Y'know, it probably would have taken you less time to click on the article link and read the first six paragraphs, which would answer your question, than post it here. But I guess that's why we're seeing your comment on Slashdot...
So worrying about Google when Microsoft is around isn't especially rational.
Google has become a major gatekeeper to the world's information. There's plenty of opportunity for abuse in that alone. The reason to "worry about" a company like Google is that it's better to anticipate problem scenarios so that there might be a chance of doing something to guard against them. There wouldn't be much need to worry about Google if it had a number of strong competitors. It doesn't. It's a public company that's run by professional management and lawyers, like any other company, with a resposibility only to its shareholders, as customary in U.S. business. In such companies, notions like "social responsibility" tend to get pushed aside by more immediate concerns. You can't rely on mammoth effective monopolies to police themselves.
God creating the laws and principles that we understand as mathematics, thermodynamics, mechanics, relativity, chemistry, inheritance and selection etc. etc. - lighting the blue touch paper and knowing
The funny thing is that the Bible completely allows for this possibility, by saying in various ways that God is beyond our understanding. The Creationists are actually trivializing God and denying the Bible when they claim that Genesis is a literal description - they're arrogantly assuming that they understand how God created the universe, based on a description intended for people who live thousands of years ago which much less understanding of science. Of course, if God exists, She knows that the Creationists are just People of Little Brain, so probably isn't too pissed at them.
You had me worried for a second there. I was going to reply and ask what the evidence for Heaven and Hell is... (I've seen plenty of "evidence" for God, but then again I've seen plenty of evidence for Bigfoot, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Loch Ness Monster.)
Bush and the rest of his cabal care about getting a Republican president in his place, so right before a Presidential election, they don't want to have to choose between scaring moderate swing voters and upsetting their religious base.
Roy Moore was not reinstated, but has remained on the media circuit, and has announced his intentions to run for governor in 2006 against incumbent Gov. Bob Riley.
"As Republican strategists weigh the party's prospects for 2006 and 2008, they are increasingly worried about a political confrontation with Roy S. Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who became a hero to religious conservatives when he refused to follow a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state's judicial building. Moore, a Republican who enjoys widespread support in his home state, is poised to run against a vulnerable Republican governor. If he wins, some party strategists speculate, he could defy a federal court order again by erecting a religious monument outside the Alabama State Capitol building. With the 2008 presidential race looming, President Bush would then face a no-win decision: either call out the National Guard to enforce a court order against a religious display on state grounds or allow a fellow born-again Christian to defy the courts."
I thought Judge Roy might have quietly gotten reinstated as an ordinary judge in the meantime, after the media fuss had died down.
My backup theory is that having two Judge Moores in Alabama can mean only one thing, the explanation for which can be found in the entry for Alabama on this page.
The article mentions Judge Moore, and this is Alabama. Is this the same Judge Moore that was removed from office for refusing to get rid of his statue of the ten commandments?
If so, I say his sanction of Jack Thompson is obviously correct. It takes one (wacko) to know one.
Try skimming the article a little further down, it addresses the points you raise, e.g. "There's no question that our senior management made major mistakes in vendor selection and management." But I have good news for you: your ability to write a plausible but detail-free "executive summary" qualifies you for a management job at IBM Global Services!
Yes, that's true, however, it doesn't negate the reduction in MD5s value. For one: any system that uses one-way hashed password storage or key generation mechanism, as many sites use, is now some percentage easier to violate because multiple strings may resolve to same hash.
That's not correct, in general. The fact that "multiple strings may resolve to the same hash" is a given, with any hashing system, because the number of bits in the original is larger than the number of bits in the hash, so there are more combinations of strings than there are of hashes, therefore "multiple strings may resolve to same hash".
This exploit makes it possible to generate collisions, but as the OP points out, that doesn't help you in the password hashing case since you don't know the text that you're trying to generate a collision for, and in any case, it seems the algorithm doesn't let you pick your source text.
If the current result somehow shows that MD5 suffers from more collisions than other hash algorithms, then that might make it "some percentage easier to violate" than was previously known to be the case. As it is, the weakness of MD5 for password hashes doesn't seem to have been demonstrated.
I'd be sorely tempted to order three or four pallets of blank paper and send that over with "Linux 2.7" scribbled on the boxes and just take whatever fines that earns you:).
Why would there be a fine? IBM could point out that it was the paper budgeted for use in work related to 2.7 kernel development, and that they were merely exercising responsible due diligence, to avoid SCO having any cause for complaint about withholding of material. This would also have the benefit that for SCO's next request, IBM could file a counter-request asking for its paper back so that it could satisfy the new request.
(If I as a conservative feel this way one year into his term, I can't imagine how you pinko liberals feel.)
It's not about right vs. left, it's about intelligence vs. stupidity. George Bush is the dumbest president in living memory. You have to be dumber than he is not to recognize that. Unfortunately, George Bush is apparently right around median intelligence, which means that nearly half of America is, in fact, dumber than he is. (The rest are wealthy and think they know which side their bread is buttered on.)
They got lucky. Part of the reason they are successful is because they never innovate and spend as little as possible on engineering and R&D.
No, they didn't get lucky. I'm guessing maybe you're too young to remember the degree to which Michael Dell revolutionized PC manufacturing, marketing and sales when he started the company. Sure, today, they're just exploiting the hell out of the model that Michael Dell set up, but luck had very little to do with it. Microsoft got lucky, with the whole IBM deal and the monopoly thing. Dell did something quite rare: built a major business from scratch in a highly competitive market, achieving success the old-fashioned way: out-competing his competitors.
Measuring open source projects based on their ranking on Sourceforge only makes sense if those projects host their development files and release files through Sourceforge! Drupal doesn't.
Does the Google video viewer even run on your Win98 system? The system requirements say that it requires "Windows 2000 or later with latest updates installed".
One way they can tell if you're blocking ads is if the ad server doesn't receive an HTTP request from you for the ad. Clever blocker software could get around this by requesting the ad but just not displaying it.
Tell you what: why don't you get together a group of geeks who all refuse to write free software. I'm sure I don't need to tell Kent M. Pitman how that'll work out. So, what's your point, or your suggestion for a better way? Ultimately, you're complaining about the fact that there are 5.999 billion people other than you on this planet, competing quite fiercly, in all sorts of ways for all sorts of resources. I'm guessing you had a very sheltered childhood in which this reality was hidden from you, and it's taking an inordinately long time for the truth to sink in.
Would you take the Commissariat for Food over Wendy's?
That's a tough choice, really. Left to myself, I would never set foot in another Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King etc. I occasionally get dragged there by friends, and I always wonder to myself what went wrong to cause mass-market food to suck so badly.
Yes, I know that many people seem to acquire a taste for it in childhood, and then are unable to kick the addiction to the endorphin rush that follows from a big hit of fat, sugar and salt, but a societally-sanctioned drug addiction which leads to obesity hardly seems like the sort of thing which makes democracy great.
Perhaps the idea is to be able to squash enemies merely by sitting on them...
Neither New Jersey or Virginia makes any distinction between DUI and DWI. California's law talks about DUI only and covers both the categories you mention under that definition (details here). My previous impression was that they were just different acronyms used by different states. It's not like the distinction in the English words "under influence" and "while intoxicated" actually means anything - if anything, one implies the other. What you wrote seems to imply you see a distinction, but that's really determined by the legal definitions you're apparently familiar with.
Apparently some states use both, that's news to me. I've never lived in a state that does. The only thing I know about Maryland is that they have the worst speedtraps on I-95 when driving through on the way to DC, so it figures they'd also have confusing drunk driving laws...;)
Keep in mind this is DUI and *NOT* DWI. DUI is very subjective and you can be charged with it for any trace amounts of alchohol in your system.
Afaict, different states use different acronyms for roughly the same crime. There's no defined difference between DUI and DWI, although different states will have different exact interpretations of whichever acronym they use. I haven't heard of anywhere that uses both (although I suppose it's not impossible). Here's a list of definitions of legal terms associated with drunk driving.
it's evident that the nation isn't just standing idly by and enjoying watching these delicious little tarts parading their flesh on the high street.
That sounds just like the Taliban, except for the ironic inclusion of the adjective "delicious", which gives away the real issue: temptation.
This sort of behavior is only possible in very civilized countries. In most other environments, such young women would soon encounter some unpleasant consequences of their behavior, in the form of predatory and violent males unrestricted by the threat of legal consequences.
The reason the behavior of these young women is so frowned on is that it breaks the mostly unwritten social compact which most nations follow. This compact has been taken to its extreme by the Taliban and other Islamic theocratic goverments: don't tempt us (men) and we'll protect you (women). Tempt us, and all bets are off.
The so-called morals referred to by the OP are in fact a reflection of a primitive culture that hasn't gotten too far beyond the caveman stage. The next time you see a semi-naked, drunk young thing staggering down the street, marvel at what a free and open society you live in, repress the urge to bonk her over the head and drag her back to your apartment, and pat yourself on the back for your own part in a real civilization.
Slashdot Mirror
Y'know, it probably would have taken you less time to click on the article link and read the first six paragraphs, which would answer your question, than post it here. But I guess that's why we're seeing your comment on Slashdot...
Google has become a major gatekeeper to the world's information. There's plenty of opportunity for abuse in that alone. The reason to "worry about" a company like Google is that it's better to anticipate problem scenarios so that there might be a chance of doing something to guard against them. There wouldn't be much need to worry about Google if it had a number of strong competitors. It doesn't. It's a public company that's run by professional management and lawyers, like any other company, with a resposibility only to its shareholders, as customary in U.S. business. In such companies, notions like "social responsibility" tend to get pushed aside by more immediate concerns. You can't rely on mammoth effective monopolies to police themselves.
The funny thing is that the Bible completely allows for this possibility, by saying in various ways that God is beyond our understanding. The Creationists are actually trivializing God and denying the Bible when they claim that Genesis is a literal description - they're arrogantly assuming that they understand how God created the universe, based on a description intended for people who live thousands of years ago which much less understanding of science. Of course, if God exists, She knows that the Creationists are just People of Little Brain, so probably isn't too pissed at them.
You had me worried for a second there. I was going to reply and ask what the evidence for Heaven and Hell is... (I've seen plenty of "evidence" for God, but then again I've seen plenty of evidence for Bigfoot, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Loch Ness Monster.)
Bush and the rest of his cabal care about getting a Republican president in his place, so right before a Presidential election, they don't want to have to choose between scaring moderate swing voters and upsetting their religious base.
I like the story here:
I thought Judge Roy might have quietly gotten reinstated as an ordinary judge in the meantime, after the media fuss had died down. My backup theory is that having two Judge Moores in Alabama can mean only one thing, the explanation for which can be found in the entry for Alabama on this page.
The article mentions Judge Moore, and this is Alabama. Is this the same Judge Moore that was removed from office for refusing to get rid of his statue of the ten commandments? If so, I say his sanction of Jack Thompson is obviously correct. It takes one (wacko) to know one.
Try skimming the article a little further down, it addresses the points you raise, e.g. "There's no question that our senior management made major mistakes in vendor selection and management." But I have good news for you: your ability to write a plausible but detail-free "executive summary" qualifies you for a management job at IBM Global Services!
That's not correct, in general. The fact that "multiple strings may resolve to the same hash" is a given, with any hashing system, because the number of bits in the original is larger than the number of bits in the hash, so there are more combinations of strings than there are of hashes, therefore "multiple strings may resolve to same hash".
This exploit makes it possible to generate collisions, but as the OP points out, that doesn't help you in the password hashing case since you don't know the text that you're trying to generate a collision for, and in any case, it seems the algorithm doesn't let you pick your source text.
If the current result somehow shows that MD5 suffers from more collisions than other hash algorithms, then that might make it "some percentage easier to violate" than was previously known to be the case. As it is, the weakness of MD5 for password hashes doesn't seem to have been demonstrated.
Why would there be a fine? IBM could point out that it was the paper budgeted for use in work related to 2.7 kernel development, and that they were merely exercising responsible due diligence, to avoid SCO having any cause for complaint about withholding of material. This would also have the benefit that for SCO's next request, IBM could file a counter-request asking for its paper back so that it could satisfy the new request.
Along these lines, someone has already proposed providing the lighting industry with trade protection against the Sun: Bastiat's Petition.
No, they didn't get lucky. I'm guessing maybe you're too young to remember the degree to which Michael Dell revolutionized PC manufacturing, marketing and sales when he started the company. Sure, today, they're just exploiting the hell out of the model that Michael Dell set up, but luck had very little to do with it. Microsoft got lucky, with the whole IBM deal and the monopoly thing. Dell did something quite rare: built a major business from scratch in a highly competitive market, achieving success the old-fashioned way: out-competing his competitors.
Measuring open source projects based on their ranking on Sourceforge only makes sense if those projects host their development files and release files through Sourceforge! Drupal doesn't.
Does the Google video viewer even run on your Win98 system? The system requirements say that it requires "Windows 2000 or later with latest updates installed".
One way they can tell if you're blocking ads is if the ad server doesn't receive an HTTP request from you for the ad. Clever blocker software could get around this by requesting the ad but just not displaying it.
Tell you what: why don't you get together a group of geeks who all refuse to write free software. I'm sure I don't need to tell Kent M. Pitman how that'll work out. So, what's your point, or your suggestion for a better way? Ultimately, you're complaining about the fact that there are 5.999 billion people other than you on this planet, competing quite fiercly, in all sorts of ways for all sorts of resources. I'm guessing you had a very sheltered childhood in which this reality was hidden from you, and it's taking an inordinately long time for the truth to sink in.
To the moderator who gave the parent a Flamebait mod: I suggest you switch your crack dealer.
Happy to oblige. People with no imagination hardly deserve to live, anyway.
As you draw your last breath, ponder this: why did you choose to read a discussion about Star Wars, if you're not interested in it?
That's a tough choice, really. Left to myself, I would never set foot in another Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King etc. I occasionally get dragged there by friends, and I always wonder to myself what went wrong to cause mass-market food to suck so badly.
Yes, I know that many people seem to acquire a taste for it in childhood, and then are unable to kick the addiction to the endorphin rush that follows from a big hit of fat, sugar and salt, but a societally-sanctioned drug addiction which leads to obesity hardly seems like the sort of thing which makes democracy great.
Perhaps the idea is to be able to squash enemies merely by sitting on them...
Neither New Jersey or Virginia makes any distinction between DUI and DWI. California's law talks about DUI only and covers both the categories you mention under that definition (details here). My previous impression was that they were just different acronyms used by different states. It's not like the distinction in the English words "under influence" and "while intoxicated" actually means anything - if anything, one implies the other. What you wrote seems to imply you see a distinction, but that's really determined by the legal definitions you're apparently familiar with.
Apparently some states use both, that's news to me. I've never lived in a state that does. The only thing I know about Maryland is that they have the worst speedtraps on I-95 when driving through on the way to DC, so it figures they'd also have confusing drunk driving laws... ;)
That sounds just like the Taliban, except for the ironic inclusion of the adjective "delicious", which gives away the real issue: temptation.
This sort of behavior is only possible in very civilized countries. In most other environments, such young women would soon encounter some unpleasant consequences of their behavior, in the form of predatory and violent males unrestricted by the threat of legal consequences.
The reason the behavior of these young women is so frowned on is that it breaks the mostly unwritten social compact which most nations follow. This compact has been taken to its extreme by the Taliban and other Islamic theocratic goverments: don't tempt us (men) and we'll protect you (women). Tempt us, and all bets are off.
The so-called morals referred to by the OP are in fact a reflection of a primitive culture that hasn't gotten too far beyond the caveman stage. The next time you see a semi-naked, drunk young thing staggering down the street, marvel at what a free and open society you live in, repress the urge to bonk her over the head and drag her back to your apartment, and pat yourself on the back for your own part in a real civilization.