Some people (like me, living in SW Missouri, of all places), don't have any CS-type classes at all in our schools. When we had to plan our schedules for high school, the counselors I was talking to bluntly said "There's nothing we can offer you here." As a result, I can't take such things as AP CompSci, Intro to C, etc.; they aren't offered. The only computer-related courses around are Keyboarding and MS Office Applications.
I agree...they wiped out a lot of our people, so we want to nuke them. If we wipe out a lot of their people...guess what they'll want to do? I don't know for sure, but it'd probably be even worse than this...
To quote the renowned Phil Zimmerman (I wonder if people in the FBI are gasping yet):
In some ways, cryptography is like pharmaceuticals. Its integrity may be absolutely crucial. Bad penicillin looks the same as good penicillin. You can tell if you spread sheet is wrong, but how do you tell if your cryptography package is weak? The ciphertext produced by a weak encryption algorithm looks as good as ciphertext produced by a strong encryption algorithm. There's a lot of snake oil out there. A lot of quack cures. Unlike the patent medicine hucksters of old, these sofwtare implementors usually don't even know their stuff is snake oil. They may be good software engineers, but they usually haven't even read any of the academic literature in cryptography. But they think they can write good cryptographic software. And why not? After all, it seems intuitively easy to do so. And their software seems to work ok.
<rant type="crazy">
Pretend the rot-13 encryption in the eBook Reader is bad penicillin, and that Dmitry is a little-known Russian doctor. (Slightly true, since I heard that this was part of his Ph.D dissertation.) Now, he finds out about this "bad penicillin" and goes to the United States to warn people, tell people, et cetera. All of a sudden, the FDA arrests him because it's already in use. Screw the fact that lives (or in this case, intellectual property) are (is) at stake.
</rant>
<anger topic="crypto">
Now, these people are stupid enough to use rot-13 and all this Caesar-era encryption. How long did these people think this would last before someone figured out their, at best, pitiful encryption and cracked it?! Haven't these guys ever heard of Twofish?! Square? IDEA? CAST? I mean, come on...even RC4's better than that. (No offense intended to anyone from RSA; RSA would be a lot better than the other crap they use)
</anger>
We all know how the government supports intellectual property. (Probably more than it should; I mean, really, why do they honor user interface copyrights?) Yet someone breaks this encryption, and the Justice Department doesn't see it as we do. To us, it shows them that they need stronger encryption to secure their intellectual property. To them, it shows that someone can break purportedly "strong encryption", which isn't really strong at all.
<mock>
Ohhhhh...this guy broke rot-13; let's throw 'im in da slammer a few years!
</mock>
I'd like to close with one more quote:
I love my country but fear my government.
- Anonymous
Free Dmitry!
Justin Myers
Email: sysop0130@hotmail.com
MSN: see email address
P.S.: Hey, all you people from Adobe! Yeah, you! Read Applied Cryptography. Interesting reading.
They have legal rights protecting them from being fired just like that (unlike the US) and that's the demand.
Yeah, we do have rights against that sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people (like me, living in SW Missouri , of all places), don't have any CS-type classes at all in our schools. When we had to plan our schedules for high school, the counselors I was talking to bluntly said "There's nothing we can offer you here." As a result, I can't take such things as AP CompSci, Intro to C, etc.; they aren't offered. The only computer-related courses around are Keyboarding and MS Office Applications.
And I also can't stand the obnoxious commercials which are all too common.
That's why there's a mute button.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Nothing works right on XP...
Anyone ready for some reverse engineering?
What, and have the government able to track our every move? Every purchase we make, every place we go...WTF is wrong with you?!
All but three (I think) of the 9/11 hijackers were legally in the US, though...wouldn't that mean they'd get an ID too?
FYI, GPL stands for the GNU "General Public License".
I agree...they wiped out a lot of our people, so we want to nuke them. If we wipe out a lot of their people...guess what they'll want to do? I don't know for sure, but it'd probably be even worse than this...
Just out of curiosity, why didn't Echelon pick this up? *evil grin*
To quote the renowned Phil Zimmerman (I wonder if people in the FBI are gasping yet):
In some ways, cryptography is like pharmaceuticals. Its integrity may be absolutely crucial. Bad penicillin looks the same as good penicillin. You can tell if you spread sheet is wrong, but how do you tell if your cryptography package is weak? The ciphertext produced by a weak encryption algorithm looks as good as ciphertext produced by a strong encryption algorithm. There's a lot of snake oil out there. A lot of quack cures. Unlike the patent medicine hucksters of old, these sofwtare implementors usually don't even know their stuff is snake oil. They may be good software engineers, but they usually haven't even read any of the academic literature in cryptography. But they think they can write good cryptographic software. And why not? After all, it seems intuitively easy to do so. And their software seems to work ok.
<rant type="crazy">
Pretend the rot-13 encryption in the eBook Reader is bad penicillin, and that Dmitry is a little-known Russian doctor. (Slightly true, since I heard that this was part of his Ph.D dissertation.) Now, he finds out about this "bad penicillin" and goes to the United States to warn people, tell people, et cetera. All of a sudden, the FDA arrests him because it's already in use. Screw the fact that lives (or in this case, intellectual property) are (is) at stake.
</rant>
<anger topic="crypto">
Now, these people are stupid enough to use rot-13 and all this Caesar-era encryption. How long did these people think this would last before someone figured out their, at best, pitiful encryption and cracked it?! Haven't these guys ever heard of Twofish?! Square? IDEA? CAST? I mean, come on...even RC4's better than that. (No offense intended to anyone from RSA; RSA would be a lot better than the other crap they use)
</anger>
We all know how the government supports intellectual property. (Probably more than it should; I mean, really, why do they honor user interface copyrights?) Yet someone breaks this encryption, and the Justice Department doesn't see it as we do. To us, it shows them that they need stronger encryption to secure their intellectual property. To them, it shows that someone can break purportedly "strong encryption", which isn't really strong at all.
<mock>
Ohhhhh...this guy broke rot-13; let's throw 'im in da slammer a few years!
</mock>
I'd like to close with one more quote:
I love my country but fear my government. - Anonymous
Free Dmitry!
Justin Myers
Email: sysop0130@hotmail.com
MSN: see email address
P.S.: Hey, all you people from Adobe! Yeah, you! Read Applied Cryptography. Interesting reading.
Just rot-13 it and convert to hex.
They have legal rights protecting them from being fired just like that (unlike the US) and that's the demand. Yeah, we do have rights against that sort of thing.
If that happens, you can bet I'll help bring it back. Don't think I won't.
Amen!