That's also why security through obscurity is bad. If your crypto algorithm is secret (as in a "secret machine" like Enigma, or as in "our brand new military-grade Bull-Shit-Algo(tm) is trade secret"), it becomes part of the key and has to be protected as well (as by Kerckhoffs' law).
While there's some truth to this, lack of obscurity is a double-edged sword. If your enemy knows your encryption algorithm, it can attack it from a much better position. How many years has NSA been grinding away at (for instance) SSH with all of its vast resources? Is SSH still secure with regards to the NSA? Only the NSA knows.
Military encryption has been the difference between victory and defeat more than once. It seems elementary common sense to reveal as little about it as possible to potential adversaries.
IIRC, doesnt microsoft hold a good amount of ownership over opengl?
No.
and now that SGI will more than likely be leaving the playing field, wont this mean that OGL will belong to microsoft?
No, the OpenGL ARB controls OpenGL, not SGI. Check the website.
who will more than likely take it, lock it up, and sue the living fuck out of anyone who implements it? (read, makes free software implementations without paying absurd royalty costs)
No. SGI is far from the most important company relying on OpenGL. Check the ARB member list: 3DLabs, Apple, ATI, Dell, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, SGI, and Sun Microsystems.
Once you've laid out a few kilobucks on your BC system and been frustrated a few times with Windows limitations, what are you going to do? Jobs's bet: You'll start spending more and more time in OS X, until you--too--become one of the pod people.
Um, fool, the "pod people" are the 90%+ who are Windows lemmings, putting up with the myriad faults of that OS. I guess that's what I'd expect from a "PC Magazine" editor...mindless Apple bashing, whether it makes sense or not.
It was a biting, harsh criticism of Bush, to his face, in front of the nation's journalism establishment.
It was also a criticism of the press corps, which is more warranted than a criticism of Bush IMO.
If the main question was "why did we invade Iraq?" delivered by the lovely Helen Thomas, then this guy was bluntly disrespectful to the President, to his face.
I doubt anyone who's ordered men to their deaths in combat is happy to have those decisions mocked. That President Bush "didn't smile" when he met Colbert later is unsurprising.
I'm sure the decision to invade Iraq wasn't an easy one. There is also a clear history on Iraq's part of a) possessing WMD, b) defying the UN and its inspectors, and c) supporting terrorism. Let's also not forget that by all accounts, fewer are dying in Iraq now than did under Saddam Hussein. It is also a good thing that a full democratically elected government has just been formed.
In the long run, I think you'll find that Bush turns out much like Reagan. Unpopular during his time in office, but in retrospect he'll be viewed as a good president who actually made a positive difference in the Middle East.
First, the PS3 absolutely will drive adoption. PS3 will probably sell 10 million units within two years.
Second, Blu-Ray has already had every major studio but one (Universal I think) commit to releasing content on Blu-Ray. HD-DVD still has three or four studios to convince to support its format.
Besides, Microsoft really likes HD-DVD...what more reason do you need to root for Blu-Ray?;-)
(As an aside, I thought the fit Microsoft threw when it found out Blu-Ray software was going to be Java was pretty funny...)
I agree with your point, but not your example. The B-29 would have been unaffected by EMP because its flight controls were levers, pulleys, and hydraulics. I think it had electric trim tabs, but the primary flight controls were all boring ol' mechanical gear.
You're ignoring the fact that the B-29 engines had electrical systems, and the plane had a radio and other electronic equipement. EMP could easily have disrupted both.
I also submit that the bombs dropped over Japan were a rather different animal than modern thermonuclear weapons, and wouldn't have the same EMP "performance". This is an area I'm not well informed about, but nevertheless I'd hesitate to draw parallels.
Here is a good page on EMP. What we're discussing here is SREMP, and that associated with thermonuclear weapons is no different from that associated with fission weapons. It is strictly dependent on the size of the blast, the atmospheric conditions, and the geometry of the receiver with the blast.
The 20 KT explosions in WWII were small by today's standards, but the B-29 was also much closer to the blast than would be a modern bomber. Five times longer standoff distance would make up for a 25 times stronger blast, which would be 500 KT. Our largest weapons are 10 MT, and IIRC there are no plans to use anything larger than 1 MT from the B-2. (Larger weapons fell out of fashion, as they are inherently less efficient than smaller weapons.)
If the weapon is delivered on something like the ALCM, the standoff distances get much larger.
To control that big laser gun, I bet there are tons of theelectronics that can't handle EM Pulse very well.
In fact, you'd lose that bet. The US military has had 60 years to learn how to deal with EMP, and frontline military equipment is generally quite EMP-hardened.
What, do you expect B-2 bombers to fall out of the sky after they drop a nuke? That didn't even happen with the B-29s in 1945. I'm sure the ABL is just as impervious.
We are not talking about scientist's *policy* opinions here, these people need permissions to express their *scientific* viewpoints.
They have *every* permission to speak their *scientific* viewpoint. Those are expressed when they publish papers in refereed scientific journals. The linked article specifically says that has not been affected, and that research areas are not being dictated.
When they give a *press conference* it often involves expressing their personal opinion, often in unscientific language. It does remain an *opinion* that humans are the driving force behind global warming. Many very responsible scientists feel that the data do NOT provide good evidence that humans are the major cause of current climate change.
If scientists need clearance from government officials to talk to media, wouldn't you agree that somehow, Bush is not completely candid about it?
Are scientists "media spokespeople" now? Many organizations have rules about who can talk to the press, in other words make public statements regarding the policies and actions of an organization.
I would be concerned if there was evidence of:
Research tampering.
Suppresion of research.
Faked results.
Influence over the peer review process.
None of this has been alleged, as far as I know.
As long as valid papers are appearing in peer-reviewed journals, scientists and policy makers the world over can make their decisions. Whether or not *government employed scientists* are allowed to present their *opinions* as a form of government policy is a separate question.
Consider this paragraph:
None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Indeed, several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.
Climate change is a highly politicized topic, my view is that the administration is looking for more light and less heat (so to speak) on the topic. Politicians do find it annoying when people that they fund provide ammunition for their political enemies, and doubly so when those people are of the opposite political persuasion.;-)
Scientists need to report their findings in scientific, not alarmist, terms. In science, as in many other areas, there are often "beliefs" that are reported as "facts", especially when the scientist is using layperson's language.
If you call what he's doing "entirely responsible", what would you call what European countries are up to?
Well, Britain for instance is behind on it's Kyoto goals, which has or will hurt its economy. On the other hand, check this page on Germany. Interesting, no?
Kyoto is unecessary, ineffective, and little more than a thinly veiled wealth redistribution scheme.
That's why some people get angry about Bush and Cheney when the latter deny man's influence on global warming or, until recently, global warming itself. They are lying to protect their self-interest and those of their oil-industry executive buddies who make big campaign donations. They know they are lying and they don't care how bad the results are.
I don't think you have before. It was written in 2001, hardly "recently". Bush had just gotten into office.
What do you think of the point regarding China and the Kyoto Protocol?
Other than avoiding the Kyoto Protocol (which I support) Bush is advocating most of the things that will help in the long-term effort to reduce pollution. Actually, Bush has behaved entirely responsibly with regard to global warming. His administration is also correct in pointing out that the first thing that's needed is definitely a LOT more research!
It's beyond hypocritical. It's evil.
You're misinformed. Or could it be that your distaste for Bush has muddied your thinking?
One sad thing about this, as a Mac user and Mac gamer, is that this probably puts a big fat nail in the coffin for AAA OS X-native game titles. Or maybe it's less of a nail, and more like sticky tape, meaning the coffin can be reopened if OS X attains a bigger critical mass.
I completely disagree. What percentage of Mac buyers do you think will acquire a copy of WinXP and use Boot Camp? I'd guess less than 20%, and probably less than 10%.
I submit that the millions of machines running only MacOS represent quite a lucrative target market. Further, I expect MacOS marketshare to grow pretty rapidly, not shrink.
The winners? Cross-platform game engine developers. Oh, and the Mac users.:-)
I hope the US fights global warming (assuming it is largely anthropogenic, which is not given) with more efficient vehicles, a massive buildout of nuclear power plants, and a move to solar/wind/geothermal/hydrogen over time. Those things simply make sense, with or without global warming. Much more research is needed to understand what is happening, what is the correct response, and how quickly it must happen.
All that said, the biggest problem is the developing third world which wants planes, trains and automobiles. Already just the cooking fires from SE Asia are a major source of pollution.
America may be ready to fight global warming, but America doesn't have control over the major upcoming sources of greenhouse gasses.
And what is the evidence that reducing greenhouse gases will trash the economy?
None, unless it's linked to a fundamentally flawed scheme like Kyoto. In case you haven't noticed, market forces are already pushing the development of alternative fuels, hybrid cars, solar etc. We ARE moving to lower emissions. We need to build more nuclear plants, so support that at your local level.
There is no need to "trash" anything as we improve our emissions picture. What will be tough is to get the developing countries like China to develop in a clean way. Kyoto doesn't address that at all.
I would be very suspicious of any lab that could show splash patterns that were smaller when the moon was directly overhead than when it is on the opposite side of the Earth, since Newtonian mechanics shows they should be roughly the same.
Nope, GP is correct. The 1/r^2 value for the Moon is different (and has different signs) for the two cases. It's a simple sum.
This is for the same reason that high tides occur at both new and full moons.
"Tides" are caused by "tidal forces". Tidal forces have nothing to do with dropping objects.
now i'm far more interested in just getting as many cheap, little, ecologically sound computers, than i am in having my own halon setup, and consequently: Apple is dead to me now.
Not sure what you mean here. Apple's Intel offerings' energy consumption are similar (MacBook, Mini) or quite a bit smaller (iMac) than the PowerPC versions. The MacMacs (nextgen "PowerMacs") will also be environmentally better than the current G5 towers.
Somalia was nothing like Rwanda, nothing, not even close. The US went into Somalia to deliver aid and then decided they'd use the opportunity to try and grab a local leader we didn't like. Short story, we got slapped, Clinton flipped and pulled the troops. Rwanda was mass slaughter, hundreds of thousands dead.
Not even close.
Right, you're saying that Rwanda was a way worse situation...thus supporting my point regarding why the US would be reluctant to get involved after Somalia.
And just a minor remark here to people who claim I was botting. Please, go look up some botting software.
I think the main problem with what happened, is that your char was playing "unattended", even though no bot was involved. I'm 99% sure that's a TOS violation. If you're playing WoW, you're supposed to be paying attention to the game.;-)
I actually think Blizzard had a point, but I agree with you that a permanent ban is too harsh, especially for a first offence. Good luck getting reinstated!
So my question about Rwanda was why the US [and the U.N.] didn't get involve?
First of all, the US did get involved in a similar situation - in Somalia. Remember that?
After "Blackhawk Down" I think there was considerable reluctance in Washington to send troops to die in African hellholes. Just a guess...;-)
It's just a total fucking coincidence that Iraq has oil fields right?
Yes.
What Iraq has that we will actually profit from (the US already makes a ton of money from oil) is a strategic location right in the center of the Middle East, and next door to Iran. Good stuff.
As to the rest of your tired, lame rant - in fact Iraq will be much better off in the future due to this war. It is already better off, as even with the current violence FEWER people are dying than did under Hussein. Iraqis have access to many things that were banned under the old government - and they like it. The Iraqi economy is taking off. American casualties are dropping rapidly, the recent terrorist efforts to start a civil war have failed, and solidified public sentiment against the terrorists.
I know you don't want to believe this, but the US is winning in Iraq. Sorry to rain on your parade.
Airplanes can roll along the ground. Cars can roll along the ground. Airplanes can fly through the air. Should not cars fly through the air?
And, having watched "Dukes of Hazzard" (along with many other Hollywood gems), I can assure you that cars DO fly through the air*. . . . . . .
*The glide ratio is pretty bad though.
and games manufacturer's are still going to want everything loaded off CD to attempt to prevent copying.
Darned near every game I have loads all the big data onto the hard drive for speed. A few games require the original CD be in the CD drive during gameplay. That type of scheme is generally unecessary for online games, where you're authenticated by other means, so the situation is generally improving.
The idea of caching frequently used stuff to a flash drive is good - I hope Apple and other OS vendors pick it up.
there doesn't seem to be any customer demand for it (apart from Mactel users)
Yeah, why worry about a few million potential customers, at $100 or so a pop. I mean, it's only a (say) $500 million a year potential revenue stream...
The DOJ ought to be on this like a starving pit bull on a bacon-wrapped bunny rabbit...I won't hold my breath though.
I hope one of the projects to boot XP works out, that's really a better idea anyhow. Then folks can use their existing XP licenses rather than giving Microsoft more money for their not-so-fine products. Software will be coming out for XP for at least five more years. If things work out right for Apple, Windows compatibility may not matter too much by then.
Slashdot Mirror
While there's some truth to this, lack of obscurity is a double-edged sword. If your enemy knows your encryption algorithm, it can attack it from a much better position. How many years has NSA been grinding away at (for instance) SSH with all of its vast resources? Is SSH still secure with regards to the NSA? Only the NSA knows.
Military encryption has been the difference between victory and defeat more than once. It seems elementary common sense to reveal as little about it as possible to potential adversaries.
No.
and now that SGI will more than likely be leaving the playing field, wont this mean that OGL will belong to microsoft?
No, the OpenGL ARB controls OpenGL, not SGI. Check the website.
who will more than likely take it, lock it up, and sue the living fuck out of anyone who implements it? (read, makes free software implementations without paying absurd royalty costs)
No. SGI is far from the most important company relying on OpenGL. Check the ARB member list: 3DLabs, Apple, ATI, Dell, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, SGI, and Sun Microsystems.
OpenGL is fine.
Um, fool, the "pod people" are the 90%+ who are Windows lemmings, putting up with the myriad faults of that OS. I guess that's what I'd expect from a "PC Magazine" editor...mindless Apple bashing, whether it makes sense or not.
It was also a criticism of the press corps, which is more warranted than a criticism of Bush IMO.
If the main question was "why did we invade Iraq?" delivered by the lovely Helen Thomas, then this guy was bluntly disrespectful to the President, to his face.
I doubt anyone who's ordered men to their deaths in combat is happy to have those decisions mocked. That President Bush "didn't smile" when he met Colbert later is unsurprising.
I'm sure the decision to invade Iraq wasn't an easy one. There is also a clear history on Iraq's part of a) possessing WMD, b) defying the UN and its inspectors, and c) supporting terrorism. Let's also not forget that by all accounts, fewer are dying in Iraq now than did under Saddam Hussein. It is also a good thing that a full democratically elected government has just been formed.
In the long run, I think you'll find that Bush turns out much like Reagan. Unpopular during his time in office, but in retrospect he'll be viewed as a good president who actually made a positive difference in the Middle East.
First, the PS3 absolutely will drive adoption. PS3 will probably sell 10 million units within two years.
Second, Blu-Ray has already had every major studio but one (Universal I think) commit to releasing content on Blu-Ray. HD-DVD still has three or four studios to convince to support its format.
Besides, Microsoft really likes HD-DVD...what more reason do you need to root for Blu-Ray? ;-)
(As an aside, I thought the fit Microsoft threw when it found out Blu-Ray software was going to be Java was pretty funny...)
You're ignoring the fact that the B-29 engines had electrical systems, and the plane had a radio and other electronic equipement. EMP could easily have disrupted both.
I also submit that the bombs dropped over Japan were a rather different animal than modern thermonuclear weapons, and wouldn't have the same EMP "performance". This is an area I'm not well informed about, but nevertheless I'd hesitate to draw parallels.
Here is a good page on EMP. What we're discussing here is SREMP, and that associated with thermonuclear weapons is no different from that associated with fission weapons. It is strictly dependent on the size of the blast, the atmospheric conditions, and the geometry of the receiver with the blast.
The 20 KT explosions in WWII were small by today's standards, but the B-29 was also much closer to the blast than would be a modern bomber. Five times longer standoff distance would make up for a 25 times stronger blast, which would be 500 KT. Our largest weapons are 10 MT, and IIRC there are no plans to use anything larger than 1 MT from the B-2. (Larger weapons fell out of fashion, as they are inherently less efficient than smaller weapons.)
If the weapon is delivered on something like the ALCM, the standoff distances get much larger.
In fact, you'd lose that bet. The US military has had 60 years to learn how to deal with EMP, and frontline military equipment is generally quite EMP-hardened.
What, do you expect B-2 bombers to fall out of the sky after they drop a nuke? That didn't even happen with the B-29s in 1945. I'm sure the ABL is just as impervious.
They have *every* permission to speak their *scientific* viewpoint. Those are expressed when they publish papers in refereed scientific journals. The linked article specifically says that has not been affected, and that research areas are not being dictated.
When they give a *press conference* it often involves expressing their personal opinion, often in unscientific language. It does remain an *opinion* that humans are the driving force behind global warming. Many very responsible scientists feel that the data do NOT provide good evidence that humans are the major cause of current climate change.
Are scientists "media spokespeople" now? Many organizations have rules about who can talk to the press, in other words make public statements regarding the policies and actions of an organization.
I would be concerned if there was evidence of:
None of this has been alleged, as far as I know.
As long as valid papers are appearing in peer-reviewed journals, scientists and policy makers the world over can make their decisions. Whether or not *government employed scientists* are allowed to present their *opinions* as a form of government policy is a separate question.
Consider this paragraph:
Climate change is a highly politicized topic, my view is that the administration is looking for more light and less heat (so to speak) on the topic. Politicians do find it annoying when people that they fund provide ammunition for their political enemies, and doubly so when those people are of the opposite political persuasion. ;-)
Scientists need to report their findings in scientific, not alarmist, terms. In science, as in many other areas, there are often "beliefs" that are reported as "facts", especially when the scientist is using layperson's language.
Well, Britain for instance is behind on it's Kyoto goals, which has or will hurt its economy. On the other hand, check this page on Germany. Interesting, no?
Kyoto is unecessary, ineffective, and little more than a thinly veiled wealth redistribution scheme.
Reading what I wrote, I realized there was an ambiguity. I meant I supported not joining the Kyoto Protocol, not that I supported the protocol itself.
First, read this.
I don't think you have before. It was written in 2001, hardly "recently". Bush had just gotten into office.
What do you think of the point regarding China and the Kyoto Protocol?
Other than avoiding the Kyoto Protocol (which I support) Bush is advocating most of the things that will help in the long-term effort to reduce pollution. Actually, Bush has behaved entirely responsibly with regard to global warming. His administration is also correct in pointing out that the first thing that's needed is definitely a LOT more research!
It's beyond hypocritical. It's evil.
You're misinformed. Or could it be that your distaste for Bush has muddied your thinking?
I completely disagree. What percentage of Mac buyers do you think will acquire a copy of WinXP and use Boot Camp? I'd guess less than 20%, and probably less than 10%.
I submit that the millions of machines running only MacOS represent quite a lucrative target market. Further, I expect MacOS marketshare to grow pretty rapidly, not shrink.
The winners? Cross-platform game engine developers. Oh, and the Mac users. :-)
All that said, the biggest problem is the developing third world which wants planes, trains and automobiles. Already just the cooking fires from SE Asia are a major source of pollution.
America may be ready to fight global warming, but America doesn't have control over the major upcoming sources of greenhouse gasses.
None, unless it's linked to a fundamentally flawed scheme like Kyoto. In case you haven't noticed, market forces are already pushing the development of alternative fuels, hybrid cars, solar etc. We ARE moving to lower emissions. We need to build more nuclear plants, so support that at your local level.
There is no need to "trash" anything as we improve our emissions picture. What will be tough is to get the developing countries like China to develop in a clean way. Kyoto doesn't address that at all.
Nope, GP is correct. The 1/r^2 value for the Moon is different (and has different signs) for the two cases. It's a simple sum.
This is for the same reason that high tides occur at both new and full moons.
"Tides" are caused by "tidal forces". Tidal forces have nothing to do with dropping objects.
Not sure what you mean here. Apple's Intel offerings' energy consumption are similar (MacBook, Mini) or quite a bit smaller (iMac) than the PowerPC versions. The MacMacs (nextgen "PowerMacs") will also be environmentally better than the current G5 towers.
No halon required, regardless.
Not even close.
Right, you're saying that Rwanda was a way worse situation...thus supporting my point regarding why the US would be reluctant to get involved after Somalia.
Thanks.
I think the main problem with what happened, is that your char was playing "unattended", even though no bot was involved. I'm 99% sure that's a TOS violation. If you're playing WoW, you're supposed to be paying attention to the game. ;-)
I actually think Blizzard had a point, but I agree with you that a permanent ban is too harsh, especially for a first offence. Good luck getting reinstated!
First of all, the US did get involved in a similar situation - in Somalia. Remember that?
After "Blackhawk Down" I think there was considerable reluctance in Washington to send troops to die in African hellholes. Just a guess... ;-)
It's just a total fucking coincidence that Iraq has oil fields right?
Yes.
What Iraq has that we will actually profit from (the US already makes a ton of money from oil) is a strategic location right in the center of the Middle East, and next door to Iran. Good stuff.
As to the rest of your tired, lame rant - in fact Iraq will be much better off in the future due to this war. It is already better off, as even with the current violence FEWER people are dying than did under Hussein. Iraqis have access to many things that were banned under the old government - and they like it. The Iraqi economy is taking off. American casualties are dropping rapidly, the recent terrorist efforts to start a civil war have failed, and solidified public sentiment against the terrorists.
I know you don't want to believe this, but the US is winning in Iraq. Sorry to rain on your parade.
And, having watched "Dukes of Hazzard" (along with many other Hollywood gems), I can assure you that cars DO fly through the air*.
.
.
.
.
.
.
*The glide ratio is pretty bad though.
Games read data WAAAAY more than they write data.
and games manufacturer's are still going to want everything loaded off CD to attempt to prevent copying.
Darned near every game I have loads all the big data onto the hard drive for speed. A few games require the original CD be in the CD drive during gameplay. That type of scheme is generally unecessary for online games, where you're authenticated by other means, so the situation is generally improving.
The idea of caching frequently used stuff to a flash drive is good - I hope Apple and other OS vendors pick it up.
Yeah, why worry about a few million potential customers, at $100 or so a pop. I mean, it's only a (say) $500 million a year potential revenue stream...
The DOJ ought to be on this like a starving pit bull on a bacon-wrapped bunny rabbit...I won't hold my breath though.
I hope one of the projects to boot XP works out, that's really a better idea anyhow. Then folks can use their existing XP licenses rather than giving Microsoft more money for their not-so-fine products. Software will be coming out for XP for at least five more years. If things work out right for Apple, Windows compatibility may not matter too much by then.
I guess we'd have to ask the OP, but I don't think it was a joke. The idea of completely portable apps is a very appealing one.
Whether Java is a reasonable means to that end is an entirely different discussion. ;-)