When you say that your project focuses on the effect of cryptography on society, is your project more "cryptography is used in banking and in cell phones and in..." or are you more into the "cryptography is one mechanism by which privacy can be protected in this age of immediate access to information"?
Though I personally believe that the second slant is more intellectually stimulating than the first, surely you could find a banker or some other official to tell and show you how cryptography is used in their line of work. Using diverse sources in this manner you could produce a project that would be informative if only a bit dry.
If I were you, I would instead take a look at the social concequences of a society whose citizens can keep whatever information they wish out of prying eyes, even the eyes of their own government. Is this a threat to the personal safety of the many or is it the ultimate expression of freedom? The good part about this slant on the issue is that events are happening soooo fast in this area that the most pertenent and exciting information can be easily found online. What could be much more exciting or pertenent than an analysis of how recent court findings and orders can effect or have effected the current state of cryptography today? (*cough MATTEL *cough*)
Oh, yea, one more thing: working css-auth.h and css-auth.c into your project is surely worth bonus points;).
I am a student at Vanderbilt university, and I am personally interested with the ethics and practicality of cloning and genetic engineering for commercial gain. However, I believe that this new cloning technique is far, far more valuable than just that.
One of the more interesting things about these pigs is that there are FIVE of them. With Dolly the sheep, the cloners had to try over and over as most of the cloned sheep embryos never made it to birth. The fact that they have five pigs that appear to be the same "age" tells me that either they burned a ludicrious amount of money to get five identical pigs at an efficiency rate comparable to Dolly's or that they developed a new technique that raises efficiency enough such that they only had to use several adult female pigs to give birth. Or even that they (gasp!) had them in the same litter; i.e. they were birthed by the same sow. If it IS a dramatic hike in efficiency, this advancement begins to dull some of the ethical argument of "an embryo is a person too" against human cloning and human cloning research.
Also, these pigs are the ultimate nature vs. nuture scientific tool. In the case of Dolly, they had one sheep that was genetically identical to another adult. In the case of these pigs, they have multiple pigs with exactly the same genetic makeup. A litter of pigs with the same genetic makeup could be bred and experimented with by the scientific community. As a previous poster has mentioned, this eliminates one of the variables -- if the natures of a set animals can be held constant, the nutures can be varied and studied. Before now this has not been possible. The importance of nature vs. nuture cannot be overemphasized, as it is a debate that has been raging ever since it was known that genes affect how the body grows and develops. Are we shaped more by our genetic makeup or by the way in which we are raised?
Here at Vanderbilt there is a discussion and debate this afternoon that asks the question "Are we playing God with our genes?", and I plan to bring these pigs into the discussion. This could be interesting;)
When you look back at history, and you look back at documents that are a "mere" thousand years old, the wealth of information in these documents makes you wonder what could be found if all the documents from that time had survived. Just because the format is digital, rather than analog or (eek!) paper, does not mean that this media is impervious to decay.
However, I think that decay is much, much more serious in digital media. The root of the problem is that if you are looking at physical document with water damage, even though the original "packets" of information (letters and words) are damaged, the human brain can sometimes extract meaning from smearing ink and crumbling paper. When an electron wanders on magnetic media or when a CD begins to decompose, that bit is lost forever. Digital media is much more sucepitble to lapsing into unintelligibility than physical media like paper.
Preservation in a media that will not become obselete is the key. As mundane as it may sound, plain ASCII text will probably never become obselete because there is no real reason to come up with a new standard. Some people may scream at me: "*ML! *ML!", but at the rate that these things will obescelece, plain text will still be around when XSGHTML has been long dead.
Just a thought. If you have something to add, feel free to respond.
This book was specifically mentioned not to be for newbies. When I go to the bookstore, there is an entire rack of java beginner's guides, and it makes my eyes cross. Is there any one book for java newbies that someone would care to recommend?
I would just like to reiterate that frequency is relatively unimportant compared to how fast this thing crunches numbers. Since no numbers to that effect were released, it can be assumed that this is just another bit of Intel PR posturing.
Also, it is not mentioned how much this thing was cooled to be able to hit 1500MHZ. I would lay money down that AMD's newest Athlon, when properly cooled, would be able to hit at least this number easily.
On a side note, this paragraph held interest for me:
"The second half will also see the introduction of Timna, a Celeron with an integrated graphics chip and memory controller. Although originally rumored to be compatible with next-generation Rambus memory, the chip will at first work with ordinary, less-expensive memory. The Rambus move will occur in 2001, said Pat Gelsinger, an Intel vice president."
RAMBUS tech, while viable and more than just a little cool, will be dead as a doornail without support from motherboard manufacturers, and it looks like that by postponing its official Intel adoption by several years will effectively kill it good. Of course, the Timna sounds like a dead end technology (who would want graphics that you have to replace the chip to upgrade?), so I don't think that that would be something I would waste expensive RAMBUS on anyway.
Methinks Intel needs to be beaten with a cluestick.
This could set a very, very dangerous precedent. If I understand correctly, the employee's hard drives are being copied and poured over on the suspicion that there could be some incriminating evidence there. This sounds to me to be like a search and seizure; however, there was no mention that the police seized the hard drives or that a warrant was acquired for the search. If the computers were company property, I could understand; however, since the computers are private property, should they be able to do this? I think not.
On a side note: let's say that incriminating email exists and that it was either a) wiped from the hard drive or b) it is in an encrypted portion of disk. Is it possible that these employees could be prosecuted for suspicion of eliminating "evidence" that may or may not have been there?
When I read this story, I knew I had heard about something like this before, and I eventually turned up the source: I was browsing a scholarly journal website collection and I saw a journal by the name of Network Security.
(side note: for those that are coming from.edu, your school probably has access to it online for free. Go to ScienceDirect, log in, browse the letter N in journals, and you should find it. The issue is Jan 1999)
In this issue, a gentleman by the name of Bill Hancock describes the vulnerabilities of network routers in his article "Attacking Network Routers" the vulnerabilities of these routers:
"To understand the problem, consider the fact that as far as most routers are concerned, a network router path, such as a leased line, technically never goes 'down'. Instead, when a line is determined to be 'dead', a router will shift the artifical cost of the line to a cost that is higher than the highest line....
"In a particularlly clever router attack, a packet [caused] havoc on a router for a specific protocol which caused the router to 'think' that it had lost multiple paths...."
(I take full responsibility for misspellings in above passage.)
The article goes on to say that the root of the problem is that there is no authentication on router-to-router updates, and if there is one sabotaged router it will quickly "infect" all the rest.
Further information about this attack and how to defend against it can be found in the above journal.
Slashdot Mirror
When you say that your project focuses on the effect of cryptography on society, is your project more "cryptography is used in banking and in cell phones and in..." or are you more into the "cryptography is one mechanism by which privacy can be protected in this age of immediate access to information"?
Though I personally believe that the second slant is more intellectually stimulating than the first, surely you could find a banker or some other official to tell and show you how cryptography is used in their line of work. Using diverse sources in this manner you could produce a project that would be informative if only a bit dry.
If I were you, I would instead take a look at the social concequences of a society whose citizens can keep whatever information they wish out of prying eyes, even the eyes of their own government. Is this a threat to the personal safety of the many or is it the ultimate expression of freedom? The good part about this slant on the issue is that events are happening soooo fast in this area that the most pertenent and exciting information can be easily found online. What could be much more exciting or pertenent than an analysis of how recent court findings and orders can effect or have effected the current state of cryptography today? (*cough MATTEL *cough*)
Oh, yea, one more thing: working css-auth.h and css-auth.c into your project is surely worth bonus points ;).
Brandon Nuttall
I am a student at Vanderbilt university, and I am personally interested with the ethics and practicality of cloning and genetic engineering for commercial gain. However, I believe that this new cloning technique is far, far more valuable than just that.
One of the more interesting things about these pigs is that there are FIVE of them. With Dolly the sheep, the cloners had to try over and over as most of the cloned sheep embryos never made it to birth. The fact that they have five pigs that appear to be the same "age" tells me that either they burned a ludicrious amount of money to get five identical pigs at an efficiency rate comparable to Dolly's or that they developed a new technique that raises efficiency enough such that they only had to use several adult female pigs to give birth. Or even that they (gasp!) had them in the same litter; i.e. they were birthed by the same sow. If it IS a dramatic hike in efficiency, this advancement begins to dull some of the ethical argument of "an embryo is a person too" against human cloning and human cloning research.
Also, these pigs are the ultimate nature vs. nuture scientific tool. In the case of Dolly, they had one sheep that was genetically identical to another adult. In the case of these pigs, they have multiple pigs with exactly the same genetic makeup. A litter of pigs with the same genetic makeup could be bred and experimented with by the scientific community. As a previous poster has mentioned, this eliminates one of the variables -- if the natures of a set animals can be held constant, the nutures can be varied and studied. Before now this has not been possible. The importance of nature vs. nuture cannot be overemphasized, as it is a debate that has been raging ever since it was known that genes affect how the body grows and develops. Are we shaped more by our genetic makeup or by the way in which we are raised?
Here at Vanderbilt there is a discussion and debate this afternoon that asks the question "Are we playing God with our genes?", and I plan to bring these pigs into the discussion. This could be interesting ;)
Brandon Nuttall
When you look back at history, and you look back at documents that are a "mere" thousand years old, the wealth of information in these documents makes you wonder what could be found if all the documents from that time had survived. Just because the format is digital, rather than analog or (eek!) paper, does not mean that this media is impervious to decay.
However, I think that decay is much, much more serious in digital media. The root of the problem is that if you are looking at physical document with water damage, even though the original "packets" of information (letters and words) are damaged, the human brain can sometimes extract meaning from smearing ink and crumbling paper. When an electron wanders on magnetic media or when a CD begins to decompose, that bit is lost forever. Digital media is much more sucepitble to lapsing into unintelligibility than physical media like paper.
Preservation in a media that will not become obselete is the key. As mundane as it may sound, plain ASCII text will probably never become obselete because there is no real reason to come up with a new standard. Some people may scream at me: "*ML! *ML!", but at the rate that these things will obescelece, plain text will still be around when XSGHTML has been long dead.
Just a thought. If you have something to add, feel free to respond.
Brandon Nuttall, the inquisitor of Reinke
This book was specifically mentioned not to be for newbies. When I go to the bookstore, there is an entire rack of java beginner's guides, and it makes my eyes cross. Is there any one book for java newbies that someone would care to recommend?
the inquisitor
I would just like to reiterate that frequency is relatively unimportant compared to how fast this thing crunches numbers. Since no numbers to that effect were released, it can be assumed that this is just another bit of Intel PR posturing.
Also, it is not mentioned how much this thing was cooled to be able to hit 1500MHZ. I would lay money down that AMD's newest Athlon, when properly cooled, would be able to hit at least this number easily.
On a side note, this paragraph held interest for me:
RAMBUS tech, while viable and more than just a little cool, will be dead as a doornail without support from motherboard manufacturers, and it looks like that by postponing its official Intel adoption by several years will effectively kill it good. Of course, the Timna sounds like a dead end technology (who would want graphics that you have to replace the chip to upgrade?), so I don't think that that would be something I would waste expensive RAMBUS on anyway.
Methinks Intel needs to be beaten with a cluestick.
the inquisitor
This could set a very, very dangerous precedent. If I understand correctly, the employee's hard drives are being copied and poured over on the suspicion that there could be some incriminating evidence there. This sounds to me to be like a search and seizure; however, there was no mention that the police seized the hard drives or that a warrant was acquired for the search. If the computers were company property, I could understand; however, since the computers are private property, should they be able to do this? I think not.
On a side note: let's say that incriminating email exists and that it was either a) wiped from the hard drive or b) it is in an encrypted portion of disk. Is it possible that these employees could be prosecuted for suspicion of eliminating "evidence" that may or may not have been there?
Just a thought. IANAL.
I had something to add about how this attack may have been done during the Yahoo! discussion, but it came too late to be read by many people.
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/02/08/1338245&cid=484
When I read this story, I knew I had heard about something like this before, and I eventually turned up the source: I was browsing a scholarly journal website collection and I saw a journal by the name of Network Security.
(side note: for those that are coming from .edu, your school probably has access to it online for free. Go to ScienceDirect, log in, browse the letter N in journals, and you should find it. The issue is Jan 1999)
In this issue, a gentleman by the name of Bill Hancock describes the vulnerabilities of network routers in his article "Attacking Network Routers" the vulnerabilities of these routers:
"To understand the problem, consider the fact that as far as most routers are concerned, a network router path, such as a leased line, technically never goes 'down'. Instead, when a line is determined to be 'dead', a router will shift the artifical cost of the line to a cost that is higher than the highest line....
"In a particularlly clever router attack, a packet [caused] havoc on a router for a specific protocol which caused the router to 'think' that it had lost multiple paths...."
(I take full responsibility for misspellings in above passage.)
The article goes on to say that the root of the problem is that there is no authentication on router-to-router updates, and if there is one sabotaged router it will quickly "infect" all the rest.
Further information about this attack and how to defend against it can be found in the above journal.
Hope this is interesting.
_____