The "Avalance is vaporware" vibe is a true one, but let's give Microsoft a chance for a real-world test before we cast our lots.
Or, we could just go ahead and fork a version of bittorrent that'll do what Avalanche is supposed to before they get the chance to make a release of their own.
I'm sure there are enough programmers lying around (they grow on trees, I hear) who believe the idea behind Avalanche is a viable one and they'd be trusted to make a decent effort to beat the original.
It'd be funny if the best bittorrent fork sucked compared to the original but was faster than anything MS puts out when they eventually get around to it.
It's worth mentioning that the crusades were most effective in removing the excess number of knights roving about Europe. Nobles were multiplying like rabbits but Europe had run out of wars to fight so the Pope had to devise a way to get them out of everyone's hair.
As added incentive the Pope guaranteed that if you died on crusade you'd be fast-tracked for heaven. Ever heard the term "jihad"?
I read a lot about China having a problem with numbers of unwed men roving the countryside in bands and harassing people. There's cultural incentive to have a son rather than a daughter and with population restrictions people generally go for one son putting women at a premium. I keep waiting for someone to get the bright idea to give these men a crusade. That'll be exciting.
I quit using Linux about a month ago opting for OSX. JWZ did the same thing about a week ago. Now this guy is knocking linux, and wouldn't you know it: he works on a BSD.
No one seems to be approaching this from the technical viewpoint, so I will try.
First the term used most often in the paper: network coding.
It looks like they're basically taking a shortcut with the bittorrent method. The neat thing is that this looks easily implemented in bittorrent. They use the term linear combination a lot which, as near as I can tell, means that they'll be doing something like this:
There will be your packets floating around just like in bittorrent. Suppose packets A, B, C, and D make up your file. The Avalanche method would work exactly like bittorrent except at some point there will also be mixed packets created. These mixed packets, the linear combination thing, would be like a packet that's actually AxorB (xor doesn't appear to be the specific function they use since they keep saying "linear combination", but it would work). The idea is that if you can get packet A, B, and C then you'll be able to get packet D by getting either D itself or AxD, BxD, or CxD. This would make the packet that you need to finish 4 times more common, and at the same time it looks like the system in this case would be handling only 10 different kinds of packets (A,B,C,D,AxB,AxC,AxD,BxC,BxD,CxD). This makes it almost twice as fast as bittorrent for finding you that last packet. The 20%-30% number seems pretty accurate.
They're likely using something more clever than a simple xor. They probably have something in their little "linear combination" algorithm that would let you get your whole file even if all you had were mixed packets.
Attacking copy protection Lest I be accused of hiding in my ivory tower, lets look a concrete application of these ideas, and some techniques (:
That's it! It's an intellectual's cock-tease! Pricks. Who posted this article?! Ye gods.
Disclaimer: My response to this article was partially fueled by anger accumulated in an effort only four hours old to violate a rather uncompliant binary.
Notice I said "girls in my life" which is plural. If I had porn on my computer they would not appreciate it: with all of them around, why do I have porn? Porn is for inspiration, not personal enjoyment.
Sadly, the easiest way to hide porn collections from the girls in my life is to drop them in folders called "programming" or "linux" or something else that they're in the habit of ignoring.
After a while it's like the words don't even exist to them.
Send secretive emails with topics like "fR33 \/a1ium" and when someone looks in your inbox their eyes will just glide past the words.
I really don't see the use of a supercomputer in the establishment of botnets. Since when is the creation of a zombie node dependent on functional security? Botnets are built on security vulnerabilities. The supercomputer attack would only be useful on a legitimately high strength encryption system.
So, yes, no one interested in encryption would be involved in setting up a botnet.
And when I say I make up my own encryption I'm not saying it's all that exciting or wonderful, it's just not what anyone would expect to be dealing with and so they wouldn't know how to attack it. For example, take a binary and replace every fourth byte with a random number and then dump the pulled bytes in reverse order at the end of the file. I just made it up, but I'd bet it'd confuse people.
All this makes you wonder what other supercomputers are out there, not known to the press, and if it's time to increase the size of your private key and strengthen your encryption.
Yes, I, private citizen of a nation with a resident population of 296,365,988, am worried that the stuff I use private key encryption on will be under attack.
Until I'm dating a girl with a billionaire ex-boyfriend/stalker I think I should be fine keeping things the way they are.
Besides, I tend to make up my own encryption scheme for truly sensitive pictu^H^H^H^H^Hdocuments and then just delete the method.
Seriously, if they're making "virtually unlimited quantities" they should at least shove a bunch together and wire up some sort of interface. It'd be interesting to see if it'll learn how to interact with whatever inputs it's given and maybe learn to respond.
They say there's some new python runtime-doodad Microsoft has that's incredibly fast. Besides the organizational things this guy managed to bring ports to Linux via a Python program.
MSPortage maybe?
Imagine future versions of Visual Studio (that's their compiler, right? never compiled anything on Windows since i'm poor) coming with a version of portage that yanks down all the OSS that'll compile on Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also a flash version.
We need you here. Think of the number of guys you'll get to meet!
The odds are good, but I admit many of the goods are odd.
I'm pretty sure global warming is the joke.
The "Avalance is vaporware" vibe is a true one, but let's give Microsoft a chance for a real-world test before we cast our lots.
Or, we could just go ahead and fork a version of bittorrent that'll do what Avalanche is supposed to before they get the chance to make a release of their own.
I'm sure there are enough programmers lying around (they grow on trees, I hear) who believe the idea behind Avalanche is a viable one and they'd be trusted to make a decent effort to beat the original.
It'd be funny if the best bittorrent fork sucked compared to the original but was faster than anything MS puts out when they eventually get around to it.
I got to wondering if traditional science fiction is just the opiate of the geek masses?
:)
Duh.
I think he's asking if science fiction is the geek religion.
Same answer though.
It's worth mentioning that the crusades were most effective in removing the excess number of knights roving about Europe. Nobles were multiplying like rabbits but Europe had run out of wars to fight so the Pope had to devise a way to get them out of everyone's hair.
As added incentive the Pope guaranteed that if you died on crusade you'd be fast-tracked for heaven. Ever heard the term "jihad"?
I read a lot about China having a problem with numbers of unwed men roving the countryside in bands and harassing people. There's cultural incentive to have a son rather than a daughter and with population restrictions people generally go for one son putting women at a premium. I keep waiting for someone to get the bright idea to give these men a crusade. That'll be exciting.
It's worth mentioning that they're hiring people with VMS and WindowsNT experience. Small wonder the malicious code got in there.
I wonder if she pays royalties.
I quit using Linux about a month ago opting for OSX. JWZ did the same thing about a week ago. Now this guy is knocking linux, and wouldn't you know it: he works on a BSD.
Ok, before anyone gets mad about the title on the post: I wrote it before I actually read the papers. I apologize.
No one seems to be approaching this from the technical viewpoint, so I will try.
First the term used most often in the paper: network coding.
It looks like they're basically taking a shortcut with the bittorrent method. The neat thing is that this looks easily implemented in bittorrent. They use the term linear combination a lot which, as near as I can tell, means that they'll be doing something like this:
There will be your packets floating around just like in bittorrent. Suppose packets A, B, C, and D make up your file. The Avalanche method would work exactly like bittorrent except at some point there will also be mixed packets created. These mixed packets, the linear combination thing, would be like a packet that's actually AxorB (xor doesn't appear to be the specific function they use since they keep saying "linear combination", but it would work). The idea is that if you can get packet A, B, and C then you'll be able to get packet D by getting either D itself or AxD, BxD, or CxD. This would make the packet that you need to finish 4 times more common, and at the same time it looks like the system in this case would be handling only 10 different kinds of packets (A,B,C,D,AxB,AxC,AxD,BxC,BxD,CxD). This makes it almost twice as fast as bittorrent for finding you that last packet. The 20%-30% number seems pretty accurate.
They're likely using something more clever than a simple xor. They probably have something in their little "linear combination" algorithm that would let you get your whole file even if all you had were mixed packets.
For example:That's it! It's an intellectual's cock-tease! Pricks. Who posted this article?! Ye gods.
Disclaimer: My response to this article was partially fueled by anger accumulated in an effort only four hours old to violate a rather uncompliant binary.
Trying to bundle their own media program with their operating system. Deplorable behaviour.
Oh, wait. Forgot.
Notice I said "girls in my life" which is plural. If I had porn on my computer they would not appreciate it: with all of them around, why do I have porn? Porn is for inspiration, not personal enjoyment.
O_o
I encrypt it because the pictures are of her. I'm not hiding them from her, I'm protecting them so no one else but us would see them.
I could have sworn that this article was about supercomputers and not botnets.
Ew. I haven't upgraded yet.
But wait, I don't have porn anymore.
Sadly, the easiest way to hide porn collections from the girls in my life is to drop them in folders called "programming" or "linux" or something else that they're in the habit of ignoring.
After a while it's like the words don't even exist to them.
Send secretive emails with topics like "fR33 \/a1ium" and when someone looks in your inbox their eyes will just glide past the words.
Pussy
Right, and I encrypt the stuff because I'd like to *keep* getting it.
You missed the girlfriend comment in the previous paragraph.
I really don't see the use of a supercomputer in the establishment of botnets. Since when is the creation of a zombie node dependent on functional security? Botnets are built on security vulnerabilities. The supercomputer attack would only be useful on a legitimately high strength encryption system.
So, yes, no one interested in encryption would be involved in setting up a botnet.
And when I say I make up my own encryption I'm not saying it's all that exciting or wonderful, it's just not what anyone would expect to be dealing with and so they wouldn't know how to attack it. For example, take a binary and replace every fourth byte with a random number and then dump the pulled bytes in reverse order at the end of the file. I just made it up, but I'd bet it'd confuse people.
All this makes you wonder what other supercomputers are out there, not known to the press, and if it's time to increase the size of your private key and strengthen your encryption.
Yes, I, private citizen of a nation with a resident population of 296,365,988, am worried that the stuff I use private key encryption on will be under attack.
Until I'm dating a girl with a billionaire ex-boyfriend/stalker I think I should be fine keeping things the way they are.
Besides, I tend to make up my own encryption scheme for truly sensitive pictu^H^H^H^H^Hdocuments and then just delete the method.
Seriously, if they're making "virtually unlimited quantities" they should at least shove a bunch together and wire up some sort of interface. It'd be interesting to see if it'll learn how to interact with whatever inputs it's given and maybe learn to respond.
We could then start teaching it stuff. Much fun.
They say there's some new python runtime-doodad Microsoft has that's incredibly fast. Besides the organizational things this guy managed to bring ports to Linux via a Python program.
MSPortage maybe?
Imagine future versions of Visual Studio (that's their compiler, right? never compiled anything on Windows since i'm poor) coming with a version of portage that yanks down all the OSS that'll compile on Windows.
Wouldn't *that* be interesting?
With an attrition rate well under 1% I find that comment laughable.
But then, it takes a special kind of intelligence to be awarded duty on the front lines.