A Slashdot-like service should be integrated in the patent review system. It appears to me that, every time there is a new software patent that makes it on Slashdot, in a matter of minutes somebody will find some relevant and non-trivial prior art. Just like the parent poster and others around did. I think that a patent should be pre-issued and be in an informal "challenge" phase. In this phase, the patent could be set up on a moderated website like Slashdot where people can point out the relevant prior art. If the patent remains unchallenged it can be granted, otherwise the patent office can take a couple more days to analyse the top "challengers".
I know that, theoretically, a system like this is already in place, since after the patent is granted it can be challenged in a court of law. However, this system is prone to abuse and too expensive.
Thank you Slashdot for finally giving me the needed push to stop visiting here. When tripe like this is "reported" here as news I know I'm wasting my time. And there seems to be more and more of this.
Instead of complaining, take a second to read a wealth of comments that are extremely critic regarding the methodology and conclusions of this study.
I don't see Slashdot as a source of truth, I just regard it as a forum whose participants always come up with useful insights, even on the dumbest of the stories.
I read this news a couple of days back and I wanted to find more about the paper, so I typed 'smokers are dumber' on Google. The headlines of the articles appeared in the results given by Google. However, while the first three or four results correctly cited the paper with titles like 'Smokers dumber than non smokers' around the 6 or 7 result articles like 'Smoking makes you dumber' started to appear.
There is cryptography for that. Now, apart from the unfortunate and deprecated WEP protocol, there are some really secure alternatives out there, like WPA2. Certainly more secure than a leaky insulation. It would be like sending a secure mail over in a physical vault, rather than using PGP or GPG. Who would do that?
It might be better to keep the GPS on in situations of 'extreme' distress. Let's assume you are so sick you can't even talk. Then when you call 911 the phone might recognize you are not talking and synthetise a message saying for example 'The owner of this phone appears to be in extreme distress and at this moment the GPS says that he is at X address. Please send an ambulance at the address'.
You could apply the same concept to action movies too. Like Jack Bauer being trapped and unable to talk that calls CIA head quarters:)
Actually crypto systems are evaluated by a concept called indistinguishability. The key idea, is that an attacker cannot distinguish the output of a cipher algorithm from a uniform and random distribution.
For example if you use AES in CBC mode, there is no way of distinguishing its output in polynomial time from one truly random. It's specified in polynomial time because, for example AES in CBC will cycle after 2^128 blocks generated.
My guess is that there must be an implementation or a design error in TrueCrypt that should be fixable. Or maybe this company is full of BS..
Of course it depends on Microsoft's implementation of the whole thing. But if done correctly Windows XP will run in a nice environment that is protected by Windows 7. In fact, Windows 7 could act as an Hypervisor to secure XP.
A hypervisor is great when it comes to security, because from its vantage point it can control the guest OS (antivirus, firewall, etc.) without risking to be compromised itself.
Oh yeah, also your Electric Company should give you one, your phone company and Paypal should send you one and EBay, Amazon..
Wait a minute. This would be a mess of CDs and usb keys.
You know what, let's set up a single place accessible on line where all this certificates are stored.. Let's call it, Certification Authority:)
here is my idea about how to overcome the problem.
When your hard drive is encrypted, with True Crypt for example, this is immediately visible to any observer. So they can take your laptop away or ask you to give out the password.
Instead I would like to code a little utility, to pass the frontier:)
The main thing to notice is that encrypted data is, high entropy data with no meaning (if you don't know the algorythm and the key:).
So the idea would be to embed encrypted data in other formats that have high entropy as well, like compressed files or videos. If they try to open the video or the compressed file they will get meaningless and apparently corrupted data. So what? Haven't you ever had a corrupted video or compressed archive on your hard disk?
Obfuscate encrypted data as corrupted compressed data of some sort should fool them.
What do you think?
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! Echelon! Didn't you get the memo? The project was renamed about 8 years ago, now it's called Facebook.
A Slashdot-like service should be integrated in the patent review system. It appears to me that, every time there is a new software patent that makes it on Slashdot, in a matter of minutes somebody will find some relevant and non-trivial prior art. Just like the parent poster and others around did. I think that a patent should be pre-issued and be in an informal "challenge" phase. In this phase, the patent could be set up on a moderated website like Slashdot where people can point out the relevant prior art. If the patent remains unchallenged it can be granted, otherwise the patent office can take a couple more days to analyse the top "challengers".
I know that, theoretically, a system like this is already in place, since after the patent is granted it can be challenged in a court of law. However, this system is prone to abuse and too expensive.
I herd you like Sql, so we injected Sql in your Sql so you can have Sql while you code MySql
to ask people now and see what they think the Internet is.
That's exactly right!
Please read these two blog posts about the consequences of P=NP from an expert in the field:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/why-believe-that-pnp-is-impossible/
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/insider-baseball-and-pnp/
Thank you Slashdot for finally giving me the needed push to stop visiting here. When tripe like this is "reported" here as news I know I'm wasting my time. And there seems to be more and more of this.
Instead of complaining, take a second to read a wealth of comments that are extremely critic regarding the methodology and conclusions of this study.
I don't see Slashdot as a source of truth, I just regard it as a forum whose participants always come up with useful insights, even on the dumbest of the stories.
found this in two seconds
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+1630&aid=857
I read this news a couple of days back and I wanted to find more about the paper, so I typed 'smokers are dumber' on Google.
The headlines of the articles appeared in the results given by Google. However, while the first three or four results correctly cited the paper
with titles like 'Smokers dumber than non smokers' around the 6 or 7 result articles like 'Smoking makes you dumber' started to appear.
The real question is, why?
There is cryptography for that. Now, apart from the unfortunate and deprecated WEP protocol, there are some really secure alternatives out there, like WPA2.
Certainly more secure than a leaky insulation.
It would be like sending a secure mail over in a physical vault, rather than using PGP or GPG. Who would do that?
Is he in the air somewhere?
Well, I cannot say I didn't see that coming!
You are on Slashdot and you need explanation to see that implementing a Twitter client on a C64 is totally cool?
Sir, you are requested to leave this room please.
It might be better to keep the GPS on in situations of 'extreme' distress. Let's assume you are so sick you can't even talk. Then when you call 911 the phone might recognize you are not talking and synthetise a message saying for example 'The owner of this phone appears to be in extreme distress and at this moment the GPS says that he is at X address. Please send an ambulance at the address'.
You could apply the same concept to action movies too. Like Jack Bauer being trapped and unable to talk that calls CIA head quarters :)
After one year of use of this nice service, I feel forced to deactivate my account
Actually I've just read a report from Netcraft that shows that IPv4 is dying!
Actually crypto systems are evaluated by a concept called indistinguishability. The key idea, is that an attacker cannot distinguish the output of a cipher algorithm from a uniform and random distribution.
For example if you use AES in CBC mode, there is no way of distinguishing its output in polynomial time from one truly random. It's specified in polynomial time because, for example AES in CBC will cycle after 2^128 blocks generated.
My guess is that there must be an implementation or a design error in TrueCrypt that should be fixable.
Or maybe this company is full of BS..
Of course it depends on Microsoft's implementation of the whole thing. But if done correctly Windows XP will run in a nice environment that is protected by Windows 7.
In fact, Windows 7 could act as an Hypervisor to secure XP.
A hypervisor is great when it comes to security, because from its vantage point it can control the guest OS (antivirus, firewall, etc.) without risking to be compromised itself.
2009 is the year of the LINUX ray traced desktop!
Wasn't it true that you had to smash your hard drive in order to be secure?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/08/1328255
What about citing articles with references instead?
Oh yeah, also your Electric Company should give you one, your phone company and Paypal should send you one and EBay, Amazon.. Wait a minute. This would be a mess of CDs and usb keys. You know what, let's set up a single place accessible on line where all this certificates are stored.. Let's call it, Certification Authority :)
here is my idea about how to overcome the problem. When your hard drive is encrypted, with True Crypt for example, this is immediately visible to any observer. So they can take your laptop away or ask you to give out the password. Instead I would like to code a little utility, to pass the frontier :)
The main thing to notice is that encrypted data is, high entropy data with no meaning (if you don't know the algorythm and the key :).
So the idea would be to embed encrypted data in other formats that have high entropy as well, like compressed files or videos. If they try to open the video or the compressed file they will get meaningless and apparently corrupted data. So what? Haven't you ever had a corrupted video or compressed archive on your hard disk?
Obfuscate encrypted data as corrupted compressed data of some sort should fool them.
What do you think?