Yep, I suppose that's true. There currently isn't any private companies with the balls to launch an actual human into orbit. Elon Musk has mentioned that he is willing to do it once a few Falcon V's have gone up. But as no-one has a reusable space vehicle capable of docking with the ISS (except NASA) I think more money will be spent on making one than on launch costs.
that China is only interested in Space as a prestige project. Didn't they get the memo? Private citizens are launching themselves into space. Anyone with 20 million to spare can go hang out on the space station. It's hardly prestigous for a country that contains the majority of the world's population to acheive something that private citizens of other countries can beat. Of course, if China was to send a manned mission to the Moon that actually acheived something (like returning a sample of the polar ice or mining a few kilograms of precious metals) that would be prestigous!
Have you ever considered the possibility that Mitnick attacked people who were evil/unethical themselves? For example, if the world had not been informed how trivial it was to clone analog cell phones the technology may never have advanced. The corporations didn't give a shit about how primitive the cell network was and how trivial it was to attack. They were only interested in hunting Mitnick down and getting him arrested for fraud. Call me crazy but I would have prefered it if the police had arrested the cell network engineers for hiding information about how insecure their network is from the public. The GSM networks of today are slightly more secure, but they're still hackable. Why? It's not like putting a crypto chip into every phone to do a proper Diffie-Hellman key exchange would be prohibitively expensive anymore. The reason is that upgrading the network to support cryptographically secure key exchange would cost more than it costs to hunt down the few people who still clone sims. So us, the consumers, get substandard security because it doesn't improve the bottom line for the service providers. And it's not like we can just set up our own cell phone network and provide proper security.. you have to be a megacorp that is in bed with all the other megacorps to compete.
Yeah, I was refering to average workers. Obviously geeks can afford to waste their disposable income on stupid gagets but the average person with a morgage and kids to feed can't afford them.
Yep, lots of luck finding a single one of these tools that works on C code. Although making pretty pictures can certainly be a good way to get an overview of the software, and maybe students need that kind of assistance. Personally I think something like C-Scope is more than enough.
Yeah, the "most of the source code" part is a bit scary. If they really are talking about reverse engineering from executables they are in for a hell of a time. The state of the art is a project I work on now and then, Boomerang, and it isn't for the faint of heart. I've been hearing for years about people who are working on decompilation tools that are integrated into IDA Pro but I've yet to see it. The time where you can enter a binary, press a button and get back compilable, maintainable source code is still a long long way off. But that's good, friends of mine do commercial decompilation work.
I presume you mean reverse engineering in the program understanding sense. In which case the way to go about it is to sit down and read the source code, taking notes as you go. You should then set yourself some maintenance tasks - modifying the source code is the best way to find out if you understand it or not.
you can drop a week's paycheck on a PSP. What scares me is the kids I see playing these things. But then I just look at their designer clothes and shoes and it all makes sense.
No, the book was about orbital spaceplanes. i.e., they actually fly into orbit, turn off the engine until they get to the other side of the planet and then re-enter the atmosphere. Not what the original poster was talking about, but personally I don't think he knows how infeasible it is to fly from one side of the planet to another in a sub-orbital plane.
The movie is loosely based on the novel "Orbit" by Thomas H. Block, from 1982. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.. sounds rediculously similar. Wonder if we're talking out and out plagarism here. James Follett also wrote Mirage, the story of how Israeli nationals stole the designs for the Mirage fighter plane when the french refused to aid the occupation of Palistine.
There's a great book called Sabre where the flying theatres of AirBus and Boeing are pitted against the new orbital space planes. More seats vs shorter flight times. The maiden flight of the orbital space plane is sabotaged resulting in an explosion. Unlike every explosion to ever go off on a plane in flight the space plane does not fall out of the sky. The passengers are rescued in orbit using a backup plane.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were replying to another post. Yes, ok, I retract that statement. Worms exist for Microsoft products because they're crap riddled messes of hammered shit. BTW, I aint claiming to be a credible professional, although I am. My comments on Slashdot are part of my recreation, not my job.
The reason you can't use critical systems development techniques to develop applications software is because the cost/benefit analysis is still unbalanced heavily on the side of cost. If you're a company that does critical systems development you have a greater chance of success if you find a client that requires critical systems as the benefit (often, "people don't die") far outweighs the costs. But Open Source turns cost/benefit analysis on its head. When developers volunteer their time the costs can't help but remain low. When the benefits are spread around to everyone, instead of just a select few, large costs can be justified. Sure, we'll need an order of magnitude more developers, and they'll have to learn new techniques, like formal specification and software verfication, but we're geeks, we like to learn new things and we like to have real projects to practice our craft on. How many of us are going to get the chance to develop using critical systems techniques? It'd be fun, and imagine the bragging rights: Four years and counting and not a single bug found. Unprecidented.
"own a copy".. ok. Why don't you talk about the real issue. I should be free to do anything I want, including recording things that my ears are hearing so that I can hear them again when I please. Imagine a future where you have record and playback equipment embedded into your head.. and now imagine that world hindered by DRM.
We used to have a mailing list for unix virus experimentation. The order of the day was to "follow the user to root". If a user runs an application they don't trust with their user account and later does an su (or sudo) to root you should be able to aquire root privileges. Many techniques were developed to achieve this. Which brings up the biggest problem with the unix security model: the operating system enforces permissions for users, but not for programs. There have been attempts to address this in the security community. Capabilities is the biggest effort. On a desktop operating system, a security model that focuses on assigning permissions to users is absurd - there's often only one user on the system.
But that has nothing to do with the operating system and everything to do with the behaviour of the people who use those systems. Mac users don't run every stupid little executable attachment they get sent. They don't download random programs off the internet and run them. They don't warez stuff, or put up with software that is DRM infested by running cracks. Linux users don't either. Hell, Amiga users don't either. It doesn't indicate anything about the security or non-security of the operating system.
See the other thread where I ask the all wise Slashdot crowd how Windows is not designed correctly and no-one can give me a straight answer. Windows has better security than Linux. For fuck sake, it has ACLs whereas Linux does not. The fact that the vast majority of people who use Windows run everything as Administrator does not make Windows insecure. Just as everyone running programs as root on a Linux box would not make Linux insecure.
Oh yes, I forgot the whole magic sandbox idea. ActiveX is a great example of how IE is insecure. It's a great reason to disable ActiveX for untrusted domains. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the security of Windows.
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Yep, I suppose that's true. There currently isn't any private companies with the balls to launch an actual human into orbit. Elon Musk has mentioned that he is willing to do it once a few Falcon V's have gone up. But as no-one has a reusable space vehicle capable of docking with the ISS (except NASA) I think more money will be spent on making one than on launch costs.
that China is only interested in Space as a prestige project. Didn't they get the memo? Private citizens are launching themselves into space. Anyone with 20 million to spare can go hang out on the space station. It's hardly prestigous for a country that contains the majority of the world's population to acheive something that private citizens of other countries can beat. Of course, if China was to send a manned mission to the Moon that actually acheived something (like returning a sample of the polar ice or mining a few kilograms of precious metals) that would be prestigous!
Have you ever considered the possibility that Mitnick attacked people who were evil/unethical themselves? For example, if the world had not been informed how trivial it was to clone analog cell phones the technology may never have advanced. The corporations didn't give a shit about how primitive the cell network was and how trivial it was to attack. They were only interested in hunting Mitnick down and getting him arrested for fraud. Call me crazy but I would have prefered it if the police had arrested the cell network engineers for hiding information about how insecure their network is from the public. The GSM networks of today are slightly more secure, but they're still hackable. Why? It's not like putting a crypto chip into every phone to do a proper Diffie-Hellman key exchange would be prohibitively expensive anymore. The reason is that upgrading the network to support cryptographically secure key exchange would cost more than it costs to hunt down the few people who still clone sims. So us, the consumers, get substandard security because it doesn't improve the bottom line for the service providers. And it's not like we can just set up our own cell phone network and provide proper security.. you have to be a megacorp that is in bed with all the other megacorps to compete.
There's lots of IDA Pro plugins.. there just aint any that do decompilation. Which is what I said.
Yeah, I was refering to average workers. Obviously geeks can afford to waste their disposable income on stupid gagets but the average person with a morgage and kids to feed can't afford them.
Yep, lots of luck finding a single one of these tools that works on C code. Although making pretty pictures can certainly be a good way to get an overview of the software, and maybe students need that kind of assistance. Personally I think something like C-Scope is more than enough.
Yeah, the "most of the source code" part is a bit scary. If they really are talking about reverse engineering from executables they are in for a hell of a time. The state of the art is a project I work on now and then, Boomerang, and it isn't for the faint of heart. I've been hearing for years about people who are working on decompilation tools that are integrated into IDA Pro but I've yet to see it. The time where you can enter a binary, press a button and get back compilable, maintainable source code is still a long long way off. But that's good, friends of mine do commercial decompilation work.
I presume you mean reverse engineering in the program understanding sense. In which case the way to go about it is to sit down and read the source code, taking notes as you go. You should then set yourself some maintenance tasks - modifying the source code is the best way to find out if you understand it or not.
If you don't want people to take you seriously that's your prerogative. I was just letting you know.
you can drop a week's paycheck on a PSP. What scares me is the kids I see playing these things. But then I just look at their designer clothes and shoes and it all makes sense.
It's a bit hard to take you seriously when you call people names. Just state your opinion and shut up.
No, the book was about orbital spaceplanes. i.e., they actually fly into orbit, turn off the engine until they get to the other side of the planet and then re-enter the atmosphere. Not what the original poster was talking about, but personally I don't think he knows how infeasible it is to fly from one side of the planet to another in a sub-orbital plane.
The movie is loosely based on the novel "Orbit" by Thomas H. Block, from 1982. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.. sounds rediculously similar. Wonder if we're talking out and out plagarism here. James Follett also wrote Mirage, the story of how Israeli nationals stole the designs for the Mirage fighter plane when the french refused to aid the occupation of Palistine.
You're a braver man than me, I'd never let my girlfriend put pictures of herself on the internet :)
There's a great book called Sabre where the flying theatres of AirBus and Boeing are pitted against the new orbital space planes. More seats vs shorter flight times. The maiden flight of the orbital space plane is sabotaged resulting in an explosion. Unlike every explosion to ever go off on a plane in flight the space plane does not fall out of the sky. The passengers are rescued in orbit using a backup plane.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were replying to another post. Yes, ok, I retract that statement. Worms exist for Microsoft products because they're crap riddled messes of hammered shit. BTW, I aint claiming to be a credible professional, although I am. My comments on Slashdot are part of my recreation, not my job.
The reason you can't use critical systems development techniques to develop applications software is because the cost/benefit analysis is still unbalanced heavily on the side of cost. If you're a company that does critical systems development you have a greater chance of success if you find a client that requires critical systems as the benefit (often, "people don't die") far outweighs the costs. But Open Source turns cost/benefit analysis on its head. When developers volunteer their time the costs can't help but remain low. When the benefits are spread around to everyone, instead of just a select few, large costs can be justified. Sure, we'll need an order of magnitude more developers, and they'll have to learn new techniques, like formal specification and software verfication, but we're geeks, we like to learn new things and we like to have real projects to practice our craft on. How many of us are going to get the chance to develop using critical systems techniques? It'd be fun, and imagine the bragging rights: Four years and counting and not a single bug found. Unprecidented.
I didn't say anything about worms you cocksmoker. If you don't know the different between a worm and a virus, don't fuckin' talk about them. Jesus.
"own a copy".. ok. Why don't you talk about the real issue. I should be free to do anything I want, including recording things that my ears are hearing so that I can hear them again when I please. Imagine a future where you have record and playback equipment embedded into your head.. and now imagine that world hindered by DRM.
We used to have a mailing list for unix virus experimentation. The order of the day was to "follow the user to root". If a user runs an application they don't trust with their user account and later does an su (or sudo) to root you should be able to aquire root privileges. Many techniques were developed to achieve this. Which brings up the biggest problem with the unix security model: the operating system enforces permissions for users, but not for programs. There have been attempts to address this in the security community. Capabilities is the biggest effort. On a desktop operating system, a security model that focuses on assigning permissions to users is absurd - there's often only one user on the system.
The courts aint going to protect you from getting "wacked" by a crooked public official.
But that has nothing to do with the operating system and everything to do with the behaviour of the people who use those systems. Mac users don't run every stupid little executable attachment they get sent. They don't download random programs off the internet and run them. They don't warez stuff, or put up with software that is DRM infested by running cracks. Linux users don't either. Hell, Amiga users don't either. It doesn't indicate anything about the security or non-security of the operating system.
Uhhh, it's a PC. If the attacker has physical access you have no chance of preventing them from accessing the system.
The point of my "analogy" was to indicate that you can't make broad statements about which is more secure. That's the nature of security.
See the other thread where I ask the all wise Slashdot crowd how Windows is not designed correctly and no-one can give me a straight answer. Windows has better security than Linux. For fuck sake, it has ACLs whereas Linux does not. The fact that the vast majority of people who use Windows run everything as Administrator does not make Windows insecure. Just as everyone running programs as root on a Linux box would not make Linux insecure.
Oh yes, I forgot the whole magic sandbox idea. ActiveX is a great example of how IE is insecure. It's a great reason to disable ActiveX for untrusted domains. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the security of Windows.