What are Open* people doing? Wasting time in reinventing the wheel, not because previous wheel don't run well, but because they don't like the "color" of the actual wheels? In those days of lack of good open-source programmers, are we really wasting so much time?
In that I see the consequences of Microsoft's point of view on open source. Put it this way: IPF creator has been scared by the whole "open software - no money" axiom, and he tried to adjust things. Creating havoc all around.
Old latins used to say "divide et impera", which means "split up and rule". The best way to conquer is to split up the enemies and eat them all one by one ('embrace and extend' looks similar, to me).
quoting theo: "Furthermore, we
know of a number of companies using ipf with modification like us, who
are now in the same situation, and we hope that some of them will work
with us to fill this gap that now exists in OpenBSD (temporarily, we
hope)."
So let's hope they'll find out a solution quickly. I think it's just a big misunderstanding: ipfilter creator wanted to be sure his product could not be modified too lightly to keep it strong, and openbsd people.. just reacted badly. I'm sure ipf creator will allow certain companies to modify it.. he's benefiting just like they do.
Calm down people, let's avoid pouring gas on flames this time.
interesting, I did not know that. I was not only thinking about linux companies, but also regular or small companies which would like to develop under open source philosophy. But it's good.
Yes, I see what you mean. I was thinking about an open-source company which does other community services, such as donating hardware to schools/disabled people/other no-profit.. that was the kind of company I volunteered for (accrc, alameda county computer research center), and there was plenty of old/new/crap hardware just to play with.
it is just an idea, perhaps somebody will join a pure-software open-source company with a no-profit like the one I just described.
just an idea for a secure wireless keyboard (even more secure than a regular one, see the 'tempest' thread): once you bought the key, you physically connect it to the radio receiver, you set up it into the right mode and then start typing a random key ON the keyboard for a while (just like pgp). And that's your key.
Now, obviously there are some issues: first, if somebody 'tempest-sniff' your keyboard while you type the one-time key you're screwed.
Second, if somebody intercept what you're typing AND the radio transmission, it's a joke to rebuild the key and decipher everything else. But then, if you have a secure environment, it's surely not visible from outside, nor put in a regular carton-wall building. It's going to be secured in a heavy-armored room, and so on.
Now a little thought: what is the point to have strong encryption worldwide, when they can sniff your keyboard or even your monitor from a 'long' distance? Wouldn't that be a 'fake security feeling' to make countries and companies much more relaxed about encryption and the US spying the rest of the world, when No Such Agencies could basically use satellites to spy? They can read your newspaper.. why couldn't they be able to spy what you type on your keyboard, or to read your monitor?
Just as a regular small-sized geek, normal people ask me every day "Why should I make my source code freely available? What if someone else steal my code to do a better product?"
I've looked for many answers, but one that I never found was: "Because too many people could do that, and they'll end up in competition with each other".
Let me explain: I develop a program which does something. I sell the whole thing, and make the source code freely available. If anybody wants to use it to write a better program, they could. Should my concern be "they'll use my work and get my money!"? I don't think so: as they could do it, there are thousend of people that could do the same thing. On the long run, we could have either thousend of competitor trying to make money, of thousend of developer trying to work under the same roof for the improvement of a good software.
Something that people forgets when they are afraid of "competition", is that there is almost never A single competitor, but many of them.
...sorry for the not-so-geek-and-pure-free-software-compliant definition, I'm just saying what I'm living and facing every day, not what theory of free source tells me that I should face.
This is a rather personal attack. I would concede that the rest of Linus' remarks were fine since he was responding to Microsoft's attitude towards open source development, but the last remark was at best childish.
Perhaps Microsoft could sue him. And patent the insult, so we'll be forced to check a 'patent-free' insult dictionary when we want to say something nasty to somebody....open source is the only way to avoid wasting resources in reinventing the wheel..
It's impossibile to keep working and staying focused for more than a few hours a day. Those hours spent surfing the web, chatting or just relaxing are NECESSARY to remain a human being, and not turn into a cubicle troll..
Prove me wrong, prove me that there's anyone around here who can happily work 40,50 hours a week, without taking any breaks during the day, without any distraction, without any drug (coffee is a drug), and I'll be pleased to meet him.
Of course I'm talking about people who have a life outside the workplace.
..that's what I've seen doing with a friend of mine. Basically, first you code "something" according to the needs. Then, once the customer has been satisfacted with his needs, you can happily opensource the code.
Benefits? The customer'll have suddenly a whole big bunch of developers/testers/bug fixer for free. The public opinion about your company gets better (in the geek field). The customer is satisfacted. You got money for your job.
'free' - no matter how much taxes you pay, if you need social help you'll have it. life is more important than bank account.
on the other hand, nobody forbids you to chose a better but expansive service.
Get out from US, come to another country: better health plans (also called 'free'..), cheaper life, and no nonsense lawsuits. Oh, also no weapons to kids.
I KNOW it's not like that everywhere, but think for a moment: once they'll be able to sue you (and you'll have to fight back paying money..) for ANYTHING you say/write/do, wouldn't be better to go somewhere else to actually DO something useful?
How much time, money, resources and brain do you waste in such lawsuits and patent-workaround?
Aren't you people sick tired of that? Do you know that the world is different out there?
...is it going to be mandatory? or will they force every farmer to get a licence to farm, after passing an exam in which they'll have to know and recognize EVERY single specie of vegetable/animal to avoid growing it?
1. We might be soon approaching the point where we should need longer encryption keys due to the amount of computing power available to the researcher.
2. We all know that the NSA is de facto "a little bit" ahead in this subject, due to their obfuscation of their existance and all the matter of cryptology during the 70s.
3. The US government decided to "open up" to allow the use of "strong" encryption to the rest of the world.
1+2+3=> I'm seriously thinking that the NSA itself could have gained enough computing power (quantum computing? does it look less impossible now?) at the time they started opening the key-size barrier.
"If you leave a bunch of people free to do what they want, each one of them will end up doing what others are doing."
I've read some excellent comments about what 'we' should do, about 'waking up' the average citizen, and so forth.
The average citizen doesn't want to be free. They want to be satisfied. Once satisfaction was meaning freedom, because people were physically chained to their land/situation. Now they aren't chained any more to anything they can see or touch, therefore there's no issue.
Why should they care about privacy? If the price of privacy is paranoia, is it worthed?
People doesn't want to be free. Information doesn't want to be freed. Those who still can do something (not only trolling around complaining like me right now) are disappearing fast, under tons of hypocrisy or just tons of lawsuit.
Welcome to the real world, where happiness is just a buck away. Don't stop thinking, just do what we want you to do.
"Welcome to the machine (pink floyd)
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been.
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time,
Provided with toys and 'Scouting for Boys'.
You brought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn't like school, and you
know you're nobody's fool,
So welcome to the machine.
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star,
He played a mean gituar,
He always ate in the Steak Bar.
He loved to drive in his Jaguar.
So welcome to the Machine."
"The coding starts with a continuously generated string of random numbers, say from a satellite put up to broadcast them or from some other source."
now that may be a good idea, but who assures me that the satellite is broadcasting truly random numbers? that supposed satellite is the weakest link of the chain. what happens if somebody spoofs the satellite? will all computers be shipped with the fingerprint of the satellite communications on a non-writable memory?
"The sender of a message and its recipient agree to start plucking a sequence of numbers from that string. They may agree, for example, to send a message, encoded with any of today's publicly available encryption systems saying "start" and giving instructions on capturing certain of the random numbers. As they capture the numbers, the sender uses them to encode a message, and the recipient uses the numbers to decode it."
what if an eavesdropper intercepts that series of random numbers? he could decipher the message without anybody knowing it. how would the two parties agree on which series of numbers without the enemy knowing it?
"If the eavesdropper, for example, had a secret way to decode the message saying "start" and it took a minute to do the calculation needed to decode it, it would be too late by the time the eavesdropper got going."
yes, but couldn't the eavesdropper record the stream of numbers broadcasted 'til he got the 'stop' message from one of the two parties? with a good range of approximation (we're talking about No Such Agencies with large amount of computing power) they can even try a brute force deciphering of the message until they got the right sequence.
I don't know, I'm sceptic about this kind of solutions, expecially those publicized as via ordinary media and not via more competent channels.
however, the impossible-to-retrieve thing is interesting.
does anybody know if that kind of cryptography will be defined as 'non exportable', and kept within the us?
I wonder if the fact that the nsa haven't blocked these news may be a proof that they already know how to decipher it, by mthematical way (not yet discovered by the academic world) or not orthodox way (intercepting the plaintext before, and so on).
"Unfortunately, shells would often lock up on there, and more than once my ~ directory got deleted and I got no answer when I mailed admins about it."
I understand where the BOFH ended up.
could a distributed parallel system be useful?
on
Genetic Stone Soup
·
· Score: 1
"Experimental work and more biocomputing is needed to find out what those genes do. The problem with biocomputing isn't the lack of CPU, but the lack of good strategies / models / theory (or, not lack of "good", but lack of "better" strategies etc.)."
I wonder if it would be possible to use a massive parallel processing system (such as SETI) just to *start* things. I know that it isn't the lack of CPU the main issue, but I think it *could* become. Once a good strategy has been found, wouldn't a great amount of cpu power be useful? At least to try things, to experiment, to choose or refine a strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
What are Open* people doing? Wasting time in reinventing the wheel, not because previous wheel don't run well, but because they don't like the "color" of the actual wheels? In those days of lack of good open-source programmers, are we really wasting so much time?
In that I see the consequences of Microsoft's point of view on open source. Put it this way: IPF creator has been scared by the whole "open software - no money" axiom, and he tried to adjust things. Creating havoc all around.
Old latins used to say "divide et impera", which means "split up and rule". The best way to conquer is to split up the enemies and eat them all one by one ('embrace and extend' looks similar, to me).
just a thought.
search on google, for accrc - their old website was www.accrc.org but it looks down now. international blvd. something, I hope they are still there.
quoting theo: "Furthermore, we know of a number of companies using ipf with modification like us, who are now in the same situation, and we hope that some of them will work with us to fill this gap that now exists in OpenBSD (temporarily, we hope)."
So let's hope they'll find out a solution quickly. I think it's just a big misunderstanding: ipfilter creator wanted to be sure his product could not be modified too lightly to keep it strong, and openbsd people.. just reacted badly. I'm sure ipf creator will allow certain companies to modify it.. he's benefiting just like they do.
Calm down people, let's avoid pouring gas on flames this time.
interesting, I did not know that. I was not only thinking about linux companies, but also regular or small companies which would like to develop under open source philosophy. But it's good.
Yes, I see what you mean. I was thinking about an open-source company which does other community services, such as donating hardware to schools/disabled people/other no-profit.. that was the kind of company I volunteered for (accrc, alameda county computer research center), and there was plenty of old/new/crap hardware just to play with.
it is just an idea, perhaps somebody will join a pure-software open-source company with a no-profit like the one I just described.
just an idea for a secure wireless keyboard (even more secure than a regular one, see the 'tempest' thread): once you bought the key, you physically connect it to the radio receiver, you set up it into the right mode and then start typing a random key ON the keyboard for a while (just like pgp). And that's your key.
:)
Now, obviously there are some issues: first, if somebody 'tempest-sniff' your keyboard while you type the one-time key you're screwed.
Second, if somebody intercept what you're typing AND the radio transmission, it's a joke to rebuild the key and decipher everything else. But then, if you have a secure environment, it's surely not visible from outside, nor put in a regular carton-wall building. It's going to be secured in a heavy-armored room, and so on.
Now a little thought: what is the point to have strong encryption worldwide, when they can sniff your keyboard or even your monitor from a 'long' distance? Wouldn't that be a 'fake security feeling' to make countries and companies much more relaxed about encryption and the US spying the rest of the world, when No Such Agencies could basically use satellites to spy? They can read your newspaper.. why couldn't they be able to spy what you type on your keyboard, or to read your monitor?
I'm turning my monitor away from my window now
peace
Just as a regular small-sized geek, normal people ask me every day "Why should I make my source code freely available? What if someone else steal my code to do a better product?"
I've looked for many answers, but one that I never found was: "Because too many people could do that, and they'll end up in competition with each other".
Let me explain: I develop a program which does something. I sell the whole thing, and make the source code freely available. If anybody wants to use it to write a better program, they could. Should my concern be "they'll use my work and get my money!"? I don't think so: as they could do it, there are thousend of people that could do the same thing. On the long run, we could have either thousend of competitor trying to make money, of thousend of developer trying to work under the same roof for the improvement of a good software.
Something that people forgets when they are afraid of "competition", is that there is almost never A single competitor, but many of them.
...sorry for the not-so-geek-and-pure-free-software-compliant definition, I'm just saying what I'm living and facing every day, not what theory of free source tells me that I should face.
I was a fidonet point in italy, but i've lost all the nodelists I had at the time. why don't we contribute with a worldwide bbs tracking system?
This is a rather personal attack. I would concede that the rest of Linus' remarks were fine since he was responding to Microsoft's attitude towards open source development, but the last remark was at best childish.
...open source is the only way to avoid wasting resources in reinventing the wheel..
Perhaps Microsoft could sue him. And patent the insult, so we'll be forced to check a 'patent-free' insult dictionary when we want to say something nasty to somebody.
It's impossibile to keep working and staying focused for more than a few hours a day. Those hours spent surfing the web, chatting or just relaxing are NECESSARY to remain a human being, and not turn into a cubicle troll..
Prove me wrong, prove me that there's anyone around here who can happily work 40,50 hours a week, without taking any breaks during the day, without any distraction, without any drug (coffee is a drug), and I'll be pleased to meet him.
Of course I'm talking about people who have a life outside the workplace.
..that's what I've seen doing with a friend of mine. Basically, first you code "something" according to the needs. Then, once the customer has been satisfacted with his needs, you can happily opensource the code.
Benefits? The customer'll have suddenly a whole big bunch of developers/testers/bug fixer for free. The public opinion about your company gets better (in the geek field). The customer is satisfacted. You got money for your job.
..just a thought.
'free' - no matter how much taxes you pay, if you need social help you'll have it. life is more important than bank account.
on the other hand, nobody forbids you to chose a better but expansive service.
...please.
Get out from US, come to another country: better health plans (also called 'free'..), cheaper life, and no nonsense lawsuits. Oh, also no weapons to kids.
I KNOW it's not like that everywhere, but think for a moment: once they'll be able to sue you (and you'll have to fight back paying money..) for ANYTHING you say/write/do, wouldn't be better to go somewhere else to actually DO something useful?
How much time, money, resources and brain do you waste in such lawsuits and patent-workaround?
Aren't you people sick tired of that? Do you know that the world is different out there?
..just think about it..
...is it going to be mandatory? or will they force every farmer to get a licence to farm, after passing an exam in which they'll have to know and recognize EVERY single specie of vegetable/animal to avoid growing it?
cool.
...surely it's a good idea, but they're still at the point of a magic lantern...
1. We might be soon approaching the point where we should need longer encryption keys due to the amount of computing power available to the researcher.
2. We all know that the NSA is de facto "a little bit" ahead in this subject, due to their obfuscation of their existance and all the matter of cryptology during the 70s.
3. The US government decided to "open up" to allow the use of "strong" encryption to the rest of the world.
1+2+3=> I'm seriously thinking that the NSA itself could have gained enough computing power (quantum computing? does it look less impossible now?) at the time they started opening the key-size barrier.
time will prove me wrong, hopefully.
what if the laser touches the oil? will it explode? that would be fun :)
..that looks like unix :)
"If you leave a bunch of people free to do what they want, each one of them will end up doing what others are doing."
I've read some excellent comments about what 'we' should do, about 'waking up' the average citizen, and so forth.
The average citizen doesn't want to be free. They want to be satisfied. Once satisfaction was meaning freedom, because people were physically chained to their land/situation. Now they aren't chained any more to anything they can see or touch, therefore there's no issue.
Why should they care about privacy? If the price of privacy is paranoia, is it worthed?
People doesn't want to be free. Information doesn't want to be freed. Those who still can do something (not only trolling around complaining like me right now) are disappearing fast, under tons of hypocrisy or just tons of lawsuit.
Welcome to the real world, where happiness is just a buck away. Don't stop thinking, just do what we want you to do.
"Welcome to the machine (pink floyd) Welcome my son, welcome to the machine. Where have you been? It's alright we know where you've been. You've been in the pipeline, filling in time, Provided with toys and 'Scouting for Boys'. You brought a guitar to punish your ma, And you didn't like school, and you know you're nobody's fool, So welcome to the machine. Welcome my son, welcome to the machine. What did you dream? It's alright we told you what to dream. You dreamed of a big star, He played a mean gituar, He always ate in the Steak Bar. He loved to drive in his Jaguar. So welcome to the Machine."
"The coding starts with a continuously generated string of random numbers, say from a satellite put up to broadcast them or from some other source."
now that may be a good idea, but who assures me that the satellite is broadcasting truly random numbers? that supposed satellite is the weakest link of the chain. what happens if somebody spoofs the satellite? will all computers be shipped with the fingerprint of the satellite communications on a non-writable memory?
"The sender of a message and its recipient agree to start plucking a sequence of numbers from that string. They may agree, for example, to send a message, encoded with any of today's publicly available encryption systems saying "start" and giving instructions on capturing certain of the random numbers. As they capture the numbers, the sender uses them to encode a message, and the recipient uses the numbers to decode it."
what if an eavesdropper intercepts that series of random numbers? he could decipher the message without anybody knowing it. how would the two parties agree on which series of numbers without the enemy knowing it?
"If the eavesdropper, for example, had a secret way to decode the message saying "start" and it took a minute to do the calculation needed to decode it, it would be too late by the time the eavesdropper got going."
yes, but couldn't the eavesdropper record the stream of numbers broadcasted 'til he got the 'stop' message from one of the two parties? with a good range of approximation (we're talking about No Such Agencies with large amount of computing power) they can even try a brute force deciphering of the message until they got the right sequence.
I don't know, I'm sceptic about this kind of solutions, expecially those publicized as via ordinary media and not via more competent channels.
however, the impossible-to-retrieve thing is interesting.
does anybody know if that kind of cryptography will be defined as 'non exportable', and kept within the us?
I wonder if the fact that the nsa haven't blocked these news may be a proof that they already know how to decipher it, by mthematical way (not yet discovered by the academic world) or not orthodox way (intercepting the plaintext before, and so on).
is it going to be enough resin to fix the object two, three, twenty times?
it appears to me that they are only going to delay an event....
"Unfortunately, shells would often lock up on there, and more than once my ~ directory got deleted and I got no answer when I mailed admins about it."
I understand where the BOFH ended up.
"Experimental work and more biocomputing is needed to find out what those genes do. The problem with biocomputing isn't the lack of CPU, but the lack of good strategies / models / theory (or, not lack of "good", but lack of "better" strategies etc.)."
I wonder if it would be possible to use a massive parallel processing system (such as SETI) just to *start* things. I know that it isn't the lack of CPU the main issue, but I think it *could* become. Once a good strategy has been found, wouldn't a great amount of cpu power be useful? At least to try things, to experiment, to choose or refine a strategy.
Just a thought.
because I don't think any government will mind go and force every single small isp to install a carnivore box...
on the other hand, hoping in broadband access, everybody will be his own provider.
and that's sad..