We use ChiliASP here because one of our outside agencies had their site developed by an outside vendor who did the whole thing in ASP. The conversion has been an absolute nightmare. ChiliASP is great for those hardcore ASP developers who need to keep programming because they can't (or won't) switch to PHP or CF but want the stability of a non-NT platform.
BUT...There are quite a few drawbacks to it. The first noted was cost. We initially looked at running it on a Solaris box but the cost was absolutely prohibitive. When then ported it to a Linux box, but now we have the whole thing running on a NT/IIS System. Why?
Flexibility - ChiliASP does not support everything that ASP is capable of (Mainly because some of those things *require* native IIS.
Stability - Stability you say? Yep! ChiliASP caused a lot of memory leaks on the Linux box. We constantly had to reboot it, and it never seemed to run quite right.
Cost (2) - We discovered that some native features of ASP are not available in ChiliASP without spending even more money on add-ons.
So while I think that porting it to FreeBSD was only natural for ChiliASP as they want to support the most platforms possible, we probably won't be using it here. Currently we rely very heavily on Cold Fusion (which could be a whole topic on it's own) but someday I would love to go to PHP. ASP is great if you are on a properly configured NT platform, but if you are going to go open-source, go with a language designed for it, or at least one that is close (such as Cold Fusion).
I'm watching, or I should say I was watching this via CNN's site - but now I am watching the main control room of NASA. Looks like they had a minor glitch in their satellite feed - gotta love those backdoor features to change channels!
I want to provide a bit different aspect of your view.
I live in Tampa, right across the water from Clearwater, one of the main headquarters for them. I know the medics that attended to 'that girl.' I've watched the courts literally paint a line - a white strip- down the center of a public road and tell Non-CoS members that they could not cross it. I've driven past it and just felt wierd.
There is a difference between a religion and a cult. I don't know how many of you took the time to look at the photos (if you could stomach them) or the report by the prosecution, but that should be enough right there. The CoS isn't even considered to be a church in the State of Florida. You know why? They are a business. A business that inteferes with the lives of people for the purpose of something that if you have been checking the links out you have seen.
I want you all to think about this too. When Lisa was involved in a minor traffic accident, the medics who came to the scene reported her waying approximately 150 lbs. When the CoS members took her, just 17 days later, nearly 1.5 hours away to a hospital in a completely different county, she weighed 108 lbs. That is an approximately 42 lb weight reduction.
Unfortunately I have wandered off-topic. I commend Slashdot for having the guts to stand-up and choose their battles. I fully agree they had no choice in the matter. But those that keep referring this as the Church of Scientology are wrong. I have never been a member, nor have I ever been inside their 'headquarters'. But I can say that what I have seen scares me worse than any Microsoft, RIAA, DMCA monster ever could.
Ok, I suppose you can relate Yahoo to the bible, but you leave out a few things. The bible has sold more copies than any other book made. Unfortuntely though there are lots of places to see the bible, someone still pays for it. Normally it is churches, who rely on the funds of their congregation to survive.
No, I'm sure there aren't any hugely profitable Bible publishing companies out there. But to say that evangelists don't advertise is a bit short of the truth. I live in Tampa and there are may billboards that I pass that are for various evangelists in this area. And I know they don't get those for free.
But I digress. Christianity and the bible-based religions do focus on the bible, but have many other things to support them. For example, Christian bands, Christian Rallies (The Billy Graham Crusade packs Tampa Stadium), etc. Being a Christian is more than just owning a Bible and referring to it when you have a question. It is a way of life (and a choice that shouldn't be forced on anyone I might add). Somehow I can't imagine waking up every morning thanking Yahoo for my breath, or for anything besides being there when I turned on my computer (ok, so I never turn it off - it's a figure of speech).
And while I could explain to you that while there are evangelists and people purporting to be Christians who take money from people and use it poorly, or don't use it for Christian like services, the best way would be for you to talk to a local church. Ask how they make it. Ask how their money comes in. I know with ours we were given x amount of dollars for five years and then we had to be self-sufficient, something that is happening in the internet world as well.
So yes, while you could say that Yahoo offers some of the services that are benefits of the Christian faith, I don't think that you could say that they should survive because of that. They are a business that must find a way to survive.
It's funny that this story should pop up on/. today. I just had finished a discussion with our NetAdmin section regarding Microsoft vs Solaris vs Linux.
Yes, I think that when you use your status to stifle development and innovation, you should be stopped. But just because you are successful and/or proprietary does not mean you should be shut down.
Unfortunately one of the biggest challenges we have to converting all of our systems to Linux is the lack of uniformity - the very thing that Microsoft has the advantage on. We are afraid to trust our servers, information, and very jobs on software that is constantly split, revised, split again, etc., and that does not offer the type of critical support we need.
Don't get me wrong, I think that the premise behind Linux and open-source is wonderful. I run Linux at home on a box for testing, and even though I have had quite a bit of difficulties, I must say it is starting to grow on me.
So while everyone was jumping the gun at Microsoft, saying how much they suck just because they are big, we were worrying about long-term development. No, NT Servers are not the most stable beasts in the world. In fact, only one of our production servers runs NT, and it isn't even with IIS. But we know that going with a company such as Solaris (which is what we mostly use) and NT will provide us support, functionality, and a consistant theme in their software (even if that theme is that you can't trust a service pack for 2.5 months).
I thank those that are seriously taking a second look at this issue. No, we don't want innovation stifled, nor should bully tactics be used, etc. But don't destroy a major platform just because everyone and their mom (Hi mom) uses it.
Ok, I'll admit, I felt a bit elated at the thought of seeing this article. I remember the first time I saw the cue cat - I immediately cursed it as evil. It's funny how the predictions failed too - I wonder how many of us could have predicted that (I'm sure about 90% of the people here at/. fell into that category).
What disturbs me is that no one is listining to the people. Revenue fell when people stopped clicking on ads, so the solution? Bigger ads! The rich people don't like using an invasive, obtrusive, feared product? Put it in Radio Shack where people finishing projects out of the Anarchist's Cookbook can go! B2B not working too well? Ignore the consumer demands! Go B2B! Yeah!
I slowly see the people who think they control the web, companies like Digital Convergence, slowly moving away from caring about, I dunno, the customer? and moving to what they want. For example, I was involved in a conference call for a $15,000 piece of software for the place where I work. Involved was myself (webmaster), my mangager, and our director. Not for some small company, but the sixth largest County Governemnt in the State of Florida. And right in the middle of the phone call, the guy demoing the product put us on hold with the following statement:
"I'm sorry, you'll have to hold on for a minute, I am being IRC'd."
WHAT?! IRC'd in the middle of a $15,000 demo? Yep, we'll be sure to use you! But that is my point, when are companies going to learn that we are not plugs, we are not hardware, we are individual human beings, who care how we are used, who care what we buy, who care who is snooping into out personal lives.
Ok, breathe in, breathe out, circular, like the merry-go-round, it goes up, and around. Whew. Just my 2 coppers if anyone cares.
Hey! I've got an idea! Let's trade Napster to Australia for some R rated content! Then we can listen to our MP3's, they can see Joe Cartoon, and the world is a better place to live. Whaddaya think?
Here in Michigan, it may soon be possible for a lawyer to argue a court case while sitting in New York at a kitchen table, wearing pajamas, sipping coffee and eating a sticky bun for breakfast.
The lawyer would never have to set foot in the Thumb or any other part of the Wolverine State.
That, anyway, is the plan. To lure technology companies to Michigan, Gov. John Engler wants to establish a separate "cybercourt" for cases involving technology and high-tech businesses, where virtually everything would be done via computer rather than in a courtroom.
Briefs could be filed online, evidence viewed by streaming video, oral arguments delivered by teleconferencing, conferences held by e- mail. Lawyers would not have to be in Michigan or even be licensed to practice in the state. Cases could be heard any time of the day, even at night, and judges would be trained to understand the complex issues that arise in technology disputes.
At least one other state, Maryland, is planning a separate judicial division to make the state more attractive to high-tech businesses. Legal experts predict other states will follow. But some lawyers and judges say the idea raises questions about many issues, including handling evidence and training judges.
Governor Engler wants technology to become as much a mainstay of Michigan's economy as the automobile industry is. He is also proposing tax breaks for new technology companies, and the state already provides millions of dollars in grants for research and product development in biotechnology.
Mr. Engler, who proposed the cybercourt in his annual address last month, said he hoped it would be up and running within a year. He said he thought technology companies would be attracted to Michigan just as Fortune 500 companies were drawn to Delaware, where the 200-year-old Court of Chancery is especially equipped to handle business cases.
"I've always admired how Delaware, with its chancery court, really became a preferred business location," Mr. Engler said in an interview. He added, "We think this is a little bit of a case of if we build it, they may come."
With a separate court, he said, cases would be fast-tracked, saving litigants time and money.
"At a time when you can go from idea to I.P.O. at warp speed, we need to have a way to get through the court system at a faster rate," said Mr. Engler, a three-term Republican. "You literally can have companies be formed, have a relatively short life cycle, and go out of business in the time it takes a case to get through court."
Lawyers and judges seem generally receptive.
"I think it will streamline the court process for new-economy businesses, and hopefully that will be something that will lure business to Michigan," said Michigan's attorney general, Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat.
But some question how the court will iron out details.
"One of the biggest questions is what is the jurisdiction of this court?" said Richard D. McLellan, a lawyer who is chairman of the Information Technology Association of Michigan. For example, some disputes involve intellectual property rights, trademarks or patents, issues handled in federal court.
And while Mr. McLellan supports allowing lawyers not licensed in Michigan to try cases from their home states, he says it will be necessary to decide how to hold those lawyers accountable to Michigan's legal code and how to discipline them.
What's more, he said, "there will be a lot of figuring out how each and every element of a courtroom proceeding will translate electronically, from filing documents to hearings to oral arguments to public access."
Marc Shulman, a Michigan state representative sponsoring the bill to create the cybercourt, said Michigan's Supreme Court would help answer those questions. Mr. Shulman, a lawyer, said the court could handle any technology-related civil litigation as long as the case did not require a jury and the parties agreed to have it heard in cybercourt. The cases would involve sums of $25,000 or more, and litigants might be charged higher fees than in regular courts.
Mr. Shulman said he thought that a judge and a clerk would still hear the case in a courtroom, to preserve a semblance of judicial pomp, but that the parties, lawyers and witnesses could be anywhere. And, he said, "the public could actually come online and follow the case as it happens, from their own homes," assuming the public found squabbles over URLs or gigabytes as gripping as the O. J. Simpson murder trial.
Mr. Shulman said Michigan's court would take elements from other states, like New York and North Carolina, which have judicial divisions for business cases. The online aspects would be modeled in part on an experimental electronic court project run by the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and the National Center for State Courts.
In Maryland, which expects to start its new division this year, plans are for cases to sweep through the system in fewer than 18 months and for many proceedings to eventually be conducted electronically.
"Our Legislature wanted to get business here, and I think that may be the impetus for a lot of states to look at this," said James L. Thompson, a lawyer, who, while president of the Maryland Bar Association last year, appointed most members of a state commission that recommended the separate division of court for technology and business cases.
"Most of the technology companies that we heard from and evaluated said that if a state has a business and technology court, a better way of addressing disputes, that would certainly be one of the things on their checklist for moving there," he said.
Another impetus for these courts, Mr. Engler said, is the Microsoft antitrust case, in which the federal judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, suggested that his technology expertise was limited, saying in an interview with The New York Times that he had supported a proposal by lawyers for the Justice Department to break up Microsoft because "there's no way I can equip myself to do a better job than they have done."
In Michigan and Maryland, judges interested and versed in technology would be selected and receive additional training.
But Max S. Oppenheimer, a Baltimore lawyer specializing in intellectual property, questioned whether the training would lead judges to believe they understood technological facts in a case before the lawyers presented their arguments.
"Do you want a judge to walk into the courtroom being his own expert?" Mr. Oppenheimer asked. He also wondered whether "by training our judges to be friendly to business, we will deliberately build in a bias to attempt to attract a certain class of litigants to the state."
Mr. Oppenheimer, and others, also questioned how other litigants would feel if "your judge hasn't had special training in how to deal with your problem, but because someone else's problem involves the Internet, they're going to get a better judge."
But will high-technology companies flock to Michigan because it is easier to sue each other?
Joan E. Trusty, president of two large high-technology organizations in Michigan, said that in the past, many technology companies decided not to go to court because it was too costly and time-consuming. "Whether or not the cybercourt will be a be- all and end-all attraction," she said, will depend on whether its first few cases "work their way through the system quickly."
A computer science professor at Harvard says he has found a way to send coded messages that cannot be deciphered, even by an all-powerful adversary with unlimited computing power. And, he says, he can prove it.
If he is right, and he does have some supporters, his code may be the first that is both practical and provably secure. While there are commercially available coding systems that seem very hard to break, no one can prove that they cannot be cracked, mathematicians say.
In essence, the researcher, Dr. Michael Rabin and his Ph.D. student Yan Zong Bing, have discovered a way to make a code based on a key that vanishes even as it is used. While they are not the first to have thought of such an idea, Dr. Rabin says that never before has anyone been able to make it both workable and to prove mathematically that the code cannot be broken.
"This is the first provably unbreakable code that is really efficient," Dr. Rabin said. "We have proved that the adversary is helpless."
Dr. Richard Lipton, a computer science professor at Princeton, who is visiting this year at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said, "It's like in the old `Mission Impossible,' where the message blows up and disappears."
Someone who uses one of today's commercially available coding systems, Dr. Lipton explained, uses the same key -- mathematical formulas for encoding and decoding -- over and over.
Eventually, they may be forced, perhaps by a court order, to give up the key. Or the key may be stolen. But with Dr. Rabin's system, the message stays secret forever because the code uses a stream of random numbers that are plugged into the key for encoding and decoding. The numbers are never stored in a computer's memory, so they essentially vanish as the message is being encrypted and decrypted.
"If someone walks into my office with a court order or if they put a gun to my head they still could not read my conversations," Dr. Lipton said.
In a sense, say some mathematicians and computer scientists, Dr. Rabin may have solved the ultimate problem in cryptography, one that has driven research for centuries: finding a provably unbreakable code that is also practical. But, they say, the paradox is that the discovery has come at a time of vigorous debate over whether such a code will make much difference in keeping communications private.
Some say that a provably unbreakable code could have profound effects, keeping secret messages secret forever. But others say that codes today are already so good that there is little to be gained by making them provably, rather than just probably, unbreakable.
For now, Dr. Rabin's idea is simply a scheme backed up by a mathematical proof that he has been presenting to scientists at seminars. No company is lurking in the background to sell it, and Dr. Rabin says he has no commercial interests in it.
"I never commercialize anything," Dr. Rabin said. "I am not in that business." Instead, he said, he did the work because it was a challenge.
Dr. Rabin's idea is simplicity itself, at least in the world of encryption. Previous coding methods rely for their security on the limitations of computing power. They assume that if breaking a code requires enough calculations, even the best computers will not be able to do it.
But, Dr. Rabin said, there is no proof that such codes are secure. Their security hinges on the belief that no one will find a shortcut to doing the calculations. It is always possible that such a shortcut exists, waiting to be discovered by a clever mathematician.
Dr. Rabin relies instead on the limits of memory banks in computers. No matter how powerful a computer is, no computer can store an unlimited amount of data. And yet that is what is required for an eavesdropper to break his code.
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. The numbers can be coming by at an enormous speed -- 10 million million per second, for example.
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.
An eavesdropper can know the mathematical formula used to encode and decode, but without knowing the exact sequence of random numbers that were used in the formula to send a particular message, the eavesdropper cannot decode the message. And the only way to have that sequence is to just happen to be storing numbers from the unending stream at exactly the right moment.
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. The sender and recipient would already have their string of numbers and that string of numbers, once broadcast, could never be retrieved. It would be infeasible to store the endless string of numbers in any computer and so they are essentially gone forever.
Often, Dr. Rabin said, eavesdroppers will capture and store encoded messages hoping to decode them at later, either when computers have improved -- making it easier to do the calculations to break a code -- or when the method for encoding and decoding is known, perhaps because it has been stolen. But, he said, messages encoded with his system can never be broken by these means because the random numbers used in encoding and decoding are used once and are never stored.
"That is why I call it `everlasting security,' " he said.
Dr. Richard DeMillo, chief technology officer at Hewlett-Packard, said that what interested him about the scheme was that it "reshuffles the policy deck."
"Normally," he explained, "agencies put the burden of wiretapping on the carrier." A telephone company, for example, would have to allow an agency like the Federal Bureau of Investigation to listen in on coded material. But with this system, the agency would still have the burden of trying to capture the appropriate stream of random numbers, a task that would be technologically infeasible.
Dr. Lipton also said the scheme could thwart law enforcement agencies.
"If I'm saying to you, `Buy 1,000 shares of I.B.M., I'm sure it's going to go up,' " he said, "and if that was an insider trading situation, five years from now the F.B.I. could go after you."
If the agency had the encrypted message in hand, it could demand the key to read it, he said. But, Dr. Lipton said, if the random numbers used to encode were used once and never stored, the agency would be hamstrung. "It changes the ground rules," he said.
Dr. Lipton added that, as a computer scientist, he appreciated the proof that the code could not be broken. "Michael's big contribution has been the proof that the system actually works," he said. "It's one of those things that sounds obvious but the mathematics is quite hard."
Of course, what is good for those who want privacy may not be good for law enforcement. Even the cryptography systems sold today are a problem for the F.B.I. "Uncrackable encryption allows drug lords, terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate about their criminal intentions without fear of outside intrusion," the F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh, told the Senate in 1998, according to a transcript from the Federal Document Clearing House. "This type of encryption also allows these same people to maintain electronically stored evidence of their crimes beyond the reach of law enforcement."
Still, some computer experts said that while it might be interesting in theory to have a provably unbreakable code, the practical importance of Dr. Rabin's code may be minimal.
Some, like Dr. Dorothy Denning, a computer science professor at Georgetown, and Dr. Cipher Deavours, a professor of computer science and mathematics at Kean University in Union, N.J., said the code was simply impractical for large messages. The larger the message, the longer the string of random numbers needed to encode it, and the more difficult it would be to send.
"It's a cute idea, but it's simply unmanageable," Dr. Deavours said.
Others, like Dr. Lipton, disagreed. "I think it is quite practical," he said. And Dr. Rabin insisted that computers would have no problem with the encryption scheme, even with long messages that were sent among a large group of people.
Beyond the question of whether the system would work in practice, some question it because, they say, the role of cryptography in protecting privacy has been overblown.
"If you think cryptography is the answer to your problem, then you don't know what your problem is," said Dr. Peter G. Neumann, a computer scientist at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.
Dr. Neumann explained that there are always ways to get around cryptography barriers and that these methods have nothing to do with breaking codes.
"It's like the voting machines," he said. "You'd like to have some integrity in the electoral process and now folks are coming out of the woodwork saying, `We have this perfect algorithm for privacy and security.' "
But, he said, while the systems may use cryptography to make sure that when someone touches a screen to vote, that vote is transmitted with perfect security, who's to ensure the integrity of the person who programs the computer?
"There is no guarantee that your vote actually goes into the computer the way it looks on the touch screen," Dr. Neumann said. "What does it take to buy a computer programmer? A couple of years' salary and a house in the Cayman Islands?"
Bruce Schneier, who is founder and chief technical officer for Counterpane Internet Security in San Jose, said that, as a scientist, he liked the idea of a provably secure system. "Research like this should be encouraged," he said. "But research is different from engineering."
But in the real world, a burglar confronted by an impenetrable lock on the front door may well go round to the back and just smash a window. "I'm a cryptographer by trade," Mr. Schneier said. "And a provably secure cryptosystem doesn't do me any good. We're putting a stake in the ground and hoping the enemy runs into it and now we're arguing about whether it should be one mile tall or two miles tall. It doesn't matter. The enemy will walk around it," he added.
Dr. Robert Morris, a retired cryptographer who was chief scientist for the National Security Agency, the nation's code-making and code- breaking agency, also questioned the primacy of cryptography.
"As far as I can see, he seems to be correct -- it's a provably secure method," Dr. Morris said. "But does that mean no one can read it? Nah."
He explained: "You can still get the message, but maybe not by cryptanalysis. If you're in this business, you go after a reasonably cheap, reliable method. It may be one of the three B's: burglary, bribery or blackmail. Those are right up there along with cryptanalysis in their importance."
Dr. Rabin said that just because there are other weaknesses in communications systems, that did not mean that secure encryption was not important.
It is as though medical researchers started arguing that there is no need to find a cure for AIDS, Dr. Rabin said. After all, many more people die of heart disease, and if you cure people of AIDS, heart disease can still strike them.
"This is not a reason not to work on H.I.V.," Dr. Rabin said. "The problem of H.I.V. is still important."
Dr. Morris said that even though the actual breaking of codes might not be necessary to read encrypted messages, Dr. Rabin's method could have an effect. "In a sense, what it does is shift the emphasis from cryptanalysis to some other sort of attack," he said.
I work for a large county government organization. We have over 10,000 employees, most of which with one or two computers. We also staff a 6 member helpdesk at a remote location that is tied to us using fiber. We run a program similar to PCAnywhere but that is extremely secure, fast, and runs seemlessly in the background. In fact, you would never know it was on your machine until someone admins it.
I think that this is probably one of the features that keeps us at the level that we are. While we give basic computer classes to our employees, trying to solve a problem using just the phone can be both frustrating and time-consuming. And with us having offices all over the county (and with the county spreading some 300 square miles or more) this is just phoenomenal.
Of course, this is run through our own organization, and not through an ASP. But the same idealogy can be used for that as well. Compare the initial costs of the software and setup to the costs of teaching the employees the skills to do basic troubleshooting and the time wasted by Net Admin having to talk them though the process, etc. If a basic service call with phone support takes 45 minutes, but with Remote Admin it is cut down to 7 minutes, that is a significant reduction in cost. Factor in the salaries of both the employee being helped (say $14.00 per hour) and the help desk personnel (Hmm, how do you convert peanuts to dollars again?) and you can generate a pretty report to show management. All before lunch. Good luck!
Yes, unfortunately it does make a difference. Before I took the position I am at now, I reported to the Vice-President of Marketing for a $275 million Credit Union. If you think that a mere name change is nothing, you are dead wrong. We were spending close to a million just to change our name so that people wouldn't get the perception that we were a teachers credit union.
So I can see the logic in this move. You are darn skippy people are going to forget about it. "MCS1000" is not only non-threatning to the general population, it's not 'catchy' like Carnivore. Can you really see Dan Rather on the news talking about "the MCS1000 recently" blah blah blah.
It is up to people like us to keep the pressure on, to make sure that our rights are not violated.
Technology like what you saw at Raymond James has been in place in Tampa for about a month or two now. One of the major downtown areas, Ybor City, has cameras everywhere, and they are linked to this same system. While there was a big uproar when the cameras were first introduced it, like a lot of other intusive technologies, was eventually accepted, and let be. However, no one here had any idea that they were using those same cameras to do exactly what they did at the Super Bowl.
But is it right? I think so. Yes, there will be problems, and it won't be perfect at first. It is similar to any new technology - there are bugs that have to be worked out. And while this is a bit different in that we are dealing with people, not just productivity, I think they were smart enough to realize the limitations of this system.
I work for the county here, on the top floor of a tall building, and for fire/rescue and I know we had several threats against the stadium. Them main use of this technology was to prevent terrorists from entering the stadium, or threatning other parts of Tampa. Perhaps none of you remember (or knew) that in 1991, when the Super Bowl was in Tampa, everyone was physically searched. Every bag, every pocket, every vehicle, truck, car, trunk, seat, purse, etc. because of security. Metal detectors were used, bomb sniffing dogs, and tons of police. All that for the safety of others.
While my thought goes along the lines that to live in the society we want, we may not be able to catch every criminal. Unfortunately, that is the tradeoff we pursue. I would rather see a criminal get off then have chips implanted in every human so that 'we would know.' The best part about society is that it is that - society. People get their due. Trust me, if some criminal raped my daughter, or killed my wife, and I knew that he did it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he got off...Well, I think we can all understand where that one is going.
And for those of you not aware, there are disclaimers on the back of the ticket that allow for you to have your picture taken. I'm not sure of the exact wording, but I bet it allows for exactly the type of systems that was put in place. Let's be realistic, and not have to put disclaimers like the one here on everything that we do.
Yes, I agree with you. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my one person idealism. However, from what I see, Bush appears to be electing 'friends' or 'similar viewpoints.' However, as one post has said, I can not base all of my viewpoints on what I have seen, or what I can imagine. Public speech is a powerful thing, and that really should have been the text of my speech.
No, one leader can't really do a lot by his/her self(with the noted exception of an executive order - and even then there are ways around). It is when the idealism of a single group is placed into a position of policy making, then we have to be cautious. Scared? No, I don't think so. I have enough faith in our systems in place that our freedoms aren't going to end up like Russia, or China.
I sincerely hope that I never have to set myself on fire in Times Square in order to change policy, but I would be willing to do so to attain freedom. I feel gratitude beyond belief that the people before me have fought so hard to get us the freedoms that we have today. And I don't see those going away without a tremendous amount of work on politicans parts, politicians who don't care about society.
I am mostly frustrated at the ability of large organizations to take away little rights. Such as being able to make a copy of an analog recording that you made. But if our voices remain strong, our rights will too.
*Sigh*
I love the U.S. Heck, I live here, so I should. But it saddens me to think that because of one leader, one person, we could lose the ability to do the things that we love, such as hacking and programming. I have at home a PC and a Big Mouth Billy Bass that I am splicing together. Why? Because it is fun. And while I want to use it for a fun, light-hearted purpose (say, when I get an email, for it to flop it's tail and say EMAIL!), I suppose I could program it to say something not-so-pleasant. Does that make it illegal?
Here is my challenge. I am a christian, supporting some of the views of Bush. However, I am not perfect. I do things that some may view as immoral, or not perfect, or a whole host of other things (my girlfriend finds it disgusting that I am hacking a Billy Bass). But since when does my immorality become a part of public policy? I may not agree with abortion, but does that mean we should cut off funding for a group that does? I don't think so, especially if they might be doing valuable research to help those in distress.
Privacy is, of course, a genuine concern of mine. Being that this is the U.S., and that we are a free, democratic society, we have to accept the fact that we can catch 'em all. How many times have you been passed by someone doing 90 mph on the freeway, and wondered where the nearest police officer was at? Does that mean that because the police can not be everywhere, we should track everyone and automatically write them a ticket? How many times have you broken the law? Maybe it was speeding, maybe it was theft (accendantely taking a pen), maybe it was, heaven forbid, running two copies of NT at one time with only one license, or making a PEREFECTLY LEGAL COPY of your music that you own for your pleasure.
America is the great country, the one I pride myself to live in and be a part of. I love being a part of the technological revelution. In fact, I work as the webmaster for one of the largest counties in Florida. I see the stupidity (14 servers to run one web site that sees maybe 15,000 hits a day), the waste, the policies and decisions based on spur-of-the moment ideas, or because it is what they know. And while I can accept that to some degree, and realize that it will be there, it does not mean that I want that from our country's leader.
My immorality, my religion, and my programming are just that, mine. It is no one's business if I choose to engage in an activity that, while may be 'illegal', I find acceptable. Laws were designed to be challenged, that is the point of the judicial system. Instead of worrying about what kids are seeing, lets focus on the parents. Why limit those that are lucky to have internet access, such as people using it at a public library, to seeing the predetermined sites that are deemed 'moral' and 'acceptable'? Because I can afford 39.95 a month, does that give me more rights than someone who prefers the surroundings of a public area, such as a library? Not in this country, I think. Right?
Sorry for the ramble, but I am so sick of being told what is acceptable, what is right, what is moral. I am a web designer and programmer, and I get enough of that from Netscape and Microsoft. I don't want to deal with that in every aspect of my life. Just don't stay quiet, don't sit idlely by and watch this unravel. Be active, be strong, and be heard. Stand by your beliefs, and by your actions. I am proud to be a/. member for those very reasons. Let's keep this ours, and not a predetermined state of bliss.
"Note on Java Support: The software product may contain support for programs written in Java. Java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of Java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage."
Dang, there goes my Java-enabled, Sprint-Internet-Connected, thermonuclear guidance system and AED (Automatic External Defibrillator). Because, technically, if the Java failed, which caused the AED to fail, and the Sprint user died, I would be denying him access. Right?
As a PC User, and a fan of Macs, It saddens me to see posts like this. I own two PC's (PIII) and a IBM Laptop, and my next purchase is going to be a G4, then probably and iMac. Why? Because I base my computer buying decisions on facts and relevance, not minor stories.
Seriously, I do graphic development, programming, and am a musician. This requires a wide range of equipment. After thoroughly researching all aspects, I am choosing Mac as my platform for music development. But I love my PC, and, as an avid ASP developer, will use that as well. I will probably split graphic development between the machines, and I will love it all.
My point is not to show off, or flaunt, but to encourage research. One of the things I am thinking about is buying a used computer and throwing Linux on there so that I can research that as well. I use a Unix environment on a PC (Exceed) at work, and like some of its features. (Half the time I type in ls at the dos prompt on my home PC!). But I am not going to throw out a company simply because they are persuing their patents. If that were true, I would never use Amazon because I think the one-click is *so* utterly ridiculous.
So I ask of you, and the/. community, don't make a decision based on a truetype font, make it on the portability, the applications, the speed, and the stablity. That is the sign of a true technology user and leader.
I agree that it states that you won't send the virus. However, this poses a problem. What if you have a virus on your computer, and you send it to NAV to be tested. However, some hacker gets the file enroute, uses it, and gets infected. He then sues Sprint, who in turn shuts off your service, because you were uploading a virus! Wow...good stuff there.
While I agree there has to be a level of protection, I think this takes it a bit too far. One of the agreements was that you would pay for anything you ordered with a credit card. Really? How does that have *anything* to do with them? What if I got jipped? Do I lose my connection because I refused to pay for a worthless product? Amazing...
Besides a fun-loving computer guy, I am also a firefighter here in Florida. Almost all of us carry some form of multi-use tool. While I know guys who swear by the Leatherman, I prefer the Gerber. Why? One-Handed operation. Imagine yourself deep in your Linux box, and you need to grab that screw, or piece of tomato you inadvertantly dropped in there. With the Leatherman, you have to pull your head and both hands out, open the tool, then poke back in and find the tomato. With the Gerber, you simply slide it from its ballistic pouch, and with a flick of the wrist the tomato is yours.
My particular one has been used for everything from cutting battery wires on wrecked cars to removing precious photos from the wall during a house fire. Plus, it looks so cool on your side.
I happen to possess about 30 of those brainbench certs, and I just got my new job as head of a web department because of them. Ok, maybe it was because of my experience (I hope), but having those pretty logos for them to see (even if they didn't know what they were) was fun. The paper certificates look really impressive for non-technical-type people to see as well. But I agree that they are good as self-assesment exams to see what you need to study up in, but shouldn't but taken (that) seriously in the 'real world'.
Slashdot Mirror
- Flexibility - ChiliASP does not support everything that ASP is capable of (Mainly because some of those things *require* native IIS.
- Stability - Stability you say? Yep! ChiliASP caused a lot of memory leaks on the Linux box. We constantly had to reboot it, and it never seemed to run quite right.
- Cost (2) - We discovered that some native features of ASP are not available in ChiliASP without spending even more money on add-ons.
So while I think that porting it to FreeBSD was only natural for ChiliASP as they want to support the most platforms possible, we probably won't be using it here. Currently we rely very heavily on Cold Fusion (which could be a whole topic on it's own) but someday I would love to go to PHP. ASP is great if you are on a properly configured NT platform, but if you are going to go open-source, go with a language designed for it, or at least one that is close (such as Cold Fusion).I'm watching, or I should say I was watching this via CNN's site - but now I am watching the main control room of NASA. Looks like they had a minor glitch in their satellite feed - gotta love those backdoor features to change channels!
I live in Tampa, right across the water from Clearwater, one of the main headquarters for them. I know the medics that attended to 'that girl.' I've watched the courts literally paint a line - a white strip- down the center of a public road and tell Non-CoS members that they could not cross it. I've driven past it and just felt wierd.
There is a difference between a religion and a cult. I don't know how many of you took the time to look at the photos (if you could stomach them) or the report by the prosecution, but that should be enough right there. The CoS isn't even considered to be a church in the State of Florida. You know why? They are a business. A business that inteferes with the lives of people for the purpose of something that if you have been checking the links out you have seen.
I want you all to think about this too. When Lisa was involved in a minor traffic accident, the medics who came to the scene reported her waying approximately 150 lbs. When the CoS members took her, just 17 days later, nearly 1.5 hours away to a hospital in a completely different county, she weighed 108 lbs. That is an approximately 42 lb weight reduction.
Unfortunately I have wandered off-topic. I commend Slashdot for having the guts to stand-up and choose their battles. I fully agree they had no choice in the matter. But those that keep referring this as the Church of Scientology are wrong. I have never been a member, nor have I ever been inside their 'headquarters'. But I can say that what I have seen scares me worse than any Microsoft, RIAA, DMCA monster ever could.
Good job Slashdot - you did the right thing.
I'm pretty sure the top item stands for a hat trick - a common Hockey term that stands for three goals.
Ok, I suppose you can relate Yahoo to the bible, but you leave out a few things. The bible has sold more copies than any other book made. Unfortuntely though there are lots of places to see the bible, someone still pays for it. Normally it is churches, who rely on the funds of their congregation to survive.
No, I'm sure there aren't any hugely profitable Bible publishing companies out there. But to say that evangelists don't advertise is a bit short of the truth. I live in Tampa and there are may billboards that I pass that are for various evangelists in this area. And I know they don't get those for free.
But I digress. Christianity and the bible-based religions do focus on the bible, but have many other things to support them. For example, Christian bands, Christian Rallies (The Billy Graham Crusade packs Tampa Stadium), etc. Being a Christian is more than just owning a Bible and referring to it when you have a question. It is a way of life (and a choice that shouldn't be forced on anyone I might add). Somehow I can't imagine waking up every morning thanking Yahoo for my breath, or for anything besides being there when I turned on my computer (ok, so I never turn it off - it's a figure of speech).
And while I could explain to you that while there are evangelists and people purporting to be Christians who take money from people and use it poorly, or don't use it for Christian like services, the best way would be for you to talk to a local church. Ask how they make it. Ask how their money comes in. I know with ours we were given x amount of dollars for five years and then we had to be self-sufficient, something that is happening in the internet world as well.
So yes, while you could say that Yahoo offers some of the services that are benefits of the Christian faith, I don't think that you could say that they should survive because of that. They are a business that must find a way to survive.
For some reason I just can't help but sing this to the tune of 'Ice Ice Baby.' I know that's horrible, but now I can't get it out of my head. Oh well.
Yes, I think that when you use your status to stifle development and innovation, you should be stopped. But just because you are successful and/or proprietary does not mean you should be shut down.
Unfortunately one of the biggest challenges we have to converting all of our systems to Linux is the lack of uniformity - the very thing that Microsoft has the advantage on. We are afraid to trust our servers, information, and very jobs on software that is constantly split, revised, split again, etc., and that does not offer the type of critical support we need.
Don't get me wrong, I think that the premise behind Linux and open-source is wonderful. I run Linux at home on a box for testing, and even though I have had quite a bit of difficulties, I must say it is starting to grow on me.
So while everyone was jumping the gun at Microsoft, saying how much they suck just because they are big, we were worrying about long-term development. No, NT Servers are not the most stable beasts in the world. In fact, only one of our production servers runs NT, and it isn't even with IIS. But we know that going with a company such as Solaris (which is what we mostly use) and NT will provide us support, functionality, and a consistant theme in their software (even if that theme is that you can't trust a service pack for 2.5 months).
I thank those that are seriously taking a second look at this issue. No, we don't want innovation stifled, nor should bully tactics be used, etc. But don't destroy a major platform just because everyone and their mom (Hi mom) uses it.
What disturbs me is that no one is listining to the people. Revenue fell when people stopped clicking on ads, so the solution? Bigger ads! The rich people don't like using an invasive, obtrusive, feared product? Put it in Radio Shack where people finishing projects out of the Anarchist's Cookbook can go! B2B not working too well? Ignore the consumer demands! Go B2B! Yeah!
I slowly see the people who think they control the web, companies like Digital Convergence, slowly moving away from caring about, I dunno, the customer? and moving to what they want. For example, I was involved in a conference call for a $15,000 piece of software for the place where I work. Involved was myself (webmaster), my mangager, and our director. Not for some small company, but the sixth largest County Governemnt in the State of Florida. And right in the middle of the phone call, the guy demoing the product put us on hold with the following statement:
"I'm sorry, you'll have to hold on for a minute, I am being IRC'd."
WHAT?! IRC'd in the middle of a $15,000 demo? Yep, we'll be sure to use you! But that is my point, when are companies going to learn that we are not plugs, we are not hardware, we are individual human beings, who care how we are used, who care what we buy, who care who is snooping into out personal lives.
Ok, breathe in, breathe out, circular, like the merry-go-round, it goes up, and around. Whew. Just my 2 coppers if anyone cares.
Hey! I've got an idea! Let's trade Napster to Australia for some R rated content! Then we can listen to our MP3's, they can see Joe Cartoon, and the world is a better place to live. Whaddaya think?
The lawyer would never have to set foot in the Thumb or any other part of the Wolverine State.
That, anyway, is the plan. To lure technology companies to Michigan, Gov. John Engler wants to establish a separate "cybercourt" for cases involving technology and high-tech businesses, where virtually everything would be done via computer rather than in a courtroom.
Briefs could be filed online, evidence viewed by streaming video, oral arguments delivered by teleconferencing, conferences held by e- mail. Lawyers would not have to be in Michigan or even be licensed to practice in the state. Cases could be heard any time of the day, even at night, and judges would be trained to understand the complex issues that arise in technology disputes.
At least one other state, Maryland, is planning a separate judicial division to make the state more attractive to high-tech businesses. Legal experts predict other states will follow. But some lawyers and judges say the idea raises questions about many issues, including handling evidence and training judges.
Governor Engler wants technology to become as much a mainstay of Michigan's economy as the automobile industry is. He is also proposing tax breaks for new technology companies, and the state already provides millions of dollars in grants for research and product development in biotechnology.
Mr. Engler, who proposed the cybercourt in his annual address last month, said he hoped it would be up and running within a year. He said he thought technology companies would be attracted to Michigan just as Fortune 500 companies were drawn to Delaware, where the 200-year-old Court of Chancery is especially equipped to handle business cases.
"I've always admired how Delaware, with its chancery court, really became a preferred business location," Mr. Engler said in an interview. He added, "We think this is a little bit of a case of if we build it, they may come."
With a separate court, he said, cases would be fast-tracked, saving litigants time and money.
"At a time when you can go from idea to I.P.O. at warp speed, we need to have a way to get through the court system at a faster rate," said Mr. Engler, a three-term Republican. "You literally can have companies be formed, have a relatively short life cycle, and go out of business in the time it takes a case to get through court."
Lawyers and judges seem generally receptive.
"I think it will streamline the court process for new-economy businesses, and hopefully that will be something that will lure business to Michigan," said Michigan's attorney general, Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat.
But some question how the court will iron out details.
"One of the biggest questions is what is the jurisdiction of this court?" said Richard D. McLellan, a lawyer who is chairman of the Information Technology Association of Michigan. For example, some disputes involve intellectual property rights, trademarks or patents, issues handled in federal court.
And while Mr. McLellan supports allowing lawyers not licensed in Michigan to try cases from their home states, he says it will be necessary to decide how to hold those lawyers accountable to Michigan's legal code and how to discipline them.
What's more, he said, "there will be a lot of figuring out how each and every element of a courtroom proceeding will translate electronically, from filing documents to hearings to oral arguments to public access."
Marc Shulman, a Michigan state representative sponsoring the bill to create the cybercourt, said Michigan's Supreme Court would help answer those questions. Mr. Shulman, a lawyer, said the court could handle any technology-related civil litigation as long as the case did not require a jury and the parties agreed to have it heard in cybercourt. The cases would involve sums of $25,000 or more, and litigants might be charged higher fees than in regular courts.
Mr. Shulman said he thought that a judge and a clerk would still hear the case in a courtroom, to preserve a semblance of judicial pomp, but that the parties, lawyers and witnesses could be anywhere. And, he said, "the public could actually come online and follow the case as it happens, from their own homes," assuming the public found squabbles over URLs or gigabytes as gripping as the O. J. Simpson murder trial.
Mr. Shulman said Michigan's court would take elements from other states, like New York and North Carolina, which have judicial divisions for business cases. The online aspects would be modeled in part on an experimental electronic court project run by the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and the National Center for State Courts.
In Maryland, which expects to start its new division this year, plans are for cases to sweep through the system in fewer than 18 months and for many proceedings to eventually be conducted electronically.
"Our Legislature wanted to get business here, and I think that may be the impetus for a lot of states to look at this," said James L. Thompson, a lawyer, who, while president of the Maryland Bar Association last year, appointed most members of a state commission that recommended the separate division of court for technology and business cases.
"Most of the technology companies that we heard from and evaluated said that if a state has a business and technology court, a better way of addressing disputes, that would certainly be one of the things on their checklist for moving there," he said.
Another impetus for these courts, Mr. Engler said, is the Microsoft antitrust case, in which the federal judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, suggested that his technology expertise was limited, saying in an interview with The New York Times that he had supported a proposal by lawyers for the Justice Department to break up Microsoft because "there's no way I can equip myself to do a better job than they have done."
In Michigan and Maryland, judges interested and versed in technology would be selected and receive additional training.
But Max S. Oppenheimer, a Baltimore lawyer specializing in intellectual property, questioned whether the training would lead judges to believe they understood technological facts in a case before the lawyers presented their arguments.
"Do you want a judge to walk into the courtroom being his own expert?" Mr. Oppenheimer asked. He also wondered whether "by training our judges to be friendly to business, we will deliberately build in a bias to attempt to attract a certain class of litigants to the state."
Mr. Oppenheimer, and others, also questioned how other litigants would feel if "your judge hasn't had special training in how to deal with your problem, but because someone else's problem involves the Internet, they're going to get a better judge."
But will high-technology companies flock to Michigan because it is easier to sue each other?
Joan E. Trusty, president of two large high-technology organizations in Michigan, said that in the past, many technology companies decided not to go to court because it was too costly and time-consuming. "Whether or not the cybercourt will be a be- all and end-all attraction," she said, will depend on whether its first few cases "work their way through the system quickly."
If he is right, and he does have some supporters, his code may be the first that is both practical and provably secure. While there are commercially available coding systems that seem very hard to break, no one can prove that they cannot be cracked, mathematicians say.
In essence, the researcher, Dr. Michael Rabin and his Ph.D. student Yan Zong Bing, have discovered a way to make a code based on a key that vanishes even as it is used. While they are not the first to have thought of such an idea, Dr. Rabin says that never before has anyone been able to make it both workable and to prove mathematically that the code cannot be broken.
"This is the first provably unbreakable code that is really efficient," Dr. Rabin said. "We have proved that the adversary is helpless."
Dr. Richard Lipton, a computer science professor at Princeton, who is visiting this year at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said, "It's like in the old `Mission Impossible,' where the message blows up and disappears."
Someone who uses one of today's commercially available coding systems, Dr. Lipton explained, uses the same key -- mathematical formulas for encoding and decoding -- over and over.
Eventually, they may be forced, perhaps by a court order, to give up the key. Or the key may be stolen. But with Dr. Rabin's system, the message stays secret forever because the code uses a stream of random numbers that are plugged into the key for encoding and decoding. The numbers are never stored in a computer's memory, so they essentially vanish as the message is being encrypted and decrypted.
"If someone walks into my office with a court order or if they put a gun to my head they still could not read my conversations," Dr. Lipton said.
In a sense, say some mathematicians and computer scientists, Dr. Rabin may have solved the ultimate problem in cryptography, one that has driven research for centuries: finding a provably unbreakable code that is also practical. But, they say, the paradox is that the discovery has come at a time of vigorous debate over whether such a code will make much difference in keeping communications private.
Some say that a provably unbreakable code could have profound effects, keeping secret messages secret forever. But others say that codes today are already so good that there is little to be gained by making them provably, rather than just probably, unbreakable.
For now, Dr. Rabin's idea is simply a scheme backed up by a mathematical proof that he has been presenting to scientists at seminars. No company is lurking in the background to sell it, and Dr. Rabin says he has no commercial interests in it.
"I never commercialize anything," Dr. Rabin said. "I am not in that business." Instead, he said, he did the work because it was a challenge.
Dr. Rabin's idea is simplicity itself, at least in the world of encryption. Previous coding methods rely for their security on the limitations of computing power. They assume that if breaking a code requires enough calculations, even the best computers will not be able to do it.
But, Dr. Rabin said, there is no proof that such codes are secure. Their security hinges on the belief that no one will find a shortcut to doing the calculations. It is always possible that such a shortcut exists, waiting to be discovered by a clever mathematician.
Dr. Rabin relies instead on the limits of memory banks in computers. No matter how powerful a computer is, no computer can store an unlimited amount of data. And yet that is what is required for an eavesdropper to break his code.
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. The numbers can be coming by at an enormous speed -- 10 million million per second, for example.
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.
An eavesdropper can know the mathematical formula used to encode and decode, but without knowing the exact sequence of random numbers that were used in the formula to send a particular message, the eavesdropper cannot decode the message. And the only way to have that sequence is to just happen to be storing numbers from the unending stream at exactly the right moment.
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. The sender and recipient would already have their string of numbers and that string of numbers, once broadcast, could never be retrieved. It would be infeasible to store the endless string of numbers in any computer and so they are essentially gone forever.
Often, Dr. Rabin said, eavesdroppers will capture and store encoded messages hoping to decode them at later, either when computers have improved -- making it easier to do the calculations to break a code -- or when the method for encoding and decoding is known, perhaps because it has been stolen. But, he said, messages encoded with his system can never be broken by these means because the random numbers used in encoding and decoding are used once and are never stored.
"That is why I call it `everlasting security,' " he said.
Dr. Richard DeMillo, chief technology officer at Hewlett-Packard, said that what interested him about the scheme was that it "reshuffles the policy deck."
"Normally," he explained, "agencies put the burden of wiretapping on the carrier." A telephone company, for example, would have to allow an agency like the Federal Bureau of Investigation to listen in on coded material. But with this system, the agency would still have the burden of trying to capture the appropriate stream of random numbers, a task that would be technologically infeasible.
Dr. Lipton also said the scheme could thwart law enforcement agencies.
"If I'm saying to you, `Buy 1,000 shares of I.B.M., I'm sure it's going to go up,' " he said, "and if that was an insider trading situation, five years from now the F.B.I. could go after you."
If the agency had the encrypted message in hand, it could demand the key to read it, he said. But, Dr. Lipton said, if the random numbers used to encode were used once and never stored, the agency would be hamstrung. "It changes the ground rules," he said.
Dr. Lipton added that, as a computer scientist, he appreciated the proof that the code could not be broken. "Michael's big contribution has been the proof that the system actually works," he said. "It's one of those things that sounds obvious but the mathematics is quite hard."
Of course, what is good for those who want privacy may not be good for law enforcement. Even the cryptography systems sold today are a problem for the F.B.I. "Uncrackable encryption allows drug lords, terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate about their criminal intentions without fear of outside intrusion," the F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh, told the Senate in 1998, according to a transcript from the Federal Document Clearing House. "This type of encryption also allows these same people to maintain electronically stored evidence of their crimes beyond the reach of law enforcement."
Still, some computer experts said that while it might be interesting in theory to have a provably unbreakable code, the practical importance of Dr. Rabin's code may be minimal.
Some, like Dr. Dorothy Denning, a computer science professor at Georgetown, and Dr. Cipher Deavours, a professor of computer science and mathematics at Kean University in Union, N.J., said the code was simply impractical for large messages. The larger the message, the longer the string of random numbers needed to encode it, and the more difficult it would be to send.
"It's a cute idea, but it's simply unmanageable," Dr. Deavours said.
Others, like Dr. Lipton, disagreed. "I think it is quite practical," he said. And Dr. Rabin insisted that computers would have no problem with the encryption scheme, even with long messages that were sent among a large group of people.
Beyond the question of whether the system would work in practice, some question it because, they say, the role of cryptography in protecting privacy has been overblown.
"If you think cryptography is the answer to your problem, then you don't know what your problem is," said Dr. Peter G. Neumann, a computer scientist at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.
Dr. Neumann explained that there are always ways to get around cryptography barriers and that these methods have nothing to do with breaking codes.
"It's like the voting machines," he said. "You'd like to have some integrity in the electoral process and now folks are coming out of the woodwork saying, `We have this perfect algorithm for privacy and security.' "
But, he said, while the systems may use cryptography to make sure that when someone touches a screen to vote, that vote is transmitted with perfect security, who's to ensure the integrity of the person who programs the computer?
"There is no guarantee that your vote actually goes into the computer the way it looks on the touch screen," Dr. Neumann said. "What does it take to buy a computer programmer? A couple of years' salary and a house in the Cayman Islands?"
Bruce Schneier, who is founder and chief technical officer for Counterpane Internet Security in San Jose, said that, as a scientist, he liked the idea of a provably secure system. "Research like this should be encouraged," he said. "But research is different from engineering."
But in the real world, a burglar confronted by an impenetrable lock on the front door may well go round to the back and just smash a window. "I'm a cryptographer by trade," Mr. Schneier said. "And a provably secure cryptosystem doesn't do me any good. We're putting a stake in the ground and hoping the enemy runs into it and now we're arguing about whether it should be one mile tall or two miles tall. It doesn't matter. The enemy will walk around it," he added.
Dr. Robert Morris, a retired cryptographer who was chief scientist for the National Security Agency, the nation's code-making and code- breaking agency, also questioned the primacy of cryptography.
"As far as I can see, he seems to be correct -- it's a provably secure method," Dr. Morris said. "But does that mean no one can read it? Nah."
He explained: "You can still get the message, but maybe not by cryptanalysis. If you're in this business, you go after a reasonably cheap, reliable method. It may be one of the three B's: burglary, bribery or blackmail. Those are right up there along with cryptanalysis in their importance."
Dr. Rabin said that just because there are other weaknesses in communications systems, that did not mean that secure encryption was not important.
It is as though medical researchers started arguing that there is no need to find a cure for AIDS, Dr. Rabin said. After all, many more people die of heart disease, and if you cure people of AIDS, heart disease can still strike them.
"This is not a reason not to work on H.I.V.," Dr. Rabin said. "The problem of H.I.V. is still important."
Dr. Morris said that even though the actual breaking of codes might not be necessary to read encrypted messages, Dr. Rabin's method could have an effect. "In a sense, what it does is shift the emphasis from cryptanalysis to some other sort of attack," he said.
I think that this is probably one of the features that keeps us at the level that we are. While we give basic computer classes to our employees, trying to solve a problem using just the phone can be both frustrating and time-consuming. And with us having offices all over the county (and with the county spreading some 300 square miles or more) this is just phoenomenal.
Of course, this is run through our own organization, and not through an ASP. But the same idealogy can be used for that as well. Compare the initial costs of the software and setup to the costs of teaching the employees the skills to do basic troubleshooting and the time wasted by Net Admin having to talk them though the process, etc. If a basic service call with phone support takes 45 minutes, but with Remote Admin it is cut down to 7 minutes, that is a significant reduction in cost. Factor in the salaries of both the employee being helped (say $14.00 per hour) and the help desk personnel (Hmm, how do you convert peanuts to dollars again?) and you can generate a pretty report to show management. All before lunch. Good luck!
So I can see the logic in this move. You are darn skippy people are going to forget about it. "MCS1000" is not only non-threatning to the general population, it's not 'catchy' like Carnivore. Can you really see Dan Rather on the news talking about "the MCS1000 recently" blah blah blah.
It is up to people like us to keep the pressure on, to make sure that our rights are not violated.
But is it right? I think so. Yes, there will be problems, and it won't be perfect at first. It is similar to any new technology - there are bugs that have to be worked out. And while this is a bit different in that we are dealing with people, not just productivity, I think they were smart enough to realize the limitations of this system.
I work for the county here, on the top floor of a tall building, and for fire/rescue and I know we had several threats against the stadium. Them main use of this technology was to prevent terrorists from entering the stadium, or threatning other parts of Tampa. Perhaps none of you remember (or knew) that in 1991, when the Super Bowl was in Tampa, everyone was physically searched. Every bag, every pocket, every vehicle, truck, car, trunk, seat, purse, etc. because of security. Metal detectors were used, bomb sniffing dogs, and tons of police. All that for the safety of others.
While my thought goes along the lines that to live in the society we want, we may not be able to catch every criminal. Unfortunately, that is the tradeoff we pursue. I would rather see a criminal get off then have chips implanted in every human so that 'we would know.' The best part about society is that it is that - society. People get their due. Trust me, if some criminal raped my daughter, or killed my wife, and I knew that he did it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he got off...Well, I think we can all understand where that one is going.
And for those of you not aware, there are disclaimers on the back of the ticket that allow for you to have your picture taken. I'm not sure of the exact wording, but I bet it allows for exactly the type of systems that was put in place. Let's be realistic, and not have to put disclaimers like the one here on everything that we do.
No, one leader can't really do a lot by his/her self(with the noted exception of an executive order - and even then there are ways around). It is when the idealism of a single group is placed into a position of policy making, then we have to be cautious. Scared? No, I don't think so. I have enough faith in our systems in place that our freedoms aren't going to end up like Russia, or China.
I sincerely hope that I never have to set myself on fire in Times Square in order to change policy, but I would be willing to do so to attain freedom. I feel gratitude beyond belief that the people before me have fought so hard to get us the freedoms that we have today. And I don't see those going away without a tremendous amount of work on politicans parts, politicians who don't care about society.
I am mostly frustrated at the ability of large organizations to take away little rights. Such as being able to make a copy of an analog recording that you made. But if our voices remain strong, our rights will too.
Here is my challenge. I am a christian, supporting some of the views of Bush. However, I am not perfect. I do things that some may view as immoral, or not perfect, or a whole host of other things (my girlfriend finds it disgusting that I am hacking a Billy Bass). But since when does my immorality become a part of public policy? I may not agree with abortion, but does that mean we should cut off funding for a group that does? I don't think so, especially if they might be doing valuable research to help those in distress.
Privacy is, of course, a genuine concern of mine. Being that this is the U.S., and that we are a free, democratic society, we have to accept the fact that we can catch 'em all. How many times have you been passed by someone doing 90 mph on the freeway, and wondered where the nearest police officer was at? Does that mean that because the police can not be everywhere, we should track everyone and automatically write them a ticket? How many times have you broken the law? Maybe it was speeding, maybe it was theft (accendantely taking a pen), maybe it was, heaven forbid, running two copies of NT at one time with only one license, or making a PEREFECTLY LEGAL COPY of your music that you own for your pleasure.
America is the great country, the one I pride myself to live in and be a part of. I love being a part of the technological revelution. In fact, I work as the webmaster for one of the largest counties in Florida. I see the stupidity (14 servers to run one web site that sees maybe 15,000 hits a day), the waste, the policies and decisions based on spur-of-the moment ideas, or because it is what they know. And while I can accept that to some degree, and realize that it will be there, it does not mean that I want that from our country's leader.
My immorality, my religion, and my programming are just that, mine. It is no one's business if I choose to engage in an activity that, while may be 'illegal', I find acceptable. Laws were designed to be challenged, that is the point of the judicial system. Instead of worrying about what kids are seeing, lets focus on the parents. Why limit those that are lucky to have internet access, such as people using it at a public library, to seeing the predetermined sites that are deemed 'moral' and 'acceptable'? Because I can afford 39.95 a month, does that give me more rights than someone who prefers the surroundings of a public area, such as a library? Not in this country, I think. Right?
Sorry for the ramble, but I am so sick of being told what is acceptable, what is right, what is moral. I am a web designer and programmer, and I get enough of that from Netscape and Microsoft. I don't want to deal with that in every aspect of my life. Just don't stay quiet, don't sit idlely by and watch this unravel. Be active, be strong, and be heard. Stand by your beliefs, and by your actions. I am proud to be a /. member for those very reasons. Let's keep this ours, and not a predetermined state of bliss.
"Note on Java Support: The software product may contain support for programs written in Java. Java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of Java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage."
Dang, there goes my Java-enabled, Sprint-Internet-Connected, thermonuclear guidance system and AED (Automatic External Defibrillator). Because, technically, if the Java failed, which caused the AED to fail, and the Sprint user died, I would be denying him access. Right?
Gotta love it!
As a PC User, and a fan of Macs, It saddens me to see posts like this. I own two PC's (PIII) and a IBM Laptop, and my next purchase is going to be a G4, then probably and iMac. Why? Because I base my computer buying decisions on facts and relevance, not minor stories. /. community, don't make a decision based on a truetype font, make it on the portability, the applications, the speed, and the stablity. That is the sign of a true technology user and leader.
Seriously, I do graphic development, programming, and am a musician. This requires a wide range of equipment. After thoroughly researching all aspects, I am choosing Mac as my platform for music development. But I love my PC, and, as an avid ASP developer, will use that as well. I will probably split graphic development between the machines, and I will love it all.
My point is not to show off, or flaunt, but to encourage research. One of the things I am thinking about is buying a used computer and throwing Linux on there so that I can research that as well. I use a Unix environment on a PC (Exceed) at work, and like some of its features. (Half the time I type in ls at the dos prompt on my home PC!). But I am not going to throw out a company simply because they are persuing their patents. If that were true, I would never use Amazon because I think the one-click is *so* utterly ridiculous.
So I ask of you, and the
I agree that it states that you won't send the virus. However, this poses a problem. What if you have a virus on your computer, and you send it to NAV to be tested. However, some hacker gets the file enroute, uses it, and gets infected. He then sues Sprint, who in turn shuts off your service, because you were uploading a virus! Wow...good stuff there. While I agree there has to be a level of protection, I think this takes it a bit too far. One of the agreements was that you would pay for anything you ordered with a credit card. Really? How does that have *anything* to do with them? What if I got jipped? Do I lose my connection because I refused to pay for a worthless product? Amazing...
Besides a fun-loving computer guy, I am also a firefighter here in Florida. Almost all of us carry some form of multi-use tool. While I know guys who swear by the Leatherman, I prefer the Gerber. Why? One-Handed operation. Imagine yourself deep in your Linux box, and you need to grab that screw, or piece of tomato you inadvertantly dropped in there. With the Leatherman, you have to pull your head and both hands out, open the tool, then poke back in and find the tomato. With the Gerber, you simply slide it from its ballistic pouch, and with a flick of the wrist the tomato is yours. My particular one has been used for everything from cutting battery wires on wrecked cars to removing precious photos from the wall during a house fire. Plus, it looks so cool on your side.
I happen to possess about 30 of those brainbench certs, and I just got my new job as head of a web department because of them. Ok, maybe it was because of my experience (I hope), but having those pretty logos for them to see (even if they didn't know what they were) was fun. The paper certificates look really impressive for non-technical-type people to see as well. But I agree that they are good as self-assesment exams to see what you need to study up in, but shouldn't but taken (that) seriously in the 'real world'.