It sounds like you know more about Thunderbolt than I. This statement seems odd, though:
> I don't see how you can implement a lower-level protocol (eg: raw thunderbolt DMA) using a higher-level... > That's like saying you'll implement Internet-layer frames only using TCP.
It's common to run lower level protocols on top of higher level, and I think you know that. PPPoE is just like that, isn't it?
>DVDs.. external drives are invariably more costly and slower than internal drives
I tried about 20 drives and found that for optical, external is consistently faster with much lower cpu usage. I guess it's something about the controller that converts to USB and the few MBs of buffer in the enclosure.
Steve Jobs once said of adult content and Apple'attempts to keep it away from iOS a "people who want to see stuff like that should get an Android device". I took his advice. Apple truly believes that which web sites you visit in their business, that they should control or influence what you read. An iDevice is for listening to music you bought from Apple, the Apple approved version, for as long as Apple thinks is suitable.
On any other device, I just copy-paste my mp3 files. The Apple device also costs twice as much.
I realize there are counter-points to the above, but those are the reasons that I personally don't buy iOS, though I like my old Mac Pro and new MacBook Pro.
True. One of the first things I ask with any piece of hardware is "can I put Linux on it?". However, Mac OSX machines come with a very Unix preinstalled, one tailored to the hardware. OSX can run all my favorite free software that I run on Linux, so I don't see any reason to put Linux on a Mac. It already HAS Unix.
A custom built machine may be fine. A custom built mmachine is one data point - it may be fine or may have a lot of problems. Half of the servers in my rack have been custom built, half are top brands. The custom builds cost less to build. The top brands have engineered cooling, designed by thermal engineers, perfectly routed cables, and other niceties. The manufacturer lists certain hard drives and RAM that are thoroughly tested for compatibility and other drives that while they SHOULD be compatible, don't actually get along with the controller very well.
In my experience, the top brands are a little more reliable. For home use, the low cost of a custom build makes sense. If downtime is expensive, such as for a workstation or server, the extra 10% reliability of a professionally engineered system makes more sense. A $10,000 maxed-out Mac Pro is a workstation. You buy that for an employee who costs $3,000 / day in salary and benefits. You don't want that employee idle for a day because something overheated.
They've speced a machine with half as much RAM, and the Mac has server grade ECC RAM. They've replaced PCIe storage with SATA. It's not a comparable machine. For a fair comparison, compare the Mac to a similarly speced HP server. Alternatively, at least spec the Mac lower to match, rather than maxing out everything.
Also, the Mac includes little niceties, some of which the HP will match better. I have the Macbook Pro, not the newer Pro, but by way of analogy compare Apple's reversible magnetic power cable vs. everyone else's barrel plugs. Apple does a lot of little things better on their computers. (Unlike their iOS iPhone and iPad, which I wouldn't buy.)
Indeed. We have a large WordPress based site and it is bound by database CPU despite the fairly powerful CPU it uses. It should scale to many cores, so I'm thinking of trying a pair of the 8 core AMD processors. Intel is faster PER CORE, but an AMD rig could have 16 cores.
Silk Road was clearly designed and promoted as a way to sell drugs and engage in other illegal activity. Same as the difference between a hotel and a whore house.
Routinely, if allowing the defendant to copy the evidence presents problems, they are allowed to examine the data but not copy it. Child porn cases are a well known example.
Of course it's the same for any evidence that isn't data - OJ wasn't allowed to take the bloody glove home with him. The defense team is allowed to examine prosecution evidence, there's clearly no right to take it.
Indeed. It's called TERRORism because it's intended to make people scared. The way to render it ineffective is to refuse to live in fear. One of the best anti-terrorism efforts was the "Anthrax this!" cover, a clear statement that we will not be terrorized.
> parties have informally (Or possible, conspiratorially)
We know they formally agree to what questions will be asked in campaign debates. They are open about that. So at least it is "sometimes conspitatorially".
True, for some business models the user is the product. The advertiser is the paying customer. Broadcast TV and radio are examples.
You forgot how to multiply when you made this statement, though: > Because their beneficial sweetheart tax deals could bring in > as much as the profit from selling consumer electronics.
Assume a 100% tax break, the company pays 0% taxes. That's zero percent of their profit. Profit = sales - expenses. If they have no sales, they make no money, and paying 0% tax doesn't help them. Sales is always more important.
Let's compare two sales figures, both with a 10% tax reduction. If the company does $10 million in sales, that 10% tax cut is worth $1 million. If the company does $100 in sales, a 10% tax reduction is worth $10 million. So we see that to maximize the value of tax breaks, a company needs to have more happy customers, generating more profit subject to the tax break.
The theory is that NSA has a partial private key to the RNG. If you can crack the NSA's key, you may be able to crack the RNG. HOWEVER, if you can crack keys, you can crack the encryption anyway.
In order to crack a key, you have to crack the RNG. In order to crack the RNG, you have to crack the (NSA) key.
So in the end you can crack a key only if you can crack a key. Evil genius.
It DOES theoretically weaken it in one way. NSA's partial key is universal. If you crack MY key, you can read MY stuff. If you crack the NSA key, you can (maybe more easily) read EVERYONE'S stuff.
Still, you have to crack the NSA's key to get anywhere, and if you can crack keys that'd be game over anyway.
I wouldn't call myself an encryption expert . I've been doing information security for sixteen years. I can name a dozen people who understand this better than I do and I'd bet there are hundreds of people more knowledgeable than I on this subject.
> charge for the actual delivery of the digital documents, which are public domain. > That's not illegal, just not really sustainable.
If I'm not mistaken, legally they are only supposed to charge enough to cover the cost of storing and retrieving them. Any other self-sustaining effort would also need to cover the same costs and so would need to charge about the same, unless someone else paid the costs as a charitable contribution.
Of course that wouldn't be true if the federal government was inefficient and wasteful, but we know that can't be true, that's liberal canon. If a private organization such as Google, for example, could find and retrieve documents for less than the $3 per page that the government spends, that would mean government is a wasteful, stupid way to do things. That's not the case, of course. It would be heresy to say so.
Good morning. I see you've been sleeping the past six years. Obama is the commander in chief and head of the administrative branch. It was Obama's team that came up with this idea (in violation of federal law) in the first place.
You can only taste it after you've bought it. It's the Coke trademark on the bottle that allows you to know what it's going to taste like. Without trademark, all of the different sodas would be labeled "Coke" and all of the different companies making them would call themselves "Coca-Cola".
There is a real life example of that here in Texas. A company in Elgin, Tx made great sausage and built a reputation for the best sausage in the state. If you were driving through Elgin on the way to Austin, you'd stop and get some "Elgin sausage". The problem was, you normally can't register your city name as your trademark. So four other companies opened up selling "Elgin sausage". Some of it isn't great. Most people no longer stop in Elgin because you never know whether you're getting the good Elgin sausage or not. The lack of trademark protection (because they chose a bad trademark) really hurt their business, and ruined customer's ability to pick up extra yummy sausage.
They are suspected of weakening it in a very specific way. Their supposed backdoor uses essentially the SAME algorithm that it's advertised to use. In order for an attacker to "be able to deduce things about the generated keys" they'd need to crack the NSA key. They can break the encryption function, but to do so they first have to break the encryption function.
What NSA did was evil, but they were smart about how they did evil .
The author shows their complete ignorance of how the economy works when they select GROCERIES as their example of an industry where they claim IP doesn't matter. Imagine if you were to walk into the grocery store and all of the cola made by different companies was labeled "Coca-Cola". It's trademark, intellectual property, that allows you to tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi, and RC cola. Were it not for IP, the generic stuff that sells for under a dollar would also be labelled "Coca-Cola".
Do you think it's important to grocers that customers can distinguish Guiradelli and Hershey from Z corp "chocolate flavored bar"? Of course! The grocery industry is ALL about trademarks. The author proves they are completely clueless by claiming IP doesn't matter in the grocery business.
I'm still waiting for the pdf to download, but I can smell the BS from here. Does anyone really believe that most businesses wouldn't mind if a competitor misappropriated their name and opened a competing establishment with the same name across the street?
Someone said that small businesses don't build a brand and don't care about their names (trademarks). I've owned a couple of small businesses and in two of those all of my customers were small businesses. For most small mom and pop businesses, the reputation attached to their trademark is EVERYTHING. They don't have national ad campaigns, their business comes from friends telling friends "go to ShoeDoc to get that fixed, they do a great job." If someone else opened a shoe repair place down the street and violated their IP by calling it ShoeDoc that would be a VERY big deal to them.
None of what I wrote above means we shouldn't be pissed at the US government. We should just be clear about exactly what we are pissed off about. We're mad that the NSA and RSA made it so NSA can decrypt our stuff. Noone else can.
I generally agree with your indignation. However, I believe you are mistaken about a technical fact that is central to your position. The following is NOT true, based on the current state of the art in cryptography:
> Our data is fundamentally easier to crack not just by our own government, but also by organized > crime syndicates, foreign governments, and even terrorist groups.
What the NSA may have done is made it so your encrypted communications have two keys: yours and the NSA's. There is no evidence that it weakens the algorithm in any way, provided of course that NSA doesn't publish their private key.
We can't PROVE for certain that the algorithm is secure with or without the NSA constants, but the consensus probability is that it can only be read by someone who has a key. Keys are held only by the intended recipient and the NSA, so it does NOT weaken it, noone can read it, except maybe the NSA because they could have the key. It's like if I sold you a car and kept a copy of the car key. That doesn't make it any easier for car thieves. It only makes it easier for me to repo the car.
That's the independent clause, it stands alone. If we interject an dependent clause we set it off with commas. In this case, the dependent clause "or even 10" is set off with commas. This is the same as the more common explanatory pattern:
Google Incorporated, the leading search company, offers many services. The part delimited by commas could be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence.
English majors feel free to correct any errors in the above.
After posting that I realized this is the second time recently I mentioned something about dealing with DJB. I don't want to overstate my own work. I was just one of many people part of IETF.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like you know more about Thunderbolt than I. This statement seems odd, though:
> I don't see how you can implement a lower-level protocol (eg: raw thunderbolt DMA) using a higher-level ...
> That's like saying you'll implement Internet-layer frames only using TCP.
It's common to run lower level protocols on top of higher level, and I think you know that. PPPoE is just like that, isn't it?
>DVDs .. external drives are invariably more costly and slower than internal drives
I tried about 20 drives and found that for optical, external is consistently faster with much lower cpu usage. I guess it's something about the controller that converts to USB and the few MBs of buffer in the enclosure.
Steve Jobs once said of adult content and Apple'attempts to keep it away from iOS a "people who want to see stuff like that should get an Android device". I took his advice. Apple truly believes that which web sites you visit in their business, that they should control or influence what you read. An iDevice is for listening to music you bought from Apple, the Apple approved version, for as long as Apple thinks is suitable.
On any other device, I just copy-paste my mp3 files. The Apple device also costs twice as much.
I realize there are counter-points to the above, but those are the reasons that I personally don't buy iOS, though I like my old Mac Pro and new MacBook Pro.
True. One of the first things I ask with any piece of hardware is "can I put Linux on it?". However, Mac OSX machines come with a very Unix preinstalled, one tailored to the hardware. OSX can run all my favorite free software that I run on Linux, so I don't see any reason to put Linux on a Mac. It already HAS Unix.
This is a $10,000 workstation, not the Acer your kid uses for their homework. Your data is on the Netapp or at least the Western Digital NAS.
A custom built machine may be fine. A custom built mmachine is one data point - it may be fine or may have a lot of problems. Half of the servers in my rack have been custom built, half are top brands. The custom builds cost less to build. The top brands have engineered cooling, designed by thermal engineers, perfectly routed cables, and other niceties. The manufacturer lists certain hard drives and RAM that are thoroughly tested for compatibility and other drives that while they SHOULD be compatible, don't actually get along with the controller very well.
In my experience, the top brands are a little more reliable. For home use, the low cost of a custom build makes sense. If downtime is expensive, such as for a workstation or server, the extra 10% reliability of a professionally engineered system makes more sense. A $10,000 maxed-out Mac Pro is a workstation. You buy that for an employee who costs $3,000 / day in salary and benefits. You don't want that employee idle for a day because something overheated.
They've speced a machine with half as much RAM, and the Mac has server grade ECC RAM. They've replaced PCIe storage with SATA. It's not a comparable machine. For a fair comparison, compare the Mac to a similarly speced HP server. Alternatively, at least spec the Mac lower to match, rather than maxing out everything.
Also, the Mac includes little niceties, some of which the HP will match better. I have the Macbook Pro, not the newer Pro, but by way of analogy compare Apple's reversible magnetic power cable vs. everyone else's barrel plugs. Apple does a lot of little things better on their computers. (Unlike their iOS iPhone and iPad, which I wouldn't buy.)
Indeed. We have a large WordPress based site and it is bound by database CPU despite the fairly powerful CPU it uses. It should scale to many cores, so I'm thinking of trying a pair of the 8 core AMD processors. Intel is faster PER CORE, but an AMD rig could have 16 cores.
Silk Road was clearly designed and promoted as a way to sell drugs and engage in other illegal activity. Same as the difference between a hotel and a whore house.
Routinely, if allowing the defendant to copy the evidence presents problems, they are allowed to examine the data but not copy it. Child porn cases are a well known example.
Of course it's the same for any evidence that isn't data - OJ wasn't allowed to take the bloody glove home with him. The defense team is allowed to examine prosecution evidence, there's clearly no right to take it.
Indeed. It's called TERRORism because it's intended to make people scared. The way to render it ineffective is to refuse to live in fear. One of the best anti-terrorism efforts was the "Anthrax this!" cover, a clear statement that we will not be terrorized.
> parties have informally (Or possible, conspiratorially)
We know they formally agree to what questions will be asked in campaign debates. They are open about that. So at least it is "sometimes conspitatorially".
True, for some business models the user is the product. The advertiser is the paying customer. Broadcast TV and radio are examples.
You forgot how to multiply when you made this statement, though:
> Because their beneficial sweetheart tax deals could bring in
> as much as the profit from selling consumer electronics.
Assume a 100% tax break, the company pays 0% taxes.
That's zero percent of their profit. Profit = sales - expenses.
If they have no sales, they make no money, and paying 0% tax doesn't help them. Sales is always more important.
Let's compare two sales figures, both with a 10% tax reduction. If the company does $10 million in sales, that 10% tax cut is worth $1 million. If the company does $100 in sales, a 10% tax reduction is worth $10 million. So we see that to maximize the value of tax breaks, a company needs to have more happy customers, generating more profit subject to the tax break.
The theory is that NSA has a partial private key to the RNG.
If you can crack the NSA's key, you may be able to crack the RNG.
HOWEVER, if you can crack keys, you can crack the encryption anyway.
In order to crack a key, you have to crack the RNG.
In order to crack the RNG, you have to crack the (NSA) key.
So in the end you can crack a key only if you can crack a key. Evil genius.
It DOES theoretically weaken it in one way. NSA's partial key is universal. If you crack MY key, you can read MY stuff. If you crack the NSA key, you can (maybe more easily) read EVERYONE'S stuff.
Still, you have to crack the NSA's key to get anywhere, and if you can crack keys that'd be game over anyway.
I wouldn't call myself an encryption expert . I've been doing information security for sixteen years. I can name a dozen people who understand this better than I do and I'd bet there are hundreds of people more knowledgeable than I on this subject.
> charge for the actual delivery of the digital documents, which are public domain.
> That's not illegal, just not really sustainable.
If I'm not mistaken, legally they are only supposed to charge enough to cover the cost of storing and retrieving them.
Any other self-sustaining effort would also need to cover the same costs and so would need to charge about the same, unless someone else paid the costs as a charitable contribution.
Of course that wouldn't be true if the federal government was inefficient and wasteful, but we know that can't be true, that's liberal canon. If a private organization such as Google, for example, could find and retrieve documents for less than the $3 per page that the government spends, that would mean government is a wasteful, stupid way to do things. That's not the case, of course. It would be heresy to say so.
Good morning. I see you've been sleeping the past six years. Obama is the commander in chief and head of the administrative branch. It was Obama's team that came up with this idea (in violation of federal law) in the first place.
You can only taste it after you've bought it.
It's the Coke trademark on the bottle that allows you to know what it's going to taste like. Without trademark, all of the different sodas would be labeled "Coke" and all of the different companies making them would call themselves "Coca-Cola".
There is a real life example of that here in Texas. A company in Elgin, Tx made great sausage and built a reputation for the best sausage in the state. If you were driving through Elgin on the way to Austin, you'd stop and get some "Elgin sausage". The problem was, you normally can't register your city name as your trademark. So four other companies opened up selling "Elgin sausage". Some of it isn't great. Most people no longer stop in Elgin because you never know whether you're getting the good Elgin sausage or not. The lack of trademark protection (because they chose a bad trademark) really hurt their business, and ruined customer's ability to pick up extra yummy sausage.
They are suspected of weakening it in a very specific way. Their supposed backdoor uses essentially the SAME algorithm that it's advertised to use. In order for an attacker to "be able to deduce things about the generated keys" they'd need to crack the NSA key. They can break the encryption function, but to do so they first have to break the encryption function.
What NSA did was evil, but they were smart about how they did evil .
The author shows their complete ignorance of how the economy works when they select GROCERIES as their example of an industry where they claim IP doesn't matter. Imagine if you were to walk into the grocery store and all of the cola made by different companies was labeled "Coca-Cola". It's trademark, intellectual property, that allows you to tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi, and RC cola. Were it not for IP, the generic stuff that sells for under a dollar would also be labelled "Coca-Cola".
Do you think it's important to grocers that customers can distinguish Guiradelli and Hershey from Z corp "chocolate flavored bar"? Of course! The grocery industry is ALL about trademarks. The author proves they are completely clueless by claiming IP doesn't matter in the grocery business.
I'm still waiting for the pdf to download, but I can smell the BS from here. Does anyone really believe that most businesses wouldn't mind if a competitor misappropriated their name and opened a competing establishment with the same name across the street?
Someone said that small businesses don't build a brand and don't care about their names (trademarks). I've owned a couple of small businesses and in two of those all of my customers were small businesses. For most small mom and pop businesses, the reputation attached to their trademark is EVERYTHING. They don't have national ad campaigns, their business comes from friends telling friends "go to ShoeDoc to get that fixed, they do a great job." If someone else opened a shoe repair place down the street and violated their IP by calling it ShoeDoc that would be a VERY big deal to them.
None of what I wrote above means we shouldn't be pissed at the US government. We should just be clear about exactly what we are pissed off about. We're mad that the NSA and RSA made it so NSA can decrypt our stuff. Noone else can.
I generally agree with your indignation. However, I believe you are mistaken about a technical fact that is central to your position. The following is NOT true, based on the current state of the art in cryptography:
> Our data is fundamentally easier to crack not just by our own government, but also by organized
> crime syndicates, foreign governments, and even terrorist groups.
What the NSA may have done is made it so your encrypted communications have two keys: yours and the NSA's. There is no evidence that it weakens the algorithm in any way, provided of course that NSA doesn't publish their private key.
We can't PROVE for certain that the algorithm is secure with or without the NSA constants, but the consensus probability is that it can only be read by someone who has a key. Keys are held only by the intended recipient and the NSA, so it does NOT weaken it, noone can read it, except maybe the NSA because they could have the key. It's like if I sold you a car and kept a copy of the car key. That doesn't make it any easier for car thieves. It only makes it easier for me to repo the car.
Ps if the above isn't clear, replace the commas with parentheses and you'll see why balanced delimiters make sense.
Start with this complete sentence:
This wouldn't have been posted 10 years ago.
That's the independent clause, it stands alone.
If we interject an dependent clause we set it off with commas. In this case, the dependent clause "or even 10" is set off with commas. This is the same as the more common explanatory pattern:
Google Incorporated, the leading search company, offers many services.
The part delimited by commas could be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence.
English majors feel free to correct any errors in the above.
After posting that I realized this is the second time recently I mentioned something about dealing with DJB. I don't want to overstate my own work. I was just one of many people part of IETF.