To have things integrated into the OS in a meaningful way is one thing. Windows simply bolts product ontop of product on top of product with no semblance to thought on what the outcome may be.
Re:I think they are going in the wrong direction h
on
The Future of KDE
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FLAMEBAIT: Say, you want a desktop that helps you work faster and easier without getting in the way? Get a Mac!:)
Has anyone for a second thought that those cards were just the stores being nice to you? Well, actually, my mom did, and then for some reason a friend of hers told her about that incident you just described... She was disturbed, but not enough so to change her behavior.
Really, information is the most valuable resource in the world right now. Not money, not weapons... Information. It's amazing how readily people give it away for the convience of saving a few dollars on their groceries...â
Well, so far I can't seem to find web based email scheme that lets me sign up and access through anonymizer. MSN Hotmail, Netscape Webmail, and a bunch of smaller outfits all can't make it through anonymizer.
So far as paranoia goes... I'm not overly paranoid inperson because I know whom I'm dealing with and feel relatively secure in the idea that there are not people following me with microphones!
So far as the internet goes, it's a different story with the ease in which it enables people to amass detailed account of a person. You can tell what one's interests are and who they associate with with no difficulty. Add that to other information that is not accessible as of current, but which the possibility exists and if seems rather scary. A brief glimpse of my bookmarks pretty much gives me away (and no, it's not all full of kiddy porn or anything... actually no porn or anything else illegal for that matter)
I trully don't like the idea of having third parties involved in my life. If I'm saying something to someone, that's all i intend to have knowledge of what I said. I don't even need to be doing anything wrong. If people know all of your circumstances, they can adjust their reactions to you prior to having any previous contact with you. This already to an extent happens with the Credit reporting agencies.
In another scenario, traffic analysis is probably more deadly than blatant invasions of privacy. The internet makes this a more logistical possiblity than had been avaible before.
Say I'm not doing anything wrong. Neither is my friend whom I correspond with. But a friend of his is involved in some scheme or another. If his mail is being monitored so as to be able to see whom he corresponds with, that brings back my friend. Depending on how deep they go, I'm on the next level of people to watch now. Even if i'm not doing anything wrong, it's still guilt by association... Maybe one day if i have the energy, I'll make a web page that talks more clearly... It doesn't merit taking up all this space on slashdot, being that this is an unrehearsed, uneditted ramble...
I simply assume I have no privacy unless I take ample steps to preserve it. I'm act as though I'm positive my ISP knows where I go on the internet. The company I work for knows what my emails say, someone IS listening in on my phone conversations, etc...
The best way to protect oneself if this is trully what is occuring (which I'm not sure of) is to act unassuming and draw no unneeded attention...
There fore, I use Anonymizer for browsing, except at sites where it's either impossible, or the usefulness of the site goes way (SLASHDOT)... I also wish that there was an SSL enabled secure proxy out there...
Of course, Anonymizer itself could probably raise some flags, as I'm sure encrypted email does as well... Kind of a no win situation, if you ask me. The act of trying to preserve your privacy draws unneeded attention to you!
So far as email goes; I use PGP when my correspondant has it. Never say anything on email you don't want to come back and bite you (even in encrypted email... afterall the recipient can still read it, and if you typed it on your computere, there's things such as keyboard monitors, etc... Basically once you type something, you're not very assured of it remaining prive once you've typed it... Unless your'e using an OS such as OpenBSD or Linux or something...))
What I really would like, by the way (hint hint!:) is web-based email accessable through anonymizer or something like that which does not require any other email address in order to register... If anyone's got any ideas... Let me know... I may even supply the server
It was on News.com during or just prior to the weekend. Check out their at a week view and it'll be around there somewhere. It pretty much reads the same though.
Actually, I'd hope that any compression apps handle the dates okay... I'd hate to compress my files and then uncompress them and have the dates modified be all mangled. So long as it uses the mechanisms for dates provided by the OS, you fine, but I'd still hope to check and be sure...
Ummm... I'd doubt that the NSA will ever be outsmarted my Engineers... Yeah, Reno, Senate, Congress, whomever may do things that we don't agree with, but don't for a moment think that that correlates to the stupidity of the intellegence community. They're all probably sitting around going "Hmmmmm? I wonder if we can convince them to pass this law? Oh wow! They did! How about this one then???"
Anyways, if this product is anywhere near "secure" then I don't expect it to make it to market (at least in the US) anytime soon...If it does appear unmodified, that'll mean that there are methods to decipher it.
Read up on the features that Unixware offers... Then compare it to Linux and you'll see that Linux has a lot of catching up to do... It'll get there evenutally, but not anytime soon. Unixware is much more scalable, etc...
So far as this new business model works... I'm eager to see someone turn a profit with it. When that happens, I'll trust it to be permanent, but right now is way too early to say if selling only support for software is enought o sustain a company
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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You need to get a clue as to how companies need to adapt as they become bigger and bigger. It's no longer an issue as to how the Linux world works, it's an issue about money. If people buy into Redhat, and then see Redhat doing things that they don't think has to potential to maximize their investments, then they CAN sue Redhat. Or everyone can turn around and dump their stock, crippling them. Face it. If Redhat was on such great ground and could get limitless funds from Intel, Oracle, and whomever else, there'd have been no reason to go public at all. Now that they're public, they need to earn money, or at least have a consice plan as to how they will eventually earn money.
Thank you for the clarification! Though I need to point out that you're the coward here!:)
I knew someone out there could shed some light on this...
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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Right. With their few expenses, not to mention small income, they won't need to issue more stock to remain that the level that they're at. If they aspire to grow and take on MSFT, which is what Wall Street seems to expect given their valuation, they'll need to expand beyond the scope of their original investors. They will need to issue more stock to use as bait to attract more developers to their fold. Their stock WILL deflate as people reap the profits of the IPO... At that point it'll be wake up time.
It's bound to get interesting when Caldera goes public. At that point Redhat will announce their new opensource breakthrough, and a few days later Caldera can turn around and say they've decided to adopt Redhats breakthrough for their own distribution. One day, they're going to have to turn on each other. That'll hurt us (Linux community) all...
We all linux. But what about all those articles about how Redhat was having the potential to cause or actually causing fragmentation within the Linux community? Now that they're everyone's darling on Wallstreet does it no longer matter? It does, and as soon as people remember those issues they had with them, it will again.
CHRP or no CHRP, these systems will still be as or more expensive than x86 systems. PPC is not pin or binary compatible with wintel. You can't plug a PPC 750 chip in a 440BX mother board (never mind the different pin configurations) and expect it to work. That'll require new parts, core logic chips, et al... Therefore, the economies of scale will lower the price of a PPC system if they catch on, but they won't catch up to the x86 crowd... 100 million units vs. 10 million units - it's jsut not happening!
Sorry, no I haven't ever programmed for AGP. If it eases and speeds the programming, that's great!
My comment was based on the idea that (I think I've heard a while back) that Intel was originally saying that AGP would become a sort of shared memory architecture (ala UMA) where there would be no need for memory on the video controller - the controller would just dip into system RAM when needed.
OKAY! I'm quite sorry about that one. Maybe it was just the atoms in the world. I'm drunk now, and really... if someone wants to run out and do some research for me at this hour, that'd be wonderful!:)
Besides, I'm on a no good computer which has Excel on it. When I did a sort on 1+E86 vs 2+E128, 2+E128 came out as the greater as the two... This is Excel. This is a Pentium chip. This is me. I may be wrong!
CAN SOMEONE help us clarify this???
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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Unless you're amazon, ebay or yahoo (the latter two actually managed to MAKE money) finances have a whole lot to do with the health of the company! And even now, week after week, I read articles about how so and so is fed up and wants Amazon to at least turn a profit one of these quarters...
Yes, SCO was the most popular version of Unix available for Intel for quite a long time, and yes, Linux has stolen some of it's thunder, but the high-end of Linux is only eating into the low to mid range of SCO... 64 processors on Linux??? Yes, It'll probably see them. It may even use them. But it won't perform to it's fullest potential with them. SCO can buy a few 64 CPU machines for their programmers. The myth about Linux is that its developed by programmers in their off time. How many of these programmers have 64 CPU machines in their study (or basement)...
In that basis, it's easy to understand the developemtn of Beowolf, in that instead fo requiring one huge expenditure on equipment, you can instead incrementally scale it. Beowolf can probably scale much further than SCO is able to, but it's still an esoteric technology.
And yes, i've rarely seen a makefile with options for compiling to SCO. To me, that simply means that it's still primarily targeted by developers who don't wish to devulge their source code.
Oracles on Linux (actually, i just received my 8i cd today!:)... Which is great for developers, but I'm sure we'll find that we'll quickly rush into Linux's boundries and have to upgrade to SCO, Solaris, AIX, etc...
From everything I've that I've read, Unixware had superior performance and features over Opensierver. Therefore SCO chose to phase OpenServer out and merge it's best techonologies with Unixware to create Unixware 7.
Several companies have done the death plunge that you describe. Most have died, I admit. But the ones that survive have reaffirmed themselves and tackled the goals that they set. SCO may need to give up the lowend of x86 Unix, but they WILL keep the highend, at least til not Merced, but McKinnely, which is still a few years out.
Even when intel's IA-64 processors appear, they're bound to be prohibitively expensive, until volume ranks up. It won't be until then that as many open source developers gain access to Merced, etc, that Linux can really have a chance to flourish. Counter that with SCO who has the money to buy development machines and the willingness to sign NDA's for early access.
In my opinion, SCO needn't worry now. 5 years from now, if they haven't done much beyond work at the extreme high end, then they'll be dead. But they've got time to adapt to the new challenge set before them.
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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Inevetiably (such as when their stock price falls from it's current position of trading at several THOUSAND times it's earnings), they'll need to have access to more capital... In order to do so, they'll release more shares to the public. Eventually, less than 50% will be held by those within the company.
Welcome to the world of publicly traded companies. Yes, you have the potential of becoming a billionaire overnight, but you also become accountable to a whole lot of other people. Shareholders can get angry. The government (SEC) can get angry. You need to appease all of these people.
Therefore, the possiblitiy exists that Redhat's (and other's) hands' may be forced to the point that they do what the shareholders want, which may or may not be in the best interest of the open source community.
It won't happen today, tomorrow, or even next week. But be on the lookout. You're playing with powers who are possess much more clout than Redhat, Microsoft, or any other organization or movement in the US... One shareholder suit can eject the board, displace the CEO, and redirect the direction of the company. Likely? No. Possible? YES!
Read read read read it! Right before bed every night, and right when you wake up in the morning. Peruse the web in search of information (searches for terms like PGP, RSA, Diffie, Public Key, Key Server, Cryptography, Cryptanalysis, security, privacy and other related terms will probably yield some more helpful info...
Counterpane is probably one of the best places to start. Read the white papers there. Subscribe to the newsletter. Check out the links. You might want to check out RSA as well. They've got a bunch of FAQ's on their website, most of which will answer your questions. You may also want to check out PGP (that link's only if you're not a business... The PDF manual has a lot of info as to how the product works. Verisign will probably have some more information... I haven't been there recently, but i'm sure you can unearth something...
Anyone else want to pile on some more resources for this guy (or girl)?
(That was still a lot less typing than answering all those questions, and will probably supply better information that I could type in an hour...)
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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We're talking cash here. If i were putting money into a company, I wouldn't do it because it was the right thing to do. I would do it so as to maximize my profit earning potential. That's what the investors do. You shouldn't buy into a company solely because you like the company. You should buy into them because you believe that they are in a position to turn a profit where others can't. Redhat doens't have this differntiation. Sooner or later, these Linux companies are going to have to face the fact that they need to compete with each other rather than just against Microsoft. When that happens, I wonder if we'll start seeing proprietary software easing its way into the distributions...
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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Redhat's investors are the Public. Whomever buys a share is an investor. If you're displeased with what the company is doing, think that they're not trying to maximize profit, you can take issue with them. If other people agreed with you and took part, you'd have a class action suit on your hands. Yes, the largest investors to date have been larger corporations, but as more and more stock finds it's way to the public, Redhat will need to be accountable to more and more people.
It can speed up the process, but so long as it's using a brute force attack, it's possible to up the keysize to gain a reasonable amount of security.
I don't know how long 1024 bit RSA will stand... Which is partially why I use a 4096-bit key. Why should I want to generate new keys 20 years from now and worry that all my old "secure" communications are now visible to prying eyes?
Processors have grown to the point where they can handle larger key sizes with not much inconvience, I simply don't see a reason to use smaller keys, when only delay the inevitable... Yes, it may be overkill these days, but I'm sure at one point people thought that 384 bits was safe, and 512 bits were overkill...
Preface: If I err in any way, someone please step forward and correct where I'm wrong. --------------- The key lengths of symmetric and asymetric encryption are not directly comparable.
RSA-public keys are extremely long, because of two things. Number one, they only make use of the prime numbers available within the limits of the key. They also need to be longer and use more complex math functions because they are available for anyone to see. The basis of the idea of the public key is that someone can use that key only to encrypt data for the intended recipient. You can not, in theory, take a public key and use that to determine the corresponding private key. What Shamir has shown is that it is feasible to do this, with a 512 bit key.
Symetric keys are shorter and much faster, because they are kept secret and they make use of the entire spectrum of numbers available, rather than just the primes. However, by gaining access to a symetric key, not only can you encrypt data, but also decrypt it as well.
In order to initiate a secure session with a web server, I believe the sequence goes: the server generates a RSA public key and passes that to the browser. The browser then generates a 40 (for exportable browses) or 128 bit symetric session key, encrypts that with the public key, and sends that back to the webserver. The webserver and webbrowser from that point forward use the smaller and faster symetric key. So long as the symetric session key is passed using an RSA key larger than 512 bits (supposing for this instance that 512 bits is crackable but 513 and more bits is not),
In trying to keep this on the shorter side, I'll point you towards Bruce Scheiner's Counterpane website, which provides a huge amount of resources and links to other sites.
Basically, among other things, I believe you'll find information that says 128-bit cryto:
1. Has more keys than atoms in the universe.
2. Would take longer than the universe has been in existance to brute force a 128 bit key using all available computers.
Re:SCO Tech support? No thanks!
on
SCO does Linux
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SCO is actually on much firmer ground than Redhat. They've been in existance for many many years, and have carved out a niche for themselves. Hell, they even generated a profit last quarter!
SCO's PE is 20.2 to 1 Microsoft is 59.6 to 1 Redhats is 2131.2:1 Ebay is 9800.0:1
Microsoft is and has ben Wall Streets darling. It's gone for how many consequtive quarters making a profit (monopoly not withstanding?:)?... If it was valued in the same terms as Redhat, it would be worth in the hundreds of trillions of dollars! And, they are on much firmer financil ground than RHAT, thanks to the proprietaryness of their software. I can go buy a Redhat package, dupe the CD, while replacing every instance of Redhat with Lucas' Hat, and presto! competition for Redhat...
Yes, Redhat's market cap is phenomenal. But really, unless they up and buy SCO this week, its not going to make a tangible difference. Redhat first needs to prove to Wallstreet that they can differeniate themselves from the other players in order to generate a PROFIT (a lost word on Wall Street these days, I admit...) Otherwise, thousands of investors who bought Redhat because they heard Linux in conjunction with the MSFT trial will dump their stock and pummel the stock price.
I'm not sure that onw would want Redhat to directly attack SCO. Rather they should let Linux itself expand into SCO's territory, and instead concentrate their money into linux development itself. Yet this is still in a sense, a threat to themselves that we'll have to see how it plays out. For every $1 that Redhat spends on R&D, it essentially adds another $1 to Debian's, Caldera's, and every other vendor's R&D as well...
So, unless Redhat does something rash, it'll be very interesting to see how Wallstreet treats RHAT and every other Linux vendor that comes forward in the coming months with the open-source philosophy. These companies will no longer be able to be so accomidating to the open-source community, unless they are able to justify it to their investors... Which, if they show capable of making a profit and sustaining themselves, will be much easier...
I guess we need to just sit back and wait for the black ink to appear on their balance sheet.
IF he's made that much of an advance, then forget about it. However, if that much of an advance was made, I don't think that it would be mentioned on AP.
I believe that if the machine worked in the way that you implied, we'd hear about it coming from someone like Cray or IBM (if we even did hear about it) - and not a cryptographer. An implentation like that would seem to have far many more uses and could quite possibly lead to a paradgrim shift in the computing world, not simply speed the decryption of 512 bit RSA.
Without more information, I'm lead to believe that he's simply created a new machine architecture for a machine that's still using a brute force attack. It's much faster any previous implentation of the idea, being that it's based on light rather than electrical currents running through a circuit board, but in the end it's most likely using a known factoring algorithm, being that there was no mention otherwise, which would be an actual breakthrough... Without that, he's simply sped up the process.
If it was simply a matter of adding a diode, or even an array of diodes, to eventually be able to target 1024 bit RSA, someone would have mentioned that.
But then, if that was the case, the story probably would not have found it's way to the press in the first place. It would completely undermine everyone's confidence in the computer systems that they use and depend on, which could completely disrupt our economy, nation, and eventually, way of life. We've grown extremely dependant on secure transfer of information in this age, and it would be extremely irresponsible to just blast this information out to the public without at least having an idea for a plan as to how banks and other companies could adapt to this.
That would be beyond open-source development. It is beyond finding holes in Windows NT and posting instructions and an executable on your website. This is about society. I hope that Shamir, or anyone, would be responsible enough to have an idea for a fall back plan prior to telling the world that every transaction that's ever been conducted is now vulnerable.
Based on those assumptions assumptions on my part, and RSA is demonstratably safer with larger keys against brute force attacks, I, like a previous poster, believe that idea that this machine is solely an exercise to show the theoretical weakness of 512-bit RSA keys.
For the conspiracy minded: their patent does expire this or next year, I believe? At which point, there's sure to be a push to move onto another algorithm that makes *SOMEONE* money. The way that that would be done would be to show everyone that it's demonstratibly better than RSA.
Slashdot Mirror
To have things integrated into the OS in a meaningful way is one thing. Windows simply bolts product ontop of product on top of product with no semblance to thought on what the outcome may be.
FLAMEBAIT: Say, you want a desktop that helps you work faster and easier without getting in the way? Get a Mac! :)
Umm they need your ID... got one that says your santa clause?
Has anyone for a second thought that those cards were just the stores being nice to you? Well, actually, my mom did, and then for some reason a friend of hers told her about that incident you just described... She was disturbed, but not enough so to change her behavior.
Really, information is the most valuable resource in the world right now. Not money, not weapons... Information. It's amazing how readily people give it away for the convience of saving a few dollars on their groceries...â
Well, so far I can't seem to find web based email scheme that lets me sign up and access through anonymizer. MSN Hotmail, Netscape Webmail, and a bunch of smaller outfits all can't make it through anonymizer.
So far as paranoia goes... I'm not overly paranoid inperson because I know whom I'm dealing with and feel relatively secure in the idea that there are not people following me with microphones!
So far as the internet goes, it's a different story with the ease in which it enables people to amass detailed account of a person. You can tell what one's interests are and who they associate with with no difficulty. Add that to other information that is not accessible as of current, but which the possibility exists and if seems rather scary. A brief glimpse of my bookmarks pretty much gives me away (and no, it's not all full of kiddy porn or anything... actually no porn or anything else illegal for that matter)
I trully don't like the idea of having third parties involved in my life. If I'm saying something to someone, that's all i intend to have knowledge of what I said. I don't even need to be doing anything wrong. If people know all of your circumstances, they can adjust their reactions to you prior to having any previous contact with you. This already to an extent happens with the Credit reporting agencies.
In another scenario, traffic analysis is probably more deadly than blatant invasions of privacy. The internet makes this a more logistical possiblity than had been avaible before.
Say I'm not doing anything wrong. Neither is my friend whom I correspond with. But a friend of his is involved in some scheme or another. If his mail is being monitored so as to be able to see whom he corresponds with, that brings back my friend. Depending on how deep they go, I'm on the next level of people to watch now. Even if i'm not doing anything wrong, it's still guilt by association... Maybe one day if i have the energy, I'll make a web page that talks more clearly... It doesn't merit taking up all this space on slashdot, being that this is an unrehearsed, uneditted ramble...
Til then!
I simply assume I have no privacy unless I take ample steps to preserve it. I'm act as though I'm positive my ISP knows where I go on the internet. The company I work for knows what my emails say, someone IS listening in on my phone conversations, etc...
:) is web-based email accessable through anonymizer or something like that which does not require any other email address in order to register... If anyone's got any ideas... Let me know... I may even supply the server
The best way to protect oneself if this is trully what is occuring (which I'm not sure of) is to act unassuming and draw no unneeded attention...
There fore, I use Anonymizer for browsing, except at sites where it's either impossible, or the usefulness of the site goes way (SLASHDOT)... I also wish that there was an SSL enabled secure proxy out there...
Of course, Anonymizer itself could probably raise some flags, as I'm sure encrypted email does as well... Kind of a no win situation, if you ask me. The act of trying to preserve your privacy draws unneeded attention to you!
So far as email goes; I use PGP when my correspondant has it. Never say anything on email you don't want to come back and bite you (even in encrypted email... afterall the recipient can still read it, and if you typed it on your computere, there's things such as keyboard monitors, etc... Basically once you type something, you're not very assured of it remaining prive once you've typed it... Unless your'e using an OS such as OpenBSD or Linux or something...))
What I really would like, by the way (hint hint!
It was on News.com during or just prior to the weekend. Check out their at a week view and it'll be around there somewhere. It pretty much reads the same though.
Actually, I'd hope that any compression apps handle the dates okay... I'd hate to compress my files and then uncompress them and have the dates modified be all mangled. So long as it uses the mechanisms for dates provided by the OS, you fine, but I'd still hope to check and be sure...
So far as Acrobat Reader goes... I dunno!
Ummm... I'd doubt that the NSA will ever be outsmarted my Engineers... Yeah, Reno, Senate, Congress, whomever may do things that we don't agree with, but don't for a moment think that that correlates to the stupidity of the intellegence community. They're all probably sitting around going "Hmmmmm? I wonder if we can convince them to pass this law? Oh wow! They did! How about this one then???"
Anyways, if this product is anywhere near "secure" then I don't expect it to make it to market (at least in the US) anytime soon...If it does appear unmodified, that'll mean that there are methods to decipher it.
Read up on the features that Unixware offers... Then compare it to Linux and you'll see that Linux has a lot of catching up to do... It'll get there evenutally, but not anytime soon. Unixware is much more scalable, etc...
So far as this new business model works... I'm eager to see someone turn a profit with it. When that happens, I'll trust it to be permanent, but right now is way too early to say if selling only support for software is enought o sustain a company
You need to get a clue as to how companies need to adapt as they become bigger and bigger. It's no longer an issue as to how the Linux world works, it's an issue about money. If people buy into Redhat, and then see Redhat doing things that they don't think has to potential to maximize their investments, then they CAN sue Redhat. Or everyone can turn around and dump their stock, crippling them. Face it. If Redhat was on such great ground and could get limitless funds from Intel, Oracle, and whomever else, there'd have been no reason to go public at all. Now that they're public, they need to earn money, or at least have a consice plan as to how they will eventually earn money.
Thank you for the clarification! Though I need to point out that you're the coward here! :)
I knew someone out there could shed some light on this...
Right. With their few expenses, not to mention small income, they won't need to issue more stock to remain that the level that they're at. If they aspire to grow and take on MSFT, which is what Wall Street seems to expect given their valuation, they'll need to expand beyond the scope of their original investors. They will need to issue more stock to use as bait to attract more developers to their fold. Their stock WILL deflate as people reap the profits of the IPO... At that point it'll be wake up time.
It's bound to get interesting when Caldera goes public. At that point Redhat will announce their new opensource breakthrough, and a few days later Caldera can turn around and say they've decided to adopt Redhats breakthrough for their own distribution. One day, they're going to have to turn on each other. That'll hurt us (Linux community) all...
We all linux. But what about all those articles about how Redhat was having the potential to cause or actually causing fragmentation within the Linux community? Now that they're everyone's darling on Wallstreet does it no longer matter? It does, and as soon as people remember those issues they had with them, it will again.
CHRP or no CHRP, these systems will still be as or more expensive than x86 systems. PPC is not pin or binary compatible with wintel. You can't plug a PPC 750 chip in a 440BX mother board (never mind the different pin configurations) and expect it to work. That'll require new parts, core logic chips, et al... Therefore, the economies of scale will lower the price of a PPC system if they catch on, but they won't catch up to the x86 crowd... 100 million units vs. 10 million units - it's jsut not happening!
Sorry, no I haven't ever programmed for AGP. If it eases and speeds the programming, that's great!
My comment was based on the idea that (I think I've heard a while back) that Intel was originally saying that AGP would become a sort of shared memory architecture (ala UMA) where there would be no need for memory on the video controller - the controller would just dip into system RAM when needed.
OKAY! I'm quite sorry about that one. Maybe it was just the atoms in the world. I'm drunk now, and really... if someone wants to run out and do some research for me at this hour, that'd be wonderful! :)
Besides, I'm on a no good computer which has Excel on it. When I did a sort on 1+E86 vs 2+E128, 2+E128 came out as the greater as the two... This is Excel. This is a Pentium chip. This is me. I may be wrong!
CAN SOMEONE help us clarify this???
Unless you're amazon, ebay or yahoo (the latter two actually managed to MAKE money) finances have a whole lot to do with the health of the company! And even now, week after week, I read articles about how so and so is fed up and wants Amazon to at least turn a profit one of these quarters...
:)... Which is great for developers, but I'm sure we'll find that we'll quickly rush into Linux's boundries and have to upgrade to SCO, Solaris, AIX, etc...
Yes, SCO was the most popular version of Unix available for Intel for quite a long time, and yes, Linux has stolen some of it's thunder, but the high-end of Linux is only eating into the low to mid range of SCO... 64 processors on Linux??? Yes, It'll probably see them. It may even use them. But it won't perform to it's fullest potential with them. SCO can buy a few 64 CPU machines for their programmers. The myth about Linux is that its developed by programmers in their off time. How many of these programmers have 64 CPU machines in their study (or basement)...
In that basis, it's easy to understand the developemtn of Beowolf, in that instead fo requiring one huge expenditure on equipment, you can instead incrementally scale it. Beowolf can probably scale much further than SCO is able to, but it's still an esoteric technology.
And yes, i've rarely seen a makefile with options for compiling to SCO. To me, that simply means that it's still primarily targeted by developers who don't wish to devulge their source code.
Oracles on Linux (actually, i just received my 8i cd today!
From everything I've that I've read, Unixware had superior performance and features over Opensierver. Therefore SCO chose to phase OpenServer out and merge it's best techonologies with Unixware to create Unixware 7.
Several companies have done the death plunge that you describe. Most have died, I admit. But the ones that survive have reaffirmed themselves and tackled the goals that they set. SCO may need to give up the lowend of x86 Unix, but they WILL keep the highend, at least til not Merced, but McKinnely, which is still a few years out.
Even when intel's IA-64 processors appear, they're bound to be prohibitively expensive, until volume ranks up. It won't be until then that as many open source developers gain access to Merced, etc, that Linux can really have a chance to flourish. Counter that with SCO who has the money to buy development machines and the willingness to sign NDA's for early access.
In my opinion, SCO needn't worry now. 5 years from now, if they haven't done much beyond work at the extreme high end, then they'll be dead. But they've got time to adapt to the new challenge set before them.
Inevetiably (such as when their stock price falls from it's current position of trading at several THOUSAND times it's earnings), they'll need to have access to more capital... In order to do so, they'll release more shares to the public. Eventually, less than 50% will be held by those within the company.
Welcome to the world of publicly traded companies. Yes, you have the potential of becoming a billionaire overnight, but you also become accountable to a whole lot of other people. Shareholders can get angry. The government (SEC) can get angry. You need to appease all of these people.
Therefore, the possiblitiy exists that Redhat's (and other's) hands' may be forced to the point that they do what the shareholders want, which may or may not be in the best interest of the open source community.
It won't happen today, tomorrow, or even next week. But be on the lookout. You're playing with powers who are possess much more clout than Redhat, Microsoft, or any other organization or movement in the US... One shareholder suit can eject the board, displace the CEO, and redirect the direction of the company. Likely? No. Possible? YES!
Quick! Run, don't walk, and find yourself a copy of Applied Cryptography!!!
Read read read read it! Right before bed every night, and right when you wake up in the morning. Peruse the web in search of information (searches for terms like PGP, RSA, Diffie, Public Key, Key Server, Cryptography, Cryptanalysis, security, privacy and other related terms will probably yield some more helpful info...
Counterpane is probably one of the best places to start. Read the white papers there. Subscribe to the newsletter. Check out the links. You might want to check out RSA as well. They've got a bunch of FAQ's on their website, most of which will answer your questions. You may also want to check out PGP (that link's only if you're not a business... The PDF manual has a lot of info as to how the product works. Verisign will probably have some more information... I haven't been there recently, but i'm sure you can unearth something...
Anyone else want to pile on some more resources for this guy (or girl)?
(That was still a lot less typing than answering all those questions, and will probably supply better information that I could type in an hour...)
We're talking cash here. If i were putting money into a company, I wouldn't do it because it was the right thing to do. I would do it so as to maximize my profit earning potential. That's what the investors do. You shouldn't buy into a company solely because you like the company. You should buy into them because you believe that they are in a position to turn a profit where others can't. Redhat doens't have this differntiation. Sooner or later, these Linux companies are going to have to face the fact that they need to compete with each other rather than just against Microsoft. When that happens, I wonder if we'll start seeing proprietary software easing its way into the distributions...
Redhat's investors are the Public. Whomever buys a share is an investor. If you're displeased with what the company is doing, think that they're not trying to maximize profit, you can take issue with them. If other people agreed with you and took part, you'd have a class action suit on your hands. Yes, the largest investors to date have been larger corporations, but as more and more stock finds it's way to the public, Redhat will need to be accountable to more and more people.
It can speed up the process, but so long as it's using a brute force attack, it's possible to up the keysize to gain a reasonable amount of security.
I don't know how long 1024 bit RSA will stand... Which is partially why I use a 4096-bit key. Why should I want to generate new keys 20 years from now and worry that all my old "secure" communications are now visible to prying eyes?
Processors have grown to the point where they can handle larger key sizes with not much inconvience, I simply don't see a reason to use smaller keys, when only delay the inevitable... Yes, it may be overkill these days, but I'm sure at one point people thought that 384 bits was safe, and 512 bits were overkill...
Preface: If I err in any way, someone please step forward and correct where I'm wrong.
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The key lengths of symmetric and asymetric encryption are not directly comparable.
RSA-public keys are extremely long, because of two things. Number one, they only make use of the prime numbers available within the limits of the key. They also need to be longer and use more complex math functions because they are available for anyone to see. The basis of the idea of the public key is that someone can use that key only to encrypt data for the intended recipient. You can not, in theory, take a public key and use that to determine the corresponding private key. What Shamir has shown is that it is feasible to do this, with a 512 bit key.
Symetric keys are shorter and much faster, because they are kept secret and they make use of the entire spectrum of numbers available, rather than just the primes. However, by gaining access to a symetric key, not only can you encrypt data, but also decrypt it as well.
In order to initiate a secure session with a web server, I believe the sequence goes: the server generates a RSA public key and passes that to the browser. The browser then generates a 40 (for exportable browses) or 128 bit symetric session key, encrypts that with the public key, and sends that back to the webserver. The webserver and webbrowser from that point forward use the smaller and faster symetric key. So long as the symetric session key is passed using an RSA key larger than 512 bits (supposing for this instance that 512 bits is crackable but 513 and more bits is not),
In trying to keep this on the shorter side, I'll point you towards Bruce Scheiner's Counterpane website, which provides a huge amount of resources and links to other sites.
Basically, among other things, I believe you'll find information that says 128-bit cryto:
1. Has more keys than atoms in the universe.
2. Would take longer than the universe has been in existance to brute force a 128 bit key using all available computers.
SCO is actually on much firmer ground than Redhat. They've been in existance for many many years, and have carved out a niche for themselves. Hell, they even generated a profit last quarter!
:)? ... If it was valued in the same terms as Redhat, it would be worth in the hundreds of trillions of dollars! And, they are on much firmer financil ground than RHAT, thanks to the proprietaryness of their software. I can go buy a Redhat package, dupe the CD, while replacing every instance of Redhat with Lucas' Hat, and presto! competition for Redhat...
SCO's PE is 20.2 to 1
Microsoft is 59.6 to 1
Redhats is 2131.2:1
Ebay is 9800.0:1
Microsoft is and has ben Wall Streets darling. It's gone for how many consequtive quarters making a profit (monopoly not withstanding?
Yes, Redhat's market cap is phenomenal. But really, unless they up and buy SCO this week, its not going to make a tangible difference. Redhat first needs to prove to Wallstreet that they can differeniate themselves from the other players in order to generate a PROFIT (a lost word on Wall Street these days, I admit...) Otherwise, thousands of investors who bought Redhat because they heard Linux in conjunction with the MSFT trial will dump their stock and pummel the stock price.
I'm not sure that onw would want Redhat to directly attack SCO. Rather they should let Linux itself expand into SCO's territory, and instead concentrate their money into linux development itself. Yet this is still in a sense, a threat to themselves that we'll have to see how it plays out. For every $1 that Redhat spends on R&D, it essentially adds another $1 to Debian's, Caldera's, and every other vendor's R&D as well...
So, unless Redhat does something rash, it'll be very interesting to see how Wallstreet treats RHAT and every other Linux vendor that comes forward in the coming months with the open-source philosophy. These companies will no longer be able to be so accomidating to the open-source community, unless they are able to justify it to their investors... Which, if they show capable of making a profit and sustaining themselves, will be much easier...
I guess we need to just sit back and wait for the black ink to appear on their balance sheet.
IF he's made that much of an advance, then forget about it. However, if that much of an advance was made, I don't think that it would be mentioned on AP.
I believe that if the machine worked in the way that you implied, we'd hear about it coming from someone like Cray or IBM (if we even did hear about it) - and not a cryptographer. An implentation like that would seem to have far many more uses and could quite possibly lead to a paradgrim shift in the computing world, not simply speed the decryption of 512 bit RSA.
Without more information, I'm lead to believe that he's simply created a new machine architecture for a machine that's still using a brute force attack. It's much faster any previous implentation of the idea, being that it's based on light rather than electrical currents running through a circuit board, but in the end it's most likely using a known factoring algorithm, being that there was no mention otherwise, which would be an actual breakthrough... Without that, he's simply sped up the process.
If it was simply a matter of adding a diode, or even an array of diodes, to eventually be able to target 1024 bit RSA, someone would have mentioned that.
But then, if that was the case, the story probably would not have found it's way to the press in the first place. It would completely undermine everyone's confidence in the computer systems that they use and depend on, which could completely disrupt our economy, nation, and eventually, way of life. We've grown extremely dependant on secure transfer of information in this age, and it would be extremely irresponsible to just blast this information out to the public without at least having an idea for a plan as to how banks and other companies could adapt to this.
That would be beyond open-source development. It is beyond finding holes in Windows NT and posting instructions and an executable on your website. This is about society. I hope that Shamir, or anyone, would be responsible enough to have an idea for a fall back plan prior to telling the world that every transaction that's ever been conducted is now vulnerable.
Based on those assumptions assumptions on my part, and RSA is demonstratably safer with larger keys against brute force attacks, I, like a previous poster, believe that idea that this machine is solely an exercise to show the theoretical weakness of 512-bit RSA keys.
For the conspiracy minded: their patent does expire this or next year, I believe? At which point, there's sure to be a push to move onto another algorithm that makes *SOMEONE* money. The way that that would be done would be to show everyone that it's demonstratibly better than RSA.