Hey, if I have the message encrypted using 4096-bit RSA, how much less time would you take to decrypt that? Don't tell me that you actually TRUST that I am not lying to you, and not using say, 3DES instead?
If you don't understand cryptography, don't mouth off!
I think I am paranoid enough to believe that this is a way for MS to try to make W2K popular, by "publishing" a standard, encouraging the Samba team to make a compatible product, without appearing to support it. As you know, W2K sales suck, and they must be getting desperate...
IMHO, they should just ignore W2K. If people ask why, point to the incompatible license, this stupid "trade-secret" and blame MS. Make MS look bad, just like how winmodems were made to look lame. Watch W2K die.
The BBC article is misleading. You cannot prove that the universe is flat. All that has been done was to put finer and finer constraints on how close to zero the curvature is. So now we have a greater confidence in the flatness than the universe, compared to before!
This just leads to the more interesting question. Why is the universe flat? After all, the visible matter (stars, galaxies and nebulae) constitute only 1% of the required amount of mass to keep the universe flat. What is the condidate for the other dark matter? (We know that there must be lots of dark matter around from rates of rotations of galaxies). This is a very controversial topic and worth lots of man-hours of work in cosmology. Whatever the candidate is, it should also explain why the universe is so flat.
It is easy to blame AOL for this, but really, all AOL is doing is trying to provide what the customer wants. The averager AOLer has heard about the bad porn on the net, and the subversive sites around, and is sure to demand some filtering. So AOL provides Cybersitter. That it cannot censor everything just shows that how uncensorable the net is. The latter half of the article which mentions the possibility of "cache surfing" is just not relevant. It sounds like bug in the browser, and not the the cybersitter program itself!
So who do we blame really? Cybersitter for distributing a faulty product? (It can't - the net is not censorable!) Parents who are ignorant and refuse to guide their children? (But they do want to do it - just that they have misplaced trust in censorware). Or the children who are so curious about the world around them?
Why did they GPL it, and not LGPL it? This does not seem to be very sensible. Only GPL code can use GPL. And GPLed programs have the source available, so buffer overruns can be fixed in the
original source, This is a more sensible approach than hacking up libsafe. It seems that the programs which need these protection are precisely the binary only, closed-source, proprietry programs. By GPLing it, it becomes illegal to link against libsafe, so where's the benefit of that?
IMHO, it should have been LPGL!
It is exactly like that, except that you have 3 axes about which to resolve the spin of an electron. The statement that each electron is in both states is precisely why it is misleading to laymen.
For example, I could say that the it is either (-1/2,+1/2) for an entangled electron pair or (+1/2,-1/2). Probability half of either. That would be a classical but fair way to decribe the system. No QM is necessary to describe this situation. This is exactly like the envelope models.
The thing about QM is this. The probabilities don't add. It is the complex amplitudes which add. This is why the two possibilities can be described by using only one wavefunction. This is also why sometimes, amplitudes can add, but the probabilities go down. Plus the mysterious idea that you can only measure one component of the spin simultaneously, wherein all the knowledge of the other components are gone.
But you are right about the ability to control the outcome. I was not thinking clearly. Even if you could control the outcome, this would not mean that a signal can be transmitted.
Sorry, but superluminal signalling just does not happen in the way it is described.
The effect you describe is exactly like taking a pair of cards, one red, the other green and sealing each in an envelope while blindfolded. Then you mail one to yourself and the other to your friend. Once you see that you have a red card, you know immmediately that your friend has a green one. But the cards themselves have not travelled faster than light!
In the real spin +1/2 and -1/2 case, it is the fact that you have no control over whether you get the +1/2 or -1/2 that prevents any signal from propagating from you to him. All you can do is note whether you have a +1/2 or -1/2. You have no way of choosing which to send.
Well, if the mind can influence such results, we should have plenty of evidence for it already. For example, the average guy should be able to control where an electron hits, and distort a TV picture just by thinking about it.
Why average guy? Becuase it is a QM effect. QM is everywhere, and why should one persons brain be any different when it comes to something very coarse like producing distortions in TV tubes?
Maybe you say that only some people with special brains can do it. Sorry, but then that is already saying more than originally posited. You are saying that (i) electrons can be affected by minds (ii) only some minds can do it, the average one cannot. In an experiment, then you would have to check for both of these effects. So far, I have never heard of people trying to isolate one effect from the other.
when simple classical physics/biochemistry will do?
All we need are electrode implants in the brain, plus some way of intgerfacing, making sure thet this is completely safe. That's a mind-input device. Why employ all of this complicated statistical effects that is so hard to detect, and so obscure to harness?
True, we still have a long way to go in making such human brain/electronic devices reality. There are so many issues involved in doing something like that. But at least this sounds more promising than pseudoscientific balderdash about spooky QM!
Just to tell you that bzImage for the Linux kernel is NOT the bzip2 compression that you know. The Linux kernel compression is still gzip. bzImage is just a format for very big kernels.
Since we are presently stuck with foobar.net/com/org, increasing this to foobar.banc/shop will increase the namespace by 5/3 N. N is of course, the current size of the namespace.
If NSI wants more money, they should make more! Change it so that any TLD is possible. Immediately, we have N-squared namespace. That's N-squared more money!
Still not enough! Enforce any two words for a TLD. foobar.dope.name. This is N cube! But why stop there? foobar.dopey.sounding.name. N to the fourth! foobar.very.very.long.name. N to the fifth!
In fact, don't have any restrictions at all. Potentially N to aleph-nought! What are you waiting for NSI! Make money now!
But from an engineering point of view, this is bad. The driver should be well-separated from the CPU, so that the OS does not get too complicated (read: stable, bug-free, predictable). The protocols would be cleaner, so that more OSes can use the peripheral. So that the modem is not tied needlessly to one OS, or certain types of functionality. From the users perspective, this is better. It is the users computer. He/she should *know* what he is in for when installing such a thing. Heshe should know that with such a modem, running Quake through the modem might not be such a good idea. Yet these design issues are just glossed over for something "cheap". Is this way way to treat a consumer, however clueless they may be?
I guess when Mr Love says "proprietry", he means "restrictive". But even this confers a slant that is essentially wrong.
He talks about open source software. Open source software includes not just GPL, but BSD, QPL, NPL, all kinds of licenses. Not all of them have the "restrictive" nature that the GPL has. So if Mr Love wants to split words, please be specific! Say "GPL", not "open source". And why is the GPL restrictive? To counter the restrictiveness of the proprietry licenses with differnt terms of its own! After all, software makers confer such restriction on others and accept such restrictions from others without batting an eyelid. Why complain now when we force you to share?
Yes the GPL is automatically restrictive. It is restrictive in the sense that one's business model must change. This is a good thing from the consumers point of view, because current proprietry software business models (ala Microsoft) suck! To see what is wrong, read what Jordan Pollack has to say about this. Notice that he is not a free software advocate. He points out how software makers are abusing Intellectual Property laws for their own gain, without regard to long term benefits to the users.
It distresses me to see Mr Love spout such unthinking canards like "Open Source is proprietry." To see the what is wrong demands a good understanding of the issues involved. I am not sure if Mr Love's target audience understands these issues. Is this an intentional attempt at FUD? I hope not!
The SDSS has not finished its survey of the sky yet. They have so far collected only about 5% of the sky that they are planning to image. Already, the processed volume of data runs into 2-3 TBs. And there is additional work to do. My friend, who works on it tells me that he has a hard time pulling the huge datasets around on 100M Ethernet. Complete downloads from one machine to another takes hours. If thousands of enthusiasts around the world are going to trying to download all of this data, you are going to run into deep trouble. As it is bandwidth is a precious resource.
So if you really want the data and want to do meaningful data mining on it, I suggest you buy it on tape, and get them to snail mail it to you. Microsoft had better think carefully about what's doing to the rest of the net before it tries to offer the data to anyone who asks.
You are right that we are doing our freedoms injustice to continue to support the CSS.
But there is one angle that I feel is understated. DVD is a significant improvement in technology over CD's and VCD's. Sound and picture quality is very much improved. To the geek community, this is kind of tech is too important to be associated with encryption technology, to be locked up and used to control access.
Therein lies the central issue. We care enough about the tech to want to see content on it. That is why we protest against CSS and region locking. If DVD's weren't a technologically superior alternative to VCDs and current CD's nobody would care.
ESR should really give up being a demagogue. His previous post was really not well thought out, and by posting to slashdot, he is simply playing to the choir, like some kind of Grande Karma Whore. As an open source advocate, he should be more mindful of the misinterpretations that people will subject his statements to. An we should not blindly listen to whatever he says without thinking.
One point that was raised that strikes me crucial to the whole argument is the actual numbers of people reviewing the code. This is a very revealing statistic, and I wish someone out there would make a proper study of this, rather than rely on purely anecdotal data.
Personally, to be honest, I have only looked at a small portion of the entire Debian boxes which I run. The Windowmaker source and some kernel drivers. And even then, I did not have the experience or expertise to know if the code I saw was weak. And I know of SysAdmins whose recommendation was to install the RPM's and run. IMHO, we really need to evaluate the truth of this before we start selling open source as a panecea for insecure systems. Don't get me wrong - open source is still better than closed course software. But the benefits of this can be sold on its own merits, without having to FUD Microsoft.
I don't understand this at all. What am I buying when I go to this exchange? Suppose I want to buy Amazon's 1-click technology (Obligatory spit at Amazon). So what do I have when I hand over the money, and the contracts have been signed?
Could I now turn around and sue Amazon? Since I am now the owner of 1-click, can I go to all licensees of Amazon and demand more money? Is Amazon obliged to tell me all the companies they have license 1-click to? What if I have an Open Patent? Can I sell that too? And what of trademarks? Linus Torvalds hold the Linux trademark. Can he sell that and what would happen to Redhat if MS buys it?
The way I see it, it just opens a whole can of worms. The field is ripe for lawyers to get rich!
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't understand cryptography, don't mouth off!
IMHO, they should just ignore W2K. If people ask why, point to the incompatible license, this stupid "trade-secret" and blame MS. Make MS look bad, just like how winmodems were made to look lame. Watch W2K die.
But then I could just be dreaming.
"Oops! I didn't mean to hit that building full of civilians. Who asked you to degrade that GPS anyway? We were trying to hit that building!" :-)
NYT Lawyer: We are a Big Media Company!
I wonder if MS got slapped with this fine. In fact, I wonder what happened since the check was supposedly auctioned off on ebay. Anyone has any news?
This just leads to the more interesting question. Why is the universe flat? After all, the visible matter (stars, galaxies and nebulae) constitute only 1% of the required amount of mass to keep the universe flat. What is the condidate for the other dark matter? (We know that there must be lots of dark matter around from rates of rotations of galaxies). This is a very controversial topic and worth lots of man-hours of work in cosmology. Whatever the candidate is, it should also explain why the universe is so flat.
So who do we blame really? Cybersitter for distributing a faulty product? (It can't - the net is not censorable!) Parents who are ignorant and refuse to guide their children? (But they do want to do it - just that they have misplaced trust in censorware). Or the children who are so curious about the world around them?
Sorry about my mistake! It is LPGL! I misread!
Why did they GPL it, and not LGPL it? This does not seem to be very sensible. Only GPL code can use GPL. And GPLed programs have the source available, so buffer overruns can be fixed in the original source, This is a more sensible approach than hacking up libsafe. It seems that the programs which need these protection are precisely the binary only, closed-source, proprietry programs. By GPLing it, it becomes illegal to link against libsafe, so where's the benefit of that? IMHO, it should have been LPGL!
For example, I could say that the it is either (-1/2,+1/2) for an entangled electron pair or (+1/2,-1/2). Probability half of either. That would be a classical but fair way to decribe the system. No QM is necessary to describe this situation. This is exactly like the envelope models.
The thing about QM is this. The probabilities don't add. It is the complex amplitudes which add. This is why the two possibilities can be described by using only one wavefunction. This is also why sometimes, amplitudes can add, but the probabilities go down. Plus the mysterious idea that you can only measure one component of the spin simultaneously, wherein all the knowledge of the other components are gone.
But you are right about the ability to control the outcome. I was not thinking clearly. Even if you could control the outcome, this would not mean that a signal can be transmitted.
The effect you describe is exactly like taking a pair of cards, one red, the other green and sealing each in an envelope while blindfolded. Then you mail one to yourself and the other to your friend. Once you see that you have a red card, you know immmediately that your friend has a green one. But the cards themselves have not travelled faster than light!
In the real spin +1/2 and -1/2 case, it is the fact that you have no control over whether you get the +1/2 or -1/2 that prevents any signal from propagating from you to him. All you can do is note whether you have a +1/2 or -1/2. You have no way of choosing which to send.
Why average guy? Becuase it is a QM effect. QM is everywhere, and why should one persons brain be any different when it comes to something very coarse like producing distortions in TV tubes?
Maybe you say that only some people with special brains can do it. Sorry, but then that is already saying more than originally posited. You are saying that (i) electrons can be affected by minds (ii) only some minds can do it, the average one cannot. In an experiment, then you would have to check for both of these effects. So far, I have never heard of people trying to isolate one effect from the other.
All we need are electrode implants in the brain, plus some way of intgerfacing, making sure thet this is completely safe. That's a mind-input device. Why employ all of this complicated statistical effects that is so hard to detect, and so obscure to harness?
True, we still have a long way to go in making such human brain/electronic devices reality. There are so many issues involved in doing something like that. But at least this sounds more promising than pseudoscientific balderdash about spooky QM!
Just to tell you that bzImage for the Linux kernel is NOT the bzip2 compression that you know. The Linux kernel compression is still gzip. bzImage is just a format for very big kernels.
A: You get out and give it a push!
Q: Whet do you do when your space-statioon falls?
A: You get up there and give it push!
If NSI wants more money, they should make more! Change it so that any TLD is possible. Immediately, we have N-squared namespace. That's N-squared more money!
Still not enough! Enforce any two words for a TLD. foobar.dope.name. This is N cube! But why stop there? foobar.dopey.sounding.name. N to the fourth! foobar.very.very.long.name. N to the fifth!
In fact, don't have any restrictions at all. Potentially N to aleph-nought! What are you waiting for NSI! Make money now!
"Use the force Luke!"
So Luke switches off the damn thing and blows the Death Star out of existence! Hey! Even a JEDI knows that! Why doesn't the Army?
But from an engineering point of view, this is bad. The driver should be well-separated from the CPU, so that the OS does not get too complicated (read: stable, bug-free, predictable). The protocols would be cleaner, so that more OSes can use the peripheral. So that the modem is not tied needlessly to one OS, or certain types of functionality. From the users perspective, this is better. It is the users computer. He/she should *know* what he is in for when installing such a thing. Heshe should know that with such a modem, running Quake through the modem might not be such a good idea. Yet these design issues are just glossed over for something "cheap". Is this way way to treat a consumer, however clueless they may be?
He talks about open source software. Open source software includes not just GPL, but BSD, QPL, NPL, all kinds of licenses. Not all of them have the "restrictive" nature that the GPL has. So if Mr Love wants to split words, please be specific! Say "GPL", not "open source". And why is the GPL restrictive? To counter the restrictiveness of the proprietry licenses with differnt terms of its own! After all, software makers confer such restriction on others and accept such restrictions from others without batting an eyelid. Why complain now when we force you to share?
Yes the GPL is automatically restrictive. It is restrictive in the sense that one's business model must change. This is a good thing from the consumers point of view, because current proprietry software business models (ala Microsoft) suck! To see what is wrong, read what Jordan Pollack has to say about this. Notice that he is not a free software advocate. He points out how software makers are abusing Intellectual Property laws for their own gain, without regard to long term benefits to the users.
It distresses me to see Mr Love spout such unthinking canards like "Open Source is proprietry." To see the what is wrong demands a good understanding of the issues involved. I am not sure if Mr Love's target audience understands these issues. Is this an intentional attempt at FUD? I hope not!
(obligatory slashdot commentary.)
"Are you incontinent, or it is just your Toshiba leaking?"
So if you really want the data and want to do meaningful data mining on it, I suggest you buy it on tape, and get them to snail mail it to you. Microsoft had better think carefully about what's doing to the rest of the net before it tries to offer the data to anyone who asks.
But there is one angle that I feel is understated. DVD is a significant improvement in technology over CD's and VCD's. Sound and picture quality is very much improved. To the geek community, this is kind of tech is too important to be associated with encryption technology, to be locked up and used to control access.
Therein lies the central issue. We care enough about the tech to want to see content on it. That is why we protest against CSS and region locking. If DVD's weren't a technologically superior alternative to VCDs and current CD's nobody would care.
One point that was raised that strikes me crucial to the whole argument is the actual numbers of people reviewing the code. This is a very revealing statistic, and I wish someone out there would make a proper study of this, rather than rely on purely anecdotal data.
Personally, to be honest, I have only looked at a small portion of the entire Debian boxes which I run. The Windowmaker source and some kernel drivers. And even then, I did not have the experience or expertise to know if the code I saw was weak. And I know of SysAdmins whose recommendation was to install the RPM's and run. IMHO, we really need to evaluate the truth of this before we start selling open source as a panecea for insecure systems. Don't get me wrong - open source is still better than closed course software. But the benefits of this can be sold on its own merits, without having to FUD Microsoft.
Could I now turn around and sue Amazon? Since I am now the owner of 1-click, can I go to all licensees of Amazon and demand more money? Is Amazon obliged to tell me all the companies they have license 1-click to? What if I have an Open Patent? Can I sell that too? And what of trademarks? Linus Torvalds hold the Linux trademark. Can he sell that and what would happen to Redhat if MS buys it?
The way I see it, it just opens a whole can of worms. The field is ripe for lawyers to get rich!