A hash function is essentially a very lossy compression algorithm. Because it's lossy, there is no way to recreate the original file from the hash; thus, it is trivial to prove that there are multiple original files matching the same MD5 hash. Doing this in a brute force fashion may be easy to implement, but it would definitely be time consuming (for the CPU, anyway). What's truely fascinating here is that you can approach this from from the more "elegant" direct method; thus allowing the potential "masquerading" of malicious information as being legitimite. This is great work, even if it adds no real value (since it effectively breaks a working standard).
On a side note, I sure hope there aren't any standing copyrights on MD5; otherwise, this work will be quashed by the DMCA in short order, and we'll have to revert to printing this code in tiny print on t-shirts like we did DeCSS
Are there any other US Citizens out there that are pissed off that the government continues trampling on the bill of rights?
1. freedom of the press...just look at this story 2. the freedom to bear firearms...has been restricted. 3. the right to a speedy and public trial...citizens can now be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism, and major trials are often closed. 4. property can now be seized without due process of law. 5. wiretaps, which used to require a warrant, now can be performed with no proof and just a hint of suspicion.
The examples go on and on, and I would argue that while it may be justified in some instances, the slope is a slippery one, and I believe that we, as US citizens must stand up and tell our government that this is *not* okay!
QBasic hasn't changed one little bit since about 1994. That's nearly 10 years. For this reason, a newer book probably wouldn't be any better. My recommendation: buy a book on algorithms, and book which covering the keywords etc. of the QBasic language. The cool thing about algorithms is that they are language-agnostic. Once you have learned the algorithms, translating that into code is a simple matter when you have a language referance in front of you.
I hear a lot of people saying that you shouldn't; Well, here's three good reasons you should:
Job security!!! If you built those machines for your company, they're going to want you around to fix them. If you do the job right, you won't ever need to fix them, but they don't need to know that:-)
Quality!!! I've never seen an OEM system that could keep up with my home built systems when it comes to quality.
Speed of repairs!!! OEM's often take weeks to replace or repair systems. When you're local, it'll be no trouble to fix them in 1-2 days. Often, it can be done with less than 2 hours of downtime. Besides, if you roll your own, you won't have to deal with the awful tech support person who treats you like you don't know WTF you're talking about.
Regarding your O/S choice: I won't tell you that you have to go with Linux. Many of your end-users wouldn't know what to do with all that power:-). But, I would suggest that you recycle your copies of Windows. If you erase the copies from the old machines, logic suggests that even MS wouldn't have issues with it since you are still in possession of only one functioning copy of Windows per license.
I'm supprised that nobody suggested this sooner. Sure, many people have suggested adding another HDD for backup, but RAID would be a far superior option. It would improve your performance, and it offers excellent reliability to boot. Plus, updates occur on the fly--saving you the time of actually doing the grudge work. If you don't have the hardware or you don't want to invest in it, then just use a software solution--all of the latest versions of Linux and NT (through XP) support it.
Testing and design verification are both very important steps in the design process. They may also be quite boring. Any programmer can tell you that debugging is quite boring...and I can tell you that as an engineering student, I must test and verify every one of my designs...sometimes enumerating every possible input and output condition and checking them by hand. Also, you must consider that somebody must perform those boring jobs, and it requires some intellegence to handle many of those jobs...they can't hire somebody out of McDonald's and pay them minimum wage to do this stuff...therefore, they must be paying you something better than minimum wage. In any case, I suggest that you get over it and make the most of your job...you can have fun with virtually any job, so go have some fun with it!!!
Firstly, ramdisks steal memory away from running programs and they completely defeat the purpose of disk buffering. Another thing is that a ramdisk could potentially run out of space and most os'es (including Linux) don't like it when they run out of space on a "storage device." Many times, the memory that is occupied by the ramdisk would be better off used by running programs. Also, think about the case where you run out of ramdisk space and your ramdisk is using swap space instead...then what happens??? Your OS will wind up calling something from your ramdisk which is then redirected to your swap space when it could have just as easily read it from your HDD in the first place. Another scenario: your computer runs out of available RAM and your OS is forced to operate some of the running programs out of your swap space...again, you have negated any performance gains. In short, I would suggest that you would be better off allowing your operating system to manage its own memory and disk space.
If you want a good example of the effects of the English language on programming languages, look at BASIC. The structure and syntax of BASIC is modeled after the English language, and you could read the code as if it were a recipe--practically any moron can understand it (although not necessarily program it). C is a completely different animal (since it is much lower-level), but some of the same cases exist. Another thing to consider is the name of the functions.
FOR
WHILE
DIM (dimension)
INT (integer)
LONG
SHORT
STRUCT (structure)
etc. etc. etc.
All of these keywords are derived from the English language, and I'm sure that not all of them have a foreign language equivalent that would be easily understood and translated. In short, if C or BASIC were developed in a non-English speaking country, then it's obvious that many of the keywords would be different, and (in the case of BASIC) some of the structure and syntax would be different too.
Last December, there was a story here on Slashdot about broadband access over power lines; The link is below. It looks like it is still in the works, but maybe you would be willing to be an alpha tester:-)
On a side note, lately I've seen a lot of modems fried by electrical storms; I would sure hate to see what would happen to your computer if you had one of these things plugged into it.
The best programming project that I have heard of is to write a simple clone of Tetris (with or without the graphics). The challenging parts are controlling the rotating the pieces, figuring out how far each piece should fall, as well as making sure that one piece never overlaps another or goes "out of bounds" It's a challenging program and it's fun to debug:-)
Okay, I'm going to take the opposing view here. First, I think that the creator of MozOffice.org--James Russell--maybe very ambitios and a little too optimistic. Whether or not he got the idea from a Mozilla support group is irrelevent. Russell has decided that the idea is a good one and he has decided to attempt to turn that idea into reality by creating a website to publicize the idea. Russell obviously hasn't worked much (or even at all) on this project yet (especially considering that neither Mozilla nor an open-source StarOffice has been released), but his website reflects this fact and only asks for help. C|Net just decided that his idea and his effort were newsworthy and so they did a story about it. Who knows, maybe Russell is the next Linus. A lot of people probably thought that Linus was a loon for attempting to single-handedly create a UNIX clone. Instead, he took his code and asked for help and he created a wonderful operating system (or kernel for you purists). Essentially, this is exactly what Russell is doing; he created his website in order to recruit some help in creating something truly great. The fact the project hasn't created anything tangible yet is irrelevent. The source of his idea is irrelevent. The facts are that James Russell wants to merge StarOffice and Mozilla and he wants some help doing so. C|Net thought that this was newsworthy. Whether it actually is newsworthy remains to be seen. If this project turns out to be an overwhelming success, then C|Net can claim the scoop. If not, then the world will move on and nobody will really think about it again. In the mean time, take the story at face value--a story about a man that is attempting to create something revolutionary.
I don't think that any "pay" version of something that we already have for free (as in beer) will ever work. There will *always* be another method of filesharing. For instance, look at the proliferation of "distributed services" like FreeNET, Gnutella, etc. These services simply cannot be shutdown from a central server. Like the internet, these services are completely impervious to even a nuclear attack. Furthermore, if one country decides that these services are illegal and subsequently kills the connection to the software's home website (which would basically be their only method of recourse), then there will be a plethora of other overseas developers and hosts that will pick up the project in defiance. Furthermore, the media attention given to anything of this nature simply adds fuel to the fire. If you want proof, look at the surge of users that Napster has seen over the last few days since the judge's decision to shut down the service. In short, if napster dies there *will* be some other free service to replace it, and that service will probably be distributed (to make it harder for the law to put a finger on it). On a sidenote, I would like to appeal to the developers of GNUTella and FreeNet to make searching for files faster. As it is, the primary advantage of Napster (with its centralized server) is its ability to search for files with much greater speed.
Does anybody else find it curious that the price for this product is $8765? I think that maybe they were just lazy and they just strummed their fingers across four keys on the top row of their keyboard:-)
Personally, I find it very surprising that the GB's architechure has lasted as long as it has. I mean look at the console and computer gaming markets, and the changes that they go through to keep up with technology. Now look at the GB's rather simple architechure and consider how they have managed to keep it around as long as they have. I guess that it has something to do with its simplicity of design. The way I figure it, Nintendo must have allowed for the cartridge to do a great deal of the processing thus allowing for its great "expandability."
Ummm....God is not a person. He (if you can call God a he) is a BEING--not a person at all!!! In our minds and in our representations, "he" is a person, yet "he" is not really a person. Humans have routinely viewed God as a person because it makes the concept easier to grasp. God incarnate is called "Jesus" by Christians, "Mohammed" by Mulslims, et cetera.
I originally learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard (just like everyone else) and then later I made the switch to Dvorak. I must say that Dvorak is certainly more comfortable to type on (I know that it sounds wierd, but it really imparts much less muscle strain). Think about it...why would *anyone* stick with a non-standard keyboard that isn't any better than the one that everyone else uses? The truth is, Dvorak IS faster, it IS more ergodynamic, it IS easier to learn, and it IS more accurate (most people make fewer errors on the Dvorak keyboard). There's even some evidence that the Dvorak keyboard helps to retard the onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and/or repetitive strain injuries. Every time I am forced to use the QWERTY keyboard, I recall exactly why I switched--once you get used to the Dvorak keyboard, you will never want to go back. The bottom line is, *** you * should * give * Dvorak * a * chance *** you WILL love it.
Slashdot Mirror
A hash function is essentially a very lossy compression algorithm. Because it's lossy, there is no way to recreate the original file from the hash; thus, it is trivial to prove that there are multiple original files matching the same MD5 hash. Doing this in a brute force fashion may be easy to implement, but it would definitely be time consuming (for the CPU, anyway). What's truely fascinating here is that you can approach this from from the more "elegant" direct method; thus allowing the potential "masquerading" of malicious information as being legitimite. This is great work, even if it adds no real value (since it effectively breaks a working standard).
On a side note, I sure hope there aren't any standing copyrights on MD5; otherwise, this work will be quashed by the DMCA in short order, and we'll have to revert to printing this code in tiny print on t-shirts like we did DeCSS
Are there any other US Citizens out there that are pissed off that the government continues trampling on the bill of rights?
1. freedom of the press...just look at this story
2. the freedom to bear firearms...has been restricted.
3. the right to a speedy and public trial...citizens can now be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism, and major trials are often closed.
4. property can now be seized without due process of law.
5. wiretaps, which used to require a warrant, now can be performed with no proof and just a hint of suspicion.
The examples go on and on, and I would argue that while it may be justified in some instances, the slope is a slippery one, and I believe that we, as US citizens must stand up and tell our government that this is *not* okay!
You mean to tell me these things can compile the kernel in two minutes or less!?!? I guess it's time to upgrade!
QBasic hasn't changed one little bit since about 1994. That's nearly 10 years. For this reason, a newer book probably wouldn't be any better. My recommendation: buy a book on algorithms, and book which covering the keywords etc. of the QBasic language. The cool thing about algorithms is that they are language-agnostic. Once you have learned the algorithms, translating that into code is a simple matter when you have a language referance in front of you.
If they want to see an example of a real backdoor, they should see the one on my house!
Hmmm...How do you "slowly but surely" shoot your own foot?
Just like the post said..."More power to 'em" :-)
Gosh I hope they get that power, they're sure to need it in those laptops
I hear a lot of people saying that you shouldn't; Well, here's three good reasons you should:
:-)
:-). But, I would suggest that you recycle your copies of Windows. If you erase the copies from the old machines, logic suggests that even MS wouldn't have issues with it since you are still in possession of only one functioning copy of Windows per license.
Job security!!! If you built those machines for your company, they're going to want you around to fix them. If you do the job right, you won't ever need to fix them, but they don't need to know that
Quality!!! I've never seen an OEM system that could keep up with my home built systems when it comes to quality.
Speed of repairs!!! OEM's often take weeks to replace or repair systems. When you're local, it'll be no trouble to fix them in 1-2 days. Often, it can be done with less than 2 hours of downtime. Besides, if you roll your own, you won't have to deal with the awful tech support person who treats you like you don't know WTF you're talking about.
Regarding your O/S choice: I won't tell you that you have to go with Linux. Many of your end-users wouldn't know what to do with all that power
I'm supprised that nobody suggested this sooner. Sure, many people have suggested adding another HDD for backup, but RAID would be a far superior option. It would improve your performance, and it offers excellent reliability to boot. Plus, updates occur on the fly--saving you the time of actually doing the grudge work. If you don't have the hardware or you don't want to invest in it, then just use a software solution--all of the latest versions of Linux and NT (through XP) support it.
Testing and design verification are both very important steps in the design process. They may also be quite boring. Any programmer can tell you that debugging is quite boring...and I can tell you that as an engineering student, I must test and verify every one of my designs...sometimes enumerating every possible input and output condition and checking them by hand. Also, you must consider that somebody must perform those boring jobs, and it requires some intellegence to handle many of those jobs...they can't hire somebody out of McDonald's and pay them minimum wage to do this stuff...therefore, they must be paying you something better than minimum wage. In any case, I suggest that you get over it and make the most of your job...you can have fun with virtually any job, so go have some fun with it!!!
Shouldn't the Florida courts be focusing on more pressing matters?
Firstly, ramdisks steal memory away from running programs and they completely defeat the purpose of disk buffering. Another thing is that a ramdisk could potentially run out of space and most os'es (including Linux) don't like it when they run out of space on a "storage device." Many times, the memory that is occupied by the ramdisk would be better off used by running programs. Also, think about the case where you run out of ramdisk space and your ramdisk is using swap space instead...then what happens??? Your OS will wind up calling something from your ramdisk which is then redirected to your swap space when it could have just as easily read it from your HDD in the first place. Another scenario: your computer runs out of available RAM and your OS is forced to operate some of the running programs out of your swap space...again, you have negated any performance gains. In short, I would suggest that you would be better off allowing your operating system to manage its own memory and disk space.
If you want a good example of the effects of the English language on programming languages, look at BASIC. The structure and syntax of BASIC is modeled after the English language, and you could read the code as if it were a recipe--practically any moron can understand it (although not necessarily program it). C is a completely different animal (since it is much lower-level), but some of the same cases exist. Another thing to consider is the name of the functions.
FOR
WHILE
DIM (dimension)
INT (integer)
LONG
SHORT
STRUCT (structure)
etc. etc. etc.
All of these keywords are derived from the English language, and I'm sure that not all of them have a foreign language equivalent that would be easily understood and translated. In short, if C or BASIC were developed in a non-English speaking country, then it's obvious that many of the keywords would be different, and (in the case of BASIC) some of the structure and syntax would be different too.
Last December, there was a story here on Slashdot about broadband access over power lines; The link is below. It looks like it is still in the works, but maybe you would be willing to be an alpha tester :-)
On a side note, lately I've seen a lot of modems fried by electrical storms; I would sure hate to see what would happen to your computer if you had one of these things plugged into it.
http://www.dmagazine.com/magazine/bd feature.html
The best programming project that I have heard of is to write a simple clone of Tetris (with or without the graphics). The challenging parts are controlling the rotating the pieces, figuring out how far each piece should fall, as well as making sure that one piece never overlaps another or goes "out of bounds" It's a challenging program and it's fun to debug :-)
Good luck!!
Okay, I'm going to take the opposing view here. First, I think that the creator of MozOffice.org--James Russell--maybe very ambitios and a little too optimistic. Whether or not he got the idea from a Mozilla support group is irrelevent. Russell has decided that the idea is a good one and he has decided to attempt to turn that idea into reality by creating a website to publicize the idea. Russell obviously hasn't worked much (or even at all) on this project yet (especially considering that neither Mozilla nor an open-source StarOffice has been released), but his website reflects this fact and only asks for help. C|Net just decided that his idea and his effort were newsworthy and so they did a story about it. Who knows, maybe Russell is the next Linus. A lot of people probably thought that Linus was a loon for attempting to single-handedly create a UNIX clone. Instead, he took his code and asked for help and he created a wonderful operating system (or kernel for you purists). Essentially, this is exactly what Russell is doing; he created his website in order to recruit some help in creating something truly great. The fact the project hasn't created anything tangible yet is irrelevent. The source of his idea is irrelevent. The facts are that James Russell wants to merge StarOffice and Mozilla and he wants some help doing so. C|Net thought that this was newsworthy. Whether it actually is newsworthy remains to be seen. If this project turns out to be an overwhelming success, then C|Net can claim the scoop. If not, then the world will move on and nobody will really think about it again. In the mean time, take the story at face value--a story about a man that is attempting to create something revolutionary.
I don't think that any "pay" version of something that we already have for free (as in beer) will ever work. There will *always* be another method of filesharing. For instance, look at the proliferation of "distributed services" like FreeNET, Gnutella, etc. These services simply cannot be shutdown from a central server. Like the internet, these services are completely impervious to even a nuclear attack. Furthermore, if one country decides that these services are illegal and subsequently kills the connection to the software's home website (which would basically be their only method of recourse), then there will be a plethora of other overseas developers and hosts that will pick up the project in defiance.
Furthermore, the media attention given to anything of this nature simply adds fuel to the fire. If you want proof, look at the surge of users that Napster has seen over the last few days since the judge's decision to shut down the service.
In short, if napster dies there *will* be some other free service to replace it, and that service will probably be distributed (to make it harder for the law to put a finger on it).
On a sidenote, I would like to appeal to the developers of GNUTella and FreeNet to make searching for files faster. As it is, the primary advantage of Napster (with its centralized server) is its ability to search for files with much greater speed.
Think about this: 1/3 + 2/3 = 1 ==> .33333... + .66666... = .99999... Therefore, .9 repeating must equal 1.
Does anybody else find it curious that the price for this product is $8765? I think that maybe they were just lazy and they just strummed their fingers across four keys on the top row of their keyboard :-)
Personally, I find it very surprising that the GB's architechure has lasted as long as it has. I mean look at the console and computer gaming markets, and the changes that they go through to keep up with technology. Now look at the GB's rather simple architechure and consider how they have managed to keep it around as long as they have. I guess that it has something to do with its simplicity of design. The way I figure it, Nintendo must have allowed for the cartridge to do a great deal of the processing thus allowing for its great "expandability."
Ummm....God is not a person. He (if you can call God a he) is a BEING--not a person at all!!! In our minds and in our representations, "he" is a person, yet "he" is not really a person. Humans have routinely viewed God as a person because it makes the concept easier to grasp. God incarnate is called "Jesus" by Christians, "Mohammed" by Mulslims, et cetera.
I must have missed something...I thought that Publisher's Clearing House mailings WERE junk mail!!!
I originally learned to type on a QWERTY keyboard (just like everyone else) and then later I made the switch to Dvorak. I must say that Dvorak is certainly more comfortable to type on (I know that it sounds wierd, but it really imparts much less muscle strain). Think about it...why would *anyone* stick with a non-standard keyboard that isn't any better than the one that everyone else uses? The truth is, Dvorak IS faster, it IS more ergodynamic, it IS easier to learn, and it IS more accurate (most people make fewer errors on the Dvorak keyboard). There's even some evidence that the Dvorak keyboard helps to retard the onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and/or repetitive strain injuries. Every time I am forced to use the QWERTY keyboard, I recall exactly why I switched--once you get used to the Dvorak keyboard, you will never want to go back. The bottom line is, *** you * should * give * Dvorak * a * chance *** you WILL love it.