A golden book of chemistry. A pack of three moleskin notebooks for their notes, and to top it off, privacy if they want it. Or get involved in their lives. Make it fun. Bond.
I'm pretty sure all the real fun in chemistry sets comes from breaking bonds, not making them.
I've got two thoughts on the subject. Mainly that this is probably going to end up being a very bad move on the part of Novell. It's hard to say exactly how it will play out but companies foolish enough to partner with Microsoft often times end up getting double crossed. And we know that Microsoft has it out for Linux, as it's pretty much the only thing slowing their growth in the server market. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind Microsoft is going into this deal with malice aforethought a evil in their hearts. Novell is going to get it in the back, mark my words.
Second, as far as the fear that Microsoft is going to start a patent war with Linux, I have three words for you: Eye. Bee. Em. Novell is small enough, and has made enough mis-steps in the past, I can imagine them letting Microsoft screw them over. I don't think Big Blue is going to let it happen though. SCOvIBM has shown that they are willing to go the distance to keep Linux in the clear, and they have more software patents than anybody I believe.
An interpreter script is a text file that traditionally begins with the #! characters followed by a path to the interpreter. Files not containing the #! line are treated as shell scripts--not by the kernel, but by the execvP stub in the C library. If the stub gets an ENOEXEC error from the kernel when such a file's execution is attempted, it reattempts execution by using "/bin/sh" as the first argument to execve() and the file as the next argument.
I think Linux does the same thing, although I haven't checked. Somehow, this just feels wrong to me. If it's not a valid binary, and doesn't start with #!, why not just fail? Why keep trying?/bin/sh is pretty forgiving. I'm pretty sure if you told it to execute a saved email or HTML file it would happily try every line in the file looking for valid commands. It's not hard to imagine this feature being one link in the chain which enables some exploit. After all, it's relatively easily to get shell commands into a users mailbox or web cache files. Making it possible for the system to natively execute a mailbox or HTML file just seems dangerous. Maybe that's just me.
For all the love that the US government and big corporations seem to have for 'free trade' and 'globalization', they don't seem interested in open borders. I wonder why not? It's OK for corporations to ship jobs around the world to wherever labor conditions are the most favorable to them. But if workers try to migrate to where the hiring conditions are better, they are demonized as 'illegals'. It's OK for corporations to buy supplies from any country, getting the best deal in the process. But if consumers try to buy products from other parts of the world, that's a no-no (witness Lik-Sang). True globalization demands open borders. Fire the border guards. Tear down the fences.
Some will reply and tell me this is crazy. How it can never work. That somehow we just have to have walls. Why? And if walls are so good and necessary, would you support building them between the States? Why not?
Everybody has a bad batch. Its easier to blame it on something menacing like "counterfeit hardware", I would simply say "bad batch", however cisco has a reputation to uphold, horror of horrors if their tackle is broken.
No, once we had the real ones we could compare them and they were clearly a completely different design. The PCB traces were different. The packaging was different. Cisco puts S/N's on each and every SFP GBIC. The fakes had numerous duplicate S/N's in the batch. The real ones had QC markings on them. The fakes didn't. It was pretty clear that they hadn't been made by the same people.
I've gotten bad hardware from Cisco, and they come clean about it. I've even had batches of bad hardware. They don't like to make a lot of noise about it when it's their own screw-ups, but they have plenty of recalls and field notices. And most importantly, they don't pretend it's counterfeit.
Do I start to believe that everything fails because its counterfeit?
I am considerably more cautious about what and where I buy electronics, at least if it's for a task where reliability counts for anything. And once you start looking for it, you realize that this crap is pretty common. Whether it's impossibly cheap GBIC's on ebay or 'two for $10 Oakly sunglasses' from a stand by the side of the road, counterfeit goods are very real whether you believe it or not.
Is it not more likely that this is just another symptom of too much, too quickly and they should just improve their quality control and testing regimes?
Sure, the cards might have been resold, but they are branded cisco items bearing the entire cisco interface and functionality - somehow I doubt outright fake chipsets and devices like this can be produced by anyone other than cisco themselves.
I've been the unlucky recipient of counterfeit Cisco hardware, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that it does exist. In my case, it was a big batch of SFP GBICs which are supposed to be build to a standard specification so it's a bit easier than linecards. But in talking to our Cisco reps during the process, it was pretty clear that they are seeing more complicated devices showing up as counterfeits as well. It's a real problem, both for Cisco and for their customers because the fake stuff, at least in our case, is total crap compared to the real thing. We bought something like 150 of them, and had maybe 10% just plain DOA, so it was pretty obvious something was wrong. But if the reseller had been smart and only sold them two or three at a time it wouldn't be anywhere near as obvious.
Which isn't to say I have total sympathy for Cisco. After all, they've outsourced both the manufacturing and the selling to third parties. Cisco, by their own choice, doesn't actually own or operate their "channel". They just manage it. When you put voluntarily let all the knowledge needed to make, box, ship and sell "your" equipment leave your company, what exactly did you think was going to happen?
It gushes. The author is in love with his demo PS3. You get the impression that he wants to marry it. There's a small bit towards the end where he says that, unlike everything else, the controller didn't quite live up to his wildest fantasies.
Well, he likens loading a disc into the slot-loading drive to getting head from a hooker. And the touch-sensitive power and eject button are magical as well. But I don't recall him saying anything positive about it's ability to, you know, play games. Sure, it seems to satisfy his techno-fetish, but is it actually any fun?
I don't know if Sony just didn't let the reviewers say anything interesting, or if the optical drive and on off buttons are really some of the more exciting aspects of the unit. I mean really, does any body really give a crap is a console is tray loading or slot loading? Both styles of optical drive have been around for what, 10 years? And a touch sensitive eject button? Who cares?
What about the games? Is the thing any fun to play? I guess they were only allowed to play one game and didn't bother saying anything about it since they have another article in the works. Add in some random comments about the firmware being incomplete and some negative comments about the controller and that's the whole article. I can't say the overall article was negative, but since the features they seemed most excited about are incidental to the actual gameplay I don't think you could call it positive.
Now contrast this with the Wii review:
It's every independent journalist's nightmare to sound like a hype generating machine; the very sight of hype sends us screaming for the hills. However, just sometimes there is hype well deserved. This is one such time. This controller, my friends, is to gaming what remote controllers were to TV sets. You have to play with this thing, and we're convinced you're going to love it. Really.
The article is about the same length, but is focused almost 100% on an issue that is actually relevant to gameplay. And comes up with very positive comments about it. I think the Wii is really going to be the console to beat this generation.
surely "Star Trek" is an example of the popular conception of teleporting, and I always interpretted that as transmitting information, not matter.
When Captain Kirk gets beamed down to the surface of a planet, where does all that matter come from which constitutes his body in the new location? There is no transporter on the receiving end with a stockpile of matter. How big of a vacuum would it leave behind if you just sucked up surrounding gas until you had enough? Put another way, if you tell somebody you are going to teleport a block of gold from box A to box B and then announce "and to begin, I will place a block of gold in each box", they will cry foul. Are you saying you wouldn't?
You've basically changed the second atom to be exactly like the first but they call that teleportation. And effectively it is.
I think most people's concept of "teleport" is something else entirely. What the physicists are doing is something more aking to "faxing". Granted, it's really high-quality faxing, but faxing none the less. But "quantum faxing" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Fundamental to the concept of "teleport" as all non-physicists know it is that the matter being teleported moves from one place to another. In this case they "teleported" atoms of Cesium. But they started with Cesium atoms on both sides of the "teleporter" at the beginning and the end. They didn't "teleport" the Cesium any more than a FAX machine "teleports" paper.
It was the highest grossing movie this weekend, right? First place? What were they hoping for? Zeroth place? I mean really. The 'buzz' was that it was basically a stupid movie with no plot. And it still made it to the top. And they complain? Man, talk about a sore winner.
You can be as flippant as you like, but the rate at which America consumes energy is a problem. One which is largely ignored by us, but that doesn't make it any less real. We could try and address it (a path which requires us to recognize and yes, criticize, our over-consumption) or we can ignore it until mother nature forces us to deal with it. But hey, why try and plan for the future? Let's just keep this party going! Jumping off a cliff doesn't hurt at all. In fact, it's quite a rush. But the rapid deceleration at the end is pretty painful.
When I invite you into my home after you knock on my door, my phone has no restrictions which stop you from making a call - are you therefor justified in making a call to any number you wish while Im out of the room? How about raiding my fridge?
No, of course not. But that's not the issue. If you invite me into your home, I think I am justified in entering your home. I may even consider it OK to stand there and consume valuable space. Maybe even breath the air. Because those things are all entailed in being invited into your home. But what act on the wireless side corresponds to "raiding my fridge" in your analogy? Using your Internet access? If that's so, I'm sorry, you're being an idiot. Claiming that inviting someone to use your wireles (via an open AP), and then providing a DHCP address upon request, somehow does not imply permission to actually, you know, use the network is the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.
And you never answered my question, which I think is a much closer and apt analogy. But you won't because you don't like the answer.
nothing short of written or spoken permission from myself gives you leave to use my internet connection.
Where do web servers (or any TCP socket based service) fit into this? My computer sends your computer a request for a connection, which your computer accpets. And I then proceed to "use" your internet connection to send data. Am I required to get "written or spoken" permission for this act? BitTorrent is probably a better example. Lots of people who run BT clients do _not_ fully understand the service they are offering, just as lots of folks who run wireless do not understand the service they are "offering" via their open wireless.
It seems like an almost perfect analogy to me. 1) Clueless user buys AP / runs BT but has no real idea of how the technology works or how to configure it. 2) Their AP / BT client begins advertising the service via broadcast beacons or telling the tracker. 3) Clients interested in the service begin connecting based upon the open invitation made by the AP/client 4) Clueless user sees their bandwidth getting used for the benefit, not of them, but of the client who connected.
But I'm to understand that the client in the wireless case are committing some sort of crime unless they get "written or spoken" permission. Do you expect BT users to do the same? If not, why not?
Maybe that's what McAfee really cares about. Full disclosure means, in part, that it's easier for new vendors and products to compete in the security field. Sticking with limited disclosure, where only the OS vendors and established security vendors are informed, just lets the established vendors get complacent. Which given the quality of modern security software I would say has already happened. So they throw a bunch of FUD around, as though the problem isn't in large part due to closed-source software vendors being incapable of getting their shit together when it comes to security.
I just do not understand the insistance/fascination with RFID in this case. Think about the situation when these RFID's are supposed to be used. You are entering a country via immigration, and you hand your passport to the immigration agent. There is no need and no benefit to involving a radio. The agent could just as easily slip your passport into a reader which uses actual metal contacts as wave it over the RFID scanner. It would probably cost less, and would have none of the security concerns (valid or not) that the RFID chips have.
I can only think of two possibilities. One is just good old fashioned corruption. It's no secret that the GOP has pretty much put a 'For Sale' sign out front of the Capital, so it may just be a way to send a bunch of money to a valuable 'doner'. Or they have some requirement which needs RFID, but is being kept secret.
I suppose they could almost completely automate letting US citizens back into the country. Will I be able to use my RFID passport to scan in to the country just like I do with my work badge to get into the machine room or co-lo? I can see benefits for having an express lane at immigration for citizens with RFID passports so we don't have to wait behind all the riff-raff:-) Just walk up to the gate, wave your passport at it, and 'beep', you're back in the country.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. EULA's are a big part of this problem. Specifically, the way above board software forces users to accept pointless pages of legalese. It serves no real purpose, but trains users that it's OK, and in fact expected, that they should click through some agreement whenever they want to run a new program. But while the 'legitimate' software companies don't really get any benefit from the EULA's, the spyware folks depend on them to keep themselves out of jail. These fsck'ers would all be in jail without EULA's providing them cover. And if only spyware was making users click through pages of legal mumbo jumbo, users might actually stop and take notice.
Re:good database, but could have been so much more
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I found it's pretty common for CD drives to not return bit-identical results when ripping the exact same CD. I've got several drives, and they will not all result in matching MD5 sum output. I forget the details, but one drive for example would add a few extra 0 bytes onto the front of the CD. And that's without taking into account the possibility of scratches or differences between different copies of the same album. It's a nice idea, keeping the MD5 sum, but would probably just result in huge numbers of duplicate entries.
Yeah, but is the NSA sitting on a supercomputer as a "last resort" for encryption problems?
Not supercomputers in the sense they are being discussed here. The top500 list is computers that excel at floating-point operations. I have never seen an encryption method which uses floating point at all. They all use integer operations. DES, RSA, AES, MD5, SHA-1, etc. All 100% integer. In most cases cracking encryption algorithms really boils down to some sort of a search algorithm, so it wouldn't suprise me if there is overlap between systems that excel at data-mining and ones that excel at cracking encryption.
The fact the LE is good at following money doesn't mean they're actually interested in doing it in the cases you care about.
As a loyal slashdot member, I had not bothered to read the article before posting. I actually did go back and read it, and you'll never guess how the ransom is paid. The victims are asked to go buy drugs at one of three online "pharmacies". Curious, eh?
Following money trails is something the world's law enforcement agencies are very good at.
Yeah, I used to think that. But the fact that I get hundreds of emails every day from people hawking either pirated software and counterfeit/illegal pills has convinced me otherwise.
Also there was a medical study that indicated some links between the vaccin and autism some time ago. The claim was largely retracted, but it was scary enough that some families didn't have their children vaccinated.
I have to admit that I find quite a bit of credence with the autism-vaccination link after doing some reading. Just some little tidbits to think about:
1) The linkage is based on the use of Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, in childhood vaccines. 2) No safety studies on Thimerosal were done, as far as I can tell. 3) The first diagnosed case of autism was just a few years after we began giving kids Thimerosal containing vaccines. Severe autism is pretty noticable. It's not the kind of thing which just wouldn't have been noticed. It's definitely a new disease. 4) The symptoms of autism are similar to those of mercury poisoning 5) Autism rates rose in parallel with increasing numbers of vaccines given to kids. From 1989 to 1999, the number of vaccines given to kids increased from 3 to 22, many of which contained mercury. 6) In 2001 they stopped putting Thimerosal in vaccines given to kids under the age of six. California tracks autism cases more closely than any other state. The rate of autism slowed it's growth in 2002 and began dropping in 2003. And it's been dropping ever since. This is now showing up in academic papers
I think in ten or twenty years, we will collectively look back and think what the f*** were we thinking injecting babies with mercury.
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A golden book of chemistry. A pack of three moleskin notebooks for their notes, and to top it off, privacy if they want it. Or get involved in their lives. Make it fun. Bond.
I'm pretty sure all the real fun in chemistry sets comes from breaking bonds, not making them.
I think experience shows us what happens to companies foolish enough to partner with Microsoft. Oh well. It's been nice knowing you Novell.
I've got two thoughts on the subject. Mainly that this is probably going to end up being a very bad move on the part of Novell. It's hard to say exactly how it will play out but companies foolish enough to partner with Microsoft often times end up getting double crossed. And we know that Microsoft has it out for Linux, as it's pretty much the only thing slowing their growth in the server market. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind Microsoft is going into this deal with malice aforethought a evil in their hearts. Novell is going to get it in the back, mark my words.
Second, as far as the fear that Microsoft is going to start a patent war with Linux, I have three words for you: Eye. Bee. Em. Novell is small enough, and has made enough mis-steps in the past, I can imagine them letting Microsoft screw them over. I don't think Big Blue is going to let it happen though. SCOvIBM has shown that they are willing to go the distance to keep Linux in the clear, and they have more software patents than anybody I believe.
An interpreter script is a text file that traditionally begins with the #! characters followed by a path to the interpreter. Files not containing the #! line are treated as shell scripts--not by the kernel, but by the execvP stub in the C library. If the stub gets an ENOEXEC error from the kernel when such a file's execution is attempted, it reattempts execution by using "/bin/sh" as the first argument to execve() and the file as the next argument.
/bin/sh is pretty forgiving. I'm pretty sure if you told it to execute a saved email or HTML file it would happily try every line in the file looking for valid commands. It's not hard to imagine this feature being one link in the chain which enables some exploit. After all, it's relatively easily to get shell commands into a users mailbox or web cache files. Making it possible for the system to natively execute a mailbox or HTML file just seems dangerous. Maybe that's just me.
I think Linux does the same thing, although I haven't checked. Somehow, this just feels wrong to me. If it's not a valid binary, and doesn't start with #!, why not just fail? Why keep trying?
For all the love that the US government and big corporations seem to have for 'free trade' and 'globalization', they don't seem interested in open borders. I wonder why not? It's OK for corporations to ship jobs around the world to wherever labor conditions are the most favorable to them. But if workers try to migrate to where the hiring conditions are better, they are demonized as 'illegals'. It's OK for corporations to buy supplies from any country, getting the best deal in the process. But if consumers try to buy products from other parts of the world, that's a no-no (witness Lik-Sang). True globalization demands open borders. Fire the border guards. Tear down the fences.
Some will reply and tell me this is crazy. How it can never work. That somehow we just have to have walls. Why? And if walls are so good and necessary, would you support building them between the States? Why not?
Everybody has a bad batch.
Its easier to blame it on something menacing like "counterfeit hardware", I would simply say "bad batch", however cisco has a reputation to uphold, horror of horrors if their tackle is broken.
No, once we had the real ones we could compare them and they were clearly a completely different design. The PCB traces were different. The packaging was different. Cisco puts S/N's on each and every SFP GBIC. The fakes had numerous duplicate S/N's in the batch. The real ones had QC markings on them. The fakes didn't. It was pretty clear that they hadn't been made by the same people.
I've gotten bad hardware from Cisco, and they come clean about it. I've even had batches of bad hardware. They don't like to make a lot of noise about it when it's their own screw-ups, but they have plenty of recalls and field notices. And most importantly, they don't pretend it's counterfeit.
Do I start to believe that everything fails because its counterfeit?
I am considerably more cautious about what and where I buy electronics, at least if it's for a task where reliability counts for anything. And once you start looking for it, you realize that this crap is pretty common. Whether it's impossibly cheap GBIC's on ebay or 'two for $10 Oakly sunglasses' from a stand by the side of the road, counterfeit goods are very real whether you believe it or not.
Is it not more likely that this is just another symptom of too much, too quickly and they should just improve their quality control and testing regimes?
Sure, the cards might have been resold, but they are branded cisco items bearing the entire cisco interface and functionality - somehow I doubt outright fake chipsets and devices like this can be produced by anyone other than cisco themselves.
I've been the unlucky recipient of counterfeit Cisco hardware, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that it does exist. In my case, it was a big batch of SFP GBICs which are supposed to be build to a standard specification so it's a bit easier than linecards. But in talking to our Cisco reps during the process, it was pretty clear that they are seeing more complicated devices showing up as counterfeits as well. It's a real problem, both for Cisco and for their customers because the fake stuff, at least in our case, is total crap compared to the real thing. We bought something like 150 of them, and had maybe 10% just plain DOA, so it was pretty obvious something was wrong. But if the reseller had been smart and only sold them two or three at a time it wouldn't be anywhere near as obvious.
Which isn't to say I have total sympathy for Cisco. After all, they've outsourced both the manufacturing and the selling to third parties. Cisco, by their own choice, doesn't actually own or operate their "channel". They just manage it. When you put voluntarily let all the knowledge needed to make, box, ship and sell "your" equipment leave your company, what exactly did you think was going to happen?
It gushes. The author is in love with his demo PS3. You get the impression that he wants to marry it. There's a small bit towards the end where he says that, unlike everything else, the controller didn't quite live up to his wildest fantasies.
Well, he likens loading a disc into the slot-loading drive to getting head from a hooker. And the touch-sensitive power and eject button are magical as well. But I don't recall him saying anything positive about it's ability to, you know, play games. Sure, it seems to satisfy his techno-fetish, but is it actually any fun?
I don't know if Sony just didn't let the reviewers say anything interesting, or if the optical drive and on off buttons are really some of the more exciting aspects of the unit. I mean really, does any body really give a crap is a console is tray loading or slot loading? Both styles of optical drive have been around for what, 10 years? And a touch sensitive eject button? Who cares?
What about the games? Is the thing any fun to play? I guess they were only allowed to play one game and didn't bother saying anything about it since they have another article in the works. Add in some random comments about the firmware being incomplete and some negative comments about the controller and that's the whole article. I can't say the overall article was negative, but since the features they seemed most excited about are incidental to the actual gameplay I don't think you could call it positive.
Now contrast this with the Wii review:
It's every independent journalist's nightmare to sound like a hype generating machine; the very sight of hype sends us screaming for the hills. However, just sometimes there is hype well deserved. This is one such time. This controller, my friends, is to gaming what remote controllers were to TV sets. You have to play with this thing, and we're convinced you're going to love it. Really.
The article is about the same length, but is focused almost 100% on an issue that is actually relevant to gameplay. And comes up with very positive comments about it. I think the Wii is really going to be the console to beat this generation.
surely "Star Trek" is an example of the popular conception of teleporting, and I always interpretted that as transmitting information, not matter.
When Captain Kirk gets beamed down to the surface of a planet, where does all that matter come from which constitutes his body in the new location? There is no transporter on the receiving end with a stockpile of matter. How big of a vacuum would it leave behind if you just sucked up surrounding gas until you had enough? Put another way, if you tell somebody you are going to teleport a block of gold from box A to box B and then announce "and to begin, I will place a block of gold in each box", they will cry foul. Are you saying you wouldn't?
You've basically changed the second atom to be exactly like the first but they call that teleportation. And effectively it is.
I think most people's concept of "teleport" is something else entirely. What the physicists are doing is something more aking to "faxing". Granted, it's really high-quality faxing, but faxing none the less. But "quantum faxing" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Fundamental to the concept of "teleport" as all non-physicists know it is that the matter being teleported moves from one place to another. In this case they "teleported" atoms of Cesium. But they started with Cesium atoms on both sides of the "teleporter" at the beginning and the end. They didn't "teleport" the Cesium any more than a FAX machine "teleports" paper.
It was the highest grossing movie this weekend, right? First place? What were they hoping for? Zeroth place? I mean really. The 'buzz' was that it was basically a stupid movie with no plot. And it still made it to the top. And they complain? Man, talk about a sore winner.
You can be as flippant as you like, but the rate at which America consumes energy is a problem. One which is largely ignored by us, but that doesn't make it any less real. We could try and address it (a path which requires us to recognize and yes, criticize, our over-consumption) or we can ignore it until mother nature forces us to deal with it. But hey, why try and plan for the future? Let's just keep this party going! Jumping off a cliff doesn't hurt at all. In fact, it's quite a rush. But the rapid deceleration at the end is pretty painful.
Come on we can critize anything.
Which does not make all criticism equal.
you neglect to account for the possible neccesity of such a vehicle, perhaps this many has a large family and a boat which he frequently tows?
Large families and boats are both lifestyle choices as well. Choices which it's perfectly valid to criticize.
When I invite you into my home after you knock on my door, my phone has no restrictions which stop you from making a call - are you therefor justified in making a call to any number you wish while Im out of the room? How about raiding my fridge?
No, of course not. But that's not the issue. If you invite me into your home, I think I am justified in entering your home. I may even consider it OK to stand there and consume valuable space. Maybe even breath the air. Because those things are all entailed in being invited into your home. But what act on the wireless side corresponds to "raiding my fridge" in your analogy? Using your Internet access? If that's so, I'm sorry, you're being an idiot. Claiming that inviting someone to use your wireles (via an open AP), and then providing a DHCP address upon request, somehow does not imply permission to actually, you know, use the network is the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.
And you never answered my question, which I think is a much closer and apt analogy. But you won't because you don't like the answer.
nothing short of written or spoken permission from myself gives you leave to use my internet connection.
Where do web servers (or any TCP socket based service) fit into this? My computer sends your computer a request for a connection, which your computer accpets. And I then proceed to "use" your internet connection to send data. Am I required to get "written or spoken" permission for this act? BitTorrent is probably a better example. Lots of people who run BT clients do _not_ fully understand the service they are offering, just as lots of folks who run wireless do not understand the service they are "offering" via their open wireless.
It seems like an almost perfect analogy to me.
1) Clueless user buys AP / runs BT but has no real idea of how the technology works or how to configure it.
2) Their AP / BT client begins advertising the service via broadcast beacons or telling the tracker.
3) Clients interested in the service begin connecting based upon the open invitation made by the AP/client
4) Clueless user sees their bandwidth getting used for the benefit, not of them, but of the client who connected.
But I'm to understand that the client in the wireless case are committing some sort of crime unless they get "written or spoken" permission. Do you expect BT users to do the same? If not, why not?
Maybe that's what McAfee really cares about. Full disclosure means, in part, that it's easier for new vendors and products to compete in the security field. Sticking with limited disclosure, where only the OS vendors and established security vendors are informed, just lets the established vendors get complacent. Which given the quality of modern security software I would say has already happened. So they throw a bunch of FUD around, as though the problem isn't in large part due to closed-source software vendors being incapable of getting their shit together when it comes to security.
I just do not understand the insistance/fascination with RFID in this case. Think about the situation when these RFID's are supposed to be used. You are entering a country via immigration, and you hand your passport to the immigration agent. There is no need and no benefit to involving a radio. The agent could just as easily slip your passport into a reader which uses actual metal contacts as wave it over the RFID scanner. It would probably cost less, and would have none of the security concerns (valid or not) that the RFID chips have.
:-) Just walk up to the gate, wave your passport at it, and 'beep', you're back in the country.
I can only think of two possibilities. One is just good old fashioned corruption. It's no secret that the GOP has pretty much put a 'For Sale' sign out front of the Capital, so it may just be a way to send a bunch of money to a valuable 'doner'. Or they have some requirement which needs RFID, but is being kept secret.
I suppose they could almost completely automate letting US citizens back into the country. Will I be able to use my RFID passport to scan in to the country just like I do with my work badge to get into the machine room or co-lo? I can see benefits for having an express lane at immigration for citizens with RFID passports so we don't have to wait behind all the riff-raff
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. EULA's are a big part of this problem. Specifically, the way above board software forces users to accept pointless pages of legalese. It serves no real purpose, but trains users that it's OK, and in fact expected, that they should click through some agreement whenever they want to run a new program. But while the 'legitimate' software companies don't really get any benefit from the EULA's, the spyware folks depend on them to keep themselves out of jail. These fsck'ers would all be in jail without EULA's providing them cover. And if only spyware was making users click through pages of legal mumbo jumbo, users might actually stop and take notice.
I found it's pretty common for CD drives to not return bit-identical results when ripping the exact same CD. I've got several drives, and they will not all result in matching MD5 sum output. I forget the details, but one drive for example would add a few extra 0 bytes onto the front of the CD. And that's without taking into account the possibility of scratches or differences between different copies of the same album. It's a nice idea, keeping the MD5 sum, but would probably just result in huge numbers of duplicate entries.
Yeah, but is the NSA sitting on a supercomputer as a "last resort" for encryption problems?
Not supercomputers in the sense they are being discussed here. The top500 list is computers that excel at floating-point operations. I have never seen an encryption method which uses floating point at all. They all use integer operations. DES, RSA, AES, MD5, SHA-1, etc. All 100% integer. In most cases cracking encryption algorithms really boils down to some sort of a search algorithm, so it wouldn't suprise me if there is overlap between systems that excel at data-mining and ones that excel at cracking encryption.
The fact the LE is good at following money doesn't mean they're actually interested in doing it in the cases you care about.
As a loyal slashdot member, I had not bothered to read the article before posting. I actually did go back and read it, and you'll never guess how the ransom is paid. The victims are asked to go buy drugs at one of three online "pharmacies". Curious, eh?
Following money trails is something the world's law enforcement agencies are very good at.
Yeah, I used to think that. But the fact that I get hundreds of emails every day from people hawking either pirated software and counterfeit/illegal pills has convinced me otherwise.
If you aren't doing anything wrong, what have you got to hide? And from that we can conclude what about an administration which tries to hide so much?
Also there was a medical study that indicated some links between the vaccin and autism some time ago. The claim was largely retracted, but it was scary enough that some families didn't have their children vaccinated.
I have to admit that I find quite a bit of credence with the autism-vaccination link after doing some reading. Just some little tidbits to think about:
1) The linkage is based on the use of Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, in childhood vaccines.
2) No safety studies on Thimerosal were done, as far as I can tell.
3) The first diagnosed case of autism was just a few years after we began giving kids Thimerosal containing vaccines. Severe autism is pretty noticable. It's not the kind of thing which just wouldn't have been noticed. It's definitely a new disease.
4) The symptoms of autism are similar to those of mercury poisoning
5) Autism rates rose in parallel with increasing numbers of vaccines given to kids. From 1989 to 1999, the number of vaccines given to kids increased from 3 to 22, many of which contained mercury.
6) In 2001 they stopped putting Thimerosal in vaccines given to kids under the age of six. California tracks autism cases more closely than any other state. The rate of autism slowed it's growth in 2002 and began dropping in 2003. And it's been dropping ever since. This is now showing up in academic papers
I think in ten or twenty years, we will collectively look back and think what the f*** were we thinking injecting babies with mercury.