I think the problem (at least IMHO) is the expiring keys. (I have no problem with people profiting (fairly) from their work, or with them taking reasonable steps to protect their ability to do so.)
Right now, if I buy a CD, I own it forever, or at least until the disc is rendered unplayable for some reason. If I'm careful and/or I make backups, it should outlast me.
Not so with an expiring key. Suddenly, under this scheme, if I buy a song/album, I can only use it for a limited amount of time. At the end of that period, I either pay up again, or I don't get to listen to it anymore.
That's changing the rules - we'd no longer be buying the music (or even access to a copy of the music on a given physical medium), we'd be hiring it. Personally, when I buy something, I like the fact that it's mine "forever".
You can be pretty sure that, in the long run, this will cost us (the music buying public) more.
In the case of/. trolls, it is their fellow site users who choose to censor them, and you can *always* browse at -1 and read everything. Also, the trolls can (and do...) still post, and read the rest of the site.
In the case of this telco, they've removed service to this user; no-one can access the site they were running, and they can't access the internet (at least via that connection).
Now, personally, I think they were dumb hosting the site on their telco's network, and that the telco was perfectly within its rights in withdrawing service (it is their network, after all).
I write code, for fun and profit. Compiling code takes time; not huge amounts of it (I currently do all my coding in Java), but enough. (Previously, in C++, our in-house libraries could take an hour or more...)
With my current (work) machine, it can take anything between 2 and 5 minutes between making a change to the source, and getting so see whether or not that fixed the problem. That's time spent compiling the code (a few seconds), starting the server (a minute or so in debug mode), parsing and compiling the page(s) (a minute or so for an average jsp), etc. (I currently do jsp/servlet work, for web sites deployed on Linux boxes running Apache and Resin)
Much past 5:30pm, that's just too long (especially on a Saturday or Sunday...).
With a faster machine, the whole process would take less time (well, duh), and I'd be happier. I'd also be less inclined to read/. and k5 whilst waiting for stuff to compile, thus wasting more time than is necessary (as it takes time to notice that my stuff is ready and waiting for me, and time to "just finish the bit I'm reading now"). I also wouldn't be sat there waiting for it to be ready, thinking "if only I had a faster machine, this wouldn't take so long" (I have a P3 450)
No, the average user doesn't need that much speed; gamers, coders, 3d modellers/artists, people running number-crunching simulations, etc, do.
One time pads are completely unbreakable (read "Applied Cryptography" if you doubt me).
That's just as long as you never reuse the pad, the pad is truly random, and you never reveal the pad to anyone else.
The biggest problem with OTPs, as with most crypto systems, is key distribution. That's basically what this guy thinks he's solved, but I'm not convinced. As others have also said, I don't think it's unfeasible for an attacker to intercept the "start" message, and synchronise their reading of the stream (the pad) with that of the correspondents.
IMHO, the only truly secure way to distribute an OTP is to write it down/burn it to CD/whatever, and hand it to the other party yourself (then hope that no-one ever steals/copies it...). Then, the "only" problem you have is generating the random sequence in the first place, which is non-trivial (especially if you're planning on encrypting large messages, where patterns are more likely to show up if the sequence repeats)
Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm old enough to remember when a sound card was very much "extra hardware". Now you can't buy a (home) computer without one...
Given enough time, either the cost will decrease, or the utility increase, to the point where most homes have one.
Think about cars - dirty, noisy, smelly, dangerous, damaging to the environment, expensive, incredibly useful; it's a rare home that doesn't have at least one, despite all their bad points.
Cheers,
Tim
Re:A shame, because wireless leapfrogs infrastruct
on
Ricochet Dead By June?
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· Score: 2
This is probably why wireless is so prevalent in England, too.
Is it? That's news to me, and I've lived here all my life...
Sure, mobile phones are everywhere (almost everyone I know owns one, but then, I guess you could say the same). Beyond that, and TV and radio, I know of no large-scale commercial wireless operations. (Certainly not wireless IP)
Nah, people just starting out may not make enough (I know I didn't). People with a family may not.
Indeed. I have a girlfriend and a one year old daughter, and am the sole earner. Thanks to buying a car (have you tried getting on or off a bus with a young child, pushchair and shopping?), my student loan (thanks to our previous government's decision to cut grants for higher education in the UK) and my girlfriend's loan, I make enough to cover our expenses and live reasonably comfortably, but not enough to save for a rainy day. I've also only been working now for just over 18 months; I don't know if that counts as "just starting out", though.
Given time, I'll have cleared the two loans (a bonus I've been promised in December, if I stick with my company (we've just been bought by a large corporate, though, so that remains to be seen) will clear one), then I'll be able to think about saving money.
Oh no, wait, then I'll have to think about getting a decent pension, and some life insurance.
If I didn't have my family, my life would be very different. Not better (although certainly richer, financially speaking;-) ), just different.
Have I screwed myself, at least temporarily? Perhaps, perhaps not.
I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk.
That happened to my girlfriend once (she worked as a secretary, before giving up work (temporarily) to have our baby). She was given no notice whatsoever, just called in to see her boss, to be told that she was being made redundant, effective immediately.
She cleared out her desk, said her goodbyes, and was escorted out of the building. She did get her redunancy money, though, so it wasn't all bad, just a bit sudden (and she didn't like it there anyway; she was actually quite happy about it:-) )
The weirdest thing, though, was that her boss didn't know it was going to happen until that day; the order came down from above. She and a mutual friend who also worked there put it down to the evil machinations of one of the other secrataries, who had never liked her, was generally perceived as being a cow, but seemed to be adored by the upper managers...
Once analog signals are turned off and replaced completly with digital (I predict 5-10 years)
Last I heard, when they were just starting to roll out digital TV, here in the UK the plan was to stop broadcasting analogue in 2 years or so; that puts it mid 2002, if memory serves me.
I don't know about the US, but I think you may be a little off at 5-10 years.
And that is half the problem; the world has gone licence mad. Everyone who's selling something is looking for ways to squeeze more and more money out of people, while everyone who is buying is doing their best to pay as little as possible. The sensible thing to do, it seems to me, is to strive to strike a balance. Unfortunately, neither side seems willing to even try; in my experience, though, it's Business that is the most die-hard in its stance. Consumers tend to be a little more willing to put up and pay up.
And as for TV shows, you're getting them for free.
So what is my cable provider charging me for each month? If I don't pay, I don't get to watch the shows. No, I'm not paying per show, but I am paying to receive the channels that they're shown on. Doesn't sound like "free" to me.
In the UK, anything that you create that is capable of being copyrighted, is automatically copyrighted. There is no need to register it.
On the other hand, my brother (who writes a little), was once advised to mail himself a copy of anything he writes, by recorded delivery, and leave it sealed in the envelope. That way, he has at least some proof that the document existed at a given point in time (the day it was posted). Maybe something similar could be done for disks/printouts of source...
Speaking from personal experience, I graduated from University with a degree in Physics, and within two weeks of starting to look for a job, had got one as a programmer with a web agency.
That was just over 18 months ago, and in that time I've been promoted twice and have seen my salary more than double (and it didn't start off too badly, considering I had no relevant qualifications and very little experience).
Physics has a very strong Mathematical aspect, without being totally incomprehensible to us mere mortals (;-) ), plus you necessarily develop problem solving abilities. In our course at least, there was also a compulsory computing laboratory in the first two years, and a couple of other computing-related courses (which all teach basic programming conecpts, plus enough of a language that you can apply them).
Whatever you do decide to do, however, do it because you enjoy it, not because you hope that it'll take you into a career that pays shed-loads. It's better to be happy and comfortable, than rich and miserable (or so I'm told; I'm certainly not rich enough to know:-) )
Well, I don't know when it was that you last checked, but I've had cable for over a year now, and knew someone with cable about 4 years ago. (Not that it was especially unusual, but we were both students at the time:-) )
No, it's not particularly widespread, but it's not exactly unheard of either, and the cable companies (of which there are several) are increasing their coverage all the time. Most of the cities/large towns have at least partial coverage.
But Sun doesn't have a pay-for version on their own operating system that they're trying to steer everyone onto, thus winning both more sales of their app, *and* more sales of their os. (Not that I'm saying that that's what MS are doing, but that was the original poster's theme)
Of course, were StarOffice a commercial product on Solaris, (and Solaris have 80-90% of the market) it would be a different story...
One of the provisions of the Bill is that it gives the police the power to demand that you hand over the decryption key to any message that they have, if they believe that you are in possession of it.
Refusal is not an option - that carries a 2 year prison sentence (just telling people that the demand was made carries a 5 year term) - and you have to prove that you don't have it (they don't have to prove that you do).
I won't bother telling you how difficult it is to prove that you don't have something (especially when that something is just a collection of bits)...
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I think the problem (at least IMHO) is the expiring keys. (I have no problem with people profiting (fairly) from their work, or with them taking reasonable steps to protect their ability to do so.)
Right now, if I buy a CD, I own it forever, or at least until the disc is rendered unplayable for some reason. If I'm careful and/or I make backups, it should outlast me.
Not so with an expiring key. Suddenly, under this scheme, if I buy a song/album, I can only use it for a limited amount of time. At the end of that period, I either pay up again, or I don't get to listen to it anymore.
That's changing the rules - we'd no longer be buying the music (or even access to a copy of the music on a given physical medium), we'd be hiring it. Personally, when I buy something, I like the fact that it's mine "forever".
You can be pretty sure that, in the long run, this will cost us (the music buying public) more.
Cheers,
Tim
That's somewhat different, don't you think?
/. trolls, it is their fellow site users who choose to censor them, and you can *always* browse at -1 and read everything. Also, the trolls can (and do...) still post, and read the rest of the site.
In the case of
In the case of this telco, they've removed service to this user; no-one can access the site they were running, and they can't access the internet (at least via that connection).
Now, personally, I think they were dumb hosting the site on their telco's network, and that the telco was perfectly within its rights in withdrawing service (it is their network, after all).
Cheers,
Tim
I could do with one too.
/. and k5 whilst waiting for stuff to compile, thus wasting more time than is necessary (as it takes time to notice that my stuff is ready and waiting for me, and time to "just finish the bit I'm reading now"). I also wouldn't be sat there waiting for it to be ready, thinking "if only I had a faster machine, this wouldn't take so long" (I have a P3 450)
I write code, for fun and profit. Compiling code takes time; not huge amounts of it (I currently do all my coding in Java), but enough. (Previously, in C++, our in-house libraries could take an hour or more...)
With my current (work) machine, it can take anything between 2 and 5 minutes between making a change to the source, and getting so see whether or not that fixed the problem. That's time spent compiling the code (a few seconds), starting the server (a minute or so in debug mode), parsing and compiling the page(s) (a minute or so for an average jsp), etc. (I currently do jsp/servlet work, for web sites deployed on Linux boxes running Apache and Resin)
Much past 5:30pm, that's just too long (especially on a Saturday or Sunday...).
With a faster machine, the whole process would take less time (well, duh), and I'd be happier. I'd also be less inclined to read
No, the average user doesn't need that much speed; gamers, coders, 3d modellers/artists, people running number-crunching simulations, etc, do.
Cheers,
Tim
One time pads are completely unbreakable (read "Applied Cryptography" if you doubt me).
That's just as long as you never reuse the pad, the pad is truly random, and you never reveal the pad to anyone else.
The biggest problem with OTPs, as with most crypto systems, is key distribution. That's basically what this guy thinks he's solved, but I'm not convinced. As others have also said, I don't think it's unfeasible for an attacker to intercept the "start" message, and synchronise their reading of the stream (the pad) with that of the correspondents.
IMHO, the only truly secure way to distribute an OTP is to write it down/burn it to CD/whatever, and hand it to the other party yourself (then hope that no-one ever steals/copies it...). Then, the "only" problem you have is generating the random sequence in the first place, which is non-trivial (especially if you're planning on encrypting large messages, where patterns are more likely to show up if the sequence repeats)
Cheers,
Tim
Internet censorship has technical solutions.
And technical solutions can be legislated against...
Cheers,
Tim
Well that's pretty unremarkable. They've written a compression algorithm.
Yeah, mp3s are pretty unremarkable too...
Cheers,
Tim
Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm old enough to remember when a sound card was very much "extra hardware". Now you can't buy a (home) computer without one...
Given enough time, either the cost will decrease, or the utility increase, to the point where most homes have one.
Think about cars - dirty, noisy, smelly, dangerous, damaging to the environment, expensive, incredibly useful; it's a rare home that doesn't have at least one, despite all their bad points.
Cheers,
Tim
This is probably why wireless is so prevalent in England, too.
Is it? That's news to me, and I've lived here all my life...
Sure, mobile phones are everywhere (almost everyone I know owns one, but then, I guess you could say the same). Beyond that, and TV and radio, I know of no large-scale commercial wireless operations. (Certainly not wireless IP)
Do you have any facts to support that statement?
Cheers,
Tim
i18n = internationalisation
Apparently because it starts with an 'i', ends with an 'n', and has 18 letters in between...
Cheers,
Tim
Nah, people just starting out may not make enough (I know I didn't). People with a family may not.
;-) ), just different.
Indeed. I have a girlfriend and a one year old daughter, and am the sole earner. Thanks to buying a car (have you tried getting on or off a bus with a young child, pushchair and shopping?), my student loan (thanks to our previous government's decision to cut grants for higher education in the UK) and my girlfriend's loan, I make enough to cover our expenses and live reasonably comfortably, but not enough to save for a rainy day. I've also only been working now for just over 18 months; I don't know if that counts as "just starting out", though.
Given time, I'll have cleared the two loans (a bonus I've been promised in December, if I stick with my company (we've just been bought by a large corporate, though, so that remains to be seen) will clear one), then I'll be able to think about saving money.
Oh no, wait, then I'll have to think about getting a decent pension, and some life insurance.
If I didn't have my family, my life would be very different. Not better (although certainly richer, financially speaking
Have I screwed myself, at least temporarily? Perhaps, perhaps not.
Do I regret it? Not for a second.
Cheers,
Tim
I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk.
:-) )
That happened to my girlfriend once (she worked as a secretary, before giving up work (temporarily) to have our baby). She was given no notice whatsoever, just called in to see her boss, to be told that she was being made redundant, effective immediately.
She cleared out her desk, said her goodbyes, and was escorted out of the building. She did get her redunancy money, though, so it wasn't all bad, just a bit sudden (and she didn't like it there anyway; she was actually quite happy about it
The weirdest thing, though, was that her boss didn't know it was going to happen until that day; the order came down from above. She and a mutual friend who also worked there put it down to the evil machinations of one of the other secrataries, who had never liked her, was generally perceived as being a cow, but seemed to be adored by the upper managers...
Aren't office politics great?
Cheers,
Tim
Once analog signals are turned off and replaced completly with digital (I predict 5-10 years)
Last I heard, when they were just starting to roll out digital TV, here in the UK the plan was to stop broadcasting analogue in 2 years or so; that puts it mid 2002, if memory serves me.
I don't know about the US, but I think you may be a little off at 5-10 years.
Cheers,
Tim
You pay to buy a license to the movies.
And that is half the problem; the world has gone licence mad. Everyone who's selling something is looking for ways to squeeze more and more money out of people, while everyone who is buying is doing their best to pay as little as possible. The sensible thing to do, it seems to me, is to strive to strike a balance. Unfortunately, neither side seems willing to even try; in my experience, though, it's Business that is the most die-hard in its stance. Consumers tend to be a little more willing to put up and pay up.
And as for TV shows, you're getting them for free.
So what is my cable provider charging me for each month? If I don't pay, I don't get to watch the shows. No, I'm not paying per show, but I am paying to receive the channels that they're shown on. Doesn't sound like "free" to me.
Cheers,
Tim
In the UK, anything that you create that is capable of being copyrighted, is automatically copyrighted. There is no need to register it.
On the other hand, my brother (who writes a little), was once advised to mail himself a copy of anything he writes, by recorded delivery, and leave it sealed in the envelope. That way, he has at least some proof that the document existed at a given point in time (the day it was posted). Maybe something similar could be done for disks/printouts of source...
Cheers,
Tim
Speaking from personal experience, I graduated from University with a degree in Physics, and within two weeks of starting to look for a job, had got one as a programmer with a web agency.
;-) ), plus you necessarily develop problem solving abilities. In our course at least, there was also a compulsory computing laboratory in the first two years, and a couple of other computing-related courses (which all teach basic programming conecpts, plus enough of a language that you can apply them).
:-) )
That was just over 18 months ago, and in that time I've been promoted twice and have seen my salary more than double (and it didn't start off too badly, considering I had no relevant qualifications and very little experience).
Physics has a very strong Mathematical aspect, without being totally incomprehensible to us mere mortals (
Whatever you do decide to do, however, do it because you enjoy it, not because you hope that it'll take you into a career that pays shed-loads. It's better to be happy and comfortable, than rich and miserable (or so I'm told; I'm certainly not rich enough to know
Cheers,
Tim
Well, I don't know when it was that you last checked, but I've had cable for over a year now, and knew someone with cable about 4 years ago. (Not that it was especially unusual, but we were both students at the time :-) )
No, it's not particularly widespread, but it's not exactly unheard of either, and the cable companies (of which there are several) are increasing their coverage all the time. Most of the cities/large towns have at least partial coverage.
Cheers,
Tim
And there I was, thinking that the comment was a joke... :-)
Cheers,
Tim
Is this a bad thing?
I'd think so, if it was my email address they managed to hit...
Cheers,
Tim
Not so fast - they have a plugin available for Netscape and IE at:
. pl?tsb=443224
http://www.lizardtech.com/cgi-bin/products/desc
Cheers,
Tim
We're all under the illusion that there is a such thing as perpetual freefall.
There is; that's what being in orbit is.
Cheers,
Tim
Now, I don't mean to be picky or anything, but "emacs operating system"?
:-)
Emacs isn't (quite) large enough to qualify as an os just yet
Cheers,
Tim
I just got the same behaviour on my Slackware 7.1 box...
Shame really, I'm really looking forward to being able to replace Netscape 4.x...
Cheers,
Tim
But Sun doesn't have a pay-for version on their own operating system that they're trying to steer everyone onto, thus winning both more sales of their app, *and* more sales of their os. (Not that I'm saying that that's what MS are doing, but that was the original poster's theme)
Of course, were StarOffice a commercial product on Solaris, (and Solaris have 80-90% of the market) it would be a different story...
Cheers,
Tim
Aside from encouraging everyone I know to use PGP
One of the provisions of the Bill is that it gives the police the power to demand that you hand over the decryption key to any message that they have, if they believe that you are in possession of it.
Refusal is not an option - that carries a 2 year prison sentence (just telling people that the demand was made carries a 5 year term) - and you have to prove that you don't have it (they don't have to prove that you do).
I won't bother telling you how difficult it is to prove that you don't have something (especially when that something is just a collection of bits)...
Cheers,
Tim
Go read the page at kuro5hin.org - they're not down, they're off; they've taken the site down and have no immediate plans to put it back up.
This isn't a hiccup, this could well be the end of k5.
Tim