i also found that program to be surprisingly biased, i had expected nova to be much more objective in its approach to these things.
i _do_ think that franklin was screwed, but by all accounts, she was a bit of a snob herself, and made it very difficult to work with her at an equal level. the program seemed to simply dismiss this as a woman struggling in a mans world, but that doesn't change the facts.
one thing struck me as very interesting. this photo 51 that they talked about, apparently, franklin had had it in her possesion for months before watson ever saw it, but watson and crick (aided by 2 or 3 other major breakthroughs and a co-workers brilliant insight) allowed them to build the model in a matter of weeks, it seems like a bit of credit (at least) should have been conceeded by the program to the two for taking her data and actually doing something with it.
it is a damn shame though. she couldn't have won a part of the nobel, but her name really should be mentioned at the same time as watson and crick whenever referring to the discovery of the double helix, imho.
i've never understood the american tendency to simply drop letters from the spelling of words. it would be frustrating if it weren't so damn silly. i've often wondered what the origins were, if they just decided that they didn't like the letter u and the letter i. perhaps some childhood trauma during a couple particular episodes of sesame street?
Re:Digital signatures are not really signatures.
on
GPG vs. PGP?
·
· Score: 1
one of the things that handle this ( at least in gpg ) is the concept of a 'web of trust'. you score each of the keys in your database with how much you trust that persons integrety when it comes to signing other peoples keys. if you think they don't bother verifying that so-and-so's public key is really theirs, then you don't trust them very highly. if, on the other hand, you know that they are careful and verify signature finger-prints via some safe method ( face-to-face, may be phone calls ) then you score them highly. then, when you get a key from someone you don't know, you check if that key is signed by anyone you trust. if it is, then you can be quite sure that it is the person it claims to be.
there is no such facility for pen and paper signatures available to the general public ( that i'm aware of ). so, this basically ( using your analogy ) allows someone to 'check your identity' through all the other people that they trust, in effect, matching the signature to your drivers license, passport, id card, library card, etc.
however, as everyone points out, security is an ongoing, active concern. the whole web of trust model does you no good if you don't actively get out there and get your key signed and sign other peoples keys after verifying fingerprints. but, by doing that you also make my life easier when it comes to verifying signatures.
and of course, all of this is also only as secure as your passphrase on your keyfile. although digital signatures are much more anti-forgable than pen and paper, once someone has your private key, they are suddenly a master forger, the like of which isn't possible using pen and paper. however, the nice thing about digital signatures is that they can be revoked if this should happen, assuming you know about it. the first thing everyone should do when they set up a digital signature they plan on using is generate and print out a revocation certificate, then store that in a very safe place. this way you can always revoke your signature if it becomes compromised.
the file on charles lindbergh is probably more related to when his child was kidnapped and held for ransom than his transatlantic flight. i seem to recall that there was some strangeness about it, and perhaps he was simply investigated to rule out any involvement in it. i also think that his child was never returned, but i'm kind of sketchy on that.
looks like mp3.com handed over audiograbber.com already. the news release seems to be data 15mar00, so this is pretty recent news for me ( it's still 14mar00 here! )
I think Fox Video only commited to supporting DVD last year, but I seem to recall that Star Wars was on their list of DVD 'ports', as well as Alien([s|III|Iv]). I hope they make a decent DVD, it's always nice to have extra features, trailers, etc. I'll probably buy it anyway, I've got both LD sets of Star Wars, and the sets of Alien and Aliens also.
Seriously though, you'd feel better having a bunch of VBXs hacked together running a nuclear power station? Originally, VB was intended as a scripting language, oh, wait, it still is.
VB is easy, it's the microsoft way of doing things: allow for flashy, management impressing demos to be whipped up at a whim, but forget about the back-end. As soon as I ever started doing serious work in VB, I ended up spending more time working around those 'black-boxes' than getting any work done. Java is *much* better thought out and allows for much, much more easily customized UI, and other little things like language security, etc. I've just spent 3 hours today tracking down a bug in a VB application that was caused by someone not initializing a variable. You can't do that in Java, which, amoung other things, makes it a much more robust language, much more naturally un-error prone.
Anyway, VB has it's place. It is easy to throw together flashy database connected demonstrations, but it doesn't do anything that Java can't do. Especially considering all the RAD enviroments coming out for Java. And your Java executable will run almost anywhere ( and getting more and more ).
As far as VB being more logical, that's interesting. However, I'm not going to comment as anything I would say would probably come across as rude.
Finally, as anyone with any experience will tell you, Java is *the* language to use for network work. Even the microsoft oriented books I've read on COM and stuff say that Java couldn't be better designed to integrate with COM if it tried, and is clearly the language of choice for any ORB driven programming model.
BTW, does VB actually compile to real code now? Isn't it done with p-code, but cleverly link in the run-time stuff?
The 800 lb ( 360 kg ) gorilla perched on top of a building, with little biplanes flying around shooting at it. The likes of Linus and Alan at the stick, and hell, Snoopy ( aka the Red Baron ) too. All shooting at it with their latest 2.2 super-lazer-blasters. The gorilla swinging wildly, in all directions obviously dazed and stunned by the suddennes and fericity of the attack. And then, in the middle of a swing its eyes suddenly flash blue and the other arm forgets to hold on.... down it falls off the Empire State building...
...why zdnet is suddenly running "isn't linux cool" articles? Is it just me, or do they seem to have suddenly 'changed' their minds about a lot of this stuff? Could it be that microsoft had a little 'chat' with them and suggested it might simply be time to start painting 'that other OS' as a serious contender until the DOJ trial is over?
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i also found that program to be surprisingly biased, i had expected nova to be much more objective in its approach to these things.
i _do_ think that franklin was screwed, but by all accounts, she was a bit of a snob herself, and made it very difficult to work with her at an equal level. the program seemed to simply dismiss this as a woman struggling in a mans world, but that doesn't change the facts.
one thing struck me as very interesting. this photo 51 that they talked about, apparently, franklin had had it in her possesion for months before watson ever saw it, but watson and crick (aided by 2 or 3 other major breakthroughs and a co-workers brilliant insight) allowed them to build the model in a matter of weeks, it seems like a bit of credit (at least) should have been conceeded by the program to the two for taking her data and actually doing something with it.
it is a damn shame though. she couldn't have won a part of the nobel, but her name really should be mentioned at the same time as watson and crick whenever referring to the discovery of the double helix, imho.
CraigL->Thx();
i've never understood the american tendency to simply drop letters from the spelling of words. it would be frustrating if it weren't so damn silly. i've often wondered what the origins were, if they just decided that they didn't like the letter u and the letter i. perhaps some childhood trauma during a couple particular episodes of sesame street?
one of the things that handle this ( at least in gpg ) is the concept of a 'web of trust'. you score each of the keys in your database with how much you trust that persons integrety when it comes to signing other peoples keys. if you think they don't bother verifying that so-and-so's public key is really theirs, then you don't trust them very highly. if, on the other hand, you know that they are careful and verify signature finger-prints via some safe method ( face-to-face, may be phone calls ) then you score them highly. then, when you get a key from someone you don't know, you check if that key is signed by anyone you trust. if it is, then you can be quite sure that it is the person it claims to be.
there is no such facility for pen and paper signatures available to the general public ( that i'm aware of ). so, this basically ( using your analogy ) allows someone to 'check your identity' through all the other people that they trust, in effect, matching the signature to your drivers license, passport, id card, library card, etc.
however, as everyone points out, security is an ongoing, active concern. the whole web of trust model does you no good if you don't actively get out there and get your key signed and sign other peoples keys after verifying fingerprints. but, by doing that you also make my life easier when it comes to verifying signatures.
and of course, all of this is also only as secure as your passphrase on your keyfile. although digital signatures are much more anti-forgable than pen and paper, once someone has your private key, they are suddenly a master forger, the like of which isn't possible using pen and paper. however, the nice thing about digital signatures is that they can be revoked if this should happen, assuming you know about it. the first thing everyone should do when they set up a digital signature they plan on using is generate and print out a revocation certificate, then store that in a very safe place. this way you can always revoke your signature if it becomes compromised.
cheers,
CraigL->Thx();
the file on charles lindbergh is probably more related to when his child was kidnapped and held for ransom than his transatlantic flight. i seem to recall that there was some strangeness about it, and perhaps he was simply investigated to rule out any involvement in it. i also think that his child was never returned, but i'm kind of sketchy on that.
--CraigL->Thx();
looks like mp3.com handed over audiograbber.com already. the news release seems to be data 15mar00, so this is pretty recent news for me ( it's still 14mar00 here! )
check it out--
CraigL->Thx();
I think Fox Video only commited to supporting DVD last year, but I seem to recall that Star Wars was on their list of DVD 'ports', as well as Alien([s|III|Iv]). I hope they make a decent DVD, it's always nice to have extra features, trailers, etc. I'll probably buy it anyway, I've got both LD sets of Star Wars, and the sets of Alien and Aliens also.
CraigL->Thx();
Be Developer ID: 5852
Hehehe. That's pretty funny.
Seriously though, you'd feel better having a bunch of VBXs hacked together running a nuclear power station? Originally, VB was intended as a scripting language, oh, wait, it still is.
VB is easy, it's the microsoft way of doing things: allow for flashy, management impressing demos to be whipped up at a whim, but forget about the back-end. As soon as I ever started doing serious work in VB, I ended up spending more time working around those 'black-boxes' than getting any work done. Java is *much* better thought out and allows for much, much more easily customized UI, and other little things like language security, etc. I've just spent 3 hours today tracking down a bug in a VB application that was caused by someone not initializing a variable. You can't do that in Java, which, amoung other things, makes it a much more robust language, much more naturally un-error prone.
Anyway, VB has it's place. It is easy to throw together flashy database connected demonstrations, but it doesn't do anything that Java can't do. Especially considering all the RAD enviroments coming out for Java. And your Java executable will run almost anywhere ( and getting more and more ).
As far as VB being more logical, that's interesting. However, I'm not going to comment as anything I would say would probably come across as rude.
Finally, as anyone with any experience will tell you, Java is *the* language to use for network work. Even the microsoft oriented books I've read on COM and stuff say that Java couldn't be better designed to integrate with COM if it tried, and is clearly the language of choice for any ORB driven programming model.
BTW, does VB actually compile to real code now? Isn't it done with p-code, but cleverly link in the run-time stuff?
CraigL->Thx();
I had this vision...
The 800 lb ( 360 kg ) gorilla perched on top of a building, with little biplanes flying around shooting at it. The likes of Linus and Alan at the stick, and hell, Snoopy ( aka the Red Baron ) too. All shooting at it with their latest 2.2 super-lazer-blasters. The gorilla swinging wildly, in all directions obviously dazed and stunned by the suddennes and fericity of the attack. And then, in the middle of a swing its eyes suddenly flash blue and the other arm forgets to hold on.... down it falls off the Empire State building...
CraigL->Thx();
Be Developer ID: 5852
...why zdnet is suddenly running "isn't linux cool" articles? Is it just me, or do they seem to have suddenly 'changed' their minds about a lot of this stuff? Could it be that microsoft had a little 'chat' with them and suggested it might simply be time to start painting 'that other OS' as a serious contender until the DOJ trial is over?
Hopefully, I'm just being paranoid...
CraigL->Thx();
Be Developer ID: 5852