I find it interesting that everyone is referring to the non-believers as "crackpots".
One thing that always stood out in my mind was a High School teacher of mine telling us that the gas chambers used to kill people in Dachau way back when was equivelant to the gas chambers in "current" (1994?) federal penitentiaries.
Up untill that moment I had no reason to doubt the Holocaust. After that, however, I started to wonder - not doubt, mind you - but wonder.
Is it really such a hard thing to find a hint of disbelief in? Way back when, on their first attempt, people rounded up millions of Jews, located and locked them up in concentration camps, tortured them a bit, killed them, and buried them safely back in earth.
I mean come on, yeah, in all likelihood it happened, but can you say that with absolute certainty that it DID happen (or as close to absolute certainty that reality will allow)? Are you so certain as to be able to label those who disagree with you as crackpots without even talking to them first?
Again, if you somehow try to refute it, I point you to a olace with more inhabitants than the US, namely the EU, where gun control is in effect, to the betterment of society. leading to less deaths and less violence...just look up the facts
i dont dispute that there is less death and violence in EU... however the key point here is there is less death and violence in ALL FORMS, not just gun related. or, in other words, americans kill each other and hurt each other more than other westernized countries, even if you take guns out of the equation. guns are not the problem, and banning them is a kludge, and one that might cause more problems than it solves.
dont be daft. OF COURSE you should care whether its a legal gun or not, because you can't control illegal guns, only legal ones. if 75% of those deaths were caused by illegal guns, gun control will only alleviate 25% of the deaths.
what, you think criminals care about gun control laws?
maybe he would have just built a fertilizer bomb and blew up a hospital instead, killing far more people. how do you know we arent BETTER off because of him having a gun?
homicidal maniacs kill people. guns have nothing do do with it.
as far as accidents go... how many people are killed each day by cars? better ban them too!
here at University of Florida, the percentage of a student's rent that pays for their internet connection is negligible. negligible, as in, less than $10 per month. now, if you want to argue that we are being unfair by blocking p2p, then you're a fucking moron.
and our bandwidth dropped from near peak average, to less than half peak average, after blocking just 412 and 6699. so yeah, we're blowing this WAY out of proportion.
please re-read my original post. i didn't say that it was insecure, i said that it was insecure, "for the purposes of data that will continue to remain critical and proprietary for long periods of time." and there's no denying that, especially when one takes moore's (pseudo)law into effect. what took 4 years when started in 1998, might only take 2 years when started in 2002. and so on.
or, to put it another way - you're head IT director of random multibillion dollar international corporation. you have several documents that, if they were to fall into the hands of your leading competitor, could cost you billions of dollars of revenue over the next 5 or ten years. said competitor has been known in the past to engage heavily in corporate espionage, and could theoretically gain access to the encrypted documents. would you feel safe with RC5-64?
you, sir, are the one to completely miss the point. on multiple counts, actually.
Many people seem to think that this proves that the security is now insecure, or that the 300,000+ volunteers and 4 years of work means that this is an impractical security breach and the award is meaningless. The boat left you standing on the dock.
well, yes, basically it DOES prove its insecure, for the purposes of data that will continue to remain critical and proprietary for long periods of time. if you have trade secrets that would be valuable to your competitors even 6 years from now, RC5-64 just isn't good enough - they could crack it by then.
The security challenge isn't just "super tough" to crack, or "practically impossible", but required exactly X bajillion processor cycles to crack. It's like the difference between "water freezes when it gets really cold," and "water freezes at 0 Celcius."
so if someone else tried to brute force RC5-65, they would guess wrong the exact same number of times that distributed.net did before guessing correctly? do you even realize how brute force works?
The real question on my mind is whether or not that $10,000 prize will be distributed among the 300,000+ distributed volunteers.
an even precursory glance at the distributed.net website would explain exactly how the cash is split.
Heh, it took a world-wide effort of thousands of computers over 1700 days. I don't think there is any debate at all; they proved the opposite of what they set out to prove.:)
no, they're completely correct. re-read their statement (emphasis mine):
we can say with confidence that RC5-64 is not an appropriate algorithm to use for data that will still be sensitive in more than several years' time.
if you are interested in decrypting a competitor's proprietary information, you don't need to do it in weeks or even months. several years may still be very worth the wait - in which case, RC5-64 would not be appropriate for that data, just as they said.
you've repeatedly tried to emphasize that learning simple arithmatic by rote is bad and harmful, and you're just plain WRONG. people SHOULD know how to do basic math in their head. if someone needs a calculator to know that 7*8 = 56, or to figure out that 15% of $5.34 ~ 0.79, then i feel sorry for that person. dedicating one semester or so in elementary school, to provide functionality that will benefit you your entire life, is certainly a good thing.
and normal people do indeed use algebra in their day to day life. if you think they dont, then you don't know what algebra is. here's a hint: knowing algebra doesnt involve memorizing a lot of formulas, and a normal calculator isn't going to help you solve an algebraic problem if you dont understand the basic concepts.
The Consumer should never be forced to change, the manufacturers should offer what the consumer wants.
i want a 10-megaton nuclear weapon. i'm a consumer. the market should offer me what i want damnit!
whats that you say? i CANT buy a 10-megaton nuclear weapon? whats this hogwash about treaties and bans and whatnot? the consumer should never be forced to change!!!
ok, well, i want a fully automatic submachine gun. what? i can't have one? what the hell, stupid lawmakers are taking away all my freedoms!! wahh wahhh!!
face it, if some idiot yuppie with too much money wants to buy a big gas guzzling SUV that will shit exhaust all over the environment, then he can damn well suck it. i don't pity him. he can donate money to ford to help fund them researching a more fuel-efficient Ford Exhorbitant.
suvs are a blight on the surburban landscape. sometimes, the psychology of the consumer SHOULD change. consumers arent always right.
did you fail to notice the whole "transition from 2nd edition rules to 3rd edition rules" thing?
Hits close to home...
on
Built For Use
·
· Score: 2, Funny
One day our previous webmaster, in a fit of god-knows-what, decided to replace our old site with an unholy conglomeration of geometric shapes that constituted the links to other sections of the site. The orange square, for instance, linked to the personnel page, while the yellow circle linked to the upcoming events, et cetera. As if that wasn't bad enough, they actually floated around the page w/ flash! He thought this was very cutting edge and would impress people.
bad analogy. a better one would be, if you hired a personal secretary to keep track of your appointments, phone book, etc. and also get your mail. then, without telling you beforehand, she replaced all the ads in your magazines with ads from other companies that were paying her to do so.
now, i dont know what legal territory this falls under, but considering the large scale, this could almost be seen as a form of denial of service or fraud or something. i dont think its nearly as cut and dry as you make it out to be.
yeah. we wouldnt want them getting involved if someone stole $10,000 from a bank. the bank should just eat the losses. corporations have no right to profit, and we sure as hell shouldn't waste our taxpayer money trying to help them.
No, you're not, anymore than you are "stealing" if you rent a car agreeing to not drive it faster than 65 MPH, then take it out on the highway and top it out at 120 MPH.
well, you'd be right, except for two things:
1. bandwidth is a shared resource. you using more means i get less.
2. bandwidth costs money. when you exceed your allocated limit, you are using more than you paid for. most people call that "theft."
therefore, your analogy sucks. a much better analogy is using a blackbox to get HBO for free, or even simply splicing into your neighbors cable to get free cable. and guess what? both of those are crimes.
First of this comes from __MS__ NBC, notice the two words MS. So william is up to his old tricks again.
hey! thanks for pointing that out! i never would have noticed otherwise, that the two words MS appeared in MSNBC, but after you took the time to seperate it out with underscores, i really took notice!
the first 30 posters who pointed this out just didnt really get their point across well, but yours did the trick! thanks again!
p.s. referring to bill gates as "william" was a nice touch, it made me LOL! keep up the good work!
Slashdot Mirror
huh? are you a blithering idiot? did you not even bother to read the parent to my original post? go read it now, please.
I find it interesting that everyone is referring to the non-believers as "crackpots".
One thing that always stood out in my mind was a High School teacher of mine telling us that the gas chambers used to kill people in Dachau way back when was equivelant to the gas chambers in "current" (1994?) federal penitentiaries.
Up untill that moment I had no reason to doubt the Holocaust. After that, however, I started to wonder - not doubt, mind you - but wonder.
Is it really such a hard thing to find a hint of disbelief in? Way back when, on their first attempt, people rounded up millions of Jews, located and locked them up in concentration camps, tortured them a bit, killed them, and buried them safely back in earth.
I mean come on, yeah, in all likelihood it happened, but can you say that with absolute certainty that it DID happen (or as close to absolute certainty that reality will allow)? Are you so certain as to be able to label those who disagree with you as crackpots without even talking to them first?
Again, if you somehow try to refute it, I point you to a olace with more inhabitants than the US, namely the EU, where gun control is in effect, to the betterment of society. leading to less deaths and less violence...just look up the facts
i dont dispute that there is less death and violence in EU... however the key point here is there is less death and violence in ALL FORMS, not just gun related. or, in other words, americans kill each other and hurt each other more than other westernized countries, even if you take guns out of the equation. guns are not the problem, and banning them is a kludge, and one that might cause more problems than it solves.
But who cares if it's a legal gun or not?
dont be daft. OF COURSE you should care whether its a legal gun or not, because you can't control illegal guns, only legal ones. if 75% of those deaths were caused by illegal guns, gun control will only alleviate 25% of the deaths.
what, you think criminals care about gun control laws?
maybe he would have just built a fertilizer bomb and blew up a hospital instead, killing far more people. how do you know we arent BETTER off because of him having a gun?
homicidal maniacs kill people. guns have nothing do do with it.
as far as accidents go... how many people are killed each day by cars? better ban them too!
here at University of Florida, the percentage of a student's rent that pays for their internet connection is negligible. negligible, as in, less than $10 per month. now, if you want to argue that we are being unfair by blocking p2p, then you're a fucking moron.
and our bandwidth dropped from near peak average, to less than half peak average, after blocking just 412 and 6699. so yeah, we're blowing this WAY out of proportion.
RC5-64 has been proven "insecure"? Hardly
please re-read my original post. i didn't say that it was insecure, i said that it was insecure, "for the purposes of data that will continue to remain critical and proprietary for long periods of time." and there's no denying that, especially when one takes moore's (pseudo)law into effect. what took 4 years when started in 1998, might only take 2 years when started in 2002. and so on.
or, to put it another way - you're head IT director of random multibillion dollar international corporation. you have several documents that, if they were to fall into the hands of your leading competitor, could cost you billions of dollars of revenue over the next 5 or ten years. said competitor has been known in the past to engage heavily in corporate espionage, and could theoretically gain access to the encrypted documents. would you feel safe with RC5-64?
you, sir, are the one to completely miss the point. on multiple counts, actually.
Many people seem to think that this proves that the security is now insecure, or that the 300,000+ volunteers and 4 years of work means that this is an impractical security breach and the award is meaningless. The boat left you standing on the dock.
well, yes, basically it DOES prove its insecure, for the purposes of data that will continue to remain critical and proprietary for long periods of time. if you have trade secrets that would be valuable to your competitors even 6 years from now, RC5-64 just isn't good enough - they could crack it by then.
The security challenge isn't just "super tough" to crack, or "practically impossible", but required exactly X bajillion processor cycles to crack. It's like the difference between "water freezes when it gets really cold," and "water freezes at 0 Celcius."
so if someone else tried to brute force RC5-65, they would guess wrong the exact same number of times that distributed.net did before guessing correctly? do you even realize how brute force works?
The real question on my mind is whether or not that $10,000 prize will be distributed among the 300,000+ distributed volunteers.
an even precursory glance at the distributed.net website would explain exactly how the cash is split.
Heh, it took a world-wide effort of thousands of computers over 1700 days. I don't think there is any debate at all; they proved the opposite of what they set out to prove. :)
no, they're completely correct. re-read their statement (emphasis mine):
we can say with confidence that RC5-64 is not an appropriate algorithm to use for data that will still be sensitive in more than several years' time.
if you are interested in decrypting a competitor's proprietary information, you don't need to do it in weeks or even months. several years may still be very worth the wait - in which case, RC5-64 would not be appropriate for that data, just as they said.
and it's so difficult to create a new user account that can post any number of times per day.
quit whining, please.
you've repeatedly tried to emphasize that learning simple arithmatic by rote is bad and harmful, and you're just plain WRONG. people SHOULD know how to do basic math in their head. if someone needs a calculator to know that 7*8 = 56, or to figure out that 15% of $5.34 ~ 0.79, then i feel sorry for that person. dedicating one semester or so in elementary school, to provide functionality that will benefit you your entire life, is certainly a good thing.
and normal people do indeed use algebra in their day to day life. if you think they dont, then you don't know what algebra is. here's a hint: knowing algebra doesnt involve memorizing a lot of formulas, and a normal calculator isn't going to help you solve an algebraic problem if you dont understand the basic concepts.
now that was a classic series. anyone remember the secret commander keen level in doom ][?
gotta love easter eggs....
The Consumer should never be forced to change, the manufacturers should offer what the consumer wants.
i want a 10-megaton nuclear weapon. i'm a consumer. the market should offer me what i want damnit!
whats that you say? i CANT buy a 10-megaton nuclear weapon? whats this hogwash about treaties and bans and whatnot? the consumer should never be forced to change!!!
ok, well, i want a fully automatic submachine gun. what? i can't have one? what the hell, stupid lawmakers are taking away all my freedoms!! wahh wahhh!!
face it, if some idiot yuppie with too much money wants to buy a big gas guzzling SUV that will shit exhaust all over the environment, then he can damn well suck it. i don't pity him. he can donate money to ford to help fund them researching a more fuel-efficient Ford Exhorbitant.
suvs are a blight on the surburban landscape. sometimes, the psychology of the consumer SHOULD change. consumers arent always right.
so we're going to arrest italian policemen, under U.S. law? for a crime they commited while in Italy?
um... didnt we get bent out of shape when this happened to skylarov, but now we're advocating doing it ourselves?
welcome to slashdot, where hypocracy isn't just for breakfast anymore.
parent comment was very gay. i laughed out loud.
$14 per month X 12 months per year = $168
$168 > $99
so, did you have a point?
did you fail to notice the whole "transition from 2nd edition rules to 3rd edition rules" thing?
One day our previous webmaster, in a fit of god-knows-what, decided to replace our old site with an unholy conglomeration of geometric shapes that constituted the links to other sections of the site. The orange square, for instance, linked to the personnel page, while the yellow circle linked to the upcoming events, et cetera. As if that wasn't bad enough, they actually floated around the page w/ flash! He thought this was very cutting edge and would impress people.
He resigned shortly thereafter.
bad analogy. a better one would be, if you hired a personal secretary to keep track of your appointments, phone book, etc. and also get your mail. then, without telling you beforehand, she replaced all the ads in your magazines with ads from other companies that were paying her to do so.
now, i dont know what legal territory this falls under, but considering the large scale, this could almost be seen as a form of denial of service or fraud or something. i dont think its nearly as cut and dry as you make it out to be.
yeah. we wouldnt want them getting involved if someone stole $10,000 from a bank. the bank should just eat the losses. corporations have no right to profit, and we sure as hell shouldn't waste our taxpayer money trying to help them.
this is different how exactly?
No, you're not, anymore than you are "stealing" if you rent a car agreeing to not drive it faster than 65 MPH, then take it out on the highway and top it out at 120 MPH.
well, you'd be right, except for two things:
1. bandwidth is a shared resource. you using more means i get less.
2. bandwidth costs money. when you exceed your allocated limit, you are using more than you paid for. most people call that "theft."
therefore, your analogy sucks. a much better analogy is using a blackbox to get HBO for free, or even simply splicing into your neighbors cable to get free cable. and guess what? both of those are crimes.
since when is theft of service legal?
people used significantly more bandwidth than they paid for, therefore, they broke the law. how hard is that to understand?
oh yeah, and abraham lincoln (altho not a founding father, still a very influential figure in american history)
how about james madison?
or benjamin franklin?
john adamn, perhaps?
thomas paine?
http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/founders.htm
http://www.postfun.com/pfp/worbois.html
zing!
First of this comes from __MS__ NBC, notice the two words MS. So william is up to his old tricks again.
hey! thanks for pointing that out! i never would have noticed otherwise, that the two words MS appeared in MSNBC, but after you took the time to seperate it out with underscores, i really took notice!
the first 30 posters who pointed this out just didnt really get their point across well, but yours did the trick! thanks again!
p.s. referring to bill gates as "william" was a nice touch, it made me LOL! keep up the good work!