...by not reading the damned article at all. There are enough freely browsable sources of information that I do not need the online New York Times. Once in a while I send the NYT an email telling them so.
Hmm...I wonder should I have an ethical dilemma reading commentary of people who have read the article in violation of copyright? I think not, since I have entered into no agreement with the NYT.
Running a service with no authentication on a random port isn't great security, but in principle, it's the same kind of security as running on a well known port and requiring a unique access identifier and passcode. It's just harder to guess, but still fundamentally the same.
It is not fundamentally the same, because in the second case, guessing is intractable.
Let's assume for the moment in your above example that the only way into the system is through the front door of the one server in question. Then in the first example, an attacker just needs to scan a few thousand ports at most, a pretty quick matter. In the second case, if the username/passcode is chosen well (randomly), and hitting the server is the only way an attacker can check the validity of the username/password, then he must make (2^^N)/2 tries on average, where N is the number of bits in the username/passcode. Make N even a little bit big, and throttle how fast attempts can be made, and you can make the expected time to break in come sometime after our sun goes red giant. That is fundamentally different.
The machine does not need infinite storage space, only polynomial space relative to the size of the problem. Only that much space can be read/written in the polynomial time allowed the machine to solve the problem.
NP-Complete means that the problem can be mapped onto other equivalent NP-Complete problems.
Yes, but that doesn't get us the first NP-Complete problem. An NP-Complete problem is both in NP, and NP-Hard. If a problem X is NP-Hard, then given a machine that will solve X, one can construct a machine that will solve any other particular problem in NP in only polynomially greater time.
First of all, I was not in my reply trying to argue for or against a young person determining his own timetable for sexual development. Rather I was saying that claiming that view is right or wrong is a moral judgment. The original poster claimed to want to banish morals from politics and law. That is not possible or desirable.
We need to study the effects on their children before we can claim to have the superior law.
Of course we need to study and reason about the circumstances to make good law. But the very proposition that some effects on children are to be preferred to others is again a moral position. Reason and morality are not contradictory. We can reason about morals all we want, but reason requires a foundation of assumptions.
Morals should never enter into a legal nor political argument
It is true to say that we should reason about our laws, but what you say is a version of the popular catchphrase "You can't legislate morality." Of course we can and do legislate morality...most if not all of our laws encode moral judgments. Applying the law is not necessarily a moral exercise, but making law certainly involves reasoning about morality.
Murder is outlawed because our moral judgment is that killing an innocent victim wrongs him.
Theft is outlawed because our moral judgment is that people may own property, and that it wrongs them to take it.
I think what most people really mean when they say "You can't legislate morality" is that you shouldn't legislate those things on which we don't have a moral consensus. This applies to such current topics as gambling, prostitution, and drug use.
But a better argument is not against "legislating morality" but rather for a framework for what we ought to legislate. IMNSHO, the libertarians have a pretty good handle on this one. My paraphrase of it is that to call something a crime, you need to be able to point to a victim.
Moreover, there are always better arguments than those based on morality. Let's take a few examples:
Child pornography. Moral argument goes something like 'it's moraly wrong, therefore should be (and rightfully is) illegal'. A more valid point of reasoning asserts that a minor child has every right to develop normal sexual relationships on their own timescale and deserves to be protected from physical harm and exploitation.
First of all, you creep me out a bit here. But anyway, your very arguments are about morality! It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to decide his own timetable for sexual development. It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to be protected. It almost seems like you want to label your opponents moral arguments a "moral" and your own as "rational" merely as a debating tactic.
I am familiar with that passage, and as a Christian have pondered what it should mean in terms of my behavior. I have not worked this out fully for myself.
Paul wrote this during the time of the Roman Empire which had not so long before crucified his Savior, and which persecuted early Christians. So clearly he knew that governments could do harm to people who had not done evil. Obviously we should respect law when it is in accordance with "higher authority." But what should the Christian do when government itself is evil?
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Godwin, would it have been "unChristian" to hide Jews from the German government in WWII Europe? I think not. Would it have been "unChristian" to assassinate Hitler, given the chance? That one is a bit dicier, but in hindsight I would have pulled the trigger.
So, in essence, you claim that you have the right to ignore any and all democratically passed laws that you find difficult to live by?
Not exactly. How difficult I find it to live by is irrelevant. But I do have the moral right to disobey a law that is unjust. Note that I would understand I was risking punishment, as does anyone who resists tyranny.
I used to think like that too, but then I realised that most people simply cannot be trusted to act that way. Face it. The majority of the public is either too stupid, lazy or immoral to be allowed to make their own moral judgements.
With freedom comes responsibility. Individual human beings have an innate right to determine their own destiny. If they act wrongly through stupidity, laziness, or immorality, then let them face the consequences. Until then, it is wrong to infringe on their dignity and freedom.
Hence, the least common denominator policy must be followed in this case as well and laws should be respected as long as they are democratically passed.
Democracy, especially pure democracy, is overrated. What if 51% of the people vote that eating ice cream should be a crime, punishable by death?
Thankfully, the US is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy. We have placed limits on what a majority may do. (We have sometimes ignored these limits, to our own harm.)
With all due respect, I suggest you sign up for remedial civics, just like the first poster. Your desire for government as "mommy and daddy" is shortsighted, and could lead to some very bad things down the road.
But when it comes to distribution and concurrency Java seems so complex with its synchronization and shared data between threads.
If you want to make a scalable program that distributes almost transparently, try Erlang instead. Erlang's message passing rules!
Too bad that Ericsson did not release Erlang as Open Source earlier...
Sounds neat...I'm gonna go take a quick look this morning.
But I disagree that Java doesn't handle threading well, compared to C++.
I may be off base, because I have not done a lot of multithreaded development in C++. I used to develop ActiveX controls, which followed "apartment model" threading. This meant that Windows guaranteed instances would only be accessed by one thread at a time. Only data static to the class needed synchronization. I only used "critical section" code a few times, but I thought I remembered it being part of the Windows API, rather than C++ itself. Some guru will correct me if I am wrong.
It is true in Java that you must think about synchronization, if your object will be accessed by more than one thread. But the language provides for synchronized methods, and more generally for synchronizing on any desired object.
Not transparent, but pretty convenient and flexible. If you design your interfaces well, you can make your system thread-safe object by object.
"But most "enterprise" applications are not CPU bound, anyway."
Another poster already addressed the cost of (expensive) people vs. (cheap) hardware.
But I'd point out that in an enterprise situation, one trip to the database can easily use up more time that is spent doing raw calculation to service a typical request. It is much better optimize database design and queries, and to optimize the system to do fewer queries, than to squeeze out a few CPU cycles. When optimizing a system, go for the big lumps first.
Let me make it clear that I was praising only the rule allowing citizens to get access to video of themselves. My preference would be to not have the video at all.
And don't even get me started on firearms restrictions in the UK. Sheesh.
If you're not spending money on anything you're ashamed about (or anything illegal), then the benefits outweigh the paranoia.
How many times in the last few days has someone said some version of "You only have to worry about the government if you are doing something wrong." Are you all a bunch of sheep?
Assuming you are from the US, have you read your Constitution, or even the Bill of Rights? Have you read any of the history and principles behind it?
I am proud of the US, and proud of our government. Even including the things the government does that trouble me, I will stack our freedom up issue by issue with any other country. But that doesn't mean I trust the government with one iota of power more than it is constitutionally entitled. That attitude of healthy distrust of government is one of the greatest gifts given to us by our Founders.
I am not currently doing anything illegal, but I may do so, if our government passes laws that I cannot morally follow. I mentioned being a Christian in China in a recent post. That is a very iffy business. If I were there, I would not want the government to be able to track my giving to the local church.
You mention being worried if I am ashamed of what I spend, even if it is not illegal. Suppose I do spend money on something that is embarrassing but not illegal. Should I have to risk it being disclosed to my neighbors by the government? Maybe I don't want everyone to know whenever I buy Preparation H or an Air Supply album.
Come on people, especially you in the US. The freedoms we enjoy were bought with a price, and can be lost if we do not work to preserve them. Learn some history, and stand up for freedom, if you think it is worth it.
Sorry to disappoint you, but over here you can request from the owner of a camera that has filmed you, and they are legally required to hand you copies of the footage (for a small admin fee, approx. $30-$50).
Ok...gonna lose a couple of karma points again, but...
Does this go to reinforce my position that in this day and age Java is a logical choice for pretty well everything bespoke and not performance critical?
I have been living in the Java/EJB enterprise application world for a couple of years now. Purely from a development point of view, Java has some very nice features.
The combination of jar-file packaging, pure interfaces, and dynamic class-loading by name make it easy to use a "pluggable component" approach. In my opinion, this goes beyong traditional OO development in making large-scale development manageable.
Automatic memory management and no pointers, love it or hate it, saves boatloads of time in chasing down those old runaway pointer bugs. Of course, you can still leak memory, but you have to work a little harder to do it.
The built-in Java libraries are as good as or better than the C runtime, if you ask me.
It looks damned nice on the resume these days.
Of course, if you need to write anything that is CPU-bound and has to be balls-to-the-wall fast, you are still better off using C++, or probably C or assembler. But most "enterprise" applications are not CPU bound, anyway.
A colleague of mine used to have a shorthand saying for that feeling of frustration you get when you have to kludge something in a software project, just because the "state of the art" wouldn't support doing it in a sensible way. He'd say "Computer, where is Captain Picard?"
The computers in Star Trek could be programmed simply by telling them what you wanted. They always seemed to do the right thing instantly, except of course when the plot called for a two-hour delay or for some malfunction.;-)
Anyway, I say we software developers should always keep the "Where is Captain Picard?" test in the backs of our minds, and try to make our software make sense.
They produce good software right up to the point where they can force competitors out. Remember, the first edition of Gate's book barely mentioned the Internet. Then they saw how the WWW could be used as a platform to deliver applications. All of a sudden, they become the 'Internet Company', and then steal someone else's browser until they can throw enough monopoly-generated money at developers to create their own.
I was developing OLE (and earlier VBXs) when the internet hit Microsoft totally flatfooted. But, in my opinion, through the sheer force of will of Bill Gates, the Microsoft behemoth turned like a dainty ballerina, and suddenly was all over the internet. I was suddenly developing ActiveXs, and making sure they behaved properly in IE.
So what happens when Bill Gates dies or retires? Will Microsoft continue as the evil empire, or will they fade to become just another big tech company? It happened to IBM in the "last generation." (Of course, if Bill Gates has a grievious head injury and miraculously recovers, then we are all screwed.;-)
I am constantly amazed at the folks who show no understanding of human nature or of history. If you were from the USA, I would advise you to take a civics class and go read some early American history.
I hereby give up my right to privacy. I don't want to be a 'private' citizen anymore. I want the police to follow my face about the town. I want cameras on every corner, and clipper chips in everything.
A little harsh, perhaps. Extreme? Certainly. Safer to go out on to the streets and have fun with my friends in a stressfree and easy atompshere without having to worry about being mugged/murdered/beaten up/terrorised? Definately.
Wow...how many ways is this wrong and misguided?
Perhaps your police are all honest and pure of motive. (Most of ours in the US are pretty good, but we definitely have a few bad apples.) Will they always be?
Will this surveillance make you safer anyway? Show me the proof. At first glance, I would bet that spending resources looking at everyone, instead of following up legitimate leads on crimes, might actually divert police resources from where they will have benefit.
Yes, you have a right to be a private person. yes, you have a right to do what you want. But as soon as you decide to live in a society that needs these sorts of measures in order to keep track of the criminals you should realise that this is not a bad thing.
The idea that living in society requires one to reveal all information about oneself is a new one. Please show me why this is not a bad thing. In the US, our Constitution explicitly limits the information one must reveal to the authorities.
If you have nothing to hide then hide nothing.
Listen to yourself! How many times has someone said something like "If you have nothing to hide, you won't object to this search. Now, just bend over please."
Perhaps you live in a country where every law is just. But will that always be the case? Ask Christians in China whether secrecy is useful.
Perhaps you live in a country where information gathered by authorities about your legal, but embarrassing activities will be kept safe from disclosure to your neighbors. But I doubt it.
The point is, any government is potentially much more dangerous that the most fiendish criminal. Wisdom insists that we limit the actions of government while we can, before it becomes tyrannical.
When did "ACLU" become a dirty word? How did defending the bill of rights come to be out of fashion? Did I miss the spaceship that took all the rational people away?
I for one applaud the ACLU for their defense of the Bill of Rights. If they defended all ten amendments of that Bill of Rights, I might even send them some money.
I know I am putting my head up for the turkey shoot here...but I have really become a Java fan in the last three years for general applications, and especially enterprise software.
Of course, if you are writing a device driver or something that has to milk every last cycle and use memory like it is gold, then use C, or even assembler.
If you just need to prototype some forms in a few minutes (dare I say it?) break out icky old VB.
Anyway, as a C developer for most of a decade, and then a C++ developer for a half-decade more, I have been totally spoiled by Java. Let me count the ways...
I haven't had to chase a runaway pointer for years.
Pure interfaces and runtime class loading make it easy to move beyond traditional object-oriented development to "component-based" development with pluggable component implementations.
Exception-handling works. (I know, that is an implementation issue, not a gripe against C++ itself. But using MSVC on Windows 5 years ago, we didn't dare try and catch.)
It is much easier to make puns with "Java" than with "C" or "C++."
Still, though... they are going to reap a lot of recognition out of this. Too bad they're doing it at the expense of our already-overburdened court system.
Sounds like an instance when "loser pays" would be mighty nice.
Watching everyone all of the time takes a lot of resources. The former East German government tried it back in the days of the Cold War. Eventually, it toppled under the strain that such a machine placed upon itself and, in turn, so did the Berlin Wall.
Paranoia is a healthy thing. In small doses.
Of course, if we allow it, Moore's law might let a future attempt be more successful than East Germany's.
Just because I am paranoid doesnt mean everyone is not out to get me! Er, I mean watch me walk around the mall, or, hmm what do I mean...
It isnt as easy as you say. Imagine a kid playing that game. It wont know all the historical background that well, and if it sees then these banners in real life, it wont just think them bad, but be strongly reminded in the game. In that way their resistance to Nazi Propaganda may grow somewhat less.
My kids will know the basic historical background of WWII by the time they are playing FPS games. How pathetic is it that someone can grow up and not know at least the general outlines of one of the most important periods in the last century?!
My kids have grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles who can talk to them first-hand about WWII. I make sure they get a chance to spend time with those relatives. I also talk to my kids about things like this when they come up. And they do come up often enough to provide ample opportunity for education.
Come on folks. Teach your kids about the world, so that they can handle its challenges and face its dangers. Don't just try to shield them from the icky parts...that is a losing battle.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm...I wonder should I have an ethical dilemma reading commentary of people who have read the article in violation of copyright? I think not, since I have entered into no agreement with the NYT.
Let's assume for the moment in your above example that the only way into the system is through the front door of the one server in question. Then in the first example, an attacker just needs to scan a few thousand ports at most, a pretty quick matter. In the second case, if the username/passcode is chosen well (randomly), and hitting the server is the only way an attacker can check the validity of the username/password, then he must make (2^^N)/2 tries on average, where N is the number of bits in the username/passcode. Make N even a little bit big, and throttle how fast attempts can be made, and you can make the expected time to break in come sometime after our sun goes red giant. That is fundamentally different.
Murder is outlawed because our moral judgment is that killing an innocent victim wrongs him.
Theft is outlawed because our moral judgment is that people may own property, and that it wrongs them to take it.
I think what most people really mean when they say "You can't legislate morality" is that you shouldn't legislate those things on which we don't have a moral consensus. This applies to such current topics as gambling, prostitution, and drug use.
But a better argument is not against "legislating morality" but rather for a framework for what we ought to legislate. IMNSHO, the libertarians have a pretty good handle on this one. My paraphrase of it is that to call something a crime, you need to be able to point to a victim.
First of all, you creep me out a bit here. But anyway, your very arguments are about morality! It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to decide his own timetable for sexual development. It is your moral judgment that a child has a right to be protected. It almost seems like you want to label your opponents moral arguments a "moral" and your own as "rational" merely as a debating tactic.Paul wrote this during the time of the Roman Empire which had not so long before crucified his Savior, and which persecuted early Christians. So clearly he knew that governments could do harm to people who had not done evil. Obviously we should respect law when it is in accordance with "higher authority." But what should the Christian do when government itself is evil?
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Godwin, would it have been "unChristian" to hide Jews from the German government in WWII Europe? I think not. Would it have been "unChristian" to assassinate Hitler, given the chance? That one is a bit dicier, but in hindsight I would have pulled the trigger.
With all due respect, I suggest you sign up for remedial civics, just like the first poster. Your desire for government as "mommy and daddy" is shortsighted, and could lead to some very bad things down the road.
But I disagree that Java doesn't handle threading well, compared to C++.
I may be off base, because I have not done a lot of multithreaded development in C++. I used to develop ActiveX controls, which followed "apartment model" threading. This meant that Windows guaranteed instances would only be accessed by one thread at a time. Only data static to the class needed synchronization. I only used "critical section" code a few times, but I thought I remembered it being part of the Windows API, rather than C++ itself. Some guru will correct me if I am wrong.
It is true in Java that you must think about synchronization, if your object will be accessed by more than one thread. But the language provides for synchronized methods, and more generally for synchronizing on any desired object.
Not transparent, but pretty convenient and flexible. If you design your interfaces well, you can make your system thread-safe object by object.
But I'd point out that in an enterprise situation, one trip to the database can easily use up more time that is spent doing raw calculation to service a typical request. It is much better optimize database design and queries, and to optimize the system to do fewer queries, than to squeeze out a few CPU cycles. When optimizing a system, go for the big lumps first.
And don't even get me started on firearms restrictions in the UK. Sheesh.
I am proud of the US, and proud of our government. Even including the things the government does that trouble me, I will stack our freedom up issue by issue with any other country. But that doesn't mean I trust the government with one iota of power more than it is constitutionally entitled. That attitude of healthy distrust of government is one of the greatest gifts given to us by our Founders.
I am not currently doing anything illegal, but I may do so, if our government passes laws that I cannot morally follow. I mentioned being a Christian in China in a recent post. That is a very iffy business. If I were there, I would not want the government to be able to track my giving to the local church.
You mention being worried if I am ashamed of what I spend, even if it is not illegal. Suppose I do spend money on something that is embarrassing but not illegal. Should I have to risk it being disclosed to my neighbors by the government? Maybe I don't want everyone to know whenever I buy Preparation H or an Air Supply album.
Come on people, especially you in the US. The freedoms we enjoy were bought with a price, and can be lost if we do not work to preserve them. Learn some history, and stand up for freedom, if you think it is worth it.
Have a big party of say 100 of your best freedom-loving friends. Bring cash, and everyone trade with everyone else over a beer.
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The combination of jar-file packaging, pure interfaces, and dynamic class-loading by name make it easy to use a "pluggable component" approach. In my opinion, this goes beyong traditional OO development in making large-scale development manageable.
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Automatic memory management and no pointers, love it or hate it, saves boatloads of time in chasing down those old runaway pointer bugs. Of course, you can still leak memory, but you have to work a little harder to do it.
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The built-in Java libraries are as good as or better than the C runtime, if you ask me.
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It looks damned nice on the resume these days.
Of course, if you need to write anything that is CPU-bound and has to be balls-to-the-wall fast, you are still better off using C++, or probably C or assembler. But most "enterprise" applications are not CPU bound, anyway....it sounds like the PL/I of the new millenium! (smirk)
The computers in Star Trek could be programmed simply by telling them what you wanted. They always seemed to do the right thing instantly, except of course when the plot called for a two-hour delay or for some malfunction. ;-)
Anyway, I say we software developers should always keep the "Where is Captain Picard?" test in the backs of our minds, and try to make our software make sense.
So what happens when Bill Gates dies or retires? Will Microsoft continue as the evil empire, or will they fade to become just another big tech company? It happened to IBM in the "last generation." (Of course, if Bill Gates has a grievious head injury and miraculously recovers, then we are all screwed. ;-)
Perhaps your police are all honest and pure of motive. (Most of ours in the US are pretty good, but we definitely have a few bad apples.) Will they always be?
Will this surveillance make you safer anyway? Show me the proof. At first glance, I would bet that spending resources looking at everyone, instead of following up legitimate leads on crimes, might actually divert police resources from where they will have benefit.
The idea that living in society requires one to reveal all information about oneself is a new one. Please show me why this is not a bad thing. In the US, our Constitution explicitly limits the information one must reveal to the authorities. Listen to yourself! How many times has someone said something like "If you have nothing to hide, you won't object to this search. Now, just bend over please."Perhaps you live in a country where every law is just. But will that always be the case? Ask Christians in China whether secrecy is useful.
Perhaps you live in a country where information gathered by authorities about your legal, but embarrassing activities will be kept safe from disclosure to your neighbors. But I doubt it.
The point is, any government is potentially much more dangerous that the most fiendish criminal. Wisdom insists that we limit the actions of government while we can, before it becomes tyrannical.
Just because I am paranoid doesnt mean everyone is not out to get me! Er, I mean watch me walk around the mall, or, hmm what do I mean...
If you don't believe me, just look around at how many people sitting in cars at stop lights pick their noses. Sheesh...half of them eat it too. *grin*
My kids have grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles who can talk to them first-hand about WWII. I make sure they get a chance to spend time with those relatives. I also talk to my kids about things like this when they come up. And they do come up often enough to provide ample opportunity for education.
Come on folks. Teach your kids about the world, so that they can handle its challenges and face its dangers. Don't just try to shield them from the icky parts...that is a losing battle.