When you buy the OB, you get gift certificates for HL2 and HL2:Ep1 if you already own those games. I would probably have bought it even if it meant paying for those games twice; the $45 it cost are easily worth it for HL2:Ep2, Portal and TF2 alone.
Very true. Just like "wait for the first service pack" has become something of a thumb rule for new Windows releases, "wait until someone cracks the DRM" may have become the rule for Apple.:)
I consider carrier lock-in a form of DRM, since it digitally restricts what a person may do with his phone, including things which are perfectly legal and constitute common use of the product.
the only people that complain about java are ones who have never bothered to learn it past the simple hello world application.
I've been a programming teacher, forced to teach Java because that's what the university had decided on (ugh). I daresay I know it a good bit beyond "hello world". I still think it's an awful programming language. In my view, the only reason it's popular is because despite all its faults, it's better than C++, and it now has a significant footprint because it was created long before C#.
The reason people are upset is probably that they are coming to realize they paid $600 for a shitty designer phone with an expensive lock-in contract, and by waiting two months, could have paid $200 less for the exact same deal. Still a rip-off, but maybe it'll be another couple hundred less in a year...
That's with today's drives. Keep in mind that this version of USB is not due to arrive on the market for another 1-2 years, and is expected to stay in use for many years after that. Furthermore, RAID enclosures aren't actually that uncommon.
I chose Windows. Despite all the talk about "the world of hurt that is Vista", the supposedly poor security of Windows in general, etc, I've had no problems with either of my boxes, which run Vista Biz and XP Pro, respectively. I try to give Linux a chance every time I have a PC to spare, but always end up switching back after a week or so of getting annoyed at how poorly everything works. Despite being a software developer, I don't want to tinker; I want everything working out of the box. I've tried Mac as well, but everything about that platform seems to be designed by a marketing department with retards as the target audience. I don't want a computer that thinks I'm an idiot, even if the UI is very nice and shiny and polite about it.
So yes, I chose Windows. It does what I want my computer to do, better than any other OS I've tried. All the apps and games I like run on Windows. My systems are fast, stable and I have lots of experience keeping them that way, to the point where doing so takes no effort. So why would I choose something else? Come on, one reason?
Googling some of those names brings up homepages, photos and profiles of the scumbag programmers who work for MediaDefender. Someone with a score to settle could do some real damage, I reckon. Good thing I'm such a nice guy.
Where I currently work, pay is good, employment is secure, the hours are bearable and the work is fun. Not quite up to six figures (in USD that is) yet, but getting there.
I figure most people commenting this article are just whiners.
Each one of the issues you list are with drivers. In contrast, every piece of hardware in my system was supported out of the box. Was I just lucky? Maybe. But blaming Microsoft for poor third-party drivers is like blaming Linus Torvalds for security holes in Firefox on Linux.
Why didn't you just assign her a different position? She may have been better suited to tasks other than development, such as testing (as in manual testing if need be - not writing unit tests). If she was willing to take a salary cut, that would have made changing her job even easier. Even if she had spent her days bringing the other developers coffee, she would not have cost the company multiples of her salary to keep employed.
I somewhat agree with what you wrote. However, Microsoft did not set the rules of the game, the governments of the respective countries in which Microsoft operates did. Microsoft are merely playing by those rules (except in some cases, and the courts have had their say about that, as you well know) and doing very well at it. A single company can't choose to "play nice" and continue making business as usual because they would be clobbered by the competition (except in a few very extreme cases - but even Google aren't very good at sticking to the "do no evil" mantra, re China for example) and they would make their shareholders very very angry indeed.
I will be the first one to agree with you if you say the current rules are bad. But clobbering a company for being greedy is missing the big picture. Fix your politicians, you guys are the ones who elect them (I live in Sweden).
BTW, comparing murder to bad business practices is comparing apples to oranges. Bad business practices cost money - not lives, except possibly by extreme extension and guilt by association, neither of which I'm inclined to except as rational argument.
If you still think I'm a troll, I invite you to examine my posting history.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
This is called "pointless forking" and "not invented here syndrome" in the open source world. Feh, big deal.
The whole world is our beta tester
Google does this. Apple does this. Every open source project ever released does this.
We can release sloppy, sloppy code because we have a virtual monopoly
The open source version of this is "you have no right to complain because you got it for free" and "you got the source code so fix it yourself". Also, Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on anything at this point in time. Also, there are plenty of other non-monopolists who release poorly-made products.
Security vulnerabilities make us money...
This is just FUD. Show me any proof that this is how Microsoft reasons. Furthermore, it's pathetic to blame Microsoft because people are stupid. Oblig. car analogy: For years, Mercedes cars have had problems with premature body rust. Would you consider this a scheme to get people to buy new cars more often?
When you partner with Microsoft, you are partnering with someone who will be partly an enemy if that makes more money.
This is mostly true for all companies. It's about making money, not being cozy friends with everybody.
Take a look at PDADB - most PDAs have in the region of 128 MB internal flash and SD card slots for expansion. The X7500/X7501 is a notable exception. The Nokia phones you mention are not PDAs. Still, it's certainly no great challenge to buy a 4 GB micro-SD card if you need the space. I got just such a card for my PDA, and it's very nice being able to move it between PDA and laptop for refilling.
The only reason you need lots of memory in a PDA is if you want to store music or movies, or other bulky data files. Most Windows Mobile-based PDAs are not built for this purpose; they're for business professionals. It takes a whole bunch of Excel or Word documents to fill up even 32 MB:)
How does the $900 mark "fill the void" between PDAs and UMPC? and it's just a (very) expensive PDA with a bigger screen. I don't see what features it has that set it apart from other high-end PDAs except for that screen. It has a 4 GB microdrive, external VGA out and a 600+ MHz CPU. These are not common features for PDAs, most of which have around 128 MB of flash memory split between OS, applications and user data, and 200-400 MHz CPUs. The X7500 is designed to be a laptop replacement, though I don't think it's a very good one. I much prefer my TyTn to the X7500 we have at work.
The big 5" screen and GPS means that the X7501 is probably quite nice when semi-permanently mounted into a vehicle. You'd have your office in your car, synchronized over 3G/HSDPA or EDGE, and it doubles as a navigator. Most PDA's have tiny 2.8" screens that make them unsuitable for use in a car, IMHO; you lose focus on the road when trying to read details off a small screen.
We have an HTC X7500 Advantage at work for testing purposes. The X7500 is identical to the X7501 save for the OS. X7501 ships with Windows Mobile 6. However, both of them are far too large and bulky to compete directly with the iPhone. For that, you want the HTC Touch P3450. We have several of these at work, and at half the cost of an iPhone and no operator lock-in, I much prefer it to the iPhone. The HTC Touch has.NET CF 2.0 SP2 in ROM, so it's a great development platform for homebrew apps.
The victim is sat down at the computer watching a flash video that runs for 20 seconds and then has a scary face pop up with a jarring scream. I've seen some of these where they direct the prank at a young child. Well gee, isn't that funny, the kid probably craps himself he's so scared and all the adults are laughing at him. Sounds hilarious! May I have the URL, please?
Not wanting to waste five minutes responding in detail to yet another anti-MS troll, I suggest genuinely interested parties either look at those links (ignoring the false claims being spewed by the poster) or google for "microsoft stock performance".
I'll note that Microsoft appear to be getting by just fine (swimming in a sea of cash, actually) without being what the above poster perceives as "innovative".
Microsoft's total revenue for 2006 exceeds $44 billion. A $5B loss on the Xbox division may seem like a lot, until you realize that it's part of a greater strategy. In the end, $5B means nothing to Microsoft, as long as they feel they've gotten somewhere in the console market. And that they have.
So does any PDA with a media player. My ancient Windows Mobile 5 device does this remarkably well, using an SD card for storage (my music collection isn't that big).
Google Maps with traffic and directions,
Also available on any PDA which runs Java. Or any device with a semi-competent web browser. I usually use Opera Mini to surf for directions on my WM device. Which is fast because while old, my device supports 3G, which the iPhone lacks.
syncs with iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Office/Outlook,
Again, old hat. Just replace the first three with the Windows equivalents and this applies to almost all WM devices in existence. The PDA I had a decade ago could also sync my calendar, contacts and e-mail, by the way.
supports third-party development,
That's a joke, right? It's common knowledge by now that the iPhone locks out third-party developers.
on a huge 3.7" screen.
Now I know you're joking. 3.7" isn't huge.
How is that failing on features?
It's failing because despite all the hype, the iPhone offers practically nothing that competing devices hasn't had for years, except the "Apple feel" which frankly will only win over people who don't need anything but a shiny toy anyway. It lacks important features like actual support for third-party developers, 3G and GPS. I for one won't buy a PDA without a fold-out QWERTY keyboard, since I use my handheld a lot for blogging and e-mailing on the go.
This is 2007, if there is a Windows victim left who hasn't been wiping and reinstalling (or using Ghost) end user machines at least annually I haven't met em.
You had me until this part. This is complete fscking hogwash. Since Windows 2000 (that's what, 7 years back now), regular reinstalls are a thing of the past. I maintain a good number of Windows end-user desktops apart from my own, including some used by complete newbies. I've told them how to avoid spyware and they run a decent anti-virus that is lightweight, includes protection from rootkits and spyware, and costs EUR20/year to keep updated. And the only time they need reinstalling is when some piece of hardware fails. Some have been running off the same XP install for 4+ years and they are rock solid.
Much of what you've written in this thread I agree with, but please don't resort to outright lies in your efforts to push OSS. It can stand on its own.
Now I remember! Thanks to you (and the other helpful people who replied) for clearing this up. The reason they use only two keys in "triple" DES is the EDE (Encrypt/Decrypt/Encrypt) mode which is there to ensure backwards compatibility. TDES-EDE is compatible with DES when using the 56-bit DES key concatenated with itself as the 112-bit TDES key, meaning the first two stages of DES will simply cancel each other out (since encryption and decryption uses the same key).
The thing that confused me was that I remembered the effective strength of TDES being "equivalent to 112 bits", yet three times 56 make 168. So I thought it had to do with some weakness caused by using the same ciphering algorithm twice. The way I understand it, by using three separate keys rather than two as in EDE mode, you lose backwards compatibility with DES (oh dear) but you get the full "168 bits" strong TDES. Of course TDES is horribly broken nowadays, anyway.
Summarizing the replies to my original post, it seems the Rijndael algorithm was designed to be easy to extend to support bigger keys. This would certainly be a more elegant solution than simply running the algorithm n times for an effective key length of n*256 bits. However, someone who does not want to implement Rijndael by himself but has access to someone else's implementation of it could achive "1024 bit security" by simply running it four times on the same block of data. Performance would suck, ofc.
I'm hoping there are some crypto geeks in the audience who can answer this. I know that back in the days when DES (with 56-bit keys) was the best there was, some genius invented TDES, which was simply three passes of DES, for a total key length of 168 bits. However, running DES thrice does not triple the "security" (resistance to brute-force cracking) of the cipher, rather the 168 bit key provides security equal to that of a 112 bit key due to some mathematical technicality that I've forgotten.
Now for my actual question. There isn't a symmetric crypto algorithm that I know of that can use 1024 bit keys (except for stream ciphers, maybe RC4?); the best block cipher is AES (Rijndael) which supports 256 bit keys. If one would "invent" QAES, i e quadruple QAES, for a total key length of 1024 bits, what would the "effective" key length be?
Slashdot Mirror
When you buy the OB, you get gift certificates for HL2 and HL2:Ep1 if you already own those games. I would probably have bought it even if it meant paying for those games twice; the $45 it cost are easily worth it for HL2:Ep2, Portal and TF2 alone.
Very true. Just like "wait for the first service pack" has become something of a thumb rule for new Windows releases, "wait until someone cracks the DRM" may have become the rule for Apple. :)
I consider carrier lock-in a form of DRM, since it digitally restricts what a person may do with his phone, including things which are perfectly legal and constitute common use of the product.
the only people that complain about java are ones who have never bothered to learn it past the simple hello world application.
I've been a programming teacher, forced to teach Java because that's what the university had decided on (ugh). I daresay I know it a good bit beyond "hello world". I still think it's an awful programming language. In my view, the only reason it's popular is because despite all its faults, it's better than C++, and it now has a significant footprint because it was created long before C#.
The reason people are upset is probably that they are coming to realize they paid $600 for a shitty designer phone with an expensive lock-in contract, and by waiting two months, could have paid $200 less for the exact same deal. Still a rip-off, but maybe it'll be another couple hundred less in a year...
That's with today's drives. Keep in mind that this version of USB is not due to arrive on the market for another 1-2 years, and is expected to stay in use for many years after that. Furthermore, RAID enclosures aren't actually that uncommon.
I chose Windows. Despite all the talk about "the world of hurt that is Vista", the supposedly poor security of Windows in general, etc, I've had no problems with either of my boxes, which run Vista Biz and XP Pro, respectively. I try to give Linux a chance every time I have a PC to spare, but always end up switching back after a week or so of getting annoyed at how poorly everything works. Despite being a software developer, I don't want to tinker; I want everything working out of the box. I've tried Mac as well, but everything about that platform seems to be designed by a marketing department with retards as the target audience. I don't want a computer that thinks I'm an idiot, even if the UI is very nice and shiny and polite about it.
So yes, I chose Windows. It does what I want my computer to do, better than any other OS I've tried. All the apps and games I like run on Windows. My systems are fast, stable and I have lots of experience keeping them that way, to the point where doing so takes no effort. So why would I choose something else? Come on, one reason?
Googling some of those names brings up homepages, photos and profiles of the scumbag programmers who work for MediaDefender. Someone with a score to settle could do some real damage, I reckon. Good thing I'm such a nice guy.
*Raises hand*
Where I currently work, pay is good, employment is secure, the hours are bearable and the work is fun. Not quite up to six figures (in USD that is) yet, but getting there.
I figure most people commenting this article are just whiners.
False statement. BitLocker does not require a TPM chip, a simple USB flash drive can be used in its stead to store the encryption keys.
Each one of the issues you list are with drivers. In contrast, every piece of hardware in my system was supported out of the box. Was I just lucky? Maybe. But blaming Microsoft for poor third-party drivers is like blaming Linus Torvalds for security holes in Firefox on Linux.
Why didn't you just assign her a different position? She may have been better suited to tasks other than development, such as testing (as in manual testing if need be - not writing unit tests). If she was willing to take a salary cut, that would have made changing her job even easier. Even if she had spent her days bringing the other developers coffee, she would not have cost the company multiples of her salary to keep employed.
The server seems to be having ... problems with the load (maybe it got cracked again?), here's Google's cache:
: blog.gnist.org/article.php%3Fstory%3DHollidayCrack ing+http://blog.gnist.org/article.php%3Fstory%3DHo llidayCracking&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=fir efox-a
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:TyrHbOqUhLgJ
I somewhat agree with what you wrote. However, Microsoft did not set the rules of the game, the governments of the respective countries in which Microsoft operates did. Microsoft are merely playing by those rules (except in some cases, and the courts have had their say about that, as you well know) and doing very well at it. A single company can't choose to "play nice" and continue making business as usual because they would be clobbered by the competition (except in a few very extreme cases - but even Google aren't very good at sticking to the "do no evil" mantra, re China for example) and they would make their shareholders very very angry indeed.
I will be the first one to agree with you if you say the current rules are bad. But clobbering a company for being greedy is missing the big picture. Fix your politicians, you guys are the ones who elect them (I live in Sweden).
BTW, comparing murder to bad business practices is comparing apples to oranges. Bad business practices cost money - not lives, except possibly by extreme extension and guilt by association, neither of which I'm inclined to except as rational argument.
If you still think I'm a troll, I invite you to examine my posting history.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
This is called "pointless forking" and "not invented here syndrome" in the open source world. Feh, big deal.
The whole world is our beta tester
Google does this. Apple does this. Every open source project ever released does this.
We can release sloppy, sloppy code because we have a virtual monopoly
The open source version of this is "you have no right to complain because you got it for free" and "you got the source code so fix it yourself". Also, Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on anything at this point in time. Also, there are plenty of other non-monopolists who release poorly-made products.
Security vulnerabilities make us money...
This is just FUD. Show me any proof that this is how Microsoft reasons. Furthermore, it's pathetic to blame Microsoft because people are stupid. Oblig. car analogy: For years, Mercedes cars have had problems with premature body rust. Would you consider this a scheme to get people to buy new cars more often?
When you partner with Microsoft, you are partnering with someone who will be partly an enemy if that makes more money.
This is mostly true for all companies. It's about making money, not being cozy friends with everybody.
Take a look at PDADB - most PDAs have in the region of 128 MB internal flash and SD card slots for expansion. The X7500/X7501 is a notable exception. The Nokia phones you mention are not PDAs. Still, it's certainly no great challenge to buy a 4 GB micro-SD card if you need the space. I got just such a card for my PDA, and it's very nice being able to move it between PDA and laptop for refilling.
:)
The only reason you need lots of memory in a PDA is if you want to store music or movies, or other bulky data files. Most Windows Mobile-based PDAs are not built for this purpose; they're for business professionals. It takes a whole bunch of Excel or Word documents to fill up even 32 MB
The big 5" screen and GPS means that the X7501 is probably quite nice when semi-permanently mounted into a vehicle. You'd have your office in your car, synchronized over 3G/HSDPA or EDGE, and it doubles as a navigator. Most PDA's have tiny 2.8" screens that make them unsuitable for use in a car, IMHO; you lose focus on the road when trying to read details off a small screen.
We have an HTC X7500 Advantage at work for testing purposes. The X7500 is identical to the X7501 save for the OS. X7501 ships with Windows Mobile 6. However, both of them are far too large and bulky to compete directly with the iPhone. For that, you want the HTC Touch P3450. We have several of these at work, and at half the cost of an iPhone and no operator lock-in, I much prefer it to the iPhone. The HTC Touch has .NET CF 2.0 SP2 in ROM, so it's a great development platform for homebrew apps.
Not wanting to waste five minutes responding in detail to yet another anti-MS troll, I suggest genuinely interested parties either look at those links (ignoring the false claims being spewed by the poster) or google for "microsoft stock performance".
I'll note that Microsoft appear to be getting by just fine (swimming in a sea of cash, actually) without being what the above poster perceives as "innovative".
Microsoft's total revenue for 2006 exceeds $44 billion. A $5B loss on the Xbox division may seem like a lot, until you realize that it's part of a greater strategy. In the end, $5B means nothing to Microsoft, as long as they feel they've gotten somewhere in the console market. And that they have.
I assume they meant yearly revenue. Previous losses come out of MS's coffers. And those are quite deep.
Plays TV shows, movies, music,
So does any PDA with a media player. My ancient Windows Mobile 5 device does this remarkably well, using an SD card for storage (my music collection isn't that big).
Google Maps with traffic and directions,
Also available on any PDA which runs Java. Or any device with a semi-competent web browser. I usually use Opera Mini to surf for directions on my WM device. Which is fast because while old, my device supports 3G, which the iPhone lacks.
syncs with iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Office/Outlook,
Again, old hat. Just replace the first three with the Windows equivalents and this applies to almost all WM devices in existence. The PDA I had a decade ago could also sync my calendar, contacts and e-mail, by the way.
supports third-party development,
That's a joke, right? It's common knowledge by now that the iPhone locks out third-party developers.
on a huge 3.7" screen.
Now I know you're joking. 3.7" isn't huge.
How is that failing on features?
It's failing because despite all the hype, the iPhone offers practically nothing that competing devices hasn't had for years, except the "Apple feel" which frankly will only win over people who don't need anything but a shiny toy anyway. It lacks important features like actual support for third-party developers, 3G and GPS. I for one won't buy a PDA without a fold-out QWERTY keyboard, since I use my handheld a lot for blogging and e-mailing on the go.
This is 2007, if there is a Windows victim left who hasn't been wiping and reinstalling (or using Ghost) end user machines at least annually I haven't met em.
You had me until this part. This is complete fscking hogwash. Since Windows 2000 (that's what, 7 years back now), regular reinstalls are a thing of the past. I maintain a good number of Windows end-user desktops apart from my own, including some used by complete newbies. I've told them how to avoid spyware and they run a decent anti-virus that is lightweight, includes protection from rootkits and spyware, and costs EUR20/year to keep updated. And the only time they need reinstalling is when some piece of hardware fails. Some have been running off the same XP install for 4+ years and they are rock solid.
Much of what you've written in this thread I agree with, but please don't resort to outright lies in your efforts to push OSS. It can stand on its own.
Now I remember! Thanks to you (and the other helpful people who replied) for clearing this up. The reason they use only two keys in "triple" DES is the EDE (Encrypt/Decrypt/Encrypt) mode which is there to ensure backwards compatibility. TDES-EDE is compatible with DES when using the 56-bit DES key concatenated with itself as the 112-bit TDES key, meaning the first two stages of DES will simply cancel each other out (since encryption and decryption uses the same key).
The thing that confused me was that I remembered the effective strength of TDES being "equivalent to 112 bits", yet three times 56 make 168. So I thought it had to do with some weakness caused by using the same ciphering algorithm twice. The way I understand it, by using three separate keys rather than two as in EDE mode, you lose backwards compatibility with DES (oh dear) but you get the full "168 bits" strong TDES. Of course TDES is horribly broken nowadays, anyway.
Summarizing the replies to my original post, it seems the Rijndael algorithm was designed to be easy to extend to support bigger keys. This would certainly be a more elegant solution than simply running the algorithm n times for an effective key length of n*256 bits. However, someone who does not want to implement Rijndael by himself but has access to someone else's implementation of it could achive "1024 bit security" by simply running it four times on the same block of data. Performance would suck, ofc.
I'm hoping there are some crypto geeks in the audience who can answer this. I know that back in the days when DES (with 56-bit keys) was the best there was, some genius invented TDES, which was simply three passes of DES, for a total key length of 168 bits. However, running DES thrice does not triple the "security" (resistance to brute-force cracking) of the cipher, rather the 168 bit key provides security equal to that of a 112 bit key due to some mathematical technicality that I've forgotten.
Now for my actual question. There isn't a symmetric crypto algorithm that I know of that can use 1024 bit keys (except for stream ciphers, maybe RC4?); the best block cipher is AES (Rijndael) which supports 256 bit keys. If one would "invent" QAES, i e quadruple QAES, for a total key length of 1024 bits, what would the "effective" key length be?