For those of you who have no idea what Multics is, here's a brief summary from www.multicians.org:
Multics (Multiplexed Information and
Computing Service) is a timesharing
operating system begun in 1965 and used
until 2000. The system was started as a
joint project by MIT's Project MAC, Bell
Telephone Laboratories, and General
Electric Company's Large Computer
Products Division. Prof. Fernando J.
Corbató of MIT led the project. Bell Labs
withdrew from the development effort in
1969, and in 1970 GE sold its computer
business to Honeywell, which offered
Multics as a commercial product and sold
a few dozen systems.
It had TONS and TONS of features (look here for a list), but unfortunately it took too long to implement, and when these features were finally implemented, the resulting OS was so damn slow nobody wanted to use it. Consequently it was canned.
Fortunately for us, Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson decided to pare down some of the features and create a version of "Multics without the balls." Thus Unix was born (the name being a pun on "Multics").
The economic and military super power known as Belize, has filed an official court bitching to halt ICANN from creating.biz Top Level Domain Name due to its similarity to the Belizian domain name ".bz".
El Presidente Jose Chi-chi del Don Pablos threatened to use the well-known Belizian military might to stop ICANN if necessary. "We are not afraid of those silly Americans with their Holleywood and their free trips to the salad bar," informed Pablos. "We will make them our bitch in a war. Just last night I beat pummelled President Abraham Lincoln in a game of FreeCiv. Muhahahahaha. Ha."
A spokesman from the pentegon countered Pablos threats saying that "The Belizian weapons of mass destruction consist mostly of sharpened sticks and four-pound rocks. However, this may change as our sources tell us that they are on the verge of discovering the wheel." Still, some guy on the street told CNN that Belize's box-wheeled chariots are amongst the best in Central America. And, even worse, they have sticks which are really, really sharp. Dan Rather insisted that the conflict is getting "hotter than a Laredo parking lot."
When quasi-president elect George "Dub" Bush was asked what he thought of the situation, he candidly replied "Where's Belize?"
Meanwhile, other nations have also started filing court injunctions to protect ICANN from what many refer to as "severe anal rapage of entire countries with their crazy domain shenanigans." Hopping on the bandwagon faster than a bossa nova-ing Marimba player, Columbia asked that ".com" be changed to "something else" due to the similarity to its country name. They suggested ".us_sucks_in_soccer". Likewise, Uganda (.ug) claimed that because their TLD has a g in it, the countries of Ghana, Germany, Greece, and Guadalaoupe are now its minor provinces. "We own their ass," said a Ugandese spokesperson. Bolivia's (.bo) only comment was "Something stinks."
Experts say that this fiasco could last for weeks, and that hopefully Florida will either secede from the Union or replace the punch-ballots with Bingo Cards.
Quasi-president-electoral-lost, Vice President Al Gore, had little to say on the issue, but insisted that since he invented the Internet, the decision is entirely his, so there.
Yes!!! Although people talk about the Gnome/GTK and the KDE/QT being just a bunch of duplicated effort, this is just one instance of the many reasons why having two groups doing similar work is better. They BOTH push the opensource movement to new and exciting places.
It's competition like this that drives us to achieve great things!
There are a number of reasons why the source code of the Shouptronic voting machine could be hidden, many of which historic.
Shoup voting machines, according to www.shoupvote.com have been around since 1919. These machines were entirely mechanical, and openly discussing every last detail of how these machines worked could have lead competitors to copying their design, thus bringging the Shoup family company to its knees. Instead, these machines were reviewed and tested by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and when certified for use, they were introduced into voting booths across the county.
Only in 1978 was the first electronic shoup machine, the shouptronic, introduced (by Shoup's son, Ransom V. Shoup II). Here still, an electronic voting machine was a fairly new concept, and releasing the detailed inner-workings of the machine to the public would again probably not have been the best business sense. More simply put, the innerworkings of the first shouptronics clearly qualified as trade secrets. (IBM or Control Data would have copied it in an instant!). Like its predecessor though, the shouptronic was reviewed, tested, and certified by the FEC. If there was some sort of diabolical magic going on in the black box, I have to believe our elected officials would not have approved this. Additionally, incorporating such electronic hocus pokus would have been enormously expensive adn timeconsuming. The engineers of the Shouptronic would have to make sure that any vot-rigging would go unnoticed by anyone testing the machine's accuracy, meanwhile making it easy for people with the know-how to rig the machines output. But, that rigged output couldn't be too suspicious or predictable, otherwise it may be noticed by those testing the machine (or the opposing party in an election). Plainly, it was a lot of work to build such a macchiavellian machine. And, not only would building this riggable machine be a boatload of work, keeping its tricks secret from "the rest" would certainly require a shit-ton of money. If one person leaked the information, the cover would be blown and the whole system would be shot. In my opinion, as of 1978, this was just not feasible.
Times have changed now. No longer is closed-source software the defacto standard. No longer is this machine housing some difficult-to-engineer trade secrets. (I bet 80% of slashdot could rig up a similar machine in less than day if they wanted). There is really no reason to keep the inner workings of these machines secret.
So, instead of us sitting here and contemplating conspiracies, let's write our Congresspeople. Let's let them know that we're concerned, and that there's nothing more American than making absolutely sure every American's vote counts on election day. Times have changed. No longer is source code of the shouptronic a "trade secret." No longer is engineering such a machine difficult. Instead, it is as easy to engineer a fair machine as an unfair one. So, get out there, make some phone calls, and convince your candidates that they need to do something about this to get your vote.
Other motivations for Quantum Crypto
on
Quantum Security
·
· Score: 1
There are two major reasons we should be motivated to research Quantum Crypto:
Quantum Computing, when feasible, will instantly make today's encryption techniques useless yatta, yatta, yatta...
If/when some crazy math guy proves P=NP, our encryption will be useless. Only QC will provide security from non-deterministic machines.
Either way, only one of these breakthroughs is the only thing needed to turn the country's deepest darkest ciphertext into plain old plaintext. I realize that most mathematicians are confident that P!=NP (I myself think this problem is probably in Goedel's indecidable domain), still I have to admit that all this makes me a little nervous.
I realize that this comment may be a little off-topic, but still I'm curious as to what things us non-gurus can do to strengthen our Linuxing knowledge.
I get my hands dirty with problems as they arise, but it would be nice if there was a more structured approach for learning the ins and outs of Linux.
What things can you suggest? (And if you say RTFM... which FMs are important and/or good?) Then at what point would I be ready for one of these certification courses?
To play devil's advocate for a bit: it's the assholes like this that drive software development to new levels. The same thing is paralleled in many different areas:
In cryptography: The people who propose new protocols depend on the people who break protocols to make their proposals robust. (Without those crackers we could still be using XOR to encrypt files).
In Science: Science, at the most fundamental level, is about destroying the work of others. One takes a theory and try to find places where it doesn't hold thereby disproving it. Without this process, we would probably still insist the world is on the back of a tortoise.
In nature: Nothing accelerates evolution like preditors.
Cheaters are nothing more than a virus in the open source community. We have no mechanisms of immunity against them. Now is a chance to prove our evolutionary fitness to the rest of the world. Either we adapt and survive these cheaters, or we die out until a better organism for developing software comes along.
The beauty of open source lies in its evolution. Let's evolve.
Slashdot Mirror
It had TONS and TONS of features (look here for a list), but unfortunately it took too long to implement, and when these features were finally implemented, the resulting OS was so damn slow nobody wanted to use it. Consequently it was canned.
Fortunately for us, Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson decided to pare down some of the features and create a version of "Multics without the balls." Thus Unix was born (the name being a pun on "Multics").
And we all lived happily ever after!!
November 12, 2000
This just in:
The economic and military super power known as Belize, has filed an official court bitching to halt ICANN from creating .biz Top Level Domain Name due to its similarity to the Belizian domain name ".bz".
El Presidente Jose Chi-chi del Don Pablos threatened to use the well-known Belizian military might to stop ICANN if necessary. "We are not afraid of those silly Americans with their Holleywood and their free trips to the salad bar," informed Pablos. "We will make them our bitch in a war. Just last night I beat pummelled President Abraham Lincoln in a game of FreeCiv. Muhahahahaha. Ha."
A spokesman from the pentegon countered Pablos threats saying that "The Belizian weapons of mass destruction consist mostly of sharpened sticks and four-pound rocks. However, this may change as our sources tell us that they are on the verge of discovering the wheel." Still, some guy on the street told CNN that Belize's box-wheeled chariots are amongst the best in Central America. And, even worse, they have sticks which are really, really sharp. Dan Rather insisted that the conflict is getting "hotter than a Laredo parking lot."
When quasi-president elect George "Dub" Bush was asked what he thought of the situation, he candidly replied "Where's Belize?"
Meanwhile, other nations have also started filing court injunctions to protect ICANN from what many refer to as "severe anal rapage of entire countries with their crazy domain shenanigans." Hopping on the bandwagon faster than a bossa nova-ing Marimba player, Columbia asked that ".com" be changed to "something else" due to the similarity to its country name. They suggested ".us_sucks_in_soccer". Likewise, Uganda (.ug) claimed that because their TLD has a g in it, the countries of Ghana, Germany, Greece, and Guadalaoupe are now its minor provinces. "We own their ass," said a Ugandese spokesperson. Bolivia's (.bo) only comment was "Something stinks."
Experts say that this fiasco could last for weeks, and that hopefully Florida will either secede from the Union or replace the punch-ballots with Bingo Cards.
Quasi-president-electoral-lost, Vice President Al Gore, had little to say on the issue, but insisted that since he invented the Internet, the decision is entirely his, so there.
Yes!!! Although people talk about the Gnome/GTK and the KDE/QT being just a bunch of duplicated effort, this is just one instance of the many reasons why having two groups doing similar work is better. They BOTH push the opensource movement to new and exciting places.
It's competition like this that drives us to achieve great things!
Cuddles,
the Roid
There are a number of reasons why the source code of the Shouptronic voting machine could be hidden, many of which historic.
Shoup voting machines, according to www.shoupvote.com have been around since 1919. These machines were entirely mechanical, and openly discussing every last detail of how these machines worked could have lead competitors to copying their design, thus bringging the Shoup family company to its knees. Instead, these machines were reviewed and tested by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), and when certified for use, they were introduced into voting booths across the county.
Only in 1978 was the first electronic shoup machine, the shouptronic, introduced (by Shoup's son, Ransom V. Shoup II). Here still, an electronic voting machine was a fairly new concept, and releasing the detailed inner-workings of the machine to the public would again probably not have been the best business sense. More simply put, the innerworkings of the first shouptronics clearly qualified as trade secrets. (IBM or Control Data would have copied it in an instant!). Like its predecessor though, the shouptronic was reviewed, tested, and certified by the FEC. If there was some sort of diabolical magic going on in the black box, I have to believe our elected officials would not have approved this. Additionally, incorporating such electronic hocus pokus would have been enormously expensive adn timeconsuming. The engineers of the Shouptronic would have to make sure that any vot-rigging would go unnoticed by anyone testing the machine's accuracy, meanwhile making it easy for people with the know-how to rig the machines output. But, that rigged output couldn't be too suspicious or predictable, otherwise it may be noticed by those testing the machine (or the opposing party in an election). Plainly, it was a lot of work to build such a macchiavellian machine. And, not only would building this riggable machine be a boatload of work, keeping its tricks secret from "the rest" would certainly require a shit-ton of money. If one person leaked the information, the cover would be blown and the whole system would be shot. In my opinion, as of 1978, this was just not feasible.
Times have changed now. No longer is closed-source software the defacto standard. No longer is this machine housing some difficult-to-engineer trade secrets. (I bet 80% of slashdot could rig up a similar machine in less than day if they wanted). There is really no reason to keep the inner workings of these machines secret.
So, instead of us sitting here and contemplating conspiracies, let's write our Congresspeople. Let's let them know that we're concerned, and that there's nothing more American than making absolutely sure every American's vote counts on election day. Times have changed. No longer is source code of the shouptronic a "trade secret." No longer is engineering such a machine difficult. Instead, it is as easy to engineer a fair machine as an unfair one. So, get out there, make some phone calls, and convince your candidates that they need to do something about this to get your vote.
There are two major reasons we should be motivated to research Quantum Crypto:
Quantum Computing, when feasible, will instantly make today's encryption techniques useless yatta, yatta, yatta...
If/when some crazy math guy proves P=NP, our encryption will be useless. Only QC will provide security from non-deterministic machines.
Either way, only one of these breakthroughs is the only thing needed to turn the country's deepest darkest ciphertext into plain old plaintext. I realize that most mathematicians are confident that P!=NP (I myself think this problem is probably in Goedel's indecidable domain), still I have to admit that all this makes me a little nervous.
Quantum Computing is NOT the same thing as Quantum Cryptography even though they are both rumored to involve QM ;->.
Here's an intro on quantum computing for non-physicists...
I realize that this comment may be a little off-topic, but still I'm curious as to what things us non-gurus can do to strengthen our Linuxing knowledge.
I get my hands dirty with problems as they arise, but it would be nice if there was a more structured approach for learning the ins and outs of Linux.
What things can you suggest? (And if you say RTFM... which FMs are important and/or good?) Then at what point would I be ready for one of these certification courses?
To play devil's advocate for a bit: it's the assholes like this that drive software development to new levels. The same thing is paralleled in many different areas:
In cryptography: The people who propose new protocols depend on the people who break protocols to make their proposals robust. (Without those crackers we could still be using XOR to encrypt files).
In Science: Science, at the most fundamental level, is about destroying the work of others. One takes a theory and try to find places where it doesn't hold thereby disproving it. Without this process, we would probably still insist the world is on the back of a tortoise.
In nature: Nothing accelerates evolution like preditors.
Cheaters are nothing more than a virus in the open source community. We have no mechanisms of immunity against them. Now is a chance to prove our evolutionary fitness to the rest of the world. Either we adapt and survive these cheaters, or we die out until a better organism for developing software comes along.
The beauty of open source lies in its evolution. Let's evolve.
I have discovered a truly marvellous solution to this problem, which however this textbox is not large enough to contain.
(Now if somebody else actually publishes the solution it will at least be named after me.)
"He who takes credit for everything, is bound to get credit for something."
-My Dad