The IBM PC's were crap. They ran slow, and I could get more performance out of a Compaq 350 MHz than an IBM 450 MHz. No, that's not flamebait; that opinion comes from certifying IBM PCs for an IBM branch.
However, I would have thought IBM would have clung to the PC market for longer than that... They did launch the whole PC trend in the early 1980's.
As it's been pointed out, the machines will continue to be available throughout the Internet, which means companies will still be able to honour that IBM-exclusive deal they signed. I have a feeling companies don't much care for performance, anyway...
Good news is, they're staying with the ThinkPads. These machines are slick! However, I can bet they won't stay competitive for very long... Producing laptops works much better when you're also making PCs. Give IBM a few years, and the ThinkPads will be gone as well.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I remember two years ago, playing around with projections, and me and my friends came to the conclusion that we'd have 1 GHz processors and 1 MB RAM before 2000.
I'm happy to see that the GHz barrier is likely to be broken before 2000, if just barely (though you have to wonder how much vaporware this is.) As for the MB RAM barrier, I guess it's always possible, but it's starting to sound like overkill (well, maybe not for W2K, but certainly for most of the uses I make of apps under Linux!)
Now all I need is a 1 TB hard drive to go with that 1 MB RAM and 1 GHz processor. In a Palm Pilot. There's nothing like misusing power to put any 1990 supercomputer to shame on playing X-mines!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Except that Sokal's hoax was much more elaborate and thought out.
I had the chance to read the article before it was exposed as a hoax (gotta love Philosophy Ph.D. friends) and we were in stitches. We knew there was something phony about it, and the conclusions were wrong; but the argument was strong and flawless. Of course, you had to know the authors that were (mis)quoted to realise what amount of B$ he was pushing.
It's worth a read, even though it's purposefully cryptic. It's as strong an argument against post-modernism, deconstructionism and feminist revisionism I have ever seen, doing so by using their own tools.
Sokal also argued that Quantum mechanics was a chauvinistic contruct that didn't withstand a feminist argument.
Pure beauty.:)
Sokal pulled a great one with this hoax, whereas Shamrock only fed a guillible media to begin with. Sokal had skill, wits and intelligence, and Shamrock just took an easy opportunity and milked them for all its worth. The first one is tricky and thoughtful, but the MTV hoax is much more far-reaching. It is an easier target, however.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Well, so Shamrock lied and deceived MTV viewers. Unethical? Perhaps. Worth it? Hell yeah.
Way to go. This is culture jamming at its best, and I think that Shamrock went about this in a very fair manner. As his letter points out, he first tried to inform the MTV people, but when they wanted sentationalism, he just gave it to them.
The result is, MTV is being slammed for their research, and people are getting a bit more suspicious of what they see on television. That's wonderful, and I don't see anything criminal in that.
And again, it shows that hackers are not to be trifled with. That was better than any web page cracking anyone could have done.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Hemos, check out Fight Club... The timing is spooky.
(Quick explanation: the kicker of the movie takes place when the main character's apartment blows up and he ends up homeless. But there's more spookiness, which I won't spoil here.)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
How is that news for nerds!? This was posted on JediDot some aeons ago, for Yoda's sake!! [spoiler deleted]'s death happened a long, long time ago! In a galaxy far, far away! Granted, [spoiler] was a nerd, but are we still crying over the death of Einstein?
(Oooooook, I've been staring at those kid lightsabers for too long...)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
First off, it's George Lucas-approved; that doesn't mean he made the call, or wrote the idea for the novel, or even came up with the idea of offing one of the main characters. It just means he feels like giving that novel a push and call it legit.
Second: why is it a big deal that a main character dies? They're, like, living in a dangerous universe, you know. They're heroes and bandits, and if anything, the death toll should be higher, not lower.
That it becomes a major news event when a character bites the bullet just goes to show that the series has turned into a narcissic exercise where the main characters face dangers, but never truly in real danger.
And that's fine, really... It works for Batman, and it works for every Star Trek crewman as long as he doesn't wear a red shirt.
However:
I wish it wasn't such a big deal. Even when the publisher/producer comes around and decides to off someone, it has to be a big deal, well-publicised in advance. Just think of the death of Superman... Anyone else was fed up with the media hype?
Babylon 5 came somewhat close to doing this right. A few characters died, even though main characters rarely did. (No, Z'ha'Dum doesn't count.) They were still lovable secondary characters and seeing them die set you on the edge of your seat, made the story more tangible and real. I wish I could read one Star Wars novel when I could turn a page and find out Han Solo has just died a horrible death. That'd make me jump and yelp in surprise. It'd hook me to the books forever.
But no. Notice how they all have to die heroic deaths? It's as if they're sorry for killing a character so they have to be nice about it. Even heroes die in freak accidents, you know. I'd love to see R2 try to fix the Millennium Falcon's toilets and fry a circuit. Well, alright, maybe that's just cruel. I'd love to believe in the possibility of it, though.
Final point: doesn't the "menace from outside the Galaxy" sound lame? It sounds like Wing Commander: Prophecy to me: a lame way to inject new energy in a story that has extended beyond its natural and satisfactory ending.
For me, Star Wars begins with Leia's ship trying to outrun a Star Destroyer, and ends with the ghosts of Anakin, Yoda and Obi-Wan looking at everyone getting drunk out of their minds.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Further explanation on the rare book cipher
on
The Code Book
·
· Score: 1
To further explain the point about the rare book method for encryption...
Yes, the book method sounds like it's a one-time pad. One can suppose that the book contains enough circled letters to run the length of a plaintext. The part about the book being a rare one is merely a question of key management, as it ensures that only that copy of the book contains a key, and that copies of the book will be hard to come by.
However, I strongly doubt the key was used only once and then the book destroyed. I also have my doubts on the selection method used on the letters of the book. Whatever the method, this is certainly not even close to peudo-random series; the fact you're selecting letters from a given language means that some letters will be more likely to be selected than others. Some in-depth statistical or differential cryptanalysis on the ciphertext using some known plaintext attacks is likely to yield results very fast. Throw in a powerful computer and you're set to break what was once unbreakable.
But my point is: the above argument invokes techniques, knowledge and tools for the cryptanalysis that were not available to the 17th Century cryptanalyst. As a matter of fact, he could not conceive them in his wildest dreams.
With that in mind, it's hard to think that even quantum cryptography, which generates a keystream that seems random enough and prevents man in the middle attacks, will always remain secure.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
What I find funny in this explanation, and in that regard it matches the guy's own description, is this:
They take two pages to describe how he painstakingly went through the process of scanning the Perl scripts, trying to squeeze in an executable under the exact right size, and ultimately gets to a dead end.
And then, in one line, they tell you he got an exploit off Bugtraq and got root access.
They're very quiet about that last bit... Yet it seems to me like it's the essential part of the exploit. Yes, accessing online resources and security websites is one of the main tools in the cracker's arsenal. Far from me to say that these sites should be banned! What I mean is, they should be read as much by the admins than they are by the crackers.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
On the Golden Age of cryptography...
on
The Code Book
·
· Score: 2
I dunno, maybe working on crypto has made me paranoid.
However, I find it hard to believe we have attained this age when crypto is almost on the threshold of total unbreakability. I think ciphers will always be broken, whether it is a simple Caesar cipher or quantum cryptography.
It is a bit like warfare: yes, it's becoming increasingly hard to break a cipher, but as ciphers become harder to analyse, so does the public become more knowledgeable on the subject.
In Ian Pears' novel 'An Instance of the Fingerpost', Cromwell's cryptographer uses a one-time pad whose key is a rare book, with some letters circled throughout the book. The key is the letters of the book. He then goes on to call the encryption scheme unbreakable. It was used by Kings and their spies to communicate safely.
Yet, we break such codes today without breaking a sweat. I am citing this example to show that, although our methods are being refined, so is the tools of cryptanalysis. In the end, I don't think we'll ever have a 100% perfect method of encryption and key management. Perfect cryptography will always require vigilance, intuition, deep thinking and a healthy dose of paranoia.
I'm not saying it's easy to break quantum cryptography (or, as it should be called, quantum key management.) I'm not saying it's not safe. I'm saying I doubt it'll be safe forever; it just seems safe now, as we haven't put a lot of energy into trying to break it yet.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Wow! This is wonderful, wonderful news. I was already amazed at Jane's request of Slashdot users to contribute their opinions on the original article, but this?
Clearly, Jane is top of their field for a good reason. They know how to innovate and pick up their source from new, yet very pertinent origins.
I sincerely hope that other companies follow this trend. Slashdot is a watering hole for many experts on various subjects, and that, and not prestige or visibility is what determines the validity of an opinion!
How many can claim to pay for good information, even if it comes from someone posting as "Anonymous Coward" on a public bulletin board?
I applaud this, and hope we see more of it in the future.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
You know, I get tired of this same old speech. I bet they said the same thing about the television. Why, since the television was invented, families don't sit together trying to relieve intense boredom by faking an interest in senseless chatter!
Heck, I bet they said that about the automobile and the radio. I bet someone once said that about fire, darnit.
Ten years ago, I would never have been able to chat in real time with a guy in Japan, or hear the original composition of a Russian musician in MP3. I had to look to biased papers and magazines to get my information, and keeping in touch with distant friends required buying stamps and taking a stroll to the post office, then wait a month.
Yes, there is always a (small) price to pay for technology. By providing us with an easier path, it can also lead to laziness and abuse. But I'm tired of the Luddite speech that technology is all evil and has cut us from our human roots.
Technology is never responsible for that. The people misusing it are.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
You know, I really hope this isn't just vaporware... The PS2 has been hyped a lot in the last few months, and to believe the game specs, the outside reviews and the screenshots, it's all worth it.
But I keep my fingers crossed... I hope they do it right and don't get carried away with the power of the machine. Yes, it's next-generation, but even 50 years from now, we'll still be asking for game machines, so there's no need to transform it all into something it is not already.
Still... Dang. I read a review by George Lucas, saying he received an early version of the PS2... Probably a machine sent to LucasArts or something. Anyway, he said there was a difference between the resolution produced by real-time imaging on the PS2 and the one used in TPM, but that you couldn't tell the difference on a television set.
Speaking of TPM, let's hope the PS2 won't receive a hype backlash like TPM did. There is such a thing as over-hyping.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
2050: People will still be making silly predictions about the future.
Very few predictions about the future ever come true, and when they do, it tends to be sheer luck: probably the most important revolution of the 90's, the Internet, was "predicted" by William Gibson, but even he admits that whe he created cyberspace, it wasn't a prediction as much as something cool he thought up.
From Nostradamus to Jules Verne, predictions rarely come true or if they do, they do so either far away in the future or much faster than they thought.
Predictions are interesting for one thing, however: they show us the particular mentality of the time. Right now, all the craze in predictions is nanotechnology and the colonisation of Mars. Ten years ago, it was about insanely fast (read: Pentium) computers in every home.
Predictions are more a display of our hopes, dreams and fears. And in that respect, they're interesting. Cause otherwise, most of them are stated to come about long after most of us die, anyway.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I dunno, individual experiences may vary, I guess.
I learned a lot from Linux Unleashed, and although the material is not softened up for a first approach, I find it's still a good reference guide when you want to, say, configure a particular X file and need a quick reference. And it was good enough to get me familiarised with most of the material.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
For people taking their first plunge in the wonderful world of Linux, I would also recommend Linux Unleashed. It's cheap in paperback, it comes with a Linux CD and it's really extensive for a first-time overview. (It even talks about the basics of C, C++ and Perl.)
Plus, when you show this to people used to buying Microsoft products, they don't believe their eyes... $30 for a Linux reference, complete with a CD including a truckload of apps. Most Microsoft application books are more expensive than that, and they certainly don't come with the OS!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I did say I didn't see much difference between receiving my bills in the mail or receiving them electronically. I do agree paying bills online is much more convenient. My point was the reception of them didn't make much of a difference. What's the difference?
1) Pick up bill on way inside; tear open enveloppe; logon and click a few times to pay it.
2) Logon and receive bill by email; click a few times to pay it.
The way I see it, not much.
And, this system does use SSL. They would be insane not to. Not that it's that secure; I wouldn't trust standard 128-bit SSL with all of my personal information.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I agree, it's not revolutionary. But it may be nice and convenient.
The way it'll work is, companies will work in conjunction with Post Canada on this. So, instead of receiving a bill through the mail, you'll get it electronically.
The payment of bills online is nothing new, and this will not change in that respect. But the idea of receiving bills through the Internet is a nice one. It eliminates that silly piece of paper every new month, which they use to pack with ads anyway.
But.
I'm fine with making a payment online, directly to my institution. But I'm not sure I like this. Receiving bills online is another can of worms, because they contain a lot of private information. With bill payment, you get a bill payment number and a certain amount. That's fine. But do I want people to know what my mother's phone number is, or what channels I have on cable?
It's a nice thought. I'm not sure people'll buy into it, because they're not the ones making the effort of delivering the mail to everyone's doorsteps. I mean, what's the difference between picking up an enveloppe in my mailbox or receiving an email? I couldn't care less. I bet many others don't. Besides, they like printed proof, so they'll probably stick to paper.
Like I said, nice idea. Too bad it won't work.
(And no, it doesn't cover personnal mail; well, they do offer a free email address, but we all know how secure that is.)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Krelle said AMD's SledgeHammer chip will be designed to run the older 32-bit software at high speeds, in contrast to the relatively slow performance that is expected for the 32-bit software on the Merced chip. And since AMD's new "x86 64" architecture will offer a less radical style of computing than Merced, Krelle said, it will be far easier for programmers to write 64-bit versions of the software.
This seems somewhat surprising, as I would expect Intel to pay close attention to the needs of their good pal, Microsoft. So now you'll need the competition's chip to run 32-bit apps more efficiently... If what AMD claims is to be believed.
And Microsoft is still years away from having a decent 64-bit OS.
With the competition following on Intel's heels, will Intel be forced to whip their 64-bit chips into gear? If so, will they be forced to toss their alliance with Microsoft to the pigs, and move on into the realm of alternate 64-bit OS?
If so, they'll get a lukewarm welcome, I'm sure. They're not nicknamed Wintel for nothing. I think as the possibility of 64-bit platforms becomes more and more a reality, the relationship between Intel and Microsoft is being detrimental to Intel. And they're both likely to lose ground.
I dunno; maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe Microsoft will come up with their Win64 platform, and people will consider crappy performance to be the norm, and nothing will change. That certainly wouldn't be anything new.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I'm not sure what's to dislike about Linux-Mandrake. Yes, most of the work done on the distro was taken from RedHat's own. Isn't that the pitfalls of Open Source, though? When the Open Source ideals begin to collide with the market world, you'll see people taking others' work and making a profit from it.
Quite simply, in the Open Source mentality, the amount of work you produce has no direct correlation to the money you'll make. It's something we all realised when we got on this boat, or so I hope.
Anyway; Linux-Mandrake is a good distro. It installs easily. It's "nice". But people, it's Linux! This is like arguing about the value of a novel because of the choice of covers. Every time a Linux-Mandrake CD sells, it's a Linux CD being sold. Whether they call it Linux-Mandrake, Corel Linux, Slackware, or Microsoft Linux (eek), it's still Linux gaining territory.
Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that this backlash against Linux-Mandrake is only motivated by the fact it's a 'user-friendly' distro. We geeks can be so macho at times... It may not be about cars, but it's about processing power, how much wasabi we can eat or what Linux distro we use. (I'm guilty of all of the above.) Fine. I suspect with the coming of Armed Linux and WinLinux 2000, geeks will consider Linux Mandrake to be true to the hardcore Linux mentality, and turn to bashing those sissy distros that don't even bother to wipe the FAT32 partition.
Me, whether the newcomer installs Linux by sweating over dozens of manuals over two months, or by popping in a CD and running Linux under Win32, I don't really care. They're still getting a taste of what a real OS is.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Well... Ok, I'm stumped. I didn't know that! There aren't any mention in the LotR trilogy that Elves have pointy ears. I always saw it as a pure creation of the D&D crowd.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Well, Elves are described as shorter and lither than Humans in the rulebooks. I think average height for an Elf is 5'4". The only tall Elves in D&D are the Dark Sun Elves.
Height is not the only thing that sets the Tolkien Elves from the D&D ones; pointy ears is another. You can bet the LotR Elves won't have them.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I mean, face it; the movie will be cheesy, the actors will suck. Men will be either 1) built like an ox or 2) weak and thin and wearing mage robes. The females will wear chainmail bikini and show a lot of cleavage.
But... Who cares? Everyone sitting in the cinema will go, 'Oh, darn, he must've hit a natural 20!' or, 'Good gosh, I never knew a Fireball was so messy... Cool!' or yet again, 'Oh, shit, a Beholder! Do you know how many HP these have?'
In short: it'll be a geek-o-rama. You bet I'm gonna see it. Story? Who cares! I bet the ratio of people who had sex before their 20's will be insanely low in that theatre...:)
And then, Lord of the Rings will come out, and the D&D movie will go down the drain because it won't hold to comparison either on the acting, SFX or story... And the D&D movie will be history.
I'm not surprised they're putting it out this year... If they put it out after LotR, it'll be too late to ever make cash on it. Now, with the LotR hype building up, the timing is perfect.
Keep on... Geekin'!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
That was a very honest and heartfelt column, Jon. Congrats, not on installing and running Linux, but on persevering and clinging to the objective.
Indeed, that was a fine homework you did. Perhaps you don't realise it, but you learned more about geeks through the whole process than you care to admit. We're not chest-thumpers, we're a community. There's some kind of secret handshake that actually takes the form of some technospeak, and then we're happily geekin' out.
You shouldn't feel as if having to resort to help meant you weren't being a geek. That's exactly the point! the fundation of the Open Source and Linux movement is one of help and mutual support! By exploiting these resources, you took true steps into the geek world. How does it look like from the inside?
Real programmers are different from mortals, certainly from writers. They are a separate species. Programmers are precise, confident and look ahead. They have no doubt they can make technology come out right for them. Writers are imprecise, uncertain and backwards-looking. Their relationship with technology is uncertain, a means, never an end.
See, I don't agree with you here. Not at all. We're not miracle workers; few of us have a methodology. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to the middle of a program, and wondered if I could pull it off.
As a programmer and a writer, I can tell you this: writing and programming is actually quite similar. You begin with a vague outline, with a goal in mind. You research your bases. You enter the subject head-on, and hope you won't stray from the objective too much. And then, something marvelous happens: as you progress, your work takes a life of its own, and you don't feel as if you're directing it, but rather that it's directing you. There's an inherent structure that emerges, and in the end, it can just take you a step further than you imagined when you began the project.
Coders have the same relationship with words than writers have with technology. It doesn't mean they work their craft differently.
Again, congratulations on making the jump to Linux. And keep this fresh attitude about the geek culture. You'll see we're not wizards or a different species; we're not that hard to figure out.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Slashdot Mirror
However, I would have thought IBM would have clung to the PC market for longer than that... They did launch the whole PC trend in the early 1980's.
As it's been pointed out, the machines will continue to be available throughout the Internet, which means companies will still be able to honour that IBM-exclusive deal they signed. I have a feeling companies don't much care for performance, anyway...
Good news is, they're staying with the ThinkPads. These machines are slick! However, I can bet they won't stay competitive for very long... Producing laptops works much better when you're also making PCs. Give IBM a few years, and the ThinkPads will be gone as well.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I'm happy to see that the GHz barrier is likely to be broken before 2000, if just barely (though you have to wonder how much vaporware this is.) As for the MB RAM barrier, I guess it's always possible, but it's starting to sound like overkill (well, maybe not for W2K, but certainly for most of the uses I make of apps under Linux!)
Now all I need is a 1 TB hard drive to go with that 1 MB RAM and 1 GHz processor. In a Palm Pilot. There's nothing like misusing power to put any 1990 supercomputer to shame on playing X-mines!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
When he blinks, he's not lying.
When he smiles, he's not lying.
When he folds his hands, he's not lying.
When he adjusts his tie, he's not lying.
It's when he speaks that he lies.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I had the chance to read the article before it was exposed as a hoax (gotta love Philosophy Ph.D. friends) and we were in stitches. We knew there was something phony about it, and the conclusions were wrong; but the argument was strong and flawless. Of course, you had to know the authors that were (mis)quoted to realise what amount of B$ he was pushing.
It's worth a read, even though it's purposefully cryptic. It's as strong an argument against post-modernism, deconstructionism and feminist revisionism I have ever seen, doing so by using their own tools.
Sokal also argued that Quantum mechanics was a chauvinistic contruct that didn't withstand a feminist argument.
Pure beauty. :)
Sokal pulled a great one with this hoax, whereas Shamrock only fed a guillible media to begin with. Sokal had skill, wits and intelligence, and Shamrock just took an easy opportunity and milked them for all its worth. The first one is tricky and thoughtful, but the MTV hoax is much more far-reaching. It is an easier target, however.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Way to go. This is culture jamming at its best, and I think that Shamrock went about this in a very fair manner. As his letter points out, he first tried to inform the MTV people, but when they wanted sentationalism, he just gave it to them.
The result is, MTV is being slammed for their research, and people are getting a bit more suspicious of what they see on television. That's wonderful, and I don't see anything criminal in that.
And again, it shows that hackers are not to be trifled with. That was better than any web page cracking anyone could have done.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
(Quick explanation: the kicker of the movie takes place when the main character's apartment blows up and he ends up homeless. But there's more spookiness, which I won't spoil here.)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
(Oooooook, I've been staring at those kid lightsabers for too long...)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Second: why is it a big deal that a main character dies? They're, like, living in a dangerous universe, you know. They're heroes and bandits, and if anything, the death toll should be higher, not lower.
That it becomes a major news event when a character bites the bullet just goes to show that the series has turned into a narcissic exercise where the main characters face dangers, but never truly in real danger.
And that's fine, really... It works for Batman, and it works for every Star Trek crewman as long as he doesn't wear a red shirt.
However:
I wish it wasn't such a big deal. Even when the publisher/producer comes around and decides to off someone, it has to be a big deal, well-publicised in advance. Just think of the death of Superman... Anyone else was fed up with the media hype?
Babylon 5 came somewhat close to doing this right. A few characters died, even though main characters rarely did. (No, Z'ha'Dum doesn't count.) They were still lovable secondary characters and seeing them die set you on the edge of your seat, made the story more tangible and real. I wish I could read one Star Wars novel when I could turn a page and find out Han Solo has just died a horrible death. That'd make me jump and yelp in surprise. It'd hook me to the books forever.
But no. Notice how they all have to die heroic deaths? It's as if they're sorry for killing a character so they have to be nice about it. Even heroes die in freak accidents, you know. I'd love to see R2 try to fix the Millennium Falcon's toilets and fry a circuit. Well, alright, maybe that's just cruel. I'd love to believe in the possibility of it, though.
Final point: doesn't the "menace from outside the Galaxy" sound lame? It sounds like Wing Commander: Prophecy to me: a lame way to inject new energy in a story that has extended beyond its natural and satisfactory ending.
For me, Star Wars begins with Leia's ship trying to outrun a Star Destroyer, and ends with the ghosts of Anakin, Yoda and Obi-Wan looking at everyone getting drunk out of their minds.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Yes, the book method sounds like it's a one-time pad. One can suppose that the book contains enough circled letters to run the length of a plaintext. The part about the book being a rare one is merely a question of key management, as it ensures that only that copy of the book contains a key, and that copies of the book will be hard to come by.
However, I strongly doubt the key was used only once and then the book destroyed. I also have my doubts on the selection method used on the letters of the book. Whatever the method, this is certainly not even close to peudo-random series; the fact you're selecting letters from a given language means that some letters will be more likely to be selected than others. Some in-depth statistical or differential cryptanalysis on the ciphertext using some known plaintext attacks is likely to yield results very fast. Throw in a powerful computer and you're set to break what was once unbreakable.
But my point is: the above argument invokes techniques, knowledge and tools for the cryptanalysis that were not available to the 17th Century cryptanalyst. As a matter of fact, he could not conceive them in his wildest dreams.
With that in mind, it's hard to think that even quantum cryptography, which generates a keystream that seems random enough and prevents man in the middle attacks, will always remain secure.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
They take two pages to describe how he painstakingly went through the process of scanning the Perl scripts, trying to squeeze in an executable under the exact right size, and ultimately gets to a dead end.
And then, in one line, they tell you he got an exploit off Bugtraq and got root access.
They're very quiet about that last bit... Yet it seems to me like it's the essential part of the exploit. Yes, accessing online resources and security websites is one of the main tools in the cracker's arsenal. Far from me to say that these sites should be banned! What I mean is, they should be read as much by the admins than they are by the crackers.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
However, I find it hard to believe we have attained this age when crypto is almost on the threshold of total unbreakability. I think ciphers will always be broken, whether it is a simple Caesar cipher or quantum cryptography.
It is a bit like warfare: yes, it's becoming increasingly hard to break a cipher, but as ciphers become harder to analyse, so does the public become more knowledgeable on the subject.
In Ian Pears' novel 'An Instance of the Fingerpost', Cromwell's cryptographer uses a one-time pad whose key is a rare book, with some letters circled throughout the book. The key is the letters of the book. He then goes on to call the encryption scheme unbreakable. It was used by Kings and their spies to communicate safely.
Yet, we break such codes today without breaking a sweat. I am citing this example to show that, although our methods are being refined, so is the tools of cryptanalysis. In the end, I don't think we'll ever have a 100% perfect method of encryption and key management. Perfect cryptography will always require vigilance, intuition, deep thinking and a healthy dose of paranoia.
I'm not saying it's easy to break quantum cryptography (or, as it should be called, quantum key management.) I'm not saying it's not safe. I'm saying I doubt it'll be safe forever; it just seems safe now, as we haven't put a lot of energy into trying to break it yet.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Clearly, Jane is top of their field for a good reason. They know how to innovate and pick up their source from new, yet very pertinent origins.
I sincerely hope that other companies follow this trend. Slashdot is a watering hole for many experts on various subjects, and that, and not prestige or visibility is what determines the validity of an opinion!
How many can claim to pay for good information, even if it comes from someone posting as "Anonymous Coward" on a public bulletin board?
I applaud this, and hope we see more of it in the future.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Heck, I bet they said that about the automobile and the radio. I bet someone once said that about fire, darnit.
Ten years ago, I would never have been able to chat in real time with a guy in Japan, or hear the original composition of a Russian musician in MP3. I had to look to biased papers and magazines to get my information, and keeping in touch with distant friends required buying stamps and taking a stroll to the post office, then wait a month.
Yes, there is always a (small) price to pay for technology. By providing us with an easier path, it can also lead to laziness and abuse. But I'm tired of the Luddite speech that technology is all evil and has cut us from our human roots.
Technology is never responsible for that. The people misusing it are.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
But I keep my fingers crossed... I hope they do it right and don't get carried away with the power of the machine. Yes, it's next-generation, but even 50 years from now, we'll still be asking for game machines, so there's no need to transform it all into something it is not already.
Still... Dang. I read a review by George Lucas, saying he received an early version of the PS2... Probably a machine sent to LucasArts or something. Anyway, he said there was a difference between the resolution produced by real-time imaging on the PS2 and the one used in TPM, but that you couldn't tell the difference on a television set.
Speaking of TPM, let's hope the PS2 won't receive a hype backlash like TPM did. There is such a thing as over-hyping.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Very few predictions about the future ever come true, and when they do, it tends to be sheer luck: probably the most important revolution of the 90's, the Internet, was "predicted" by William Gibson, but even he admits that whe he created cyberspace, it wasn't a prediction as much as something cool he thought up.
From Nostradamus to Jules Verne, predictions rarely come true or if they do, they do so either far away in the future or much faster than they thought.
Predictions are interesting for one thing, however: they show us the particular mentality of the time. Right now, all the craze in predictions is nanotechnology and the colonisation of Mars. Ten years ago, it was about insanely fast (read: Pentium) computers in every home.
Predictions are more a display of our hopes, dreams and fears. And in that respect, they're interesting. Cause otherwise, most of them are stated to come about long after most of us die, anyway.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I learned a lot from Linux Unleashed, and although the material is not softened up for a first approach, I find it's still a good reference guide when you want to, say, configure a particular X file and need a quick reference. And it was good enough to get me familiarised with most of the material.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Plus, when you show this to people used to buying Microsoft products, they don't believe their eyes... $30 for a Linux reference, complete with a CD including a truckload of apps. Most Microsoft application books are more expensive than that, and they certainly don't come with the OS!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
1) Pick up bill on way inside; tear open enveloppe; logon and click a few times to pay it.
2) Logon and receive bill by email; click a few times to pay it.
The way I see it, not much.
And, this system does use SSL. They would be insane not to. Not that it's that secure; I wouldn't trust standard 128-bit SSL with all of my personal information.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The way it'll work is, companies will work in conjunction with Post Canada on this. So, instead of receiving a bill through the mail, you'll get it electronically.
The payment of bills online is nothing new, and this will not change in that respect. But the idea of receiving bills through the Internet is a nice one. It eliminates that silly piece of paper every new month, which they use to pack with ads anyway.
But.
I'm fine with making a payment online, directly to my institution. But I'm not sure I like this. Receiving bills online is another can of worms, because they contain a lot of private information. With bill payment, you get a bill payment number and a certain amount. That's fine. But do I want people to know what my mother's phone number is, or what channels I have on cable?
It's a nice thought. I'm not sure people'll buy into it, because they're not the ones making the effort of delivering the mail to everyone's doorsteps. I mean, what's the difference between picking up an enveloppe in my mailbox or receiving an email? I couldn't care less. I bet many others don't. Besides, they like printed proof, so they'll probably stick to paper.
Like I said, nice idea. Too bad it won't work.
(And no, it doesn't cover personnal mail; well, they do offer a free email address, but we all know how secure that is.)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
This seems somewhat surprising, as I would expect Intel to pay close attention to the needs of their good pal, Microsoft. So now you'll need the competition's chip to run 32-bit apps more efficiently... If what AMD claims is to be believed.
And Microsoft is still years away from having a decent 64-bit OS.
With the competition following on Intel's heels, will Intel be forced to whip their 64-bit chips into gear? If so, will they be forced to toss their alliance with Microsoft to the pigs, and move on into the realm of alternate 64-bit OS?
If so, they'll get a lukewarm welcome, I'm sure. They're not nicknamed Wintel for nothing. I think as the possibility of 64-bit platforms becomes more and more a reality, the relationship between Intel and Microsoft is being detrimental to Intel. And they're both likely to lose ground.
I dunno; maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe Microsoft will come up with their Win64 platform, and people will consider crappy performance to be the norm, and nothing will change. That certainly wouldn't be anything new.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Quite simply, in the Open Source mentality, the amount of work you produce has no direct correlation to the money you'll make. It's something we all realised when we got on this boat, or so I hope.
Anyway; Linux-Mandrake is a good distro. It installs easily. It's "nice". But people, it's Linux! This is like arguing about the value of a novel because of the choice of covers. Every time a Linux-Mandrake CD sells, it's a Linux CD being sold. Whether they call it Linux-Mandrake, Corel Linux, Slackware, or Microsoft Linux (eek), it's still Linux gaining territory.
Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that this backlash against Linux-Mandrake is only motivated by the fact it's a 'user-friendly' distro. We geeks can be so macho at times... It may not be about cars, but it's about processing power, how much wasabi we can eat or what Linux distro we use. (I'm guilty of all of the above.) Fine. I suspect with the coming of Armed Linux and WinLinux 2000, geeks will consider Linux Mandrake to be true to the hardcore Linux mentality, and turn to bashing those sissy distros that don't even bother to wipe the FAT32 partition.
Me, whether the newcomer installs Linux by sweating over dozens of manuals over two months, or by popping in a CD and running Linux under Win32, I don't really care. They're still getting a taste of what a real OS is.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Height is not the only thing that sets the Tolkien Elves from the D&D ones; pointy ears is another. You can bet the LotR Elves won't have them.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
But... Who cares? Everyone sitting in the cinema will go, 'Oh, darn, he must've hit a natural 20!' or, 'Good gosh, I never knew a Fireball was so messy... Cool!' or yet again, 'Oh, shit, a Beholder! Do you know how many HP these have?'
In short: it'll be a geek-o-rama. You bet I'm gonna see it. Story? Who cares! I bet the ratio of people who had sex before their 20's will be insanely low in that theatre... :)
And then, Lord of the Rings will come out, and the D&D movie will go down the drain because it won't hold to comparison either on the acting, SFX or story... And the D&D movie will be history.
I'm not surprised they're putting it out this year... If they put it out after LotR, it'll be too late to ever make cash on it. Now, with the LotR hype building up, the timing is perfect.
Keep on... Geekin'!
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Indeed, that was a fine homework you did. Perhaps you don't realise it, but you learned more about geeks through the whole process than you care to admit. We're not chest-thumpers, we're a community. There's some kind of secret handshake that actually takes the form of some technospeak, and then we're happily geekin' out.
You shouldn't feel as if having to resort to help meant you weren't being a geek. That's exactly the point! the fundation of the Open Source and Linux movement is one of help and mutual support! By exploiting these resources, you took true steps into the geek world. How does it look like from the inside?
See, I don't agree with you here. Not at all. We're not miracle workers; few of us have a methodology. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to the middle of a program, and wondered if I could pull it off.
As a programmer and a writer, I can tell you this: writing and programming is actually quite similar. You begin with a vague outline, with a goal in mind. You research your bases. You enter the subject head-on, and hope you won't stray from the objective too much. And then, something marvelous happens: as you progress, your work takes a life of its own, and you don't feel as if you're directing it, but rather that it's directing you. There's an inherent structure that emerges, and in the end, it can just take you a step further than you imagined when you began the project.
Coders have the same relationship with words than writers have with technology. It doesn't mean they work their craft differently.
Again, congratulations on making the jump to Linux. And keep this fresh attitude about the geek culture. You'll see we're not wizards or a different species; we're not that hard to figure out.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."