One of the wonderful things about assymetric cryptography is that it removed the need for secure transmission of private keys, an expensive process that in many cases made cryptography the sole-preserve of governments and other powerful organisations.
Quantum computers could render assymetric crypto next-to-useless, and as-such may permenantly set electronic privacy back decades for all but the super-powerful.
Those that claim quantum cryptography will redress this problem don't understand that quantum crypto will likely be even more expensive than secure symmetric cryptography.
In essence, the advent of quantum computers may be the turning point, the point where advances in computer communication are no-longer tools of freedom, but become, once more, tools of the powerful.
They didn't say a million qubits, they said a million "quantum-dots", whatever they are (I guess they could be the same thing, but if they meant qubits, I am sure they would have said it).
They claim to be in favour of software choice, but what choice do you have when your government standardizes on closed software and protocols? The answer is none.
Ensuring that your government standardizes on open protocols, file formats, and software ensures that there will always be a choice, since anyone can produce competitive implementations of such software. The same is not true if your government requires that you use something like MS Word. Yes, you can argue that you could use something like AbiWord, but it really isn't a practical way to create or read MS Word documents.
The only way to ensure freedom of choice is to use open protocols and software.
If ever there was a reason to spam your friends...
on
Lessig @ OSCON
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· Score: 2
...this is it.
I just sent the following email to some friends of mine who work at Disney.
Dear friend,
I hate spam as much as the next guy, so you will understand that I wouldn't be sending this email if it wasn't important.
The following is a link to the audio and slides from a speech given by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of Law at Stanford University, on an issue that is very important to me - namely our freedom to create.
http://www.perl.org/tpc/2002/lessig/
I would urge you to listen to it, it is about 30 minutes long, so put on your headphones and pretend you are listening to music;-)
If, after listening to it, you agree with me that this is an important issue, then please do as I have done and encourage your friends to listen to it, and to pass it on to their friends.
All the best,
Ian.
This may look like a troll, but I assure you it isn't.
I never liked the name "Mozilla" for a web browser, it might appeal to geeks - who might be amused by the Godzilla reference, but I very much doubt that it appeals to the general public.
It may seem silly that something as trivial as a name can have such an impact, but just try telling a non-geek "Hey, check out mozilla dot org, it is a really great web browser", watch their reaction, and think about how likely they are to look at it based on its name.
I have never understood this obsession people have with NextStep (WindowMaker, GNUStep, Afterstep etc). Sure, it looked nice at the time - but it is time to MOVE ON people!
...won't change a thing once the politicians start messing around with what hardware we can and cannot use. There are more than enough clue-full software engineers to help these people box the rest of us (no matter how smart we are) into a world where creativity is assumed to be the sole preserve of Sony, Disney, Microsoft, and others like them.
Don't give up on politicians, some of them - perhaps even most of them are good well-intentioned people, their flaw is often little-more than ignorance, and you can change that, provided you are good at explaining geeky issues to non-geeks (and, despite the stereotype portrayed in this article, I think many geeks are) in a clear and non-patronising way.
Just encrypt the discovery with an algorithm that you estimate will take 5 years to brute-force (of course, this won't be exact, but you can base it on reasonable estimates about progress in processing power).
Oh, so the best way to help this guy is to compound his mistake by bringing forth a barrage of criticism from the public? That will simply confirm their worst fears about someone taking the organization's PR into their own hands, and will almost definitely worsten things for him.
No need to remove functionality, just deprecate
on
10 Reasons We Need Java 3
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· Score: 3, Insightful
In the article, I didn't see a convincing argument why any of these changes require that backwards compatability be broken, that is the whole point of deprecation.
If the price of not pissing off the current user-base is to support some deprecated functionality, then I really think that the good outweighs the lack of asthetic simplicity of not having deprecated methods.
I will be giving a talk on The Freenet Project at 5pm next Friday at DEFCON. If anyone would like a high-speed warts 'n all introduction to what's interesting about Freenet, past, present, and future, feel free to stop-by. </Shameless Self-promotion>
Don't you get it? Their job is to get bad PR
on
RIAA Smacked by DoS
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The RIAA doesn't care about public relations, their whole purpose is to take the heat and protect the brand names of the companies behind them such as Sony and EMI.
Arguing that bad PR will make the RIAA think twice about doing something is like arguing that a fish won't want to get wet.
When will we get a proper packaging system?
on
RPM Dependency Graph
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· Score: 2, Interesting
RPM is nice, because almost everyone uses it, and because it is based on Redhat, which - unlike Debian - devotes enough effort to the initial installation process that it comes close to being a viable Windows alternative.
I love debian - in theory - but in practice, it can be a bitch to get working. Even experienced Debian users who repeatedly try to persuade me to abandon RedHat are forced to admit that they never did get USB working, and after a while you realize that they are more in-love with the theory of debian than the reality.
So what are the problems with Linux?
Firstly, multiple incompatable packaging systems. There is no good reason why we need both debs and rpms other than petty politics.
Secondly, no elegant way to integrate software that hasn't committed to one of the packaging systems into an architecture. Both RedHat and Debian both work great when you stick to rpms and debs, but just try installing the latest version of a piece of software that doesn't have an rpm or deb yet, and you run into a world of pain.
It is time for a new approach, hopefully one that is backward compatable with previous packaging systems, but which provides a unified distribution mechanism for binaries, while allowing different distributions to do things in their own way.
You give a great explanation of why he is wrong, but I don't think that justifies a troll moderation. In fact, I really wish that Troll and Flamebait moderations were removed, since they are just begging people to moderate based on agreement/disagreement, rather than their actual intent.
Moderation privs should not be used to suppress opinions with which you disagree.
Europe doesn't maintain a large military because they don't need to, and if the US was smarter, they wouldn't need to waste their taxes on such things either. Hell, perhaps they might build a decent healthcare system instead. Which would you perfer?
My understanding is that part of the problem in the US is that the military is hogging much of the radio spectrum, much more-so than the military in other countries.
It's not bigotry, it's normal self interest. I desire to work in the nation of my citizenship. Is that so hard to understand?
It is easy to understand, but not so easy to justify. By that argument, it is ok to have employment bias against women, blacks, or gays - since that too would be in your self-interest (assuming you were male, white, and straight).
The point is that all people are created equal and should be treated as such. It is in the national interest that people be employed (or not) on the basis of their ability to do the job, irrespective of their national origin, race, sex, or sexual orientation.
If you set up a credible company, that company can then provide you with a H1B - however the INS looks very closely to make sure that the company is real, so you can't just set up a shell to get yourself a visa.
It's difficult to leave the company you are supposed to work for.
Not any more. IANAL, but I recently spoke to one about this very issue, and apparently the law was recently changed to allow a H1B to be transferred to another company, rather than requiring that the visa holder get a completely new visa for the new company (which can cost up to $10,000 depending on how you do it).
I came to the US, and founded a company which currently provides jobs for 10 Americans, I am also in the top tax bracket, and am thus helping to pay for the public services you all use every day.
My point is that it isn't as simple as saying "If we kick out all the foreigners we will all have jobs again". That is a racist attitude. I am fortunate to come from a country with a similar - if not better standard of living to the US, however those that are advocating "kicking out" H1B workers should remember that they were invited here, and in many cases they will be forced to return to countries with extremely poor standards of living.
I am really saddened by the response to this story here, I honestly thought that the geek community was above this kind of bigotry.
It is because the people that are interviewing you believe that the foreigners who get the job are so much better than you that they are worth the expense of hiring a H1B visa holder (it can be an expensive process).
American's need to remember that immigration is part of this country - in many ways - immigration is this country. The only people that suffer are those that can't compete - welcome to capitalism.
If the java community really cared, they'd be pressing sun to make java GPL, instead of whining about the evolution of Free Software... Now... THAT would rock...
It is unlikely Sun will GPL their JVM implementation, if only because they are probably using third-party code here and there that they have no right to release as Open Source.
A much better solution is to use and support Kaffe, a free GPL'd Java runtime environment which as of late has been under very active development.
I am a long-time Redhat user, and am curious as to what might persuade me to switch to one of the other RPM-based distributions such as Mandrake. Can anyone out there list the main differences?
Slashdot Mirror
Quantum computers could render assymetric crypto next-to-useless, and as-such may permenantly set electronic privacy back decades for all but the super-powerful.
Those that claim quantum cryptography will redress this problem don't understand that quantum crypto will likely be even more expensive than secure symmetric cryptography.
In essence, the advent of quantum computers may be the turning point, the point where advances in computer communication are no-longer tools of freedom, but become, once more, tools of the powerful.
They didn't say a million qubits, they said a million "quantum-dots", whatever they are (I guess they could be the same thing, but if they meant qubits, I am sure they would have said it).
Ensuring that your government standardizes on open protocols, file formats, and software ensures that there will always be a choice, since anyone can produce competitive implementations of such software. The same is not true if your government requires that you use something like MS Word. Yes, you can argue that you could use something like AbiWord, but it really isn't a practical way to create or read MS Word documents.
The only way to ensure freedom of choice is to use open protocols and software.
I just sent the following email to some friends of mine who work at Disney.
Dear friend, I hate spam as much as the next guy, so you will understand that I wouldn't be sending this email if it wasn't important. The following is a link to the audio and slides from a speech given by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of Law at Stanford University, on an issue that is very important to me - namely our freedom to create. http://www.perl.org/tpc/2002/lessig/ I would urge you to listen to it, it is about 30 minutes long, so put on your headphones and pretend you are listening to music ;-)
If, after listening to it, you agree with me that this is an important issue, then please do as I have done and encourage your friends to listen to it, and to pass it on to their friends.
All the best,
Ian.
I never liked the name "Mozilla" for a web browser, it might appeal to geeks - who might be amused by the Godzilla reference, but I very much doubt that it appeals to the general public.
It may seem silly that something as trivial as a name can have such an impact, but just try telling a non-geek "Hey, check out mozilla dot org, it is a really great web browser", watch their reaction, and think about how likely they are to look at it based on its name.
I have never understood this obsession people have with NextStep (WindowMaker, GNUStep, Afterstep etc). Sure, it looked nice at the time - but it is time to MOVE ON people!
Don't give up on politicians, some of them - perhaps even most of them are good well-intentioned people, their flaw is often little-more than ignorance, and you can change that, provided you are good at explaining geeky issues to non-geeks (and, despite the stereotype portrayed in this article, I think many geeks are) in a clear and non-patronising way.
Just encrypt the discovery with an algorithm that you estimate will take 5 years to brute-force (of course, this won't be exact, but you can base it on reasonable estimates about progress in processing power).
Oh, so the best way to help this guy is to compound his mistake by bringing forth a barrage of criticism from the public? That will simply confirm their worst fears about someone taking the organization's PR into their own hands, and will almost definitely worsten things for him.
If the price of not pissing off the current user-base is to support some deprecated functionality, then I really think that the good outweighs the lack of asthetic simplicity of not having deprecated methods.
Wow - finally, a post actually worthy of a "Troll" moderation.
I will be giving a talk on The Freenet Project at 5pm next Friday at DEFCON. If anyone would like a high-speed warts 'n all introduction to what's interesting about Freenet, past, present, and future, feel free to stop-by.
</Shameless Self-promotion>
Arguing that bad PR will make the RIAA think twice about doing something is like arguing that a fish won't want to get wet.
I love debian - in theory - but in practice, it can be a bitch to get working. Even experienced Debian users who repeatedly try to persuade me to abandon RedHat are forced to admit that they never did get USB working, and after a while you realize that they are more in-love with the theory of debian than the reality.
So what are the problems with Linux?
Firstly, multiple incompatable packaging systems. There is no good reason why we need both debs and rpms other than petty politics.
Secondly, no elegant way to integrate software that hasn't committed to one of the packaging systems into an architecture. Both RedHat and Debian both work great when you stick to rpms and debs, but just try installing the latest version of a piece of software that doesn't have an rpm or deb yet, and you run into a world of pain.
It is time for a new approach, hopefully one that is backward compatable with previous packaging systems, but which provides a unified distribution mechanism for binaries, while allowing different distributions to do things in their own way.
None of this is brain-surgery people!
Moderation privs should not be used to suppress opinions with which you disagree.
Europe doesn't maintain a large military because they don't need to, and if the US was smarter, they wouldn't need to waste their taxes on such things either. Hell, perhaps they might build a decent healthcare system instead. Which would you perfer?
My understanding is that part of the problem in the US is that the military is hogging much of the radio spectrum, much more-so than the military in other countries.
The point is that all people are created equal and should be treated as such. It is in the national interest that people be employed (or not) on the basis of their ability to do the job, irrespective of their national origin, race, sex, or sexual orientation.
If you set up a credible company, that company can then provide you with a H1B - however the INS looks very closely to make sure that the company is real, so you can't just set up a shell to get yourself a visa.
...but I will take whatever I can get ;-)
My point is that it isn't as simple as saying "If we kick out all the foreigners we will all have jobs again". That is a racist attitude. I am fortunate to come from a country with a similar - if not better standard of living to the US, however those that are advocating "kicking out" H1B workers should remember that they were invited here, and in many cases they will be forced to return to countries with extremely poor standards of living.
I am really saddened by the response to this story here, I honestly thought that the geek community was above this kind of bigotry.
American's need to remember that immigration is part of this country - in many ways - immigration is this country. The only people that suffer are those that can't compete - welcome to capitalism.
A much better solution is to use and support Kaffe, a free GPL'd Java runtime environment which as of late has been under very active development.
I am a long-time Redhat user, and am curious as to what might persuade me to switch to one of the other RPM-based distributions such as Mandrake. Can anyone out there list the main differences?