunner. The specs are about as good as XO-1, it actually does run linux unlike XO-1 and it fits into your pocket. You'll even have 5$ left.
OOXML's standard status, OLPC, what will Microsoft's money buy next?
Their motives do seem quite clear. Last thing that Microsoft wants is a new generation of open-source hackers that actually dare to have control over their own computers. Logical move in their part, guess money buys it all.
P.S. I might have accidentally already posted this as AC but the post didn't seem to come through. Excuse me if that was not the case.
You are kind of right but not quite. Fluxbox is not just a window manager. It contains it's own tools to run other programs (fbrun), have menus and all the such. I would consider it still a desktop environment as I don't need much else to be able to use the desktop. It all depends on the definition.
"Two desktop environments for Linux"? Are you referring to Gnome? There aren't just two desktop environments, there are a lot more and this is in no way a bad thing. The beauty of Linux is that you have choice. You can use whatever the hell you deem necessary. I for example am perfectly happy on my fluxbox. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, they all have their pros and cons but what are pros for one user are cons for another. Choice and competition are always good things and merging all the Linux DEs into one giant blob would most certainly not achieve anything.
The next logical question is, if you password-protect and encrypt your hard drive to thwart precisely this kind of unwarranted and unjustifiable privacy invasion, can Customs force you to divulge your passwords?
Schwab
The answer to this is to use deniable encryption. For example throw all your sensitive data on a separate partition that is at the end of the hard drive and encrypt it. Not the data, the partition. Keep the decryption tools on a separate pen drive or just make them look like something innocent. Now it looks just as if part of the hard drive is simply unused. If they don't know the encryption is there, they can't do anything. If a window jumps up at boot that says "Enter the passphrase that will decrypt the harddrive where all the information that customs shouldn't see is" you can be sure you'll be searched and probed in minutes.