Here's my question: How can you hide a message in an executable containing a single NOOP, or in the Perl program "" (without the quotes). You can't hide much in there.
The answer there is "you can't". You need a compiled executable large enough to have multiple instances of "alterable sequences". The way I understand it, they fiddle with reversable/interchangeable opcodes to create "bits". Say a program has 500 mixed instances of: (this is all made-up assembly)
JNZ $(foo) ; jump if not zero to address (foo)
JMP $(bar) ; otherwise jump to address (bar)
and
JZ $(bar) ; jump if zero to address (bar)
JMP $(foo) ; otherwise jump to (foo)
As you can see, a sequence of a JNZ followed by a JMP can easily be re-written as a JZ followed by a JMP. The program only needs to go through and change each instance to match bitwise value of the "message", treating JNZ-JMP as a bitwise 0 and JZ-JMP as a 1. There are probably more instances of "two ways to do it" one can exploit in a given executable to yield even bigger "message spaces".
Ask anyone who suffers regularly from motion sickness to ride a Tilt-A-Whirl but keep their eyes closed. They will *still* end up dizzy and sick.
Yeah, but a Tilt-A-Whirl is a special circumstance. It's a device essentially designed to totally discombobulate your inner ear so that you get dizzy. Your inner ear can't keep up with the rapid motion changes on multiple axes and subsequently the perception of motion via your eyes and ears will never match. NOBODY can ride a Tilt-A-Whirl without getting dizzy to some degree. People susceptible to motion sickness are just generally easier to throw out of whack and have greater difficulty recovering. I used to vomit in the car every fifty miles or so when I was a kid. Maybe I grew out of it, or maybe it was all the low-altitude helicopter rides I had to endure in the Army that desensitized me, but I don't get motion sickness anymore.
the courts awarded clearchannelsucks.com to clear channel, so you're wrong. there is no free speech in the u.s.
I was speaking in the purely philosophiocal sense which, as we all know, isn't worth squat in a real court. the clear channel decision is obviously "Not OK".
And which work did you prefer, and did it all pay the same?
I liked the Army the best, but the pay was really bad and they kept sending me to places where people were shooting at us. The job related stress was also pretty high and wore me out. I currently install telecom equipment, a job which isn't nearly as fun as vectoring AH-64's in to blow up that APC that's down the road firing at your friends, but I've come to value the 16 hours of peace and quiet it affords me when I go home at night. The programming job paid well, but was almost as stressful as the Army was. I make a lot less money now, but I'm infinitely happier.
What do you tell people who are in debt for many thousands of dollars because they believed the PTB when they said we should retrain for *knowledge work*?
I tell them to cry me a fucking river. I was several thousand dollars in debt when my well-paid programming job was yanked from beneath me. When I couldn't find another programming job I got work as an electrican's helper by day and a convenience store clerk part time in the evening and on weekends. I busted my ass and lived on beans and rice for almost a year, but I paid off my debts. Since then I haven't been a dime in debt. As a result, loss of work hasn't been a particularly dire threat to me. Spending beyond one's current means is always a gamble. A guy who loses his cushy SW engineer job that he assumed would last longer than it did and finds himself under a huge mortgage he can't pay? Well, that's a risk he took. Either 1) find a way to make the mortgage payment, perhaps by working longer hours for lower pay at crappier jobs; 2) sell and perhaps take a loss, but be out of debt in less than 30 years; or 3) if your debt load is too high, give up and declare bankruptcy and let the courts sort it out for you and start over. Surely you're not suggesting that there's nothing an unemployed SW engineer can do except lay down and die, are you?
Or pay for yet another education and get deeper into debt chasing another chimera?
It's never a binary choice of "get a SW eng job" or "buy more education". There are always plenty of options. Some may require taking a pay cut and/or moving to where the work is. People complain that they have no options when what they really mean is that none of their options will allow them to maintain a close semblance to the standard of living to which they've become accustomed. I had to live in the hell-hole that is Las Vegas to get work once and believe me, my standard of living dropped considerably.
The "suck it up and deal with it" posts are always good for the poster's self-esteem, but they don't help the betrayed people trying to support a family and pay off their debts.
I'm not here to help them, and never claimed I could. Just pointing out that sometimes you have to look outside your chosen field when times are hard. It's simple reason that suggests that the solution to a glut of SW engineers is to stop banging your head against the wall looking for a SW engineering job.
Thankfully, I still have a job, but I'm not going to claim I'm better than all the people who have lost their jobs.
I'm not claiming I'm better. If anything, I'm saying that if a fucked-up former speed addict with PTSD and no college degree like me can "suck it up and deal with it", a degreed SW engineer can too. It's no picnic, but anyone can do it.
I think definitions 1 and 2.a work pretty well in this context.
1 : the result of work or thought 2 a : the output of an industry or firm
I don't think it does. In the case of insurance, what is the "output" or "result"? They certainly do work collecting statistics and (of course) premiums, but this work doesn't result in anything one could call "output". Insurance is a service, not a product.
I hope this will help drive down the price for the AMD 64 FX CPUs to a level I can afford.
It won't, for the same reason that Ferrari 550 Maranello being faster doesn't drive down the price of the Toyota Celica GT. They compared a desktop processor to an bleeding-edge server processor.
I write for a living, anyway. I aint a software engineer.....
I guess if someone cannot attack an argument, he usually attacks the person making the argument, huh?
Sorry, I was just doing as you asked: "suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off". Doesn't matter if you're a writer. I'm supposing you're a software engineer. Furthermore, I wasn't attacking the person (the suppositional SW engineer), I was pointing out that the original argument was not "hard work will get you another job as a SW engineer", but rather "[Success] is earned through taking risks and working your ass off". You mischaracterized the original assertion. Sorry if you think calling you on your strawman was a personal attack.
OK, just suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off this past 3 months, and I take your advice to just "work my ass off". But you seemt o forget that there are also 131K other Software Engineers also laid off, who you say should do the same thing--just work their ass off. That worldview of yours is the Achilles heel of globalization/neoliberalism: we are all just supposed to "work harder" each successive round of outsourcing. But you seem to forget we are all competing against each other!
Perhaps you should look into another profession. He didn't say that hard work and taking risks would necessarily get you work as a software engineer. Adapt! I've been a programmer, trench digger, electrician, soldier, telecom technician, and a locksmith at various times over the last 15 years. There's always work.
I have to agree with the parent. Lot of people who were never qualified to do tech jobs aren't doing them anymore because the companies realised that they aren't value for money.
Yeah, in my opinion this is entirely predictable. You gotta wonder how many dot-com dopes and post-dot-com-hopeful dopes have given up or been let go and have gone back to their previous jobs, making lattes at Starbucks. I install network cabling and I've noticed a lot fewer boneheads of late. It's been almost 6 months since I've fielded a call from an idiot claiming the 48-port patch panel I installed is "broken" because, like, "half our computers suddenly can't connect to the internet".
I was told that prices are odd amounts so that the customer always waits for the sales assistant to register the sale and print out the change required on the cash register. If the cost were an even $6,000, the customer would just give the assistant the money and walk away, leaving the sales assistant to decide whether to register the sale... or pocket the cash.
Someone's going to buy a $6000 item and not wait for a receipt? Besides, show me a place where sales tax doesn't ALREADY turn the price into an odd number requiring change. No, the reason for prices like "$5999" has always been marketing psychology.
"The military wants robotic vehicles for unmanned transport of supplies, primarily."
Yeah, but supplies ain't just food, you know. Think munitions.
I covered this angle. That argument is more a disagreement with the purpose of the DoD as a whole, as it can be applied to anything the DoD touches. The robots are not killing machines. My father, a wimpy electrical engineer with glasses who worked on the B-2 bomber, he is not a killing machine. A robotic truck designed to deliver anything from water to ammunition is not a killing machine. Soldiers carrying rifles (and I should know, I was one*) are the real killing machines.
(101st AB, 311th MI BN "Eyes of the Eagle" '90-'91)
I think that everyone that considers to participate in this has to think about what their technology will be used for. 'saving lives on the battlefield' also mean 'being better at killing the target for the attack' and lets face it, not all attacks made are good(tm) ones.
The military wants robotic vehicles for unmanned transport of supplies, primarily. They're not developing killer robots, nor do they have any reason to turn this into a weapons system. Humans are by far the deadliest and most effective tools the military has for killing other humans. It's one thing to oppose this because it's funded by the DoD, but it's not a weapons system and probably never will be. Robots are too easily out-thought by humans.
Just change it. Or is The Constitution (TM) something utterly immutable?
Oh sure, you try to push through a constitutional amendment to change that. "Hey, let's amend the constitution so FOREIGNERS can be president!" You can word it any way you like, but the opposition will always call it the "Foreigners For President Amendment" and it'll never pass.
I think he'd win, too.
Which, actually, I'm not entirely against. He's been trying to do some good things in California, he wasn't born rich - he's had to work hard for his money, and he has not been a career politician all his life. All these things could definately make for an interesting President, that might actually change the way things are headed now (into the shitter.)
Too bad he's Republican! hah
Too bad, also, that he wasn't born a US citizen and, as such, cannot be president. Alexander Hamilton, the guy on the US $10 bill, was never president because he was born in the Caribbean. It's written in to the constitution that way.
Ah, a blast from the past, when I was a small child watching TV: Timex. They don't really use that ad campaign anymore, I don't think.
if any of these phrases bring a companies name to mind, and any ideas about that company, then youve been affected by advertising more than you think. its branding, and you dont have to interact with an ad to be affected by it. a big part of marketing is just letting people know a company exists, not making you buy a product then and there.
And I have made a concerted effort to minimize my awareness of and exposure to advertising. I represent that portion of the audience who doesn't buy based on advertising.
You cost the site bandwidth, you fucking moron. Free sites go down when too few people even click the ads. Or do you think the companies running the ads don't pay attention to have much traffic the site gets them?
What a fucking moron, and an asshole to boot.
I know you are, but what am I?
All childishness aside, think about this rationally, please. The original assertion was that blocking ads results in lower ad revenue. This is incorrect. It's not the blocking, but the not clicking that reduces revenue. Whether I see the ad or not, I am not clicking. Advertisers always assume that a certain percentage of people will not be affected by the ads. I represent part of that percentage. Feel free to call me an asshole for not doing what they already know I'm not going to do, but think about the alternative. Are you saying that everyonbe ahould click every ad that comes up? Don't you think the ad company is going to get suspicious when a grossly abnormal percentage of people are clicking through? I understand your knee-jerk, but you have to understand that "freeloaders" like me have already been accounted for.
Absolute bollocks. As a rule, I NEVER click on a banner ad. When they're visible, I don't look at them. The only difference between a blocked ad and an unblocked ad coming into my browser is the blocked ad (white box) renders faster. I am not cost advertisers on cent.
I have both the REB1100 and REB1200, both of them descendents of the Rocket Ebook, but made by RCA. Both solve the irritating problems of trying to read ebooks on PDAs (too small) or laptops/desktops (too big) by being book sized. The only problem with the REBs is that they were made to take only an encrypted proprietary format. You were expected to buy all your content from Gemstar (who bought Rocket) and download it via modem (both models) or internet (REB1200) or USB (REB1100). The functionality of these devices is GREAT. The only real drawback is that it currently takes about four steps to get plaintext into one of the REBs using aftermarket software. Really, these devices would be PERFECT if they had a couple more features: bluetooth and/or 802.11 wireless transfering of text and the ability to render PDFs.
Well, yes and no. The way it REALLY works is that we have enemies that gather data on a CONTINUING basis, so that at any given time they ALREADY have an assortment of classified data (some out of date, some inaccurate, some accurate, some misinformation) and the next classified data ADDS to what they have, clarifying some things, revealing other things as tricks, and so forth. So even ONE DOCUMENT can make a BIG difference. But it usually doesn't.
I'd wager that any secret document on a computer connected to the internet was highly perishable information and not the sort of thing that would "complete the puzzle". The other thing you have to remember is that the military compulsively classifies things. The vast majority of classified information is utterly worthless. When I was an intelligence analyst in the Army, I personally generated TONS of essentially worthless information, most of it classified TOP SECRET only because it was compiled from some other TOP SECRET information, which was itself four degrees of separation from the actual Good Stuff which deserved the TS rating it had (and I never got to see).
Yes, but unless no one outside that unit, or the military as a whole, has downloaded the thing...the cat is out of the bag. And as the blogger in question demonstrated, people outside the military did download it.
Classified information doesn't work that way. It's heavily compartmentalized and often perishable (becomes inaccurate as time passes). Any one secret document is mostly useless on its own. This is intentional. In order for any really useful information to be put together, several different people have to screw up separately in a fairly short time frame. All aggregate data of high and/or long-term value is guarded with extraordinary zeal. Generally the only way THAT kind of secret stuff gets out is actual espionage from the inside, like that Hanssen jackass in the FBI did.
Shortly after Wallace got in contact with Burns' office, the file of classified documents disappeared from Gnutella.
Ummmm...what??? How powerful is this senator, that he can pluck a given file off a decentralized P2P network? How did he do that?
1) Senator calls DOD aide in and says "find where this is being leaked" (hands him copy of secret document
2) DOD aide makes call to appropriate Army commander (based on the unit(s) referenced in secret doc)
3) Army commander calls in his IT and BuddyFucker(couinter-intel) officers and shouts at them for twenty minutes
4) the unit's computers are examined until P2P host(s) is(are) found and shut down (probably by examining router traffic)
This sequence would probably unfold in under 3 hours.
Slashdot Mirror
The answer there is "you can't". You need a compiled executable large enough to have multiple instances of "alterable sequences". The way I understand it, they fiddle with reversable/interchangeable opcodes to create "bits". Say a program has 500 mixed instances of: (this is all made-up assembly)
and As you can see, a sequence of a JNZ followed by a JMP can easily be re-written as a JZ followed by a JMP. The program only needs to go through and change each instance to match bitwise value of the "message", treating JNZ-JMP as a bitwise 0 and JZ-JMP as a 1. There are probably more instances of "two ways to do it" one can exploit in a given executable to yield even bigger "message spaces".Wow, a true PNAMBC* demo. Usually they're sensible enough to not use an actual curtain in order to avoid the inevitable Wizard of Oz jokes.
*Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
Yeah, but a Tilt-A-Whirl is a special circumstance. It's a device essentially designed to totally discombobulate your inner ear so that you get dizzy. Your inner ear can't keep up with the rapid motion changes on multiple axes and subsequently the perception of motion via your eyes and ears will never match. NOBODY can ride a Tilt-A-Whirl without getting dizzy to some degree. People susceptible to motion sickness are just generally easier to throw out of whack and have greater difficulty recovering. I used to vomit in the car every fifty miles or so when I was a kid. Maybe I grew out of it, or maybe it was all the low-altitude helicopter rides I had to endure in the Army that desensitized me, but I don't get motion sickness anymore.
I was speaking in the purely philosophiocal sense which, as we all know, isn't worth squat in a real court. the clear channel decision is obviously "Not OK".
(entity)sucks.com would be OK, as it's not likely that someone will type that in expecting to find (entity's) legitimate web site.
I liked the Army the best, but the pay was really bad and they kept sending me to places where people were shooting at us. The job related stress was also pretty high and wore me out. I currently install telecom equipment, a job which isn't nearly as fun as vectoring AH-64's in to blow up that APC that's down the road firing at your friends, but I've come to value the 16 hours of peace and quiet it affords me when I go home at night. The programming job paid well, but was almost as stressful as the Army was. I make a lot less money now, but I'm infinitely happier.
What do you tell people who are in debt for many thousands of dollars because they believed the PTB when they said we should retrain for *knowledge work*?
I tell them to cry me a fucking river. I was several thousand dollars in debt when my well-paid programming job was yanked from beneath me. When I couldn't find another programming job I got work as an electrican's helper by day and a convenience store clerk part time in the evening and on weekends. I busted my ass and lived on beans and rice for almost a year, but I paid off my debts. Since then I haven't been a dime in debt. As a result, loss of work hasn't been a particularly dire threat to me. Spending beyond one's current means is always a gamble. A guy who loses his cushy SW engineer job that he assumed would last longer than it did and finds himself under a huge mortgage he can't pay? Well, that's a risk he took. Either 1) find a way to make the mortgage payment, perhaps by working longer hours for lower pay at crappier jobs; 2) sell and perhaps take a loss, but be out of debt in less than 30 years; or 3) if your debt load is too high, give up and declare bankruptcy and let the courts sort it out for you and start over. Surely you're not suggesting that there's nothing an unemployed SW engineer can do except lay down and die, are you?
Or pay for yet another education and get deeper into debt chasing another chimera?
It's never a binary choice of "get a SW eng job" or "buy more education". There are always plenty of options. Some may require taking a pay cut and/or moving to where the work is. People complain that they have no options when what they really mean is that none of their options will allow them to maintain a close semblance to the standard of living to which they've become accustomed. I had to live in the hell-hole that is Las Vegas to get work once and believe me, my standard of living dropped considerably.
The "suck it up and deal with it" posts are always good for the poster's self-esteem, but they don't help the betrayed people trying to support a family and pay off their debts.
I'm not here to help them, and never claimed I could. Just pointing out that sometimes you have to look outside your chosen field when times are hard. It's simple reason that suggests that the solution to a glut of SW engineers is to stop banging your head against the wall looking for a SW engineering job.
Thankfully, I still have a job, but I'm not going to claim I'm better than all the people who have lost their jobs.
I'm not claiming I'm better. If anything, I'm saying that if a fucked-up former speed addict with PTSD and no college degree like me can "suck it up and deal with it", a degreed SW engineer can too. It's no picnic, but anyone can do it.
1 : the result of work or thought 2 a : the output of an industry or firm
I don't think it does. In the case of insurance, what is the "output" or "result"? They certainly do work collecting statistics and (of course) premiums, but this work doesn't result in anything one could call "output". Insurance is a service, not a product.
It won't, for the same reason that Ferrari 550 Maranello being faster doesn't drive down the price of the Toyota Celica GT. They compared a desktop processor to an bleeding-edge server processor.
Sorry, I was just doing as you asked: "suppose I was one of the 131K SW engs who got laid off". Doesn't matter if you're a writer. I'm supposing you're a software engineer. Furthermore, I wasn't attacking the person (the suppositional SW engineer), I was pointing out that the original argument was not "hard work will get you another job as a SW engineer", but rather "[Success] is earned through taking risks and working your ass off". You mischaracterized the original assertion. Sorry if you think calling you on your strawman was a personal attack.
Perhaps you should look into another profession. He didn't say that hard work and taking risks would necessarily get you work as a software engineer. Adapt! I've been a programmer, trench digger, electrician, soldier, telecom technician, and a locksmith at various times over the last 15 years. There's always work.
Yeah, in my opinion this is entirely predictable. You gotta wonder how many dot-com dopes and post-dot-com-hopeful dopes have given up or been let go and have gone back to their previous jobs, making lattes at Starbucks. I install network cabling and I've noticed a lot fewer boneheads of late. It's been almost 6 months since I've fielded a call from an idiot claiming the 48-port patch panel I installed is "broken" because, like, "half our computers suddenly can't connect to the internet".
Someone's going to buy a $6000 item and not wait for a receipt? Besides, show me a place where sales tax doesn't ALREADY turn the price into an odd number requiring change. No, the reason for prices like "$5999" has always been marketing psychology.
Yeah, but supplies ain't just food, you know. Think munitions.
I covered this angle. That argument is more a disagreement with the purpose of the DoD as a whole, as it can be applied to anything the DoD touches. The robots are not killing machines. My father, a wimpy electrical engineer with glasses who worked on the B-2 bomber, he is not a killing machine. A robotic truck designed to deliver anything from water to ammunition is not a killing machine. Soldiers carrying rifles (and I should know, I was one*) are the real killing machines.
(101st AB, 311th MI BN "Eyes of the Eagle" '90-'91)
The military wants robotic vehicles for unmanned transport of supplies, primarily. They're not developing killer robots, nor do they have any reason to turn this into a weapons system. Humans are by far the deadliest and most effective tools the military has for killing other humans. It's one thing to oppose this because it's funded by the DoD, but it's not a weapons system and probably never will be. Robots are too easily out-thought by humans.
Just change it. Or is The Constitution (TM) something utterly immutable?
Oh sure, you try to push through a constitutional amendment to change that. "Hey, let's amend the constitution so FOREIGNERS can be president!" You can word it any way you like, but the opposition will always call it the "Foreigners For President Amendment" and it'll never pass.
Too bad he's Republican! hah
Too bad, also, that he wasn't born a US citizen and, as such, cannot be president. Alexander Hamilton, the guy on the US $10 bill, was never president because he was born in the Caribbean. It's written in to the constitution that way.
(shrug) I use AdBlock set to blank ads out, so I still count as an impression-- I just don't see 'em.
Christ almighty, you're stretching. Shoplifting is illegal. At present, ignoring advertising is not. Get a clue, man.
No idea.
"just do it."
It's familiar, but I don't know what it's for
"takes a licking and keeps on ticking."
Ah, a blast from the past, when I was a small child watching TV: Timex. They don't really use that ad campaign anymore, I don't think.
if any of these phrases bring a companies name to mind, and any ideas about that company, then youve been affected by advertising more than you think. its branding, and you dont have to interact with an ad to be affected by it. a big part of marketing is just letting people know a company exists, not making you buy a product then and there.
And I have made a concerted effort to minimize my awareness of and exposure to advertising. I represent that portion of the audience who doesn't buy based on advertising.
I know you are, but what am I?
All childishness aside, think about this rationally, please. The original assertion was that blocking ads results in lower ad revenue. This is incorrect. It's not the blocking, but the not clicking that reduces revenue. Whether I see the ad or not, I am not clicking. Advertisers always assume that a certain percentage of people will not be affected by the ads. I represent part of that percentage. Feel free to call me an asshole for not doing what they already know I'm not going to do, but think about the alternative. Are you saying that everyonbe ahould click every ad that comes up? Don't you think the ad company is going to get suspicious when a grossly abnormal percentage of people are clicking through? I understand your knee-jerk, but you have to understand that "freeloaders" like me have already been accounted for.
Absolute bollocks. As a rule, I NEVER click on a banner ad. When they're visible, I don't look at them. The only difference between a blocked ad and an unblocked ad coming into my browser is the blocked ad (white box) renders faster. I am not cost advertisers on cent.
I have both the REB1100 and REB1200, both of them descendents of the Rocket Ebook, but made by RCA. Both solve the irritating problems of trying to read ebooks on PDAs (too small) or laptops/desktops (too big) by being book sized. The only problem with the REBs is that they were made to take only an encrypted proprietary format. You were expected to buy all your content from Gemstar (who bought Rocket) and download it via modem (both models) or internet (REB1200) or USB (REB1100). The functionality of these devices is GREAT. The only real drawback is that it currently takes about four steps to get plaintext into one of the REBs using aftermarket software. Really, these devices would be PERFECT if they had a couple more features: bluetooth and/or 802.11 wireless transfering of text and the ability to render PDFs.
I'd wager that any secret document on a computer connected to the internet was highly perishable information and not the sort of thing that would "complete the puzzle". The other thing you have to remember is that the military compulsively classifies things. The vast majority of classified information is utterly worthless. When I was an intelligence analyst in the Army, I personally generated TONS of essentially worthless information, most of it classified TOP SECRET only because it was compiled from some other TOP SECRET information, which was itself four degrees of separation from the actual Good Stuff which deserved the TS rating it had (and I never got to see).
Classified information doesn't work that way. It's heavily compartmentalized and often perishable (becomes inaccurate as time passes). Any one secret document is mostly useless on its own. This is intentional. In order for any really useful information to be put together, several different people have to screw up separately in a fairly short time frame. All aggregate data of high and/or long-term value is guarded with extraordinary zeal. Generally the only way THAT kind of secret stuff gets out is actual espionage from the inside, like that Hanssen jackass in the FBI did.
Ummmm...what??? How powerful is this senator, that he can pluck a given file off a decentralized P2P network? How did he do that?
1) Senator calls DOD aide in and says "find where this is being leaked" (hands him copy of secret document
2) DOD aide makes call to appropriate Army commander (based on the unit(s) referenced in secret doc)
3) Army commander calls in his IT and BuddyFucker(couinter-intel) officers and shouts at them for twenty minutes
4) the unit's computers are examined until P2P host(s) is(are) found and shut down (probably by examining router traffic)
This sequence would probably unfold in under 3 hours.