The idea of a free univeristy is extremely interesting. I'm an Electrical engineering college student in Spain, and sometimes I try to find information on the Internet about interesting subjects that I'm not able to learn on my own university. In the past months I've been trying to learn something about WAP, Firewire, UMTS, and even about biology, chemistry, or astrophysics and I have been unable to find anything interesting on the Internet: all I find is either too short and superficial or extremely technical documents aimed only to developers. I feel there's a real lack of advanced level information on a lot of subjects on the Internet, and that's the reason because I always try to find a good book on the subject rather than relying on the Internet contents. A free University would be interesting in covering the gap in that zone. It would be a brilliant idea to create a place gathering information from different sources, providing knowledge to all who want to learn. And I think of some kind of free university build by contributors around the world, just like Linux is build by the open source community. I'm only an student, but I'm sure that I'm able to create documents, tutorials, short courses on topics I've studied at an undergraduate level that would be interesting to others.
Maybe the diploma issued by that university (if any) would be useless, but I want a university to learn and knowledge is never useless, even if I don't have a diploma to prove I know. It is a huge project that can only be done with a lot of money, and some people coordinating it all, but I encourage those with resources to make it happen.
I find this story really interesting. I don't know how the members of the Internet Boards are elected at present and how much influence they have in the development of the net but of course there is (or has been in the past) concern in some countries on the predominance of the USA in most of the internet decission bodies. To give voice to the final users is a bettery way to go.
I think the aim here is to build a more democratic Internet and if this initiative works, soon we will see other boards making the same move. We will see how all this is finally implemented given the possible problems in any Internet voting system: I have about 20 email addresses and could create thousands more in any of the free email services; it seems easy to vote hundreds of times beeing unnoticed, isn't it? Anyway, I'm going to register myself immediately.
Think of a very long ruler with all the marks in centimetres on it. The spectrum is the same, only that the marks are given in a frequency unit, MHz. In any communication system you need some bandwith allocated in the spectrum ruler for the electromagnetic waves that will carry the information. For a voice channel you need 4 KHz (let's say this is 0.5 cm), well you need to use 0.5 cm of the ruler for a voice channel, it doesn't matter where you allocate it, you can use the space between 70 and 70.5 cm as well as the zone between 346.3 and 346.8 cm as long as you use an space that has not been used before. The spectrum ruler is of finite length, and we have TV stations using part of it, mobile phones another space, radio stations using another piece... In fact the spectrum is crowded, and everyone all over the world is using part of it. Fortunately, electromagnetic waves get weaker with distance, so that if you are using the space between 346.3 and 346.8, me beeing thousands of kilometers away can use that space also, the wave that you emitted in that zone has almost disappeared where I am. Well, cell phones are allocated a bandwith around 900 MHz (that's GSM) that is enough only for a few simultaneous communications. Now divide your country in little cells, and in one of them use bandwith centered in 890 MHz, in the cell besides use 900, in the other 910... and now start reusing frequencies, if cells are distant enough, you can use again 890, 900, 910... That's how you can serve thousands of phones with little bandwith. Of course, if it happens that thousands of phones are on the same cell, the system will run out of bandwith, and your mobile phone will not be able to call; this happens sometimes in crowded airports or fairs.
Blueetooh emits very weak radio waves that reach about 10 meters, so bandwidth should not be a problem.
Re:PKI and other issues, Interlock protocol
on
SSH v. SRP
·
· Score: 5
There's a way to defeat, in some extent, man in the middle attacks when using public key cryptography: the interlock protocol designed by Rivest and Shamir.
The protocol works this way: 1) A sends B his public key 2) B sends A his public key 3) A encrypts using B's public key and sends half the message to B 4) B encrypts using A's public key and sends half the message to B 5) A sends the other half to B 6) B sends the other half to A 7) Both A and B put the two halves together and decrypt the message with their private keys
If someone is in the middle, he can change the public keys by its own keys, but then in points 3 and 4 he will not be able to pass the real message because it has not been transmitted yet; he will have to invent a completely new message and though the "conversation" will be completely different. This is not a perfect solution since, in fact, he will be able to intercept at least the first messages exchange, but his presence would be detected quickly. As you pointed, the good solution is to use some kind of trusted third party authentication.
It's not unusual these days, another cat.com eating an old tiger.
I find all this really impressive, and crazy.
Here where I live, we have an internet company that recently issued an IPO, after multiplying by more than 6 its share prices now is the second company in the country's markets. It's value is over the capitalization of all the electric power suppliers companies.
Very interesting if you take into account that one day without that Internet company is only a little trouble while one day without power supply is a total catastrophe.
DVD is only the media. What is important here is the content.
The Hollywood studios that support DVD are concerned about piracy and distribution control, and these are the reasons of these injuctions. But, sincerly, if a DVD can be copied bit by bit with some soon common equipment making the crypto anti copy protection useless, why so much hype about DeCSS? The reason cannot be piracy, it has to be control.
They want to control how they sell their products, they want to be able to launch first a movie in America, then in Europe, then Asia..., in an scheduled way. This is how cinema distribution works; here in Europe we see some films after months of beeing released in the USA. And let me say I think this is legitimate, given some limits.
DVD seemed fine to the studios because they could use zone codes to control the distribution in a growing global market with virtually no commerce frontiers.
All the commercial DVD players since now are fully compliant to zone codes, and since now all the players had to be, because the DVD consortium had to give the decryption keys and scheme to those players manufacturers, and no one that was to bypass zone control would receive the decryption scheme.
Now, with DeCSS everyone will be able to realease players that will play any zone thus making possible parallel distribution of DVD movies not controlled directly by the studios.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of a free univeristy is extremely interesting.
I'm an Electrical engineering college student in Spain, and sometimes I try to find information on the Internet about interesting subjects that I'm not able to learn on my own university.
In the past months I've been trying to learn something about WAP, Firewire, UMTS, and even about biology, chemistry, or astrophysics and I have been unable to find anything interesting on the Internet: all I find is either too short and superficial or extremely technical documents aimed only to developers.
I feel there's a real lack of advanced level information on a lot of subjects on the Internet, and that's the reason because I always try to find a good book on the subject rather than relying on the Internet contents.
A free University would be interesting in covering the gap in that zone. It would be a brilliant idea to create a place gathering information from different sources, providing knowledge to all who want to learn.
And I think of some kind of free university build by contributors around the world, just like Linux is build by the open source community.
I'm only an student, but I'm sure that I'm able to create documents, tutorials, short courses on topics I've studied at an undergraduate level that would be interesting to others.
Maybe the diploma issued by that university (if any) would be useless, but I want a university to learn and knowledge is never useless, even if I don't have a diploma to prove I know.
It is a huge project that can only be done with a lot of money, and some people coordinating it all, but I encourage those with resources to make it happen.
I find this story really interesting.
I don't know how the members of the Internet Boards are elected at present and how much influence they have in the development of the net but of course there is (or has been in the past) concern in some countries on the predominance of the USA in most of the internet decission bodies. To give voice to the final users is a bettery way to go.
I think the aim here is to build a more democratic Internet and if this initiative works, soon we will see other boards making the same move.
We will see how all this is finally implemented given the possible problems in any Internet voting system: I have about 20 email addresses and could create thousands more in any of the free email services; it seems easy to vote hundreds of times beeing unnoticed, isn't it?
Anyway, I'm going to register myself immediately.
Think of a very long ruler with all the marks in centimetres on it. The spectrum is the same, only that the marks are given in a frequency unit, MHz.
In any communication system you need some bandwith allocated in the spectrum ruler for the electromagnetic waves that will carry the information.
For a voice channel you need 4 KHz (let's say this is 0.5 cm), well you need to use 0.5 cm of the ruler for a voice channel, it doesn't matter where you allocate it, you can use the space between 70 and 70.5 cm as well as the zone between 346.3 and 346.8 cm as long as you use an space that has not been used before.
The spectrum ruler is of finite length, and we have TV stations using part of it, mobile phones another space, radio stations using another piece... In fact the spectrum is crowded, and everyone all over the world is using part of it.
Fortunately, electromagnetic waves get weaker with distance, so that if you are using the space between 346.3 and 346.8, me beeing thousands of kilometers away can use that space also, the wave that you emitted in that zone has almost disappeared where I am.
Well, cell phones are allocated a bandwith around 900 MHz (that's GSM) that is enough only for a few simultaneous communications. Now divide your country in little cells, and in one of them use bandwith centered in 890 MHz, in the cell besides use 900, in the other 910... and now start reusing frequencies, if cells are distant enough, you can use again 890, 900, 910... That's how you can serve thousands of phones with little bandwith. Of course, if it happens that thousands of phones are on the same cell, the system will run out of bandwith, and your mobile phone will not be able to call; this happens sometimes in crowded airports or fairs.
Blueetooh emits very weak radio waves that reach about 10 meters, so bandwidth should not be a problem.
The protocol works this way:
1) A sends B his public key
2) B sends A his public key
3) A encrypts using B's public key and sends half the message to B
4) B encrypts using A's public key and sends half the message to B
5) A sends the other half to B
6) B sends the other half to A
7) Both A and B put the two halves together and decrypt the message with their private keys
If someone is in the middle, he can change the public keys by its own keys, but then in points 3 and 4 he will not be able to pass the real message because it has not been transmitted yet; he will have to invent a completely new message and though the "conversation" will be completely different. This is not a perfect solution since, in fact, he will be able to intercept at least the first messages exchange, but his presence would be detected quickly.
As you pointed, the good solution is to use some kind of trusted third party authentication.
I find all this really impressive, and crazy.
Here where I live, we have an internet company that recently issued an IPO, after multiplying by more than 6 its share prices now is the second company in the country's markets. It's value is over the capitalization of all the electric power suppliers companies.
Very interesting if you take into account that one day without that Internet company is only a little trouble while one day without power supply is a total catastrophe.
If you already know that Linux is a great OS, why do you need a commercial telling you exactly that?
DVD is only the media.
What is important here is the content.
The Hollywood studios that support DVD are concerned about piracy and distribution control, and these are the reasons of these injuctions.
But, sincerly, if a DVD can be copied bit by bit with some soon common equipment making the crypto anti copy protection useless, why so much hype about DeCSS?
The reason cannot be piracy, it has to be control.
They want to control how they sell their products, they want to be able to launch first a movie in America, then in Europe, then Asia..., in an scheduled way. This is how cinema distribution works; here in Europe we see some films after months of beeing released in the USA. And let me say I think this is legitimate, given some limits.
DVD seemed fine to the studios because they could use zone codes to control the distribution in a growing global market with virtually no commerce frontiers.
All the commercial DVD players since now are fully compliant to zone codes, and since now all the players had to be, because the DVD consortium had to give the decryption keys and scheme to those players manufacturers, and no one that was to bypass zone control would receive the decryption scheme.
Now, with DeCSS everyone will be able to realease players that will play any zone thus making possible parallel distribution of DVD movies not controlled directly by the studios.
They have lost control.