The article mentioned above was a preliminary blurb, and was the only thing available when I submitted this. Yahoo has just posted more information here:
What an incredible read! These guys really have their act together, and this is a MUST read for anyone interested in reverse engineering anything with crypytography.
What I really got out of this article (Other than the obvious facts about censorware) is that security through obscurity is never a good thing. In this case, it just took some bright programming and some time with a decompiler.
What was even more entertaining is how limiting their key space for the hash algorithm actually improved the security (marginally) such that a dictionary attack was a bit harder. While not that much harder, the authors have an excellent point that security would be better with salts.
Kudos to these guys for a fascinating read and a good job engineering.
It's not as easy as it sounds. A certain Texas university recently upgraded their homepage in a similar manner. There is no attempt at being accesible, despite pleas from both students and faculty. In this case, marketing took the front seat to common sense.
With that in mind, I would like to recommend Bobby. Bobby is a program that will scour a webpage and point out where there are flaws with its accesibility. You can find it at http://www.cast.org/bobby/.
For example, Slashdot does not receive a Bobby approved rating, meaning that it could improve its accesibility.
Does this mean that Bill Gates is going to show up with goons and "buy him out?" Can it allow me to download nude pictures of Captain Janeway any faster?
"Gee, they have the Internet for computers now! What will they think of next?"
Actually, this is not unreasonable. Prototypes are usually very expensive, due to the large amount of research and development money that is put into them. The low cost that the consumer pays is largely due to the mass production of many units. The cost goes up significantly when only building one or two units.
Let's make a really small silly example to demonstrate. Intel makes microchips. It costs approxamately $1 billion to build a chip fabrication plant. Let's say that Intel makes one chip at that plant. That chip's value will be about $1 billion. Now let's say they make thousands of chips at that plant. Well, the price comes down considerably. In other words, the sunk cost for the prototype is the same as that for the mass production variety. It's just that the cost can be distributed across the mass production systems, and not the prototype.
Don't worry. When this $1 million WebTV hits the stores, it will cost considerably less.
This is not as bad as you might think. This hole relies on ssh being built with the proprietary third party RSAREF library. If you haven't built ssh that way, then you're safe. I guarentee that 90% of the people reading this are safe. To make sure, type the following:
ssh -V
This should return the following:
Standard version. Does not use RSAREF.
Also, let's not forget that the Bugtraq people have known about this for months. If you don't read Bugtraq, you should.
Madeline Kahn was an excellent actress with a great deal of talent and ability. She's been in many Mel Brooks films as well as playing cameo roles in some newer things, such as the new Cosby show (She was a next door neighbor).
Few people seem to be commenting on her gorgeous singing voice. I always enjoyed her singing ability. One instance that comes to mind was when she participated in a Broadway revival of the musical Company, singing the song Getting Married Today. For those of you who don't know this song, it involves being able to sing well at about 90 mph. She pulled it off, and she produced one of my favorite versions of that song.
She played Gene Wilder's annoying (acting at least) fiance, and later became the monster's wife. You might remember her for having an extremely good voice, and not wanting her hair messed up.
The New York Times recently had an article that called into question the notion that Judge Jackson's finding of fact are indeed bullet proof. Specifically, they mentioned that previous rulings by other appeals courts could possibly counter some of Judge Jackson's findings, creating the strong possibility for an appeal. These issues included the idea that consumers are or are not benefitted by the tying of two products.
In this light, how easy will it be for Microsoft to appeal these finding successfully? How useful are the previous rulings by other appeals courts in deciding the validity of the new findings of fact?
So many people are advocating Pine, Elm, Mutt, and the other Unix mail clients. I think we've all forgotten that these clients are just as susceptable to viruses and malicious code execution. I would like to propose an alternative:
cat/var/spool/mail/username |more
This wonderful method of reading mail will allow you to view your messages without ever having to worry about viruses or evil code execution. Both cat and more handle MIME types in the correct way, by completely ignoring them.
Those that do receive attachments can always use uudecode or hexbin to retrieve the original file. Of course, you're on your own at that point.
You can see what the Tour research group is up to at Rice by going to his homepage at http://www.jmtour.com/. There is information about this project at http://www.jmtour.com/info.htm. Scroll down the page a bit.
Finally, don't forget that you can see more about the Rice nanotechnology program at The Rice Quantum Institute and The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Don't forget that Rice is where the Buckyball craze started, with Smalley and Curl winning the Nobel for the discovery of its shape.
As much as I love Linux, I have to say that advanced mouse support is really lacking. Take, for example, the wheel. One can configure applications to use the wheel independently, but where is the overall XFree86 functionality of the wheel? Why won't my wheel mouse scroll ANY window ANYwhere no matter what program is running?
Granted, I'm not complaining. I have my wheel setup to scroll things in Netscape (Most of the time), Emacs, xterms, etc. But, it's a huge pain to configure, unlike the regular buttons which come working right out of the box.
Let's focus on getting solid support for some of the current standards before we concern ourselves with new ones.
Let's back up. Ok, the government spies on me. There's a lot of evidence for and against this idea, but let's assume it to be true. Let's assume the government is the spawn of the devil and does all kinds of evil things to me, my computer, my privacy, my family, and my pets. Does that make it right for kids to break into computers? I think not.
Two wrongs do NOT (And never have) made a single right. The impression I get from this article is that it's ok to break into computers, because the government does it already. This is one of the most unproductive viewpoints I've ever heard.
Perhaps this justice department program could use some re-tooling, but the overall message is correct. Cracking things is bad. It's bad coming from anyone. You do not contribute to the overall solution by doing so yourself.
Remember, geeks do well when put in cages for the night. They should be fed twice a day, but not overfed. That could lead to collic and the possible need for a veterinarian.
Be firm, yet gentle with your geeks. If a geek has lost it's temper, do not make eye contact. That could cause them to attack you. Instead, talk in a soothing voice and hope that the geek goes back to what it was doing. Have trainquilizer darts if necessary.
A clean geek is a happy geek. They should be washed regularly, and their cages should be kept clean and neat. Feed your geeks deworming medication daily to keep their intestinal tracks free of parasites and other pests. Having them checked up twice a year will also give you a happy healthy geek that has a shiny coat and bright teeth. A rabies shot is a must.
Positive renforcement is good for your geeks. Try using biscuits or other treats when training them. Negative renforcement can also be effective. Shouting "No!" in a clear voice will carry the message of dissatisfaction.
But, don't forget. Years of love and care for your geek will give you a geek that loves and cares for you!
The Graphite iMac is CLEAR. That's really cool, but it leaves me with one question. How in the world do you shield that thing? It just seems like a really bad idea to have an unshielded CRT hanging out in the open like that. It seems like the current iMacs do have a small amount of shielding around the unit, so why not this one?
I think we can look at this two ways. We have the issue of a possible illegal lottery. We have a lawfirm that is suing the company that is orchestrating this lottery.
The situation here is whether or not they are doing it for the right reasons. Are they suing them to seek moral justification for a possible violation of the law? Or are they suing them to fill their own pockets?
The evidence here suggests the latter. Accordingly, they are doing something right for the wrong reasons. For that reason, I cannot support their actions.
These guys just seem like massive litigation machines. They probably believe that you can sue anyone and everyone at the drop of a hat. Every once and a while, they'll be right about something, and get a huge settlement. That settlement pays for all of their other suits, and they keep going.
The downside to this is that our court system is now clogged with silly lawsuits. This just makes it harder for the occasional legitimate case to reach trial.
The M2 thing seems to be going nicely, but I would like to propose an additional idea. When you moderate, you're limited to having very few subjects that detail how you feel about the message. Sometimes they don't do justice to your feelings about the post. That's why I think that it would be nice to have a one line comment detailing why you think the moderation you just made was fair. This is something that I have actually wanted in the past, and it might even help with the M2 moderation.
Writing a comment would be optional, as many moderations are simply self explanatory. But, it could be useful to say "I moderated this down because it was repeated above in comment #xyz," or "I moderated this down because we aren't discussing foo here, only bar." Of course, positive feedback would be good, too. Good posters could be rewarded with feedback like "Good post," or "Nice job researching this subject."
This information could then be made available on the M2 moderation page, permitting people to get an idea about why a moderation took place. A comment that might look perfectly normal could have been grossly off topic. Further, it would give the original poster an idea about why he was moderated up or down. Everybody wins.
Of course, the moderation comments would have to have limits. Perhaps the complete history of the moderation comments would only be available to the original poster, while everyone else only saw the most recent. This would prevent silliness like whole discussion threads on why a post was moderated in such and such of a way.
I'm not part of the kernel development team, and I have not kept up with the 2.3.x series. So, I'm a little behind. I would love to see a list of the updated/new features in the new series. I'm aware of the USB support, but what about FireWire? Are there any major changes to the ext2 filesystem? I realize that everything is tentative right now, but it would be nice to have a sort of refresher on the current happenings in the kernel development group.
I use Mandrake, and I've been very pleased with it. If you want Red Hat, but don't want the bugs or Gnome, then Mandrake is your best bet. In fact, I'd say a great deal of care is put into making Mandrake a user oriented system rather than a general purpose or even server system. This is demonstrated by the easy install, diskdrake, and KDE as the default window manager.
I have no clue what to think of this page. It was either written by someone who is totally brilliant at comedy and has a great deal of talent, or written by a complete blithering idiot who is wasting perfectly good space on some poor server's hard drives.
In other words, if the goal of this site was to make fun of script kiddies and Microsoft sycophants, then the author hit the nail on the head. The placement of slobbering, non-sensical prose was masterful. The misspelled words were placed in just the right places. It's REALLY convincing.
If not, then I REALLY don't want to know what he's been smoking. The page claims that the author was born in the 50s. If that's true, then he has truly screwed up his brain in the last 40 years.
Anyone care to comment on how they interpreted it?
Oh, to do justice to my username, I am excited about the upcoming Dune trilogy. While it won't be Herbert, it should still be entertaining.
What was the mother of those teenagers thinking when she allowed a complete stranger to take them into a dark theatre and watch a movie? I'm sure you are a very nice person, Mr. Katz, but would you allow your children to go into a dark room with a stranger in the same situation? I know I wouldn't. Plus, I would be concerned that they wouldn't be seen again. Too many people are kidnapped and abused each year for me to be comfortable with anyone taking my kids, unless I knew them REALLY well.
As for the validity of what you did, I don't agree with it. But comments along this line have already been made. I won't repeat them.
Did anyone see this? This was buried a little more deeply on his page, and refers to the auction of the first Apple I.
WOZ: I wanted to give the first Apple I, on a PC board, to Liza LO*OP of the LO*OP Center in Cotati, California. I took Steve [Jobs] up there and she showed us how she rolled a PDP-11 around to elementary schools and told the students how a computer was just a collection of programs written by people and didn't have a mind of it's own. 4th through 6th graders. I admired this and wanted to give her the first one. Jobs actually made me buy it, if you can believe that, for $300. I did and gave it to Liza. The one being advertised must be number 2.
This is very interesting. I wonder if the auction house realizes that it isn't selling the original Apple I like they claim? Supposedly, Jobs had identified it as being authentic, so I guess Woz disagrees. Hmmmm...
I BELIEVE this is an idea that popped up in the 50's during early brain research. Scientists discovered neurons that were 'undersized' compared to most neurons, so they assumed that they were unused. Since a large portion of the cortex was composed of these neurons, they came up with this wild statistic.
Now we know that these neurons are just small, which doesn't make them unused. So, the notion is false.
Anyone have a different idea? My memory of introductory psychology is pretty fuzzy, as I mostly spent my time just trying to stay awake...
Slashdot Mirror
The article mentioned above was a preliminary blurb, and was the only thing available when I submitted this. Yahoo has just posted more information here:
. html
http://dailyne ws.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20000401/ts/microsoft_talks_8
What an incredible read! These guys really have their act together, and this is a MUST read for anyone interested in reverse engineering anything with crypytography.
What I really got out of this article (Other than the obvious facts about censorware) is that security through obscurity is never a good thing. In this case, it just took some bright programming and some time with a decompiler.
What was even more entertaining is how limiting their key space for the hash algorithm actually improved the security (marginally) such that a dictionary attack was a bit harder. While not that much harder, the authors have an excellent point that security would be better with salts.
Kudos to these guys for a fascinating read and a good job engineering.
It's not as easy as it sounds. A certain Texas university recently upgraded their homepage in a similar manner. There is no attempt at being accesible, despite pleas from both students and faculty. In this case, marketing took the front seat to common sense.
With that in mind, I would like to recommend Bobby. Bobby is a program that will scour a webpage and point out where there are flaws with its accesibility. You can find it at http://www.cast.org/bobby/.
For example, Slashdot does not receive a Bobby approved rating, meaning that it could improve its accesibility.
Does this mean that Bill Gates is going to show up with goons and "buy him out?" Can it allow me to download nude pictures of Captain Janeway any faster?
"Gee, they have the Internet for computers now! What will they think of next?"
Actually, this is not unreasonable. Prototypes are usually very expensive, due to the large amount of research and development money that is put into them. The low cost that the consumer pays is largely due to the mass production of many units. The cost goes up significantly when only building one or two units.
Let's make a really small silly example to demonstrate. Intel makes microchips. It costs approxamately $1 billion to build a chip fabrication plant. Let's say that Intel makes one chip at that plant. That chip's value will be about $1 billion. Now let's say they make thousands of chips at that plant. Well, the price comes down considerably. In other words, the sunk cost for the prototype is the same as that for the mass production variety. It's just that the cost can be distributed across the mass production systems, and not the prototype.
Don't worry. When this $1 million WebTV hits the stores, it will cost considerably less.
This is not as bad as you might think. This hole relies on ssh being built with the proprietary third party RSAREF library. If you haven't built ssh that way, then you're safe. I guarentee that 90% of the people reading this are safe. To make sure, type the following:
ssh -V
This should return the following:
Standard version. Does not use RSAREF.
Also, let's not forget that the Bugtraq people have known about this for months. If you don't read Bugtraq, you should.
Madeline Kahn was an excellent actress with a great deal of talent and ability. She's been in many Mel Brooks films as well as playing cameo roles in some newer things, such as the new Cosby show (She was a next door neighbor).
Few people seem to be commenting on her gorgeous singing voice. I always enjoyed her singing ability. One instance that comes to mind was when she participated in a Broadway revival of the musical Company, singing the song Getting Married Today. For those of you who don't know this song, it involves being able to sing well at about 90 mph. She pulled it off, and she produced one of my favorite versions of that song.
She played Gene Wilder's annoying (acting at least) fiance, and later became the monster's wife. You might remember her for having an extremely good voice, and not wanting her hair messed up.
You can find out more about her at the Internet Movie Database.
The New York Times recently had an article that called into question the notion that Judge Jackson's finding of fact are indeed bullet proof. Specifically, they mentioned that previous rulings by other appeals courts could possibly counter some of Judge Jackson's findings, creating the strong possibility for an appeal. These issues included the idea that consumers are or are not benefitted by the tying of two products.
In this light, how easy will it be for Microsoft to appeal these finding successfully? How useful are the previous rulings by other appeals courts in deciding the validity of the new findings of fact?
Go to their main page at http://www.starchildproject.com/ and you can see all the pictures you want.
So many people are advocating Pine, Elm, Mutt, and the other Unix mail clients. I think we've all forgotten that these clients are just as susceptable to viruses and malicious code execution. I would like to propose an alternative:
/var/spool/mail/username |more
cat
This wonderful method of reading mail will allow you to view your messages without ever having to worry about viruses or evil code execution. Both cat and more handle MIME types in the correct way, by completely ignoring them.
Those that do receive attachments can always use uudecode or hexbin to retrieve the original file. Of course, you're on your own at that point.
You can see what the Tour research group is up to at Rice by going to his homepage at http://www.jmtour.com/. There is information about this project at http://www.jmtour.com/info.htm. Scroll down the page a bit.
Finally, don't forget that you can see more about the Rice nanotechnology program at The Rice Quantum Institute and The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Don't forget that Rice is where the Buckyball craze started, with Smalley and Curl winning the Nobel for the discovery of its shape.
As much as I love Linux, I have to say that advanced mouse support is really lacking. Take, for example, the wheel. One can configure applications to use the wheel independently, but where is the overall XFree86 functionality of the wheel? Why won't my wheel mouse scroll ANY window ANYwhere no matter what program is running?
Granted, I'm not complaining. I have my wheel setup to scroll things in Netscape (Most of the time), Emacs, xterms, etc. But, it's a huge pain to configure, unlike the regular buttons which come working right out of the box.
Let's focus on getting solid support for some of the current standards before we concern ourselves with new ones.
Let's back up. Ok, the government spies on me. There's a lot of evidence for and against this idea, but let's assume it to be true. Let's assume the government is the spawn of the devil and does all kinds of evil things to me, my computer, my privacy, my family, and my pets. Does that make it right for kids to break into computers? I think not.
Two wrongs do NOT (And never have) made a single right. The impression I get from this article is that it's ok to break into computers, because the government does it already. This is one of the most unproductive viewpoints I've ever heard.
Perhaps this justice department program could use some re-tooling, but the overall message is correct. Cracking things is bad. It's bad coming from anyone. You do not contribute to the overall solution by doing so yourself.
Remember, geeks do well when put in cages for the night. They should be fed twice a day, but not overfed. That could lead to collic and the possible need for a veterinarian.
Be firm, yet gentle with your geeks. If a geek has lost it's temper, do not make eye contact. That could cause them to attack you. Instead, talk in a soothing voice and hope that the geek goes back to what it was doing. Have trainquilizer darts if necessary.
A clean geek is a happy geek. They should be washed regularly, and their cages should be kept clean and neat. Feed your geeks deworming medication daily to keep their intestinal tracks free of parasites and other pests. Having them checked up twice a year will also give you a happy healthy geek that has a shiny coat and bright teeth. A rabies shot is a must.
Positive renforcement is good for your geeks. Try using biscuits or other treats when training them. Negative renforcement can also be effective. Shouting "No!" in a clear voice will carry the message of dissatisfaction.
But, don't forget. Years of love and care for your geek will give you a geek that loves and cares for you!
The Graphite iMac is CLEAR. That's really cool, but it leaves me with one question. How in the world do you shield that thing? It just seems like a really bad idea to have an unshielded CRT hanging out in the open like that. It seems like the current iMacs do have a small amount of shielding around the unit, so why not this one?
I think we can look at this two ways. We have the issue of a possible illegal lottery. We have a lawfirm that is suing the company that is orchestrating this lottery.
The situation here is whether or not they are doing it for the right reasons. Are they suing them to seek moral justification for a possible violation of the law? Or are they suing them to fill their own pockets?
The evidence here suggests the latter. Accordingly, they are doing something right for the wrong reasons. For that reason, I cannot support their actions.
These guys just seem like massive litigation machines. They probably believe that you can sue anyone and everyone at the drop of a hat. Every once and a while, they'll be right about something, and get a huge settlement. That settlement pays for all of their other suits, and they keep going.
The downside to this is that our court system is now clogged with silly lawsuits. This just makes it harder for the occasional legitimate case to reach trial.
The M2 thing seems to be going nicely, but I would like to propose an additional idea. When you moderate, you're limited to having very few subjects that detail how you feel about the message. Sometimes they don't do justice to your feelings about the post. That's why I think that it would be nice to have a one line comment detailing why you think the moderation you just made was fair. This is something that I have actually wanted in the past, and it might even help with the M2 moderation.
Writing a comment would be optional, as many moderations are simply self explanatory. But, it could be useful to say "I moderated this down because it was repeated above in comment #xyz," or "I moderated this down because we aren't discussing foo here, only bar." Of course, positive feedback would be good, too. Good posters could be rewarded with feedback like "Good post," or "Nice job researching this subject."
This information could then be made available on the M2 moderation page, permitting people to get an idea about why a moderation took place. A comment that might look perfectly normal could have been grossly off topic. Further, it would give the original poster an idea about why he was moderated up or down. Everybody wins.
Of course, the moderation comments would have to have limits. Perhaps the complete history of the moderation comments would only be available to the original poster, while everyone else only saw the most recent. This would prevent silliness like whole discussion threads on why a post was moderated in such and such of a way.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
I'm not part of the kernel development team, and I have not kept up with the 2.3.x series. So, I'm a little behind. I would love to see a list of the updated/new features in the new series. I'm aware of the USB support, but what about FireWire? Are there any major changes to the ext2 filesystem? I realize that everything is tentative right now, but it would be nice to have a sort of refresher on the current happenings in the kernel development group.
I use Mandrake, and I've been very pleased with it. If you want Red Hat, but don't want the bugs or Gnome, then Mandrake is your best bet. In fact, I'd say a great deal of care is put into making Mandrake a user oriented system rather than a general purpose or even server system. This is demonstrated by the easy install, diskdrake, and KDE as the default window manager.
I have no clue what to think of this page. It was either written by someone who is totally brilliant at comedy and has a great deal of talent, or written by a complete blithering idiot who is wasting perfectly good space on some poor server's hard drives.
In other words, if the goal of this site was to make fun of script kiddies and Microsoft sycophants, then the author hit the nail on the head. The placement of slobbering, non-sensical prose was masterful. The misspelled words were placed in just the right places. It's REALLY convincing.
If not, then I REALLY don't want to know what he's been smoking. The page claims that the author was born in the 50s. If that's true, then he has truly screwed up his brain in the last 40 years.
Anyone care to comment on how they interpreted it?
Oh, to do justice to my username, I am excited about the upcoming Dune trilogy. While it won't be Herbert, it should still be entertaining.
What was the mother of those teenagers thinking when she allowed a complete stranger to take them into a dark theatre and watch a movie? I'm sure you are a very nice person, Mr. Katz, but would you allow your children to go into a dark room with a stranger in the same situation? I know I wouldn't. Plus, I would be concerned that they wouldn't be seen again. Too many people are kidnapped and abused each year for me to be comfortable with anyone taking my kids, unless I knew them REALLY well.
As for the validity of what you did, I don't agree with it. But comments along this line have already been made. I won't repeat them.
Did anyone see this? This was buried a little more deeply on his page, and refers to the auction of the first Apple I.
WOZ: I wanted to give the first Apple I, on a PC board, to Liza LO*OP of the LO*OP Center in Cotati, California. I took Steve [Jobs] up there and she showed us how she rolled a PDP-11 around to elementary schools and told the students how a computer was just a collection of programs written by people and didn't have a mind of it's own. 4th through 6th graders. I admired this and wanted to give her the first one. Jobs actually made me buy it, if you can believe that, for $300. I did and gave it to Liza. The one being advertised must be number 2.
This is very interesting. I wonder if the auction house realizes that it isn't selling the original Apple I like they claim? Supposedly, Jobs had identified it as being authentic, so I guess Woz disagrees. Hmmmm...
Where does that measurement come from?
I BELIEVE this is an idea that popped up in the 50's during early brain research. Scientists discovered neurons that were 'undersized' compared to most neurons, so they assumed that they were unused. Since a large portion of the cortex was composed of these neurons, they came up with this wild statistic.
Now we know that these neurons are just small, which doesn't make them unused. So, the notion is false.
Anyone have a different idea? My memory of introductory psychology is pretty fuzzy, as I mostly spent my time just trying to stay awake...