we were as well saying that Linux is very secure,
since it is scrutinized by many eyes, etc etc...
and then, two root exploits have appeared in
the kernel in the last 2 months: so I am not so sure
any more, regarding the outcome of this SCO case
I have an old dekstop (K6 II 350, 128MB ram)
and I want to use Gnome and mozilla.
With 2.4.22 it is slow. With 2.6 it is slightly faster.
(just my 2eurocents)
all of the above remarks and comments are very deep and insightful.... if you happen to live in the U.S.A.! Outside the country, Tivo is not an option.
(sometimes there is truth in the jokes)
the distribution contain a Release.gpg
file that is signed: so it is not possible, for example, to compromise a mirror, and it is more difficult for an intruder to compromise a single Debian package in the archive.
There is a script apt-check-sigs
that will check the above signature: this
is explained in the
debian page on releases;
unfortunately the link to download
the script from there is down,
here are two alternatives:
google cache
my site (slow)
There are lots of people that don't want to use a computer. But this product is for people that: (a)don't want to use a computer, and (b)have a network server at home with some giga of video, that is capable of transcoding mpeg4 on the fly.
So, while the product is quite a cool gadget,
its market success is quite arguable:
if person X satisfies (b), then
most probably X likes to use
computers.
Price may seem to be a matter of discussion... unless you consider that
the person X above has already spent so many
$$ for the aforementioned server that
X probably does not see a big difference in
the spending
150$ for an XBox, 160$ for an Oritron,
or 230$ for an old PC (as I did)
for a person X as above, hacking an old PC
(or similar) is much more fun
And spouses can find
Freevo reasonably easy to use.
(BTW: all the above comments come
from personal experience)
It does not say what you want it to say.
It says: "the DCMA specifically allows reverse engineering to produce an interoperable computer program"
Indeed, in the case
Lexmark v. Static Control Components
the ruling was opposite to this one: the court decided against SCC's interoperable devices.(this was discussed in Slashdot a lot).
So I am very very surprised that the court
decided in favour of interoperable devices
this time.
[disclaimer: I know nothing of lab phisics, and it shows]
how do they test these devices? what kind of lab tools do they use? I mean, since this transistor is way much faster than any other,
it seems a chicken and egg problem to me: to build a testing device, you would need some transistors (for amplification of the output of the tested transistor, or whatever) that are as fast as the tested device, possibly faster...
Re:Great. Answer the phone, get an ear infection.
on
Handy Wristwatch Phone
·
· Score: 0
I went in July to a seminar of a group that studies Q.C. (won't say who they are). They repeated (several times) phrases as "q.c. is the future" and "standard crypto will be substituted by q.c.". It was really funny (to say the least) considering that q.c. only enables to: "send a data stream along a single fibre so that receiver can detect tampering".
So I agree that it is perfect for distributing secret keys, and other similar applications.
But I had to force myself to not ask these questions:
What about sending data in the internet as large?
What about data signing?
The 1st question has been asked by other/.ers; the second is worth at least some remarks. Data received thru q.c. is as secure as the server where it is stored; photons cannot be stored. Suppose that Alice wants to send data to Bob so that Bob knows that Alice sent it. Suppose also that Alice host is secure (otherwise,So, while q.c. could substitute conventional data signing for short-time applications, when we want to sign data so that the signature can be verified at a later time, q.c. is not the answer: photon
my PDA is a SHARP ZQ-1250 (34KB RAM, 3 lines of text, QWERTY keyboard); it was a gift for my degree, 1993. It works perfectly. I hate using cell's keyboards, so my PDA has all of my contacts.
I am probably a unlucky computer destructor: I did most of the above mistakes (and invented some new ones) but never managed to destroy anything. Here is a list of my feats
in August I got an old PC, Celeron on a ABIT
M/B;
the Celeron is a PPGA, and is mounted on a ZIF which is itself soldered on a small board, called SlotKET, that is then insterted in the
motherboard's SLOT1; the whole thing is too small for the PentiumIII retention system, and it wobbles under the weight of a massive heatsink.
Since the heatsink was quite dusty, and I did not dare to detach the heatsink, I took off
the whole SlotKET and washed the heatsink under tap water. Then I mounted the whole hw in a self-made case, and did some tests using Knoppix.
When two days later I turned it on again, it did not boot.
It took 3 days, and a borrowed PentiumIII, to understand that the problem was in the CPU; so I decided to brute-force it: I took off the hooks,
only to realize that the heatsink was glued to the CPU (by them *** using some two-face-glue-tape, instead of paste); so I insterted a flat skrewdriver between the heatsink and the CPU, and applied
quite some force: I heard a noise as of velcro, and saw that I had actually managed to pull the CPU from the ZIF (without releasing the lever),
so I had to tore apart the last pins by hand.
Then I really insterted the skrewdriver between the heatsink and the CPU, and managed to detach it. I sprayed abundant contact cleaner everywhere, and mounted it back on. It now works.
Since ATX brought soft-off to the world, I have always prominently forgotten to use the back power switch (thinking "if it is noiseless, it must be off"), and I have plugged/unplugged components, while a green led was brightly and suspiciously looking at me from the M/B
this week I helped my father to install a new 80GB drive; since the BIOS hanged on it, I decided to flash a new one; I downloaded it and put it in the floppy, but the aflash.exe utility reported a wrong checksum: I had forgotten to unzip it, and was trying to flash the bios1003a.zip file (instead
of the bios1003a.awd that is inside it)
static discharge? what is it?
(seems that I was spared because: I live in a very humid place, with no carpets; and I never remember to turn off main power, let alone unplugging the cord; moreover, when I open a PC, I always sweat as a fountain, and, by reading above, you know why)
and, yes, I manage 3 PC at home and 6 at work, and I never got to break anything (that I could not repair by spraying it): probably because I always install
St IGNUcius on any of them.
it happened that I proposed (almost)
the same problem at a seminar in Nov 2002, and
then I solved it.
My program
does not find the shortest string; but it also understands if a code
is 'uniquely infinitely decodable' that is if it can decode strings of
infinite lenght in an unique way.
It is based on a known technique, see [Cover Thomas], with some improvements.
This program also shows that the problem is polynomial complexity in n,k
where n=number of words k=maximum of letters in a word.
Slashdot Mirror
we were as well saying that Linux is very secure, since it is scrutinized by many eyes, etc etc... and then, two root exploits have appeared in the kernel in the last 2 months: so I am not so sure any more, regarding the outcome of this SCO case
I have an old dekstop (K6 II 350, 128MB ram) and I want to use Gnome and mozilla. With 2.4.22 it is slow. With 2.6 it is slightly faster. (just my 2eurocents)
all of the above remarks and comments are very deep and insightful.... if you happen to live in the U.S.A.! Outside the country, Tivo is not an option.
(sometimes there is truth in the jokes)
the distribution contain a Release.gpg file that is signed: so it is not possible, for example, to compromise a mirror, and it is more difficult for an intruder to compromise a single Debian package in the archive.
There is a script apt-check-sigs that will check the above signature: this is explained in the debian page on releases; unfortunately the link to download the script from there is down, here are two alternatives: google cache my site (slow)
(a)don't want to use a computer, and
(b)have a network server at home with some giga of video, that is capable of transcoding mpeg4 on the fly.
So, while the product is quite a cool gadget, its market success is quite arguable:
- if person X satisfies (b), then
most probably X likes to use
computers.
- Price may seem to be a matter of discussion... unless you consider that
the person X above has already spent so many
$$ for the aforementioned server that
X probably does not see a big difference in
the spending
150$ for an XBox, 160$ for an Oritron,
or 230$ for an old PC (as I did)
- for a person X as above, hacking an old PC
(or similar) is much more fun
- And spouses can find
Freevo reasonably easy to use.
(BTW: all the above comments come from personal experience)It does not say what you want it to say. It says: "the DCMA specifically allows reverse engineering to produce an interoperable computer program"
Indeed, in the case Lexmark v. Static Control Components the ruling was opposite to this one: the court decided against SCC's interoperable devices.(this was discussed in Slashdot a lot). So I am very very surprised that the court decided in favour of interoperable devices this time.
[disclaimer: I know nothing of lab phisics, and it shows]
how do they test these devices? what kind of lab tools do they use? I mean, since this transistor is way much faster than any other, it seems a chicken and egg problem to me: to build a testing device, you would need some transistors (for amplification of the output of the tested transistor, or whatever) that are as fast as the tested device, possibly faster...
japanese people do not shake hands. It all fits.
I went in July to a seminar of a group that studies Q.C. (won't say who they are). They repeated (several times) phrases as "q.c. is the future" and "standard crypto will be substituted by q.c.". It was really funny (to say the least) considering that q.c. only enables to: "send a data stream along a single fibre so that receiver can detect tampering". /.ers; the second is worth at least some remarks.
So I agree that it is perfect for distributing secret keys, and other similar applications. But I had to force myself to not ask these questions: What about sending data in the internet as large? What about data signing?
The 1st question has been asked by other
Data received thru q.c. is as secure as the server where it is stored; photons cannot be stored.
Suppose that Alice wants to send data to Bob so that Bob knows that Alice sent it. Suppose also that Alice host is secure (otherwise,So, while q.c. could substitute conventional data signing for short-time applications, when we want to sign data so that the signature can be verified at a later time, q.c. is not the answer: photon
my PDA is a SHARP ZQ-1250 (34KB RAM, 3 lines of text, QWERTY keyboard); it was a gift for my degree, 1993. It works perfectly. I hate using cell's keyboards, so my PDA has all of my contacts.
-
in August I got an old PC, Celeron on a ABIT
M/B;
the Celeron is a PPGA, and is mounted on a ZIF which is itself soldered on a small board, called SlotKET, that is then insterted in the
motherboard's SLOT1; the whole thing is too small for the PentiumIII retention system, and it wobbles under the weight of a massive heatsink.
Since the heatsink was quite dusty, and I did not dare to detach the heatsink, I took off
the whole SlotKET and washed the heatsink under tap water. Then I mounted the whole hw in a self-made case, and did some tests using Knoppix.
When two days later I turned it on again, it did not boot.
-
Since ATX brought soft-off to the world, I have always prominently forgotten to use the back power switch (thinking "if it is noiseless, it must be off"), and I have plugged/unplugged components, while a green led was brightly and suspiciously looking at me from the M/B
-
this week I helped my father to install a new 80GB drive; since the BIOS hanged on it, I decided to flash a new one; I downloaded it and put it in the floppy, but the aflash.exe utility reported a wrong checksum: I had forgotten to unzip it, and was trying to flash the bios1003a.zip file (instead
of the bios1003a.awd that is inside it)
- static discharge? what is it?
(seems that I was spared because: I live in a very humid place, with no carpets; and I never remember to turn off main power, let alone unplugging the cord; moreover, when I open a PC, I always sweat as a fountain, and, by reading above, you know why)
and, yes, I manage 3 PC at home and 6 at work, and I never got to break anything (that I could not repair by spraying it): probably because I always install St IGNUcius on any of them.It took 3 days, and a borrowed PentiumIII, to understand that the problem was in the CPU; so I decided to brute-force it: I took off the hooks, only to realize that the heatsink was glued to the CPU (by them *** using some two-face-glue-tape, instead of paste); so I insterted a flat skrewdriver between the heatsink and the CPU, and applied quite some force: I heard a noise as of velcro, and saw that I had actually managed to pull the CPU from the ZIF (without releasing the lever), so I had to tore apart the last pins by hand. Then I really insterted the skrewdriver between the heatsink and the CPU, and managed to detach it. I sprayed abundant contact cleaner everywhere, and mounted it back on. It now works.
> God is real unless declared integer
I laughed so hard at your sig that I had
to drink.
...are not necessarily a good thing; many big programs (particularly, propertary ones) need some tweaking on ENV variables to work properly
I co-author a software gtkmorph if you wish to give an help, may you try the GUI? thanks in advance
it happened that I proposed (almost) the same problem at a seminar in Nov 2002, and then I solved it. My program does not find the shortest string; but it also understands if a code is 'uniquely infinitely decodable' that is if it can decode strings of infinite lenght in an unique way. It is based on a known technique, see [Cover Thomas], with some improvements. This program also shows that the problem is polynomial complexity in n,k where n=number of words k=maximum of letters in a word.